October 24, 2013

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Jennifer Rubin on the absentee presidency.

… This is a president who set up a system in which he imagines he is relieved of responsibility. Someone else’s job. Not his problem. Didn’t know. Doesn’t matter why. He ‘s “madder” than anyone he keeps telling us, but not mad enough to make certain senior advisers tell him what is going on. He wants to be the victim (I’m mad!) and not the boss (Why didn’t I know this? Anyone who acts that way is fired!). This is intentional ignorance, inexcusable in a president.

Obama likes worlds of his own creation. That is what a memoir is and to a large extent that is what a campaign is — a narrative about your presidency. He is always infallible in his own yarns. The other side is evil and the facts are on his side. That, however, is a make-believe world. Here in this world, he is not a problem-solver, does not engage with opponents and wrestle with conflicting goals, and has no interest in getting his hands dirty. He’s too big for the presidency, apparently. He’s the inspirer, the slayer of the Republicans. …

 

 

The Federalist lists the eight biggest falsehoods in the rose garden infomercial on healthcare.

… Falsehood #1: “I’m joined today by folks who’ve either benefited from the Affordable Care Act already, or who are helping their fellow citizens learn about what this law means for them and how they can get covered.”

According to Byron York, some of the people who were behind President Obama hadn’t actually benefitted from ObamaCare.  For example, the White House description of Nathaniel Hojnacki stated that he was “planning to enroll after he had explored his coverage options on the DC exchange.”   York counted at least three other people there who had not yet “benefited” from ObamaCare.

Falsehood #2: “Despite all [of the problems with the website], thousands of people are signing up and saving money as we speak.”

Does the President have a live feed that shows him real-time updates on how many people are saving money on healthcare.gov?  And if so, why doesn’t he share it with the rest of us?

Getting information out the Administration about enrollment in healthcare.gov has been like pulling teeth—from an alligator.  Thus far all we know is that 500,000 people have at least started applications for insurance via the federal and state exchanges.   We don’t know how many have completed the application process.

And completing an application doesn’t mean you will qualify for insurance.  The data insurers have received from the exchanges are often riddled with errors, making it impossible to determine if the applicants qualify for insurance, let alone save money.

Enroll Maven, a website that tracks enrollment in the ObamaCare exchanges based on news reports, can confirm only 167 people have actually enrolled in an insurance plan on the healthcare.gov.  Chances are slim and none that Obama has any idea how many people have enrolled and have saved money, and slim is headed for a death spiral. …

 

 

The Dallas Morning News carried an AP story that illuminates some of problems with the roll out.

Crammed into conference rooms with pizza for dinner, some programmers building the Obama administration’s showcase health insurance website were growing increasingly stressed. Some worked past 10 p.m., energy drinks in hand. Others rewrote computer code over and over to meet what they considered last-minute requests for changes from the government or other contractors.

As questions mount over the website’s failure, insider interviews and a review of technical specifications by The Associated Press found a mind-numbingly complex system put together by harried programmers who pushed out a final product that congressional investigators said was tested by the government and not private developers with more expertise.

Project developers who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity — because they feared they would otherwise be fired — said they raised doubts among themselves whether the website could be ready in time. They complained openly to each other about what they considered tight and unrealistic deadlines. One was nearly brought to tears over the stress of finishing on time, one developer said. Website builders saw red flags for months.

A review of internal architectural diagrams obtained by the AP revealed the system’s complexity. Insurance applicants have a host of personal information verified, including income and immigration status. The system connects to other federal computer networks, including ones at the Social Security Administration, IRS, Veterans Administration, Office of Personnel Management and the Peace Corps. …

 

 

Here’s the big news! LA Times reports on British Medical Journal touting bacon. Well, sort of. 

The British Medical Journal has issued a clarion call to all who want to ward off heart disease: Forget the statins and bring back the bacon (or at least the full-fat yogurt). Saturated fat is not the widow-maker it’s been made out to be, writes British cardiologist Aseem Malhotra in a stinging “Observations” column in the BMJ: The more likely culprits are empty carbs and added sugar.

Virtually all the truths about preventing heart attacks that physicians and patients have held dear for more than a generation are wrong and need to be abandoned, Malhotra writes. He musters a passel of recent research that suggests that the “obsession” with lowering a patients’ total cholesterol with statins, and a public health message that has made all sources of saturated fat verboten to the health-conscious, have failed to reduce heart disease.

Indeed, he writes, they have set off market forces that have put people at greater risk. After the Framingham Heart Study showed a correlation between total cholesterol and risk for coronary artery disease in the early 1970s, patients at risk for heart disease were urged to swear off red meat, school lunchrooms shifted to fat-free and low-fat milk, and a food industry eager to please consumers cutting their fat intake rushed to boost the flavor of their new fat-free offerings with added sugar (and, of course, with trans-fats). …

 

 

Daily Beast says someone at the white house actually got fired. The offense; truth telling tweets.

A White House national security official was fired last week after being caught as the mystery Tweeter who has been tormenting the foreign policy community with insulting comments and revealing internal Obama administration information for over two years.

Jofi Joseph, a director in the non-proliferation section of the National Security Staff at the White House, has been surreptitiously tweeting under the moniker @natsecwonk, a Twitter feed famous inside Washington policy circles since it began in February, 2011 until it was shut down last week. Two administration officials confirmed that the mystery tweeter was Joseph, who has also worked at the State Department and on Capitol Hill for Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Joe Biden. Until recently, he was part of the administration’s team working on negotiations with Iran.

During his time tweeting under the @natsecwonk name, Joseph openly criticized the policies of his White House bosses and often insulted their intellect and appearance. At different times, he insulted or criticized several top White House and State Department officials, including former National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, Secretary of State John Kerry, and many many others.

The Daily Beast saved a long record of @natsecwonk’s tweets prior to the shutting down of his Twitter feed.

“I’m a fan of Obama, but his continuing reliance and dependence upon a vacuous cipher like Valerie Jarrett concerns me,” he once tweeted.

“Was Huma Abedin wearing beer goggles the night she met Anthony Wiener? Almost as bad a pairing as Samantha Powers and Cass Sunstein ….,” he tweeted on another occasion, insulting a top Clinton aide, a then Congressman, and two White House senior officials in one tweet.

 

Andy Malcolm closes our week with late night humor.

Conan: Facebook is preparing for its launch in the Jewish state of Israel by changing the “Like” button to the “Could Be Worse” button.

Conan: At an Olympic exhibition game, the U.S. and Canadian womens’ hockey teams got into a full-on, all-female brawl. Olympic referees ruled the incident, “unsportsmanlike,” “unprofessional” and “super-hot.”