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Home Front: Culture Wars
ObamacareÂ’s Magical Thinkers
2013-10-27
h/t Instapundit
If you’re looking for an epitaph for the republic (and these days who isn’t?) try this — from August 2010 and TechCrunch’s delirious preview of Healthcare.gov:

“We were working in a very very nimble hyper-consumer-focused way,” explained Todd Park, the chief technology officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “all fused in this kind of maelstrom of pizza, Mountain Dew, and all-nighters . . . and, you know, idealism. That kind of led to the magic that was produced.”

Wow. Think of the magic that Madison, Hamilton, and the rest of those schlubs could have produced if they’d only had pizza and Mountain Dew and been willing to pull a few all-nighters at Philadelphia in 1787. Somewhere between the idealism and the curling slice of last night’s pepperoni, Macon Phillips, the administration’s director of new media, happened to come across a tweet by Edward Mullen of Jersey City in which he twitpiced his design for what a health-insurance exchange could look like. So Phillips printed it out to show his fellow administration officials: “Look, this is the sort of creativity that is out there,” he said. “One thing led to another and he left Jersey City to come to D.C. and helped push us through an information architectural process.”

Don’t you just love it! This is way cooler than the decline and fall of the Roman Empire: The only “architectural process” they had was crumbling viaducts. I think we can all agree that Barack Obama is hipper than all other government leaders anywhere, ever, combined. Unfortunately, the dogs bark and the pizza-delivery bike moves on, and, in the cold grey morning after of the grease-stained cardboard box with the rubberized cheese stuck to it, Obamacare wound up somewhat less hipper and, in fact, not even HIPAA — the unpersuasively groovy acronym for federally mandated medical privacy in America. Appearing before Congress on Thursday, the magicians of Obamacare eventually conceded that, on their supposedly HIPAA-compliant database, deep in the “information architectural process” is a teensy-weensy little bit of “source code” that reads, “You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication of any data transmitted or stored on this information system.”
Posted by:g(r)omgoru

#6  ...for an excellent (imho) analysis , click here...
Posted by: Uncle Phester   2013-10-27 16:22  

#5  All-nighters have never produce anything noteworthy other than a hangover. What America need is certainly not some "instant Gratification" event. We need people of quality willing to sit down and methodically work through all the issues and develop a plan that will work. Sorry Obamacare your late night attempt to be a hero has been weighed and found lacking...
Posted by: 49 Pan   2013-10-27 13:34  

#4  his kind of maelstrom of pizza, Mountain Dew, and all-nighters

Code written after midnight is always suspect.
Posted by: SteveS   2013-10-27 12:48  

#3  Â“all fused in this kind of maelstrom of pizza, Mountain Dew, and all-nighters . . . and, you know, idealism.

I have a suggestion as to what this choom gang of spaced out sophomoric ideaologues can do with their pizza and Mountain Dew in their all night sessions.
Posted by: JohnQC   2013-10-27 10:31  

#2  whoops! hopefully the hopper caught my double post
Posted by: Frank G   2013-10-27 09:56  

#1  Â“You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication of any data transmitted or stored on this information system.”

The Privacy Act and automation are mutually exclusive - Adm Grace Hooper, lecture at the Army Automation School, Fort Ben Harrison, 1981.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2013-10-27 09:05  

00:00