DESIGNER CAROLINA HERRERA: ‘Of Course’ I Would Dress Melania Trump.
Good for her. The politicalization of everything up to and including fashion does nothing to hurt Trump — either Trump — and everything to reinforce Flyover Country’s suspicions of the coastal “elites.”
PRIVACY: Baltimore’s aerial surveillance continues unchecked.
The Baltimore surveillance program broke new ground by bringing wide-area persistent surveillance—a technology that the military has been developing for a decade—to municipal law enforcement. The police department kept the program secret from the public, as well as from the city’s mayor and other local officials, until it was detailed in August by Bloomberg Businessweek. Privacy advocates, defense attorneys, and some local legislators called for the program to be suspended immediately, until the technology could be evaluated in public hearings.
But in the three months since the public discussion began, the police have continued to use the surveillance plane to monitor large events, such as the Baltimore Marathon, and essential questions remain unanswered. The police continue to classify the program as an ongoing trial, but the private company that operates it for the police—Persistent Surveillance Systems—doesn’t have a permanent contract and no specific regulations govern its operations.
Why are Democrat-run cities such cesspits of militarized police surveillance?
HERE WE GO AGAIN:
Trump hasn't said much about homelessness—and that's making a lot of people nervous https://t.co/zGFqHcJlD9 pic.twitter.com/Jvt7oGEJU3
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) December 8, 2016
As Glenn noted years ago, the mainstream media only makes an issue out of homelessness when a Republican is in the White House.
NEWS-READING GRIN: Pope Warns That ‘Fake News’ Is a ‘Sickness’ Comparable to Eating Excrement.
PAYBACK’S A… YOU KNOW: Republicans Explore Budget Maneuver to Chip Away at Dodd-Frank.
They are exploring use of a tactic known as reconciliation, a procedural shortcut tied to the budget, which would allow them to make legislative changes to the 2010 regulatory-overhaul law with just a simple majority in the Senate. Republicans are likely to hold 52 seats in the 100-seat chamber, meaning they could pass such changes with just GOP votes.
They would otherwise need 60 votes to get the legislation through the Senate, putting them in the difficult position of needing support from some Democrats, who generally oppose rolling back the landmark law.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) is leading the charge to use reconciliation to pare back pieces of the law, which President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wanted to scale back or scrap.
“We need to make a number of really substantial reforms to Dodd-Frank,” Mr. Toomey said in an interview Wednesday. While he said he would prefer to make legislative changes with Democrats’ support, he is open to more partisan methods. “I am very much in favor of making sure we have all the tools to do this,” he said.
Republicans are weighing using the tool to chip away at two Dodd-Frank creations in particular: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of Financial Research.
The upcoming session of Congress promises at the least to be wildly entertaining.
MORGAN CHILDS FOR GQ: The Libertarian Utopia That’s Just a Bunch of White Guys on a Tiny Island.
This is the most sneering and hate-filled piece I recall seeing in a major publication.
BRICK AND MORTAR BLUES: Sears Says It’s Likely to Close Many More Stores as Sales Slide Worsens.
JOHN ELLIS: The Best Albums of 2016.
Mostly solid picks, including a near-handful I’d missed. And I’d have put David Bowie’s Blackstar higher on the list.
WHITTLE, OTT, GREEN: Man’s inhumanity to kangaroo.
Full disclosure: I’m Green.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Syria President Says Victory in Aleppo Won’t End the War.
Assad, in an interview published on Thursday in the state-owned newspaper al-Watan, said he will no longer consider truce offers, adding that such offers, particularly from Americans, often come when the rebels are in a “difficult spot.”
“That is why we hear wailing and screaming and pleas for truces as the only political discourse now,” Assad said. He described his forces’ fight in Aleppo as one “against terrorism and a conspiracy” to destroy and divide Syria, allegedly led by Turkey.
“Liberating Aleppo from the terrorists deals a blow to the whole foundation of this project,” he said. But he added, “to be realistic, it doesn’t mean the end of the war.”
With Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and former commercial heart, the capital of Damascus and Homs, the third largest city under his control, Assad says “terrorists” no longer hold any cards.
“Even if we finish in Aleppo, we will carry on with the war against them,” Assad added.
It doesn’t seem possible that any amount of force or any attainable political solution will ever make Syria whole again. Iraq either, for that matter.
PERHAPS SARAH HOYT WILL LET ME BORROW HER SHOCKED FACE: OPEC expected to deliver only half of target production cut.
Most energy professionals expect OPEC output will decline to around 33.0 million barrels per day in January 2017, down from 33.6 million bpd in October but well above the deal’s target of 32.5 million bpd.
Most of the 260 respondents to the survey think the organisation will succeed in cutting output, but on average by only 600,000 bpd, or half its stated target of 1.2 million bpd.
Less than 8 percent thought OPEC would achieve its target in full. More than twice as many thought output would stay the same or rise.
SALENA ZITO: Even anti-Trump working-class voters are having second thoughts.
What is astounding, post-election, is the total lack of contrition Democrats have displayed for ignoring the workingman and -woman bloc that has been the party’s horn of plenty. The only regret they display is that they lost the election, not the voters.
What Democrats, academics and pundits keep refusing to see is that the loss was never about Trump’s candidacy; it was all about how Democrats have increasingly lost touch with their voters outside of coastal America — until those voters finally hit their breaking point.
“The Democratic Party has become a coastal elitist club and if there is any decision or discussion made to broaden that within the ranks it is squashed,” said Dane Strother, a legendary Washington, DC-based Democratic strategist.
“We have completely lost touch with Middle America,” he admits, “How did we go from the party of the little man to the party of the elite?” Then he answers; “Yes, we rightfully should protect the rights of minorities, African-Americans, Hispanics, the LBGTQ communities and we always should — but we can’t forget the rest of the country along the way,” he said.
It isn’t that the Democrats forgot the rest of the country, it’s that they disdain the rest of the country.
OBAMACARE: IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T RUIN? Drug price hikes put sex beyond reach.
Soaring prices for prescription medicines for impotence and other problems have put the remedies out of reach for some.
Without insurance coverage, Viagra and Cialis cost about $50 a pill, triple their 2010 list prices. The new “female Viagra,” a daily pill for low sex drive called Addyi, costs $800 per month. Older products for women also have seen huge price run-ups, Truven Health Analytics data show.
“Many of them don’t get past the pharmacy counter once they see the price,” says Sheryl Kingsberg, a University Hospitals-Cleveland Medical Center behavioral psychologist and researcher who counsels men and women.
What people actually pay out of pocket varies. Some insurance prescription plans, including Medicare, cover some of the medicines. Some plans don’t cover any, arguing they’re not medically necessary. Many require steep copayments or limit the number of impotence pills per prescription.
“Once you get to a certain price point, sex becomes a financial decision,” says Dr. Elizabeth Kavaler, a sexual dysfunction specialist at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital. “It takes a lot of the joy out of this.”
Indeed.
PAYBACK’S A… YOU KNOW: The Most Potent Federal Regulatory Agency Will Answer Solely to Donald Trump.
The [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] was unaccountable to Congress and the president—but not the courts.
A federal appeals court ruling in October changed the fundamental structure of the CFPB and will allow future presidents to have direct control over the agency that has direct control over wide swaths of the country’s banking and financial sectors. Regulatory agencies headed by a single executive must be directly accountable to the president, the court observed, while independent agencies authorized by Congress—like the SEC and the FCC—must have a multi-member commission at the helm.
Practically, that means that Trump might be able to replace the director of the CFPB, Richard Cordray, before his term officially ends in 2018.
More importantly, it means Trump will be able to use the CFPB’s powers for his own ends, if he wants, because the person who gets to determine whether a banking practice is unfair, deceptive, or abusive will now serve at the whims of the president.
In other words, nothing changes on January 20.
Obligatory:
WELL, YES: Comprehensive Terrorism Strategy Needed.
Bruce Hoffman, Director for Security Studies at Georgetown University:
Clearly during the eight years of the Obama Administration there was an effort to shift from the deployment of U.S. ground forces for prolonged periods overseas to using other forms of engaging terrorists, principally unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, as well as the increased deployment of Special Operations forces. Tactically, it was successful – it eliminated at least three-dozen senior al Qaeda commanders following the ramp up of drone strikes in 2009 – and it crystalized of course with the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011. These tactics served to disrupt terrorist operations and keep these groups off balance. Tactically, it was unquestionably successful.
But strategically, the U.S. faces the most parlous international security situation in terms of terrorism, at least since the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. According to the National Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC), despite our ongoing efforts in Iraq and Syria over the past two years, ISIS has expanded geographically. The NCTC reported that in 2014, when the U.S.-backed campaign against ISIS began, the group had branches in seven countries. By 2015, they had branches in 13 countries, and by 2016, this number had increased again, now to 18. So clearly the Obama Administration’s strategy hasn’t stopped the spread of ISIS.
Read the whole interview.
WHICH BRINGS US TO THE END OF THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: U.S. life expectancy declines for the first time since 1993.
Rising fatalities from heart disease and stroke, diabetes, drug overdoses, accidents and other conditions caused the lower life expectancy revealed in a report released Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics. In all, death rates rose for eight of the top 10 leading causes of death.
“I think we should be very concerned,” said Princeton economist Anne Case, who called for thorough research on the increase in deaths from heart disease, the No. 1 killer in the United States. “This is singular. This doesn’t happen.”
A year ago, research by Case and Angus Deaton, also an economist at Princeton, brought worldwide attention to the unexpected jump in mortality rates among white middle-aged Americans. That trend was blamed on what are sometimes called diseases of despair: overdoses, alcoholism and suicide. The new report raises the possibility that major illnesses may be eroding prospects for an even wider group of Americans.
This report will probably become bigger news after January 20.
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Enough With The West’s Imaginary Threats.
THAT WOULD EXPLAIN… EVERYTHING: Earth’s days getting longer, slower.
Over the past 27 centuries, the average day has lengthened at a rate of about +1.8 milliseconds (ms) per century, a British research team concluded in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A.
This was “significantly less”, they said, than the rate of 2.3 ms per century previously estimated — requiring a mere 2.6 million years to add one minute..
Oh. So it is just 2016 then.
EVERYTHING IS SEEMINGLY SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Remarkable New Theory Says There’s No Gravity, No Dark Matter, and Einstein Was Wrong.
Professor Erik Verlinde, an expert in string theory from the University of Amsterdam and the Delta Institute of Theoretical Physics, thinks that gravity is not a fundamental force of nature because it’s not always there. Instead it’s “emergent” – coming into existence from changes in microscopic bits of information in the structure of spacetime.
Verlinde first articulated this groundbreaking theory in his 2010 paper, which took on the laws of Newton and argued that gravity is “an entropic force caused by changes in the information associated with the positions of material bodies”. He famously stated then that “gravity is an illusion,” elaborating further that:
“Well, of course gravity is not an illusion in the sense that we know that things fall. Most people, certainly in physics, think we can describe gravity perfectly adequately using Einstein’s General Relativity. But it now seems that we can also start from a microscopic formulation where there is no gravity to begin with, but you can derive it. This is called ‘emergence’.”
What’s more, the Dutch professor now published an elaboration of his previous work in “Emergent Gravity and the Dark Universe”, which argues there’s no “dark matter” – a mysterious kind of matter that along with dark energy theoretically makes up 95% of the universe, but has not really been discovered yet.
“Dark matter” always felt like a rationalization to cover up a serious flaw in our understanding of the universe, but the idea that gravity doesn’t exist until it emerges locally is too bizarre for this non-physicist to comprehend.
As usual, Douglas Adams might have nailed it decades ago:
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Indeed.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: How Lasers and a Goggle-Wearing Parrot Could Aid Flying Robot Designs.
YOU CAN’T LEGISLATE LOVE: Denzel Washington on Race Relations.
TRANSPARENCY: Obama’s Pentagon Suppresses Study Finding $125 Billion in Wasteful Spending.
That’s $125 billion annually.
President Barack Obama’s Pentagon discredited and suppressed an internal probe that uncovered $125 billion in wasteful spending on the enormous administrative operations primarily ran by civilians and contractors.
The money could have been reinvested in payment for troops, weapons, and renovating the aging nuclear arsenal, the Washington Post (WaPo) has learned.
The Defense Business Board produced the study in January 2015 by a federal advisory panel of corporate executives, in coordination with consultants from McKinsey and Company.
More:
U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) leaders – namely Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work, the Pentagon’s second-highest-ranking official, and Frank Kendall III, the Pentagon’s chief weapons-buyer – reportedly buried the report by discrediting and suppressing its findings after the study discovered far more wasteful spending than the department expected.
According to the study, DoD is spending about 23 percent ($134 billion) of its $580 billion on back-office business operations, namely accounting, human resources and logistics and property management.
If we had as much military power as we actually pay for, we’d be the United States of Earth and Neighboring Satellites and Planets by now.
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