ObamaCare Scoreboard

by JASmius

Funny, I thought the World Champion Seattle Seahawks had already served their sentence of having to go to the White House and stand around as propaganda props.  So what prompted Barack Obama to gush with football metaphors at Cruella DeVil's public execution yesterday?

Ted Cruz was certainly wondering:

Senator Ted Cruz on Friday ripped into President Barack Obama's "smug" boast that 7.5 million signups for [Una]ffordable Care[-Less] Act coverage indicated a "final score" of success.

Stop the tape.  7.5 million?  Wasn't it 7.1?  Is he now claiming 400,000 more "enrollments" in the preceding ten days, even with no "deadline," which would be an even faster "enrollment" rate?

Yes!....he!....is!

In an interview with Fox News, the Texas Republican said the president was willfully ignoring the myriad problems with ObamaCare.

"He's trying to sweep all of those problems under the rug," Cruz charged.

And lie like it, as well, it would seem.

But remember what the purpose of that "end zone celebration" is - changing the Narrative.  The White House can see the GOP tsunami building as well as we can.  They know the ObamaCare reality "on the ground" - that was the point of the whole exercise.  So they are doing the only thing they know how: Make up the most brazen lie they can and flood the PR zone with it for the next seven months in the belief that the American voter will disbelieve his/her lying eyes, lying cancellation notices, lying death spirals, lying exploding premium bills, lying religious repression, lying exploding tax bill, lying interminable waits to get in to see a doctor, lying lost jobs, etc. and believe O dunking over the goal posts that he's been rabbiting across the countryside at the speed of sound.

Hence....:

But Obama's comments praising outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius were particularly irksome, Cruz said.

In a White House Rose Garden speech, the president said his administration "lost" the first quarter of the six-month open enrollment period for Obamacare because of the HealthCare.gov problems.

But, he added, "Under Kathleen's leadership, her team at HHS turned the corner, got it fixed, got the job done, and the final score speaks for itself. There are 7.5 million people across the country that have the security of health insurance, most of them for the very first time, and that's because of the woman standing here beside me."

Yeah - millions of Americans who had plans they liked, had them taken away from them, BY YOU, were forced at virtual gunpoint to buy vastly more expensive comprehensive plans with coverages they didn't need and were nonetheless inferior to those of which they were stripped.  Health care piracy, to put it another way.

Oh, it's "irksome," alright.  Aggravating as hell, in point of fact.  But judging by ongoing polling of the issue, it does not appear to be having any affect:

[T]his week's USA Today/Pew Research Center Poll discovered a majority of Americans now say the so-called Affordable Care Act and its widespread turmoil and costs will be "very important" as they decide their vote. More ominously for Democrats, by a two-to-one margin that majority disapproves of the president.

If, as Senator Cruz argues, O has always looked upon ObamaCare as "just a political battle," then it would seem that the "final score of success" would be on the board in November - and it'll be a Denver Broncos level of "success".




But White House flailing and Kathleen Sebelius impaling are distractions.  To keep our eyes, well, "on the ball," and on where Barack Obama is going with the UCLA, we can't obsess over past figures and where ObamaCare has been, but the ditch into which he's careening us next:

Kathleen Sebelius, who oversaw the botched rollout of the [Una]ffordable Care[-Less] Act, is resigning her post as [commissar] of Health and Human Services, but Grover Norquist, founder and president of the conservative advocacy organization Americans for Tax Reform, says Sebelius' potential replacement isn't up to the responsibility of the post.

President Barack Obama announced Friday he will nominate Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, to replace Sebelius. But Norquist told John Bachman and J.D. Hayworth on "America's Forum" Friday on Newsmax TV that Burwell isn't fit for the job.

"To bring the Obama budget person in, Obama hasn't put forward a serious budget in years … you wonder what she does with her time because she doesn't write serious, grown-up budgets that even the modern Democratic Party in the House of Representatives, they're not willing to vote for her budget, which had over a trillion dollars in higher taxes. And now she's going to run HHS …" Norquist said.

Well, now, Grover, to understand why O is bringing over Comrade Burwell, you need to grasp two things: (1) just exactly what her "job" is intended to be and (2) what skillset she'll be bringing to it.

Beginning with an uncanny resemblance:





It's like O had a cracker half-sister.  But the amazing likeness goes beyond the physical:

A single person shut down the entire U.S. government for the first time in seventeen years

Not a congressman, but an unelected woman named Sylvia Burwell who, as the relatively new director of the Office of Management and Budget, sent the email that initiated the process that has closed national parks, visitors’ centers and even the “panda-cam” at the National Zoo.

"Agencies should now execute plans for an orderly shutdown due to the absence of appropriations," Burwell wrote in a memo to heads of executive departments and agencies Monday night as it became clear lawmakers had failed to agree on a budget deal.

"We urge Congress to act quickly to pass a Continuing Resolution to provide a short-term bridge that ensures sufficient time to pass a budget for the remainder of the fiscal year."

The phrase "Red Barry's henchwoman" comes to mind.  Just as [GODWINN ALERT!] Adolph Hitler never personally harmed a Jew in his entire tenure atop the Third Reich, but had Heinrich Himmler to drive the Holocaust Machine for him, so The One had Sylvia Burwell to donate her fingerprints to cover the petty police state thuggery designed to punish Americans for having the effrontery to elect Republicans who would actually think to act like an opposition party and try to kneecap Dear Leader's masterpiece.

Annnnnnd now she will be driving the ObamaCare Machine.  Nothing....ominous about that, is there?

At least Ted Cruz will be present to make Burwell's rubber-stamp hearing....interesting.