memeorandum: Obama pledges support for global fight against AIDS, issues challenge (Matthew Hoye/CNN)

4:45 PM ET, December 2, 2013

Top Items:

Insurers Claim Health Website Is Still Flawed — Weeks of frantic technical work appear to have made the government's health care website easier for consumers to use. But that does not mean everyone who signs up for insurance can enroll in a health plan. — The problem is that so-called …

Marc A. Thiessen / Washington Post:

For Democrats in 2014, the Web site is not the problem — Democrats are praying that this weekend's relaunch of the Obamacare Web site will save them from an electoral bloodbath in 2014. Their hopes are misplaced. Here are five numbers that suggest that public anger over Obamacare will only grow as Election Day 2014 approaches:

Discussion: National Review

Julianna Goldman / Bloomberg:

Obamacare Website Sign-Ups Said to Reach 100,000 in Month — About 100,000 people signed up for health insurance through the online federal exchange last month, a roughly four-fold increase from October even as a team of U.S. government and contractor programmers was fixing …

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Reuters, Shakesville, Talking Points Memo, Mediaite, Politico, Business Insider, Hot Air, Weasel Zippers, Los Angeles Times, ABC News, Jammie Wearing Fools and Wonkblog

Ben Jacobs / The Daily Beast:
Is the HealthCare.gov Fix Too Late to Save Obamacare?

Discussion: Connecting.the.Dots

Louise Radnofsky / Wall Street Journal:
Insurers Seek to Bypass Health Site

Discussion: National Republican …, Talking Points Memo, USA Today, Ricochet Conversations Feed, AEIdeas, Wonkblog, Washington Wire, NBCNews and Politico

Rebecca Shabad / The Hill:
Report: Nov. O-Care site enrollment near 100K

Discussion: The Political Carnival and Jammie Wearing Fools

Matthew Yglesias / Slate:

Drones Could Be Amazon's Undoing — Tonight on 60 Minutes, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced rather hazily that the company is working on trying to hone unmanned aerial vehicles as a last-mile delivery solution that could make ultra-fast same-day delivery a reality.

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Marginal Revolution, Outside the Beltway, New York Times and The Dish

Charlie Rose / CBS News:

Amazon's Jeff Bezos looks to the future — Amazon is the world's largest online retailer, serving 225M customers. What's next for the company that prides itself on disrupting tradition? — STUMBLE — TWITTER

Discussion: Guardian, ThinkProgress, Forbes, American Prospect, Law Blog, Businessweek, Hot Air, Associated Press, The Switch, Hit & Run, TechCrunch, NPR, The Verge, Above the Law, The Other McCain, NBCNews, Washington Post, GalleyCat, Roll Call, Taylor Marsh and Gigaom

Politico:
Obstacles to the Jeff Bezos drone dream

Discussion: BuzzFeed, iOwnTheWorld.com, Boing Boing, Jezebel and TheBlaze.com

CBS News:
Amazon unveils futuristic plan: Delivery by drone

Discussion: Firedoglake, The Switch, The Verge, DCist, Wonkblog, PandoDaily, Guardian and VentureBeat

David Pierce / The Verge:
Delivery drones are coming: Jeff Bezos promises half-hour shipping with Amazon Prime Air

Discussion: Achenblog, Gawker, ProfessorBainbridge.com, Patterico's Pontifications, The Switch and Mock Paper Scissors

The Hill:

Democrats admit reboot needs stronger White House team — Former administration officials and Democratic operatives say President Obama is ill-served by his current White House staff and must reboot his second term team following the disastrous ObamaCare rollout.

Discussion: Hot Air, The Hinterland Gazette, VodkaPundit, Weasel Zippers, Jammie Wearing Fools and The Reaction

Ron Fournier / NationalJournal.com:

Fire Your Team, Mr. President — A White House shake-up can't stop with a sacrificial lamb. Obama needs to change the people around him to change how he governs. — President Obama needs to fire himself. Not literally, of course, but practically: He needs to shake up his team so thoroughly …

Discussion: TIME, Mediaite, Hot Air, Booman Tribune, naked capitalism, VentureBeat, Business Insider and Doug Ross

Matthew Hoye / CNN:

Obama pledges support for global fight against AIDS, issues challenge — Washington (CNN) - On the 25th anniversary week of World AIDS Day, President Barack Obama issued a new pledge Monday along with a challenge to global AIDS advocates. — At a White House meeting …

Discussion: Politico

Sahil Kapur / Talking Points Memo:

The Rise Of Obamacare McCarthyism — When House Republicans unveiled a proposal in the fall aimed at avoiding a dead-end government shutdown over Obamacare, the conservative backlash was swift and brutal: they called it a surrender, a betrayal, an appeasement of the health care law they all abhor.

Darlene Superville / Associated Press:

5 NEW THINGS ABOUT OBAMA — You are here — Home » United States government » 5 new things about Obama — WASHINGTON (AP) — The man who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is more than just another celebrity, or the famous face behind the government's troubled health care website.

Discussion: Liberaland, The Daily Caller, TheBlaze.com and Jammie Wearing Fools

Nate Cohn / The New Republic:

Scott Walker Could Reunite the GOP — Unlike Chris Christie or Ted Cruz, Scott Walker can appeal to the entire party. — There's a real case that Chris Christie is the front-runner for the 2016 Republican nomination. That's pretty remarkable: He's for gun control, hails from the northeast …

Discussion: No More Mister Nice Blog

Joan Walsh / Salon:
GOP's massive 2013 mistake: How the party ignored its terminal illness

Discussion: Brains and Eggs, Associated Press and Taylor Marsh

Rosie Gray / BuzzFeed:

NRCC's “Happy Holidays Is What Liberals Say” Shirt Removed From Website — War on Christmas? — Twitter: @NRCC — WASHINGTON — The National Republican Congressional Committee appears to have removed a t-shirt from its website that advocates against saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

Discussion: Liberaland and Mediaite

ProPublica:

‘Please Wait’: New-and-Improved HealthCare.gov Has Same Old Problems — After a glowing news conference yesterday citing “night and day” progress on HealthCare.gov, I decided to log in this morning and take the Web site for a test drive, as I'm sure many others are doing. Early reports had been promising.

Discussion: VodkaPundit, Hot Air, Hit & Run, HHS.govStrategy and Federal Eye

Phil Galewitz / capsules.kaiserhealthnews.org:
Many Consumers Report Improvements With Healthcare.gov

Discussion: Daily Kos

Daniel Halper / Weekly Standard:

Report: Obama Arranging Tehran Visit for Next Year — The Kuwaiti news outlet Al-Jarida reports that President Obama is seeking to arrange a trip to Tehran, Iran next year. — The headline of the article reads, “Obama would like to visit Tehran, official invitation after details resolved.”

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Politico, The Hill, Liberaland, Mediaite and Weasel Zippers

Juan Williams / The Hill:

Dems now party of women — As the 2014 midterm election season begins, the Democratic Party is in full bloom as the political home of the modern American woman. — For the last half-century, women were swing voters between the parties. A gender gap emerged in the 1980s …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Booman Tribune and TheBlaze.com

Michael Howard Saul / Metropolis:

Bloomberg in Bermuda During Derailment — Privacy Policy » Search Metropolis1 — Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in Bermuda on Sunday when a train derailed in the Bronx, the most recent time that the mayor has been out of town when a major incident in New York City occurred, a person familiar with the matter said.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Weasel Zippers, Runnin' Scared, Jammie Wearing Fools and Gothamist

Lucy McCalmont / Politico:

Lincoln Chafee decks Christmas title on tree — Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee is attempting to end the war on Christmas in his state once and for all. — Chafee, a Republican-turned-independent-turned- Democrat, issued a statement Monday announcing the tree in the State House will be called a …

Discussion: CNN

Jennifer Epstein / Politico:

Obama to sign up for health insurance through exchange — President Obama will sign up for health insurance through an Affordable Care Act exchange, press secretary Jay Carney said Monday — “I don't have an update for you on that. I know that he will and has said that he will,” Carney told reporters.

Colin Freeman / Telegraph:

Child taken from womb by social services — Exclusive: Essex social services have obtained a court order against a woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and for her child to be taken from her womb by caesarean section — A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by caesarean section by social workers.

Discussion: National Review, addictinginfo.org, The Daily Caller and iOwnTheWorld.com

Kevin Gosztola / Firedoglake:

NSA Sent Home Talking Points for Employees to Use in Conversations with Family & Friends During Holidays — A sheet of talking points for employees of the National Security Agency and Central Security Services, was sent out ahead of Thanksgiving to help guide conversations with family and friends during the holiday season.

Discussion: emptywheel