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The Obama administration and HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius have had 3-1/2 years to get ready for Obamacare's rollout. Though we have yet to learn all of the gory details, America already knows what an unmitigated disaster HealthCare.gov has been thus far. But at least one could argue (not successfully, in my opinion, but work with me on this) that "programmming is hard."

That's not the case with another aspect of Obamacare implementation, namely the handling of exemptions from the individual mandate. The forms involved, the generation of which should have been a relative breeze and which obviously should have been ready eons ago, are at least a month away. Instead of describing this situation as yet another miserable failure, Kyle Cheney at the Politico, perhaps signaling to other establishment press outlets that they shouldn't consider this a big deal (though it clearly is), merely characterized it as "another big hurdle," and kept "individual mandate" out of his headline. Excerpts follow the jump (HT to a frequent emailer; bolds are mine):

When the new Fox News program The Kelly Files trounced The Rachel Maddow Show in the ratings last Tuesday, MSNBC president Phil Griffin actually called for an investigation into the matter.

The good folks at Nielsen complied, and according to New York's Daily News, Griffin is once again looking foolish:

Apparently desperate to claim that 17 percent government shutdown is causing pain, Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press, aka the Adminstration's Press, decided that the Empire State Manufacturing Index's decline from brisk expansion to modest expansion was "a sign that the partial government shutdown may be weighing on the economy." Rugaber wrote what he did despite the actual report's emphasis that both business and labor market conditions "held steady," and its accompanying observation that manufacturers' borrowing costs have increased.

Though the headline at the AP's national site is a neutral "NY FACTORY ACTIVITY GROWS MORE SLOWLY IN OCTOBER," the one accompanying the story at some outlets (e.g., here and here — "Survey shows NY factory activity grows more slowly in October, signaling shutdown impact") is not. The four-paragraph story, presented in full for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes, follows the jump:

Another day, another epic battle between Piers Morgan and a gun rights advocate.

What made Monday’s skirmish on CNN’s Piers Morgan Live so delicious was Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb marvelously informing the host that his anti-gun campaign is probably responsible for his dismal ratings (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Washington Post was once the paper that brought down a president. These days, what with the industry in decline and a Democrat in the White House, the Post has a more modest goal – to be the paper that brought down a mascot.

Nobody has done more to agitate for the Washington Redskins to change their name to something more politically correct. In just the last year, October 2012 – October 2013, the Post has dedicated at least 31,562 print and online words to its crusade. That’s just shy of the 32,241 words in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” It’s more than seven times the words in the U.S. Constitution. All this despite the fact that most Americans, and most American Indians, aren’t offended by the name.

Paper disdains fans, popular opinion in PC jihad against mascot.

NPR has been a breeze beneath the wings of snarky gay advice columnist/MTV host Dan Savage on his book tour for “American Savage.” NPR White House correspondent Ari Shapiro hosted a book event in his hometown of Seattle. Now, Savage is denouncing traditional Mormons and Catholics on the NPR station KCPW in Salt Lake City.

The local NPR drone Ryan Cunningham wished him a happy birthday, and led him through a softball interview. Savage (inaccurately) trashed both Mormons and Catholics on this so-called network of civility for believing that sex is only for providing more “zombie-eyed followers for Jesus”:

Break out the confetti!

Strike up the band!

It's time for an "ObamaCare Success" victory parade!

And what was this "ObamaCare Success?" Why, it was Paul Krugman conveniently discovering ONE unnamed person who claims to have "signed up" for ObamaCare. Here is Krugman breathlessly describing this astounding "ObamaCare Success":

Nicolle Wallace is the perfect MSNBC kind of Republican: the kind who isn't sure if she opposes Obamacare.

On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough was seeking to make the point that while Republicans are divided over tactics, they are ideologically united in opposition to Obamacare.  To demonstrate his thesis, Scarborough asked Wallace whether she supports Obamacare, taking it for granted that she would express her opposition.  Amazingly, Wallace responded that she "wasn't sure anymore," then quoted her [former Bush aide] husband who had wondered "what do we hate about it?" She did then catch heself and admitted to not supporting Obamacare on the grounds that the government is not a competent deliverer of healthcare.  Too late: Wallace had already betrayed her RINO roots.  View the video after the jump.

Ted Turner said men should be banned from serving in office. Now Susan Jones at CNSNews.com reports Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz says women could solve the shutdown in hours because  "a woman doesn't want to ruin the person on the other side of the aisle or the table."

The DNC chair – who can barely get through a sentence without denouncing Republicans as “extremist” – touted The Fairer Sex on Morning Joe:

The Blacklist wrestles with the questions of humanty's ability to change.

MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski has applauded calling Newt Gingrich a “political pyromaniac,” and suggested Sarah Palin was to blame for the Gabby Giffords shooting. So it was a bit shocking to see her fawning over Pentagon bomber Bill Ayers on Monday morning.

Ayers is selling a new memoir called "Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident," but Mika threw softballs and let him discuss how he has to put his grandkids to bed at 7:30 pm. She left the heavy lifting to Mark Halperin, who quickly found that much like unrepentant Rev. Al Sharpton's morning visit last week, Bill Ayers has no regrets about bombing the Pentagon or the U.S. Capitol. (Video, transcript below)

Monday's CBS Evening News unsurprisingly ginned up the ideological struggle inside the Republican Party as it covered the ongoing partial government shutdown. Chip Reid spun the face-off inside the House Republican caucus as being between "staunch" Tea Party-aligned representatives inside the House and "mainstream" Republicans.

Reid later played up how House Speaker John Boehner could "face a dilemma" if the Senate came up with a compromise to end the shutdown, and that Boehner "can either allow the House to vote, which will likely split the Republican Party in two and create a major backlash from the Tea Party; or...he can refuse to allow a vote, which could lead to default." [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]

magine a world where everyone held hands and shared equally in the income amassed by a few. Barack Obama is able to imagine such a world. He articulated his vision of it in July 2011, when he expressed his loathing for being “able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that I don’t need, while a parent out there who is struggling to figure out how to send their [sic] kid to college suddenly finds that they’ve [sic] got a couple thousand dollars less in grants or student loans.”

He never enlarged upon the novel concept of “additional income that I don’t need” or who gets to make that determination for other people, but he has made it clear on several occasions that he is a firm believer in income redistribution.

Although Democrats stymied a bipartisan debt ceiling deal over the weekend, CNN's chief political analyst focused on poor polling for the Republicans in Congress on Monday, and wondered if it couldn't be like "Katrina" for the party in the long-run.

"I think public opinion, this has been a disaster for the Republican party, unmitigated. Everybody admits it. And the question is whether this is going to be short-term damage or long-term damage, a la Katrina for George W. Bush," Borger stated on Monday afternoon, concerning the current standoff over the shutdown and debt ceiling.