Sunday's Washington Post article makes it quite clear how the Republican party created the "train wreck" of an Affordable Care rollout that they could use in talking points to discredit the entire program.

Much of this article focuses on mistakes the administration made by being too insular for fear of being sabotaged by the Republicans who made no secret of the fact they would do just about anything to keep it from being successful:

Based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former administration officials and outsiders who worked alongside them, the project was hampered by the White House’s political sensitivity to Republican hatred of the law — sensitivity so intense that the president’s aides ordered that some work be slowed down or remain secret for fear of feeding the opposition. Inside the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, the main agency responsible for the exchanges, there was no single administrator whose full-time job was to manage the project. Republicans also made clear they would block funding, while some outside IT companies that were hired to build the Web site, HealthCare.gov, performed poorly. 

However their vigilance did little to stop the political IED's from being placed along it's path:

Although the statute provided plenty of money to help states build their own insurance exchanges, it included no money for the development of a federal exchange — and Republicans would block any funding attempts. According to one former administration official, Sebelius simply could not scrounge together enough money to keep a group of people developing the exchanges working directly under her. 

Bureaucratic as this move may sound, it was fateful, according to current and former administration officials. It meant that the work of designing the federal health exchange — and of helping states that wanted to build their own — became fragmented.

This allowed the Republicans to point the finger at the Obama administration for their ineptitude when it fact they had dammed off the flow of money needed to fully develop the federal exchanges.

I think we all know what their next step was:

A larger number of states than expected were signaling that, under Republican pressure, they would refuse to build their own online insurance marketplaces and would rely on the federal one. The more states in the federal exchange, the more complex the task of building it. Yet, according to several former officials, White House staff would not let this fact be included in the specifications. Their concern, one former official said, was that Republicans would seize on it as evidence of a feared federal takeover of the health-care system.

And there you have it.  Strike fear in the administration's heart concerning possible sabotage, block funding for the federal exchanges to cripple them and make them less effective, and then keep Republican run states from developing local exchanges to relieve the pressure and smooth the way for progress.

Instant train wreck.

And the only casualties are the millions of Americans who still cannot get access to affordable health insurance, the millions more who are now being victimized by greedy insurance companies who have kicked them off their health plans only to offer them more expensive ones, and of course the trust of the voting public who naively believed that the politicians they elected would work for them, and NOT simply engage in partisan battles to the detriment of the government and of its people.

(H/T to Jonathon Capehart)

The Year in Political Fashion. And some obvious observations by moi.

The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart has put up his picks for "The Year in Political Fashion."

There were a number of obvious choices such as Santorum's sweater vest, Chris Christie's omnipresent fleece, and Mitt Romney's Costco purchased mom jeans.

There were also a few that became internet memes, such as this picture of Hillary.

And this picture of Paul Ryan.

I am certainly by NO means an expert on fashion (Understatement of the year), and I disagree with some of Capehart's choices. However with one example I think he was dead on.

Here is how Capehart described this look: 

Sarah Palin was all over the place with this outfit, worn while stumping for Missouri Senate candidate Sarah Steelman. The superman t-shirt screamed: “laundry day!” The Capri pants were fine, even with that belt. Don’t get me started on her wedges. Any taller and they’d qualify as stilts.

Yes indeed Palin's choice to just throw on any old thing laying on the Palin recreational vehicle floor certainly sent the message that either she simply did not give a shit about dressing professionally anymore, or she had no idea HOW to dress herself. (Guess which one I am leaning toward.)

However it occurs to me that there were other, earlier examples that she had some form of "dressing yourself dyslexia" as well.

Wearing a see thru top and drenched in sweat in July.

In Wasilla voting during GOP primary in March

Sweaty and bitchy in Iowa wearing Piper's t-shirt during straw poll in February.

Sporting her vagina crucifix during screening of "The Undefeated" in Pella.

 And I am not even going to bother with post pictures of ALL of the bizarre wigs that Palin has stapled to her head in the last few years. Those pretty much speak for themselves.

(And I believe I mean that quite literally.)

However, to be fair, was there EVER really a time that when Palin was forced to dress herself that she WASN'T adorned in trailer park chic?

You know I think that SOME people actually bought into the image of the perfectly coiffed, professionally dressed politician that the McCain campaign spent $150,000 trying to create.

But let's face it, Palin was ALWAYS that poor mentally challenged girl in the corner with the mismatched clothes and the bike helmet on her head to keep her from running into sharp corners. Yet people saw what they WANTED to see in her and THEY were the ones who were surprised that she could not live up to their expectations.

Alaskans? Yeah, not so much.

Update: I almost forgot to include this last photograph which I think succinctly drives home my point.

Attorneys for George Zimmerman release bloody nose photo.

Here is what Jonathon Capehart had to say about this latest bit of evidence:

Once again, we are confronted with a visual reminder of the confrontation, the struggle and the killing that took place on that rainy evening on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla. This the latest in a series of photos showing Zimmerman's injuries that will surely renew questions about what happened that night. No doubt his supporters will say they prove him innocent of the second-degree murder charge against him. 

But today's bloody photo doesn't solve the mystery of Trayvon's hands. There were "No DNA results foreign to Trayvon Benjamin Martin" found on them. Also, in a written statement, during a jailhouse interview and a reenactment the next day, Zimmerman said that he pulled the dead teen's arms away from his body after killing him. Yet, the police officer who arrived on the scene noted in his report, "The black male had his hands underneath his body." Until that question -- among many -- is answered, Zimmerman's dubious claim of self-defense will remain suspect.

I don't think that this picture does anything to help prove that Zimmerman did NOT follow that innocent young man and kill him in cold blood.

He supposedly was in  fight for his life and has a bloody nose AND wounds on the back of his head, yet NO DNA evidence on Trayvon Martin's hands?

 Unless the boy had rubber gloves which mysteriously disappeared how does that happen? Because I am sure that their are plenty of potential thieves and murderers out their who would LOVE to learn Trayvon's secret for beating a man bloody and coming away with his hands completely clean of any incriminating DNA evidence. That is quite a feat.

This case has ALWAYS stunk to high heaven, and this picture does nothing to minimize the stench.

Jonathon Capehart weighs in on some African Americans feeling that President Obama is not reponsive to their concerns.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

Over the last three and a half years, there have been three silly political storylines that have driven me absolutely nuts because it was plainly apparent that they were not true. One was that author, reality television star and former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin was going to run for president in 2012. Another was that President Obama would swap out Vice President Biden in favor of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And the most irksome of all is the complaint from African Americans that Obama ignores their concerns. 

The latest manifestation of the Obama-doesn’t-care-about-black-people whine comes from Fredrick Harris. In a piece for The Post’s Outlook section headlined “Still waiting for our first black president,” which was adapted from his new book, the Columbia University professor makes a stunningly false argument. 

"Obama has pursued a racially defused electoral and governing strategy, keeping issues of specific interest to African Americans — such as disparities in the criminal justice system; the disproportionate impact of the foreclosure crisis on communities of color; black unemployment; and the persistence of HIV/AIDS — off the national agenda. Far from giving black America greater influence in U.S. politics, Obama’s ascent to the White House has signaled the decline of a politics aimed at challenging racial inequality head-on."

Those are all important issues. They must be addressed. The problem for Harris is that they are being addressed by the president. Not in the theatrical way Harris would like. But in the actions-speak-louder-than-words way of Obama.

Capehart then goes on to list the numerous policy decisions that President Obama has  made that address African American concerns. And they are, of course, numerous,

You know we have come to expect that a certain type of American will simply NEVER be happy with the President's performance, you would think that the black community would give him a break.

And yes I know this is only one guy who certainly does NOT speak for all African Americans in this country, but still it just seems ridiculous that any black man in America would provide ammunition for the Right Wing by questioning the support this President has with the African American community.

Surely this individual has to know that the Republicans are looking for ANY way in which to peel off support from this President.  They tried it by suggesting that his speaking out for same sex marriage would cost him Black support. Or that he was waging a "war on women" due to his inability to improve the job market sufficiently. And now they are touting Obama's "Pew Gap" and claiming that he has lost many of the religious voters.

In my opinion, anybody who wants to stop the Republicans from  taking back the White House, and effectively taking us back to George W. Bush's America, needs to look for the positives, and there are many, with this President and leave the criticisms and negativity to the GOP.

As Jonathon Capehart points out at the closing of his article:

By searching for marquis moments, Harris and others appear not to care about the myriad actions Obama has undertaken that affect the lives of all Americans, yes, but also of African Americans more directly. And I certainly don’t advocate for Obama to burst into the East Room clad in Kente cloth and brandishing a definable “black agenda”or whatever else so many blacks seem to want from him to prove that he cares. 

Someone who started his career on the south side of Chicago, whose wife is also from Chicago and who also has two young black daughters, doesn’t wake up one day and say, I don’t care about African Americans. That’s why it bothers me to no end that those who are “still waiting for our first black president” seem unwilling to pay attention to what the first black president is actually doing.

All I am saying is that ANY President who has spent the last four years under the kind of constant assault that his man has endured, should NEVER have to worry about  becoming the victim of "friendly fire" from within his own ranks.

That is what second terms are for.

Al Sharpton expresses amazement that Sarah Palin is calling for the vetting of President Obama.

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Yep the woman is a joke.  A very BAD joke.

Lawrence O'Donnell discusses the oddity that is Herman Cain and two of the strangest campaign ads of this political season.

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I actually was going to post that second ad yesterday, but had trouble coming up with anything coherent to write about it, and later just became too busy to go back and try again.

As you can see by Lawrence and Jonathon Capehart's response I was far from the ONLY person rendered speechless. I still contend that Herman Cain is a bright shiny object meant to distract us, and that he is only playing the part of a Presidential candidate, with no actual desire to even have the job. Essentially Sarah Palin in black face.

Lawrence O'Donnell compares the Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann appearances in Iowa. Guess who he considers more serious.

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Lawrence also mentions Nick Broomfield's documentary, and Bailey's book.