Sebelius says she doesn't 'work for' those calling for her resignation

Bailey Comment: This one example of many just shows you how self-center all of these politicians are. 
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is rebuffing calls from Republicans for her to resign over the troubled launch of the ObamaCare sign-up website, saying those asking her to resign are “people I don’t work for.”
Sebelius gave the comments on a tour Thursday of an ObamaCare call center in Phoenix, which kicks off a multi-city tour by administration officials to promote the health care law amid the website's troubles.
Sebelius said “no one is getting fired” over the litches and that her main focus is to get the website up and running.
“The majority of people calling for me to resign I would say are people who I don't work for, and who do not want this program to work in the first place,” she said. “I have had frequent conversations with the president and I've committed to him that my role is to get the program up and running and we will do just that.”
Sebelius’ comments come after Rep. John Fleming, R-La., sent a letter to President Obama signed by 33 Republican members of Congress calling for Sebelius’ resignation over the troubled health care law roll out.
“It’s clear that Secretary Sebelius has mismanaged the ObamaCare roll out and is in over her head. Before the train wreck is allowed to continue… before more taxpayer dollars are spent trying to fix what’s already wrong… and before the Secretary continues on her damage control tour, it’s time for the president to admit that, despite three-and-a-half years to prepare, his HHS Secretary has dropped the ball on this and needs to step down,” the letter reads.
Also Thursday, the contractors who built the health care website defended their work at a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and claimed the government failed to properly test the system before launch.
CGI Federal and the other contractors repeatedly claimed that overall "end-to-end" testing was the responsibility of an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, as was the decision to go live on Oct. 1. They suggested more time was needed to work out the kinks.
Sebelius came under fire after telling the House Energy and Commerce Committee she was not also available to testify Thursday due to a “scheduling conflict,” but then travelling to Phoenix.
Sebelius was already taking heat for snubbing the committee while planning to attend a health care gala in Boston on Wednesday night.
It's unclear whether Sebelius' "scheduling conflict" was the gala, the Phoenix event or neither.
The committee says Sebelius is now expected to testify next Wednesday on the health care law.

ObamaCare and America’s journey into the Third World

One need only compare the sense of dispatch at Federal Express with time endured to send a package via the U.S. Postal Service to recognize the federal government doesn’t do things quite as well as the private sector.
It doesn’t even function as well as state bureaucracies.
Now ObamaCare, which socializes an industry larger than the economies of France or Britain, is proving Health and Human Services can be more incompetent than many Third World governments.
These past few weeks, poor Mexico could sign up urban poor for health care with less mess than Washington did folks needing insurance in San Antonio.

ObamaCare, which socializes an industry larger than the economies of France or Britain, is proving Health and Human Services can be more incompetent than many Third World governments.

In Europe, national health care systems deliver coverage for everyone, at remarkably lower cost, and in countries with per capita income comparable to the United States, a lot better care. The United States spends 18 percent of GDP on health care; Germany and Holland spend about 12 with better results.
One only need look behind the rollout of the federal health insurance exchanges to see why.
President Obama sees every decision -- from the timing for sending his mother-in-law a birthday card to those required for the rollout of the exchange -- as a political calculation.
The bureaucrats at Health and Human Services ordered CGI, the private contractor primarily responsible for designing the exchanges, not to permit visitors to browse prices anonymously.
That would allow young people with decent jobs to compare the prices they must pay for insurance, or face harsh penalties, with the subsidized prices offered other young folks with lower wage jobs.
After all, those jarring differences might cause young voters, whose allegiance to President Obama has been weakened by an economic recovery that does not deliver decent prospects for their advancement, to vote for whatever Republican promises less government and dares to run against Hillary Clinton.
This political decision was made less than a month before the exchanges went live and threw a terrible wrench into the rollout.
Like the IRS decision to harass conservative non-profits and community activists, it is not clear how high up that decision was made -- was it made by the HHS division directly supervising CGI, Secretary Sebelius or the White House?
Fast forward to today, when Ms. Sebelius laments that the online marketplace should require five years to construct and a year of testing.
Yet California, whose economy is larger than most countries and problems as complex, managed to get the job done. Its exchange and those of other states, designed independent of federal incompetence, are running well despite initial glitches.
A basic problem Washington does not like to admit is that the federal civil service is a refuge for overpaid, politically-motivated and distracted-from-task statists, who are often cynical about the private sector and insensitive to citizens’ needs.
Like the Godfather’s henchmen, they look to what will please their political masters and act accordingly, even if it tramples civil liberties.
Consider the allegedly independent handiwork of the IRS bureaucrats on non-profits and citizens supporting conservative causes or Justice Department’s wholesale violation of privacy of AP communications.
American universities’ schools of business and engineering attract the best and the brightest -- not so schools of public policy, education and the softer social sciences that train foot soldiers that fill offices at HHS, Justice and the like.
Democrats in congress are now raising questions about HHS reliance on private contractors, but the truth is federal government simply does not have the resources to pull off something as large and complex as the health care exchange.
If the president wants ObamaCare and other federal initiatives to succeed, then he and his cabinet can’t make every decision a political calculation. And they need to recognize that the government civil service needs much more competent employees, not political activists masquerading as public servants.

Jon Stewart a Conservative Darling for Zinging Obamacare

Conservatives have found an unlikely hero in Jon Stewart after the host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" continues to zing President Barack Obama, Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius, and the glitch-riddled HealthCare.gov rollout this week on his satirical news show.

The rocky introduction of HealthCare.gov has garnered some blunt criticism from Stewart, who again on Monday bashed the website where consumers can sign up for Obamacare.

So far, Stewart has compared Obama to "Gil," the unfortunate salesman from "The Simpsons," freaked out about the site's broken calculator ("The one thing that's been included in computers since 1972 — you couldn't make THAT work?"), and gone toe-to-toe with Sebelius.

"I'm going to try and download every movie ever made, and you're going to try to sign up for Obamacare, and we'll see which happens first," he challenged her last week.

Several conservative news outlets, including The Blaze and Fox Nation, have mentioned Stewart's segments, and Republican political action committee America Rising even highlighted his comments on Twitter this week.

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EXCLUSIVE: Key suspects in Benghazi attack include former courier, bodyguard for Al Qaeda, sources say

At least two of the key suspects in the Benghazi terror attack were at one point working with Al Qaeda senior leadership, sources familiar with the investigation tell Fox News.
The sources said one of the suspects was believed to be a courier for the Al Qaeda network, and the other a bodyguard in Afghanistan prior to the 2001 terror attacks.
The direct ties to the Al Qaeda senior leadership undercut early characterizations by the Obama administration that the attackers in Benghazi were isolated “extremists" -- not Al Qaeda terrorists -- with no organizational structure or affiliation. 
The head of the House Intelligence Committee, Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., who receives regular intelligence briefings and whose staffers continue to investigate the Benghazi terrorist attack, would not discuss specific suspects or their backgrounds.
But he said the ties to Al Qaeda senior leadership, also known as Al Qaeda core, are now established.
“It is accurate that of the group being targeted by the bureau, at this point, there’s strong Al Qaeda ties,”  Rogers told Fox News. "You can still be considered to have strong ties because you are in the ring of operations of Al Qaeda core. ... There are individuals that certainly fit that definition."
Counterterrorism expert Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News that investigators are finding "more and more ties -- not just to Al Qaeda's branch in North Africa ... but Al Qaeda senior leadership in Pakistan."
A year ago, Fox News' Bret Baier was first to report that a former Guantanamo detainee, Sufian bin Qumu, was suspected of training jihadists in eastern Libya for the attack.
Now, sources tell Fox News that Benghazi suspect Faraj al Chalabi, also a Libyan national whose ties to Usama bin Laden date back to 1998, is believed to be a former bodyguard who was with the Al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan in 2001.
After the Benghazi attack, al Chalabi fled to Pakistan where reports suggest he was held, then later returned to Libyan custody and eventually released. He was first publicly identified as a suspected terrorist in 1998 by the regime of former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi for his alleged role in the murder of a German intelligence official, Silvan Becker and his wife. An Interpol arrest warrant in March 1998 named al Chalabi, two other Libyans and bin Laden as the likely perpetrators.
“Our sources say al Chalabi is suspected of bringing materials from the compound to Benghazi to Al Qaeda senior leadership in Pakistan. It's not clear what those materials consisted of but he is known to have gone back to Pakistan immediately after the attack,” Joscelyn said.
Separately, and for the first time, Rogers laid out a timeline for the attack which suggests significant advance planning. According to the congressman, there was an “aspirational phase” several months out, where the idea of an attack was thrown around, followed by “weeks” of operational planning, and then the ramp up to the Sept. 11 assault which lasted up to several days. This assessment is in stark contrast to initial administration statements that the attack was “spontaneous” and achieved with little planning.
“I believe that they had an operational phase that lasted at least a couple of weeks, maybe even longer. And then an initiation phase that lasted a couple or three days prior to the event itself. And so this notion that they just showed up and decided this was a spontaneous act does not comport with the information at least with what we have seen in the intelligence community,” Rogers told Fox News.
Some counterterrorism analysts concur with Roger’s assessment, describing the mortars used to strike the CIA annex in the second wave of the attack as "smoking gun" evidence -- as mortars require skill to fire, and typically must be pre-positioned to ensure accuracy. On Sept. 11, two mortars struck the CIA annex, killing former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
The opposing analysis is that the mortars were set in the early morning hours of Sept. 11, and that the terrorists did not bring equipment with them that suggests significant planning.
Fox News contacted the FBI which is in the lead on the Benghazi investigation, as well as the CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC. Both the NCTC and the CIA declined to comment. There was no immediate response from the FBI.

Day 1 The Launch

Rubio pushing bill to delay ObamaCare mandate over website meltdown

The widespread problems with the ObamaCare website are generating a new backlash in Congress, with Sen. Marco Rubio planning to introduce legislation that would delay the health law's individual mandate until the technical failures are addressed.
The Florida senator discussed the plan Tuesday morning in an interview with Fox News' "Fox & Friends." He said it would be "prudent" to delay the requirement on individuals to buy health insurance -- set to kick in early next year -- until users can consistently access the main website.
"How are you going to go after people next year ... if the thing you're forcing them to buy isn't available to buy?" he asked, saying the site is "not working."
Rubio's plan would delay the mandate until the Government Accountability Office certifies the system is "up and running and effectively working for six months, consecutive."
The plan comes as new reports detail the warning signs that may have been missed before the launch, and the massive undertaking that the tech team hired to fix the site is confronting.
The administration is now in a scramble to fix the problems that have prevented many from signing up for health insurance online. Officials announced Tuesday that former White House budget office chief Jeff Zients has been brought in as part of the team to address the site. President Obama on Monday directed the public to apply over the phone or by mail -- but at the same time, the White House did not rule out delaying the health law's 2014 requirement on individuals to buy insurance.
The New York Times, detailing the scope of the repair project, reported that while contractors have identified most the problems with the site, the administration is slow to issue orders. The Times quoted one specialist as saying 5 million lines of code may have to be rewritten.
The Washington Post reported Monday that a test of the website's capability to handle heavy traffic went wrong just days before the planned launch, when the site crashed after just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously.
The Post also reported that a group of 10 insurers invited to give advice and test the website urged federal officials not to do a nationwide launch due to the number of issues with the site. At late as a week before the launch date, the paper reported, no one had thought to test whether or not a user could complete the process of signing up for a health insurance plan through the site.
Meanwhile, a review of the site's technical specifications by The Associated Press found a mind-numbingly complex system put together by harried programmers who pushed out a final product that congressional investigators said was tested by the government and not private developers with more expertise.
Project developers who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity -- because they feared they would otherwise be fired -- said they raised doubts among themselves whether the website could be ready in time. They complained openly to each other about what they considered tight and unrealistic deadlines. One was nearly brought to tears over the stress of finishing on time, one developer said. Website builders saw red flags for months.
A review of internal architectural diagrams obtained by the AP revealed the system's complexity. Insurance applicants have a host of personal information verified, including income and immigration status. The system connects to other federal computer networks, including ones at the Social Security Administration, IRS, Veterans Administration, Office of Personnel Management and the Peace Corps.
President Barack Obama on Monday acknowledged technical problems that he described as "kinks in the system." He also promised a "tech surge" by leading technology talent to repair the painfully slow and often unresponsive website that has frustrated Americans trying to enroll online for insurance plans at the center of Obama's health care law.
But in remarks at a Rose Garden event, Obama offered no explanation for the failure except to note that high traffic to the website caused some of the slowdowns. He said it had been visited nearly 20 million times -- fewer monthly visits so far than many commercial websites, such as PayPal, AOL, Wikipedia or Pinterest.
"The problem has been that the website that's supposed to make it easy to apply for and purchase the insurance is not working the way it should for everybody," Obama said. "There's no sugarcoating it. The website has been too slow. People have been getting stuck during the application process. And I think it's fair to say that nobody is more frustrated by that than I am."
The online system was envisioned as a simple way for people without health insurance to comparison-shop among competing plans offered in their state, pick their preferred level of coverage and cost and sign up. For many, it's not worked out that way so far.
Just weeks before the launch of HealthCare.gov on Oct. 1, one programmer said, colleagues huddled in conference rooms trying to patch "bugs," or deficiencies in computer code. Unresolved problems led to visitors experiencing cryptic error messages or enduring long waits trying to sign up.
Congressional investigators have concluded that the government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, not private software developers, tested the exchange's computer systems during the final weeks. That task, known as integration testing, is usually handled by software companies because it ferrets out problems before the public sees the final product.
The government spent at least $394 million in contracts to build the federal health care exchange and the data hub. Those contracts included major awards to Virginia-based CGI Federal Inc., Maryland-based Quality Software Services Inc. and Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.
CGI Federal said in a statement Monday it was working with the government and other contractors "around the clock" to improve the system, which it called "complex, ambitious and unprecedented."
The schematics from late 2012 show how officials designated a "data services hub" -- a traffic cop for managing information -- in lieu of a design that would have allowed state exchanges to connect directly to government servers when verifying an applicant's information. On Sunday, the Health and Human Services Department said the data hub was working but not meeting public expectations: "We are committed to doing better."
Administration officials so far have refused to say how many people actually have managed to enroll in insurance during the three weeks since the new marketplaces became available. Without enrollment numbers, it's impossible to know whether the program is on track to reach projections from the Congressional Budget Office that 7 million people would gain coverage during the first year the exchanges were available.
Instead, officials have selectively cited figures that put the insurance exchanges in a positive light. They say more than 19 million people have logged on to the federal website and nearly 500,000 have filled out applications for insurance through both the federal and state-run sites.
The flood of computer problems since the website went online has been deeply embarrassing for the White House. The snags have called into question whether the administration is capable of implementing the complex policy and why senior administration officials -- including the president -- appear to have been unaware of the scope of the problems when the exchange sites opened.
Even as the president spoke at the Rose Garden, more problems were coming to light. The administration acknowledged that a planned upgrade to the website had been postponed indefinitely and that online Spanish-language signups would remain unavailable, despite a promise to Hispanic groups that the capability would start this week. And the government tweaked the website's home page so visitors can now view phone numbers to apply the old-fashioned way or window-shop for insurance rates without registering first.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee was expected to conduct an oversight hearing Thursday, probably without Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testifying. She could testify on Capitol Hill on the subject as early as next week.
Uninsured Americans have until about mid-February to sign up for coverage if they are to meet the law's requirement that they be insured by the end of March. If they don't, they will face a penalty.

Growing the Debt: US resumes $1.6B in aid to Pakistan

As the national debt tops $17 trillion -- thanks to the newly sealed debt-ceiling agreement -- America's costly foreign aid tab is back in the crosshairs.
The federal government in fiscal 2012 spent about $21 billion on non-military foreign assistance and was on track to spend roughly the same in 2013, according to federal records. As Washington enters the new fiscal year, another huge chunk of aid is being released -- the Associated Press reported over the weekend that the U.S. is planning to free up more than $1.6 billion in aid to Pakistan following a lengthy hiatus.
Daniel Markey, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, suggested Monday that the aid decision was premature. He told FoxNews.com Live that the U.S. should at least be changing the way that money is used.
"We haven't gotten a lot out of Pakistan ... and we've spent billions and billions of dollars," Markey said Monday.
He said new leadership in Pakistan offers a reason to keep trying "but we should be very careful."
The aid had been on ice after a major breakdown in U.S.-Pakistan relations. Pakistan lashed out at the U.S. over the 2011 raid on Usama bin Laden's compound. U.S. lawmakers were similarly outraged after Pakistan imprisoned a doctor alleged to have helped the CIA in tracking bin Laden.
Ties continued to fray after the U.S. mistakenly fired on and killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers.
But after a long pause, and an election in Pakistan, both sides are trying to rebuild their relationship.
Newly elected Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived in the U.S. on Sunday, for the first visit by a Pakistani head of state since 2008, and met with Secretary of State John Kerry. In a statement, the State Department said they "continued the robust dialogue on our shared goal of a stable, secure and prosperous Pakistan." The statement stressed the importance of "continued counterterrorism cooperation."
Aid to Pakistan over the years has been channeled to everything from health to education to economic development.
But it is Pakistan's role in counterterrorism operations that has made the U.S. so reluctant to cut ties with the country altogether. Despite suspicion running high between the two governments -- and concerns that some Pakistani officials are taking U.S. money with one hand and helping America's enemies with the other -- many in Washington see the partnership as one of necessity.
Markey, author of "No Exit from Pakistan: America's Tortured Relationship with Islamabad," said the U.S. still needs the supply lines in and out of Afghanistan as that war winds down. But he said the U.S. should be "skeptical."
The battle over how much to give to which countries has been escalating in Washington, and Republicans have made it a perennial target as they seek additional savings.
House Republicans proposed a nearly $6 billion cut to foreign aid in their fiscal 2014 budget proposal.
Congress has not yet passed a full-year budget -- the latest agreement to end the partial government shutdown resulted in a bill to fund the government for just three months. Lawmakers are now seeking a broader agreement to both fund the government and cut the deficit.
Amid the resumption of aid to Pakistan, the Obama administration recently decided to put some aid to Egypt on hold. The decision came after then-President Mohammed Morsi was overthrow.

White House won't rule out delay of ObamaCare individual mandate

The White House appeared to leave the door open Monday to delaying the so-called individual mandate in the federal health care law, as President Obama acknowledged the main website for enrollment is not working as it should.
Press Secretary Jay Carney addressed concerns over the mandate at a press briefing shortly after Obama, in the Rose Garden, personally acknowledged failures with the HealthCare.gov site and vowed that "these problems are getting fixed."
Carney was peppered with questions on whether the administration would be open to delaying the requirement on individuals to buy health insurance, if the website continues to lock out would-be customers. Echoing Obama, Carney said repeatedly that the country is just three weeks into a six-month enrollment process and suggested it's too early to make any decisions of that magnitude.
But he did not close the door on the option.
Asked if the administration is looking for flexibility in applying the mandate, Carney said: "Whatever conclusions you draw about the way the law is written, I think you can draw. The law is clear that if you do not have access to affordable health insurance, then you will not be asked to pay a penalty because you haven't purchased affordable health insurance."
He added that the administration is focused on providing that access.
Carney was vague on what the administration's next move would be, aside from bringing in tech experts from the private sector to try and repair the website. Without offering further explanation, he said the Department of Health and Human Services is "looking to align the policies with the disconnect between the open enrollment period and the individual responsibility time frames, which exist on the first year only."
Whether that signals the administration would consider even a short-term delay of the mandate is unclear.
Technically, Americans are supposed to obtain health insurance by the end of March 2014 to avoid a fine. But analysts have since calculated that, considering the time it takes to process all the relevant documents, most would have to seek coverage by mid-February. 
Republicans have used the website failures to fuel their case that the individual mandate should be delayed. They've been pushing for the delay ever since the administration announced earlier this year it would offer some employers a one-year reprieve from a separate mandate to extend insurance to workers.  
The president's remarks in the Rose Garden did little to quell their complaints.
"If the president is frustrated by the mounting failures of his health care law, it wasn't apparent today. Americans are looking for accountability, but what the president offered today was little more than self-congratulation," House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement. "Either the president doesn't grasp the scale of the law's failures or he doesn't believe Americans deserve straight answers." 
Republicans have blasted the administration for not offering up Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for a House hearing scheduled for Thursday.
But the House Energy and Commerce Committee confirmed late Monday that Sebelius would testify before the committee Oct. 30.
"As the administration continues to withhold important details and enrollment figures, I hope Secretary Sebelius is ready to give answers and finally live up to the president's celebrated claims of transparency," Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in a statement.