Obamacare Scores and Benghazi Diversions

++The great Brainwrap or Charlie Gaba predicted 8.4 as his final figure for the end of the initial enrollment period. Close and give him a cigar anyway. It was 8.3 million. 

++HHS released its figures today just after the GOP released their report on Obamacare, where they claimed only 2/3rds had paid and that government figures were low.

++Health insurance companies warned the House panel that their own figures on payment were way behind. Of course, it's really 90-94%, a far cry from the House figures.

++The 18-24 years doubled in enrollments from 1.1-2.2 million in a month, making them 28% of the demographic. 

++The 36 states with exchanges doubled from February to April --2.6 million to 5.4 million.

++In red states like Florida,Georgia,Arkansas and North Carolina,enrollments hit six figures and Democratic candidates are beginning to be aggressive  in support of the ACA and medicaid expansion.

++Roughly, 19 million have benefited from the ACA, not including the rest of us with better benefits and a cap on spending.

++But the GOP digressed back to Benghazi and the debate on the new talking points memo unearthed by Judicial Watch. Dave Wiegel and others have analyzed this more closely than others and concluded that the big snafu was that it had not been released sooner to the Hill. Otherwise we are back into a fight over versions of talking points that generated from the C.I.A. 

++Let us reason together. Ambassador Stevens twice refuses additional security,interrupts his vacation and flys to Bengazi, is supposed to receive MPADS from the local militia for transport to Turkey or Syria. He gets killed. The CIA head of the time was General Petraeus. The State Department spokeswomen at the time was Victoria Nuland,who was a former aide to Dick Cheney. The Republicans at the time thought this would be a September Surprise so Mitt Romney broke the campaign truce on 9-11 and attacked the President of the United States. 

++Now protests surrounded the embassy in Cairo and Sa'na, Yemen at the same time based on outrage at the video made by a Coptic Christian based in L.A. Washington did not have the details on Benghazi yet but the helpful C.I.A. conflated the events together, which now is known to be wrong. So now the new document only adds that the White House NSC officer vetted the final talking points so as not to give the GOP room to criticize the President. Spin. Not unknown to a White House. 

++But the real issue was a cover-up of a covert operation that tangentially led to the death of 4 Americans, who had been involved in it. It should be noted that in the days and weeks afterwards no evidence emerged that Al Qaeda committed this attack. That is the working assumption of the GOP investigations. So do we really want to know what Ambassador Stevens was up to?

++Lindsey Graham claims the new document is a smoking gun. Darryl Issa says this shows a criminal act--getting talking points wrong? Or not submitting this document?

++This all comes as the elite media is beginning the war drums again--for what I can't tell. Maureen Dowd in the New York Times,Richard Haas and Leon Weseltier have begun the chorus that Obama's foreign policy is leading the world to chaos and he must lead.
Now the theme is that President Obama is so weakened with so long to go in office. Andrew Sullivan has a take on this today showing how Americans have no stomach for greater intervention abroad and that Obama is trying a balancing act to accommodate the non-interventionist mood of the country and maintain America's global dominance.

++John McCain introduced the Russian Aggression Prevention Act today. The Congressional Republicans are demanding Ukraine be given arms.

++If you want an empire, you must pay for an empire. If you want another war, then you must pay for it.