--NBC's Chuck Todd yesterday on Meet the Press (12/10/11), commenting on Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich:

Well, first of all, those are a couple of nimble debaters. They are pretty good.  I think we have seen it.  This is the final two.

I'm old enough to remember when Todd had the campaign narrowed down to a Top Three, way back in August:  "We have a top tier. It is Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann."

--ABC host Diane Sawyer, asked to describe (This Week, 12/11/11) the most revealing lesson she learned about the candidates after she moderated a debate this weekend:

The vitality on the stage. We said at the beginning the marathon run it is to run for president. But I have to tell you, first of all, they have great immune systems.... They came out strapping, they came out ready.... I think you can't always experience on television just the sheer physical vitality of all these candidates.

--The New York Times reports (12/11/11) that a story about Newt Gingrich featured an anonymous source rebutting criticisms of him. Turns out that source was... Newt Gingrich.

Even though Mr. Gingrich publicly insists that he will take the high road with a positive campaign that does not criticize other Republicans, he recently strayed from that vow, offering himself as an anonymous source in a New Hampshire newspaper last week to reply to criticism by John H. Sununu, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush who, as a Romney surrogate, has called Mr. Gingrich "untrustworthy and unprincipled."

Mr. Sununu told the newspaper, the Union Leader, that Mr. Gingrich supported a tax increase deal that the first President Bush made with Democrats in 1990, then reversed himself. The newspaper, quoting a source identified as "a senior aide in the Gingrich campaign," elaborately rebutted this account.

[Gingrich spokesman R.C] Hammond said the source was actually Mr. Gingrich, who did not want to be identified to avoid the impression he was getting into a fight with the Romney camp.

Anchor Diane Sawyer explained:

If you were watching your stocks today, you saw a nosedive. The Dow down nearly 300 points, so, what changed?  Well, blame it on the country of Greece, long criticized for being undisciplined, and now threatening American retirements.

OK, since we probably were all "watching our stocks" on Tuesday--like any other day--why is Greece doing this to us?

ABC correspondent Dan Harris explains how this all works by introducing us to 2 workers. The Greek--Yannis--is a 52-year-old bank teller, already retired for two years (naturally). The other is a 60-year-old Florida resident--Emma--who is  "still having to work around the clock and doesn't have enough savings to retire."

How representative are those workers? While Yannis resembles the Greek worker most familiar in the U.S. media, it's not clear that he's at all typical. This chart, for instance, shows the Greek retirement age isn't all that different from the rest of Europe.

Harris explains that Greeks live it up:

And check this out. While our maximum Social Security payment is around $28,000 a year, over in Greece, where Yannis lives, it's 20 grand more, $48,000 a year.

It's hard to figure out exactly what is being compared here, or where the figures come from. But you get the idea. Harris goes on to say that Greece "is a country of generous benefits, of pools and Porsches," with American workers footing the bill:

And so here is how Emma is now paying for Yannis.

In order to pay for all the retirement packages for people like Yannis, the Greek government borrowed big time from banks all over Europe. Now, Greece says it can't pay. So, those banks are facing huge losses and that could push Europe into a depression. Since America does so much business with Europe, we would be pulled down, too, and that, of course, would hurt Emma's savings.

I'm confused. Emma doesn't have much in the way of savings; even still, it's hard to fathom how that money is at risk. America might get "pulled down" and that would...affect her Social Security checks? There's no explanation for how that could possibly be true. But there is a graphic:

Oh. Now it makes sense, right? You can see the dollars floating out of the U.S. bank right into Europe.

You seem to hear more about Greek retirees than Greek workers, which makes stories like this fuel a sense of outrage at what Harris calls Greek's "fat pensions."

But occasionally another message breaks through, like in this USA Today piece (5/10/10):

ATHENS -- A hard life is about to get harder for Manolis Fylaktidis.

Greece's cash-strapped government is cutting the schoolteacher's $27,300 salary by about $5,300 as part of a dramatic austerity move the prime minister says is needed to pay the country's ballooning debt. "It is difficult now.... We have to change our life because life is too expensive," Fylaktidis says.

Even as the 44-year-old teacher's salary falls, the government is raising the value-added tax on most purchases for the second time in as many months, to 23 percent, and increasing electricity and water charges.

We might live in a very different world if workers in one country saw what they have in common with workers in another country, instead of being made to feel angry about supposedly cushy retirements.

A former senior riot police officer with knowledge of current operations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the most recent riots were allowed to rage, in part, because police officers felt constrained.

While there is no doubt that some people feel this way--one British poll found a third of respondents supported using live ammunition against demonstrators--it is rather odd to focus on police restraint when the immediate context of the uprisings concerns police brutality. The protests started after police killed Mark Duggan in Tottenham last Thursday. Early, inaccurate reports suggested Duggan fired on the officers.

While some commentary is quick to point out that looting can't possibly be connected to one police killing, there is a far bigger problem here. As you might expect, independent media are covering this better than the corporate media. From a Democracy Now! interview (8/10/11) with London blogger Richard Seymour:

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask Richard Seymour about one of the pieces in the Guardian written by Caroline Davies, who says, "A total of 333 people have died in or following police custody over the past 11 years, but no officer has ever been successfully prosecuted." That’s according to the government; it's according to a watchdog report. "'Prosecutions were recommended against 13 officers based on 'relatively strong evidence of misconduct or neglect,' but none resulted in a guilty verdict." This is quite remarkable. Three hundred thirty-three people have died in or following police custody over the last 11 years? This is more than two people a month over the last more than decade. Can you talk about the significance of this, Richard?

RICHARD SEYMOUR: Yeah. I mean, first of all, there has been, over the last generation or so, some efforts to overcome the antagonisms between the police and black communities in Britain, but that didn't, obviously, get rid of institutional racism. Institutional racism was acknowledged in the outcome of the Lawrence Inquiry, but the steps undertaken to deal with it were obviously inadequate. And the result of that has been that there has been a disproportionate amount of stop-and-search of young black men, a disproportionate amount of harassment and violence, and, of course, as you mentioned, deaths in police custody.

But it's worth mentioning that it’s not just deaths in police custody. There have been a number of recent notorious deaths outside of police custody, including that of Ian Tomlinson at a G20 protest, and including that of the artist Smiley Culture, who, they said, stabbed himself in the kitchen while police were visiting with him to discuss allegations of drugs. And I don’t think anybody really believes that, but there were peaceful protests in response to that, quite large protests by the local community. And to be honest, they were largely--in fact, completely--ignored by the media. They were a very important democratic moment, but just completely ignored.

And that puts these riots in an interesting light, because when one of the young people was asked by a reporter, "Do you really think the rioting is the right way to go about getting what you want?" he said, "Yes, because if we weren’t rioting, you wouldn't be talking to us." A political establishment, a media, and a state system that gives people that impression, that gives people the impression that they won’t be listened to unless they force themselves onto your attention, is going to lead to riots.

That kind of analysis stands in stark contrast to a New York Times story today that explores anti-police resentment in minority communities:

The broader question, though, is this: How did a national institution once held in esteem, or at least respect, by many Britons--"bobbies on the beat" to an earlier generation--become a force of such contention, even as, in recent years, it has taken credit for shielding the country from an array of terrorist plots?

The Times adds that "in recent years the force, overwhelmingly white, has faced accusations of racism, brutality and incompetence that it has struggled to shake off." Of course, accusations that are true are bound to be are hard to "shake off."

An ABC World News report (8/10/11) introduced by Diane Sawyer asked a similar question that's bothering many reporters.

And now, overseas to those riots in England. And a question we had today, where are the British parents as their young people run wild in the streets of London and other cities?

The piece that followed showed correspondent Lama Hasan asking rioting teens why they it was happening. One says, " We're just showing the rich people we can do what we want." Another says: " The problem is there ain't enough opportunities for people out here.... People's lives are like a dead end."

It sounds like parental authority might not be the most important factor. But if you're going to ask these kinds of questions, then by all means: Over 300 people have died in police custody. What went wrong with the parents of those officers?

SAWYER: He's talking to the Afghan people. But Martha, he put restrictions on what U.S. troops can do, what the NATO troops can do. How onerous are these?

RADDATZ: Well, he's trying to put restrictions on. I mean they simply have to carry out air strikes over there. It's a very rapid response. It's real-time intelligence. It's certainly flawed at some points.

But I've been on these missions. I've been on a combat mission in a fighter jet. I've seen all the very, very careful steps they take. They go through what's called the nine line. In fact, the mission I went on, some French soldiers were calling for them to bomb and the pilot and the weapons officer said, "We can't bomb, we think there's a school, we think there might be people in there."

So I think you will see a real fight over these restrictions, but the airstrikes and these night raids just simply have to continue if they're going to go after the enemy.

So bombing raids in Afghanistan "have to continue," for the sake of having a "rapid response" to "real-time intelligence." And Raddatz, who has "been on a combat mission," can assure you how "very, very careful" they are--why, on the mission she flew, they didn't bomb a target simply because they thought it was a school! This great care taken to not kill civilians sometimes gets more attention than the actual killing of civilians.

The piece helpfully included footage of Raddatz on her combat mission, gathering all the "facts" necessary to produce this kind of journalism.