One challenge facing consumers will be wide swings in prices. Some insurers are seeking double-digit price increases, while others are hoping to snare more of the market by lowering premiums for the coming year. At the same time, the Obama administration is expected to try to persuade about five million more people to sign up while also trying to ensure that eight million people who now have coverage renew for another year.

Adding to the complexity is the shorter time frame for choosing a new policy: three months instead of six.

"In some respects, it's going to be more complicated," said Kevin Counihan, the former chief executive of Access Health CT, Connecticut's online marketplace, who was just named as the head of the insurance marketplaces for the federal government. Connecticut's marketplace was among the most successful state-based exchanges, sharply reducing the number of uninsured in the state. "Part of me thinks that this year is going to make last year look like the good old days."

McCain and Graham are talking about "optics" not strategy or policy. What they want is for president Obama to go on TV and talk about good and evil and how the oceans don't protect us anymore and how we have to fight the bad guys and "take 'em out." They want tough talk. They need the US to be swinging its great big stick as hard as it can because that is how they perceive influence to be properly wielded. If you are calm or thoughtful or patient, it means you are showing weakness.

These two have perfected a certain act. Graham is the hysterical panic artist given to calling for the smelling salts at the slightest suggestion of a foreign threat who is paired with the macho McCain who says we should just put 'em in a room together and "tell 'em to stop the bullsh!t". Together they are the perfect Republican couple of the 1950's --- if Ralph Cramden had been married to Lucy Ricardo.

Link

And Peter Beinert, whom she quotes at length, is worth reading, as well.

Here's part of what he wrote:

One reason Obama isn't bombing in Syria yet is that he's not clear on what the goal would be. McCain and Graham are. "ISIS," they write, "cannot be contained." Why not? Hasn't the U.S. been containing al-Qaeda--ISIS's estranged older brother--for more than a decade now? But the two senators don't pause to explain. "It must be confronted," they declare. What does that mean? If the U.S. is bombing ISIS in Iraq, aren't we confronting the group already?

McCain and Graham later clarify: The goal is to "defeat ISIS." Excellent--how do we do that? 1) "It requires an inclusive government in Baghdad that shares power and wealth with Iraqi Sunnis." OK, Obama just toppled a prime minister in service of that goal. But there are those decades of dictatorship, brutality, and sectarian slaughter to overcome. 2) "Mobilize America's partners in a coordinated, multilateral effort." OK, but those "partners"--which include pro-Muslim Brotherhood regimes like Turkey and Qatar and anti-Muslim Brotherhood ones like Egypt and Saudi Arabia--are jockeying fiercely with one another for influence across the Middle East. Not to mention the fact that they don't listen to us all that much anymore. 3) Bring "an end to the conflict in Syria."

[snip]

Any serious proposal for expanding American military involvement in Iraq into Syria must do one of two things. 1) Explain, in some detail, how bombing ISIS will strengthen the moderate Syrian opposition rather than other Sunni jihadist groups (for instance, al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's affiliate) and/or Bashar al-Assad. Or 2) explain why it's worth bombing ISIS even if we strengthen other Sunni jihadist groups and/or Bashar al-Assad.

What's next? Hillbilly Handfishin' stars Skipper Bivins and Trent Jackson showing up to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

The Obama administration has lifted longtime restrictions on Libyans attending flight schools in the United States and training here in nuclear science.......

DHS said the prohibition is irrelevant now since the United States and Libya have worked to "normalize their relationship," according to the directive approved by the OMB.

Link

And then....

Intelligence reports of the stolen jetliners were distributed within the U.S. government over the past two weeks and included a warning that one or more of the aircraft could be used in an attack later this month on the date marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, said U.S. officials familiar with the reports.

The aircraft were reportedly taken in late August following the takeover of Tripoli International Airport, located about 20 miles south of the capital, by Libyan Dawn.

Link

Six days after the first Snowden leak appeared on the front pages of newspapers worldwide, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit to stop the mass surveillance by US intelligence agencies. A New York federal judge ruled against the ACLU in December. Today, ACLU lawyers made a second effort, making their case to a three-judge panel on the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. It's the first time a US Appeals Court has considered whether the "bulk telephony" database is constitutional.

President Obama has been excoriated for declaring that "we don't have a strategy yet" for effectively confronting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. In criticizing Obama for taking too much time, Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told "Fox News Sunday" that "this `don't-do-stupid-stuff' policy isn't working." That sounded odd to my ear -- like we should just bomb somebody, even if it is stupid. If Obama did that, what would he be ignoring?

First, experience. After 9/11 that sort of "fire, ready, aim" approach led George W. Bush to order a ground war in Iraq without sufficient troops to control the country, without a true grasp of Iraq's Shiite-Sunni sectarian dynamics, and without any realization that, in destroying the Sunni Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the Sunni Baathist regime in Iraq, we were destroying both of Iran's mortal enemies and thereby opening the way for a vast expansion of Iran's regional influence. We were in a hurry, myself included, to change things after 9/11, and when you're in a hurry you ignore complexities that come back to haunt you later.
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I'm all-in on destroying ISIS. It is a sick, destabilizing movement. I support using U.S. air power and special forces to root it out, but only as part of a coalition, where everybody who has a stake in stability there pays their share and where mainstream Sunnis and Shiites take the lead by demonstrating that they hate ISIS more than they hate each other. Otherwise, we'll end up in the middle of a God-awful mess of duplicitous allies and sectarian passions, and nothing good we do will last.

A terrified Arizona widow, armed with a revolver, hid in her bathroom then shot and subdued a robber who broke into her home.

As the last few days of summer linger, you'd be forgiven if you feel a wave of anxiety upon the inevitable return of crisp, cold mornings. There's no two ways about it: Last winter, replete with polar vortexes galore, was brutal. And we may not have seen the last of them.

New research published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications attempts to track the polar vortex disturbances back to their source.

The study, written by a team of Korean and American scientists, is the latest (and perhaps most comprehensive) attempt to answer a question that's as hot as any in climate science right now: What's the impact of melting Arctic sea ice on extreme weather?

Through a blend of statistical analysis of recent weather and computer modeling of a world in which rapid Arctic ice loss hadn't occurred, the study establishes a link between the warming ocean, melting ice, and weakened polar vortex. For the first time, the study also proposes an epicenter of action where years of extreme ice loss in particular appear to dominate this process: a remote part of the Arctic between Scandinavia and Siberia.