This "sources say" piece has gone viral: right now lists10,663 shares @ The Hill. Fuggeabout wine caves?

By Amie Parnes @ TheHill.com, Dec. 23

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has spent her presidential campaign railing against the donor class, making it known she doesn't want their help. She has publicly bashed millionaires, has sworn off high-dollar fundraisers and has refused large checks from Democratic bundlers. 

But behind the scenes in recent months, former President Obama has gone to bat for Warren (D-Mass.) when speaking to donors reluctant to support her given her knocks on Wall Street and the wealthy. 

And if Warren becomes the nominee, Obama has said they must throw the entirety of their support behind her. 

The former president has stopped short of an endorsement of Warren in these conversations and has emphasized that he is not endorsing in the Democratic primary race. But he also has vouched for her credentials, making it clear in these private sessions that he deems her a capable candidate and potential president, sources say [....]

Like Americans, Britons are jettisoning longtime political allegiances in a sign of new cultural divides.

Guest op-ed by Matthew Goodman & Eric Kaufmann @ NYTimes.com, Dec. 21. Goodwin is a professor of politics at the University of Kent, England, and a senior visiting fellow at Chatham House and co-author, with Roger Eatwell, of “National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy.” Kaufmann is a professor of politics at Birkbeck, University of London and the author of “Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities.”

Sophisticated thoughts on topic, and including some graphs.; sample excerpt:

[....] If, as research from the Voter Study Group showed, the average American voter is left on economics and right on culture, then this zone is the sweet spot for both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Yet as the British writer David Goodhart notes, Labour, like many Western left parties, finds it much more difficult to speak to the identity anxieties of the median voter over immigration, family and national identity.

Conversely, the right is generally able to shift toward higher public spending. Under President Trump, for instance, the deficit has skyrocketed to approach a staggering $1 trillion. In Britain, Mr. Johnson promised higher expenditure on public services, raising the minimum wage and offering more state aid for failing businesses [....]

Amazon runs a machine that squeezes ever more money out of the hundreds of thousands of companies, from tiny start-ups to giant brands, that put the everything into Amazon’s Everything Store.

In more than 60 interviews, current and former Amazon employees, sellers, suppliers and consultants detailed how Amazon dictates the rules for those businesses, sometimes changing those rules with little warning. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of retaliation by Amazon.

Upping Artappraiser's link.
The public is iffy on healthcare - burning Dems over the years, while Republicans water Obamacare down.
What can be done in this environment has been done.
But Warren's expertise is in areas like business and finance reform, including government policy.
Why is she chasing Bernie's windmills?
Back to the knitting (or baking cookies, depending):
And note - I originally thought her idea of breaking up the big boys was going too far except for Facebook. But as the year wore on, Google & Apple & Amazon wore on my patience. I'd like the restructuring to be as part of a bigger picture, but yeah, enough too big to fail/regulate/get accounting for.

The police killed an average of 17 people every day in Brazil last year, and rogue officers are killing even more off duty. “I’m a hero to my people,” one militia leader said.

By Azam Ahmed @ NYTimes.com, Dec. 21

BELÉM, Brazil — The masked gunmen pulled up to Wanda’s Bar at 3:49 p.m. on May 19 and began firing the moment they left their vehicles. Two people, including Wanda herself, died on the patio.

Inside, the gunmen worked in silence: two in front, shooting unarmed patrons at the bar and in the main room, while a third followed behind with a gun in each hand, firing a single shot into the head of anyone still moving.

When the massacre ended, 11 people lay dead, slumped over the bar, draped across chairs or huddled on the floor. Only two people survived, one by hiding under a friend’s lifeless body, case files show.

Once again, masked gunmen had struck in the Brazilian city of Belém, as they have for nearly a decade, stalking the streets in open defiance of the law. Robbing, extorting and killing without compunction [....]

By Kevin Fagan @ SFChronicle.com, Dec. 16

Homeless advocates won a major victory Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court decided to leave in place a landmark ruling preventing cities from rousting people from street camps unless they offer them shelter or housing. But they’d really already won more than a year ago.

Cities and counties throughout the West had been following the dictate limiting street sweeps since September 2018, when the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a decade-old lawsuit filed by homeless people in Boise, Idaho, against anti-camping ordinances there. The Supreme Court’s refusal to take up an appeal of that case now simply confirms it as the law in the nine Western states, including California, that the Ninth Circuit covers.

Homeless community leaders say they hope the mandate will now be taken up in other parts of the nation, as well as pressure local communities to create more shelters, services and housing [....]