The first figures are out for the number of people who have successfully used the Obamacare website to buy insurance, and it is no surprise to anyone by now that they fell far short of the expectations drawn up before the website's launch. The website is undergoing intensive repair efforts, with the target of being up and running for most users by the end of this month. Doubts exist as to whether that target will be met, but there's a whole lot of wiggle room in that word "most," so undoubtedly both sides will spin whatever happens to present it in the worst or best light possible. But what few seem to be talking about is what will happen next -- in the first two weeks of December. Which could be even worse than the initial rollout, as hard as that is to believe.

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Wedgie: When a political party's "wedge" issue turns on them and instead of dividing the other party, begins to divide their own.

Usage: "Boy, the Republicans are really getting a giant wedgie on immigration, aren't they?"

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While Obama hit an all-time low in one recent poll which made a few headlines this week, he's actually not had that bad a month, relatively. In fact, his monthly average job approval number rose for only the second time in his second term. Obama had good news and bad news battling it out this month, and his polling reflected this tension. But the news for Obama in October was a lot better than you might think.

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To put this another way, while most focused on one broken promise from President Obama this week, he actually made good on an earlier promise -- which is nothing short of astounding and deserves a lot of attention.

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"I will not yield to this monkey court!"

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The hearings have started on Capitol Hill, and there will likely be plenty of fodder mined by Republicans over the awfulness of the Obamacare exchange launch for weeks to come. That much is certain, at the very least. But I can't help but wonder what the future will look like this time next year, especially on one key question: will "red" states begin to set up their own state health insurance exchanges, or will they continue to allow the federal government to run their exchanges for them?

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President Obama today addressed the problems with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act's website... kind of. He tried refocusing media attention from just the website's problems, and he promised that the problems would be fixed. But he didn't actually admit what those problems were. Today, to be fair and evenhanded, we're going to take a look at the president's statement extolling the good things his signature healthcare reform law has accomplished, as well as the bad things he couldn't quite bring himself to talk about in detail.

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I don't know about anyone else, but the image that popped into my head this week was Ted Cruz drunk in some dive of a karaoke bar, doing his version of "I Fought The Law, And The Law Won."

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We've been in the midst of crass politics for three solid weeks now, so it doesn't seem that unbecoming to engage in some more of the same, here at the end of the shutdown/default crisis. Oh, I know, John Boehner tried to get emotional and proclaim "This is not some damn game!" but we all knew, on a certain level, that is was indeed a damn game. As well as a damn shame.

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In this particular instance, the storyline will run with one of either two words to describe the perceived loser: "blink" or "cave." We're going with the cave metaphor, today. Call it media-political spelunking, if you will. Which brings us to the most important question imaginable (to the mainstream media): Who will inhabit the cave? Who will cave, and who will enjoy the bright, bright media sunlight of perceived victory?

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