RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Kathleen Sebelius on CNN last night and it’s a train wreck. Interviewed by chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, who was sitting in for Anderson Cooper. And Sanjay Gupta, who is the staff doctor, CNN, “Just days before the launch a test was conducted. The website crashed with just a few hundred users. How was this decision made to still go forward? I mean, it crashed with just a few hundred users, and you wanted and needed millions. So what happened?”
SEBELIUS: Sanjay, there are people in this country who have waited decades for affordable health coverage for themselves and their families. I see them all over the country. What’s clear is we have a product. The product really works. We have created a market where there wasn’t a market. So waiting is not really an option. People can sign up on the website, at the call center, in person.
RUSH: They can’t. I said earlier, no one is this stupid. I want to take that back. That, folks, is exactly what I was just talking about. There is a combination of absolute incompetent ignorance, combined with a willful arrogance that makes this simply impossible. This question, “Look, it crashed with just hundreds of users. Why did you still go forward?” “Because we have waited decades for this. We Democrats have waited decades for this. There are people who have to waited decades for affordable health coverage. I see ’em all over the country.”
This is not an answer. This is just abject incompetence on parade. The product is the website, and the product does not work. “What’s clear is we have a product.” Your product is the website. Your product is not health insurance. You people aren’t offering that yet. You’re just arranging the deal. You don’t have a health insurance company yet, Ms. Sebelius. You’re just a middleman. All you are is a website, and it doesn’t work. That is your product. “We’ve created a market where there was a market.” Only somebody who hasn’t slightest idea what they’re talking about and who has no clue what a market is and no idea what the private sector is could possibly make that statement.
“We created a market where there wasn’t a market.” You know what that is? That’s like an iPhone or a Xerox copier. You haven’t done anything like that. You are bogging down the market that was just fine compared to what you’ve turned it into. Waiting isn’t an option? Well, tell that to the millions and millions who’ve been doing nothing but that for three weeks.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here, Kathleen Sebelius, cut five, last night, CNN with Sanjay Gupta, the doctor. Gupta said to her, “The president did say he was angry about this. I mean, do you know when he first knew there was a problem?” Now, stop and think of that question. When did Steve Jobs know that there might have been a problem with the iWatch? What do you mean when did Obama know? And here’s what she said.
SEBELIUS: Well, I think it became clear fairly early on, the first couple of days that —
GUPTA: So not before that, though?
SEBELIUS: No.
GUPTA: Not before October 1st? There was no concern at that point either in the White House or at HHS?
SEBELIUS: I think that we talked about having testing going forward, and if we had an ideal situation and could have built a product in, you know, a five-year period of time, we probably would have taken five years.
RUSH: I’m sorry. This can’t be happening to us. So the president knew nothing of the problems until the first day, and if they had five years they coulda gotten it right. Again, I hearken back to where are all these people inspired by Obama, who want to make him look good, who want to get this done right for the big guy? Not to mention the country. I mean, he didn’t know? That’s not possible. It’s not possible. If he didn’t know, then he didn’t care to know. If he didn’t know people were afraid to tell him what the truth was, but I just can’t accept any of it. And if it was going to take five years, why did they say it could be done in three?
Okay, so let’s delay it by five years then. That’s solution here. She said they need another five years, you got it. We’ll go back to the way it was. Oh, yeah, did you see that? The Baltimore Ravens are gonna be paid $130,000 to promote Obamacare at M&T Bank Stadium. I think that’s the name of their place. One more here from Sebelius. Sanjay Gupta finally says, “What about tech people? We hear the best and the brightest. Are there people or companies that we’re gonna recognize? Can you give us some names?”
SEBELIUS: We’ve asked all of our contractors to look at the their teams on the ground and bring in their absolute A team, and I’m confident that that is happening every day. We also — the presidential (crosstalk)
GUPTA: The contractor didn’t — didn’t — didn’t do such a great job so far.
SEBELIUS: Well, I —
GUPTA: And why didn’t they bring their A team in in the first place?
SEBELIUS: I can’t tell you why they —
GUPTA: Why are we saying in three weeks now, bring your A team into this — this whole equation?
SEBELIUS: We have — hope that they had their A team on the table, but I — I am talking to CEOs and urging them to make sure that we have the talent that they have available.
RUSH: What? Folks, do you realize the level of abject stupidity that we’re hearing here? Not just ignorance, in this case. This is abject stupidity. (imitating Sebelius) “Gonna bring in the absolute A team. I ordered it done. I’m confident it’s happening every day.”
“Well, the contractors didn’t do such a great job. Well, why didn’t you bring in the A team in the first place?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Hey, we’re as upset about this as you are, Dr. Gupta. We don’t know how this happened. We’re trying to find out who’s to blame for this. And when we find out, we’re gonna punish ’em. We had nothing to do with this. What are you asking us this for?”
“Well, it’s your website.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter.”
“Why are you saying in three weeks you bring your A team into this?”
“Well, we hoped that they had their A team.”
Who is “they”? It’s you! And what is this about, “I’m talking to CEOs and urging them to make sure that we have the talent.” What, are you raiding corporate America now? Are you calling CEOs and threatening them and having them send their best people to you? This is an utter embarrassment. I have never thought this woman was qualified. One more and I gotta go take a break. This is Sheila Jackson Lee, who thinks that we landed on Mars and planted a flag there. She was on CNN with Carol Costello this morning talking about Sebelius, saying that Obama didn’t know about the problems with the website at first. This is Costello’s question, we’ll have Sheila Jackson Lee’s stab at an answer next.
COSTELLO: Kathleen Sebelius told our Sanjay Gupta that President Obama did not know about problems until a few days into the launch. How can that be? If I was responsible for putting my boss’s signature program online, and I didn’t tell him that there were major problems and I left him in the dark, my boss would be really angry at me. He may even fire me. You never want to put your boss in that light, do you?
LEE: You’re absolutely right, and President Obama was mad as he could possibly be, and I would imagine that the thought processes, right or wrong, was, “We can fix this for the boss. We gonna get this right. The boss is focused on the threats of the government being shut down.” As you well know, the government started being shut down between September 30th and October 1st. The boss has a lot of other issues. I don’t think it was in any way a hide-and-seek game.
RUSH: Madam congresswoman, this has been three years that you’ve been working on this, are you trying to tell us that over 24 hours of the shutdown — they just insult our intelligence with this. Folks, we’re living the movie Idiocracy. We’re living it. We’re in the middle of it. Just in the middle of it.
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