College hunt looms for first daughter Malia Obama

Soon first daughter Malia Obama will be the decider, choosing which colleges to apply to and which one to attend beginning in the fall of 2016, as her father's presidency winds down.

She wants to be a filmmaker, the president has said. Last summer news outlets said his 16-year-old daughter toured two northern California rivals: Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.

UC Berkeley, the state's flagship public university, is known as a liberal enclave, and it has a Department of Film & Media.

Stanford, a private university whose Palo Alto campus features towering palm trees, is more buttoned-down and boasts alumnae including first daughter Chelsea Clinton and Supreme Court justices such as the retired Sandra Day O'Connor. Obama's commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker, is from Stanford — and like the first lady and the Obama daughters, is also from Chicago.

At Stanford, students can major or minor in film and media studies. Malia Obama is known as an athlete, especially at tennis, so she might be a good fit in "Nerd Nation," the unofficial nickname for the school's sports fans.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-malia-obama-college-search-met-20141226-story.html#page=1

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Cellphones cut off, East Cleveland weighs bankruptcy

EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio (AP) -- East Cleveland has long been one of the poorest cities in the state, a model for what urban decay looks like — streets filled with blighted and boarded-up homes and tired commercial districts.

And it's beyond broke.

The city government's cellphone provider recently cut off service for nonpayment. It is getting two new salt trucks purchased with federal money but won't be able to fill them because of what it owes Morton Salt Inc., one of the city's fiscal overseers said.

This city of 17,000 people is now considering whether to file for municipal bankruptcy, which would be a first for an Ohio municipality.

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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cellphones-cut-off-ohio-suburb-162451878.html

Newest U.S. Stealth Fighter ‘10 Years Behind’ Older Jets

America’s $400 billion, top-of-the-line aircraft can’t see the battlefield all that well. Which means it’s actually worse than its predecessors at fighting today’s wars.
When the Pentagon’s nearly $400 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter finally enters service next year after nearly two decades in development, it won’t be able to support troops on the ground the way older planes can today. Its sensors won’t be able to see the battlefield as well; and what video the F-35 does capture, it won’t be able to transmit to infantrymen in real time.

Versions of the new single-engine stealth fighter are set to replace almost every type of fighter in the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps inventory—including aircraft specifically designed to support ground troops like the A-10 Warthog. That will leave troops in a lurch when the F-35 eventually becomes the only game in town.

“The F-35 will, in my opinion, be 10 years behind legacy fighters when it achieves [initial operational capability],” said one Air Force official affiliated with the F-35 program. “When the F-35 achieves [initial operational capability], it will not have the weapons or sensor capability, with respect to the CAS [close air support] mission set, that legacy multi-role fighters had by the mid-2000s.”

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/26/newest-u-s-stealth-fighter-10-years-behind-older-jets.html

I'm sure a $$$$$olution will be found

Jazz great Buddy DeFranco dies at age 91

Source: AP/SFGate

Renowned jazz clarinetist Buddy DeFranco, who led the way on his instrument in the transition between the swing and bebop eras, has died at the age of 91, his family said Friday.

DeFranco's family told The Associated Press that the famed musician died Wednesday evening at a Panama City hospital. His wife, Joyce, said he had been in declining health in recent years. The couple lived in Panama City.

DeFranco, who began his professional career as a teenager in the late 1930s, made both concert and recording appearances with many of the top singers and musicians of his era, including Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum.

"We have received condolences from around the world," said Joyce DeFranco. She said her husband's influences on music will last long beyond his lifetime.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Jazz-great-Buddy-DeFranco-dies-at-age-91-5979869.php

Credit Suisse Faces $10 Billion Mortgage Fraud Suit

Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) was ordered to face a $10 billion lawsuit by New York’s attorney general accusing the Swiss bank of fraud in the sales of mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis.

A New York State Supreme Court justice rejected the bank’s request to dismiss the case, a move that gives leverage to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to demand internal bank documents and force a settlement. New York demonstrated the bank may have engaged in misconduct, Justice Marcy Friedman said in a Dec. 24 decision, allowing the suit to head toward trial.

In addition to forcing Zurich-based Credit Suisse to defend itself or settle, the ruling may strengthen Schneiderman’s hand in punishing other banks for bad behavior tied to the recession.

Elizabeth DeBold, a spokeswoman for Schneiderman, said the lawsuit is part of an effort to pursue “accountability for those who contributed to the near collapse of our economy.” Drew Benson, a spokesman for Credit Suisse, said yesterday in an e-mail that the bank will appeal the ruling.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-25/credit-suisse-ordered-to-face-new-york-s-mortgage-fraud-claims.html

Female veterans battling PTSD from sexual trauma fight for redress

By Emily Wax-Thibodeaux

Thousands of female veterans are struggling to get health-care treatment and compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs on the grounds that they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by sexual trauma in the military. The veterans and their advocates call it “the second battle” — with a bureaucracy they say is stuck in the past.

Judy Atwood-Bell was just a 19-year-old Army private when she says she was locked inside a barracks room at Fort Devens in Massachusetts, forced to the cold floor and raped by a fellow solider.

For more than two decades, Atwood-Bell fought for an apology and financial compensation from VA for PTSD, with panic attacks, insomnia and severe depression that she recalls started soon after that winter day in 1981. She filled out stacks of forms in triplicate and then filled them out again, pressing over and over for recognition of the harm that was done.

The department labels it “military sexual trauma” (MST), covering any unwanted contact, including sexual innuendo, groping and rape.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/female-veterans-battling-ptsd-from-sexual-trauma-fight-for-redress/2014/12/25/f2f22d8e-7b07-11e4-b821-503cc7efed9e_story.html

Obama hopes to enlist GOP in push for trade pact, despite Democratic resistance

By David Nakamura
December 26 at 12:01 PM

President Obama is preparing a major push on trade that seeks to enlist Republicans as partners and test his premise that Washington can still find common ground on major initiatives, even after he angered the GOP with a recent slew of executive actions.

It also will test his willingness to buck his own party in pursuit of a legacy-burnishing achievement. Already, Obama is facing fierce blowback from fellow Democrats, who are accusing him of abandoning past promises on trade and potentially undermining his domestic priority of reducing income inequality.

The dynamic, as the White House plots strategy for the new year when the GOP has full control of Congress, has scrambled traditional political alliances. In recent weeks, Obama has rallied the business community behind his trade agenda, while leading Capitol Hill progressives, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have raised objections and labor and environmental groups have mounted a public relations campaign against it.

The administration is moving aggressively in hopes of wrapping up negotiations by the middle of next year on a 12-nation free-trade pact in the Asia Pacific before the politics become even more daunting ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-hopes-to-enlist-gop-in-push-for-trade-pact-despite-democratic-resistance/2014/12/26/81236a34-8600-11e4-b9b7-b8632ae73d25_story.html

Paul Krugman: Tidings of Comfort

Maybe I’m just projecting, but Christmas seemed unusually subdued this year. The malls seemed less crowded than usual, the people glummer. There was even less Muzak in the air. And, in a way, that’s not surprising: All year Americans have been bombarded with dire news reports portraying a world out of control and a clueless government with no idea what to do.

Yet if you look back at what actually happened over the past year, you see something completely different. Amid all the derision, a number of major government policies worked just fine — and the biggest successes involved the most derided policies. You’ll never hear this on Fox News, but 2014 was a year in which the federal government, in particular, showed that it can do some important things very well if it wants to.

Start with Ebola, a subject that has vanished from the headlines so fast it’s hard to remember how pervasive the panic was just a few weeks ago. Judging from news media coverage, especially but not only on cable TV, America was on the verge of turning into a real-life version of “The Walking Dead.” And many politicians dismissed the efforts of public health officials to deal with the disease using conventional methods. Instead, they insisted, we needed to ban all travel to and from West Africa, imprison anyone who arrived from the wrong place, and close the border with Mexico. No, I have no idea why anyone thought that last item made sense.

As it turned out, however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite some early missteps, knew what they were doing, which shouldn’t be surprising: The Centers have a lot of experience in, well, controlling disease, epidemics in particular. And while the Ebola virus continues to kill many people in parts of Africa, there was no outbreak here.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/26/opinion/paul-krugman-tidings-of-comfort.html?_r=1

Post Xmas Toon Roundup

GOP










Cuba












Middle East





Torture







Last Term





Media and Police






The Issue




Season

















Economy








Environment






Putin







Israel





N. Korea


LGBT

Toon: Must be that Kenyan...