Well, it seems that "our" President has done it, again.
The man who has an academic career of being the "man who wasn't there"; a writing career of fake autobiography written by ghosts; a legislative career of voting "present"; who won the presidency for being a cool guy who can read his teleprompter; and got a Nobel Prize for just showing up, has made it clear that He is displeased with the way others conducted the roll-out of His "signature" achievement, the horrendously misnamed Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).
It seems that nearly a decade and a half into the 21st century, after spending three years and over $634 million, the government of the United States of America, the country more than any other that invented the modern digital age, the country that can listen to every phone call in Azerbaijan, and read every email in France, cannot set up a functioning website. EBay can do it; Amazon can do it; millions of banks, car rental offices, hotels, motels, restaurants, pet stores, charities, and a zillion other retailers can do it; hell, a one-man florist shop almost anywhere in the world can do it, but the richest and most powerful government of the richest and most powerful country in all of human history cannot do it despite having essentially unlimited funding and three years to do so.
Yes, my friends, creating a website is beyond the technical, leadership, and managerial skills of the Obama misadminsitration. This corrupt, inept bunch of loons who run our government gave the contract for this website, on a sole-source bidding basis, to the American subsidiary of a Canadian company (Blame it on Canada! Yah!) that was fired by Canadian officials for having messed up work on Canada's health care system. It seems no adult supervised the creation of the website, not to mention no teenaged computer nerd who would know what he is doing.
Do not, however, fret my friends for The One, The Name (יהוה), The Healer of the Earth is on the case. As I mentioned at the outset, He is unhappy, in fact, He let it be known that "Nobody's madder than Me about the website not working as well as it should . . ." Wow! "Nobody is madder" than He about this issue.
We have two possibilities here.
The first is that the government grammarian who supervises teleprompters had not returned to work because of the "GOP shutdown" leading the President to be, well, inarticulate--imagine if Bush spoke that way!
The second possibility is that He uttered a great revelatory truth, to wit, that He is the maddest man in the world. Could be. He said it; I didn't, so it must be thus.
I can see the biopic, The Madness of King O.
Given all the evidence, it looks as if the site and the legislation were never meant to work as stated. Their failure will serve the purpose of creating a need for yet more government "solutions," involving more taxpayer money p!$$ed away on nothing.
ReplyDeleteI think you're cribbing off Swoggler (vide infra). Please stop violating temporal causality.
DeleteAmazing that we live in a country where Obama gets re-elected by people who are sure that Obama is the candidate who most "cares about people like me". ???
ReplyDeleteIf not by people who think--excuse me, feel--that's the single desideratum for a political candidate, then by whom *would* he be re-elected?
DeleteRubia tinctorum is the president of the United States.
ReplyDeleteIf he's so mad, why does Sebelius still have a job? Because if he fires her, she'll talk.
A surprisingly few ex-Chicago Way pols talk.
DeleteThey understand that it's too easy to fall into a river or into the path of an on-coming train.
Perhaps you're right.
DeleteI'm quite sure "President" Obama is madder than a wet hen. (take that however you wish)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I wish Obama was mad as a hatter. We'd probably be far better off.
-Blake
So you're positive he isn't?
DeleteOn the bright side, one never has to look far for the lie. He's not really mad. This is all part of the plan.
ReplyDeleteThe rollout is a disaster? Then we must have more money and more workers and more authority! Only that way can we provide the bright, shiny thingamajig we promised. (heh heh...suckers)
And the "madness" will continue. Some people refuse to sign up for the new reality? Then we must have more enforcers, more reach, more money! Only that way can we ensure that fairness prevails and we all march forward together to the glorious future.
The problems with this rollout are not bugs...they are features.
Well, a bit yes but mostly no.
DeleteHiding the prices until you've put in, and had verified a ton of personal information--partly to commit you, but mostly to see if they can offer you some tempting subsidies--was intentional; and the IT disaster owes much to that.
But of course the party of The State doesn't want The State to look incompetent. Even apart from ideology, the power of which over them never underestimate, it threatens their rice bowl.
"But of course the party of The State doesn't want The State to look incompetent." Their deadliest enemy is derision and disbelief.
DeleteIt is the Affordable Care Act not the Convenient Care Act. The website's cost savings will be passed on to everyone eventually.
ReplyDeleteLet no one touch this woman!
DeleteWhen I was an undergraduate, I roomed briefly with a bright kid from rural Georgia who believed that Jews had horns. It's a superstition that once had currency, and he ... just didn't know any better. I wished him a gut shabbos, as it happened to be Saturday, but I didn't tell him he was mistaken ... it would have been like killing the last unicorn.
Similarly our Anonymous. There's a glass jar at the Smithsonian with her name on it. Let no one take the awesome responsibility of snuffing out the last Obamacare believer. Who knows, someday her DNA may be found to have a useful sequence in it.
When ever you see "Affordable" as a prefix to a programme it should always ring warning bells. It has about as much reliability of being so as when you find a country called "The Democratic Republic of Wherever" has of actually being democratic - unless of course the definition is the same as your Democratic Party.
DeletePurely an outsider's observation.
Should have been signed David from Oz - damn this getting old.
DeleteDavid, Aussies are forgiven as they are the only sane ones left in the Anglo-sphere.
DeleteOh, I don't know! Canada isn't doing so badly - though I may change my mind if we elect the Son of Trudeau'!!
DeleteInteresting article on Ontario's approach to Death Panels
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/10/canada_has_death_panels_and_that_s_a_good_thing.html
Kirkbride
" The website's cost savings will be passed on to everyone eventually. "
DeleteAll except taxpayers, of course.
Obama frequently assesses events by making his feelings the chief measure of their importance. I assume he believes that revealing his emotional responses somehow gives us great confidence in his leadership and management skills. Thanks, Diplomad, for adding to my collection:
ReplyDelete2009: "Nobody is more worried about the deficit and the debt than me."
2010: "Nobody is more upset than me" about the oil disaster.
2010: "Nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space than I am."
2012: "Nobody is more interested in figuring [Benghazi] out than I am."
2013: "Nobody is more offended than me by some of the anti-gay and lesbian legislation that you've been seeing in Russia."
2013: "Nobody is more war-weary than me."
2013: "Nobody shares the frustrations of the American people more than I do." The president says no one sees the damage "day in and day out" of a shutdown more than he does.
2013: "Nobody's madder than me about the [Obamacare] website not working as well as it should…"
Obama's exquisitely tuned emotions rival the exquisitely tuned physical sensibilities of that princess who could feel a pea even through a dozen mattresses. It's a relief, really, to be able to transfer my concerns to Dear Leader. Caring more deeply than anyone else truly is the path to perfect order. I feel much, much better about Obamacare now, simply because I know he has the capacity to FEEL more angst about every blinking thing than we ordinary slobs can even imagine.
Well, it is all about him.
DeleteI think we ought to elect this Nobody guy President, because apparently he's up to the job and the former junior senator from Illinois is not.
DeleteI loved the excuse that it was impossible to design a nationwide purchasing network that link shipping and payment systems and was usuable by millions of people at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThen I went on Ebay and purchased a trinket from some guy in Poland and paid for it through a secure account linked to my checking account with a credit card filed as a backup source just in case. Went with the standard USPS shipping.
Now this link is from a couple of weeks back - October 2nd to be specific (and oooh delicious irony and one other small "whatnot" or as the teens might say a WTF?!!
ReplyDeleteYa'll of course remember (though it's muted now - the thing about "Voter ID")?
You'll remember of course the canard back then, "Requiring a [cough, cough] 'disadvantaged person' to have the wherewithal to be able to muster up the skill to get to the DMV (Revenue Office in Arkansas) to get a photo ID, is pure racism!"
I'm tempted to just go ahead with the obvious but the truth is ... I didn't come up with the joke [apologies Whitewall] ... oh heck I'm gonna do it anyway just in case none of ya'll search the link:
Voter ID laws require the most disadvantaged among us to be expected to navigate the complexities of getting themselves down to the DMV and sit for a picture. "Racism pure and simple!" said Nancy [among others] Pelosi.
Complex to get to the DMV and sit for a picture Nancy?
Then how in the hell are these supposedly 'disadvantaged voters' being so "unskilled" as they are - supposed to get on a computer and navigate to a $220M Sebelius run HHS website that doesn't work for even tech-savvy people gonna manage that?
Diplomad long ago described the phenomena. Not exactly so as I recall but "Pert Near" as we say in Arkansas - and that's why I'm leaving off the actual wording of the joke. Malcolm Pollack reposted the same thing but ... anyway:
http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/10/minorities-cant-be-expected-to-have-photo-id-but-can-be-expected-to-navigate-obamacare-sites.html
Arkie
Yes, I have had a similar argument with Ocare supporters noting that the "poor" whom are to "benefit" from Ocare are assumed to have computers, wifi, etc. Some poor, eh?
DeletePresumably they use the computers in the libraries, if the porn customers haven't left the keyboards to sticky.
DeleteArgh. "Too sticky", of course.
Delete"I can see the biopic, The Madness of King O. " Ah, now this has promise. The cast alone is exquisite.
ReplyDeleteRe: to all the above on the ACA. Think of it as the Mother of all Speed Rail projects with armed ticket takers and conductors.
Why was it necessary to create a new website in order to impose this monstrosity on the people? They could simply have decreed that only ACA compliant policies are permitted henceforth, and required the subjects throughout the realm to purchase them through the existing insurance company websites.
ReplyDeleteThat would have been inconvenient when they moved on to Stage Two, the push for single-payer.
DeleteThe major problem with the web site is the requirement, added late, that no one can see the premium prices before submitting all their financial information to the IRS. The second stage of "We have to pass it to see what's in it."
DeleteThat wouldn't work because the insurance companies can't calculate the rebate. The sheep would see the full price of the policy and then have to find a way to get the rebate. Which, they wouldn't do because most of them would have had a coronary occlusion at the first sight of the premium. Pretty much anybody who survived the premium shock would keel over at the deductible.
DeleteIn answer to your question, it was necessary in order to show everyone how much more competent the noble government is than the greedy corporations.
DeleteSo, how's that working out for you?
Someone once called the O the Affirmative Action President. We see now one more reason why it's an appropriate monniker.
ReplyDeleteThis is a late post, but I can't resist. They've decided to bring in the best and the brightest.
ReplyDeleteAs of this writing, they won't say who, exactly.
Top. Men.