memeorandum: Democrats admit reboot needs stronger White House team (The Hill)

6:45 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: The Hill, Shakesville, Talking Points Memo, Mediaite, Business Insider, Hot Air, Reuters, ThinkProgress, Weasel Zippers, Politico, Los Angeles Times, Jammie Wearing Fools, ABC News 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

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.

Discussion: Washington Monthly

Brian Beutler / Salon:

R.I.P. Obamacare repeal movement: Crusade is officially dead — Back in July, long before we knew just how turbulent the rollout of the Affordable Care Act would be, and even longer before we knew just how committed Republicans were to the idea that Congress shouldn't boot people out of health insurance …

Discussion: msnbc.com, The Atlantic Online, Liberaland, The Huffington Post and A plain blog about politics

Karoli / Crooks and Liars:
CA Assembly GOP Puts Up Fake California Health Exchange Site

Discussion: Hullabaloo

Scott Pruitt / Wall Street Journal:
ObamaCare's Next Legal Challenge

Discussion: The Daily Caller

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: Mediaite, Hot Air, TIME, VodkaPundit, Booman Tribune, naked capitalism and VentureBeat

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: Power Line, The Moderate Voice, Hot Air, PostPartisan, A plain blog about politics, The Hinterland Gazette, VodkaPundit, Weasel Zippers, Jammie Wearing Fools and The Reaction

Jennifer Epstein / Politico:
Obama to sign up for health insurance through exchange

Discussion: Taegan Goddard's …

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

Politico:
Obstacles to the Jeff Bezos drone dream

Discussion: BuzzFeed, The Daily Caller, iOwnTheWorld.com, Boing Boing, Jezebel and TheBlaze.com

James Ball / Guardian:
Amazon to deliver by drone? Don't believe the hype

Discussion: ThinkProgress, CBS News, TechCrunch, Wonkblog, Above the Law and The Switch

Alistair Barr / USA Today: Amazon testing delivery by drone, CEO Bezos says

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: Hot Air, Yahoo! News, Politico, Mediaite and Weasel Zippers

Julian Pecquet / The Hill:
White House: Obama not eyeing Iran trip

Discussion: Washington Monthly

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: Liberaland, Brains and Eggs, Taylor Marsh and Associated Press

Dylan Byers / Politico:

MSNBC's Martin Bashir ‘on vacation’ after Sarah Palin remarks — Martin Bashir, the MSNBC host who has come under fire for the controversial remarks he made about Sarah Palin, is “on vacation” and will not host his namesake afternoon program on Monday, POLITICO has learned.

Discussion: FishbowlDC, Mediaite, Weasel Zippers and NewsBusters

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: Business Insider, Mediaite and Liberaland

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

Sean Michaels / Guardian:

Bob Dylan sued for alleged racism — French-based Croatian community organisation file a complaint following controversial remarks made in 2012 — Bob Dylan has been sued by a French-based Croatian community organisation for alleged racism. Representatives from the Council of Croats in France …

Discussion: FP Passport, TIME, Mediaite, NPR, National Review and Gothamist

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: capsules.kaiserhealthnews.org, Mashable, VodkaPundit, Hot Air, Hit & Run, HHS.govStrategy and Federal Eye

Catherine Thompson / Talking Points Memo:

Pope Francis Tells Faithful He Worked As A Nightclub Bouncer — As head of the Catholic church, Pope Francis is charged with bringing people into the faith. — But the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano reported the pope told churchgoers Sunday that he used to make money by kicking people …

Discussion: Liberaland and Outside the Beltway

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, The Mahablog, Booman Tribune and TheBlaze.com

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: Washington Monthly, CNN, Weasel Zippers and WPRI.com Blogs

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: The Verge and emptywheel

Frank Newport / Gallup:

Young Americans Least Familiar With Healthcare Law — Democrats, those with lower incomes also less familiar — PRINCETON, NJ - Americans younger than 30, a key group targeted by the Affordable Care Act, continue to be the least familiar with it. Another important group, those with lower incomes …

Discussion: National Review and Mediaite

Jason Redmond / The Star-Ledger Editorial Page:

Christie's flip-flop on immigration: Editorial — Star-Ledger Editorial Board By Star-Ledger Editorial Board — If Gov. Chris Christie thinks voters won't notice if he promises one thing when he's running for governor, then another when he's running for president, he's dreaming.

Discussion: CNN and Post Politics