Today's Munch Prize Goes to ...

Last week, Frank Rich asked this:

How could a president whose signature achievements include the health-care law and two brilliantly tech-centric presidential campaigns screw this up so badly? How could he say even as late as September 26 that the site would work 'the same way you shop for a TV on Amazon'? How could he repeatedly make the false promise that all Americans could keep their insurance plans, and then take so long to recognize that he was wrong and mobilize to correct it? This is hardly Kathleen Sebelius’s fault. It is Barack Obama’s fault — a failure of management for sure, and possibly one of character. There is something rotten in the inner-management cocoon of the White House, and if the president doesn’t move to correct it, his situation will truly be hopeless for the rest of this term.

"A failure of character"?? That seemed rather over-the-top. I considered Rich a candidate for the Munch Prize, but I so value his opinion that I couldn't just dismiss his charge as the usual hyperbole.

Rich points out that the President was claiming days before the big Healthcare.gov fail that using the Website would be as easy as ordering small appliances online. It seems plausible, if dismaying, that White House & HHS staff kept the president in the dark -- that he had no idea, days before the launch of the Website -- that it was a giant clusterfuck. Kathleen Sebelius claimed as much when Sanjay Gupta interviewed her in late October:

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.'

But what about that claim, "If you like your health plan you can keep it"? Surely the President knew that wasn't true. Indeed, the record makes pretty clear that the President did understand this. The last time he made the flat-out claim that people could keep the policies they liked was way back in April 2010, barely a week after passage of the ACA: 

And if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it.  No one will be able to take that away from you.  It hasn’t happened yet.  It won’t happen in the future. -- Barack Obama, speech in Portland, Maine, April 1, 2010

Let's call that an April Fools joke. And let's accept that it is possible and understandable that on that date, the President -- and his speechwriter -- weren't aware this was a false statement. The ACA is some 2,000 pages long. Maybe the President hadn't read all the fine print.

After that date, President Obama began subtly changing his message to align it with the facts. The next time the President made any comment about the supposed inviolability of current health insurance policies, according to PolitiFact, was after the Supreme Court ruled the ACA constitutional:

If you’re one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance — this law will only make it more secure and more affordable. -- Barack Obama, June 28, 2012

Notice how the President shifted his message. He was no longer claiming you will keep the same policy; in fact, he's implying -- to those who are good at reading between the lines -- that you're going to get a new & better policy.

The President continued this theme throughout the 2012 campaign, never specifically promising "you can keep it." Here's the language the President used in a typical campaign speech:

If you have health insurance, the only thing that changes for you is you’re more secure because insurance companies can't drop you when you get sick. -- Barack Obama, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 6, 2012

Post-campaign, that language too evolved. Here is a remark from the September 26, 2013, speech Rich cites:

... If you already have health care, you don’t have to do anything. -- Barack Obama, Largo, Maryland

"You don't have to do anything." Uh, well, until your insurer sends you that cancellation notice. Or your employer tells you this year's plans aren't like the old plans.

Is there some duplicity here? Duplicity that rises to the level of a character issue? It depends upon how much control you imagine President Obama has over the White House Website. Here is surely the most confounded graf that has ever appeared on the Website. This is not some relic from 2010. It is on the White House Website today:

For those Americans who already have health insurance, the only changes you will see under the law are new benefits, better protections from insurance company abuses, and more value for every dollar you spend on health care. If you like your plan you can keep it and you don’t have to change a thing due to the health care law. The President addressed concerns from Americans who have received letters of policy cancellations or changes from their insurance companies in an interview with NBC News, watch the video or read a transcript. (Emphasis added.)

A character issue? I seriously doubt President Obama has read the text of the White House Website. He has other things to do.

Rich claims, "There is something rotten in the inner-management cocoon of the White House, and if the president doesn’t move to correct it, his situation will truly be hopeless for the rest of this term." I have to give Rich that. The graf above is an exemplar of double-speak and rank incompetence. Obviously, it was updated on or after November 7, 2013, when the President spoke to Chuck Todd during the height of the uproar over the President's "broken promise." Whoever updated the Website should start updating his resume' instead. Firing that lamebrain would be one "move to correct" the "rotten" thing in "the inner-management cocoon."

But I do not think a misstatement -- one the President hasn't uttered since days after this very complex law passed -- speaks ill of the President's character. It is true that Obama's shift to a more accurate claim has been, well, shifty. "You don't have to do anything" isn't precisely true, either. Most insureds have to "do something" to get continued coverage. But I think it's fair to interpret Obama's new line to mean, "You don't have to do anything different from what you've done in the past." It would be really splitting hairs to insist that the President deliver a speech in the form of a contract. I find his latest shorthand acceptable. It is not, in my opinion, evidence of a "possible character flaw."

Munch Prize recipient responds to award announcement.Indeed, Rich himself makes a false claim when he accuses Obama of "repeatedly [making] the false promise that all Americans could keep their insurance plans." Rich should have said, "Obama used to make the false promise...." But in the form of his remark, Rich implies that Obama has made the false promise recently. He has not.

So, Frank Rich, Congratulations. Reluctantly, I must award you today's Munch Prize.

The Commentariat -- Nov. 24, 2013

Failure may have a thousand fathers, but CGI Federal, the main software contractor on Healthcare.gov, is the Big Daddy of them all. Amy Goldstein & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post report. CW: Goldstein & Eilperin don't say so, but some of CGI's excuses sound totally phony to me. For instance, they claim that they couldn't write key code because the adminstration hadn't established minimum insurance requirements. That's sort of like saying you can't code an app because you haven't decided what you will charge customers for it. Obviously, you can code dummy requirements & plug in the real ones later.

Michael Memoli of the Los Angeles Times on the new Democratic Senators who drove the filibuster change. 'When [Jeff] Merkley [Oregon], as a prospective candidate, first met with [Majority Leader Harry] Reid ahead of the 2008 election, he told the leader that filibuster reform was one of his top priorities. Reid put his head in his hands.... 'It's not about the filibuster,' Reid admonished the younger man. 'It's about the culture. We've got to change the culture.' Six years later, the culture is the same and the filibuster is gone." ...

... Leigh Ann Caldwell of CNN credits liberal bloggers for initiating filibuster reform.

Kate McDonough of Salon: Sen. "Marco Rubio [RTP-Fla.] over the weekend delivered the keynote address at a fundraising event for the Florida Family Policy Council, a conservative organization that promotes so-called ex-gay conversion therapy and believes that gay parents are a 'threat' to their children, among other odious views.... The organization ... also has a broader political agenda that includes abolishing reproductive rights and teaching creationist pseudo-science in public schools. Rubio ... used his address to explain why the separation of church and state is not even worth debating because 'God is everywhere' and 'doesn't need our permission to be anywhere.' Via Steve Benen. CW: Say, MAG, can I come up to Maine & stay at your place if I feed the sled dogs? Florida is really too embarrassing.

Juan Cole: "The decade-long Neoconservative plot to take the United States to war against Iran appears to have been foiled." Thanks to contributor safari for the link. See also today's News Ledes.

Norimitsu Onishi of the New York Times: "Nearly three years of bloody civil war in Syria have created what the United Nations, governments and international humanitarian organizations describe as the most challenging refugee crisis in a generation -- bigger than the one unleashed by the Rwandan genocide and laden with the sectarianism of the Balkan wars. With no end in sight in the conflict and with large parts of Syria already destroyed, governments and organizations are quietly preparing for the refugee crisis to last years."

Local News

Who Could Have Known? Jonathan Kaminsky of Reuters: "Significantly more drivers pulled over by police in Washington state are testing positive for marijuana since legalization of the drug's recreational use took effect in January, according to figures released this week by the Washington State Patrol."

Can a high-school teacher claim a First Amendment right to teach creationism, display Christian iconography in the classroom & defy his superiors' orders to cut it out? The teacher lost his case before the Ohio State Supreme Court. But. As Steve Benen writes, "This wouldn't appear to be a tough call. The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that, under the First Amendment, public schools cannot teach creationism as science -- a detail this teacher ignored. That, in conjunction with his brazen disregard for the school district's instructions, seems to make dismissal a no-brainer. But here's the thing that jumps out: it was a 4-3 ruling. In other words, three justices on the Ohio Supreme Court concluded that the teacher in question was justified in blowing off the school district, scientific cannon, modern biology, the religious liberties of his students, and legal precedent."

News Ledes

New York Times: "The United States and five other world powers announced a landmark accord Sunday morning that would temporarily freeze Iran's nuclear program and lay the foundation for a more sweeping agreement." ...

... Washington Post: "Israeli leaders denounced the interim Iranian nuclear pact signed by the United States and five world powers as an historic mistake that does little to reverse Iran's nuclear ambitions and instead makes the world a more dangerous place."

On the Afghan Front. Dubya's Handpicked President For Life Is Still Crazy. New York Times: "A grand council called by President Hamid Karzai approved a security agreement with the United States on Sunday, but the Afghan president said he wanted to keep negotiating, throwing into confusion and uncertainty future relations between the two countries."

Mavis Lever Batey. Undated photograph. Via the Scotsman.New York Times: Mavis Lever Batey, one of the real Bletchley Girls, died on November 12 at age 92. A fascinating woman. Her Los Angeles Times obituary is here.

The Commentariat -- Nov. 23, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

Lena Sun & Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post: "... several states running their own online exchanges are reporting a rapid increase in the number of people signing up for coverage, a trend officials say is encouraging for President Obama's health-care law. By mid-November, the 14 state-based marketplaces reported data showing enrollment has nearly doubled from last month, jumping to about 150,000 from 79,000, according to state and federal statistics. The nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, which has been tracking the data, called the most recent numbers 'a November enrollment surge.'" ...

... Robert Pear & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The Obama administration said Friday that it would give people eight more days, until Dec. 23, to sign up for health insurance coverage that takes effect on Jan. 1 under the new health care law." ...

... Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times: "President Obama's healthcare law ... now depends more than ever on insurance companies, doctor groups and hospitals -- major forces in the industry that are committed to the law's success despite persistent tensions with the White House.... Since 2010, they have invested billions of dollars to overhaul their businesses, design new insurance plans and physician practices and develop better ways to monitor quality and control costs.... Healthcare industry officials generally view several GOP proposals, such as limiting coverage for the poor and scuttling new insurance marketplaces created by the law, as more damaging than helpful to the nation's healthcare system." (Emphasis added.) ...

... Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker speaks with John Cassidy, Rick Herzberg & Ryan Lizza discuss the state of ObamaCare:

... The Making of a Clusterfuck. Eric Lipton, et al., of the New York Times: "Interviews with current and former Obama administration officials and specialists involved in the project, as well as a review of hundreds of pages of government and contractor documents, offer new details into how tensions between the government and its contractors, questionable decisions and weak leadership within the Medicare agency turned the rollout of the president's signature program into a major humiliation. The online exchange was crippled, people involved with building it said in recent interviews, because of a huge gap between the administration's grand hopes and the practicalities of building a website that could function on opening day. Vital components were never secured, including sufficient access to a data center to prevent the website from crashing. A backup system that could go live if it did crash was not created, a weakness the administration has never disclosed. And the architecture of the system that interacts with the data center where information is stored is so poorly configured that it must be redesigned, a process that experts said typically takes months. An initial assessment identified more than 600 hardware and software defects -- 'the longest list anybody had ever seen,' one person involved with the project said." ...

... CruzCare, the Ted Cruz Healthcare Reform Plan:

... Viva Vermont! Salvatore Aversa of Occupy Democrats: "The ACA provided states with federal funds to institute a Medicaid expansion.... Vermont decided to take it a step further by setting up their very own single payer system.... The program will be fully operational by 2017, and will be funded through Medicare, Medicaid, federal money for the ACA given to Vermont, and a slight increase in taxes. In exchange, there will be no more premiums, deductibles, copay's, hospital bills or anything else aimed at making insurance companies a profit. Further, all hospitals and healthcare providers will now be nonprofit." Thanks to contributor Julie L. for the link. ...

... CW: Also, thanks to all the contributors who helped me understand the way hospitals and insurance carriers, including Medicare, "calculate" the costs of the medical care.

Bullies, Left and Right, Are Kicking Sand in the Face of the Turtle:

     ... Matthew Boyle of Breitbart: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on a conference call organized by Karl Rove's Crossroads organization for large donors and their advisers on Oct. 30 that the Tea Party movement, in his view, is a 'nothing but a bunch of bullies' that he plans to 'punch ... in the nose.'" ...

I think what we really need is an anti-bullying ordinance in the Senate. Now we've got a big bully. Harry Reid says he's just going to break the rules and make new rules. It's never been done this way before. -- Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Ky.)

We thought he said if you like the Senate rules, you can keep them. But instead ... they just broke the Senate rules in order to exercise the power grab. -- Mitch McConnell

James Risen of the New York Times & Laura Poitras: "Officials at the National Security Agency ... pledged last year to push to expand its surveillance powers, according to a top secret strategy document. In a February 2012 paper laying out the four-year strategy for the N.S.A.'s signals intelligence operations, which include the agency's eavesdropping and communications data collection around the world, agency officials set an objective to 'aggressively pursue legal authorities and a policy framework mapped more fully to the information age.' Written as an agency mission statement with broad goals, the five-page document said that existing American laws were not adequate to meet the needs of the N.S.A. to conduct broad surveillance.... The strategy document [was] provided by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden...."

For the editors at the Wall Street Journal, the Founders wrote the Constitution to cater to Republicans. Hamilton Nolan of Gawker checks the record.

Gubernatorial Race

What I don't understand is how Gov. [Rick] Scott [RTP-Fla.] said for about 30 seconds that he was for more health care for the poor, for about the 1 million people that aren't getting it right now. And then, the Medicaid expansion, he didn't lift a finger to get it done. And as a result of that, those million Floridians that can't afford coverage, they're getting sicker or they're going to die. It is unconscionable to me how you can turn your back on people like that. -- Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist ...

... George Bennett of the Palm Beach (Florida) Post:Charlie "Crist, the former Republican governor who's now seeking his old job as a Democrat, will attend a Palm Beach fundraiser hosted by actor George Hamilton [Friday] night. He met with reporters [Friday] afternoon at the train station near downtown [West Palm Beach], using the venue to criticize Republican Gov. Rick Scott for refusing federal money for high-speed rail in 2011. Crist, who called Scott 'a tea party governor,' also slammed the incumbent for failing to push for an expansion of Medicaid in the state this year after declaring his support for it."

The Assassination of President Kennedy

The Dallas Morning News covers the city's events memorializing the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy.

The New York Times reprises its coverage of the assassination.

John Cassidy of the New Yorker can't quite let go of conspiracy theories. CW: Like any good journalist, Cassidy is not content with the who, what, when & where. He also wants to know the why. And we don't know know why Lee Oswald killed President Kennedy or why Jack Ruby killed Oswald.

Local News

The Texas Board of Bible Studies. Motoko Rich of the New York Times: "The Texas Board of Education on Friday delayed final approval of a widely used biology textbook because of concerns raised by one reviewer that it presents evolution as fact rather than theory. The monthslong textbook review process in Texas has been controversial because a number of people selected this year to evaluate publishers' submissions do not accept evolution or climate change as scientific truth. On Friday, the state board, which includes several members who hold creationist views, voted to recommend 14 textbooks in biology and environmental science. But its approval of 'Biology,' a highly regarded textbook by Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, and Joseph S. Levine, a science journalist, and published by Pearson Education, was contingent upon an expert panel determining whether any corrections are warranted. Until the panel rules on the alleged errors, Pearson will not be able to market its book as approved by the board to school districts in Texas."

News Lede

New York Times: "As Secretary of State John Kerry and top diplomats from five other world powers swept into Geneva this weekend for the second time in two weeks, they struggled to complete a groundbreaking agreement with Iran that would temporarily freeze Tehran's nuclear program and lay the foundation for a more comprehensive accord."