By now the extremes these Congressional Republicans will go to in their ceaseless attempts to nullify two consecutive presidential elections really should not surprise or upset me. And, lest any Republicans take offense, I suspect I myself am most likely a closet Republican. But, I am a David Brooks (New York Times) Republican, what I’m probably now calling The Sane Republicans or maybe The Adult Republicans. The GOP has become wholly owned and controlled by its extreme base and their megalomaniacal fanaticism apparently knows no bounds. They play politics with absolutely, positively everything, up to and including the world economy and efforts—regardless of how cosmetic or half-a-loaf—toward engagement over nuclear nonproliferation.

These extremes fall into a series of unprecedented and shockingly sophomoric if not infantile political maneuvers to the great degradation and loss of the American people. Oddly enough, it is those great American people I fault for this. Not for continuing to vote these guys into power, but for the two-thirds of us who can’t be bothered to vote them out.

Ever see those terrible, evil commercials where Ed McMahon or Wilfred Brimley looks soulfully into the camera and lies to old folks? You know, the reverse mortgages, life insurance, Medic Alert and healthcare scams? To me, that’s what the entire 2014 political campaign season was about: lying to and scaring old folk. I think my brain literally melted from the onslaught of insulting, soporific ads reducing terribly complex issues to MacDonald’s Happy Meal slogans. The manipulative, stupid formula played out again and again—the scary music, the grainy, black-and-white photo of the political opponent, “he voted against (or for) such-and-such…” which conveniently leaves out the fact legislators often vote for or against things not necessarily on their merits but because of extenuating factors like stupid amendments tacked onto bills or insider political shenanigans which kill bills in their crib.

Every day, my mailbox filled up with junk—expensive, oversized glossy junk printed in huge letters so old folk can read them without searching for their glasses. One of my favorites, an anti-Udall glossy which included a NY Post quote from the year 2000, nine years before Udall was elected to anything. How stupid do these people think I am?

Of course, the messaging is not for me or even my mom. It’s for my grandmother, my great aunt and her group down at the senior center. It’s for low-information voters who vote out of anger, resentment or bias rather than resolve to compromise in order to actually do what’s best for their community, state or country. It’s all about winning, now—this zero-sum formulaic fanaticism. (more…)

People who actually build websites were certainly not surprised that the ACA site had bugs. People who build websites for institutions—religious, educational and, yes, government—are not surprised the thing was a disaster. Institutions are typically run by bureaucrats who know precious little about the things they are in charge of yet charge boldly ahead anyway for fear of losing face. Bureaucrats are invested more in self-protection than in whatever it is they are actually supposed to be doing, so they pretend to know things they actually don’t know. And, because they don’t know, they are in no position to adequately evaluate the merits of someone who writes code. Because they themselves do not write code and, therefore, cannot read it r evaluate its merits. All they know is these guys built a site for this other bureaucrat and came highly recommended. Also, because these people know nothing about building websites, it doesn’t register how complex these things are or that they need the full attention of the bureaucracy and plenty of lead time for testing and kicking the tires. Fundamentally changing how the site processes information at the ninth hour is suicidal. Absolutely none of the emerging revelations concerning the ACA site surprise me. Anybody who designs websites has encountered this—albeit on a much smaller and less public scale—many, many times. What surprises me is how the bureaucrats never learn. They’re running around promising the thing will work in 30 days, an extremely dangerous thing to do, especially for a build-out that is so fundamentally flawed. Fixing bad code is much harder than just scrapping it and starting over. You can’t start something like this over in 30 days, and you cannot guarantee all the various insurance companies will have accurate info ready to plug-in or that the infrastructure of many dozens of carriers will interface properly with this beast in 30 days. I am absolutely puzzled as to why they’d even make that promise.

It doesn’t surprise me that administration has had nearly four years to get this thing done and, instead, rolled out this shockingly disastrous camel build by somebody’s cousin Buzz. It should surprise me, but it doesn’t. It depresses the heck out of me, though.

The real disaster, though, is the Obama Administration—which has always been disastrously slow to respond to attack—has failed to stop the Republicans from successfully equating the Affordable Care Act itself with the government website. It’s as if the president keeps making the same mistake of over-estimating how well-informed or, frankly, how intelligent the American public are. So much so that the Republicans, who have served for decades now as the doomsayers of America, have effortlessly shaped the thinking of the average American to believe the new health care law is a website. The administration has done and continues to do a dismal job of educating America that the law is a *law*–a set of rights and protections that are now a part of our society. The website is just a website—a colossal failure on the part of the president himself. I mean, were I President Obama, had my place in history and the blood and tears of millions been invested in that website, I’d have checked that code every day myself. And I’d surely have seen this tactic coming—ObamaCare Is A Website, which efficiently links the credibility and effectiveness of the health care law itself to the workings of a website. It’s a stupid notion that treats Americans like they’re stupid, which is, essentially, the Republican modus operandi. Everything they do, every distortion of truth, every irrational act or act of cowardice in caving into the extremists among them, suggests their basic strategy is The American People Are Stupid and Gullible. They’re probably right. What troubles me deeply, though, is how the administration dropped the ball both on the website itself and in their messaging: how they did not see this ObamaCare Is A Website idea coming. They failed to the point of having the president on defense, Saturday, trying to un-ring that bell. “The Affordable Care Act is more than just a website,” an exasperate president told the nation.

Simply forcing him to actually have to say that is a huge win for the GOP. The administration is looking like monkeys. And, by the way, all that heavy demand for the ACA site? It’s mainly older and sicker people—yes, like me—anxious to find lower-cost solutions to health care. I seriously doubt a lot of 27-year olds have even bothered with it.

At most every point of Cain’s quixotic candidacy he has left clues, dropped breadcrumbs, indicating, clearly, that his is a political send-up, a satirical candidacy. From quoting Pokémon (not making this up) to modeling his “999” tax plan on the tax pan from the video game Simm City, to his embrace, last week, of the rather infamous Koch Brothers, to even the alleged scandal over sexual harassment, breaking into song when asked about it–if you step away and put all of these pieces together, it becomes amazingly clear: Cain is having fun at our–and America’s–expense. He is selling books and raising his speaking fees through the roof. He may actually be doing a lot more. The one thing he is not doing, however, is running for president.

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