Should U.S. Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s Vacancy Be Filled As Soon As Possible?

With the U.S. Republican Party’s camp already criticizing Pres. Obama’s plan to fill the vacancy left by Justice Scalia as soon as possible – will Pres. Obama’s decision truly constitutional? 

By: Ringo Bones 

For all intents and purposes, it is indeed constitutionally valid for U.S. President Barrack Obama to find a replacement and fill in the vacancy left by the passing of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at the age of 79. Despite the howls of derision from the talking heads of the U.S. Republican Party that Obama should wait after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to replace Scalia and the replacement should harbor the same conservative politics as the late Supreme Court Judge’s. Despite President Obama referring Scalia as “a towering legal figure”, most people on the liberal side of America’s political aisle blame Justice Scalia as the reason why America is currently the mess it is in geopolitically. 

Antonin Gregory Scalia became the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States after being appointed into that position by the then U.S. President Ronald Reagan back in September 26, 1986. Since then, Americans of the liberal persuasion had blamed Scalia for virtually all of the problems America is currently in. From repressing women’s reproductive rights to choose, to his “scary” support of the death penalty / capital punishment, Scalia is indeed a thorn in the side of liberal America’s quest for social justice. One of the “scariest Scalia quotes” pertaining to the death penalty / capital punishment goes: “Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.” Many blame Scalia as on of the reasons why the September 11, 2001 Terror Attacks was a relative success because the Federal Bureau of Investigation was too busy wasting their resources and manpower chasing “Christian Terrorists” - i.e. domestic terrorists – mollycoddled by the Evangelical right wing in power which the then Supreme Court Justice Scalia and his ilk has a close kinship. 

Scalia died in his sleep during a visit to Texas. A government official said Scalia went to bed Friday night - February 12, 2016 – and told friends he wasn’t feeling well. He didn’t get up for breakfast on Saturday morning – February 13, 2016 – and the group he was with for a hunting trip left without him. Scalia’s death during a presidential election year sets up a titanic confirmation tussle over his successor on the U.S. Supreme Court bench. The already challenging task of getting a Democratic president’s nominee through a Republican-controlled Senate will be made more difficult as the fight over Scalia’s replacement will likely to emerge as a dominant theme of the already contentious 2016 U.S. Presidential Race. 

Did Some Joker Just Nominated Donald J. Trump For The Nobel Peace Prize?

As if his bid for the U.S. Republican Party wasn’t yet enough of a joke, did you know that some joker just nominated Donald J. Trump for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize?

By: Ringo Bones 

When the new year began, the roster for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize included residents of the Greek island of Lesbos - as in the Lesbians - who aided the Syrian refugees washed up on their shores, an escaped sex slave of the so-called Islamic State turned women’s rights activist, the negotiators who ended five decades of civil war in Colombia, National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and them some joker just nominated the U.S. Republican Party’s presidential joke candidate Donald J. Trump. The social media is indeed alight of comments of “W.T.F.?!!!” indeed. But is Donald J. Trump a valid nominee for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize? 

A respected Nobel watcher and director of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo named Kristian Berg Harpviken told CNN back in February 3, 2016 that a “mystery patron” nominated Donald J. Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Even though Harpviken made a promise / deal not to reveal the nominator’s name, Harpviken did reveal the reasons on why the mystery patron nominated Donald J. Trump for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize as the mystery patron cited Donald J. Trump’s Ronald Reagan influenced “Peace Through Strength” ideology and using the U.S. Armed Forces as a threat weapon of deterrence against radical Islam, the so-called Islamic State, Iran’s iffy nuclear deal and Mainland China’s undermining of the United States’ economic well-being. More famous as a brash reality show host and as a billionaire with a somewhat cavalier attitude towards women’s issues back in the 1980s and the 1990s, Donald J. Trump is indeed an odd nominee for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize given the current political outlook of the new generation of so-called millennials.  

The Nobel Committee, which does not reveal the details of its decision-making process, typically offers thousands of people opportunity to nominate notable organizations and individuals for the award, which counts among its notable recipients Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Red Cross and in 2009, U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama. Donald J. Trump, however, is not on Harpviken’s shortlist, which is currently topped by Edward Snowden and two U.S. and Iranian nuclear negotiators. Others that were nominated in the past but did not receive their Nobel Peace Prize include Mahatma Gandhi, Pope Francis, Adolf Hitler and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Given his disparaging comments on Mexicans and Muslims on U.S. soil – many cite Donald J. Trump is more akin to the reasons why Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Crude OIl: No Longer The Geopolitical Leveraging Tool It Used To Be?

Even though the Saudi-Iran tensions only managed to generate a “slight” trading price rise in crude oil a few days ago, is crude oil no longer the geopolitical leveraging tool it used to be?

By: Ringo Bones 

Since the Saudi Arabia-Iran tensions due to the execution of a prominent Saudi Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr only managed a “slight” increase in the trading floor price of crude oil despite of the subsequent riots that had resulted in a fire that gutted parts of the Saudi embassy in Tehran, crude oil prices still continued its inevitable terminal decline during the second week of January 2016. If the current Saudi-Iran tensions happened back in the 1980s or the 1990s - i.e. the Iran-Iraq War and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait back in August 2, 1990 to cite some examples - crude oil prices would have tripled by now. But given the lack of crude oil’s geopolitical leveraging that has global economic repercussions that it used to have back in the 1980s, 1990s or even during the George “Dubya” Bush administration part of the first decade of the 21^st Century, does the current downward trend in crude oil prices spell bad news for the global economy? 

The current bargain basement prices of crude oil can be squarely blamed on the current “oil glut” that the world had been experiencing since the latter half of 2014. Given the high-level new oil strikes in the state of California back in 2013 and the American and Canadian tar-sands crude oil extractions that has since become economically viable during the past few years which made the United States now the world’s number one producer of crude oil and Capitol Hill even recently voting to end the Federal ban on U.S. oil exports is just one of the pieces that resulted in our current global crude oil supply glut. The last OPEC meeting of 2015 where Saudi Arabia and the rest chose to stick with sticking to their then current crude oil output quotas in order to drive the American tar-sands crude oil extraction industry only exacerbated the global crude oil supply glut problem. As Iran is now slated to reenter the global crude oil export market as a “reward” for the recent Nuclear Deal – the global crude oil supply glut will likely to worsen – rather than get better – further into 2016. 

A few hours ago, crude oil hits 33 US dollars per barrel – quite a far cry from 18 months ago when it used to trade within the 100 US dollars per barrel mark not to mention that “extreme peak” back in July 2008 when crude oil hit the 147 US dollar per barrel mark. Overall, crude oil lost 70-percent of its value since 2014 thanks to the global supply glut and the waning demand due to improvements in renewable energy power generating systems like wind and solar during the past 10 years. Not to mention that the ongoing downward trend in global crude oil prices caused most of the trading losses incurred back in 2015 and the continuing hardship of crude oil producing emerging economies like Brazil, Russia amongst others who rely on crude oil prices staying at 100 US dollars per barrel or more just to keep their government programs above water. 

Thatcherism Sells – But Who’s Buying?

Given that the former UK PM Margaret Thatcher is up for auction next month, will it sell better than 1980s era Thatcherism? 

By: Ringo Bones

By December 2015, the late former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s wardrobe – about 150 lots in all – will all be up for auction at Christie’s. And given that Thatcherism was an easy sell – both politically and economically – back in the 1980s when the capitalist West was still toe-to-toe with the Warsaw-Pac countries at that stage of the Cold War, will “Thatcherism Memorabilia” in the form of his iconic wardrobes worn at the time, be an easy sell? 

Proceeds of the auction next moth will primarily benefit the former UK PM’s immediate family after the Victoria and Albert Museum declined to display the items for public viewing but inexplicably, it managed to generate overwhelming interest to everyone old enough to both remember and actually lived through Thatcherism. One of the items to be auctioned off was Baroness Thatcher’s iconic handbag which during her stint as the UK’s Prime Minister got her detractors accusing her of “hand-bagging” her political opponents. Another iconic item on the block was Thatcher’s pale beige raincoat by Aquascutum which was made famous as the “tank dress” that she wore when at the helm of a British Challenger tank during a NATO training maneuvers in the then West Germany as part of her campaign to gain global support for the Falklands War back in 1982 is estimated to go as high as 20,000 UK£. Given that the auction is a perfect example of Thatcherism par excellence – is there any change that it would be as “popular” as Katharine Hamnett’s “58 % DON’T WANT PERSHING” T-shirts of 1983? 

Since she passed away two and a half years ago, Margaret Thatcher did manage to generate interest to both of her critics and fans alike. Even the UK’s Official Secrets Act had to bare Thatcher’s “hair secrets” back in 2014 in order to allay the public’s “unanswered questions” with regards to Britain’s “Iron Lady”. 

US Republican Party Congressman John Boehner Resigning: Good For The US Government?

As the mastermind of the US government shutdown of few years ago, is the resignation of US Republican Party Congressman John Boehner a good thing? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Given that it happened after he met Pope Francis many are wondering if Pope Francis had finally managed to exorcise the Republican Jesus / GOP Jesus out of House Majority Leader US Republican Party Congressman John Boehner. After all, he was the mastermind of the US government shutdown that paralyzed Washington DC a few years ago. After deciding to resign effective October 30, will the troubles plaguing Capitol Hill will soon be coming to an end? 

Unfortunately, Congressman Boehner, who became the Majority leader of the 435-seat chamber, is slated to be replaced by someone more evil according to Capitol Hill insiders and there might be some truth to this given that TEA Party poster-child US Republican Party Senator Ted Cruz had been gloating over Boehner’s resignation announcement last week. Boehner could be replaced by Majority leader Kevin McCarthy – although Rep. McCarthy is not known for being “more evil” than Rep. Boehner or being “as evil” as Senator Ted Cruz. 

John Boehner will be remembered as the Ohio Republican who steered his party to an overwhelming House majority in Capitol Hill. His recent resignation announcement managed to launch an unexpected leadership battle among house Republicans. If Boehner is replaced by someone “more evil”, could the days of government shutdown by the GOP soon return to Washington DC?