AT AMAZON, take 20% off on winter clothes and fashions. For men and women.

Also, pre-Black Friday deals on Electronics.

And, today only: “Columbo: The Complete Series” on DVD, $52.49 (65% off).

Also today only: Up to 65% Off Select Barska Safes.

I’VE GOT A PIECE IN ROAD & TRACK: Don’t track me, bro! As gas tax revenues drop, governments look to more invasive solutions, privacy be damned.

HOW’S THAT WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA, CHAMP? 2008 Flashback: “Obama plans to ‘make government cool again.'”

TOMORROW’S SPIN, TODAY! What They’ll Tell You the VA and NJ Elections Mean.

TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: Obama’s Catastrophic Victory.

So the program debuts and it’s a resounding, famous, fantastical flop. The first weeks of the news coverage are about how the websites don’t work, can you believe we paid for this, do you believe they had more than three years and produced this public joke of a program, this embarrassment?

But now it’s much more serious. No one’s thinking about the websites. They wish you were thinking about the websites! I bet America hopes the websites never work so they never have to enroll.

The problem now is not the delivery system of the program, it’s the program itself. Not the computer screen but what’s inside the program. This is something you can’t get the IT guy in to fix.

They said if you liked your insurance you could keep your insurance—but that’s not true. It was never true! They said if you liked your doctor you could keep your doctor—but that’s not true. It was never true! They said they would cover everyone who needed it, and instead people who had coverage are losing it—millions of them! They said they would make insurance less expensive—but it’s more expensive! Premium shock, deductible shock. They said don’t worry, your health information will be secure, but instead the whole setup looks like a hacker’s holiday. Bad guys are apparently already going for your private information. . . .

It’s as if it’s 1937 and they launched Social Security, only rich coupon-clippers on Park Avenue immediately started getting small monthly checks, and 67-year-old dust bowlers in tarpaper shacks started getting monthly bills.

You know, they’ve got to be thinking at least a bit wistfully that if they had been less successful in bullying John Roberts around, life would be a lot easier now . . . .

COME LEARN WITH VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Freedom Academy’s November Military History Challenge: A month-long history quiz from Victor Davis Hanson about his new book.

The book is Hanson’s The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost, From Ancient Greece To Iraq.

JAMES TARANTO: How Low Can They Go? The White House Attacks A Cancer Patient.

It’s been just over a month since ObamaCare’s disastrous launch, and it’s just over three years until the scheduled election of Barack Obama’s successor. It’s going to be a long three years. The exposure of Obama’s signature “achievement” as both incompetent and fraudulent (with its economic inviability yet to be realized) is also showing the administration’s true face. It is an ugly one, and we can expect to see a lot more of it while Obama remains in office.

This morning the White House went on the attack against a cancer patient who is also a victim of ObamaCare. Edie Littlefield Sundby of San Diego explains in today’s Wall Street Journal that she’s been managing a case of stage 4 gallbladder cancer, an affliction whose five-year survival rate is just 2%. Having survived the diagnosis by seven years so far, she beat very long odds–and she did so with the help of an excellent insurance plan that covered care at three hospitals, two in California and one in Texas.

In touting ObamaCare, Obama asserted at least two dozen times (in slightly varying language) that if you like your health plan, you can keep it. As Sundby explains, she is a victim of Obama’s fraudulent sales pitch. . . .

This morning Dan Pfeiffer the fast-talking flack tweeted out a piece from ThinkProgress.org, a leftist propaganda outfit. Titled “The Real Reason That the Cancer Patient Writing in Today’s Wall Street Journal Lost Her Insurance,” the piece, by one Igor Volsky, claims that “Sundby shouldn’t blame reform.” Volsky instead blames United Healthcare. . . .

All this may be true, but it begs the question. The addition of a phrase to that last sentence shows why: Sundby is losing her coverage and her doctors because of a business decision her insurer made within the competitive dynamics of California’s health care market under the regulatory structure established by Obama’s comprehensive “reform.”

Obama did not qualify his pitch by stating that if you like your health plan, you can keep it unless your insurer makes a business decision to the contrary within the competitive dynamics of your state’s health care market.

To the contrary, he represented ObamaCare as protecting consumers from precisely that sort of cruel business decision, and he has not backed away from that fraudulent promise.

They lied because people wouldn’t have passed it if they told the truth. Now they’re lashing out as people point out that they lied. Back during the campaign they lied and said that Mitt Romney cut off a woman with cancer. Now they’re lying about the woman with cancer that they cut off. Fraudulent, indeed. But lashing out at critics won’t stop the rot.

UPDATE: ObamaCare and the Wages Of Spin.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Double-Dealing Middle East Is Double-Dealt. “Obamism could not have happened to a nicer region.”

INDIA LAUNCHES spacecraft to Mars.

NOW SHIPPING: The Kindle Fire HDX. If anybody out there bought one, I’d like to hear if the “Mayday” button works as well as it does on the commercials.

Also shipping: The new Kindle Paperwhite.

UPDATE: That was fast! From the comments: “Just got an HDX last week and have used ‘Mayday’ twice. Works as advertised. Very nice. Portent of things to come on other devices?”

WITH OBAMACARE TANKING, THEY’RE GETTING DESPERATE FOR DISTRACTIONS: Eric Holder: I might still charge George Zimmerman with something, you know.

NOPE. NOT AT ALL. NEXT QUESTION? Does Hillary Clinton’s Enthusiasm for Profit Extend Beyond Her Own Earnings? “The news that Hillary Clinton has earned what the Washington Post characterized as ‘close to $500,000’ for two recent speeches to Goldman Sachs is generating a certain amount of excitement.” So if Hillary’s elected, President Goldman Sachs The First will be replaced by President Goldman Sachs The Second. Guess I’ll need to redo this logo a bit if that happens.

TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: Young Avoid New Health Plans: Early Buyers of Coverage Are Older Than Expected, Raising Expense Concerns.

OBAMACARE FUNDS INSURANCE FOR THE POOR BY MAKING IT WORSE FOR EVERYONE ELSE: “Middle-income cancellation victims are the Affordable Care Act’s first cash cow. . . . Rather than prioritize federal or state government budgets to subsidize those with pre-existing conditions – treating them as the rare special cases they are – Obama chose to finance their care by making you pay more into the system and get less out of it whenever you eventually become sick. Someone out there is benefiting from Obamacare. It just isn’t you.”

WASHINGTON POST: How we know the NSA had access to internal Google and Yahoo cloud data.

THE WAGES OF HYSTERIA: Central Connecticut State University Locked Down After Campus Shooter “Scare” That Could’ve Been a Halloween Costume; Campus Police Chief Says There Was No Real Threat to Anyone, Charges Likely. Charges for what? Being surrounded by overexcitable ninnies?

HOW STUPID IS THAT? Guns & Ammo Editor Pens Editorial Supporting Gun Control. Well, that’s not going to be good for circulation. Wonder if the NSA has something on Dick Metcalf.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Actually, America Doesn’t Have a Trillion-Dollar Infrastructure Crisis.

Well, that’s a good thing. Because if we did have such a crisis, it would be the feminists’ fault.

MEDIAITE: Anonymous Dem Senator Blasts Obama’s Credibility: ‘You Got to Have It, to Lose It.’ “Members of President Obama’s party in Congress are lashing out at the president after being put in the politically disadvantageous position of having to defend the negative consequences and faulty roll-out of the Affordable Care Act. Democratic officeholders are not holding back with quotes, including some brutal personal and political attacks on Obama.” Well, he doesn’t have to run for re-election. But they do.

I GUESS IT’S EASY TO SEE WHY THIS SONG WOULD BE big in Norway.

THIS IS CLEVER: To celebrate the FAA’s new rule on electronic devices, Amazon is offering 15% off Kindles, today only. Enter promo code ThnksFAA at checkout.

Here’s the FAA press release. (Bumped).

HOW BAD IS THE OBAMACARE ROLLOUT? This bad.

HEH: Flowchart of President Obama’s “You can keep your plan, period” defenses.

HUFFINGTON POST: Men might buy more books if publishing houses weren’t run by and for women. Ya think?

Interestingly, Helen got a lot of this when she was talking about her book. Turns out lots of men wanted to read it. And quite a few women, too.

UPDATE: To the folks in the comments who have given up on female science fiction authors — don’t do that until you’ve given Sarah Hoyt a chance. She’s excellent.

“SIGNATURE ACHIEVEMENT:” In Virginia, neither Obama nor Biden mentioned ObamaCare.