Obamacare: "There's a Glitch in the System."

Good for the Republican insurgents! They managed to throw such a huge tantrum over the drumroll opening of Obamacare that they drowned out the fiasco of Obamacare's first act. 

In politics, wisdom decrees that when your enemies are forming a circular firing squad, it's best to let them get on with it. Alas, the circular firing squad is forming on both sides, thanks to the self-destructiveness of both parties.

On the Republican side, Wall Street may step in to realign the insurgents versus the traditionalists: those who take money and do what they're told, which would be Republican House Speaker John Boehner and the oh so loathesome, turtle-resembling, coal-mine owner-loving Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY); the Karl Rove variety, the fundraiser friend of the Bushies, who successfully threw the presidential race in Ohio to Bush43 in 2004 and spectacularly failed to do so for Mitt Romney on Fox TV in 2012; and the so-called insurgents, a.k.a. the Tea Party Congresspersons and Senators, who also take gobs of money but don't necessarily do what they're told.

The casualties on the Democratic side are also entirely self-inflicted and almost as loathesome. Incompetence is the leading actor currently on stage, with a lack of transparency clouding the issue of how gross the incompetence is coming in a close second.

As millions of people turned to the hope that is Obamacare, the hope of health insurance for those who have none or have it at a cost that is all but prohibitive or is prohibitive, very, very few people were able to log in, much less purchase health insurance. The Obama administration had over three years to put the website in place. They knew or should have known how many people would try to log in on the first day of its rollout, October 1st, 2013.

In Iowa, Edward Voss, a semi-retired computer programmer, was able to log in and purchase health insurance after 100 tries. He had special skills. Rare success stories like that emerge like a shaken family from a storm shelter amid innumerable Obamacare horror stories.

Will Pres. Obama or Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tell us what went wrong? Of course not. If they did, we'd know the dimensions of their incompetence.

What bugs me is the cost of this initial failure, which presumably, at some point, will be fixed. What worries me is that the Obamacare website will have to rebuilt from the ground up. Pres. Obama is already urging people to call a toll-free phone number to enroll: 1-800-318-2596; TTY: 1-855-889-4325.

I remember walking into a hotel near Des Moines on RAGBRAI and checking in. I opened the door to our room and found that it was very lived in. Someone had been living there for weeks, apparently. The trash can was overflowing. There was garbage and clothing everywhere. It was a huge mess.

With all the dignity she could muster, which was quite a bit, a portly manager told us, "There's a glitch in the system," which put the responsibility for the condition of the room and the fact that we'd been given the key to this room onto some outside agency, some force out there. She was not responsible, she implied.

Inside a different room, a clean one, my husband and I expressed our indignation and then laughed. What could we do? We got a clean room and were only momentarily inconvenienced. This "glitch in the system" had only inconvenienced two people for a minute or two and didn't cost $400 million.

Obamacare, on the other hand? Heads should roll. Will Secretary Sebelius be treated to a Tea Party circus in Congress? Of course she will. That goes without saying. But in this case, the rotten tomatoes thrown in her direction will be well deserved.

There's not much left of the Obama administration other than turning out the lights. Wall Street might take care of the Republicans. There's even talk of bringing the insurgent Republicans, guys like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Congressman Steve King (R-IA), who are apparently accountable to no one but their own districts, to heel. That'd be a sight I'll refrain from paying for, unless there is a worthy challenger with a chance of winning.

I'm still looking for a few Democrats worth supporting. There are a few, but not many. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) are some of my favorites.