Coincidence. I Wonder…

Let me begin by stating that I am not a conspiracy theorist. I believe that Oswald acted alone, Elvis is dead, and that Amelia Earhart did not spend her final days playing canasta in Passaic, New Jersey. I don’t read the National Enquirer or the Weekly World News, and I’m pretty certain that no one has ever married an alien (unless Miley Cyrus has clandestinely tied the knot). With that being said, let me be the first to postulate that the execrable performance of the Obamacare exchanges, and the electrical problems that are being experienced by the new NSA data center just might have a little more in common than one might think. That’s right kids. I think this is more than just a coinkydink. The question that should be on all of our minds is who are the clandestine masterminds behind these seemingly unrelated instances of governmental ineptitude?

I admit that, on the surface, the failure of a few websites and 10 reported incidents of arc flash meltdowns would appear to be totally unrelated but wouldn’t you agree the timing is just a little too convenient? I mean it’s not like both of these endeavors were begun yesterday. The NSA facility has been in the design and construction phase for the past eighteen months, and they’ve been working on the healthcare exchanges for the last three years. Now we all know that building a secure e-commerce website, or a data center, is no walk in the park, but since both of these projects were undertaken by the most savvy professionals that our tax dollars could buy, surely their issues must be the work of some unseen malevolent cabal.

The more spiritual among you may chalk this up to karma, based on the aversion of the majority of Americans to having the government take over one-sixth of their economy or reading their tweets, but that just seems a little too “new agey” for issues as serious as these. Some may blame the Russians—The 80’s are back! Welcome back to the global stage boys—but they seem pretty content to sit back and watch us self-immolate rather than to get involved something like this. The Chinese would also seem like logical suspects, but what do they care if some guy in Maryland can’t find a doctor, and since we seem to be more interested in spying on ourselves than some party apparatchik in Beijing, it looks like they’ve decided to sit this one out.

Obviously, if these coordinated attacks are not being mounted from beyond our shores then it looks like we may have to look inward to identify the culprits. Since The Tea Party is the domestic hate group de jour, they seem like a logical “disgruntled group of interest”. But really, aren’t these just a bunch of rich folks who were always going to hide their money offshore and pay for their own physicians and insurance anyway? Plus, I don’t think even their most ardent detractors believe they are placing a whole lot of calls to Imams in Yemen, so that let’s them off the hook. Naturally, there are the usual assortment of progressive groups with conflicting agendas that could be suspected, or those Anonymous guys who just seem to hate everything, but in each of these cases their positive disposition toward the prospect of getting their insurance paid for using somebody else’s dime would rule them out on the ACA stuff at least. Certainly the Mob always provides a potential group of suspects, but I don’t think guys with names like Joey the Hammer and Vito the Iceman play much in the cyber arena. Their efforts seem to include a desire for more of a “personal” touch, and I don’t think they even have a Utah branch so let’s cross them off the list as well.

Although we’ve eliminated some of the most obvious suspects in these attempts to thwart the best government intentions, I don’t think a conspiracy can be ruled out as the root cause. The problem with conspiracies is that they take a long time to sort out and usually require a death—like that guy “Deep Throat” from Watergate—or an Oliver Stone movie to answer all of our questions. Until that time we can only continue to wait, wonder and hypothesize. Fortunately for us, I’ve heard that signing up on one of the ACA exchanges gives us plenty of time for all three.