The President’s national security team begged him to do something about Syria back when the United States still had options. He turned them down flat, and the US and the world now face a problem for which few answers exist—and all of them are ugly.

Pope Francis was already the “most talked about person on the planet,” but lately the media obsession with him has gone into overdrive. Buzzfeed is running stories about how Francis used to be a bouncer, and Think Progress and Huffpo are excited that he currently spends his evenings sneaking out of the Vatican to distribute alms to the poor. But the biggest driver of the pope’s ubiquity was the release of Evangelii Gaudium, the apostolic exhortation heard round the world. The document was released just before Thanksgiving, and immediately made waves with its strongly worded claims about economics.

Feed-in tariffs for green energy are making many German farmers rich, though German households and businesses are bearing the cost through higher electricity prices.

The world’s largest ship just left its dry dock in South Korea. More accurately, the hull for the world’s first floating liquified natural gas (FLNG) vessel was floated for the first time this morning. The Prelude, as it’s called, is noteworthy for more than just its size (in fact, bigger FLNG ships are already under construction): it’s a key that will unlock “stranded” reserves of offshore natural gas.

As the rolling pensions crisis has amply shown, America’s struggling cities and states excel at nothing so much as procrastination—dithering, passing legislative half-measures—anything to avoid tackling their problems head-on. Illinois’ interminable pension reform saga is the most obvious example of this, but Springfield is hardly alone.

Washington needs to get its ducks in a row. The different branches of the US government can’t be sending out mixed messages. Our allies in Asia are watching very closely to gauge the depth of the US commitment to stability in Asia. Diplomatic missteps, confusion, mixed messages, and incompetence will only further convince our allies that the US ship has sailed.

The single payer pivot is going gangbusters over at the New York Times. The Grey Lady had two pieces out yesterday on health care prices, and the mix of the two shows a paper, and an intelligentsia, deeply confused about health care.

Public sector unions have been handed a stinging defeat this morning in Detroit. After nearly a month of waiting, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court ruled that the city is eligible for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, declaring that it may cut pension benefits as part of the procedure—despite the unions’ argument that the state constitution forbids such cuts.

The Ukraine story, one of the most important geopolitical events of the past few years, is still up in the air. Right now, Russia has the advantage but with protestors swarming the streets of Kiev and President Yanukovych away in China, anything could happen.

Japan is rather desperate for domestic energy sources these days. After shuttering its nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the island country—largely bereft of oil and gas—has had to dramatically ramp up imports of liquified natural gas (LNG) to meet its energy needs, and is paying dearly for the privilege.But there’s good […]