Morning Jolt October 21, 2013 Continuing the effort for three consecutive all-conservative, no-RINO editions . . . What Can Obama Say Today, Besides, 'My Administration Failed on an Epic Scale?' As One Republic sang, it's too late to apologize. And the president probably won't do that, anyway:
Place your bets on whether the president will acknowledge that back on October 1, he was among those who said the problems with the website were minor and routine:
If an Apple product is still crap weeks after it debuts, nobody buys it and they stop making it. So what are we to make of this comment from Kathleen Sebelius, offered to the Wall Street Journal in an article appearing this weekend?
The online insurance marketplace needed five years of construction and a year of testing, she said: "We had two years and almost no testing." She thinks she's offering the excuse that she was given an extremely difficult and complicated task and given one-third the necessary time to do it. But that isn't as exculpatory as she thinks, as it means either A) she and her team misjudged the time needed by FOUR YEARS B) someone within the team knew it would take four years, and was ignored or C) she knew it would take four years all along, and was overruled by her boss, the president. There's no "innocent mistake" option here. This was either epic incompetence (meaning both the Democratic Congress that passed this bill and the administration that promised to implement it simply couldn't understand how much time it would take to set up the system) or epic dishonesty (making promises they knew they couldn't keep, but felt were necessary to ensure the political health of the administration). On Sunday the Department of Health and Human Services bragged that there have been "over 19 million unique visits to date to HealthCare.gov." (Mind you, that's just visiting the website, not actually filling out any forms.) Way to go, Secretary Sebelius, that's almost as much as the 21 million hits Drudge gets in a day. In a two-week span, Drudge gets about, say, 450 million hits. HHS continues: "In that time, nearly half a million applications for coverage have been submitted from across the nation." 19 million hits turned into nearly 500,000 applications. So about 2.6 percent of all hits turn into an application? Note that over at EnrollMaven.com, they keep their eye on the prize, actual plan enrollment (which usually begins after the purchaser has sent the first check to pay for it). It doesn't measure "web hits, user registrations, applications started, applications completed or any other pre-enrollment parameter, does not include enrollments in jurisdictions which have not yet reported enrollment statistics (except confirmed registrations in states on the federal exchange) and does not count new Medicaid enrollees." This morning they put the number of confirmed enrollees at . . . 19,790. Something in the neighborhood of the attendance of the average NBA or NHL game. NR cruiser Bruce Webster, professional analyst of big organizations and how they tackle complicated projects, writes in again:
BREAKING NEWS: NSA Still Pretty Good at Its Main Job, Spying on Foreigners Lo siento, mis amigos. Slipping back into my native tongue, you shouldn't be that surprised by this; this is what a country with an NSA does -- it gathers intelligence about the leaders of other countries. If you guys could read our president's e-mail, you would do the same. In fact, I don't really have a problem with it, but you're perfectly entitled to be in a snit considering the hope-and-change kumbaya vibe that this president campaigned on twice.
Reaction for public diplomacy: (head shaking in somber sympathy) Reaction for private: Attaboy, NSA! This is what we pay you for! 'They Won Nothing Except the Chance to Allow Obamacare to Fail Spectacularly' Tony Katz's effort to create a program that can shake up late-night television continues, and he's gotten Nick Searcy of FX's Justified and also activist/comedian Stephen Kruiser, legendarily "caring" columnist Kurt Schlichter, actor/entrepreneur Joseph C. Phillips, as well as our own Miki Yamashita, Speaking of Kurt Schlicter, his latest column makes some points I agree with strongly and disagree with slightly:
That conclusion may be a little Pauline Kael-ish. As laid out here, the effects of the shutdown were real, and while Kurt's circles may not have noticed it, they noticed it on the assembly lines of Sikorsky, at Johnson Space Center, in U.S. attorneys' offices, etc. But Kurt may very well be right on his conclusion:
ADDENDUM: Thank you Morning Jolt reader Helen Graham. From the Saturday edition of the Wenatchee World newspaper:
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'They Won Nothing Except the Chance to Allow Obamacare to Fail Spectacularly'
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