Recently...

Another mass murder
As usual, Republicans are blaming crazy people and Democrats are calling for what would be essentially useless gun control measures even if they could be enacted, which they cannot.  The essential problem is that there are entirely too many guns floating around the USofA, and nobody, really, is "cummin' t' take yer guns."  They're just "cummin' t' flap ther gums."  I have no solutions to offer, and neither, I believe, does anybody else.

Russia in Syria
Weren't things already complicated enough?  I guess not.  Russia is bombing anybody opposed to Assad, and Iran, mainly through Hezbollah, is doing what it can to keep Assad in power.  The USofA sort of supports the Free Syrian Army, recently bombed by Russia, and halfheartedly supports the Kurds, currently being bombed by our "ally," Turkey.  Then we've got those five guys fighting IS but not Assad, even though we want Assad to step down.  France is fighting IS in Iraq, but not in Syria.  IS is fighting everybody, and not especially bothered that everybody is fighting everybody else.  You can't tell the players without a scorecard, and the scorecard keeps changing.

Arne Duncan resigns
It's about time, because Obama's Education Secretary has been a disaster, and through his support for charter schools has done as much as any Republican to advance the privatization of public education.  "Race to the Top" did it's bit to advance corporatist "data based" evaluation of schools and teachers, despite the fact that no useful data at all has been available — only scores on tests of no observable value designed by private contractors.  Happily, Duncan will not be replaced: his bureaucratic duties will be assumed by some bureaucratic lackey, and no further damage is likely to be done through the remainder of the Obama presidency.