The current administration’s cabinet personnel are all so similar it becomes, well, actually odd.

‘When this job came available, it was such an incredible opportunity to work so closely with the president. But everything’s a cost-benefit, right? And the benefits of this and the influence of this job are sufficiently great that there were more costs I was willing to take on the family side.’
– Samantha Power

No Samantha, actually it’s not a “cost-benefit analysis”, not even close.  It is actually just a matter of priorities.   We do that which is important to us, and we avoid or postpone, if avoidance impossible, that which is not seen as important.

New York – United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power has said that it is the thrill of a lifetime to be working at the international organization that she has idolized for years, but that doesn’t mean that she won’t be happy it’s over. (more…)

The Kentucky, Tennessee and South Carolina Tea party Tests are discussed toward the end:

.@corybooker Today is another example of how people of different parties can work together and accomplish big things. pic.twitter.com/sd2iGRtKTM

— Chris Christie (@GovChristie) October 17, 2013

When New Jersey Democrat Senator Frank Lautenberg died on June 3rd 2013, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had a decision to make. Generally speaking, Governors appoint interim representatives as replacement Senators to finish the term (through 2014) of the deceased. But this potential appointment held some *other* considerations. (more…)

Via iOTW
~ The quenching drink amid the aridity of Liberal “ism’s” ~

(more…)

Splodey Heads in every room at Woolsey Hall….
(Via Politico)  A finding in a study on the relationship between science literacy and political ideology surprised the Yale professor behind it: Tea party members know more science than non-tea partiers.
Yale law professor Dan Kahan posted on his blog this week that he analyzed the responses of a set of more than 2,000 American adults recruited for another study and found that, on average, people who leaned liberal were more science literate than those who leaned conservative.
However, those who identified as part of the tea party movement were actually better versed in science than those who didn’t, Kahan found. The findings met the conventional threshold of statistical significance, the professor said.
Kahan wrote that not only did the findings surprise him, they embarrassed him. (more…)

• The big government freedom-destroying Democrats and Decepticons said the Sequester cuts would be the ‘end-of-the-world’ type painful.
It wasn’t, no-one noticed the cuts – they were Chicken Little.
• The big government freedom-destroying Democrats and Decepticons said the federal government shutdown would be ‘end-of-the-world’ type painful.   Having learned from the Chicken Little sequester narrative, they moved to insure this time it would be more visible and painful.
Yet, it really wasn’t, the cuts weren’t even noticed except on TV – Just more Chicken Little.
• The big government freedom-destroying Democrats couldn’t allow the debt ceiling breech cuts to take place because the American people would see it’s all just more Chicken Littling.  So:

You can read about the “DEAL” HERE.
(more…)

As previously discussed and anticipated. However, in the article the influence of Denis McDonough is avoided….
WASHINGTON DC – President Obama’s top adviser Valerie Jarrett was behind a plan to force a showdown with Republicans over ObamaCare as part of a strategy to regain Democratic control of the House next year, claims author Ed Klein.
Klein — who wrote a provocative biography about Obama last year entitled “The Amateur” — said White House insiders refer to Jarrett as “The Night Stalker” because she is the only presidential aide who frequently spends time in the family quarters and dines with the Obamas.
Klein, who is conducting a research for a new Obama tome scheduled for next spring, called Jarrett the “architect” of Obama’s take-no- prisoners approach when it comes to his signature domestic policy initiative.
It was Jarrett who advised Obama that voters would mostly blame Republicans if the federal government ground to a halt, providing a golden opportunity to swing back control of the House to Democrats in the 2014 mid-term elections, according to Klein. (more…)

Now that we have affirmation on WHY the website does not work. Lets take a look at how it’s put together and follow the network.  (HatTip Fantasia for some links)

Sometimes looking into the engineering side of the new Obamacare Cyber Construction (Rabbit Hole) makes you wonder…..

In 2010 when the ACA (Obamacare) was passed it was 2,700 pages, 381,517 words, formulating a bill that no-one read before it was voted on; and “we’d have to pass it to see what’s in it”.
In 2013 Obamacare, and the accompanying regulation which compromise it’s construct, is now 10,535 pages long (11,588,500 words).  Thirty times larger than the initial construct and so massive that no-one knows what it all means in totality.
So a website to sign people up for it needed to be constructed.

Where did the feds turn?  To a previously authorized cyber engineering firm, CGI, who held a very special status –  “Indefinite Delivery and Indefinite Quantity.”   As the Washington Examiner outlined: (more…)

(Daily Kos) My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 this year, mine $150. We have a high deductible. We are generally healthy people who don’t go to the doctor often. I barely ever go. The insurance is in case of a major catastrophe.
Well, now, because of Obamacare, my wife’s rate is gong to $302 per month and mine is jumping to $284.
I am canceling insurance for us and I am not paying any f**king penalty. What the hell kind of reform is this?
Oh, ok, if we qualify, we can get some government assistance. Great. So now I have to jump through another hoop to just chisel some of this off. And we don’t qualify, anyway, so what’s the point? (more…)

We knew sooner or later someone in the media would pick up on this.  It appears Forbes is the first large media outlet to share what we have outlined for the past two weeks.  

The HHS website issues/flaws stem from the structural design to keep users from recognizing their cost. 

Forbes Magazine – A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.

HHS didn’t want users to see Obamacare’s true costs – “Healthcare.gov was initially going to include an option to browse before registering,” report Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky in the Wall Street Journal. (more…)