Little surprises me these days — I don’t know if it’s age, or what. But the long quote below from a recent post in Jacobin has me shaking my head.

“We need to understand this point well if we want to make the most of the opportunities presented by the Sanders campaign, especially if Bernie follows through on his plans to give a “major speech” about socialism. [This] will be a great occasion for the Left to debate our own meanings of socialism — but only if we silence our inner Anderson Coopers and discuss Bernie’s ideas on their own terms without worrying about how they impact his electability.”

The Good: The coalition of students, graduate students, faculty, and football players that forced University of Missouri President Timothy Wolfe to step down. Wolfe had become an obstacle to addressing issues of racial justice and other student concerns in a timely and robust way.

The Bad: The Republican Party presidential debate. Instead of attacking each other as happened in earlier debates, each of the candidates offered solutions to today’s problems and crises that ranged from the outlandish to the ridiculous. Wage cutting was a universally popular prescription among this motley, but very wealthy bunch.

The Very Ugly: The vicious killing of innocent people in Paris. So far 160 are reported dead, according to the Washington Post. Time to “give peace a chance.” Don’t see any other solution to the cycle of violence and counter violence that is gripping and crushing our interconnected and increasingly fragile world.

I said in an earlier post that the entrance of the football players was the tipping point in the struggle on the University of Missouri campus over racial justice, but also mentioned that was part of a wider process of struggle. And surely the police murder of Michael Brown and the ensuing and protracted struggle that followed in Ferguson last year had to loom large in the thinking of many, including the political class in that state, and factored into the outcome.

The Good: Announcement by President Obama to nix Keystone XL pipeline. Another victory for climate change movement.

The Bad: We poured roughly 32 millions tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere this past year compared to 29 billion tons in 2009 at the time of the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. According to experts, CO 2 emissions need to drop to about 20 million tons within 20 years. For more read article by Robert Pollin in the Nation. http://www.thenation.com/article/think-we-can’t-stabilize-the-climate-while-fostering-growth-think-again/

The Ugly: Retreat on withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the introduction of military advisors in the Syrian conflict t by the Obama administration. Mission creep!