Just a brief one tonight.

Now the Park Service, which is going to find itself rather nicely purged at some point, is spending time and manpower removing the handles from drinking fountains on public lands. Caveat: NC Mountain Girl says drinking water handles are routinely taken off as winter approaches, so this might not be a Shutdown Theater production at all.

If the Shutdown has any good benefit, it's of clarifying the situation: Not only does it clarify that the Government has its own interest -- not a public interest, mind you, but its own selfish corporate interest distinct from that of the citizenry -- but it's also now brazen in asserting that interest, at the expense of citizens.

Wolf Blitzer wants to know if maybe a year delay in ObamaCare isn't such a bad idea.

And while Obama's approval rate may be falling (per AP, to a new low), the GOP's has fallen to a 20 year low.

If you didn't read my piece on Media Ignorance, Media Ideology, and The State's War on the Citizenry, now's your chance. I might #ShutItDown to teach y'all a lesson.

And now, a mama cat who adopted a squirrel baby. more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:26 PM | Comments (401)
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Via former AoSHQ podcast guest David Freddoso.

Shot: "Obamacare causes insurance companies to scrap some plans, create new ones"

Chaser:

Hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans opened the mail last week to find their health insurance plan would no longer exist in 2014 because it does not cover all the essential benefits required by the Affordable Care Act.

The news surprised some who were unaware that provisions in the new law known as “Obamacare” were forcing insurance companies to scrap some plans they had previously offered.

..

The changes will impact more than 800,000 people in New Jersey who purchase insurance on the individual and small-employer markets, according to Ward Sanders, president of the New Jersey Association of Health Plans."

...

“In the end it could be a net positive for people,” said Linda Schwimmer, vice president of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute.

She pointed out that preventive care, such as blood pressure screening, will now be covered for free.

Emphasis mine.

New Jersey's population is just shy of 9 million so this is a pretty big slice of the population.

But hey, just some new plans replacing old plans.

And sure Obama said, "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan" but hey...Blood pressure screenings for free! So shut up.

Nothing to see here, move along. Just a glitch or something.

Added: Earlier today New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was in DC and made it pretty clear he's not a fan of the anti-ObamaCare shutdown.

"You know, I don't think it's ever good to keep the government closed when your job is to run the government," he said.

With almost 10% of his state's citizens about to lose their insurance policies, I wonder if he'd like to rethink that. Somehow I doubt he would.

Posted by: DrewM at 03:41 PM | Comments (225)
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In many ways the current shutdown/debt ceiling/ObamaCare battles are merely proxy fights for the leadership and direction of the Republican Party. It's a fight that's been awhile in the making and is as ugly as it is necessary.

Think back to the aftermath of 2008. Obama's election was supposed to herald a new age in which the GOP would never another election for an officer more important than dog catcher.

When a party faces a devastating defeat and is totally removed from power after a good run it usually spends quite a bit of time in the wilderness (think the Conservatives in the UK and Canada after Thatcher/Major and Mulroney respectively) figuring out where it went wrong, what new policies and messages to come back with and to develop new leaders untainted by past failures.

Thanks to the magical powers of Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in 2009/2010, Democrats managed to turn their supposed generational tidal shift into a two year run. Suddenly the GOP found itself back in the driverÂ’s seat of the House and had gained traction in the Senate.

The GOP's 2010 revival was not really the result of anything it did. Beyond, "You're mad at Obama and so are we", there were no policy initiatives, no new messaging strategies, just the good fortune of having an opponent who over played their hand. There were some new faces certainly and an anti-DC business as usual attitude, but leadership of the party remained with people who were just a notch below the old guard when the ship went onto the rocks in the first place. When the energy of the "tea party" turns into the speakership of John Boehner, there's a disconnect between what Republicans voters want and who is supposed to be delivering it. I understand why it's that way but that doesn't change the fact that it's a marriage of convenience rather than conviction.

Something that didn't help the insurgent/establishment relationship was that fresh from having the insurgents return the establishment to power, one of the first things that establishment did was...to try and renege on their promise to cut $100 billion in spending upon taking office.

In retrospect, it was pretty clear that electing Republicans was simply the first step in the process. Holding them to their word and keeping them on the straight and narrow was going to be a near full time job.

This concern about Republican betrayal of conservative promises and positions is no mere paranoia. Republican control of the House, the White House and the Senate (precariously at times) had not produced conservative results. In fact thanks to No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, and bloated domestic spending in areas like Agriculture and Transportation, conservatives had begun their rebellion during the Bush years. Remember Pork Busters?

(Fun side note: Supposed conservative hero and House Majority Leader Tom Delay reacted to the increased conservative concern over pork by declaring victory in the war on government overspending).

There’s clearly a faction of the party (the entrenched professional class) that saw the victories of 2010 as simply an opportunity to return to business as usual. There was no real urgency to roll back the Obama agenda of 09-10, just to accept the ground lost and move on. Oh sure there were plenty of votes to repeal ObamaCare but not when it really counted. In divided government only a handful of bills are going to pass. If you don’t hitch your wagon to one of the few “must pass” pieces of legislation, you’re really just putting on a show for the folks back home.

Enter the establishments new favorite conservative villains...the Senate Conservative Fund, Heritage Action and The Club for Growth. The knock on these groups is that they spend far more time attacking Republicans than Democrats. And to a large extent, itÂ’s a fair description. But that ignores the problem they are trying to solveÂ…weak kneed Republicans who left to their own devices will revert to their big spending, go-along, get-along ways.

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 06:12 AM | Comments (356)
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Sigh. Another day in the Age of Obama.

Top Internal Revenue Service Obamacare official Sarah Hall Ingram discussed confidential taxpayer information with senior Obama White House officials, according to 2012 emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and provided to The Daily Caller.

Lois Lerner, then head of the IRS Tax Exempt Organizations division, also received an email alongside White House officials that contained confidential information.

...

The emails provided to Oversight investigators by the IRS had numerous redactions with the signifier “6103.”

Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code forbids a federal employee from “disclos[ing] any return or return information obtained by him in any manner in connection with his service as such an officer or an employee.”

Posted by: Ace at 01:27 PM | Comments (143)
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DOOM or something.

With the Republican-controlled House of Representatives engaged in a tense, government-shuttering budgetary standoff against a Democratic president and Senate, the Republican Party is now viewed favorably by 28% of Americans, down from 38% in September. This is the lowest favorable rating measured for either party since Gallup began asking this question in 1992.

Democrats come in at a less than impressive, but miles ahead of the GOP, 43% approval.

A couple of thoughts:

No doubt a bunch of people will read this poll and say it's time for the GOP to end the shutdown before things get worse. These will no doubt be the same people who opposed the shutdown from the start.

Here's the thing, no one looks good in the middle of a fight. That's ok because the goal isn't to look good in the middle but to win or at least to be able to plausibly claim a victory. Winning is the thing that makes people look good and it comes after, not during, the battle.

Imagine you're watching a baseball game and your team is losing in the bottom of the fifth inning. You may say, "things don't look good" but you don't say, "This could get worse. Sure there are 4 innings left but we better quit now."

Remember, this is a poll. There isn't an election for over a year. There's time to come back if things don't go well.

More importantly, how many people who say they don't have a favorable opinion of the GOP are conservatives? There are clearly more than a few people who are tired of the GOP looking for ways to avoid taking the fight to Obama or are upset at the way the GOP has focused on how to get out of the shutdown rather than focusing on the goal..delaying or defunding ObamaCare?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that doubling down on the fight card is the path to popularity and fortune. I'm just saying that when 27% of your own voters don't have a favorable opinion of their own party (and it doesn't measure conservative leaning independents), you've go some real trouble.

Here's my theory: The biggest problem the GOP has is people are upset with it for different and contradictory reasons. On one side you have people who think the GOP has become to conservative and shrill (this includes a not insignificant number of self-identifying Republicans, "moderates" and Democrats) while on the other side are conservative Republicans and independents who are really conservatives.

A move by the GOP to mollify and woo one faction will lead to greater alienation with the other.

It's the same dynamic we're seeing play out in the House GOP caucus. Boehner is trying to find a path that satisfies both sides of his caucus but each move he makes in one direction or the other costs him more votes than it picks up for him.

The advantage for the moderates in the House is that if push comes to shove, Boehner can cut a deal with the Democrats but the price will be steep come next year. It would mean betting that conservatives won't stay home or that enough moderates will suddenly flock to the GOP to replace conservatives who do sit it out.

In and out of government the GOP is in a real bind. They have to find a way to pick up new voters somewhere while hanging on to the ones they have. Threading that kind of needle requires a level of skill and luck the GOP hasn't demonstrated to date. In fact, evidence indicates they aren't even aware of the nature of the challenge they face.

(Note: I had this up for a minute before I realized Ace had posted something I missed, so I took it down for a bit.)

Posted by: DrewM at 01:55 PM | Comments (196)
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From Tami. Jan Crawford is one of the few reporters in the media who calls things as they are, without prejudice or favor.

This is a tough report. Tough, but honest. Look below the fold for it.

The White House has been warned for months that the system was nowhere near ready.

But they don't listen to facts. They make decisions based upon their partisan hopes and ideological dreams. The thing will work, because it must work, because the Cause of the Left is noble and good, and because the left's strange gods will come in at night, like socialist elves, to cobble the Administration's code together.

Major insurers, state health-care officials and Democratic allies repeatedly warned the Obama administration in recent months that the new federal health-insurance exchange had significant problems, according to people familiar with the conversations.

...

Two allies of the administration, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the controversy surrounding the rollout, said they approached White House officials this year to raise concerns that the federal exchange was not ready to launch. In both cases, Obama officials assured them there was no cause for alarm.

Robert Laszewski, a health-care consultant with clients in the insurance industry, said insurers were complaining loudly that the site, www.healthcare.gov, was not working smoothly during frequent teleconferences with officials at the Department of Health and Human Services before the exchange’s launch and afterward. “People were pulling out their hair,” he said.

The left likes to flatter itself as thinking in terms of reason, facts, expertise, openness to doubt, and scorn of dogma and magical thinking.

Is this anywhere close to true?

When experts told the Obama Administration it was a fact the website was not ready, did they take seriously this advisement?

Nope! They simply said there was no cause for alarm; the strange gods of the left would just sort everything out.

Oddly enough, they didn't.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:47 PM | Comments (243)
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First of all, I'm sorry I didn't give you a warning to go find a fainting couch before I put in that hard-to-believe headline that Obama is blaming others for his failures.

I know I just rocked your worlds and stole any sense from your universes. I'm sorry for that.

First, let's talk about how awful this thing is built.

Five outside technology experts interviewed by Reuters, however, say they believe flaws in system architecture, not traffic alone, contributed to the problems.

...

One possible cause of the problems is that hitting "apply" on HealthCare.gov causes 92 separate files, plug-ins and other mammoth swarms of data to stream between the user's computer and the servers powering the government website, said Matthew Hancock, an independent expert in website design. He was able to track the files being requested through a feature in the Firefox browser.

Of the 92 he found, 56 were JavaScript files, including plug-ins that make it easier for code to work on multiple browsers (such as Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer and Google Inc's Chrome) and let users upload files to HealthCare.gov.

It is not clear why the upload function was included.

"They set up the website in such a way that too many requests to the server arrived at the same time," Hancock said.

In case you missed it, @johnekdahl noted last night that the administration has reset everyone's passwords in an effort to... I don't even know what. It's a drastic step, though.

Well, I suppose that's one way to try fix this. Generally speaking, the "your username got eaten by the computer machine or lost in the interwebs tubes so choose a different one, and no, we don't know what happened to the original" isn't a best practice solution. If I were a cynic, I might suggest they're just wingin' it at this point.

Now here's where the story takes that shocking turn I mentioned in the headline: I know none of you will believe me, but via NRO, the NYT reports -- I can't even write these words, they are so difficult to believe -- Obama is blaming other people for his failures.

The technical problems that have hampered enrollment in the online health insurance exchanges resulted from the failure of a major software component, designed by private contractors, that crashed under the weight of millions of users last week, federal officials said Monday.
...

[B]ecause of the initial failures [of the first step functions of the software], other parts of the complex system have yet to be proved under the intense strain of real-world conditions. And outside experts said that White House officials should have spent more time tending to the computer code and technology of the Web site, rather than recruiting Hollywood celebrities to promote it.

“It’s poorly designed,” said Luke Chung, the president of a database company in Virginia who has publicly criticized the site in recent days. “People higher up are given the excuse that there are too many users. That’s a convenient excuse for the managers to pass up the chain.”

...

White House officials declined to identify the private contractors who had built the account creation function, citing a decision to keep that information private.

As someone once said, upon Obama's reelection as President: "Which predecessor will Obama blame now for his failures?" I guess it's the Obama of 2011.

Oh wait, no, that's silly; that would be confessing to having erred.

The Buck Stops With Unnamed Independent Contractors Whose Names Cannot Be Divulged Due to Privacy Laws.

via @gpollowitz and @jonahnro

Posted by: Ace at 12:46 PM | Comments (336)
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This guy really took one for the team, here.

He's a hero.

And if you deny it -- would you talk this long with Andrea Mitchell?

REP DUFFY: Listen, is it nonnegotiable that he's not going to enter Obamacare? I get my gold plated health care plan but I want members of Congress and rest of America to be in Obamacare, that's nonnegotiable? Come on. That's not reasonable. One issue we have, the media won't ask the question about why are you treating families different than big business. You need Jon Stewart on Comedy Central to ask Secretary Sebelius, hey, why won't you treat these two equally and she won't answer it. That's how pathetic news reporting has come when they won't ask tough questions to the administration.

MITCHELL: We've asked questions of both sides. That's not fair.

DUFFY: Do you ask that question, Andrea.

MITCHELL: We have asked the question. The basic point is that --

DUFFY: Why do you want your own ... and won't join us in Obama care. That question I haven't seen anybody ask on MSNBC. They don't have a good answer for it. With regard to actually --

MITCHELL: The response Kathleen Sebelius gave to Jon Stewart, if we got what we wanted, a single payer plan, this wouldn't be the problem.

DUFFY: You say I think this is what they would say but you don't know because you haven't asked.

What a horrid woman. I'd say "witch" but witches are usually thought of as smart, or at least cunning. She is simply dumb.

I'd also say the "lights are on but no one's home" but that implies attractive, or at least superficially intelligent. She's not. She appears superficially stupid, but when you dig underneath the surface, you find she's also fundamentally stupid as well.

Posted by: Ace at 12:05 PM | Comments (242)
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Ideology and partisan leaning permit people who are ignorant of the facts and the law to have an overly-firm opinion on matters they know nothing about.

Note this doesn't mean that ideological people are ignorant of the facts, law, economics, history, or all the rest. In fact, some of the most ideological people are the most informed. Surveys consistently show that independent voters -- those without a firm ideology (or at least one they admit to having) tend to be the least informed of all the population, the so-called Low Information Voters.

(As an Independent myself, I'm not saying all Independents are ignorant, of course. But, as a group, they do have the lowest level of information about current events and politics.)

While ideology is no bar to having actual expertise, ideology does permit those without any particular expertise to have an opinion on matters they know little about. A conservative will at least have a First Approximation on a matter by trying to figure out if a policy or law reduces freedom or expands it. A leftist similarly will form a First Approximation of an opinion by deciding if a law or policy advances a group in the leftist coalition.

This is not abnormal or wrong; when people are on an unknown road, without any familiar landmarks, they resort to very general rules of road-travel. A leftist is predisposed to take the left fork, for example, and a conservative the right. (A libertarian gets out a coin and flips it.)

The problem is that the media makes these sorts of decisions out of nearly perfect ignorance, but, having a Corporate Mission of presenting itself as Expert and Informed on every issue, cannot admit that it is simply groping based upon its ideology, and dresses up its partisan/ideological guesses as "expertise."

Even when they have no expertise. Indeed, in the case of Shutdown Theater, they are missing such a basic element of property law as to be laughably, ridiculously ignorant.

The media has several reasons for not giving any play to shutdown theater. The first is obviously simple partisanship -- they know Obama is a weak president, they all support Obama, and they want him to "win" in the current fight, as the summer and fall have been dominated by nothing but high-profile failures, embarrassments, climbdowns, and reversals.

They know further that Obama's odds of "winning" the current fight depend heavily on public opinion, so they execute Obama's tactical plan of making the shutdown appear to be solely the work of Republicans. Any contrary storyline confuses the Narrative -- by the way, media, most Narratives should be somewhat confused by contrary facts and indications, don't you think?

Is the Truth ever as simple as the White Hat/Black Hat Narrative the media favors? It continues to astonish me that the media credits itself as being nuanced, enlightened thinkers comfortable with doubt and contrary factual signals and yet continues to present a Babyfood Leftist Narrative to its declining audience.

While simple partisanship explains much of media behavior, one must not discount the operation of simple, complete, out-of-their depths ignorance.

And that's what I'll be talking about for the rest of this article. They're missing something rather Huge in property law, and this ignorance permits them to continue to believe there's nothing at all wrong with the National Park Service capturing public lands for partisan political ends.

And I do mean Huge. This is first-year stuff. This is not just first-year stuff, this is first-half of the first-year stuff.

But the media doesn't know a whole lot of Huge things, but they paper over their manifold ignorances with the confident swagger of the Righteously, Ignorantly, Indignantly Partisan.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (513)
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Maybe the fever has broken.

The GOP's doing even worse but then again they're always doing worse.

Most Americans disapprove of the way Obama is handling his job, the poll suggests, with 53 percent unhappy with his performance and 37 percent approving of it. Congress is scraping rock bottom, with a ghastly approval rating of 5 percent.

...

Fifty-two percent said Obama is not doing enough to cooperate with Republicans to end the shutdown; 63 percent say Republicans arenÂ’t doing enough to cooperate with him.

I should note that prior to this very bad poll for Obama, the RCP average had his approval rising a tiny bit through the shutdown. We'll have to see if any other polls show this sort of fall.

Posted by: Ace at 08:49 AM | Comments (582)
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