I HAVE known Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, since he was a college student in London, and have spent many hours negotiating with him since he has been in office. This has often been at the request of the United States government during those many times when our ambassadors have been withdrawn from Damascus because of diplomatic disputes.

                                                                                                 Jimmy Carter

Key details:

The endorsement, by the 1.3 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, enables Clinton to claim support from groups representing the majority of the nation’s 14.6 million union members....

...Sanders, by contrast, has been endorsed by only one national union — the 185,000-member National Nurses United ...

Here is a scientific forecast of what is in store this winter and spring in this years El Nino 2015/16. There are gifs that show the way this all works together across the world.  Some really interesting stuff. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has warned that the ongoing El Niño episode could rival the strongest El Niños on record (1982-83, 1997-98) and is nearly certain to last into the Northern Hemisphere spring of 2016.

Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, gave this El Niño its “Godzilla” moniker. The “Godzilla” El Niño of 2015-2016 is expected to be one of the strongest on record, having large consequences on global weather. But not all of El Niño’s impacts are monstrous, and some can even be positive. Knowing what to expect can help people deal with the worst effects of El Niño.

Cashing in on PAC money, Carly gets her 15 minutes of fame and waves goodbye. Forgetting the fave GOP joke - "what do you call the first female president?" "Bitch" it's hard to imagine she could campaign as a female bulldog and gain long-term traction, especially when working the media-savvy Donald Trump's side of the street, Unhinged Alley, and paying more attention to his hair. Mostly she served a useful retread for the media to trot out old HP stories and comparisons with Hillary and other little pot fillers. It's like Halloween's coming and there are treats for everyone. Except Carly, it seems - her sweets are rapidly turning sour. Adios, Carlita - we hardly knew thee. In a man's world/party, when your hair starts waving, it's just waving goodbye.

Background on Debbie Wasserman Schulz's time as head of the DNC. Think she overall comes across as good. I'm most interested if the party will get back to a 50-state approach a la Dean or continue as the president's personal support group as Obama remade it.

Hillary now gets the kind of campaign publicity that can't be bought.

Not just deflating email-gate; turning it back against the GOP - if the media actually do that.

As someone here noted about Trump coverage, it pays the bills. Hillary + email also pays the bills - will a GOP + email scandal?

In any case, will be difficult to still drag out the story after the debate & 2nd report about the panel.

What will the papers do between now and Feb 1? That's what will shape the polls & coverage.

Insurgent commanders say that since Russia began air attacks in support of the Syrian government, they have for the first time received bountiful supplies of powerful American-made antitank missiles....With the enhanced insurgent firepower and with Russia steadily raising the number of airstrikes against the government’s opponents, the Syrian conflict is edging closer to an all-out proxy war between the United States and Russia....

[see definition of Fugazi]

So the Benghazi "investigation" starts to turn on itself, twisting in the wind. The NY Times is finding Hillary email stories boring and the irony of all the things the umpteenth committee was going to do before it settled on Hillary Hillary Hillary is simply too amusing to ignore, especially since McCarthy made sure they couldn't ignore it. Expect a rather fun appearance by Hillary in front of the committee in a few weeks - let the GOP play with the hot potato for a while.

Digby points at what I've been saying for a while - Cruz is a dangerous snake in the weeds. All the worry about Trump ignores that he will burn out, wear out his welcome for real people, that this is just the warm-up side tent freak show for what inevitably turns into a much more boring big tent circus. And Cruz is working the groundskeepers and folks outside peeping in.