So, would the House GOP be surrendering today if they vote to support the Senate plan to extend the Debt Limit to Feb 2014 and funding until Jan 2014?

No, they would not.

They would be living to fight another day AND be in a good spot to attack ObamaCare’s individual mandate. Because weeks more of ObamaCrash in sight, the GOP hand will be stronger after the holidays.

So go ahead GOP, reopen the government and begin the investigations into the Shutdown Theater and Healthcare.gov.  And build the PR case for the fights to come in 2014.  This ain’t over yet!

Update: Also note that the Shutdown has done one good thing: it has exposed Dems and GOP alike to the voters outrage.

Just eight percent (8%) of Likely U.S. Voters would vote to keep the entire current Congress. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 78% would vote instead to get rid of the entire Congress and start over again.

Everyone starts at rock bottom for the midterms, which is good for the GOP. Now, who is going to win the 2014 argument? The GOP can since ObamaCare is such a costly disaster. Long term folks, think long term.

Update: BTW, Holding The Line will require a year or two of focused efforts.  ObamaCare will not be fixed in one budget cycle – neither will it be up and running. So a strategic stand down while we garner and re-plan our forces is not a bad strategy.

Major Update: Ezra Klein interviews someone directly familiar with Obamacare’s technical issues, and he confirms my predictions  – this is not going to get fixed soon:

So I think some of the problem is the Obama administration never brought in heavyweight IT people to oversee this. Are there no Democrats in Silicon Valley? Kathleen Sebelius was the governor of Kansas. Mary Tavenner is a nurse and health policy person. Their senior people had no information technology background. And they’re listening to the consultants!

…

I think it gets back to oversight. It was a lack of oversight on the part of the Obama administration. They needed to bring in the same kind of heavyweights in IT that the Obama administration brought in to sell this from the campaign.

…

There’s no evidence of any improvement so far. I say that factually, not as a shot at them. The question then is will they get there in time?

…

I think the feds have to really solve their problems. I wouldn’t go on those sites now. People are just wasting their time. I think Mark Bertolini from Aetna made the comment this morning, and I agree with it that the smart move on the part of the Obama administration would’ve been to suspend the Web system, shut it down, go back, and fixed the problems.

To shut down and go back to fix the problems, to bring in experienced IT people will take a year -at least. First, you will have to shutdown the current contracts (they are legally binding commitments that cannot just be dropped). Then you will have to go back and assess and redo the system architecture, specifications and interfaces. My guess this is all mucked up.  On the project I am working now to correct a similar bad start, it took us 1.5 years to just fix the technical documentation so the developer could get back on track.

However, to bring in new technical leads will also require a competitive procurement. So add another year. 2.5 years if you start over and do it right.

Apparently Sebellius and Obama have succeeded in delaying ObamaCare where the Tea Party had yet to succeed!

Update:Ace has more on how Healthcare.gov crashed due to a scheme to hide the cost of premiums from the American People.

Update: Hopefully this is a good sign, the House GOP taking the initiative and moving legislation today

On the latest offer from House Republicans—a short-term extension of the debt ceiling—Mr. Needham calls it a shrewd move by Speaker John Boehner: “We’ve got to get back to the discussion of ObamaCare, not the typical Washington food fight.”

– end update

Last night on O’Reilly I listened to Bill and Karl Rove spew so much egotistical nonsense I have had to strike another show from my watch list. With perfect 20-20 hindsight, these two were patting themselves on the back about how wrong it was for the House GOP to try and loosen the grip of ObamaCare from the finances of average Americans. They pointed to the disastrous ObamaCare roll out as evidence it would have been better to just let the funding and law go unchallenged and not call for changes!

Yeah, that would have been brilliant IF the ObamaCare launch had been a disaster. But who predicted such a screwed up implementation? Not Bill or Karl! The truth was (and is) the House GOP had to put their cards on the table BEFORE the ObamaCare launch, and if the launch went even somewhat OK, they would have been rightfully seen as going along and playing it safe.

BS on Rove and O’Reilly.  Remove those 20-20 Arse-Looking glasses and grab hold of the opportunities we have right now – opportunities to start fixing Obama’s mistakes.

First off, the longer ObamaCare’s technological issues persist, the more people will appreciate the efforts of the GOP in trying to protect them from the ObamaCare mess. Give it time. The polls are turning against Obama now. Here is Gallup’s numbers on Obama for 10/14/13, and look where they are heading:

That spread is one of the worst for Obama in Gallup since around October 2009.  And we all know what happened after that!

Here are the numbers at Rasmussen, where the spread of intensity is turning against Obama:

The latest figures include 27% who Strongly Approve of the way Obama is performing as president and 43% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -16.

The GOP has already taken their hit in the polls – as McCain noted they are down to families and paid staff. So you better get something for all this and set the stage for the coming months of the ObamaCare fiasco.  And it will be a fiasco – all the reporting confirms this. I posted previously on the state of ObamaCare here and here, and today the news keeps rolling in, pointing to MONTHS of bad news for the administration and Dems.

First here (from CNBC no less!), from a Insurance Company CEO who has seen the disaster coming for months:

Asked on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” if he knew that the rollout of Healthcare.gov would be problematic, the insurer’s CEO, Mark Bertolini, said his giant company’s role as an alpha tester for the system gave it a sense of how many problems the health insurance marketplace faced on the eve of its launch.

“We were pretty nervous as we got further along,” Bertolini said. “As they started missing deadlines, we were pretty convinced it was going to be a difficult launch.”

…

“It’s all been on the fly,” Bertolini said of the construction of the marketplace and the integration of insurers such as Aetna, whose plans are being offered to up 40 million customers.

“We didn’t get code drops until the last month before the system went live,” he said.

Gubberment mismanagement – plain and simple. Testing something like this requires at least 6 months – with time to make the corrections and retest. 4 weeks for the first real system-wide testing is a joke.

Asked how long the marketplace, also known as an exchange, will take to fix, Bertolini said, “That’s the big question.”

…

“I think the attention span of the younger generation in using technology is that if it doesn’t work the first time, it’s going to be pretty hard to get them back the second time,” he said. “If the program blows up because people don’t sign up, then the program’s not going to move ahead … all that well.”

…

Asked if he would have delayed the launch of the exchange given its earlier problems, Bertolini said, “I would have, if I’d been in their seat.”

I know, I have seen this everyday for the last 7-8 years. All the signs, all the same missteps, all the CYA over promises. The fact is, there are very few people in government and industry who know how to handle a project this big.  Even company labels don’t help, because inside each company there are only a few.

I can tell you as a 25 year professional in the business of large scale computer systems, all the evidence points to months of rework – maybe even a complete restart with a real competitive procurement process this time around.

The biggest problem with Healthcare.gov seems simple enough: It was built by people who are apparently far more familiar with government cronyism than they are with IT.

…

“All but one of of the 47 contractors who won contracts to carry out work on the Affordable Care Act worked for the government prior to its passage,” the report reads. Some of the names ought to be familiar: Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Deloitte, and Booz Allen Hamilton, all of whom assumed different roles and worked on different aspects of the project.

As familiar as those names might be, especially to those who follow Beltway lobbying practices, few of them would be as commonly associated with large-scale IT projects as, say, Google, Amazon.com, or Dell would be — especially when it came to building the public-facing components of the system. (Techdirt concurs.)

…

Granted, some experience with government work is vital for any contractor, and the federal procurement system is geared to favor those already doing government work, but Sunlight pointed out that the list tips heavily toward those with both existing contracts and political leverage.

This program was screwed up from the beginning, and only got worse as it went along. HHS does not have the in-house expertise to craft and manage something like this. Painfully evident now. And the most interesting news to come to light was how a last minute political decision upended all the shoddy work done prior:

“Healthcare.gov was initially going to include an option to browse before registering,” report Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky in the Wall Street Journal. “But that tool was delayed, people familiar with the situation said.” Why was it delayed? “An HHS spokeswoman said the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.” (Emphasis added.)

…

So, by analyzing your income first, if you qualify for heavy subsidies, the website can advertise those subsidies to you instead of just hitting you with Obamacare’s steep premiums. For example, the site could advertise plans that “$0? or “$30? instead of explaining that the plan really costs $200, and you’re getting a subsidy of $200 or $170. But you’ll have to be at or near the poverty line to gain subsidies of that size; most people will either not qualify for a subsidy, or qualify for a small one that, net-net, doesn’t make up for the law’s cost hikes.

This political objective—masking the true underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans—far outweighed the operational objective of making the federal website work properly.

Second emphasis added by me.There is very little chance this mess can be cleaned up and made to work in a month. Obama has hinted as much. I don’t have any special ability to see into the future and I don’t have the detailed specs and test reports to assess the level and scope of damage, but what I am seeing reported (and that is just a hint of what is happening) tells me this will be an issue into 2014.

Here is where Rove and O’Reilly were completely wrong. Keep the individual mandate about ObamaCare front and center. Be the protector against Oppressive Government Incompetence. Keep pushing on why the individual mandate is unfair, especially when the government system is plain broken! Obama and the Dems are starting to fold under the Shutdown.

Every step back by Obama and the Dems exposes the absurdity and cruelty of Shutdown Theater, and the clear effort to cover up the mess that is ObamaCare:

Two weeks into the partial government shutdown, the Obama administration is increasingly easing off some of its most painful cuts — fueling the perception among critics that the government initially imposed visible, but ultimately unnecessary, cutbacks as a way to pressure Republicans.

The Department of the Interior late last week agreed to let states use their own money to reopen some national parks. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also determined football and other sports could continue at service academies through October.

Following outrage from military groups, the Pentagon contracted with a charity to provide death benefits to the families of fallen soldiers, before President Obama abruptly signed legislation to do just that.

Earlier, the Pentagon also announced most of its 350,000 furloughed civilian military personnel would return to their jobs. And CIA Director John Brennan said he would begin bringing back employees deemed necessary to the agency’s core missions.

What you are seeing is the phased re-opening of the 17% of the government shutdown by Obama for political reasons. And each new surrender reduces the pressure on the GOP. Obama and the Dems are being forced to back track.

I see no reason to give in now for nothing in return.

Tags: Computer Crash, GOP, Obama, Obamacare, Shutdown Theater

In a stunning coincidence, two moving images of America were on display this weekend. It was as if Fate was giving us a choice of two paths to take. I wonder how hard the choice truly is for some?

The first glimpse was a disturbing look into what government dependence does to the pride and soul of people:

Shelves in Walmart stores in Springhill and Mansfield, LA were reportedly cleared Saturday night, when the stores allowed purchases on EBT cards even though they were not showing limits.

…

Lynd explained the cards weren’t showing limits and they called corporate Walmart, whose spokesman  said to let the people use the cards anyway. From 7 to 9 p.m., people were loading up their carts, but when the cards began showing limits again around 9, one woman was detained because she rang up a bill of $700.00 and only had .49 on her card. She was held by police until corporate Walmart said they wouldn’t press charges if she left the food.

… but Walmart shoppers Stan and Judy Garcia feel very differently. “That’s plain theft, that’s stealing that’s all I got to say about it,” said Garcia.

It was stealing, and it was made worse by the fact Walmart attempted to help these people by allowing them to use the cards – not abuse them. As Ace notes, it was one of the most disturbing stories I have seen in years:

These are the wages of the welfare state, my groovy babies: we’ve been mainlining the drug so long that we can’t go for an hour without it. DOOM isn’t foreign terrorists or enemy soldiers or dirty bombs. It’s legions of stupid people almost tearing down a Wal-Mart because their SNAP cards didn’t work for an hour or two. Now tell me what’s going to happen when the balloon really goes up and we can’t afford to keep ladling out government cheese any more. What happens if the SNAP cards stop working permanently? Do you think these hordes of angry stupid people are just going to grumble and go back home?

This to me is probably the most important DOOM-related story that I’ve seen so far this year. Why? Because it illustrates how deep our pathologies run, and how maddeningly difficult — maybe impossible — it will be to find a political solution.

Important observations – even if you don’t get the Doom analogy (lost many a night to playing that game in makeshift home networks – long before there was anything like the network gaming of today). This America is scraping the bottom, and when there is a couple of hours to mine some treasure (in this case food), the moral individual is wiped out as the Mob mentality takes over. It is sad to see someone being held for over charging their credit like that, but this is the price of government dependency.

It also represents the America envisioned by the Democrats and the left. Handouts instead of A Hand Up. Just read this nonsense to understand how government fixes are warping the morals and priorities of the American soul:

People whose 2014 income will be a little too high to get subsidized health insurance from Covered California next year should start thinking now about ways to lower it to increase their odds of getting the valuable tax subsidy.

…

Under the Affordable Care Act, if your 2014 income is between 138 and 400 percent of poverty level for your household size, you can purchase health insurance on a state-run exchange (such as Covered California) and receive a federal tax subsidy to offset all or part of your premium.

If your income falls below 138 percent of poverty, you qualify for Medicaid, which provides no-cost health care to low-income people. In California, it’s called Medi-Cal.

There you go. Instead of trying to reach for the stars and increase your wealth and lifestyle, it may be better to be a little poorer and be able to get yourself on the government dole! And once you are on the dole, you are hooked for life. That is the dream world of the left – where every citizen is financially chained to the political elite.

Now contrast these Democrat images of America’s potential future with these GOP leaning images [I use the term ‘leaning‘ here because Libertarians, Tea Party types and supporters of the Military align with GOP when they can – otherwise they are distinct and independent from the GOP Party].

In the ‘other’ America the “individual” was on parade. These people were not begging for handouts, they were pushing back at an oppressive government. They reflected a different America from the one Democrats and Leftists envision.

Which path do you think we should take?

[Follow the link above to view all the pictures from yesterday, which hopefully more fully reflect our tomorrow]

So much for the lame Democrat excuse that piece-wise opening of the government is a bad thing.  Remember Harry Reid lambasting Dana Bash for considering the idea of opening the government one in stages!

REID: Listen, Senator Durbin explained that very well, and he did it on the floor earlier. As did Senator Schumer. What right did they have to pick and choose what part of government is going to be funded? It’s obvious what’s going on here. You talk about reckless and irresponsible. Wow.

Emphasis mine, I plan to reuse Reid’s words later. And so the Democrats ignored the constitutional budget and spending process – where normally 12 bills are crafted, each funding a segment of the government:

According to the Origination Clause of the United States Constitution, all bills for raising revenue, generally tax bills, must originate in the House of Representatives … Traditionally, though, appropriation bills also originate in the House of Representatives. …

Annual appropriations are divided into 12 separate pieces of legislation:

1. Agriculture,
2. Commerce, Justice, and Science,
3. Defense,
4. Energy and Water,
5. Financial Services,
6. Homeland Security,
7. Interior and Environment,
8. Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education,
9. Legislative,
10. Military and Veterans,
11. State and Foreign Operations,
12. Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.

And that gives the House of Representatives the right to select what gets funded. Of course, Harry Reid would not know a proper appropriations bill if someone b-slapped him with one. His Senate as failed for 4+ years to perform their constitutional duty and pass the appropriations bills that came from the house

Talk about reckless and irresponsible. Wow!

So how do those same Democrats explain how the Obama administration is now opening up federal parks – piecewise and using state funds to pay federal employees (something I am pretty sure is illegal):

On Saturday, the barricades at Utah’s Natural Bridges National Monument disappeared, allowing visitors to return to the tourist draw despite the government shutdown. They also came down at Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, Arizona’s Grand Canyon and New York’s Statue of Liberty.

What began as a sort of modern Sagebrush Rebellion — with Utah county commissioners threatening to bring in a posse and dismantle federal barricades themselves — has become an intense negotiation between Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and governors across the country eager to reopen public lands that generate valuable tourism revenue.

…

After initially seeking permission to reopen the park and staff it with volunteers and others provided by the state, he agreed to pay for federal employees to return in order to revive the tourism that sustains several local communities near federal lands.

So Obama can negotiate piecemeal park openings with the states, but not the House of Representatives? What right did they have to pick and choose what part of government is going to be funded?

Given the Senate Dems prior excuses on partial funding the government, it would seem Obama has cut the legs out from under Reid and the Senate. There are no more excuses left to not pass the House bill on Parks and Veterans. Not after already folding on so many other fronts – piecemeal.

And remember what this Shutdown was all about? It was because the GOP wanted Obamacare to be delayed because it was going to negatively impact Americans. And guess what – Obamacare is an epic and chronic fail, which is not going to be fixed anytime soon.

As I noted before – and now confirmed by reporting in the New York Times no less – Obamacare has more than just glitches, it is fatally broken.

“These are not glitches,” said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he works. “The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, ‘It’s awful, just awful.’ ”

Interviews with two dozen contractors, current and former government officials, insurance executives and consumer advocates, as well as an examination of confidential administration documents, point to a series of missteps — financial, technical and managerial — that led to the troubles.

…

Confidential progress reports from the Health and Human Services Department show that senior officials repeatedly expressed doubts that the computer systems for the federal exchange would be ready on time, blaming delayed regulations, a lack of resources and other factors.

Deadline after deadline was missed. The biggest contractor, CGI Federal, was awarded its $94 million contract in December 2011. But the government was so slow in issuing specifications that the firm did not start writing software code until this spring, according to people familiar with the process.

…

One highly unusual decision, reached early in the project, proved critical: the Medicare and Medicaid agency assumed the role of project quarterback, responsible for making sure each separately designed database and piece of software worked with the others, instead of assigning that task to a lead contractor.

Some people intimately involved in the project seriously doubted that the agency had the in-house capability to handle such a mammoth technical task of software engineering while simultaneously supervising 55 contractors.

I have been a federal contractor of one form or another for a quarter of a century, and I am not surprised or shocked at this turn  of events. As I noted in the prior post, only a few government entities can pull this kind of technical deployment off, and HHS just is not one of them. My experience in fixing programs like this (which is what the government hires me to do in essence) is Obamacare will not be operationally ready for some time to come. The New York Times has provided confirmation to my speculation.

Obamacare has sky high premiums, IRS fines and penalties for non-compliance, impacts to everyone’s health care plans AND it is not functioning. And this is why Obama and Reid went through a Shutdown?

Really?

Obama’s Shutdown Theater deserves a theme song. And I think I have just the one [an adaptation of Woodie Guthrie’s This Land Is Our Land]:

This land is O’s land, this land’s NOT OUR land

From California, to the New York Island

From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf Stream waters

This land’s now run by Barack Obama.

As I was walking, that ribbon of highway

I saw all around me, signs crying “stay away!”

I saw below me, endless walled-off valleys

This land’s now run by Barack Obama.

Went to roam and ramble, but was forced to divert

Barry-caded sparkling sands, of diamond deserts

While all around me, a voice was sounding

This land’s now run by Barack Obama.

When the sun came shining, I was suddenly hounded

Along the highways, the Park Service surrounded

A voice was chanting, As the sunlight dimmed,

This land’s now run by Barack Obama.

This land is HIS land, no longer our land

From World War Monuments, to Private Businesses

From the Grandest Canyons, to the Florida Waters

This land no longer seems the same.

– AJStrata

[Bookworm has ironic back story to the song and its author]

Update: Sad proof that this new version of the song is very true.

One thing to take away from the last two weeks is how right the GOP was to warn the country of the pending doom to our Health Care System from the evolving ObamaCare  debacle. They were so right to try and stop what Obama is doing to individuals and families across this country. So right.

For many reasons.

First: the sticker shock of ObamaCare is just now coming out in the open – and it is down right scary:

Deception #3: annual premium savings of $2,500

Obama’s promise: “We’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year. .??.??. We’ll do it by the end of my first term as president of the United States” (June 5, 2008).

Reality: Taken literally, we know this promise failed spectacularly. According to the authoritative annual Kaiser Family Foundation/HRET Employer Health Benefits Survey, average premiums for family coverage (i.e., the kind of private coverage the “typical” family has) were $13,375 in 2009 and $16,531 in 2013. In short, average premiums for family coverage grew by $2,976 by the end of President Obama’s first term. Thus, we can accurately say that both in direction and magnitude reality turned out to be the opposite of what the president pledged.

…

The latest version of these projections, released just last month, shows that between 2010 and 2022, aggregate health spending will be $621 billion higher under the Obamacare scenario. For a typical family of four, this amounts to $7,579 over that 13-year period.

Form a real world example, here is just one of what will easily be tens of thousands of instances of financial ruin to come in 2014 under ObamaCare:

“I feel it’s important for people to understand that the premiums aren’t affordable,” says Jennifer Most, a mother, who “told the crowd she went to the government website with all intentions of signing up … Jennifer and her husband are disabled, on a fixed income, and their five year old has a few medical problems as well,” the reporter explains.

The woman says, “My premium for health insurance was $947.63.”

“That is a over 765 dollars more [a month – AJSrata] than she currently pays,” says the reporter.

“It would take food out of our mouths to be able to afford these coverages,” the mother explains.

Do the math = $9,180 more a year these people have to find in order to just keep their financial heads above water. And all due to ObamaCare.

But the sticker shock is just part of the ObamaCare problem. The implementation is the other big “scary”!

In a piece titled “Why Obamacare Implementation Isn’t Actually A Disaster,” Think Progress happily quoted the president’s pronouncement that “all the implementation issues that are coming up are implementation issues related to that small group of people: 10 to 15 percent of Americans.”That “small group,” as the president went on to admit, is “still 30 million Americans” — equivalent to the population of Malaysia. Thirty million, it seems, is a number that can be big or small depending on the needs of the speaker. When the president is trying desperately to justify his health-care overhaul, 30 million people — all of whom do not have health insurance but apparently want it — is such a vast and unconscionable number that the entire nation and its constitutional norms need to be upended to address it. But when he’s trying to push back against fears that his health-care overhaul won’t work, 30 million is just a “small group of people” and reform should therefore be a doddle.

This is a truly amazing exposure of how little the bureaucrats care about the people they are impacting, and how little they care about accountability. The roll out of ObamaCare is one of the worst disasters I have seen in a long, long time. And yet – all is good in ObamaCare Land!

Obamacare’s exchanges are not seriously flawed, they are just “glitchy.” One wonders in what world those who disseminate this view live. Asked by CBS to comment on the mess that is the Healthcare.gov website, Luke Chung, a database programmer and professed Obama supporter, admitted that “it wasn’t designed well, it wasn’t implemented well, and it looks like nobody tested it.” Chung confirmed that this had nothing to do with demand or to first-day bugs. “It’s not even close,” he suggested. “It’s not even ready for beta testing for my book. I would be ashamed and embarrassed if my organization delivered something like that.” A similarly brutal piece, from Reuters, features a web-design expert explaining that the site is a structural mess, designed so badly that the data flow between the user and the server looks “as if the system was attacking itself.”

OK, it is now obvious HHS cannot even get the basic components of ObamaCare to work – and there is so much left to get right it boggles the mind how we can even hope to hold accountable those required by law to make this monstrosity work!

The part HHS so royally screwed up this month is that box on the bottom in the middle called “Health Insurance Exchange”. Trust me when I say, the rest of the ‘system’ is probably in worse shape than the tip of the iceberg we just witness collapse.

So how will Democrats respond to issues with ObamaCare; its shoddy service and gold-plated pricing?

Well, the Shutdown Theater gives us a clear example of what else is to come!

But the one place where a full-scale shutdown is being enforced is in America’s alleged “National Park Service,” a term of art that covers everything from canyons and glaciers to war memorials and historic taverns. The NPS has spent the last two weeks behaving as the paramilitary wing of the DNC, expending more resources in trying to close down open-air, unfenced areas than it would normally do in keeping them open.

…

Not content with that, the NPS shock troops then moved on to insisting that privately run sites such as the Claude Moore Colonial Farm and privately owned sites such as Mount Vernon were also required to shut. When the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway declined to comply with the government’s order to close (an entirely illegal order, by the way), the “shut down” Park Service sent armed agents and vehicles to blockade the hotel’s driveway.

…

At the same time as the National Park Service was holding legal foreign visitors under house arrest, it was also allowing illegal immigrants to hold a rally on the supposedly closed National Mall. At this bipartisan amnesty bash, the Democrat House minority leader Nancy Pelosi said she wanted to “thank the president for enabling us to gather here” and Republican congressman Mario Diaz-Balart also expressed his gratitude to the administration for “allowing us to be here.”Is this for real? It’s not King Barack’s land; it’s supposed to be the people’s land, and his most groveling and unworthy subjects shouldn’t require a dispensation by His Benign Majesty to set foot on it.

Punishment for those opposed to Obama’s policies, permission for those who support him. Get the hint? Bought that clue yet?

The Death Panel meme is now not so crazy after all, is it? In order to salvage ObamaCare, the Democrats are holding the country hostage and forcing us to witness Shutdown Theater. Forcing us to expend tax dollars and to harass and oppress the American People.

Is it any wonder we are now open to investigation and fines by the IRS (the financial shock troops of liberal government)? If King Obama is willing to withhold death benefit payments, why would he not be willing to hold back life saving benefits? If they are willing to hold back food stamp funds for the needy, why not pricey medications or procedures?

In the behavior of the NPS during Obama’s Shutdown Theater we see clearly where our Health Care will end up under the government diktat of ObamaCare. It will follow the pattern of this month: Incompetent services without any accountability, sky high prices for thos incompetent services, and a jack-boot response to any and all who complain or challenge.

Obama’s Brave New World is now coming into focus.

Tags: Barrycades, National Park Service, Obamacare, Premiums, Shutdown Theater

Obama and Democrats arrogantly assumed the GOP would buckle under pressure during the Shutdown, and cave the the left!

A seriously naive and arrogant assumption.

And a politically deadly one.

The Democrats and Left learned nothing from their drubbing in 2010, which was a small version of “kick the bums out” we see arising now. First off, in 2010 the Dems got hit much harder than the GOP because when government screws up – or screws with Main Street as with Obama’s Shutdown Theater  – those who back government are rightfully tagged with the source of the problems!

Throw the bums out.

That’s the message 60 percent of Americans are sending to Washington in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, saying if they had the chance to vote to defeat and replace every single member of Congress, including their own representative, they would. Just 35 percent say they would not.

The GOP, on the other hand, has a serious Libertarian/Tea Party component that wants to reign in wasteful, spiteful and incompetent government. This group is what is giving the Democrats heart burn – and has the Dem Senate so spun up they are spouting some of the dumbest rhetoric ever heard, exposing their blind, liberal stubbornness when it comes to bloated government.

The GOP would only take huge losses – first through primary challenges that would deploy a lot of inexperienced candidates (as we saw in 2010 in the Senate) – IF they gave into the Democrats. Certain electoral death faces the GOP if they crumble again.

The result inside the GOP would then be EVEN MORE Libertarian/Tea Party forces coming into their caucus. Basically, there is no way to stop the rising tide of frustration with government run amok.

The numbers reflect the highest dissatisfaction with the nation’s two political parties since Gallup first asked the question 10 years ago. Just 26% of respondents believe the Democratic and Republican parties adequately represent Americans.

Those polled that identified as Republicans and Democrats were equal in their view that a third party is needed, 52 percent and 49 percent respectively.

However, the GOP can – as Anne Coulter noted – transition into  the champions of the emerging Libertarian/Tea Party forces in the nation, and avoid electoral massacre. If you cannot stop the tide, ride it! As Ed Morrissey notes, this tide is being driven by Independents – who actually select with polarized party gets a shot at leading this country:

It’s no big surprise to see independents leading this push.  In the ten years of polling on this question, there has always been a majority of independents who want a third party.

Can you blame voters after decades of kicking the can down the road and protecting those in office at all costs? Sadly Ed misses the point – the 3rd party will arise from one of the two big parties. One will be taken over and transformed. We The People are fed up with excuses. And since the only party in line with the Libertarian drive in the country is the GOP – it will be the one to transform.

If this “throw the bums out” fire is still burning next fall (and I fail to see anything to douse it, since ObamaCare’s sticker shock and incompetence is guaranteed to stoke those fires all year), the GOP members who stood firm on the deficit, debt, government overreach and ObamaCare will be spared. In addition, those who spend this coming year holding hearings on Obama’s Shutdown Theater Gestapo tactics will also be spared.

The anti-big-government rising tide will not spare the Democrats. It cannot. They are one in the same thing (big government = Democrats). For the GOP to avoid the wrath of the voters, they simply need to stand their ground and let the Libertarian/Tea Party forces protect them at the voting booth.

I wrote this post  days ago, and then hesitated because I did not want to give anyone bad advice and they pay a price with law enforcement. Please note: I am not telling anyone this is risk free or to even attempt it, but recent evnts in DC confirm some of my suspicions:

In downtown Washington, where the civil disobedience began with veterans bursting through barricades to get to the World War II Memorial, the Park Service has relented to some extent.

Although barricades still surround most of the site, there is an opening — figuratively and literally — that visitors can use to gain access through the gate commemorating the Pacific theater.

Rangers told visitors Wednesday that they could not deny entry to anyone who wanted to exercise First Amendment rights, and could not interrogate visitors, which effectively means the monument is open to those aware of the loophole.

“The First Amendment trumps all,” a Park Service ranger told visitors.

The exemption applies to monuments on the Mall, though visitors are not allowed inside the chambers of the Lincoln or Jefferson memorials because congregating there to exercise First Amendment rights is prohibited under Park Service regulations.

Original Post: One thing I noticed during Shutdown Theater was a bizarre exception to the Barrycades:

The caveat reads “Except for 1st Amendment Activities”.

The first amendment covers freedom of religion, free speech and assembly:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.^[1]

Therefore, I would bet if any person wanting to enter these closed off spaces and they claimed they are exercising their 1st Amendment rights, they must be allowed to enter. If challenged, I would not attempt to explain or defend this claim. If challenged, I would simply ask the Ranger or Policeman if they have any evidence or cause to doubt the claim. We are all assumed innocent until proven otherwise and they still require proof to arrest or cite.

Without cause or hard evidence to the contrary, the individual officer is at risk for violating constitutional rights, and I wager none of them are willing to risk their career for this.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. This is just my opinion – not a promise it will work – and if you decided to try this I can only wish you luck.

BTW, LJStrata had a good suggestion for the police and rangers being used to make life miserable for Americans: Call in sick (and tired).

Tags: Barrycades, Shutdown Theater

Final Update: OK, this left a mark:

Regardless of the variety of places to hear whatever facts and justification align with how you feel about the program, it is undeniable that this launch has been an incredible technical failure.  Straight up – an absolute failure. …

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is about as ugly any kind of site deployment gets.

In the words of our twin teenage daughters – Epoch Fail!

Hopefully this is not a harbinger of things to come, but many have predicted that to be the case.

So now is everyone ready for these clowns be in charge of your health and well being? – end update

While I am not surprised the Obamacare roll out is glitch-full disaster, I am a bit surprised at the depth of the train wreck.

The problem here is well known to folks like us who are high tech government contractors, and who have been in this role for a quarter century now. I have worked on some of this nation’s largest DoD and NASA programs. Technological wonders in their own right (I will let one out of the bag – the International Space Station). I want folks to let that sink in for a bit – a quarter century tackling some of the largest, most complex technical challenges this nation has attempted. Some never got off the drawing board (e.g., President Reagan’s Star Wars), but they all required a very large and talented team on both the contractor and government side.

The ISS is a great example of what I mean, because ISS was originally called Space Station Freedom, but program management structural issues created a nightmare of independent fiefdoms at each NASA center. The program was doomed to fail and ground to a halt – it was thankfully cancelled. Out of the ashes came ISS, which was technically the same basic architecture but with major fixes for persistent issues that were unable to be resolved during the Space Station Freedom days. They had to clean out the managers to fix the program.

So, how does a Space Station relate to the Obamacare roll out? In may ways formulating, designing, building and launching a Space Station is much, much more complicated and challenging. Yet we have one on orbit now. And everyone probably realizes that launching a larch scale website has its challenges. But that has been done many, many times now. This should not be rocket science.

But apparently for Team ObamaCare, it was:

The reason for this nationwide headache apparently stems from poorly written code, which buckled under the heavy influx of traffic that its engineers and administrators should have seen coming. But the fact that Healthcare.gov can’t do the one job it was built to do isn’t the most infuriating part of this debacle – it’s that we, the taxpayers, seem to have forked up more than $634 millionof the federal purse to build the digital equivalent of a rock.

…

The company originally won the contractback in 2011, but at that time, the cost was expected to run “up to” $93.7 million – still a chunk of change, but nothing near where it ended up.

…

Facebook, which received its first investment in June 2004, operated for a full six years before surpassing the $600 million mark in June 2010. Twitter, created in 2006, managed to get by with only $360.17 million in total funding until a $400 million boost in 2011. Instagram ginned up just $57.5 million in funding before Facebook bought it for (a staggering) $1 billion last year. And LinkedIn and Spotify, meanwhile, have only raised, respectively, $200 million and $288 million.

So what we see in all this is that private industry is more efficient, productive and successful than government run programs of the same size and scope.

Color me totally unsurprised.

I predicted back in 2009 The Democrat’s Stimulus BS would crash and burn, because of the inherent structural barriers in government programs that make them slow, expensive and ultimately incompetent:

The big Democrat mistake was, at its core, believing naive socialist theories that government can out perform the private market. They gambled the government could create jobs faster than the economy could if it was unleashed by tax cuts. It seems Democrats are going to have learn that lesson the hard way, and we are the ones who will feel all the pain (which we will gladly reflect back in the voting booths come next year).

…

Here’s the problem. A third of this stimulus package money is stuck in the federal bureaucracy, and the tax refunds are just not doing anything ($13 a week?). The rest is aimed at the safety net money that only helps when you are so far gone financially you need to welfare. The government is stalled. It is just impossible to fathom the Democrats in Congress were ignorant of the snail’s pace of federal acquisition (especially outside the DoD, which due to its mission is nimble and well staffed). It was either historic incompetence or fraud on their part to claim the plan would impact the economy.

Basically, Team ObamaCare under estimated the challenges and greatly over estimated their skill base.

There are only a few departments or agencies that can roll out $100 million dollar technology programs – and even they are beginning to struggle as more and more paperwork and process is layered on them by Congress.  That is because an organization has to become very skilled in running these large, complex endeavors to succeed. If you try and jump from managing some health care technology to deploying a system like ObamaCare – you will fall on your face.

NASA, DoD and DoT have the necessary government infrastructure to accurately define, procure and monitor something like ObamaCare. They have this capability because the built up a contractor and civil servant base able to take on the challenge over many decades. HHS and other government entities usually do not.

When I dabble in space programs from other agencies outside DoD and NASA (who have the lion share of expertise), the level of skill and ability I find is very disturbing. For example, USGS and NOAA have satellite programs. But they launch one every five years in the best of times. That cadence is not enough to retain the expertise they need, let alone grow it. It is not their fault, but to be in shape to take on these challenges requires regular ‘exercise’. NASA and DoD get this exercise because their launch cadence is much higher (couple a year).  This is why they have built up a unique expertise base inside and outside government. And I have spent a quarter century clawing my up to the upper echelons of that pool of talent.

And that is why ObamaCare is crashing – and will not get right any time soon. When SSF was floundering (because Johnson Spaceflight Center did not have the experienced resources to take on such a challenge initially) the only solution was to kill the program and start over.  When NPOESS (a NOAA weather satellite program) fell 6 years behind in launching their first capability (the S-NPP Satellite), the only answer was to close down the program and give NASA a more central role in the procurement under the new program JPSS.

This ObamaCrash is really bad folks, on par with these other ‘restarts’:

The rollout of Obamacare has been so disastrous that even “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart was plainly mystified and unconvinced when Sebelius came on his show the other day to offer soothing explanations and reassurances. Stewart gently expressed his frustration that there is “a level of incompetence that is larger than what it should be,” …

…

Judging by the haphazard rollout — incomprehensible error messages have been the norm, and the federal website has had to be taken offline several times — you’d guess that this was a back-burner project for the Obama administration, or the start-date for the exchanges had been sprung on it a few weeks ago. Of course, it is the president’s most cherished initiative, and his team has had more than three years to get the exchanges up and running.

Given the train wreck we are seeing on the roll out, it is clear this one is not salvageable. You cannot rush patch something this bad. It looks to be a lot more than just the public facing web page, but includes some of the behind the curtain components that verify people’s identities, manages their account information, and produces health care coverage requests for insurers to process. With this many people banging on the system you will never work out the issues ‘on-line’.

Clearly the problems were known for weeks and months before the roll out. Also obvious is how Obama’s lackadaisical management team exposed their full incompetence.

As Wolf Blitzer noted, time to go back to the drawing board on this one.\

Update: Start over for no other reason that we should be buying state-of-the-art technology, not out-of-date crap at premium prices (which the government does ALL THE TIME – I know from first hand experience)

Yet increasingly, they are saying the root cause is not simply a matter of flawed computer code but rather the government’s habit of buying outdated, costly and buggy technology.

…

They say most government agencies have a shortage of technical staff and long have outsourced most jobs to big contractors that, while skilled in navigating a byzantine procurement system, are not on the cutting edge of developing user-friendly Web sites.

Yep, as I well know.

Update: CBS News interviewed someone in the field of website development – an ObamaCare supporter – who agrees with my assessment – take it down and redo it [H/T: Ace of Spades]:

Good lord, is the Obama administration even still sane? How do you explain closing down a children’s event on an open beach?

It was announced today that an annual sandcastle contest on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach has been cancelled out of sheer malice by the Obama administration, despite the fact that the beach on which it is held — part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area — normally has no lifeguards, no rangers, is permanently open to the public, and requires no funds for day-to-day operations:

A popular youth sandcastle contest on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach is the latest local victim of the federal government shutdown, event organizers said today.

The Leap 30th Anniversary Sandcastle Contest was planned for Saturday, but the continued standoff in Congress over the federal budget is causing organizers to postpone the event until a later date.

Thousands of people were expected to attend the free event, with more than 20 local schools participating. Leap, a local arts advocacy nonprofit, has held the contest for the past three decades.

I mean really, what heartless Scrooge decided this was good Shutdown Theater? Like I said before, will anyone ever allow another Democrat anywhere near the reigns of power after this disgusting show?

Tags: Barrycades, Children, Shutdown Theater