Kathleen Sebelius is insistent that no one told Obama prior to October 1 that testing and evaluation had indicated healthcare.gov likely would fail.
Not even as a government “shutdown” was looming over the issue of delaying the individual mandate for a year? Even though an inoperable healthcare.gov website would justify the Republican position? Even though a failure of the website would be a major embarrassment?
HHS chief: President didn’t know of Obamacare website woes beforehand
President Barack Obama didn’t know of problems with the Affordable Care Act’s website — despite insurance companies’ complaints and the site’s crashing during a test run — until after its now well-documented abysmal launch, the nation’s health chief told CNN on Tuesday.
In an exclusive interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked when the President first learned about the considerable issues with the Obamacare website. Sebelius responded that it was in “the first couple of days” after the site went live October 1.
“But not before that?” Gupta followed up.
To which Sebelius replied, “No, sir.”
This all sounds eerily familiar:
Senior White House officials, including Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, learned last month about a review by the Treasury Department’s inspector general into whether the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, but they did not inform President Obama, the White House said Monday.
Holder: No Petraeus security breach, so Obama not told:
The FBI investigation into former CIA Director David Petraeus’ extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell found no apparent threat to national security, so there was no reason to notify President Obama or Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday.
White House: Biden, Obama unaware of security requests:
Josh Rogin reports at The Cable that President Obama and Vice President Biden were never personally made aware of requests for additional security at the Benghazi consulate and the Tripoli embassy in Libya….
Being unaware is a convenient excuse, almost as convenient as still blaming Bush almost 5 years after Obama took over The White House.
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First to take credit last to take blame. I wish more people saw through this scumbag.
Heh… Sounds like a twist of the old LIFO vs. FIFO thang.
Good one!
Yeah, him and his Attorney General and Secretary of State: their excuses are that they didn’t attend the briefings and didn’t read their mail.
Fantastic.
Come on, this is right out of “Dictator for Dummies”. Recall that of the thousands of pages documenting The Final Solution kept by those record-retaining fanatics, the Nazis, there was not one shred of evidence that The Fuhrer (the original “Teh One”) knew, approved or had a hand in that evil design.
Recall too, that until the archives of the former Soviet Union were made public, there were still millions of Russians who believed Stalin knew nothing of the millions of arrests and deportations. Only when they saw that old Koba reviewed and approved the lists did many realize that Stalin was not the affable Georgian-peasant-boy-made-good they believed him to be.
The starving Koreans refuse to blame their Kimmy Boys and the Juche Idea for their plight. Instead, they blame a jealous world who persecutes them for their great fortune of being born Korean and living under such magnificent dynastic leadership who brought them the world’s greatest philosophy.
Yeah, in a cult of personality, it always makes sense to keep your hands clean and visible to the public, even when you are in sh!t up to your neck. You have toadies who are paid to wear the sh!t shirts and take the blame.
Dear Leaders, Enlightened Ones, Sun Kings, Fuhrers, Emperors, Chosen Wons and other assorted despots and near-despots do no wear blame or failure well. That We The People are now saddled with such a Personality speaks volumes of the failure of the Fourth Estate, formerly known as The Free Press (1789-2008 RIP).
Great comment to Prof’s deadbangon post.
He knows nothink…
Excellent points, Trooper John!
Incompetence on an epic scale…since January 20, 2009. And the media continues its celebration of this administration.
Of course he did. Nothing but lies.
Consider the idea that the “smartest man in the room” can read minds
They don’t have to “tell” him.
Hey, what’s the point of interrupting Barry’s golf game with bad news, especially when Valerie Jarrett is the one making all the decisions anyway.
Do they really think more lies will help them?
So far there’s been no repercussions from lying. In fact, each lie has resulted in full support of the media. So yes, they do think it will help.
Even if it won’t help, it won’t hurt and costs them nothing. So why not?
So, the know-nothingest president in the history of EVER…
adds the ObamaDoggle IT debacle to his catalog of Sgt. Schultz moments…
AND it is all lies. All of it.
Yeah, pretty ironic that the man who promised “the most transparent administration in history” is running (read: ruling) a system so opaque that he can’t see out any better than we can see in. There are so many “moving parts” that nothing gets through to him without being mangled and/or lost. (Coming from him is different, with a complicit media just begging for the scraps from his table.)
I firmly believe that setup is completely intentional, so he can avoid blame/accountability by (almost) legitimately claiming he wasn’t aware of the problems.
Any judge or police officer will tell you that ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating it. Therefore, Big O’s “ignorance” of the goings-on of his Administration DOES NOT IN ANY WAY ABSOLVE HIM OF RESPONSIBILITY. The manager is always accountable for the actions of his/her employees. Period. Full stop. It’s part of the job to oversee the happenings and correct problems. That’s reality.
I believe Rumsfeld called these “known unknowns”
Either Obama’s staff are the most stupid bunch of clowns every assembled by a POTUS, or this POTUS has moved “plausible deniability” to a new level.
1. Plausible Deniability Salad
1. A salad eaten at a large buffet in order so that the person eating it doesn’t look like a total glutton to everyone around them.
Nice one!
But I think Plausible Deniability Salad, in this case, is more like:
1. A large salad, passed among the guests such that the host receives an empty bowl, having not eaten it can claim to not know what was in it.
…or it’s part a grand plan to set in place a single payer system.
Something smells rotten in..
Why, yes it is exactly that…a plan to get to single payer using the Cloward-Piven strategy. Simple.
back in my school days, I read a history book about the phenomenon of Kristalnacht, the NSDAP, and German civil society. One thing that has stayed with me, was that many jews (while their businesses were destroyed and so forth) constantly said something to the effect of, “If only the Feuhrer knew, he would put a stop to this.”
If you don’t remember history, you are doomed to repeat it
Remember: SpinMaster DJ David Axelrod said that government was “Sooooooooooooooooooo Big that who could know everything.”
Obama: ”I know nuffink! Nuffink!”
Lying bastard.
OK, so take it at face value. It’s incontrovertible evidence that the federal government is way too large and should be cut back to about half it’s size. Seriously, if The Smartest President Ever can’t manage a government this large, then who could?
We need a Federal Sunset Commission similar to what we have in Texas. Every state agency is up for regular review to determine whether it still needs to exist.
The Founders’ Republic: A system of government designed by geniuses so that an idiot could run it.
The Modern “Republic”: The Founders’ Republic, modified by so many idiots that even a genius can’t run it.
To work for Obama is to become an insurance salesman. Liability, not health.
Ultimately, the website is a farcical, predictable, maddening, but largely irrelevant red herring. Indeed, I think that Mugabe-Bama and the libs welcome its failure, because they can use it to distract from the more important issue of the real-world, nightmarish consequences of Obamacare which have been widely reported (outside of the Leftist pro-Obama propaganda machine) and which are affecting millions of Americans — people whose coverage has been canceled as a result of Obamacare, who don’t qualify for the “affordability credits” (aka subsidies), and who now have to swallow the exponentially higher premiums, higher deductibles, increased out-of-pocket expense limits, and more restrictive doctor choice without any help. Where is that money going to come from to pay for these increases — out of other necessities, out of retirement savings, out of college education funds, that’s where.
This is the unvarnished reality of Obamacare. Ironically, the only “crisis” in American healthcare is the one that Obamcare is creating.
The website is a convenient distraction and scapegoat, because it allows the Left to say “Hey, as soon as the website is up and running, everything will be a-okay” — as if the only thing wrong with Obamcare is its website! Let’s remind people that the discredited, tyrannical ideology behind Obamacare is far more flawed and irreparable than the $750 million website which it produced.
Never forgets tee time though.
It’s a classic example of the Limbaugh Theorem:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/05/21/the-limbaugh-theorem/
But, it’s much more than just insulating Obama from his own policies…
…it’s the old adage that liberals always point to failed liberal policies to demonstrate the need for liberal policies.
the death spiral into absolute tyranny..
One has to concede that there is a sort of perverse genius with respect to liberalism and liberal social programs, inasmuch as their inevitable policy failures create the justification for yet more government intervention to allegedly “solve” the very problems which they created in the first place. It’s truly the gift that keeps on giving.
Thus, the federal government’s pressure on lenders to lower their lending standards helped lead to the housing crisis of 2007-2008, which, of course, provided the justification for Dodd-Frank and a whole smorgasbord of new, oppressive regulations and rules.
The federal government’s interference in the healthcare market, through Medicare/Medicaid, S-CHIP, etc. has completely distorted healthcare pricing and led to skyrocketing costs, which, of course, provides the alleged justification for Obamacare to come into being to help contain costs.
I’m sure there are plenty of other examples that illustrate this.
He is only a community organ grinder not a manager. C’mon people.
Besides, Bush probably saw this coming and didn’t say anything to Obama.
It was Bush! It was Cruz! Bush! Cruz! Crush! Bruise! It was anybody but me!
Not attending to your responsibilities is no excuse for failure to fulfill your responsibilities.
Then again, Obama provides us a handy alibi come April 15th.
Uh,umm, good luck with that Obama excuse on 15 April 2014.
Does President Obama know his golf handicap or are the gate keepers protecting him from that too so as not to hurt his precious feelings too? Good forbid he might know how bad he sucks (at everything)!
I think that we are in for an exciting and tumultuous three years. Lame Duck Presidents always have informational problems with the bubble they live in. But Obama has been in an informational bubble almost from the first, almost as if he were a front man for some powerful interests that put him into office so that they could do what they wanted with the government, and his only job was to enjoy the perks of office (including playing a lot of golf), and looking Presidential. No CEO really likes hearing bad news, but the good ones know that they need to hear it before the good news. Obama apparently has made it clear that he doesn’t like hearing bad news, so he doesn’t, until he hears it on the nightly news – often much too late to do much about it. Dana Perino talks about how hard she, and much of the rest of the White House staff, worked so hard to stay ahead of this sort of thing. Of course, her boss has a Harvard MBA, while Obama’s degree from there provided little traing in running anything larger than a secretarial pool.
This isn’t the first time that we have seen this sort of thing. Saw it as early as Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS, etc. But a lot of people thought that he and his close staff were lying about their Sgt Shultz defense of knowing nothing. I think though that this is strong indicia that he and his close staff are really, almost intentionally oblivious about what is going on in much of the government that they are supposed to be running. Imagine if they had known that the healthcare.gov launch would have been this disastrous, and the Republicans had tried to force him to agree to delay the individual mandate for a year, or they would shut the government down. He could have played hard to get, extracting some concessions before agreeing to it. And then when he did give in, could take credit for it when the rollout crashed. Instead, Republicans are the ones who look like they had foresight, trying to delay the individual mandate for a year that without such many Americans are going to face penalties for failing to sign up for healthcare that they cannot sign up for due to the almost complete failure in the rollout of the site that they are supposed to use to sign up on. To mix metaphors a bit, he was staring a gift horse in the face, and instead cut off his nose in spite of his face (or however they go). He could have painted the Republicans into a corner, and, instead, finds himself the one there. He is going to have to do what the Republicans urged him to do, but will have to do so illegally, ignoring the letter of the ACA law, instead of legally with the consent of Congress.
Perfectly said. I’m particularly fond of the line: … almost as if he were a front man for some powerful interests that put him into office so that they could do what they wanted with the government, and his only job was to enjoy the perks of office …
I have reached the point where I believe that is exactly what happened. I can’t fathom anyone so innately stupid as dear leader appears to be in reality. Furhtermore, he attracts like and kind…e.g., Lew, Sebelius, Salazar, Clinton, et al ad nauseum.
Not sure about his cabinet. Many of those posts seem to have gone to radical ideologues. They represent his power bases, and at one level were political playoffs, and at another, how better to radically reshape policy in these areas than to appoint a radical to oversee the department? Hillary!’s job, I think, was a political payoff, to get her, and esp her husband on-board, instead of in active opposition. And I think this is the one place where the WH really did make policy, while she toured the world shaking hands, but little else – except that I think that she agreed with Obama’s diasterous policy switch to pandering to much of the Muslim world. Little surprised at Ken Salazar though. Knew him slightly from early in his political career, and he never seemed that radical then. And, while cowboy hats are not that common any more in Denver, they still are though where he grew up in the San Louis Valley. His family has been farming and ranching there for maybe 150 years now (he grew up near the first permanent white settlement in CO).