The Commentariat -- Oct. 22, 2013
Michael Shear & Robert Pear of the New York Times: "In remarks in the Rose Garden, Mr. Obama acknowledged serious technical issues with the Web site, declaring that 'no one is madder than me.' He offered no new information about how many people have managed to enroll since the online exchanges opened on Oct. 1." CW: Shear (who is a Fox "News" contributor), & Pear couldn't seem to write a positive sentence about the President's remarks. Looks as if "crummy Website" is going to be the Big News till Darrell Issa dredges up something else:
... Ah, here's Joan Walsh of Salon: "As predictably as night follows day, on Monday the media establishment pivoted away from obsessing about GOP extremism and the party's alleged 'civil war' to the 'train wreck' that is, allegedly, the Affordable Care Act." ...
... William Saletan of Slate: "Blocking affordable health care. Denying coverage under Medicaid. Shutting down the government. Harming the economy. That's an all-out indictment of the opposition party. Even Republican criticism of the Web site debacle -- which everyone acknowledges -- has become, in Obama's words, 'rooting for failure' at the expense of middle-class families. Obama may not win this fight. But he has certainly entered it swinging." ...
... ** Alec MacGillis of the New Republic: House Republicans are preparing to hold hearings to probe why Healthcare.gov doesn't work; no matter that they don't want it to work. "Unspoken in all of those questions [MOCs will be asking HHS officials] is something that Republicans have simply shut out of their assault on Obamacare until now: That there are people out there, millions of them, who do not have coverage and will be helped by the law if it can be made to function properly.... Despite themselves and without fully realizing it, Republicans are perilously on the verge of becoming advocates for expanded health care coverage." CW: So maybe the Healthcare.gov fiasco has a silver lining. ...
... Single Payer! Ezra Klein: "The core problem for the GOP is that they're complaining about problems they don't actually want fixed. So the criticisms have an oddly self-negating quality: Republicans are furious that more people can't sign up for this law they want to repeal altogether.... The case that can be made against the difficulties of implementing a system this complex isn't a case for the status quo. Nor is it a case for Republican health-care ideas, insofar as they exist. After all, Rep. Paul Ryan's health-care plan -- and his Medicare plan -- would also require the government to run online insurance marketplaces. It's a case for a much simpler, government-run health-care system." (Related: Humor Break below.) ...
... Dave Weigel of Slate: Republican calls for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's firing over the botched Healthcare.gov rollout means she can keep her job. CW: I wish I could say I thought she was a great secretary, but this isn't her first Big Mistake. Obama& had to step in & rescue her when she mishandled the religious exception provisions of the ACA. He stepped in again -- and stepped in it -- when Sebelius overruled the FDA on over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill (a fabulous Reagan-appointed judge later ruled against the administration). ...
... Lydia DePillis of the Washington Post: Why all the problems with Healthcare.gov? Because the government doesn't know how to structure bids for software contracts, which leads to a style of development & coding that builds in fundamental errors & does little testing until it's too late. ...
... Guaranteed Failure. Lean Sun & Scott Wilson of the Washington Post: "Days before the launch of President Obama's online health-insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the Web site to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously. Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead. When the Web site went live Oct. 1, it locked up shortly after midnight as about 2,000 users attempted to complete the first step." ...
... Humor Break. Sarah Sees a Conspiracy! She Can See Canada from Her Porch. Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "The former half-term Alaska governor and failed vice presidential candidate suggested Sunday in a Breitbart.com column that design flaws were intentionally implemented to make the system more difficult to use and drive Americans to accept a government fix. President Barack Obama admitted Monday that the site needed to be overhauled and announced a 'tech surge' to make those repairs, but Palin said the eventual fix would be a Canadian-style socialized health care system." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "Liberals admit ObamaCare's failures while conservatives refuse to concede its successes.... The coverage of the Obamacare website debacle is a helpful illustration of the epistemic imbalance between left and right.... Only the negative liberal coverage has pierced the conservative information bubble.... The imbalance in honesty has magnified the impact of bad Obamacare news and blunted the impact of good Obamacare news."
... Jim Siegel & Catherine Candisky of the Columbia (Ohio) Dispatch: Gov. John Kasich [a conservative Republican] forced implementation of the Medicaid expansion in Ohio, after the GOP-controlled state senate refused to ratify it/ (The general assembly had voted for it.) Kasich transferred the decision-making process from the senate to an oversight board, then packed the board with pro-expansion members. State senators plan retaliatory moves.
** Sam Stein & Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post write a fascinating piece on how President Obama & Speaker Reid worked together to fend off Republican demands. CW: As often is the case, I have to wonder why Leader Pelosi gets almost no mention. This is the story smarmy Bob Woodward probably wished he'd got.
If CNN did sports reporting, every game would be a tie. -- Cenk Uygur
... Here's one for Akhilleus. Paul Rosenberg, in Salon, applies logical & rhetorical constructs to Tea Party "reasoning" & MSM reporting. He concludes, "Our politics are a disaster because the media -- and the president -- pretend conservatives are dealing with facts." ...
... CW: Notice how Rosenberg's piece relates to Chait's discussion of the liberal & conservative criticism of the ObamaCare rollout. What I think this all demonstrates is that conservatives are for the most part extremists while only some liberals are extremists. Liberals are tethered to reality; conservatives are tethered to ideology & refuse to accept reality; when reality hits them in the face, they deny it & turn to "beliefs." Thus, as contributor Nancy wrote in yesterday's thread, there was no way to convince her neighbor that Obama hadn't shut down the government & that he could not raise the Social Security eligibility age by fiat. The neighbor just "believed" that was the case because she doesn't like "that Obama." Contra Pat Moynihan, Nancy's neighbor feels entitled to her own facts. Note to Nancy: I did stop a conservative neighbor of mine cold by pointing out that he was basing his opinions on impressions, not on facts. It hadn't occurred to him that his impressions were inferior to my facts. I think he got it. Momentarily, anyway. ...
... Dan Balz & Scott Clement of the Washington Post: "The budget confrontation that led to a partial government shutdown dealt a major blow to the GOP's image and has exposed significant divisions between tea party supporters and other Republicans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The survey highlights just how badly the GOP hard-liners and the leaders who went along with them misjudged the public mood. In the aftermath, eight in 10 Americans say they disapprove of the shutdown. Two in three Republicans or independents who lean Republican share a negative view of the impasse. And even a majority of those who support the tea party movement disapprove." ...
... Good News for Republicans! Thanks to Democratic Messaging. Todd Lindberg of the New Republic: "To the extent the GOP's internal struggle is understood as a contest between conservatives and radicals, in which the conservatives prevail, it will likely help the party regain some of the ground it has been losing at the center.... So long as the Tea Party is losing, division might be just what the GOP needs" because it makes non-Tea Party Republicans seem moderate & reasonable. ...
... Steve M. of NMMNB adds a cogent point: "What has to happen before voters decide the GOP can't be trusted at all? Does the party actually have to push us into default and start a global depression...? That's the difference between the majority of the U.S. electorate and the voters of Wingnuttia. You edge a millimeter toward a slope that's a hundred miles away, and isn't the slightest bit slippery, and wingnut voters immediately foresee a cataclysmic slide. Propose firearm background checks that aren't even truly universal, and wingnut voters think mass gun confiscation is imminent within weeks. Pass a market-based, Heritage Foundation-developed health care plan, and they think we're living under the Khmer Rouge.... But if Republicans take us nearly to the brink of disaster, a disaster from which we're rescued at the last second, centrist voters still don't develop a sense of alarm about the party." ...
... AND right on cue, as if he might be in the employ of Prince Rebus, Obama's former speechwriter Jon Favreau, now penning his bright ideas for the Daily Beast instead of the POTUS, writes a piece titled, "The Tea Party, Not Democrats or Republicans, Is the Problem. Blah blah blah." Favreau doesn't see red states & blue states; he sees the United States of America. Rah rah rah. ...
... Not irritated enough yet? Why, let's check in with Alan Greenspan. That should help. BBC News: "Mr Greenspan confessed to sympathies with the aims of the Tea Party, the Republican faction that fought the government during debt ceiling talks. But the former central banker said the movement's tactics were 'undemocratic'.... 'What Britain has done with its austerity programme has worked much better than I thought it would,' Mr Greenspan said. 'As far as I can judge, it [the economy] is coming out pretty much the way they [the coalition government] had expected.'" Ayn Rand lives!
Declan Walsh & Ihsanullah Mehsud of the New York Times: "... a new Amnesty International investigation ... found, among other points, that at least 19 civilians in ... North Waziristan had been killed in just two of the drone attacks since January 2012 -- a time when the Obama administration has held that strikes have been increasingly accurate and free of mistakes. The study is to be officially released on Tuesday along with a separate Human Rights Watch report on American drone strikes in Yemen.... On Wednesday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a vocal critic of the drone campaign, is to meet with President Obama in the White House. And on Friday, the drone debate is scheduled to spill onto the floor of the United Nations, whose officials have recently published reports that attacked America's lack of transparency over drones."
Local News
This Is a Big Deal. Salvador Rizzo of the Star-Ledger: "Gov. Chris Christie dropped his legal challenge to gay marriage in New Jersey [Monday], only hours after same-sex couples began exchanging wedding vows throughout the state. Christie's unexpected decision to withdraw his appeal of a major case at the state Supreme Court marks the end of a decade-long legal battle. It means that a lower-court ruling allowing gay couples to marry in New Jersey stands as the law." ...
... Darrell Isherwood of NJ.com: "... some national social conservative leaders lashed out at the governor." CW: Here's an example of the "purity fallacy" Rosenberg wrote about:
Do we have any illusions, given the nature of the decision, that there was a high likelihood that his appeal would succeed? No. But that's irrelevant. You do what's right regardless of the cost. -- Brian Brown, President of the National Organization for Marriage
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Reader Comments (12)
If the Republicans are capable of shutting down the government, who says they didn't have something to do with sabotaging the healthcare.gov site? Maybe the winning contractor is a Koch-backed company set up expressly for the purpose of sabotage?
@Nancy. Hate to tell you, but you're sounding a little Palin-ish. Palin doesn't think the Republicans hacked Healthcare.gov; she thinks the Democrats did in a devious plan to force Medicare-for-all onto all the innocent Americans who don't want healthcare coverage & prefer to die quickly, as Alan Grayson would say.
BTW, I logged on to Healthcare.gov at 2 am ET & got to all the info I needed. There was no delay at all in clicking through about 30 pages.
What the site doesn't tell you is that it does not include a market for Medicare-supplemental insurance. I found that out elsewhere. That, of course, is not the fault of the programming but of the law itself. If the government is going to help the kids shop, why not help me, too?
Marie
I don't go immediately to the "your fired" button every time someone makes a mistake. But Jeebus, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius screwed an entire pack of pooches on this one. The last thing the emerging, flawed ACA needed was a moron level IT roll out. ACA, like Medicare and SS before it, will have a rocky start. Its a given. The laws themselves need clean-up and the enrollment process has never been smooth. We're in the tech age now, the level of incompetence in the ACA roll out is breathtaking. Fred Flinstone, a stone chisel and a rock tablet would have had a better result.
My primary work experience was in a law enforcement agency of about 1000 employees. We had a fabulous IT division. Rolling out the simplest of new program changes took an enormous amount of energy, training and testing before the program went live. People do not like change and they resist even changes that seem benign. This blunder fed right into the meme that ACA is evil and must be repealed.
So, yeah, Sebelius should get out post haste.
The Secession Tango
When considering possible courses of history, it’s useful to at least play out the scenario, to suss out as many stumbling blocks as possible. Conservatives are not big on this (see: War, Iraq) largely because, when you live in Right Wing World, fantasy rules and everything turns out A-OK all the time, no matter what (and if not, there’s always Jesus to kill your enemies and make it right), so I have volunteered to do a little go ‘round for the wingers, ‘baggers, fantasists, and other hopelessly befuddled sorts.
Secession. Yes! Such a nice ring of FREEDOM it has, no? That word deserves its own post, nay, its own book, but for now let me just say that for a group that mewls on endlessly about the words of the founders, those sainted white guys hardly ever used that particular word. You won’t find “freedom” in the Declaration of Independence. I’ve looked for it in the Constitution too and if it’s there, I haven’t found it (you also won’t find “God” or “Jesus” or “Rushbo”, contrary to conservative claims).
On the other hand, “liberty” appears in the preamble of the Constitution and in a number of places in the Declaration. But aren’t they the same thing? Nope. Not unless your reading is very broad. Liberty implies a political order, a system. And a system implies rules and basic agreements. That system can support various liberties (the civil kind so hated by the right—unless they’e of use to them) which give a certain amount of freedom to do certain things. But whenever you hear someone say “this is a free country, isn’t it?” you have to immediately point out that yes it is, to a point. There are plenty of things you’re not free to do. Freedom to do anything is known by another name: anarchy. This is what the founders were about: liberty within a system, not do whatever the hell you want and fuck anyone who says different. This may be why you will practically never hear conservatives running on about liberty, as opposed to freedom. But we’ll come back to this in a bit.
So, secession, eh?.
Be careful what you wish for, ‘baggers because secession would be the ultimate test of far-right (there really isn’t any other kind) ideology and claims to historical inevitability.
You want out? Okay. then we’re taking back everything you’ve gotten from the federal government of the United States of America. This means (very short list—the full one would pop the pennies off the eyes of a corpse) no revenue from taxes. Red states, those panting to secede, get far more than they give. And because taxes are anathema to ‘baggers (the ones who will be calling the shots), at least so they say, seceding states will be required to find some other way to fund whatever they intend to do. But they better do it quickly because, thanks to Republican obfuscation, the US infrastructure is in a bad way and there won’t be a penny coming to fix bridges, roads, dams, waterways, you know, the transportation systems necessary to keep an economy going. See ya!
Oh, and if they want to protect what businesses they’ll have left, they’ll have to come up with their own military and fund it (it could be that the major corporations will hire their own private armies, a nice way to start a new nation). Federal Defense will be right out.
This shouldn’t be a problem though. They’ve done it before. For a while, at least. They’ve got plenty of guns, right? State militias will be no problem to put together, along with the private corporate police state armies. There won’t be any money for education, but then they don’t care about that anyway, right? Rick Perry will find some yahoo to write one book for everyone. Kids will grow up morons, but who cares? They’ll have guns and Jesus. That’s all they need.
No federal money for medical research, and no easy access to advances. Poor people will be left to rot—no health care for the lazy poors! Since ‘baggers hate regulation, businesses should be able to do anything they want. Dump raw sewage into the kiddies’ swimmin’ hole? Why not? Oil disasters off the coast? Wildlife dead? Fisheries closed, business dries up? Natch. Hey, this is what you all wanted. No, you demanded.
Well, you get the picture. It would be the mother of all cluster fucks. And don’t forget, they also won’t have access to most northern industries, and as it was during the Civil War, once materiel runs low and the bullets are almost gone, you’re in the deep doo doo. Now add to that no clean water, or food you can trust (Federal regulations are kaput), industrial accidents, like Texas towns blowing up because of no controls, a populace of drooling idiots—education being run by the churches and all, and what you have, within a generation or so, is a failed state:Teabagger Somalia.
How fun. The end of timers, conspiracy nuts, survivalists, the updated KKK bands, will turn into gangs of roving marauders. Not a good place for people of color, gays, anyone with more than a fifth grade education, or any progressive minded humans left behind. It will, in fact, be a Left Behind plot. Except they’ll be the ones hanging from the street lights. Which never work anymore.
But, hey. They’ll have FREEEDDDOOOMMM.
Oh, and by the way, if they don’t like it and want to emigrate to the good ol’ US of A, they’ll have to abide by the immigration rules they put in place before seceding. “Okay, Mr. Jones, you’d like to come to the US? You can have a work permit that will allow you to dig ditches with your bare hands for $2 an hour, no medical care, no housing, no food stamps to feed your kids, and you have to prove to us that you’re not a threat to the country. Oh, you mean you can’t prove a negative? I guess you’re right. Well, here’s a friendly INS officer who will escort you back to the Georgia border and kick your sorry, secessionist ass over the fence. NEXT….”
Yeah. And like that.
My take? They’ll never go for secession. They love being victims, love being able to complain, and fuck things up for everyone else, but they like to do it with the comforts of a working state, and a government that provides them with protection and a monthly social security check and medicare. Secession will mean that they have to confront the problems of unbridled freedom and consider the usefulness of liberty. That will mean they’ll also have to deal with the one thing most hated by ‘baggers: responsibility.
So how did the ‘baggers do with this ultimate test of their most cherished ideological tenets?
You got it. The Secession Tango turns into the Secession St. Vitus Dance.
More from Teabagger Somalia.
So Monday we all heard about a(nother) school killing. A 12 year old kills a teacher and himself and wounds several other innocents with a semiautomatic handgun which he borrowed, apparently, from his parents.
But what is the story? What are the headlines? CNN is a perfect reduction of this ongoing absurdity. Their stories are all about (aren't all these stories taking on the same caste, like the same folk tale told in thousands of villages around the world with changes only in local color and names?) the Hero Teacher.
And no, I'm not saying we should not honor someone who puts him or herself in harm's way to save a life, that's not the point. The point is that heroic actions and heartfelt eulogies would not be necessary if weapons were not so ubiquitous. And don't worry. CNN knows better than to make any mention of gun control or the NRA or the craven tree stumps in congress who jerk their little knees at every whisper of controlling gun violence and death.
But never fear, brothers and sisters, the NRA will not let this teacher die in vain at the hands of their latest success story, at least not without using his death as an excuse for more guns.
So what to do about the plague of gun deaths in schools? Teach kids--first fucking graders!--how to handle their very own weapons. I kid you not, RCers. The state of Missouri has passed an NRA backed law to teach kids as young as 6 about using guns. I guess Missouri has become the Show Me How to Shoot state. Oh, they call it Gun Safety, but why do 6 year olds even need to see a gun? Why? It implants the necessity and importance of guns. That's why. "Give me a child when he's 6 and I'll own him for life". Marcus Aurelius has it right. People covet what they see every day. Give 6 year olds a handgun and plenty will want one of their own. Or will want to try out that gun in dad's night table.
Teabagger Somalia. Kids aren't allowed to know about evolution but they sure as shit will know how to hit a moving target at 100 yards. Oh, and do it "safely". I feel so much better now.
Plenty more heroes in our future, boys and girls. Line up. Wayne LaPierre will shed two very public crocodile tears for you.
At your funeral.
Yet another explanation of why the ACA rollout is a miracle. Reading the article makes me think the IT firms deserve a medal. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/why-the-healthcaregov-train-wreck-happened-in-slow-motion.html
The article states that no one has seen the actual coding, it's not open source. So what is that coding that the IT 'experts' on TV disparage as amateurish? The IT equivalent of the couples with terrible ACA price shock?
Marie,
Thanks for pointing me to that Rosenberg piece on Salon about conservative abuse of logic in support of specious arguments. If I were a student again and doing a doctorate on logic fallacies, I'd find a goldmine of sterling examples in the vapors rising off the sidewalks in Right Wing World, as facts, logic, and well supported arguments all burn off under the heat of stupidity.
And it may not even be that the practitioners, at least not all of them, of conservative logical fallacies are trying intentionally to deceive. One of the great dangers of poor logic is, as Aristotle never tires of pointing out, that sloppy thinking and illogical arguments can convince the holder of unsound beliefs that they are absolutely correct.
But you can find a colossal panoply of horrifyingly bad logic oozing from your TV and computer screens from stage right: arguments from authority (a greatest hit for the authoritarians), straw man arguments, false attribution (otherwise known as Making Shit Up), the Historian's Fallacy (a favorite of the Supremes), argumentum ad hominem (wingnut radio screamers would be unemployed without personal attacks), a variation on the Nirvana Fallacies (held on to by 'baggers as if they were beloved childhood toys), and of course, the ever popular No True Scotsman jiggedy-jig, exercised without discretion by faux patriots everywhere.
The No True Scotsman fallacy reminds me of a song by a good friend of mine from Ireland. After coming to this country, he found work playing in pubs but his songs were mostly from or based on traditional Irish culture, not Irish/American music hall stuff. Once here he was accosted by drunken louts in bars who claimed--guys who have never set foot in Ireland, by the way--that he couldn't be a true Irishman because he didn't sing Danny Boy or MacNamara's Band.
They probably all voted for Romney.
The No True Scotsman fallacy is alive and well.
A saying that was popular back when I was in IT was "The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned."
To put it another way,:"Replacing one pregnant woman with nine pregnant women does not mean you will have a baby in a month."
Software surge? Good luck. The odds are against you. For once, I hope Palin is right: That we do end up with single payer.
Congratulations Marie for clicking through all 30 pages at 2:00 in he morning. Now all you have to complete is the income investigation.
As a person who has set up several of these websites said on NPR this morning, "this whole process violates the principles of marketing website design". The first of these is simplicity.
The first question to be answered, after no more than two inquires from the program, is " how much is this going to cost?"
The complexity of the application process will greatly limit it's use by the very people it is supposed to help, (besides the insurance companies)
If single payer doesn't result from this mish mash of Tower of Babel proportions , surprised, I will be.
This will be another example of the fallacy of the privatization fetishists arguments. However, MSM will continue to ignore these glaring examples.
@ Akhilleus: The notion that freedom grants the states the right to secede is mistaken, for a number of reasons.
As a matter of law, no party to a contract has the right to void the terms of the contract as long as the other party is adhering to the terms of the contract. Essentially, the constitution is a contract between the states and the federal government which outlines the terms under which each of the individual states agreed to be part of the United States. It was the product of intense, prolonged negotiations. As long as the federal government does not violate the the constitution, no state has the right to withdraw because of the duty it owes both the federal government and the other states.
There were a number of safeguards put into place to ensure the federal government did not usurp the powers of the individual states or allow the larger states to dominate the smaller ones, including disproportionate representation in the Senate and the electoral college. Ultimately, the Supreme Court exists to adjudicate disputes that arise over whether the federal government has exceeded its authority.
So while it may seem logical that freedom includes the right to secede, it doesn't, as your freedom does not include your right to break an agreement you have with me.
The people who spit and scream the most over FREEEEDOM will not be satisfied with an affirmative exercise of their own personal authority. They are more invested in forcing their personal view of the world on others. I think there would be little satisfaction in a separate existence in which they were self governed. Lord ain't that the stuff of nightmares and zombie films. They really want to govern you and I. Certainly no live and let live there. The threat may be secession, but I doubt it would be a satisfying outcome for the nutballs.
@Noodge. Isn't the issue of violating the Constitution exactly the argument that is most often posited by the nutballs? Not that I think there is a basis in fact for their argument, but the current Supreme Court has disagreed already. "Corporations are people" seems anti-Constitutional.
@Akhillius, "it could be that the major corporations will hire their own private armies....."
At risk of bringing up literature again, Ms. Atwood's CorpSeCorps (Oryx and Crake et seq.) not only nailed it, but seems disturbingly prescient. Good employment ops for NSA alumni.