Here Is Today's Jaw-Dropping Healthcare.gov Article
— JohnE.

These appear to be coming out once a day now. From WaPo:

The Obama administration will consider the new federal insurance marketplace a success if 80 percent of users can buy health-care plans online, according to government and industry officials familiar with the project.

The goal for how many people should be able to make it through the insurance exchange is an internal target that administration officials have not made public. It acknowledges that as many as one in five Americans who try to use the Web site to buy insurance will be unable to do so.

The administration will deem it a "success" if only 80% of users are able to buy insurance through the website. This, of course, includes the nearly 5 million people who have already been booted off their plans due to Obamacare. I suppose it's a success if 20% of them, or 1 million people, are unable to purchase insurance because the website is glitchy. Wait, wasn't this law passed in large part to "help those who were unable to purchase health insurance"? I seem to recall that being a thing.

Oh, well. Eggs and omelettes.

But Zients also said that “new bugs and other glitches will surface” in December and beyond that and will need to be fixed. Even if the site works well, he said, “that doesn’t mean that the site will be sufficient for 100 percent of users or consumers to use for enrollment.”

Until last month, no concrete performance measures had been developed for HealthCare.gov, the first-ever government computer system for consumers to buy private insurance, several officials confirmed.

“Many asked about benchmarks,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic’s sensitivity. But there was “no schedule of them.”

No concrete performance benchmarks? Are you kidding me?

When HHS in 2011 invited contractors to bid on the chance to build HealthCare.gov, the department’s “statement of work” did not include requirements typical of many IT contracts in which interested companies must spell out how the system would perform, according to an industry representative close to the project, who was granted anonymity in order to speak frankly. The agreement that CGI Federal, the company chosen as the main contractor, signed on Sept. 30, 2011, also did not contain specific performance criteria, success measures or response times.

Okay, so what the hell did the statement of work include? Color palettes?

I think Andrew Stiles was half-kidding here, but maybe it is time for prosecutions.

Stay tuned tonight. I'm sure there will be more.

Posted by: JohnE. at 08:21 AM | Comments (165)
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When the Obama "Magic" Died
— Ace

Faoud Ajami's piece is terrific.

Forgive the personal reference, but from the very beginning of Mr. Obama's astonishing rise, I felt that I was witnessing something old and familiar. My advantage owed nothing to any mastery of American political history. I was guided by my immersion in the political history of the Arab world and of a life studying Third World societies.

In 2008, seeing the Obama crowds in Portland, Denver and St. Louis spurred memories of the spectacles that had attended the rise and fall of Arab political pretenders. I had lived through the era of the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser. He had emerged from a military cabal to become a demigod, immune to judgment. His followers clung to him even as he led the Arabs to a catastrophic military defeat in the Six Day War of 1967. He issued a kind of apology for his performance. But his reign was never about policies and performance. It was about political magic.

In trying to grapple with, and write about, the Obama phenomenon, I found guidance in a book of breathtaking erudition, "Crowds and Power" (1962) by the Nobel laureate Elias Canetti. Born in Bulgaria in 1905 and educated in Vienna and Britain, Canetti was unmatched in his understanding of the passions, and the delusions, of crowds. The crowd is a "mysterious and universal phenomenon," he writes. It forms where there was nothing before. There comes a moment when "all who belong to the crowd get rid of their difference and feel equal." Density gives the illusion of equality, a blessed moment when "no one is greater or better than another."

The whole thing is worth reading. I interrupt it here just to note that the next paragraph doesn't really follow from the last; I've cut out the middle half. But he concludes:

Valerie Jarrett, the president's most trusted, probably most powerful, aide, once said in admiration that Mr. Obama has been bored his whole life. The implication was that he is above things, a man alone, and anointed. Perhaps this moment—a presidency coming apart, the incompetent social engineering of an entire health-care system—will now claim Mr. Obama's attention.

Posted by: Ace at 10:03 AM | Comments (220)
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Gun Thread (11-17-2013)
— andy

Fun with numbers

Americans overwhelmingly prefer firearms to Obamacare

During the same time period that only 106,185 people signed up to purchase Obamacare, a total of 1,687,599 background checks for firearm purchases went through the NICS system, according to the FBI.

"What a difference 90 degrees makes"

Anti-gun groups thrive on dishonesty, Exhibit 3,256,918:

Be sure to read the Charles C. W. Cooke piece I got this from.

Gun Of The Week

(answer below)
more...

Posted by: andy at 05:47 AM | Comments (146)
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One Day After Questioning Obamacare Fix, The DC Health Commissioner Is Fired
— Open Blogger

William P. White, the D.C. Insurance Commissioner, was fired 24 hours after he pointed out what everyone with a brain knew to be true about Obama's healthcare fix.

n a statement issued Thursday, White hinted strongly that he opposed the idea.

“The action today undercuts the purpose of the exchanges, including the District’s DC Health Link, by creating exceptions that make it more difficult for them to operate,” the statement said.

He also pointed to a statement issued by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners that said the Obama order “threatens to undermine the new market, and may lead to higher premiums and market disruptions in 2014 and beyond.”

“We concur with that assessment,” White said Thursday.

WhiteÂ’s statement was removed from the departmentÂ’s Web site sometime before Friday morning. Asked about the removal Friday, spokesman Michael Flagg said the departmentÂ’s statement had changed.

Can you imagine being a state Insurance Commissioner right now? How much pressure is being put on them to enact a fix that they know can't work and may very well be illegal?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:59 AM | Comments (108)
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Sunday Morning Open Thread
— andy

"If you like your Republic, you can keep your Republic. Period." ~ Benjamin Franklin

Posted by: andy at 03:52 AM | Comments (114)
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Gaming Thread (Wall of Text edition Part 2) 11/17/2013
— Gang of Gaming Morons!

Another console from Microsoft. With the last two gens, they went with raw horse power but this time they're changing it up. Main thing is that after a gen where they should have made money if it wasn't for the whole non-lead solder fiasco known as the RROD, they're now in a position of doing so. Wither you like Don Mattrick or not, he was a fixer for getting the division into the black. Unlike Sony's decision of having a console that you play your game and then turn off, Microsoft is angling the Xbox One to never be turned off while having their ecosystem be always a quick voice prompt away. Will this be the right business decision in the way to go?

(this should be shorter this week as my main keyboard died and I really HATE my cheapo backup) more...

Posted by: Gang of Gaming Morons! at 11:00 AM | Comments (47)
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Through The Sheer Brilliance Of Barack Obama's Foreign Policy Vision, Israel and Saudi Arabia Are Now Working Together
— JohnE.

Pretty amazing.

Israel is working on coordinating plans for a possible military strike with Saudi Arabia, with Riyadh prepared to provide tactical support to Jerusalem, a British newspaper reported early Sunday.

The two countries have both united in worry that the West may come to terms with Iran, easing sanctions and allowing the Islamic Republic to continue its nuclear program.

According to the Sunday Times, Riyadh has agreed to let Israel use its airspace in a military strike on Iran and cooperate over the use of rescue helicopters, tanker planes and drones.

More flexibility, yo.

Posted by: JohnE. at 05:09 PM | Comments (213)
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Sunday Morning Book Thread 11-17-2013: Unnatural Disasters [OregonMuse]
— Open Blogger

Legacy

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to the award-winning AoSHQ's prestigious Sunday Morning Book Thread.

Pay No Attention To That Iceberg Up Ahead

Having been put in a perversely enjoyable mood (yet another link to Jonah Goldberg's schadenboner piece) by the events of the last week, I did a search for "disaster" on Amazon to see if anything interesting would turn up.

Gone at 3:17: The Untold Story of the Worst School Disaster in American History tells the story of an horrific catastrophe I had never heard of:

At 3:17 p.m. on March 18, 1937, a natural gas leak beneath the London Junior-Senior High School in the oil boomtown of New London, Texas, created a lethal mixture of gas and oxygen in the schoolÂ’s basement. The odorless, colorless gas went undetected until the flip of an electrical switch triggered a colossal blast. The two-story school, one of the nationÂ’s most modern, disintegrated, burying everyone under a vast pile of rubble and debris. More than 300 students and teachers were killed, and hundreds more were injured.

Ouch. This tragedy, by the way, is why they now have to put that additive in (naturally odorless) natural gas to make it stinky.

Another book takes us back to July, 1919, when Chicago couldn't catch a break:

Chicago suffered a devastating 12 days. It began with the crash of the blimp, Wingfoot Express. The blimp caught fire and crashed in the heart of Chicago killing many innocent citizens. This is followed by the search for a young missing girl who turns up murdered by a predator, a transit strike, and deadly racial riots that result in the burning of many parts of the city.

All of this is recounted in City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago, as well as the over-arching political rivalry between corrupt Chicago mayor Bill "Big Bill" Thompson and the Republican governor of Illinois, Frank Lowden, both of them trying to use these disasters for their own political advantage. The end result was Lowden's downfall as a national politician and the nomination of Warren G. Harding.

And let's not forget the Great Depression: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, details the dust storms which devastated the midwestern states during the 1930s. This book has been mentioned in several previous book threads, and is now available on Kindle for only $2.99.

And then there's Cleveland Area Disasters, but I always thought Cleveland itself was a disaster (rimshot!).

And that book led me to this author, who is making a career out of writing bad stuff about Cleveland, for which there is apparently a crap ton of material:

The Maniac in the Bushes: More True Tales of Cleveland Crime and Disaster
They Died Crawling: And Other Tales of Cleveland Woe
The Corpse in the Cellar, and Further Tales of Cleveland Woe

And he's got others. I have to laugh out loud at some of these titles.

But getting back to the immediate subject, here is the text of the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare, in all its glory. Read it, all ye mighty morons, and despair.
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:05 AM | Comments (137)
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Overnight Open Thread (16 Nov 2013)
— CDR M

16 American cities foreign governments warn their citizens about. Aren't these all liberal bastions of gun free zones and other liberal kumbayah nonsense? I mean, these aren't exactly hotbeds of Tea Partiers and such right?
h/t more...

Posted by: CDR M at 06:16 PM | Comments (645)
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Excitable Andy has had enough of Alec Baldwin
— Purple Avenger

At some point you have to stop making excuses for people's atrocious behavior. Sullivan seems to have hit that point.

...For too many of them – especially gay establishment liberals, like the tools at GLAAD or the terminally naive like Hilary Rosen – there is a glaring double standard here. It seems to me that this double standard cannot stand any more. And this raging, violent bigot cannot be defended any longer...

Open whatever. Chainsaws and creamed corn wading pools allowed this time. No greased porcupines or napalm though. Some lines just shouldn't be crossed. more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 02:21 PM | Comments (183)
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