Obama's "There’s no sugarcoating it" was — we now know — a sugarcoating.

WaPo reports:

Days before the launch of President Obama’s online health ­insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the Web site to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously.

Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead.

What else have they plowed ahead even though they knew it wouldn't work?

Let's remember this particular delusion: that a machine already in motion is easier to fix than one that you keep on the ground until you know it works (or at least until you don't know that it doesn't work!).

Yesterday, Obama said: "There’s no sugarcoating it: The Web site is too slow; people have been getting stuck during the application process."

He was sugarcoating when he said that. "There’s no sugarcoating it" was — we now see — manifestly a lie in the form of the classic lie: "I am not a liar."