Justice Anthony Scalia Is Dead

Conservative firebrand Justice Anthony 'Nino' Scalia died today while hunting in Big Bend, Texas apparently of natural causes.  He was found dead in his quarters at age 79.  He will be remembered and perhaps vilified for his participation in two of the most controversial and disastrous opinions in Supreme Court history:  Bush v. Gore (2000) and Citizens United v. FEC (2010).  The first installed George W. Bush in the Office of President despite a popular vote in favor of Democrat Al Gore while the second allowed unlimited campaign financing from anonymous sources, thus insuring the predominance of the Money Power in our nation's politics.  Arguably these two decisions have done more to undermine democracy in the United States than Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) which upheld the fugitive slave law as constitutional.  The Current Occupant has declared his intention to nominate a successor.  However, Senate conservatives will block any approval of his nominee until the election in eleven months. The Court, facing some of the nation'smost contentious social issues on its docket will be evenly split until a successor can be approved.

Democratic Debate: Live Blog

Prologue:  The latest knock against 'feeling the Bern' is that he is way behind Clinton in support from minorities.   Is it too gauche for US Person to suggest some non-white bigotry is responsible for the polls showing less support among blacks for a candidate [chart] whose socialist economic policies are much more supportive of their plight than Hillary Clinton's will ever be?  Bernie Sanders is after all, the first Jewish candidate to win a presidential primary election.  Prejudice against Jews in  urban black communities is deep seated. In the ghettos Jews were often the local icon of 'the man'--owner of the corner store or the tenement landlord. Jesse Jackson's infamous referral to New York City as "Jew Town" touched a deep discord that still exists.  Senator Sanders will try and focus his remarks on social justice to win minority support that is critical to a general election victory in the Wisconsin debate without appearing to pander to yet another special interest within the confines of the Democratic Party label.

credit: Washington Post-ABC News

18:07PST Senator Sanders opening remarks succinctly sum up what this election cycle should be about: fundamentally changing the structures of government and politics to address the increasing unfairness and inequality of American society. How an establishment candidate like Hillary Clinton can achieve fundamental reform while leading change that would directly impact vested interests is not clear. 

6:15PST Conservatives and moderate liberals love to talk about the size of government, yet they never acknowledge the ever increasing size of the Pentagon and its budget.  It is the unspoken rule apparently that the Pentagon can never be reduced in size to pay for other forms of government service. The Pentagon has embarked on a program to spend $700billioin  modernizing nuclear weapons instead of providing free college education for anyone who want one.  America's competitiveness cannot be insured with guns but with a educated work force.

6:27 PST No one doubts Ms. Clinton's support for women's rights.  The women of New Hampshire understood that the problems facing American society go beyond gender.  Bernie Sanders is also a member of a minority.

632 PST  Answer: provide economic opportunities, reform laws that incarcerate people for minor drug offenses, focus on treatment for drug addiction not incarceration, and take big business out of the business of building prisons and staffing them. 

6:39PST  Obama disappointed a lot of Americans, black and white, with his incremental approach to governing. ("No He Can't")

6:52PST   How do you know a fascist?  Look at his immigration policies.  America is a nation of immigrants it should not really matter when you arrived.

6:56PST  Another reason US Person support Bernie Sanders: lifting the wage cap on social security tax so benefits can be increased to a realistic level.

7:05PST  Do we have Glass-Seagall back?  Is Blankfein doing time?  NO.  Is Morgan Stanley paying a minute fine for knowingly granting mortgages to borrowers without incomes? Seems like a quid pro quo to this commentator.

7:17PST  Here are three letters for you to begin with Senator Sanders:  F:35.  Weapons procurement continues to be the one sector of government where cost overruns are endemic.  The fighter is now so expensive even our allies cannot afford to buy it.

7:25PST  Nice reward for playing team ball, Ms. Secretary.  
Here's a complaint about teammate Henry Kissinger that the Senator was too polite to mention: he was instrumental in instigating the coup that assassinated Chile's democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende.

7:45PST  Mahatma Ghandi. Caesar Chavez. Both leaders who gave the final measure in pursuit of their goal of a better life for their countrymen.

7:52PST  A government for the people, by the people and of the people so that it may not perish from the face of Earth. 

Epilogue:  Citizens United has made a mockery of our political system; even the case name is a obvious rebuke to citizens who have given up on the system.  Bernie Sanders is offering to help us get rid of the heavy yoke of corporatism.  At least he is willing to try. It is a testament to the resiliency of our system that there is a Bernie Sanders to stand up and say what needs to be done. Hillary Clinton seems satisfied with tweaking the status quo.  Yes, America is not Europe and Henry Kissinger may be a war criminal, but there is nothing in our laws that would prevent us from adopting a more efficient means of healthcare, one that is not driven solely by profit.  A simple start could be made by passing a single payer option for the current system that got lost in the onslaught of insurance lobbyists.  Ms. Clinton implausibly wants to work with reactionaries in Congress that are still trying to undo the limited progress made under the Affordable Health Care Act. Governors that are unwilling to open their public colleges and universities to free higher education can be replaced.  The Supreme Court when properly staffed can overturn bad case law.  Only fear and trepidation holds us back. Never mind, on to Flint, MI where people are dying of lead poisoning and bad government.

More US Sabre Rattling in Europe

When the establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton, says Russia is "moving borders" in Europe she has to conveniently ignore developments like this: NATO announced yesterday that it will move more troops and infrastructure to Russia's western frontier. The announcement means more NATO bases, pre-positioned military supplies such as tanks, artillery, trucks and fuel and more 'boots on the ground'. The Russian military establishment will view these measures with alarm since a key concept of their defense strategy is to prevent Russian encirclement. NATO typically takes the disingenuous view that is it is merely responded defensively to Russia's use of force against neighbors. During the past year US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has announced deployments of US hardware and forces to Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland. It conducted five simultaneous war drills with Lithuania troops in November. All of the enhanced activity is being conducted under the rubric of protecting "Eastern allies" against events like the seizure of Crimea and the crisis provoked by the US-backed coup in Ukraine.

The United States is not only preparing for conventional warfare in Europe, but also a nuclear confrontation. The Pentagon's 2017 budget allocates $3.2 billion for a modernization program of nuclear weapons. The Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration which is responsible for nuclear warhead development is slated to received another $12.9 billion. These increased expenditures on warfare puts the country on track to spending more than $700 billion over the next 25 years on its already swollen nuclear arsenal. Want to know why we don't have social medicine or free college education like Germany? Because its war business as usual in Merika.

Conservationists Find 'Lost' Lion Population

Conservationists working in Alatash National Par in remote northwest Ethiopia have found a population of lions not previously known to science living in the park. Alatash is a huge region on the Sudanese border not visited often by outsiders. Lions are thought to have lived there for centuries and locals knew of their existence in the area. But the IUCN only considered Alatash a possible range for lions without any confirmed sightings. Renowned lion expert Dr. Hans Bauer and his team obtained camera images and lion tracks during an expedition supported by Born Free, the lion conservation society. The researchers also concluded that lions are living across the border in Sudan's Dinder National Park, adjacent to Alatash. Bauer concludes that densities are low due to low prey levels in an arid environment of about two lions per 100km².

IUCN lists lions as vulnerable and their numbers are estimated to have declined 50 to 70% since 1980. The species occupies only 8% of its historic range; they were thought to be extinct in Sudan. So the new information is encouraging and provides reasons for both Sudan and Ethiopia to protect the region as a lion stronghold.

Creature Feature: America's Only Known Jaguar

The video captures America's only known living jaguar as it stalks its Santa Rita Mountain home about twenty-five miles south of Tucson. "El Jefe" has been living there for over three years, only one of three or four jaguars spotted north of the border in twenty years. Few people know that the southwest US was once jaguar country, but there has been little concerted effort to reintroduce the predator to its rightful home. The last verified female jaguar was shot and killed in 1963 in Arizona. El Jefe's habitat is now threaten by a copper mining project that will span eight miles of the Santa Rita's 215 square miles. Currently the Rosemont Mine is in the permitting process.

Live Blog: New Hapshire Debate

What Senator Sanders did not mention in the last exchange concerning the Wall Street meltdown was that Robert Rubin,  a Wall Street insider, was President Clinton's choice for his Secretary of Treasury.  Rubin brought in other former Wall Street officials to serve in the administration that Ms Clinton is so proud of. Sanders point is that his opponent is too compromised to be an effective leader of a political revolution against the plutocracy..

It's not just where Ms. Clinton gets her financial support.  She actually does represent her "constituency", as a New York senator that happens to be Wall Street.  Ms. Clinton voted for bankruptcy "reform" that made it much more difficult for consumers to obtain Chapter 7  discharge from overwhelming debts.  The banking lobby wanted this legislation and Senator Clinton obliged.

Free college? Single payer health care?  No major tax increases for middle class and working families.  Is it possible?  Sure it is, IF corporations and the rich are denied their exorbitant privileges and the billions wasted every year on so-called "national security" is ended and the money saved diverted to needed social programs. This is why Sanders is calling his grass roots movement a revolution--a revolution in the way Americans think about politics and  their government and refuse to accept the status-quo as inevitable.

Ms. Clinton is right Bernie Sanders rejects neo-conservative foreign policy doctrine that is responsible for the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iran.  It is this policy of American hegemony supported by an bloated, expensive military establishment that needs to be reformed to prevent further foreign entanglements that cannot be won by force.

19:21PST NATO has done more to "move boundaries" in Europe than Russia has.  Russia has responded to what it sees as western provocation in the former Soviet Republics from the Baltic Sea to the Crimea.  Of course as a world power, it has geopolitical goals just like the United States.  The US would gain more from Russia by engaging that nation in mutual security building and peace-making efforts especially in Syria.

19:25PST Bernie is correct in his assessment of the results in Iowa.  Essentially it is a split decision, and a moral victory for a grass-roots campaign expected to fold after the Iowa Caucuses.  Yee-ha!

19:31PST The distinction between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio is fuzzy at best in the minds of most Americans because they are all establishment political figures.  They can understand the difference however between a social democrat and an evangelical plutocrat or bombastic billionaire snake-oil salesman.

19:36PST Thank you, Madam Secretary.

19:47PST The problem of public health poisoning by toxins goes way beyond the single city of Flint, MI. The epidemic of cancer and cancer related illnesses can in US Person opinion be laid at the feet of lax federal and state enforcement.  Hazardous materials of all types are used everyday in commercial and industrial activities.  Just look at the huge methane gas leak that goes currently unchecked in Southern California. A progressive administration would make vigorous environmental regulation and enforcement a top priority; it would end the false dichotomy between economic activity and environmental protection.

Epilogue: Senator Sander's campaign of "big ideas" is making the plutocrats nervous as evidenced by Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein's comments after the New Hampshire debate. Well it should since they and other banksters like him are the ones who are stiffing this nation's democratic processes. We spent $26 trillion dollars saving them from their own folly, yet their most prominent member of the club has the audacity to label a grass-roots political campaign a "dangerous moment". If American's want to take back their government and live in a fairer society, then they have to support the only candidate willing to implement fundamental change, not incremental window dressing.  You simply cannot sum up a revolution in a few letters, and real reform goes way beyond gender.

credit: Gary Varvel
Wackydoodle sez: Nothin' like Iowa Humble Pie!

Tru'merica: "Know Nothing" Then and Now

The "Know Nothing Party" never really disappeared from American history, it simply morphed into the Republican Party that formed in 1854. Its characteristic suspicion of and discrimination against later immigrants, especially those of a different race or religion from the so-called "nativists", still resonates with a segment of the native born, white, Protestant public. A partial history in three parts: