memeorandum: Sweet: Obama tries to empathize over health insurance cancellations, but is that the best he's got? (Lynn Sweet Washington/Chicago Sun Times)

3:55 PM ET, November 8, 2013

Top Items:

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:

Obama's Second-Term Slide Continues — 65% Disapprove of his Handling of Economy — Barack Obama has had a difficult year since his reelection victory. His overall job rating stands at 41%, down 14 points since last December. A majority (53%) now disapproves of the way he is handling his job as president.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, The Daily Caller, Business Insider, Hot Air, Associated Press, Weasel Zippers, Politico and Taegan Goddard's …

Aaron Blake / Post Politics: Poll: Obama's approval hits new low

George E. Condon Jr / NationalJournal.com: How Obama Blew the Entire Last Year

Peggy Noonan / Wall Street Journal:

Noonan: 'I'm Gonna Be the Republican Nominee' — Mitch McConnell on the shutdown's failure, ObamaCare's future, and his own primary challenge. — Washington — It is a month since the government shutdown and a day after the election. The minority leader of the U.S. Senate …

Discussion: Hot Air, Talking Points Memo, No More Mister Nice Blog, First Read and Connecting.the.Dots

Andrew Kohut / Wall Street Journal:

The GOP Is in Better Shape Than You Think — Independents favor the GOP on handling the economy by a whopping 46%-30% margin. — Tucked away in recent polls—which have documented the extraordinary anger directed at the Republican Party during the shutdown crisis—are measures of clear disappointment with the Democratic Party.

Discussion: VodkaPundit, Questions and Observations, CANNONFIRE and The Reaction

New York Times:

CBS Correspondent Apologizes for Report on Benghazi Attack — The correspondent for the disputed “60 Minutes” segment about the attack on the United States Special Mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year apologized on the air Friday morning, saying it was a “mistake” to put …

Discussion: Daily Mail, Liberaland, AMERICAblog News, Talking Points Memo, Erik Wemple, Guardian, Daily Kos, Roger Ailes and The Raw Story, more at Mediagazer »

Noah Rothman / Mediaite:

CBS 60 Minutes' Lara Logan Apologizes for Erroneous Benghazi Survivor Report: ‘We Were Wrong’ — CBS 60 Minutes reporter Lara Logan admitted on Friday that a person who claimed to have been witness to the deadly September 11, 2012 attack on an American consulate in Benghazi and who served …

Discussion: The Daily Banter and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion

David Simpson / CNN:
‘We were wrong’: CBS's Lara Logan apologizes for Benghazi report

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Voices and The Raw Story

New York Times:
Accounts Differ to F.B.I. and CBS on Benghazi

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Politico, NBCNews, Foreign Policy, Crooks and Liars, AMERICAblog News, The Raw Story, ThinkProgress, Taylor Marsh, Poynter, Liberaland, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, Little Green Footballs, Capital New York and CNN, more at Mediagazer »

Sam Stein / The Huffington Post:

Obama Considers Administrative Fix To Health Care Law — WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering a fix to the president's health care law that would expand the universe of individuals who receive tax subsidies to help buy insurance, an administration source told The Huffington Post.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, U.S. News, Daily Kos, Forbes, Washington Post, National Review, The Incidental Economist, Ross Douthat and The Moderate Voice

Lynn Sweet Washington / Chicago Sun Times:
Sweet: Obama tries to empathize over health insurance cancellations, but is that the best he's got?

Discussion: Patterico's Pontifications

Mark Finkelstein / NewsBusters:
Obama Plays The Victim: 'I've Been Burned' By ObamaCare Website

Discussion: The Daily Caller

Shahien Nasiripour / The Huffington Post:

New York Fed Chief Levels Explosive Charge Against Big Banks — The head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Thursday that some of America's largest financial institutions appear to lack respect for the law, a potentially explosive charge against an industry already roiling …

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Firedoglake and Washington Wire

William C. Dudley / newyorkfed.org:
Ending Too Big to Fail

Discussion: Real Time Economics

The Daily Beast:

Exclusive: Obama's Secret Iran Détente — Long before a nuclear deal was in reach, the U.S. was quietly lifting some of the financial pressure on Iran, a Daily Beast investigation reveals. How the sanctions were softened. — The Obama administration began softening sanctions …

Discussion: The Heritage Foundation, The Dish, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Taylor Marsh, Weasel Zippers, New York Times, Roger L. Simon, The Gateway Pundit, Patterico's Pontifications and Wall Street Journal

Jordan Weissmann / The Atlantic Online:

Yep, Being a Young, American Adult Is a Financial Nightmare — Here are the graphs to prove it. — Poverty is an astonishingly common experience here in the world's richest country. As I wrote this morning, almost 40 percent of American adults experience it for at least a year by age 60.

Discussion: The Dish

New York Times:

Rules to Require Equal Coverage for Mental Ills — WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday will complete a generation-long effort to require insurers to cover care for mental health and addiction just like physical illnesses when it issues long-awaited regulations defining parity in benefits and treatment.

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Capital New York, ThinkProgress, Post Politics and Shakesville

Jen Christensen / CNN: Feds boosting mental health access, treatment

Frank Newport / Gallup:

Most Uninsured Americans Ignoring Health Exchange Sites — Three in 10 are familiar with the exchanges — PRINCETON, NJ — In the midst of widespread news coverage of problems with the federal health exchange website, relatively few uninsured Americans (18%) — the primary target population …

Discussion: Politico, Talking Points Memo, Right Wing News, The Daily Caller, Post Politics, Hot Air and First Read

Ashley Alman / The Huffington Post:

Chris Matthews Takes A Crack At Chris Christie And Wife — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's weight has been a key concern during his years in the public eye, prompting the release of a medical report declaring Christie “fit to serve as governor” during his reelection campaign last month.

Discussion: Hot Air and Weasel Zippers

Tal Kopan / Politico:
Bill O'Reilly: Chris Christie won't do my show

Discussion: Talking Points Memo

Noah Rothman / Mediaite:

Former MSNBC Host's Health Plan Cancelled, New Plan Costs 3.5 Times More — “Thnx Mr. President.” That's all former MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan had to say to President Barack Obama on Thursday when he announced that the health insurance plan he purchased on the individual market after leaving the news network was being cancelled.

Discussion: No More Mister Nice Blog, The Gateway Pundit, Weasel Zippers, Twitchy and Instapundit

Benjamin Weiser / New York Times:

Pine Bush, N.Y., School District Faces Accusations of Anti-Semitism — The swastikas, the students recalled, seemed to be everywhere: on walls, desks, lockers, textbooks, computer screens, a playground slide — even on a student's face. — A picture of President Obama …

Discussion: The Week, BBC and Capital New York

Brian Beutler / Salon:

GOP's intolerance trap: How ENDA fight explains all of U.S. politics — America's liberalization has coincided with the right's increasing extremism. Is the House GOP running out of time? — Back in September of 1996, when the ideological sorting of the country's two major political parties …

Discussion: The Plum Line, Liberaland and Booman Tribune

Lynne Marek / Chicago Business:

Onion quits print — The Onion is halting its print version in Chicago and its two other remaining markets with its Dec. 12 issue. The newsweekly was 25 years old and is survived by its website and a new creative service for advertisers. — “It's sad to see a print edition no longer exist …

Discussion: The Verge, The Switch and Poynter, more at Mediagazer »

Paul Krugman / New York Times:

The Mutilated Economy — Five years and eleven months have now passed since the U.S. economy entered recession. Officially, that recession ended in the middle of 2009, but nobody would argue that we've had anything like a full recovery. Official unemployment remains high …

Discussion: Wonkblog, Campaign for America's Future and BillMoyers.com

Noah Bierman / The Boston Globe:

Scott Brown gets a plea to run in N.H. — WASHINGTON — The signs are mounting. Scott Brown travels almost weekly to New Hampshire. Last month he formed a political action committee there to raise funds; this week he attacked the state's Democratic senator on his favorite target: national health care.

Discussion: Weekly Standard, Talking Points Memo, Roll Call and Post Politics

Jonathan Taplin / Talking Points Memo:

Why Does Rush Limbaugh Hate Single Women So Much? — I've been trying to understand Rush Limbaugh's almost pathological hatred of single women. Why would he want to antagonize the 43 million single women in America? We all remember when he called Sandra Fluke a slut …

Discussion: ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

Jennifer Kabbany / The College Fix:

UC Berkeley Student Government Bans Term ‘Illegal Immigrant’ — The UC Berkeley student government has banned the term “illegal immigrant” from its discourse, deeming the phrase racist, offensive, unfair and derogatory. — In an unanimous vote, student senators passed a resolution that stated the word …

Discussion: protein wisdom, Liberaland, Weasel Zippers and National Review

Associated Press:

HOME DEPOT APOLOGIZES FOR RACIST TWEET — You are here — Home » AP Company » Home Depot apologizes for racist tweet — NEW YORK (AP) — Home improvement maker Home Depot Inc. on Thursday apologized for a tweet that showed a picture of two African-American drummers with a person …

Discussion: The Raw Story