ROGER SIMON: Riddle of the Day — What Do John Kerry and Ayatollah Khamenei Have in Common? “Well, a few things. One, they’re both billionaires who didn’t earn the money themselves. . . . Two, they both want Iran to have the bomb, but neither of them will admit it.”

JAMES TARANTO: The Carter Administration: Shop till you drop (your insurance carrier).

The press release doesn’t say if it includes Oregon, but that actually doesn’t affect the result one way or another. The Beaver State’s website is completely nonfunctional, so that its total enrollment is zero, zip, zilch, nada, nil, naught–in other words, a big goose egg.

The Associated Press has one of the all-time great look-on-the-sunny-side quotes, from Amy Fauver, chief communications officer for Cover Oregon: “We stuck to the vision, and we’re experiencing now the bumps that go along with having a grand vision that doesn’t work out exactly the way you hope it will.”

If she were good at math, she might have added that Cover Oregon’s enrollment has been growing exponentially.

Another state excluded from the Avalere study is Massachusetts. You might think that’s because Massachusettsans are old pros at running a health-insurance exchange, having set one up way back in 2006 after Mitt Romney’s reform. But no. As the Boston Herald reports, the old, functional Commonwealth Connector had to be scrapped and replaced with an ObamaCare-compliant exchange.

The new Massachusetts Health Connector is beset with “embarrassing glitches,” the Herald reports, and little wonder, since the state hired CGI Group, the same Canadian firm that designed the beglitched federal exchange. Result: “Only 549 applicants–out of the 150,000 Bay Staters forced to switch their health plans to comply with Obamacare rules–are poised to receive insurance.”

“Poised” turns out to be the local dialect for what the Obama administration calls “enrolled”; in Massachusetts, at least, the latter word retains its earlier meaning. “No, nobody’s enrolled,” Scott Devonshire, the exchange’s chief information officer, told the Herald, “because enrollment . . . doesn’t happen until a [health plan] carrier receives payment. It’s a semantics issue, I guess.”

Which seems like a perfect segue to Bill Clinton. The Weekly Standard’s Daniel Halper notes that the 42nd president said in a recent interview that Obama ought to keep his most infamous promise: “I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.”

So a couple of weeks ago he was being called incompetent by Jimmy Carter. Now he’s being lectured on commitment by Bill Clinton.

HEY, MAYBE WE SHOULD TRY THAT: Facing slowdown, China vows to let market play more important role in economy.

MELISSA BOND: “I am not a feminist. I cannot support a movement that asks for special treatment rather than equal treatment, and I do not understand why anyone would.”

TOM BLUMER: What Is The Real Unemployment Rate? It’s far higher than the official 7.3 percent.

ROLL CALL: Senate Abortion Rights Backers Want to Pre-empt State Laws.

Love the illustration.

MICHAEL BARONE: Voters in referenda reject big-government control.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH: Weddings and Celebrations: Girl from the Obamacare Website and Baghdad Bob.

THE HILL: Obama is boxed in by Bill Clinton.

President Obama scrambled to find a coherent response Tuesday after former President Clinton jammed the administration by saying it should keep its promise that people could keep their health insurance plans if they liked them.

The White House said Obama agreed with Clinton, but it offered no concrete idea on how that could be done.

Anxiety is growing among congressional Democrats, with the House poised to vote this week on Republican legislation to let insurers offer their old plans even if they don’t meet the new standards required by ObamaCare.

Whatever Bill Clinton’s motives — Republicans say he is distancing his wife, Hillary Clinton, from the ObamaCare debacle in advance of a White House run — his comments sharply intensified pressure on the president to change his signature law.

The White House opposes the pending House Republican bill but has no alternative yet. The quicker Obama comes up with an answer the better, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday.

The GOP should add a package including interstate insurance sales and Health Savings Accounts and assorted other improvements, and dare Dems to vote against it — or Obama to veto. He drove the car into the ditch; they’ll just be pulling it out.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: 80%-85% of ABA-Accredited Law Schools Are Losing Money. “My survey of law school budgets suggests that, on average, law school revenues will be down this fiscal year by about 15% in real terms from where they were three years ago. Costs, meanwhile, have not decreased by the same amount — if anything, they are slightly higher (as of now the rankings struggle continues unabated). Very few law schools were running 15% operating surpluses three years ago, which means that the large majority of law schools — I estimate between 80% and 85% — are incurring significant operating deficits in the present fiscal year.”

#WARONMEN: Innocent man commits suicide after paedophile accusation.

THEY THINK YOU’RE STUPID AND EASILY INFLUENCED. BUT WHY WOULDN’T THEY? Latest Obamacare Ads Are an Insult to All Americans.

WE’RE NOW IN THE SECOND DECADE OF THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: RoboticsAlley Expo and a Few Thoughts Re the Regulatory Future of Robotics.

PROF. JACOBSON: Thank you Elizabeth Warren boosters for reminding us how unappealing Hillary is. “No, the horse that just left the barn was the open acknowledgement of the progressive base that they don’t really want Hillary Clinton, they don’t really like her, and they feel the need for a breath of fresh air. Just like in 2008.”

ONLY TRAINED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS CAN BE TRUSTED WITH FIREARMS:

Uniforms take cased rifle out of CT scanner and place it on counter that runs along left side of room. Proceed to unlock case, while TSA takes literally dozens of photos, and open case up. Rifle is now sitting in case, pointed at doorway and tensabarrier beyond which 8-10 hunters, a woman who bought her nephew a toy gun as a present and had to check it, and myself, are waiting.

Uniformed DPD then picks up rifle and sweeps it back and forth across the entire crowd while “inspecting” the trigger, safety and bolt. Finger on trigger.

Crowd scatters, I nearly dive for cover. Woman with toy gun just looks confused wondering why everyone is shoving to get out of the way.

Police, TSA and Detective are all completely oblivious. Not a clue what they just did.

I make smart ass comment out loud “leave it to the police to wave a loaded rifle at you”.

Pathetic. The terrorists have won.

AT AMAZON, pre-Black Friday deals in Movies & TV.

Also, deals in Computers & Accessories.

And as you do your shopping, a reminder: InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you do your Christmas/Hanukkah shopping — or any other shopping — through the Amazon links on this page, including the “Shop Amazon” tab at the top or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you support the blog at no cost to yourself. Just click on the Amazon link, then shop as usual. It’s much appreciated!

TICK, TICK, TICK: WaPo: Troubled HealthCare.gov unlikely to work fully by end of November, as White House vowed. Have any of their “vows” turned out to be, you know, true?

GOING DOWN: President hits new low as Obamacare discontent grows.

President Obama hit an all-time low in a poll released Tuesday, with just 39 percent approving of his job performance and a majority of Americans saying he is “not honest and trustworthy.”

The national survey from Quinnipiac University represents Obama’s lowest approval rating since becoming president in 2008.

Just as troublesome for the White House, 52 percent of respondents say Obama is no longer honest and trustworthy — the lowest-ever measure of his veracity by Quinnipiac.

Obama’s approval ratings — and perceptions of his trustworthiness — have taken a hit in the wake of his broken promise that all Americans could keep their insurance plans under Obamacare. The problem-ridden healthcare.gov website continues to weigh on the White House as well.

It’s a new low, but I predict that it’s not the bottom.

DOESN’T ADVANCE THE PREFERRED NARRATIVE: High School student set on fire by admitted homophobe, and where’s the media? Just like the numerous episodes of gay-bashing by blacks in NYC don’t get the full-bore media treatment, just local-crime-story coverage.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How Getting Into College Became Such a Long, Frenzied, Competitive Process.

ED DRISCOLL: And Now, a Few Words on Interracial Marriage from the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen. “Speaking of which, say, does Jeff Bezos know about this column? Is he OK with his newspaper claiming that the majority of his customers at Amazon.com ‘repress a gag reflex’ when it comes to interracial marriage?”

For the aging Richard Cohen and his ilk, it’s always 1963. It must be, because otherwise, they’d be irrelevant.

THESE OBAMACARE ADS TELL YOU THAT they think you’re really, really stupid and gullible. And really, after electing Obama twice, it’s easy to see why they might.

THIS IS NEWS: Investor’s Business Daily: Intelligence Warnings On Benghazi Were Loud And Clear.

A trio of intelligence reports sounded the warning — but were ignored by senior administration officials during the 2012 presidential campaign.

One report, compiled for the Irregular Warfare Support Program of the Pentagon’s Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, predicted al-Qaida would take aggressive actions, including “selective terrorism, threats, intimidation and assassination.”

Well, that turned out to be true. Someone should ask Hillary about it.

MORE ON THAT OBAMACARE NAVIGATORS SCANDAL: One fired, three suspended after undercover health care video.

I WAS UNAWARE THAT CHATTANOOGA HAS the world’s longest pedestrian bridge.