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Through serendipity I’ve ended up working in HIT (health information technology). I take 50 calls a day with independent insurance agents/brokers to navigate the hoops to qualify to sell on the FFM (Federal Facilitated Marketplaces). The Government websites they need to access to register are riddled with random error messages, and simply attempting to log in to complete this process routinely fails. The agents/brokers are, to a person, terrified. If they cannot complete this process by October 1st (the deadline) they are hosed. Nobody knows what to do, and this will only get worse when millions of consumers join the fray of the marketplace. It appears nobody scaled the back end to accommodate this exponential growth. And now?, It’s too late. It’s like the owner of the White Star line getting a telegram about the Titanic sinking and saying “We need to order more lifeboats.” And these are the smartest guys in the room? #soscrewed. For obvious reasons, don’t use my name please…

(H/T: Instapundit) I work for an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software company: we do manufacturing soup to nuts.  From the receiving dock to inspection to inventory to shop floor to QA to picking and packing to shipping, we do it.  We handle the engineering bits, the work enters, the scheduling, purchasing, and financials (and a whole bunch more around and in between).  We do small companies, divisions, and entire corporations ($5 mil to billions in revenue).  And one thing that we (and all other ERP companies) know, is test, test, test,test, test…and more test.  Single function test, departmental test, cycle tests, flow tests – to complete simulation tests with rigorous results checking.  Months and months spent before throwing that GO LIVE switch.

Oh, and did I forget something?  Oh yeah – load tests.  Do you have enough hardware to support X number of users doing N number of “stuff”?  Can your network support the traffic?  What happens when you go from 1 location to 3?  3 to 10?  Country wide (we’ll leave international aside for purposes of Obamacare)?

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I’ve been meaning to get back to this for a while; from WMUR’s Political Standing from 9/6/2013:

Kelly Ayotte: She takes the down arrow on behalf of all New Hampshire Republicans. All these problems are now her problem. They are too big, even for NHGOP Chair Jennifer Horn.

Now there’s a declaration that is about as wrong as it gets.  The MAIN job of the NH GOP is to get candidates to run.  Period.  That’s it, seemingly (er, I can think of a lot of things, and if you’ve been reading the ‘Grok for any period of time, I’m guessing you know what some of those are).  And there is ONLY one person responsible for this, and that is the NH GOP Chair, Jennifer Horn.  While some might see Kelly Ayotte, being the highest elected Republican official in NH, as being the “titular head”, getting people to run is NOT her responsibility.  And Pindell is dead wrong in trying to lay this on Ayotte.  When you are the Chief, the buck stops with you (regardless of what President Blameless says).

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I have two rules for the folks that write at GraniteGrok:

• Rule #1: Adult themes, kid friendly

I do not want to hear that Janie and Johnny ran to their parents and asked “Mommy, what does this mean?” and then the parents come to me and ask “Oh REALLY!!!”

• Rule #2: Write when you can on stuff you want to, just don’t violate Rule #1.

Apparently, even before I can get all the videos up from Cornerstone’s sold out event, some Common Core materials are already sending fourth grade kiddies to Mommy and Daddy over their homework assignment:

“What’s a pimp?“

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The third speaker of the night was Jane Robbins.  She is a Senior Fellow with American Principles Project. Her works includes education policy, student privacy and parental rights issue and has drafted state legislation on educational transparency and sovereignty. Ms. Robbins began her career as a labor lawyer for an Atlanta firm, after which she worked for the firm as director of associate training and writing coach. Since then she has taught legal writing at Emory Law School, presented legal-writing workshops for firms in Atlanta and Washington, DC, and served as a writing consultant for several Atlanta firms. In the past several years she has handled a variety of legal projects for different firms and organizations. On behalf of APP, Ms. Robbins writings have appeared in, among other places, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The New York Post, and Public Discourse. Ms. Robbins is a native of Pendleton, South Carolina, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Clemson University.

Part 1:

Part 2 and previous videos after the jump:

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Update and Bumped: NBC News via Instapundit:

…But law enforcement officials told NBC News they believed he arrived packing only the shotgun, which he bought last week from a gun dealer in Lorton, Va., about 20 miles from Washington.

Hmm, reported by Instapundit, this seems to have been scrubbed from the report: The officials also said Alexis obtained the assault rifle used in the shooting from a gun safe on the naval base. There’s where he may have also obtained a handgun, according to authorities.  That would mean more crimes attributable to Alexis – and no background check required or used.

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We do not know why evil people do bad things to innocents.  We do not know what lurks in their hearts or in their twisted souls that allows them to harm others for what seems to be random or unknown reasons.  Our hearts and prayers go out to the families affected by this evil man’s decision to put himself and his emotions / reasons before that of the peoples’ lives he took and those he hurt.  Nothing will or can bring them back – may God comfort you in only ways that He can.

Sad to say, the usual suspects already are up in arms (pun intended) about another shooting incident.  US Senator Diane Feinstein (CA-gungrabber), never one to consider that EVIL is the source of this and not a hunk of metal and plastic, said today:

“This is one more event to add to the litany of massacres that occur when a deranged person or grievance killer is able to obtain multiple weapons — including a military-style assault rifle — and kill many people in a short amount of time. When will enough be enough?” asked Feinstein. “Congress must stop shirking its responsibility and resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence in this country. We must do more to stop this endless loss of life.”

The California Democrat is one of the Senate’s leading advocates for further gun control measures at the federal level, including an assault weapons ban.

That is true, but not strictly true;

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A non-starter, or should be, for anyone who actually thinks that there really is a purpose to the NH GOP Platform (and by-laws) as opposed to the Gene Chandler Theorem of Being a Republican (“Any Republican that helps us regain power is a good Republican“).  From DiStaso today – what does Brad Cook believe (potential and erstwhile candidate for NH Governor)?  And, most important to the grassroots,  how would Brad Cook fare when measured against the standard of what a Good Republican is suppose to typify – the  NH GOP Platform (quotes from it are bolded):

• Refuses to take the Pledge to veto a state sales or income tax.

Which if enacted, either a sales or income tax would definitely cause Government to grow as most Establishment Republicans (re: remember the gas tax raise?) and Democrats seemingly forget that the ability to tax more ALWAYS ends up in bigger government, not limited.

We’d be New Jersey (who put in an income tax to lessen the property taxes – how’d that work out for them?)!  So what does the NH GOP Platform say about that?

• We, the people of the New Hampshire Republican Party, do stand united in our dedication to preserving freedom, limited government and unlimited opportunity for all
• Strongly oppose new taxes and fees, including an income, sales or capital gains tax

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Rather than mere head count, officials say they are scrutinizing what capacity physicians have to accept new patients… “Does the doctor have room for one more patient or 40 patients? It’s about available seats,” Lee said. “We want to make sure every network has enough doctors.”

Translation: if The State believes that certain doctors are “slacking off” (betcha they accuse them of wanting to make the Government look bad, or be unpatriotic, or wanting to hurt other patients, or some such nonsense), I bet that the docs are gonna get a visit (“Er, nice practice youse got here – pity if something were to happen to it”).

What if the doctor doesn’t WANT to take more patients – that they happy with their income the way it is and wish to not work harder but rather enjoy life?  Or will this be the Progressive way: we must take from others (in this case, the doctors’ time) to give to others – the epitome of Tyranny?  And what would future docs think of this?  I was waiting for this to happen – I knew that just legislating that 50 million more people by government fiat was going to be a disaster.  What we are seeing here in NH with Anthem’s “narrow network” was just the first BIG disclosure that the Federal Nationalization of Healthcare (aka, Obamacare) was going to be in trouble.  While here in NH, those that believe that Citizens should be able to choose their docs have been trying to slow this down, CA has gone whole hog in getting Obamacare implemented (emphasis mine, reformatted)…

…and running into the EXACT same problem – Kiss your Doc goodby because they may not be in that “skinny network’!

Sidenote: Glad to see that NH CongressCritter Annie Kuster is just dandy with this notion, dontcha know!

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An audacious band of citizen militias battling a brutal drug cartel in the hills of central Mexico is becoming increasingly well-armed and coordinated in an attempt to end years of violence, extortion and humiliation.

What began as a few scattered self-defense groups has spread in recent months to dozens of towns across Michoacan, a volatile state gripped by the cultlike Knights Templar, a drug gang known for taxing locals on everything from cows to tortillas and executing those who do not comply.

Gun laws are FAR stricter in Mexico than they are here in the US – many calibers are restricted to the military or law enforcement (.380, .22, 9mm  are permitted with some other exceptions, so are shotguns > 25″), Federal Government highly restricts the sale and purchase of private arms, legal open carry is illegal except by Government permission, private sales are prohibited, and guns are sold in government regulated shops only.  While there is the idea of gun ownership in the Mexican Constitution, it is not like that of the US one.

The army deployed to the area in May, but the soldiers are mostly manning checkpoints. Instead, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is facing the awkward fact that a group of scrappy locals appears to be chasing the gangsters away, something that federal security forces have not managed in a decade.

The Mexican drugs cartels have been around for a long time – mostly due to the demand here in the States and the money drug users can spend for it.  During all that time, 10s of thousands of Mexicans have died in this drug war – and their Government has been all but powerless to protect its citizens from its ravages.  Ordinary citizens, law enforcement, journalists, military, elected officials – all types of folks have been gunned down or made to “disappear” for being threats to the cartels’ profits or turf.  The State has been powerless to protect its citizens even if Piers Morgan, Diane Feinstein, and now FORMER Colorado State Senator Angela Giron have argued otherwise (and Colorado voters decided to disarm her legislatively).

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