What’s interesting out there today?

Open Thread, as always.

As launch day approaches, second thoughts?

From Bloomberg  “U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia broke ranks with fellow Democrats and said he’d support a stopgap spending plan that delays the individual mandate in President Barack Obama’s health-care law.

“There’s no way I could not vote for it,” Manchin said at a Bloomberg Government breakfast today. “It’s very reasonable and sensible.”

“The individual mandate is the linchpin of the law that requires Americans who lack insurance to purchase health care through government-run exchanges. Republicans, led by a group of newcomers in the House, are pushing to dismantle the health-care law and are using a ticking clock on a possible Oct. 1 government shutdown as leverage.”

_________________________________________________

So Manchin is a terrorist too?

What? I’m just repeating what I’ve heard. He might be a kidnapper and/or arsonist as well. Like us.

From BusinessInsider  “White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer used three vivid analogies to  attack House Republicans’ laundry list of demands for  raising the debt ceiling, comparing Republicans to arsonists, hostage-takers  and suicide bombers.

 “What we’re not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to  their chest,” Pfeiffer said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper Thursday  afternoon. “We’re not going to do that.””

_________________________________________________

More problems…..

From DesertNews  “Days before the debut of new online insurance markets, a couple of last-minute technical glitches with President Barack Obama’s health care law are making supporters anxious and giving opponents a new line of attack.

The administration said Thursday that small business owners who want to use insurance markets designed especially for them will have to wait until sometime in November before they can finish their sign-ups. They still can start shopping right away on Oct. 1. And even with the delay, they can get coverage for their employees by Jan. 1, when the law takes full effect.

In a potentially more significant delay that affects the law’s larger insurance market for individuals, the administration quietly told Hispanic groups on Wednesday that the Spanish-language version of the healthcare.gov website will not be ready to handle online enrollments for a few weeks. An estimated 10 million Latinos are eligible for coverage, and 4 million of them speak Spanish primarily.”

_________________________________________________

This one we’ll call “Lowered Expectations”.

From Politico  “Americans probably won’t flock to sign up for Obamacare coverage in October  or even in November — and the White House doesn’t expect them to, a top Obama  adviser said Wednesday.

Enrollment will go through lots of ebbs and flows over the six-month  enrollment period rather than remaining steady, communications adviser David  Simas told reporters during a 45-minute interview at an event sponsored by Third  Way at which he downplayed the Obama administration’s expectations for the law’s  rollout starting next week.”

“But he also acknowledged the realities on the ground. Simas said that  “perhaps” the administration could have started its outreach efforts earlier, to  prepare to sign up as many people as possible. But he blamed financial  limitations for the late start — an indirect reference to House Republicans who  have blocked the administration’s requests for more implementation funding.

“In a perfect world with a ton of money for outreach and engagement, perhaps  you could have started earlier,” Simas said. “This is not a perfect world, and  there are limitations on what you can do.””

_________________________________________________

That’s funny. They need more money. Maybe they should just find the 67 million the IRS misplaced from their ObamaCare slush fund.

From Reuters  “With Congress debating whether to take funding away from the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in an audit that the IRS failed to account for some of the agency’s spending to implement the law.”

“The IRS did not report $67 million in costs the agency incurred for employees who were working on the healthcare law for fiscal 2010 through 2012, the report said.

The money was part of $488 million the IRS tapped from a special fund the agency was using to implement Obamacare.

“Funding related to direct labor were sometimes inaccurate and not always substantiated by reliable supporting documentation,” TIGTA said.”

Translated, we spent it on perks and wasteful stuff and didn’t get receipts, but it’s all totally legit. Uh-huh. And yet Obama wants to give them another 1/2 a billion for their ObamaCare work.

_________________________________________________

In other news, the revolving door between the press and Obama admin continues to spin.

From TheWashingtonPost  “As it happens, Carney was an early adopter. He was among the first of what has turned out to be a parade of journalists who’ve turned in their press badges for work in the Obama administration. In a trend that has raised some eyebrows among Obama’s critics, at least 20 reporters and editors from mainstream news organizations have taken high-profile positions in the administration within the past five years.

The latest hire: Richard Stengel, Time magazine’s managing editor (and Carney’s former boss). Obama nominated Stengel last week to be the State Department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a top communications post. Stengel will succeed Tara Sonenshine, another journalist (ABC News, Newsweek) who became part of the government she once covered.

At State, Stengel can swap newsroom stories with Samantha Power, a former journalist (U.S. News, the Boston Globe, the New Republic) who is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. His staff will include Desson Thomson, a former Washington Post movie critic who became a speechwriter for Hillary Rodham Clinton when she served as secretary of state. Other colleagues will include two recent additions to Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s staff: Glen Johnson, a longtime political reporter and editor at the Boston Globe, and Douglas Frantz, a reporter and editor who has worked for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and, most recently, The Post. Frantz was also briefly an investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Kerry, then a senator from Massachusetts.”

All these connections ensure that the press remains “on message” for Obama. It’s Journolist 2.0

_________________________________________________

This one, well once again…

Thank you Texas.

From TheHill  “Texas attorney general Greg Abbott (R) is threatening to sue the federal  government after Secretary of State John Kerry signed the U.N. arms treaty this  week.

“Texas stands ready to lead the charge to have the treaty overturned in court,”  Abbot said Wednesday, according to the Austin  American Statesman.“

_________________________________________________

And the last one from me today. Saying goodbye to the greatest closer ever. Mariano Rivera’s final game at Yankee Stadium.

_________________________________________________