I love Fall. ItÂ’s always been my favorite time of year, especially growing up in a hot, humid climate. Fall represented an escape from the oppressive weather and signaled the resumption of the school year, something I always enjoyed. (I denounce myself.)

Sadly, this time of year brings with it shorter days, which becomes jarringly obvious in a couple of weeks when we “fall back” for Daylight Savings Time (a thing I loathe and one of the best things about living in Indiana before they, too, succumbed to DST).

As if to compensate for the gloom of shorter days, Nature provides us with quite a show at this time of year in the form of Fall foliage. This short video from Scientific American explains the hows and whys of Fall color:
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Posted by: Open Blogger at 01:11 PM | Comments (322)
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Dr. John E.-vil: Gentlemen, I have a plan. It's called blackmail. The Head Ewok has gone on vacation and left us the keys. In his absence we will hijack his URL and route the traffic to Healthcare.gov. Either the Obama administration pays us an exorbitant amount of money, or we make it seen that Barack Obama has caused Healthcare.gov to be released years too early and without adequate testing, causing it to crash.

Coblogger Number Two: The Obama administration *did* release Healthcare.gov years too early, and it did shit the bed as expected.

Dr. John E.-vil: Right, people you have to tell me these things, okay? I've been tweeting about that shitty Orca launch for a year, okay? Throw me a frickin' bone here! I'm the boss! Need the info.

Dr. John E.-vil: Okay no problem. Here's my second plan. Back in the 60's, I had a weather changing machine that was, in essence, a sophisticated heat beam which we called a "laser." Using these "lasers," we guide precision weapons and cause Libyan leader Colonel Qaddafi to be overthrown by Islamic militants, plunging the country and the entire middle east into chaos. That is unless the world pays us a hefty ransom.

Coblogger Number Two: That ... also already has happened.

Dr. John E.-vil: Shit. Oh hell, let's just do what we always do. Swipe some content from Allah at Hot Air and turn it into a blog post.

HereÂ’s a tidbit on yesterdayÂ’s HHS conference call which lays bare the agencyÂ’s new approach to accountability. Sebelius doesnÂ’t work for you, right? Well, then, why should she have to answer your questions?

According to some accounts, the projectÂ’s managers at the Department of Health and Human Services assured the White House that any remaining problems could be worked out once the Web site went live, but other senior department officials predicted serious trouble and advised delaying the rollout.

But on a conference call with reporters on Thursday, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services officials twice declined to answer questions about whether Kathleen Sebelius, Mr. ObamaÂ’s health secretary, knew about the problems. Asked if Marilyn Tavenner, the agencyÂ’s director, or anyone else had alerted Ms. Sebelius, an official cut off a reporter.

“Next question,” he said.

First of all, that should be FYNQ. I mean, if you're going to throw a brushback pitch, throw the damned thing.

But, seriously, these people nominally work for us*. I don't think it's too early at all for a little, "what did they know and when did they know it?" action.

But our esteemed Juicebox JournoList corps doesn't seem to agree:

He's not sure what Sebilius knows, but he doesn't have a question for her. Ummm, how about "what do you know?". Just spitballin' here, but the best way to get information out of people would seem to be, you know, asking them questions.

Now of course she'll just stonewall but eventually enough people will ask enough questions and get enough partial answers to piece the puzzle together. These people used to be called journalists. more...

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Little Bear hugs Urine Bear

So cute!

Glasswing butterflies. Via VA Viper. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 10:55 AM | Comments (165)
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Another nasty bite-sized nugget of DOOM, my groovy babies. One more day in His Majesty's Happy Kingdom.

Flee! Flee! Run for your lives!

Print, baby! Print until those presses catch fire!

The decline and fall of France.

The luckiest generation. The great mistake of liberalism was in assuming that this historical anomaly was the norm, and would continue to be so forever. (Also, bear this in mind: luck favors the well-prepared.)

Americans are accumulating debt faster than savings. But it's been that way for a long time now. Americans have been under-saving for fifty years or more.

Teh Krugman, Village Idiot: “Don’t worry! Be happy!” Don't get close to the strange little man with the beard, Timmy, I don't think he's quite right in the head. more...

Posted by: Monty at 10:11 AM | Comments (165)
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From Jonah's Goldberg's newsletter, The Goldberg File:

King Obama

Charlie Cooke has a great column today making a very similar point to what I had intended to start the G-File with: Obama's not a dictator; he's a king. And when I say he's a king, I don't mean the dictatorial kind of an absolute monarchy. I mean he's like the king in a parliamentary democracy where the prime minister has all of the power and the monarch is supposed to mug for postcards and inspire elementary-school children. He's less Longshanks and more King Ralph. At least whenever he's expected to take responsibility, he becomes a figurehead who gives voice to the public's outrage over the problems he himself created. "Nobody is angrier," Obama routinely insists, about the crap people should be angry at him about. As Charlie puts it, "Obama is less Julius Caesar than he is a tribune of the plebs -- an Oprahfied avatar that has been custom-designed both to indulge and guide the public sentiment like so many Bill Clintons feeling your pain."

He's always changing costumes to play the role that political necessity requires of him, which means he has more wardrobe changes than a Vegas drag queen's one-"woman" tribute to Cher.

Always Running for a Job He Already Has

The only thing Barack Obama knows how to do is be Barack Obama. He thinks that's his job, like a king whose only real responsibility is to be kingly. The problem is that the one person (who matters, at least) who doesn't understand this is Barack Obama. As he once said, Obama believes his own bull***t. Charlie offers some good examples of Obama's own Olympian self-regard. For instance:

"I think I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters," Obama told him. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director."

Though I immediately thought of this bit from New York magazine:

Emanuel's ad-hocracy, meanwhile, didn't faze Obama. The president's friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett sometimes pointed out that not only had he never managed an operation, he'd never really had a nine-to-five job in his life. Obama didn't know what he didn't know, yet his self-confidence was so stratospheric that once, in the context of thinking about Emanuel's replacement, he remarked in all seriousness, "You know, I'd make a good chief of staff."

Those overhearing the comment somehow managed to suppress their laughter.

Obviously, Obama always has a healthy ego, in the same way Godzilla had a healthy physique and the sun has a healthy mass. But part of the problem stems from the fact that he cannot see the difference between campaigning and governing. That would be bad enough, if it were not for the fact that Obama seems to think that he ran his campaign. As I noted the other day in the Corner, here's Obama's response to the charge that Sarah Palin had more executive experience than he did:

Barack Obama: Well, you know, my understanding is that, uh, Governor Palin's town of Wasilly [sic] has, uh, 50 employees, uh, uh, we've got 2,500, uh, in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. Uh, uh, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. Uh, so I think that, uh, our ability to manage large systems, uh, and to, uh, execute, uh, I think has been made clear over the last couple of years. Uh, and certainly, in terms of, uh, the legislation that I've passed just dealing with this issue post-Katrina, uh, of how we handle emergency management. The fact that, uh, many of my recommendations were adopted and are being put in place, uh, as we speak indicates the extent to which we can provide the kinds of support and good service that the American people expect.

The remarkable thing about this is that there's no real executive experience in his explication of his executive experience. Yes, the candidate can fire people from the campaign. But being the candidate and being the campaign manager are as different as being the lead singer for Spinal Tap and being the band's manager. On the campaign trail, Obama's job was to "be Barack Obama," to sound smart and charismatic and rev up the crowds. He's still playing that part rather than fulfilling the job description.

And no one will tell him. That's why, I suspect, when he went to check on the progress of the site's development he had no idea how to ask questions that would get at the reality of the situation. Bureaucrats, apparatchiks, and contractors blow smoke. That's what they do. Obama has no idea how to cut through the smoke. He thinks being president involves constantly going out and giving speeches to crowds that love him about how hard he's working rather than actually, you know, working. It's all very meta. He's playing president Obama because he doesn't know how to be president Obama. I think that when he went out on Monday and did his infomercial schtick in the Rose Garden -- Operators are standing by! It's not just a website; it's a floorwax! etc. -- he honestly thought he was fixing the problem. Well, I've done my part!

You can sign up for email delivery of Jonah Goldberg's The Goldberg File and other NRO newsletters here.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 11:30 AM | Comments (238)
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From Geraghty's newsletter, The Morning Jolt:

Campaign Spot's increasingly regular contributor, IT project management expert Bruce Webster, writes in again:

Lots of people are going around quoting Fred Brooks now -- both the 'mythical man-month' concept as well as Brooks's Law ("Adding manpower to a late project makes it later.").

But there's something else Brooks said with regards to projects that are running late that is directly relevant in the context of the 'tech surge': "Take no small slips." In other words, if you know a project is going to be late, or if it already is, and you have to come up with a new anticipated release date, you should significantly over-estimate how much time it's going to take to get it right. (In essence, a recasting of the old engineering maxim to 'under-promise and over-deliver'.) It is far better to estimate that you'll need an extra six months and deliver in four or five, than to estimate that you need one or two months and then deliver in four or five.

I know that rule, or a version of it. I'm just used to seeing it attributed to chief engineer Scotty from Star Trek.

Of course, the natural tendency on the part of HHS & the Administration will be to minimize the estimates of how long it's going to take to fix things -- and those estimates will almost certainly be wrong. So what we may see is the 'Never-Ending Story' pattern, where for several months they're perpetually 4-6 weeks away from having Healthcare.gov working properly.

If I were in charge? I'd pull the plug completely and give no completion date at all until the website reconstruction was at a point where I felt comfortable opening it up for public alpha testing. Based on how the alpha testing went, I might announce a subsequent date for beta testing; and if that went well, then and only then would I announce a planned date to go live. (Here's some background on alpha test/beta test/release: http://bfwa.com/2013/10/10/an-approach-to-software-release/).

Of course, the administration can't do that. They need to heave Hail Mary passes from here on out, and hope the thing suddenly and miraculously starts working like the hyperdrive of the Millennium Falcon at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.

Despite Joe Manchin, the administration is holding fast on the deadline to have insurance (as opposed to the open enrollment period, which is different). They've staked everything -- including their stance during the government shutdown -- on the mandate kicking in on March 31, and this whole thing working properly by that date.

Also, expect the coming days and weeks to feature a big focus on how many of the 'enrollees' are from expanding Medicaid, as opposed to purchasing insurance.

Avik Roy:

Therefore the 476,000 number [the administration released] is misleading. My best guess is that for the 17 states that have reported out some data, the number is closer to 193,818 applications (once you pull out the Medicaid applications that have been reported on).

And here's the devastating statistic you'll see cited until the numbers change:

Over 500,000 individuals have seen their insurance policies cancelled in just 3 states. In all 50 states, only 476,000 applications have been "filed" in an exchange.

In short, Obamacare has caused more people to lose their health insurance than gain it so far.

You can sign up for email delivery of Jim Geraghty's The Morning Jolt and other NRO newsletters here.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 08:29 AM | Comments (403)
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A Daily Caller exclusive.

A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed.

In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter.

A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home.

. . .

After the search began, Hudson said she was asked by an investigator with the Coast Guard Investigative Service if she was the same Audrey Hudson who had written a series of critical stories about air marshals for The Washington Times over the last decade.

More at the link. The search for firearms was shaky, but obviously it was just a pretext for searching for what they really wanted, her notes and information on sources.

I know, abuse of authority. Dog bites man. But at some point we have to reconsider the scope of the benefit of the doubt we grant to bureaucrats like these, that they're always acting lawfully. A while back Ace discussed public choice theory which is the the idea that political actors are self-concerned and act to maximize their own position.

Previously economists had not studied the operations of government (at least not using the economic tools and assumptions of each person seeking to maximize his own wealth/power), believing government to be outside the scope of economic analysis. This cleared the field, at least intellectually, for political scientists to consider public policy choices in the same terms that politicians described them, that is, sanctimoniously, romantically, with the assumption that any public policy choice was about "the good."

Buchanan rejected that and applied the assumptions of economics -- political actors are self-concerned and act to maximize their own position -- and thus demystified and demythologized the Great Men of Politics, as conventional academic thought would term them.

Public choice theory is focused on political actors and economic analysis, but it seems something similar should be applied in other areas of government. The people involved in the search and seizure above are not Great Men of the Law who are only interested in justice; they're self-interested just like any other human being.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 07:30 AM | Comments (250)
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• This Made Me Laugh Pretty Hard (video)
  
• More People Have Lost Their Insurance Than Have Signed Up For Obamacare
  
• Cooke: Obama The Avatar
  
• Americans As Good With Money As Our Government Apparently
  
• Explosion In Medicaid Enrollments May Threaten Entire Structure Of Obamacare
  
• Obamacare's War On Women
  
• Journalists Homes Being Raided In Obama's America
  
• Democrats United Front Begins To Crack
  
• Obamacare's Doubtful Deficit Reduction
  
• Misinformed Race Hustlers Heckle A Libertarian Event
  
• When The Going Gets Tough, Obama Leaves Town
  
• Missing The Point On Binge Drinking
  
• John Kasich's Medicaid Expansion And Uncompensated Care
  
• Joking Aside, I Honestly Believe Grayson Has Serious Mental Issues
  
• Obamacare Redefines Shutdown
  
• Kids, Don't Do Drugs Or This Will Happen To You
  
• DOJ Tries To Stop Parents From Defending Louisiana School Voucher Program
  
• Ex-Heroin Addict Who Used To Give Handjobs For Money Thinks He Has A Brilliant Political Idea
  
• Where Are They Now? The Sirens Of Political Sex Scandals
  
• NBC Rebooting Murder She Wrote
  

Check out my new E-Harmony profile. more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:35 AM | Comments (308)
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FRIDAY, WOOOOOOO!

Smart Power™: Norway rejects U.S. request to receive and destroy Syria's chemical weapons.

Failed Sec. Sebelius responds to calls for her resignation: "The majority of people calling for me to resign I would say are people who I don't work for." Excuse me?

The U.S. is alerting some foreign governments that traitorous Ed Snowden stole details of their cooperation with U.S. espionage programs and may release them to journalists. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (418)
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A quick note on the podcasting schedule - we've shifted the recording time to accommodate an earlier posting. If everything goes according to plan, the podcast will be available on iTunes, etc. at 6:00am each Friday. Stitcher takes up to an hour to update, so it should be there by 7.

On today's episode, Ben Domenech joins Gabe, Drew, John and Rick Tempest to discuss the ongoing disaster with the Obamacare exchanges and where we go from here.

Ben is publisher of The Federalist, editor of The Transom (an indispensable daily newsletter that's well worth the $2.99/mo subscription price) and a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute. Ben also discussed the exchanges, Obamacare and future health policy at length in yesterday's Transom.

[MP3 Download] | Subscribe: [RSS] | [iTunes]

Follow on Twitter:
AoSHQ Podcast (@AoSHQPodcast)
Rick Tempest (@RickTempest)
Drew M. (@DrewMTips)
Gabriel Malor (@GabrielMalor)
John E. (@JohnEkdahl)
Andy (@TheH2 and @AndyM1911)

Open thread in the comments.

Posted by: andy at 06:33 AM | Comments (130)
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