Even that is better than cancer or heart-disease research.
But that’s still not where the funding priority is.
[Update a few minutes later]
A simple pill to cure Alzheimers?
Faster please. Though it looks like it would only prevent further damage, not necessarily reverse it. But even that would be a huge breakthrough.
What went wrong?
I imagine there was a dialogue last Monday afternoon that went something like this:
FRONT-END DEVELOPER: Why does the username have to have a number in it?
BACK-END DEVELOPER: It’s in the government username regulations. Didn’t you read them?
FRONT-END DEVELOPER: No, we don’t do accounts, we just hand the input to you.
BACK-END DEVELOPER: And we told you your front-end the input was no good! See the ErrEngineDown in the URL?
FRONT-END DEVELOPER: Fine, fine. Sigh. Nice to finally talk to you, by the way.
BACK-END DEVELOPER: Yeah, you too. Are you in D.C.?
FRONT-END DEVELOPER: San Francisco.
BACK-END DEVELOPER: Know any good jobs in D.C.? I hate this place and they’re furloughing me as soon as we fix this mess.
Each group got its piece “working” in isolation and prayed that when they hooked them together, things would be okay. When they didn’t, it was too late. It is entirely possible that back-end developer CGI is primarily at fault here, but no one will care because they just see that the whole thing doesn’t work. As you learn early on in software development, there is no partial credit in programming. A site that half-works is worse than one that doesn’t work at all, which is why the bad error handling is so egregious. You always handle errors.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
[Update a few minutes later]
The roll out was nothing short of disastrous:
The left likes to flatter itself as thinking in terms of reason, facts, expertise, openness to doubt, and scorn of dogma and magical thinking.
Is this anywhere close to true?
When experts told the Obama Administration it was a fact the website was not ready, did they take seriously this advisement?
Nope! They simply said there was no cause for alarm; the strange gods of the left would just sort everything out.
Oddly enough, they didn’t.
It’s almost like they’re not quite as brilliant and rational as they’re always telling us they are.
And then there’s this. That’s right, Sheila Jackson Lee, who thinks that the Apollo astronauts went to Mars, thinks that the solution to the government shutdown is martial law. Meanwhile, the good lefties over at The Atlantic are more measured. They just want to have the Speaker of the House arrested.
It’s almost like they have a will to power, or something. And of course, as always with the left, when they accuse the “right” of this sort of thing, it’s projection.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, so just what are CGI Federal’s ties to the administration? You’d be a fool to think there are none.
…pile up:
To recap, then: Before, during, and after passage, Americans were promised that Obamacare was going to lower premiums for “everyone” (the goal of merely maintaining premiums being too modest); it was not going to interfere with anybody’s health care or health insurance if they already had it; and it was not going change anybody’s patient-doctor relationship. The message was unmistakable: All the government wanted to do was extend health insurance to people who didn’t have it. This wouldn’t affect you. No need to worry. Period. Move along.
In addition to the totally partisan nature of this thing, one of the other many things that distinguishes it from previous entitlements is the many grandiose lies that were told about it to sell it, going back to the president’s first campaign.
It was both entirely predictable, and predicted.
Speaking of which, Bruce Webster has some interesting thoughts on the thermocline of truth.
OK, call me crazy, and I haven’t looked into this at all. But would anyone be at all surprised if they were selected on how much they filled Democrat campaign coffers rather than track record or competence?
Why is ObamaCare such a hot steaming mess? Because Obama cares more about campaigning than governing (though he does like the part of governing where he can push his political enemies around).
[Update a while later]
The Republicans didn’t sabotage the health exchanges. Obama did.
This train wreck was perfectly predictable, and many predicted it.
[Update a couple minutes later]
It’s ObamaCar.
[Update a while later]
USA Today: “…an inexcusable mess.”
[Bumped]
What we see is the web portal, which is a mess. It’s even worse behind the wizard’s curtain. I love the train-wreck animated gifs.
When the administration says they don’t know how many have signed up, they’re either lying, or their technical incompetence knows no bounds.
It’s an embarrassment for the administration. Well, yeah. What’s surprising, though, is who is saying it:
“An embarrassment for the administration,” Blitzer stated. “Hopefully, they’ll get all those glitches out of the way by Monday, if possible. They’ve only had three years to get ready for this roll out.”
When you’ve lost Wolf Blitzer…
Why it is not “settled law”:
I find quite bizarre the repeated claims that the Supreme Court’s decision in NFIB v. Sebelius should somehow end debate on the PPACA and the individual mandate. Did the Supreme Court’s decisions upholding the Hyde Amendment or other limits on federal funding for abortion end debate over the wisdom or fairness of these policies? Of course not — nor should they have. These decisions did not dampen the debate over the underlying constitutional questions either. There is nothing inappropriate about abortion rights groups continuing to challenge these policies, politically and in the courts. By the same token, so long as a substantial portion of the American electorate opposes key elements of the PPACA, we should expect efforts to limit or overturn it. That’s how the system works.
Indeed. There are more cases pending, and if they reach SCOTUS, they may still overturn the law (particularly given the ruling that it is non-severable). It will simply happen on some grounds other than those previously argued. Also, unless Roberts’ decision arose from his being blackmailed (I wish I could be sure that it wasn’t), he probably learned a lesson from it, and won’t pass up another opportunity to strike it.
…finally find out about ObamaCare.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.