FLASHBACK: Under ObamaCare Your Premiums Will Fall “By As Much As 3000%”

That’s a lot.

PRESIDENT ASH CARTER: Raqqa Offensive Against ISIS to Begin Within Weeks.

BEER IS CERTAINLY THE BETTER VALUE: Aetna CEO says young people pick beer over Obamacare.

Bertolini’s comments, made at Bloomberg’s The Year Ahead Summit in New York City, came a day after the Obama administration announced that Obamacare premiums will spike and plan offerings will be significantly down for 2017.

He brought up a problem that has plagued the Obama administration — convincing enough young, healthy people to enroll so that insurers are bringing in enough revenue to cover sicker patients while keeping premiums lower. With rates jumping next year, it could be a challenge for advocates for the Affordable Care Act to increase the share of healthy enrollees.

“As the rates rise, the healthier people pull out because the out-of-pocket costs aren’t worth it,” Bertolini said. “Young people can do the math. Gas for the car, beer on Fridays and Saturdays, health insurance.”

Just don’t call it a death spiral!

OUR FRIENDS IN ANKARA: TURKEY DETAINS KURDISH MAYORS.

The co-mayors of the largest city in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast have been detained for questioning as part of a “terrorism” investigation, according to Turkish media reports.

The state-run Anadolu Agency reported that anti-terrorism police took Gultan Kisanak into custody late on Tuesday at the city’s airport. The second politician, Firat Anli, was held at his home.

The agency cited an ongoing probe into the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as the reason for their detentions, without providing further details.

I’m starting to wonder how much longer before the ethnic cleansing — or worse — begins.

JAYVEE UPDATE: Mosul Fight Unleashes New Horrors on Civilians.

A sulfur plant set on fire by the Islamic State has sent dozens of people for treatment for respiratory problems, and several journalists have been hurt, and two killed, covering the fighting. And a wayward attack — either an artillery shell or an airstrike —– hit a Shiite mosque in northern Iraq, killing more than a dozen women and children.

Just 10 days into the long-awaited offensive to retake Mosul from the Islamic State, the campaign has unleashed a fresh set of horrors across a wide stretch of the country. Although the government’s military operation itself is largely meeting its goals in progressing toward the city, the turmoil surrounding it is a sign of just how difficult it would be to secure a lasting peace across Iraq’s many divisions even after a victory.

The tragedy is that if ISIS had been treated seriously in the beginning, things wouldn’t be so serious in the end.

YES. Internet of Things: Have We Bitten Off More Than We Can Chew?

“We definitely have a lot of work to do. Any device that has an IP address is vulnerable to tampering,” Robert Siciliano, CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com told NBC News.

The crippling DDoS attack that last week shut down many popular websites, including Twitter, Amazon and Spotify, turned harmless web-connected home devices, such as smart cameras, into cyber soldiers in a “botnet” — a network of “bots.”

That botnet then flooded its target, internet service management company Dyn, sending it artificial traffic that made it impossible to access its customers’ websites.

We had four IoT outlet plugins, controlling nothing more dangerous than bedroom and living room lamps — convenient for having stuff switch on at dusk, and off again around bedtime. But they aren’t secured by any kind of encryption that I’m aware of, and they are “internet facing” for switching when we’re away from home. I knew they weren’t secure, but it didn’t seem as though anyone could do anything worse than switch my nightstand lamp on in the middle of the night.

When I read how hackers conducted Friday’s DDoS, I unplugged all four controllers, because it turns out that hackers can make a botnet — one capable of taking out huge swaths of the internet — out of seemingly anything.

EAST BOUND AND DOWN: Self-driving semi-truck makes first trip — a 120-mile beer run.

SOCIAL JUSTICE NETWORKING: Twitter’s sales team is taking a hit in big upcoming layoffs.

It’s possible to feel sorry for those losing their jobs while at the same time having no pity at all for a CEO who seems determined to run his company into the ground.

YOU MAY NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOUR CHILDREN: Sesame Street Preaches Trans Politics to Parents.

It’s been all downhill since Cookie Monster started reminding kids that cookies are a sometimes food.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Kerry’s Daughter Traveled On Taxpayers’ Dime To Get Government Contracts.

The Peace Corps authorized an estimated $46,000 for 20 international and domestic trips for Dr. Vanessa Kerry and her staff, agency documents obtained by TheDCNF show. The purpose of the travel was to form the Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP) – a Peace Corps-run and State Department-funded program Kerry proposed.

The Peace Corps ultimately gave Kerry’s nonprofit – Seed Global Health – $9 million in contracts for the program, which were bankrolled by the State Department and awarded without competition between 2012 and 2015, The DCNF previously revealed.

I’d like to see their books.

HMM: Justice Dept. Shakes Up Inquiry Into Eric Garner Chokehold Case.

ALL LIVES MATTER: Respect for police near all-time high.

WELL, YES: Putin’s Strategic Aim is to Fracture the West.

The apparent disconnect between Russia’s strategic gains and economic costs in theaters such as Ukraine and Syria leaves more questions than answers about “what Putin wants,” and how he perceives Russia’s interests. Alarmed by this uncertainty, a growing chorus of influential voices has warned that unless NATO shores up its land and maritime capabilities in Europe, it risks inadvertently inviting Russia to make a land-grab of NATO’s eastern territory. While NATO must prepare for such a scenario and reassure nervous eastern allies, Putin is probably not looking to rebuild Russia’s imperial frontiers or start a war with the United States, nor is he interested in or capable of reestablishing Russia as a global power like the Soviet Union was. Most analyses about “what Putin wants” miss the mark. Putin realizes that in an era when Russia’s internal challenges dramatically limit its ability to project power, Russia’s security depends not on rolling tanks across the borders of the NATO alliance, but instead on fracturing the West and paralyzing decision-making among Western leaders. Russia’s apparent success in exploiting these fissures within the Alliance is thus the greatest threat the United States and its NATO allies face from Moscow.

Read the whole thing.

Putin’s also had the good luck of an American President who has spent much of the last eight years trying unsuccessfully to cuddle up to America’s enemies, and trying more successfully to worry America’s allies.

OUR SEMI-RETIRED PRESIDENT: Obama mixes talk of ‘mean tweets,’ politics on Jimmy Kimmel.

SMOKING GUN:

Holy crap. #PodestaEmails18 pic.twitter.com/MkV15n1zX6

— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) October 25, 2016

“Clean this up,” eh? Sounds Nixon-ish to me.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Podesta Kept Up With Former Investment Firm Employer While at White House.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman met and corresponded on multiple occasions in his capacity as a top White House adviser with a previous employer seeking energy policies that it described as a potential “gold rush,” hacked emails and public records show.

John Podesta was a top White House energy policy official before joining the Clinton campaign last year. He previously served on the board of renewable energy investment firm Equilibrium Capital. He owned stock in the firm and drew $4,000 in annual “board fees.”

White House ethics rules bar employees from working on issues affecting former clients or employers for two years after taking their jobs. However, internal emails show that Podesta was in contact with Equilibrium within months of joining the White House as the company pursued a new energy efficiency financing model that would steer it significant revenue.

Glenn’s revolving-door surtax is a marvelous idea, and in addition to that we ought to look into requiring that for the duration of their office, elected officials, cabinet officers, and Presidential appointees place their investments into a blind trust.

HOTSEAT: Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey Still Won’t Answer Trump Question.

“I don’t think my constituents care that much how one person is going to vote,” Toomey said in response to the third ask by the moderator at Monday night’s Pennsylvania Senate debate.

“They’re gonna make their own decision, all across the commonwealth, about who they’re going to support and who they’re not going to support,” Toomey added. “I think they care much more about whether I’ve got policies that are gonna help grow this economy, whether I’ve got policies that are gonna help keep us safe, and that’s the contrast on which they’ll make their decision.”

His refusal to clarify his stance on the GOP nominee extends a long line of delicately-worded statements in which Toomey has sought to avoid alienating Republican voters and moderates by keeping Trump at arms’ length.

Toomey is walking a delicate line in a state that hasn’t gone Republican in almost 30 years.

WHAT WOULD ANDREW DO? Breitbart coordinated with liberal activist and organizer who disrupted GOP primary campaign events.

Aaron Black, an associate with Democracy Partners and a former Occupy Wall Street organizer, worked with the pro-Trump site Breitbart, tipping it off about his stunts, exchanging raw video and coordinating coverage, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation.

Black has resurfaced recently as one of the people featured in undercover video from the Project Veritas group. In the video, he claims to work for the Democratic National Committee. Though he does not appear on their payroll, his bio at Democracy Partners credits him with “working closely with the Democratic National Committee” during the 2012 election cycle. Black in the video says he helped organize protests in Chicago that led to Trump’s cancellation of a rally there in March.

According to the source, Black coordinated with Breitbart via email, phone and in person, including when he dressed up as a robot and trolled Marco Rubio’s events. The relationship was described as very friendly. An article subsequently published on Breitbart featured video footage of a physical confrontation between Black and Rubio’s New Hampshire campaign chairman.

“He worked directly with Breitbart’s political team on the ground in the primary states to sabotage Marco Rubio & Ted Cruz, and elect Trump as nominee of [the Republican] party,” the source told POLITICO. “[Black] was coordinating with [Breitbart’s] top staff to rabble rouse against Rubio at rallies.”

If true, this coordination would mark an ugly end to an ugly political season.

DOES SIZE MATTER? Clinton has bigger ground game than Trump.

Reporting from North Carolina:

“My sense is we got a late start,” said Dan Gurley, former deputy political director and field director for the RNC. “We are playing catch up, but we are catching up.”

The Trump/RNC operation’s 11 field offices in North Carolina compare to 24 that Mitt Romney had in 2012, according to FiveThirtyEight.

But they say what they lack in bricks and mortar, they are making up with boots on the ground.

Although this is comparing apples and oranges, the RNC has said it had 61 staffers in North Carolina in 2012 and this year has 657 “staff/trained organizers,” a figure which seems to include a lot of volunteers.

Chairman “Robin Hayes at the N.C. GOP, along with the RNC and their large investments in North Carolina, have put together a strong ground game competitive with Hillary’s many offices,” said Jonathan Felts, former White House political director under President George W. Bush.

“But my observation is that Donald Trump doesn’t seem very interested in the ground game,” Felts said. “Whether intentional or not, Trump seems to have decided to run a grand experiment betting that earned media and a cult of personality is more important than grass-roots infrastructure. It’s not how I learned to win elections, but we’ll see who was right on Nov. 8.”

It’s been a year of surprises, to say the least — so who knows?

21ST CENTURY QUESTIONS: What if your Obamacare insurer has left the business?

The result is a substantial increase in the number of people who’ll be changing health care plans during the 2017 open-enrollment period. Many will have only one insurer left in their exchange selling multiple plans. According to Kaiser Family Foundation, only 60 percent of exchange members nationwide will have three or more insurers to choose from, compared to 85 percent during 2016’s open enrollment.

What can you do if you’ve been abandoned by your insurer? You’ll need to keep an eye on the government’s efforts to match consumers with another plan to make sure you understand what’s happening. You’ll also need to do some due diligence on your own. The following advice from Joel Ario, a previous director of Health and Human Services and managing director of consulting firm, Manatt Health, may help.

Letting government do the shopping has never proven to be a good way of getting the best prices, historically speaking.

RELATED: It’s official: Double-digit rate hikes for Obamacare.

All of this, of course, means it’s working.

Turkey Mulls Iraq Ground Action Amid IS Threat.

Turkey’s foreign minister says Ankara will consider all military options — “including ground operations” — if developments in Iraq deteriorate to the extent that they threaten Turkey’s security.

The minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, told private broadcaster “24 TV” on Tuesday that Turkey would use its international right to quell threats from the Islamic State group and Kurdish militants in Iraq.

He says that “if the threat against us” increases, “we will use our power … to end the threat against us and that is our most natural right.”

Cavusoglu in televised comments the day before said the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK is crossing into Turkey from Iraq and coordinating attacks.

Ankara will likely use ISIS again as a smokescreen for bombing the Kurds, and perhaps to increase their military presence in northern Iraq.

RAMESH PONNURU: Why Obama Won’t Listen to Reason on Obamacare.

The core problem with his speech was not that he overestimated the merits of Obamacare (as much as I believe that he did). Nor was it the partisan silliness in which the president sometimes indulged. It’s that he refused to acknowledge that conservatives have reasonable disagreements with him about the direction of health-care policy.

Obama believes that only comprehensive insurance policies are real insurance. Conservatives generally believe, by contrast, that people should be free to buy cheaper policies that protect them only from financial catastrophes arising from their health needs.

It’s a difference that leads to others. Obama says that people who are having trouble buying insurance on Obamacare’s exchanges should receive more generous subsidies. The conservative alternative — relax the regulations that make the insurance unaffordable for them — is unacceptable to him because it would be a retreat from comprehensiveness.

All of the president’s shows of open-mindedness include similar caveats.

“I won” is not indicative of a open-minded thinker willing to listen to others and reach a consensus.

WELL, GOOD: Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Gets Prison Term.

Ms. Kane, 50 years old, was convicted in Montgomery County Court outside Philadelphia in August on nine counts, including perjury and obstruction of justice, for leaking grand jury documents to a local newspaper in a bid to embarrass a political foe and for lying about it under oath.

An attorney for Ms. Kane couldn’t immediately be reached to comment.

Once viewed as a rising political star in the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania, Ms. Kane resigned as attorney general a day after she was convicted. Her law license had already been suspended. She had faced a maximum sentence of between 12 and 24 years in prison.

Before her sentencing, Ms. Kane’s lawyers had asked the judge for leniency. They had argued that probation and home arrest were adequate punishment and that Ms. Kane needed to be home to care for two teenage sons.

Prosecutors had sought a significant prison sentence, arguing that the facts in the case were “particularly egregious” and that Ms. Kane had shown no remorse.

We need to set more examples like this one.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. America’s foreign policy is turning Iran into a world power.

By accident or by design will have pundits and historians arguing for years.

ALL IS PROCEEDING EXACTLY… WAIT, WHAT? Mosquitoes May Meet Their End Thanks to Marlon Brando.

Nope, never saw that one coming.