SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

CHICAGO TOP COP OUT – From Fox:   Chicago’s top cop is out.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the news during a Tuesday afternoon news conference about Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, whom Emanuel hired shortly before his 2011 inauguration.  "I formally asked for Superintendent McCarthy's resignation," Emanuel said.  McCarthy, who came under fire following the release of a videotape showing a white cop shooting a black suspect 16 times, was “shell-shocked" after getting the news, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, citing sources. McCarthy and Emanuel reportedly met Monday night at City Hall and McCarthy was not fired. But Emanuel later made the decision that McCarthy had to go and phoned him to give him the news.  Trouble is, there is now a movement to force Emanuel to resign.  That would be a major blow to the national Democratic Party.  Emanuel was Barack Obama's first chief of staff in the White House.  His forced departure would vastly increase the power of militant minority groups in Democratic politics.

ANOTHER REVISED WEATHER PICTURE – From nola.com:   The 2015 Atlantic hurricane season ends quietly on Monday (Nov. 30), marking the second straight year with a below-average number of named storms. Credit a record-breaking warm-water El Nino in the Pacific and a variety of other climate conditions for the relatively inactive season, say climate scientists at Louisiana State University and Colorado State University.  The only threat to Gulf Coast communities was Tropical Storm Bill, a rain-producing storm that made landfall near Matagorda Island, Texas, on June 16 with top winds of 60 mph. Bill is blamed for four deaths and about $17.9 million in damages.  Seems to me that the climate-change crystal ball guys were saying, just a few years ago, that there would be a dramatic increase in major, violent storms because of global warming.  Will any climate-change prediction actually come true?

OBAMACARE RUMBLES – From The Hill:   The CEO of UnitedHealthCare on Tuesday said he regretted the decision to enter the ObamaCare marketplace last year, which the company says has resulted in millions of dollars in losses.  “It was for us a bad decision,” UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley said at an investor’s meeting in New York, according to Bloomberg Business.  UnitedHealth, the country’s largest insurer, announced last month that it would no longer advertise its ObamaCare plans over the next year and may pull out completely in 2016 — a move that sent shockwaves across the healthcare sector.  Hemsley’s remarks double down on his earlier warning that the ObamaCare exchanges remain weaker than expected after two years and that it will take far longer for insurers to profit from the millions of new enrollees.   Another brilliant bit of planning by Nancy Pelosi and her Obamacare army.  The whole thing has been so poorly executed.  And you may be sure that you and I will pick up the tab.

December 1,  2015