December 9 2024

1. Assad flees to Russia, post-Assad Syria face difficult road
2. Air Force delays next-gen fighter jet decision; Musk advocates drones over pilots.
3. Chicago pensions on brink: A snapshot of national crisis
4. Trump political dynasty: Lara Trump resigns from RNC, eyes FL Senate seat
5. Taylor Swift's Eras Tour ends, grosses $2 billion
6. 12 teams advance to college football playoff; bowl games set
December 9, 1992: U.S. Marines storm Mogadishu, Somalia

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FLASH…MAJOR COCAINE TRANSIT COUNTRY PARAGUAY HALTING U.S. DRUG COOPERATION…E.P.A. BANS CANCER-CAUSING CHEMICALS USED IN DRY CLEANING…SOUTH KOREA’S LEADER SURVIVES IMPEACHMENT VOTE AFTER BOTCHED POWER GRAB…PANEL OF FEDERAL JUDGES UNANIMOUSLY UPHOLDS LAW BANNING TIKTOK…

1. Assad flees to Russia, post-Assad Syria face difficult road

A. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has arrived in Russia, according to Russian state media outlets and Iranian officials, and is seeking refuge from his longtime patrons in Moscow after fleeing his own country.  

B. an expected brutal fight to control Damascus, and by extension Syria, would constitute the most important confrontation yet in the struggle to remake the region, one ignited on Oct. 7, 2023, with the Hamas-led attack on Israel. The main regional players — Israel, Iran and Turkey — all have a stake in the outcome, which means that the ripples will affect not just the Middle East, but also global powers like the United States and Russia. If the war in Gaza is the worst manifestation yet of the seemingly intractable Israel-Palestinian dispute, which drew in the armed Lebanese group Hezbollah, analysts call the fight for Syria a far more important struggle to dominate a regional crossroads that influences the entire Middle East. “Syria is the barometer for how power dynamics in the region are changing,” said Mona Yacoubian, head of the Middle East and North Africa Center at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. “It is in for a period of chaos in a region that is already on fire.” Some analysts see the hand of Mr. Erdogan in the sweeping advance of the main Syrian rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant. Turkey seized an opportunity to increase its influence at a time when Iran was beleaguered, analysts said, and it wants the three million Syrian refugees who fled to its territory because of the civil war to return home.  

Editors note: If the past decade in the Middle East has taught us anything, it’s that the greatest challenge often comes after rebels succeed in toppling a regime like Assad’s. The transition to democracy and elections will not be straightforward or easy, or even likely. The numerous rebel factions that united under a coalition to fight a common enemy during the civil war are now likely to turn against one another, vying for control of Syria. The country with the most to gain from Syria’s turmoil is its neighbor Turkey, given its growing regional ambitions and favorable demographic trends. However, the greatest risk remains the resurgence of the Islamic State, which thrives in power vacuums.

Article Source: NYT

2. Air Force delays fighter jet decision; Musk advocates drones over pilots.

The U.S. Air Force is leaving a decision on the future of the next jet fighter to the incoming Trump administration, a move that comes shortly after billionaire Elon Musk called for pursuing drones over piloted combat aircraft.  The Air Force is still building F-35 stealth jet fighters, a program whose total costs are expected to exceed $2 trillion over several decades. At the same time, the service is pushing forward with a combat drone system, as well as a next-generation crewed fighter. On Thursday, the Air Force announced that it would delay a decision, originally set for the end of 2024, on which company would build the new jet fighter, meaning it will fall to the new administration to decide whether and how to go forward with the crewed aircraft.  Musk, who has long advocated for drones, took aim at manned jet fighters generally and Lockheed’s F-35 in particular in a post last month on X, writing that “manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones.” In another post, he claimed “a reusable drone” can do everything a jet fighter can do “without all the overhead of a pilot.”

Article Source: WSJ

3. Chicago pensions on brink: A snapshot of national crisis

Despite the massive stock market boom, the Chicago Firefighters pension is only 21.6 percent funded. Police is 31.1 percent funded. The Teachers’ pension is only 43.4 percent funded. Brandon Johnson is a former teachers’ union organizer and is beholden to the union at the expense of safety, Chicago businesses, and citizens. It’s quite something when aldermen vote 50-0 against a mayoral proposal. Has that ever happened before? Also, the entire school board resigned en masse this month, and was replaced by a new group of mayoral appointees. The New York Times notes “Mr. Johnson had proposed a $300 million high-interest loan to cover a $175 million pension for staff members in the district who aren’t teachers, and to cover pay increases for members of the union, among other things.”   

OPINION  

I am openly rooting for Chicago and the entire pension system of Illinois to implode. That sounds harsh bit it isn’t. There will be no reform until crisis hits, and the sooner the better because those currently collecting unwarranted massive pensions are bleeding the pension funds dry. The sooner the collapse, the more pension money will be saved for the average Joe. Good pension reform would target excesses on the top end with a threat of municipal bankruptcy hanging over everyone’s head if the unions refuse to cooperate. That is the only proposal that works.

Article Source: Mish Talk

4. Trump political dynasty: Lara Trump resigns from RNC, eyes FL Senate seat

Lara Trump, President-elect Donald Trump's daughter-in-law, said she would step down as co-chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and would consider a U.S. Senate vacancy if Marco Rubio is confirmed as secretary of state. "The job I came to do is now complete and I intend to formally step down from the RNC at our next meeting," she said in a Sunday night post on X that cited fundraising, election integrity and voter turnout as goals met. Lara Trump told the Associated Press in an interview she was open to filling the U.S. Senate seat that would be vacated if the Senate confirms Trump pick Marco Rubio as the next secretary of state. "It is something I would seriously consider,” she told the AP. "If I’m being completely transparent, I don’t know exactly what that would look like. And I certainly want to get all of the information possible if that is something that’s real for me. But yeah, I would 100% consider it.”

Article Source: Reuters

5. Taylor Swift's Eras Tour ends, grosses $2 billion

For the last 21 months, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has been the biggest thing in music — a phenomenon that has engulfed pop culture, dominated news coverage and boosted local economies around the world. Now we know exactly how big. Through its 149th and final show, which took place in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Sunday, Swift’s tour sold a total of $2,077,618,725 in tickets. That’s two billion and change — double the gross ticket sales of any other concert tour in history and an extraordinary new benchmark for a white-hot international concert business. Every date on the Eras Tour was sold out, and spare tickets were scalped at eye-popping prices — or traded within the protective Swiftie fan community, often at face value. According to Swift’s touring company, a total of 10,168,008 people attended the concerts, which means that, on average, each seat went for about $204. As gigantic as they are, the figures revealed by Swift’s company are only part of the overall business that has surrounded the tour. They exclude her extraordinary merchandise sales, for example, a product line so in demand that Swift opened stadium sales booths a day early in some markets to sell T-shirts, hoodies and Christmas ornaments to fans, ticketed or not. And they do not count the secondary market of online ticket resellers. According to StubHub, the Eras Tour was the biggest-selling tour in the platform’s two-decade history, and last year it outsold Beyoncé’s shows by a factor of five. Another ticketing company, Victory Live, said the average price for resold tickets to the Eras Tour’s three Vancouver dates was $2,952. (Swift earned nothing from resold tickets.)

Article Source: NYT

6. 12 teams advance to college football playoff; bowl games set

Now we know the committee’s verdict. Without further ado, your 2024 Playoff Dozen is: Oregon, Georgia, Boise State, Arizona State, Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Tennessee, Indiana, SMU and Clemson. Per the rules, Oregon, Georgia, Boise State and Arizona State all get first-round byes as the highest-ranked conference champions. The remaining teams have on-campus tangos in the first round: Indiana visits Notre Dame for the Indiana Super Bowl (Friday, Dec. 20), followed by a trio of games on Saturday, Dec. 21: SMU at Penn State, Clemson at Texas, then Tennessee at Ohio State, the Buckeyes daring to resurface in Columbus after that soul-crushing home loss to Michigan.   

Every bowl game

Article Source: WSJ

December 9, 1992: U.S. Marines storm Mogadishu, Somalia

Sources

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3. https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/air-force-jets-vs-drones-trump-administration-8b1620a5?st=wZ84ax&reflink=article_copyURL_share

4. https://mishtalk.com/economics/when-do-mayor-brandon-johnson-and-the-city-of-chicago-finally-implode/

5. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/lara-trump-step-down-republican-party-post-eyes-senate-seat-2024-12-09/

6. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/arts/music/taylor-swift-eras-tour-ticket-sales.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

7. https://www.wsj.com/sports/football/college-football-playoff-oregon-ducks-2ffd2310?st=cSRJ5y&reflink=article_copyURL_shareio9