This one goes out to you, whomever you may be...

The significant numbers of city mayors or EMs closing schools, then creating private charters with TFA instant teachers? 

The whole Charter school idea is flawed from the start.  But what marketing. Supporting charter schools lets mayors seem like they're doing something other than writing checks to politically connected cronies and lets them claim they're being tough on teacher's unions. It's be another generation before the scam is exposed. We could have better public schools if everybody had a stake it truly public schools.

#Grexit, #Brexit?

First should have happened, the second won't likely happen and I see both pros and cons to it.  The problem with the #Brexit is that then Scotland has to decide if it wants to be part of the UK or Europe, economically. A UK outside of its euro commitments could be fragile.    

Fukushima, the gift that keeps on giving? 

The global power industry hs spent $47 billion on safety upgrades and it's enough to make you wonder if this is throwing good money after bad or if nuclear power still has real green energy potential.

The European refugee crisis and the EU’s hideous amoral response? 

There's a charming economist named Jeremy Rifkin, who is big hearted but wrong about everything, who once wrote a book called The European Dream in which he argued that the EU had almost infinite growth potential because the European project could easily be expanded to include a secularizing Middle East.  This is clearly not so and was a naive idea from the start.

In any event. I find it difficult as an American to criticize European immigration skepticism given how little the U.S. is doing on this issue.

Also, I do have some sympathy for the position that some European countries that value their secular cultures do not want to accomodate an influx of more overtly religious migrants who have proved resistant to adapt.  Sorry, I said it.

NATO (and increasingly many nations ‘under our umbrella’) and Africom footprints?  The soft coups going on in the global south? 

Very frightening.  I don't want to get into a conflict with Russia over Turkey.  Can't imagine ever supporting that.

Obama’s ‘visits’ to Cuba and the right-winger Macri in Argentina?

Why is 'visits' in quotes here? This isn't the moon landing, he really went.  Good for him, visiting Cuba.  It's about time.  Our Cuba policies have been a mistake since the beginning. We pushed Castro into becoming what he became and essentially thwarted a legitimate people's revolution.  Now, however, we can beging to open some resorts.

As for Argentina, our courts have treated the country very badly in its fight with the hedge funds that bought up its discounted, defaulted debt. Given that the holdouts got almost everything they asked for, I wonder why any sovereign borrower would ever negotiate with an indebted country again.  Only the debt forgiveness that followed Argentina's financial crisis allowed the country to build up reserves to pay its creditors in the first place.  So the lesson here is that if you held Argentina bonds and cut a deal with the country, you're a sucker because you didn't get paid while those who refused to deal did.    

Climate change indicators?

I read today that the coral is suffering as never before, due to rising ocean temperatures. But, nothing to get alarmed about, right?  

Recent and pending SCOTUS decisions?

I'm intrigued by the nun's healthcare case.  The court does not seem to accept "if you won't give your employees access to contraception, the government will do it for you," as a legitimate compromise.  I can;t imagine how on Earth that isn't a legitimate compromise.  I wish the government would do for me all the things I don't want to do myself. 

And who is Merrick Garland, anyway?

From what I can tell, an inoffensively moderate judge  chosen more to stick it to the Republicans who say they won't hold hearings than to change the court in a lasting way.  The cool thing about the Supreme Court, though, is that they probably means he will somehow change the court in a lasting way because nothing ever seems to go as planned with these nominations.

Dilma Rosseff’s now likely impeachment? 

The post Financial Crisis tide of funds flowing into emerging markets (fleeing zero interest rates in the developed world) allowed for a lot of unchecked corruption in both public and corporate life. Some of those bills are coming due.

TTP and TAFTA and the implications for the 99% in signatory nations?

A mixed bag, as you'd expect.  I think the effect of these treaties will be, in the short run, totally swamped by simultaneously diminishing demand from China, EM countries and the developed markets.  The world is too awash in stuff.

The  U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention having ruled that Julian Assange has been unlawfully detained at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and what that means? 

These things tend not to mean much.  UN working group's make declarations and rulings all of the time.  They have importance equal to the willingness of powerful member states to act on them.  It's a terrible system. But what is Assange hiding from, again?  It's not like Snowden, right? He's still hiding from a rape charge. Why do we continue to hear more about him than the alleged victim?

The increasing murders of environmental activists in the global south? 

I know nothing about this.  I should be for it, right?

Justice denied in the police state killings of blacks, browns, First Americans and mentally ill? 

I am against all of that. My ultimate solution is that we should have fewer criminal laws and fewer police, but only I think that.

The constant attacks on trade unions and the ILWU getting the bird finger from the NLRB in a sleight-of-hand sick comedy sketch? 

Not familiar with this but on the brighter side, public employee unions came out okay in that Supreme Court tie.

The uselessness (or worse) of Big Unions captive to Democrats? 

Big labor unions, like any big organization, can develop interests that diverge from those of their constituents. Union leadership starts to have needs that conflict with member interests just like big company managers are not always incentivized to do right by shareholders. Of course, this is not always useless. autoworkers got a bailout that other laborers did not, for example. Though one could argue that auto executives who weren't fired benefited most.

Increasing wealth disparity, homeless  numbers, and percentage of USians living below the (low bar) poverty level?

I thought you didn't want to talk about Bernie Sanders?