TWITCHY: Touré thinks THIS is why Americans are losing ‘ability to trust media’?

Plus this important reminder from the comments:

YET ANOTHER COOL BOMBER PHOTO: The photo shows a USAF B1-B being escorted by a USN F/A-18E Super Hornet. The two planes are flying over the Philippine Sea (east and north of the Philippines). They aren’t over the South China Sea (west of the Philippines) — but they could be.

From the informative caption:

The B-1 is deployed in support of U.S. Pacific Command’s Continuous Bomber Presence (CBP) mission. In place since 2004, the CBP missions are conducted by U.S. Air Force bombers such as the B-1, B-52 Stratofortress and B-2 Spirit in order to provide non-stop stability and security in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.

The photo credit goes to a USN lieutenant.

GOOD LUCK: Dems Hope Ivanka Can ‘Convince’ Her Dad to Support Parental Leave Plan.

Trump is busy resetting foreign policy, repealing and replacing ObamaCare, rewriting a major executive order, and even just staffing up his Administration — and Democrats are pinning their hopes on a parental leave bill?

BILL GERTZ: Murder of Kim Jong Un’s Brother Comes After Book Reveals Plan to Use Him for Regime Change.

The assassination came as a recently published book by this writer, iWar: War and Peace in the Information Age, called for waging an information warfare campaign that would use the estranged brother of Kim Jong Un as a replacement leader.

Since taking power in 2011 following the death of his father, Kim Jong Un has ruled with an iron grip while carrying out ruthless purges of perceived opponents. As many as 300 officials have been killed in the purges, including Kim’s pro-China uncle, Jang Sang Taek.

Kim Jong Nam, 45, at one time was considered the heir to the late Kim Jong Il, but he ran afoul of the Pyongyang communist family dynasty after his 2001 arrest in Japan for entering the country using a false passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

As the Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial, Kim Jong Nam was viewed as a threat to the Kim Jong Un regime because of past comments criticizing the North Korean system. “North Korea should pay attention to reform and openness. If it continues like this, it cannot become an economic power,” Jong Nam was quoted as telling a Japanese newspaper in 2011.

Jong Nam also opposed the dynastic communist system, which he said “does not fit with socialism and my father was against it.”

He also was close to his uncle Jang, who was executed in 2013, allegedly for corruption but more likely for his close ties to the Chinese. Jong Nam’s support for Jang is an indication he favored the reform communism of China over the Stalinist North Korean model.

An “information warfare campaign” to topple Kim Jong-un seems like a long shot, at best. But Jong-nam’s connections with China and Jang were seemingly enough to earn his half-brother’s wrath.

FRACKERS HAVE DONE MORE THAN THE SIERRA CLUB EVER DID: The U.S. Keeps Getting Greener.

The Environmental Protection Agency still exists—though House Republicans have introduced a bill that would seek to change that, and President Trump is reportedly ready to sign executive orders to hamstring the agency’s climate change-related efforts—and it just released its annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions report. The published information only runs through 2015, owing to the lag associated with such large data sets, but what we do know is, well, encouraging. . . .

A 2.2 percent annual decrease in overall GHG emissions is no small feat, and it will obviously be received as good news by environmentalists around the country. But before those greens despair that now, without Obama, those emissions are going to spike again, let’s consider that it was a shift in fossil fuels—not renewables—that was responsible for the majority of these reductions. Specifically, it was the ongoing displacement of coal-fired power plants by natural gas-fired ones that did the heavy lifting for American climate change mitigation in 2015.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions hit a 25-year low over the first six months of 2016, continuing the progress that the EPA says we made in 2015. In both cases, the drop in emissions was largely put down to a decline in coal usage (coal is the dirtiest and highest-emitting fossil fuel). Interestingly, it was cheap shale gas and not President Obama’s Clean Power Plan that dethroned Old King Coal.

That’s why fracking should be considered green, and it’s also why we shouldn’t expect Donald Trump to increase our overall emissions. Trump is fracking friendly, and as many times as he promised to revive the coal industry during his campaign, he won’t rein in the shale boom just to make coal country happy. The oil and gas that revolution is unleashing is just too important to our energy security and the U.S. economy to ignore.

Contra this piece, however, I don’t think Obama “worked hard” to advance shale energy. Quite the contrary, in fact.

THANKS, OBAMA: Obama Appointees Preventing Mattis From Rebuilding The Military, Says Armed Services Chair.

“I am concerned that … to fix these problems [it] is going to take a lot more money, and yet a lot of the folks who are coming up with the budget to fix them are the same people who have been fighting every step of the way against our efforts to fix these problems,” said Chairman Mac Thornberry during a Capitol Hill press gaggle Thursday.

Thornberry noted that Mattis is “alone” in his attempts to alleviate the readiness problem at the Pentagon. He added that there are some people, including “political appointees and others from the Obama administration,” who have been “trying to deny there was a problem.”

The Vice Joint Chiefs of Staff warned the armed services committee last week that the lack of military readiness across all branches was putting the military’s capabilities at risk. Their reports revealed, among other substantial problems, only three of 58 Army brigade combat teams are ready for combat, while fewer than half of the Air Force’s aging aircraft fleet is ready to fight.

Heads should roll, and the sooner the better.

CARTEL WAR PHOTOS: A new batch of leaked photos purportedly show factions of the Sinaloa cartel preparing for a cartel civil war now that former senior commander Joaquin Guzman has been extradited to the U.S. The photo gallery also includes a section with pictures of Gulf cartel gunmen. I’m linking to the Houston Chronicle/San Antonio Express-News report. The Sinaloa photos are credited to Blog del Narco.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: ‘Sell-By’ Dates On Food Items Will Be Replaced By ‘Use By’ And ‘Best If Used By’ Labels.

Per the Standardized Voluntary Regulations, stated by the two trade groups of the grocery industry, every manufacturer will be now be using only two labels- “use by” and “best if used by”, instead of the other 10 labels used earlier.

The “use by” label acts as the safety indicator, thus hinting to the customer the date by which the food is safe to eat and when it is not.

The “best if used by” label acts as description of quality by the manufacturer, which hints when the product should be consumed to get the best taste.

These dates, which will come from the manufacturer, actually points to one of the two – either the dates indicated to the store when the product should be stacked on store shelves, or suggest to the consumers when to consume the food item for best taste.

Good to know.

BOGUS NUMBERS FROM A BOGUS OUTFIT: The Southern Poverty Law Center Is Counting Extremists Again. ” I see that the SPLC is no longer counting the Moorish Science Temple among the ‘Patriot’ groups—a wise decision—but the list still has separate entries for both WorldNetDaily and WorldNetDaily’s book imprint. What on earth could justify that? There’s also the matter of where you draw the line between an ‘extremist’ group and some plain old constitutionalist conservatives. I understand why the Patriot roster includes militias and III%ers, but do they really need to list every Eagle Forum chapter in the land?”

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Adjunct Serfs: Trump Should Target Worker Exploitation at American Universities. “A growing army of administrators, standing on the backs of underpaid and overworked adjunct professors, is the kind of exploitative two-tier system that people on the left typically denounce. But now, although there’s a bit of support for graduate students and adjuncts who want to unionize, there’s nothing like the ‘Fight for 15’ movement aimed at ending this unfairness. And, weirdly, no school is hiring ‘adjunct administrators.’”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UC San Diego Students Protest Visit by ‘Oppressive and Offensive’ Dalai Lama. They’re Chinese students spouting the Chinese government’s line, wrapped in college diversity-speak. To be fair, college diversity-speak lends itself to communist propaganda. . . .

NO COMICALLY MISLABELED RED PLASTIC BUTTONS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS RESET: Tillerson Has ‘Productive Meeting’ with Russian Counterpart on First Trip

CHANGE: Trump’s Inroads in Union Ranks Have Labor Leaders Scrambling.

DEEP STATE OVER THE EDGE: In A Show Of Defiance, EPA Workers Fight To Stop Pruitt’s Confirmation.

THEY HAVE AN INFLATED SENSE OF THEIR OWN IMPORTANCE:

CIVIL WAR: Dem State Leaders Think Obama’s New Organizing Army is ‘Grade A Bullshit’

The nonprofit, which functions as a sort of parallel-Democratic National Committee, was founded to mobilize Democratic voters and supporters in defense of President Obama’s, and the Democratic Party’s, agenda. Instead, the organization has drawn the intense ire, both public and private, of grassroots organizers and state parties that are convinced that OFA inadvertently helped decimate Democrats at the state and local level, while Republicans cemented historic levels of power and Donald J. Trump actually became leader of the free world.

These intra-party tensions aren’t going away, especially now that OFA “relaunched” itself last week to protect the Affordable Care Act, boost turnout at congressional townhalls, and train grassroots organizers gearing up for the Trump era.

“This is some GRADE A Bullshit right here,” Stephen Handwerk, executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party, wrote in a private Democratic-listserv email obtained by The Daily Beast. Handwerk was reacting to news of OFA’s post-election retooling, which was shared “without comment” to the group of state-level Dems by Crystal Kay Perkins, executive director for Texas Democrats.

“It also to me seems TONE DEAF—we have lost over 1,000 seats in the past 8 years… all because of this crap,” Handwerk continued. “Let’s get through the next two weeks—but then we gotta figure this out and keep the pressure on. WOW.”

Others on the thread shared these sentiments.

Obama has always been about Obama, but now that he’s out of office, his fellow Democrats are free to push back.

WELL, THAT’S PRETTY OBVIOUS BULLSHIT, ISN’T IT? WaPo editor: Would have covered Clinton the ‘same’ way as Trump.

The editor of the Washington Post, which staffed up its White House team to cover the new administration, said the paper would have covered a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency with the same intensity as it has President Trump.

Cheered by journalists at a media roundtable in California late Tuesday, Marty Baron also said that despite some criticism, the Post is doing its job, not acting as the opposition.

Well, even an NPR CEO thinks you’re so biased against Trump that you’re like a reverse-Breitbart. So, no.

CHARGE IT: U.S. household debt near record levels, Federal Reserve report says.

It hasn’t been this high since 2008, but the foundation might be more secure this time around:

The report indicates mortgages still make up the bulk of household debt, but student loans are now 10 percent of the total, auto loans are 9 percent of the total and credit card debt is 6 percent. Dollar amounts rose in each category in 2016’s fourth quarter. The rising debt indicates that banks are extending more credit to households.

A major difference between the 2008 and 2016 debt levels, the report said, is that fewer delinquencies were reported at the end of 2016. In last year’s fourth quarter, 4.8 percent of debts were regarded as delinquent or late in payment, compared to 8.5 percent of total household debt in 2008’s third quarter. There were also 200,000 fewer consumer bankruptcies reported in 2016’s fourth quarter, a four percent decline, compared to the fourth quarter of 2015.

That’s still a lot of debt for households to carry around.

TONY BLAIR: “I want to be explicit. Yes, the British people voted to leave Europe. And I agree the will of the people should prevail. I accept right now there is no widespread appetite to re-think. But the people voted without knowledge of the true terms of Brexit. As these terms become clear, it is their right to change their mind. Our mission is to persuade them to do so.”

Given what’s happened to Labour since Blair left office, his new anti-Brexit campaign seems like a non-starter. Who would call for a second referendum, now that Blair’s party has rejected his reforms, and Britain has rejected Blair’s party?

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Former Obama campaign aide David Plouffe has been fined $90,000 for breaking the city of Chicago’s ethics rules in lobbying Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) on behalf of Uber. When you’re too unethical for Chicago. . . .

BURYING THE NEEDLE ON THE SMUG-O-METER:

It’s a wonder everybody doesn’t love them more.

FLASHBACK: Why do organizations like CNN let Democrats arrested for felonies slip through the cracks, while going crazy about things that Republicans say?