JOHN LEO: What That Sneaky Fee On Your Phone Bill Means.

MEGAN MCARDLE: How To Put The Brakes On Consumers’ Debt.

My basic opinion of the piece is that this is a conflict between what Walter Russell Mead calls the blue social model and the red-state world where Ramsey lives and finds most of his listeners. We can quibble about this or that — is Ramsey’s estimate of stock market returns too rosy? Should he be more open to bankruptcy? But what it boils down to is that Olen thinks that rising economic insecurity calls for a massive expansion of the blue social model, while Ramsey thinks it calls for getting more entrepreneurial and adjusting your lifestyle to meet reduced income expectations. How well you think this works is probably closely connected to where you live.

Nowhere is this clearer than on the question of education. Early on in the piece, Olen recounts an episode when a listener asks about stopping his debt-repayment plan in order to send his kid to a $42,000-a-year college. Olen seems to find this odd; after all, the cost of college has risen dramatically over the last 25 years. This is true, but I’m not sure why it’s relevant: $42,000 a year is not even the average cost of tuition, much less the minimum decent standard you can get away with. What it will not do is send you to a fancy Northeastern private college. Ramsey’s advice is absolutely correct: A middle-age couple with heavy debt need to get themselves stable, not shell out more than $150,000 in college tuition.

But for blue-state professionals, that’s something close to suggesting that they should abandon their kids in the street (or have them take out $150,000 in student loans, which is not much better). The social norm is that you send your kid to the best college he or she can get into, by any means necessary. In a red state, if your kids are planning to stay in your area, then it’s probably not that much of a sacrifice to send them to the local state school — in Biloxi, a degree from Ole Miss is probably more valuable than a degree from Harvard. But especially in the Northeast, mobility is the default assumption; you want your kids to go to the school that will give them the best array of jobs and places to live, not one that will position them to come back and take their place in your community. This may mean considerable personal sacrifice — even when I was going through Penn, 20 years’ worth of tuition inflation ago, I knew a surprising number of kids whose educations were being financed by mortgages. If you start off with this norm, then what has happened to tuition over the last 25 years is something like watching the price of a basic food budget octuple in real terms, leaving millions of families mired deeply in debt just to pay for some hamburger and rice. If that had happened to the price of food, even the staunchest Republican might be looking for some relief beyond better budgeting skills.

Educational expenses loom very large in Olen’s piece; she emphasizes it over and over, along with medical debt.* And in blue states, that is exactly how a lot of parents feel.

Read the whole thing. But blue-state parents bleeding themselves dry on educational expenses — at any level — should really pre-order my new book.

I SUSPECT THIS WILL HAPPEN PRETTY MUCH EVERYWHERE HE GOES: Obama Flies to Dallas to Promote O-Care… Protest Breaks Out (Video).

JOHN STOSSEL: In America, we let people sell blood. And sperm. And eggs. Why not kidneys?

AT AMAZON, Countdown To Black Friday Deals.

Also, markdowns in Athletic & Outdoor Clothing.

And, today only: Up to 62% Off “Fringe: The Complete Series” and “Chuck: The Complete Series.”

Also today only: Up to 57% off Ion Portable Bluetooth Speakers.

INSTAVISION: I talk with Rand Simberg about his new book, Safe Is Not An Option, and how an excessive concern with safety is causing space exploration to stagnate.

DAVID HOGBERG: Papa John Was Right: Marking the first anniversary of the 29-hour workweek.

FRANK FUKUYAMA: WHY WE NEED A NEW PENDLETON ACT.

Well, we need to address the fact that the civil service has been colonized by a single political party, and that career officials who are supposed to be nonpartisan have been acting as partisan political operatives, from the IRS Scandal to . . . well, all the other scandals. I don’t think that Fukuyama’s proposed reforms would do anything about this problem. But I have some transformative thoughts.

JOHN ROSENBERG: Obama’s Second, and Continuing, Big Lie: The administration’s 2010 rules were written to undermine employer-provided insurance as well.

JAMES TARANTO: The Worst Is Yet to Come: There probably isn’t time to mitigate the ObamaCare debacle.

The ObamaCare debacle carries the name of the president and the face of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the highest-ranking official subject to congressional oversight. Sebelius was on Capitol Hill again today, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee. She assured the Democrat-run panel that “repairs are under way on the most serious [technical] problems” afflicting the federal insurance exchange, The Wall Street Journal reports. Such problems, she claimed, number “a couple of hundred.”

The exchange was supposed to be functional at the beginning of October. The administration now promises it will be by the end of November. Sebelius’s assurances strained the credulity even of Chairman Max Baucus, who cast the deciding vote to pass ObamaCare in December 2009. “It has been disappointing to hear members of the administration say they didn’t see problems coming,” Baucus told Sebelius today. “We heard multiple times that everything was on track. We now know that was not the case.” In April Baucus famously told Sebelius “he saw ‘a huge train wreck coming down,’ ” a statement that proved to be an outrageous slander against train wrecks.

The administration’s decision to cut itself two months’ slack raises two questions: Can it keep the new promise, and what happens in December?

There is every reason to doubt the exchange can be made functional in the next 24 days. One reason is that much of the coverage and commentary tends to minimize the seriousness of the challenge by describing the nonfunctional system as a “website.” What’s not working isn’t just the website–the online user interface–but the complicated system that lies behind it. To say HHS needs to fix the “website” is like saying your car needs repairs to its steering wheel and accelerator when in fact the whole engine is junk.

Read the whole thing.

LAWSUIT FALLOUT: In Unintended, But Totally Expected, Consequences: Condé Nast Eliminates Internship Program. “Condé Nast, the globally renowned media publisher that produces magazines like Glamour, The New Yorker, and Wired, announced late last month that it will no longer offer its internship program. The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed by two former interns, Lauren Ballinger and Matthew Leib; in June, the interns sued Condé Nast for months of backpay, alleging that the publisher violated federal and state labor laws.”

THE DANGERS OF INDEPENDENT THOUGHT: Student newspaper editor extensively explains decision to publish a letter questioning the existence of a “rape culture.” You can’t publish critical views here! This is a University!

UPDATE: Link was broken before. Fixed now. Thanks!

ROLL CALL: Democrats Up in 2014 Vent Their Obamacare Anger in White House Meeting.

President Barack Obama heard an earful at the White House Wednesday from Senate Democrats running for re-election next year who are fuming about the Affordable Care Act’s rocky rollout.

During a two-hour meeting that was not on the president’s public schedule, the president met with 15 Senate Democrats facing the voters next year, as well as Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Michael Bennet, D-Colo.

Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska issued a release after the meeting torching the administration.

“It is simply unacceptable for Alaskans to bear the brunt of the Administration’s mismanagement of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and that is the message U.S. Senator Mark Begich delivered to President Obama today,” his office said in a statement blasted to reporters.

The release went on to say that Begich complained about “an unworkable website, technical glitches and inaccurate information about peoples’ individual situations. Begich demanded the administration fix the problems immediately so Alaskans, including the 55,000 eligible for subsidies to lower monthly premiums, can realize the many benefits due to them as a result of the health reform law.

“Alaskans should be appreciating the critical benefits of the Affordable Care Act but there is an understandable crisis in confidence because the administration has yet to get it off the ground,” Begich said.

Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado said he let the president know just how upset he is about the troubled health care law. He sent out a release saying that he had pressed the administration to extend the enrollment period due to the problems with HealthCare.gov, ensure that the data on the website is secure and make other modifications. . . . In addition to Bennet, Udall and Begich, attendees included the other Senate Democrats up in 2014: Cory Booker of New Jersey, Chris Coons of Delaware, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Al Franken of Minnesota, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Tom Udall of New Mexico and Mark Warner of Virginia.

There’s a whole lot of distancing going on.

TIM CARNEY: Maybe You Can’t Beat K Street In Fairfax. “Here was the problem for Cuccinelli: He was running in Virginia. The overlap may have been too great between local business and suckler at the federal teat.”

THE HILL: Anxious Democrats Press Obama To Fix Healthcare Rollout. “More than a dozen anxious Senate Democrats facing reelection next year met with President Obama at the White House Wednesday to review the administration’s progress in fixing technical problems hobbling the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. Senators told Obama point blank that his administration needs to fix glitches that have left many of their constituents fuming and could threaten the pary’s majority in the 2014 midterm elections.”

Especially since, just a few weeks ago, each and every one of them voted to go full-steam ahead with ObamaCare despite Republicans’ efforts to secure a delay.

MICHAEL BARONE: Lessons For Both Parties In Virginia And New Jersey Results.

PETER WEHNER: Barack Obama’s Multiplying Deceptions.

It was, I think, the most brazenly mendacious claim an American president has told since Bill Clinton’s finger-wagging insistence that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

I have in mind Barack Obama’s statement, made earlier this week, in which he said this: “Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.” (Emphasis added.)

That is not, in fact, what the president said. Not by a country mile.

What Mr. Obama actually said, dozens of times, is a variation of what he said during a speech to the American Medical Association on June 15, 2009: “That means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

But Mr. Obama is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill fabulist. It appears as if he’s in the process of becoming an inveterate one. He was, after all, building one untruth upon another. I say that because by now it’s obvious to nearly everyone, including liberals, that the president and his aides knew that when he made his initial claim that under the Affordable Care Act you will be able to keep your health-care plan “no matter what”–that you would keep it “period”–he knew the assertion was false. Yet he repeated it over and over again. (I’d urge you to watch this short video produced by New York magazine, which is a montage of Obama quotes claiming “you can keep your plan no matter what.”)

The last six weeks have been brutal ones for the Obama presidency. And I’m guessing that the damage that’s been inflicted will not be transitory. All the failures surrounding the Affordable Care Act–from the disastrous rollout of the federal health-care exchanges, to sticker shock surrounding premiums and deductibles, to the jolting realization that millions of people are now being forced out of health-care plans they like (with millions more to follow)–has likely left an indelible mark of incompetence on Mr. Obama. He looks like nothing so much as a community organizer who is totally overmatched by events.

That would be injurious enough. But now you can add to the mix the shattering of Mr. Obama’s credibility; the belief among a growing number of his fellow citizens that he cannot be trusted, that he will corrupt words in order to advance his ways. Those character defects would be troubling enough in, say, a state senator. They are much more problematic to find in an American president. It’s all very discouraging.

True. And yet, also kinda amusing.

LAW AND LIBERTY: Tea Party Game Show With Guest Host Cass Sunstein.

ALSO, “BLURB” IS MISSPELLED: Woman From MTV Demands Free Stuff From Us. That said, I disagree that women are cheapskates. When I was single, I found some to be quite openhanded.

NOTHING SLEAZY HERE: Obama Political Team “Trains” Reporters On How To Cover ObamaCare Website Problems.

RECKONING DAY: Well I was thinkin’ about Abraham Lincoln, and the enemies of the truth, but I could not tell a Kennedy from a John Wilkes Booth. “We’re takin’ the history test, of who’s baddest and who is best, Lennon the brother, Lennon the sisters, Lenin the communist.” Put your money in the mattress. Put your pennies where they count.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Health care law allows hiring convicted felons as Obamacare navigators.

SO WHEN THEY MAKE YOU A SCHOOL PRINCIPAL, DO THEY AT LEAST PAY FOR THE LOBOTOMY? Mom says she’s banned from Georgia school over Facebook pic of CCW permit. Er, those are legal, you know . . . .

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Jewish dad questions homework assignment, gets investigated for being a ‘neo-Nazi.’ I’m beginning to think that putting your kids in public schools is parental malpractice. And I think the teachers’ union president should be fired, and sued. The only way to address this kind of stuff is to make examples of people; right now there’s a culture of impunity.

WHEN A TRAIN WRECK BECOMES A LAUGHING STOCK: ‘Obamacare by morning’: Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood hilariously mock HealthCare.gov during Country Music Awards.