MOPPING UP IS A DANGEROUS CHORE: Islamic State desert bases still a headache for Iraq.

With police being targeted in their homes near Ramadi, and with the Islamic State (IS) still in possession of bases in the vast Iraqi desert, counterattacks on forces across the border in Syria are of growing concern to the Iraqis.

Security sources deployed to the area told Al-Monitor that with the recent military campaign launched by Turkey in northern Syria against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), there is a risk that the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dominated by the YPG, might withdraw from their positions in nearby eastern Syria to assist their fellow Kurds to the north. Such a development could make it easier for remaining IS forces in Syria to slip across the border and cause trouble.

Despite a Dec. 7 Russian declaration that IS had been defeated in Syria, some villages and areas in the east near the Iraqi border remain under the extremist group’s control.

More airstrikes like last weekend’s body blow would be nice.

READER CO-BLOGGER BOOK PLUG: I read Austin Bay’s Embrace the Suck a couple weekends ago and thoroughly enjoyed it — and the Kindle edition is a steal.

DAN MCLAUGHLIN: Chuck Schumer Doesn’t Want An Immigration Deal.

• Trump will sign basically anything that he can claim includes “The Wall.”

• Trump would be effectively admitting defeat if he signs something that he can’t claim includes “The Wall”

• If Trump is on board with an immigration deal with the Senate, that will give cover for it to pass the Republican-controlled House.

• Most of the Republican voters who care about restricting immigration will take their cues from Trump if he says he got a wall from Schumer, and will be happy and encouraged regardless of what else is in the bill.

• Most of the Democratic voting base will be furious at Democrats that they did something to make Trump happy – especially on his signature issue – regardless of what else is in the bill. The “Resistance” will treat this as the equivalent of a deal with Hitler.

• The optics of a smiling Trump signing a bipartisan immigration deal will play well overall for Trump and Republicans, and will help defuse some of the most polarizing arguments against Trump.

• Schumer expects to have more leverage to extract better terms in 2019, given that the Democrats are universally expected, at a minimum, to gain seats in the House in November.

Dan concludes, “Now that both Schumer and Trump have declared the wall non-negotiable, one of them has to cave or there’s no deal – a situation that was completely predictable when Schumer made his announcement.”

I’ve been reading Dan for years and respect the heck out of him, but his take might be too generous to Schumer. It isn’t that he doesn’t have any plays to make, but I don’t see any — at least not yet — which overcome his essential bind:

• Democrats can’t deliver the immigration deal which their most energized voters demand, even to the point of protesting at Schumer’s home.

• Continued Democratic obstruction on immigration restrictions — which poll surprisingly well (surprising to Beltway types, anyway) — risks turning off the very same Obama-to-Trump voters who Democrats need to win back in November.

This is far from over and Schumer is a crafty Washington player, but for now it looks like a “bad” deal for Schumer might be better than no deal at all.

HMM: New Docs Connect Robert Mueller to FBI Coverup Denying Saudi Family’s Connections to 9/11.

ALLIES (AND THIS TIME I’M NOT USING THAT WORD IRONICALLY): Japan PM Abe reveals country’s first mission to defend US military aircraft.

“With tensions growing over North Korea, the Self-Defense Forces carried out a mission to protect U.S. vessels and aircraft for the first time,” Abe said on Monday. “An alliance gets stronger if the partners can help each other. The Japan-U.S. alliance has without a doubt become stronger than ever.”

The comments were the first confirmation of a cooperative U.S.-Japan air mission. Last spring, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force helicopter carrier JS Izumo escorted the USNS Richard E. Byrd off Chiba Prefecture to resupply an unnamed warship that was helping defend against North Korean missiles.

If Beijing doesn’t like these developments, well, tough — they have no one to blame but themselves.

RUPERT DARWALL: Europe’s Energy Crack-Up.

Europe’s energy policies are worse than stupid. At the end of last year, Sir John Beddington, a former chief scientific adviser to the British government, lifted the lid on the scandal at the heart of the EU’s renewable policies. According to Sir John, since the EU’s first renewables directive in 2008, the growth of bioenergy — much of it sourced from North American woods and forests — has provided around half the expansion of renewable energy. To supply even one third of the additional renewable energy needed to meet Europe’s new 2030 target will require an amount of wood roughly equivalent to the combined harvest in the U.S. and Canada. The fiction currently being peddled is that Europe is only burning wood residues — the bits of trees left over from other uses — but new EU rules agreed to last week by the European Parliament will expand the definition of bioenergy to include trees specifically harvested to be burnt in power stations.

This, Sir John says, will result in higher emissions than from using natural gas or coal. Burning wood releases four times as much carbon dioxide per MWh of electricity as natural gas does, and over 50 percent more than coal. At the same time, cutting down trees reduces carbon sinks. Even so-called sustainable forestry practices incur “carbon debt,” with carbon paybacks running into decades and even centuries. EU policies, Sir John argues, gives a green light to developing countries for vastly greater forest removals, potentially risking “the incredibly valuable tropical forests that are not only valuable sources of biodiversity, but also form vast carbon sinks which are one of our best tools of defense against climate change.”

Whichever way you look at it, burning the world’s carbon sinks to meet the EU’s arbitrary renewable-energy targets is environmentally insane.

It isn’t insane if your goal is to gain political power and money for cronies, instead of “saving” the environment.

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE: If you’re using an Android phone, Google may be tracking every move you make.

The Alphabet subsidiary’s location-hungry tentacles are quietly lurking behind some of the most innovative features of its Android mobile operating system. Once those tentacles latch on, phones using Android begin silently transmitting data back to the servers of Google, including everything from GPS coordinates to nearby wifi networks, barometric pressure, and even a guess at the phone-holder’s current activity. Although the product behind those transmissions is opt-in, for Android users it can be hard to avoid and even harder to understand. Opting in is also required to use several of Android’s marquee features.

As a result, Google holds more extensive data on Android users than some ever realize. That data can be used by the company to sell targeted advertising. It can also be used to track into stores those consumers who saw ads on their phone or computer urging them to visit.1 This also means governments and courts can request the detailed data on an individual’s whereabouts.

While you’ve probably never heard of it, “Location History” is a longtime Google product with origins in the now-defunct Google Latitude. (Launched in 2009, that app allowed users to constantly broadcast their location to friends.) Today, Location History is used to power features like traffic predictions and restaurant recommendations. While it is not enabled on an Android phone by default—or even suggested to be turned on when setting up a new phone—activating Location History is subtly baked into setup for apps like Google Maps, Photos, the Google Assistant, and the primary Google app. In testing multiple phones, Quartz found that none of those apps use the same language to describe what happens when Location History is enabled, and none explicitly indicate that activation will allow every Google app, not just the one seeking permission, to access Location History data.

Google gave up on “Don’t be evil” a long time ago, assuming they ever meant it.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Keep Dreaming, Dreamers.

“I’M OUT!” 10 Seinfeld Moments That Totally Nailed Real Life.

SEEN ON FACEBOOK:

I don’t think “embarrassing meme” is how Cathy Newman would have chosen to define her career, but that’s the game she chose to play.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH THIS STORY: 12 Sexy Camels Kicked Out of Beauty Contest for Using Botox.

BUT WHAT ABOUT NATURE’S FITNESS STANDARDS? I Became A Plus-Size Fitness Model To Say ‘F**k You’ To The World’s Body Standards.

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Legislation Tries to Block Census from Adding Citizenship Question as DOJ Requested.

RETAIL BLUES: Toys R Us to close 180 stores across the US.

The one closest to us escaped the chopping block, which is nice because there’s something special about taking your kids to a big toy store rather than just setting them loose on Amazon.

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND INFURIATE PEOPLE: DACA recipients temporarily block Disneyland entrance as an act of civil disobedience.

Given the location, perhaps I should have intro’d with “BLUE ON BLUE.”

BUT OF COURSE: Glenn Simpson, Conspiracy Theorist, Finds a Place for the Jews in his Trump-Russia Fantasia.

In some sense, none of this should be surprising. Before he left the practice of journalism in 2009, Glenn Simpson was an investigative reporter. As every journalist knows, the investigative reporter is a special breed, valued because of his or her ability to see connections that are likely lost on others—often because there is no connection. What newspaper editors will never admit when they are scooping up prizes won by their ace investigative reporters, but every professional who has been around the block in the news business knows, is that nine of every 10 stories pitched by an investigative reporter are indelibly riddled with speculative lunacy. The one good lead needs to be carefully managed for months by at least one sub-editor before it ever reaches the desk of the top editor, whose publication, and professional reputation, requires excising every trace of madness before the story sees print. If you doubt this, here’s a sample of what a legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning ace investigative reporter like Seymour Hersh sounds like unplugged, i.e. pretty much like every other investigative reporter I have ever met.

So, what happens when there is no more editor, and the investigative reporter, Glenn Simpson, is managing the business? Even worse, what happens when the chief investigative theorist aka conspiracy enthusiast is handing out his fevered story ideas to other journalists—in fact, to the entirety of the Washington and New York press corps, for more than a year? We now know what happens — you wind up with a media that has replicated the sensibility of a conspiracy theorist.

Read the whole thing.

TYLER O’NEIL: Rush Limbaugh goes tinfoil hat.

DON’T LOOK UNDER THE BED: A wildly popular conspiracy theory about why there are so many Mattress Firm stores is starting to sound less crazy.

“Mattress Firm is some sort of giant money laundering scheme,” a Reddit user wrote, adding: “I remember seeing 4 mattress firms all on each corner of an intersection once, and there is no way there is such a demand for mattresses.”

This caused an outcry on the Reddit thread.

Mattress Firm, which acquired Sleepy’s in 2015, now has over 3,500 stores, sometimes in high concentrations. But Reddit users argue that there are too many, especially given that it stocks a product that people typically buy every seven to 10 years.

“Multiple stores = more places to shuffle money between and more sources for fake money to appear to come from,” another user wrote.

The South African retailer Steinhoff bought Mattress Firm for $3.8 billion in 2016. At the time, analysts were skeptical about why Steinhoff had forked over so much for a business increasingly threatened by new startups such as Casper.

Toward the end of last year, Steinhoff’s stock price tanked by as much as 62% in one day, wiping out $15 billion of its market value, Reuters reported. The company postponed publishing its full-year accounts, citing “accounting irregularities,” and its two top executives and chairman have resigned.

Curious.

BLUE ON BLUE: Chuck Schumer’s People Are Camping Outside His Home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhYxi33F17s

Jazz Shaw adds, “It won’t come as much of a surprise to learn that one of the groups organizing the activity was the Working Families Party of New York. They’re basically the modern version of the socialists in New York and if Chuck Schumer has them up in arms, there’s a definite fracture on the left.”

Corn, popped.

BREAKING: ISIS Group Puts Crosshairs on Vegas Hotel in Threat to Shed ‘Dirty Blood.’

BEFORE THIS IT WAS UNOFFICIALLY OFFICIAL: Pew Poll Makes It Official: Democrats Abandon Israel.

LONG TIME COMING: Soothing words aside, the Trump administration recognizes that the relationship with Turkey is dangerously near the breaking point.

America needs to bolster Sunni Arabs in Syria, lest the Islamic State returns. But American commanders know that it’s the Kurds (who the Turks now say they want to destroy) who have done the bulk of the fighting and dying. The civilian death toll in the Islamic State conflict hasn’t been well-calculated, but it was horrific.

Votel visited the ruined city of Raqqa on Monday. He told reporters that the campaign there was “ugly,” but necessary. When we talked last week, he said in the last phase of the Islamic State campaign, U.S. advisers and airpower would partner with the SDF in a war of “annihilation” against “hundreds” of Islamic State fighters who are trapped in the lower Euphrates valley. U.S. commanders worry that their SDF allies will be pulled away from this essential mopping-up operation to fight the invading Turks.

A sign of the new post- Islamic State crackup in Syria was this headline in the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak about Votel’s arrival in the war zone: “U.S. commander visits … terrorists in Syria’s Raqqa.” That bodes ill.

Yep.

BRANDON MORSE: “Wonder Woman” Noticeably Absent From Oscar Nominations, And It’s Little Mystery As To Why. “A very successful film directed by a woman will get no recognition at the Oscars because it starred the wrong woman, sporting the wrong values, having the wrong looks, and promoting the wrong behaviors. For Hollywood, Wonder Woman was just too… well, American.”

RELATED:

The “revolt against the masses” indeed.

NO. WAY. Here’s A Crazy Theory: Maybe Americans Just Want A Rational Immigration Policy.

David Harsanyi:

Logically speaking, Democrats can’t simultaneously contend that the borders are already secure and argue we have an obligation to legalize 800,000 illegal immigrant children and another 11 (or whatever it is) million illegal immigrants. How did they get here? How will the dynamic change in the future? All the arguments now in play for DACA will be in play a decade from now. Do we do this every decade?

Now Mitch McConnell has promised to allow an up-or-down vote on DACA in early February that ensures the immigration debate will consume Washington for the next few weeks. It seems there’s already consensus forming among analysts that this is a loser for Republicans. But maybe the lesson of the shutdown is that DACA, and the debate surrounding illegal immigrants in general, isn’t as simple or as powerful as Democrats imagine. Maybe the shutdown’s lesson is that Trump can hold out for a wall and other concessions on chain migration and enforcement in exchange for an easier path towards legalization for those already here. Maybe the lesson is that a deal is available.

Because if the wall is just a silly, ineffective, useless prop then certainly it would make sense for Democrats to accede to its creation to help legalize the Dreamers and create a more rational and ethical immigration policy. If they don’t, cynical people might start to get the impression that Democrats are far more interested in creating millions of new Democrats than they are in creating a lawful and rational process that respects the sovereignty of their nation.

I guess I’m a cynical person then.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. America Needs More Ladies.

It’s a surefire fix for creating more gentlemen.