Mahler's Prodigal Son

Hard to believe, but credible reports suggest that Sarah Palin could be offered the position of Secretary of the Interior in the Trump Cabinet.      That the woman is nothing short of a dilettante and "drop-kick" - to use the expression by an Australian Cabinet Minister about Trump - is being kind. Just consider and reflect on this collection of what Palin said back in 2008.....as collected on Alternet in " The 11 Dumbest Things Sarah Palin Has Said So Far ". "When Sarah Palin was first added to the Republican ticket, the McCain campaign went to almost comical extremes to guard her from press scrutiny. The Alaska governor was hustled through photo opportunities, kept from doing interviews and hidden from reporters at several events. Palin did prove adept at reading from a teleprompter in front of conservative supporters, though, so the campaign mostly had her do that. When Palin finally made her teleprompter-free debut in an interview with Charlie Gibso...

Op-ed writer Nicholas Kristof, in his latest piece for The New York Times , reflects on how the media (some of it so-called) dealt with, if at all, the repeated lies of Trump as he he electioneered his way to the White House. Considerable blame can be heaped on to the media for not only giving Trump so much free airplay and oxygen but not vigorously challenging and testing his continuous lies.   As many are now saying the media were talking to themselves - and from lofty heights.       "As I’ve argued for most of this year, I think we in the mainstream media — especially cable television — sometimes bungled coverage of Trump. There was too much uncritical television coverage of Trump because he was good for ratings; then there was not enough investigation of his business dealings, racism and history of sexual assaults, and too much false equivalency that equated the two candidates as equally flawed. More broadly, we in the mainstream media are out...

Let it not be said we haven't been warned.     Climate change is already affecting ecosystems and life .....and will continue to do so. "Climate change is already affecting life on Earth, despite a global temperature increase of just 1°C, according to a new study published in the journal Science on Friday. Nearly every ecosystem on the planet is being altered, and plants and animals are being so affected that scientists may soon be forced to intervene to create "human-assisted evolution," the study, titled The Broad Footprint of Climate Change from Genes to Biomes to People, found. The researchers say 82 percent of "core ecological processes" on land and sea have been affected by climate change in a way that had not been expected "for decades." Co-author and professor John Pandolfi of the University of Queensland said, "Temperature extremes are causing evolutionary adaption in many species, changing them genetically and physically. These r...

This piece " President Trump: How America Got It So Wrong - Journalists and politicians blew off the warning signs of a Trump presidency – now, we all must pay the price " in Rolling Stone ought to be of interest to those who are still wondering how the US ended up with Trump headed for the White House and who missed what along the way to him getting there. "Most of us smarty-pants analysts never thought Trump could win because we saw his run as a half-baked white-supremacist movement fueled by last-gasp, racist frustrations of America's shrinking silent majority. Sure, Trump had enough jackbooted nut jobs and conspiracist stragglers under his wing to ruin the Republican Party. But surely there was no way he could topple America's reigning multicultural consensus. How could he? After all, the country had already twice voted in an African-American Democrat to the White House. Yes, Trump's win was a triumph of the hideous racism, sexism and xenophobia that...

  Credited to Mike Luckovich

The Gazans (or perhaps, more so, Hamas) are demonised by the world - resulting in Gaza being described by many as one giant prison.   Most Gazans simply cannot exit the territory.    Most foreigners are barred from entry.   And as one Israeli Cabinet Minister said, famously, a while back, Israel is allowing just enough food into Gaza to prevent the people starving.   A hell-hole personified! An up to date account of life in Gaza in " Lives in ruins: the human tragedy unfolding in Gaza " has just appeared in The National ..... "A 2015 UN report found that Israel struck seven sites designated as civilian shelters in the 2014 Gaza war, killing 44 Palestinians and injuring 227. No Israelis have been charged for these incidents, or any attacks, during the war. Beit Hanoun was particularly badly hit in the 2014 conflict and 70 per cent of its housing became uninhabitable. Today, sand, rubbish and discarded clothes remain strewn across the ground but the...

" As Trump Transitions to Power, 'Cabinet of Horrors' Takes Shape " from CommonDreams : "As President-elect Donald Trump began his transition to power on Thursday, early reporting has opened a window into what the nation can expect as his "cabinet of horrors," as AFP put it, takes shape. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Ben Carson, Newt Gingrich, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, and former Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin are among the more high-profile individuals named on a shortlist of potential appointees leaked to several news outlets. On Wednesday, BuzzFeed News published a list of 41 names suggested for 13 positions, including attorney general, secretary of state, White House chief of staff, and White House counsel. And while some, like Christie, were unsurprising, as Salon's Brendan Gauthier wrote, "The people whose names you don't recognize are as bad or worse as those whose names you're sick of hearing." For example, Ret...