The US Supreme Court decision outlawing bans on same-sex marriages has resulted in some state legislatures passing statutes that allow people to discriminate against the members of the LGBT community under the guise of advancing ‘religious freedom’. Indiana was one such state but faced condemnations from business and calls for boycotts of conventions and tourism that prompted it to reverse course.
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Tomorrow is Super Tuesday that sees a whole slew of primary and caucuses and is the day when the political and media establishment see whether their last ditch campaign to dethrone Donald Trump works. They have decided to throw everything at him in the hopes of blunting his progress. But the confusion into which he has thrown the establishment can be seen even here since it is not clear what they are hoping for as their best outcome.
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This film by British director Ken Loach will be welcomed by those who would like a change from the films and TV shows from the UK that portray upper class life. Based on a true story, it deals with life in an impoverished Irish village in the depression-era 1930’s when a young rebel Jimmy Gralton returns from a self-imposed exile in the US and reopens a hall for the local community where they conduct classes but also have fun such as dances.
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The death of Antonin Scalia has cost Dow Chemical corporation about a billion dollars. As David Dayen explains:
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was worth billions of dollars to corporate America, if a Dow Chemical settlement made public Friday is any indication.
Dow was in the midst of appealing a $1.06 billion class-action antitrust ruling, after a jury found that it had conspired with other chemical companies to fix prices for urethane, a material used in furniture and appliances.
But because of Scalia’s death and the sudden unlikelihood of finding five votes on the Supreme Court to overturn the case, Dow decided to settle for $835 million, the bulk of the original award.
Professional athletes, once the leaders in trash talking opponents, may have to take notes from the new kids in the game. While I said before Thursday’s debate that the fight between Donald Trump and Marco Rubio would get ugly, I did not expect that it would sink so deep into the mud so soon, starting with Rubio’s aggressive performance at the debate itself where he tried to out-Trump Trump. It looks like Rubio’s technicians have reprogrammed him and flipped the switch into Attack mode.
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Pretty much everyone has received the offer to take part in what has become known as the ‘Nigerian Prince’ scam, that is also known as the Nigerian 419 scam. This takes the form of a letter asking the recipient to agree to be a partner in getting a huge amount of money out of that country that, for whatever reason, cannot be done any other way. All that you have to do is give them your bank account number and they will wire the money to you, you keep a hefty portion of the money, and send the rest to another account. Of course, all they want is access to your bank account so that they can drain it.
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Tomorrow is the Democratic primary in South Carolina that polls predict Hillary Clinton will win handily. What has been extraordinary is how Bernie Sanders has made the word socialism and socialist ideas so acceptable, especially among the young, so that they view it as a more compassionate system than capitalism. This is certainly true but the mainstream media in the US has been relentlessly extolling the virtues of a particular form of capitalism that leads to vast inequalities, and they cannot believe that their sustained propaganda has been upended by a hitherto obscure senator from Vermont.
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Ben Carson is weird. Ok, I know that is not news since he keeps adding to that impression, like his ‘fruit salad’ comment at the last debate. But he outdid himself by claiming that president Obama cannot speak to the black experience because his life growing up was not genuinely black, whatever the hell that means.
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… because he will take it anyway.
But joking aside, his tactical abilities were on display today. Marco Rubio was making the rounds on media outlets this morning touting his debate performance as a knockout blow against Trump that would turn the tide in his favor although the verdict on that is decidedly equivocal. Since he has been chosen to be the establishment candidate to defeat Trump, he was sure to get a lot of positive media attention to bolster his claim.
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The debate last night was as expected a slugfest between Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz, with Ben Carson and John Kasich largely bystanders. It looked like Cruz and Rubio had decided to join forces and attack Trump rather than each other (maybe they met in a closet before the debate to plan their strategy) and they did manage to land some blows on him. This report from the Guardian suggests that Trump stumbled but similar instant judgments have proved in the past to be not good predictors of his fortunes.
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