Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty 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: President Barack Obama will declare the glitches in a new healthcare website "unacceptable" on Monday and outline ways for consumers to sign up for insurance while his team scrambles to fix problems that have tainted the rollout of his signature healthcare law. Fresh from two weeks of budget battles that have consumed Washington, Obama will hold an event at 11:25 a.m. in the White House Rose Garden with consumers, small business owners, and pharmacists who have been affected by the new law. 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: Now, like every new law, every new product rollout, there are going to be some glitches in the signup process along the way that we will fix . . . For example, we found out that there have been times this morning where the site has been running more slowly than it normally will. . . . We're going to be speeding things up in the next few hours to handle all this demand that exceeds anything that we had expected. Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system. And within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it. I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads -- or threatening to shut down the company if they didn't. 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? After two weeks of review, the HHS secretary concluded, "We didn't have enough testing, specifically for high volumes, for a very complicated project." 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: When I saw this… The Obama administration Sunday said it's called on "the best and brightest" tech experts from both government and the private sector to help fix the troubled website at the root of the Obamacare enrollment problems. . . . I immediately thought of this: "Adding manpower to a late project makes it later." -- Brooks's Law (first coined in The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., back in 1975… The two basic ideas behind Brooks's Law are (1) the new people have to come up to speed on the project, and (2) you've just added an exponential number of new possible communication channels -- from (N^(2)-N)/2 to ((N+M)^(2)-(N+M)/2, where 'M' is the number of new people added. 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. The NSA has been systematically eavesdropping on the Mexican government for years. It hacked into the president's public email account and gained deep insight into policymaking and the political system. The news is likely to hurt ties between the US and Mexico. . . . That category includes surveillance of neighboring Mexico, and in May 2010, the division reported its mission accomplished. A report classified as "top secret" said: "TAO successfully exploited a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain within the Mexican Presidential network to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon's public email account." According to the NSA, this email domain was also used by cabinet members, and contained "diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico's political system and internal stability." The president's office, the NSA reported, was now "a lucrative source." 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: Perhaps it's anecdotal, but it seems to be a pretty common anecdote -- outside the Beltway, no one cares. The shutdown, the debt ceiling -- it's not even on normal peoples' radar except for as part of what those normal people who don't live and breathe politics regard as the general background noise of governmental dysfunction. I've heard literally no normal folks talk about the "crisis." Not one or two or three but zero. None. Anecdotal, perhaps, but anecdotes can tell you a lot. So can social media sites like Twitter -- the #shutdown hashtag disappeared long ago, replaced by topics of real interest like #WhyBieberRules and #AddTheWordBananaToAMovieTitle. Sure, there are polls asking peoples' opinions, and many seem willing to offer one. It doesn't mean they care. People can offer an opinion on anything if asked -- despite not being a virgin and having a life, I could probably tell you which is my favorite Star Trek movie if asked. It doesn't mean I care. I don't. And just because some portion of Americans say that Republicans are more to blame than Democrats for the irrelevant shutdown doesn't mean that it really matters to them either. 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: In 2014, the fact that their insurer is dumping their health insurance plan and making them pay twice as much for a crummier one -- now that will get their attention. They will have an opinion on that, plus they will be plenty interested in who is responsible for it. And does anyone want to guess who is responsible for ensuring that the Scarlet "O" of Obamacare is tattooed right onto the forehead of every Democrat running in 2014? Three guesses, and if your first two are John and Lindsey you are wrong, wrong, wrong. This wasn't a defeat. Sure, the Democrats will cluck about it, and their media serfs will repeat the Journolist talking points du jour, but it doesn't matter. They won nothing except the chance to allow Obamacare to fail even more spectacularly. Congratulations, President Pyrrhus. A couple more "wins" like this one and we'll be on our way to fundamentally changing America back. ADDENDUM: Thank you Morning Jolt reader Helen Graham. From the Saturday edition of the Wenatchee World newspaper: Who: Retired legal secretary Helen Graham, 82, of East Wenatchee What: Using technology to explore, learn and stay connected with friends, family and the world at large. "Every morning I spend quality time in bed with Jim Geraghty," the pundit and blogger for the Morning Joe cable TV show. "I don't get up until I've read my dose of Geraghty on my iPad. For me, it's one of life's essentials." For some inexplicable reason, the promotional slogan "Spend quality time in bed with Jim Geraghty!" was turned down by our marketing department.
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