Not one of them can win, but one must. That's the paradox of the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, fast becoming the signature event in the history of black comedy.

Conventional wisdom says that with the primaries and caucuses rapidly approaching, front-running nuts Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson must soon give way to the "real" candidates. But behind Trump and Carson is just more abyss. As I found out on a recent trip to New Hampshire, the rest of the field is either just as crazy or as dangerous as the current poll leaders, or too bumbling to win.

Disaster could be averted if Americans on both the left and the right suddenly decide to be more mature about this, neither backing obvious mental incompetents, nor snickering about those who do. But that doesn't seem probable.

Instead, HashtagClownCar will almost certainly continue to be the most darkly ridiculous political story since Henry II of Champagne, the 12th-century king of Jerusalem, plunged to his death after falling out of a window with a dwarf.

One controversial TTIP provision, called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), would allow foreign investors to sue an EU state or the EU itself for damages from policies that they think have hurt their corporate profits.
Global Justice Now in the U.K. and European groups such as the European Citizens Initiative that oppose the TTIP say it would increase the power of multinationals at the expense of democracy and the rule of law.

Global Justice Now's website says it targeted King & Spalding because of the firm's large foreign investor-state treaty arbitration practice.
King & Spalding represents multinational corporations in similar arbitration claims against national governments before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes at the World Bank, under the provisions of bilateral investment treaties.

Global Justice Now highlighted King & Spalding's representation of French utility company Veolia in a $92 million investment treaty suit that it filed against Egypt in 2012 after the country raised the monthly minimum wage from 400 to 700 Egyptian pounds ($56 to $99).
Veolia is claiming breach of a waste disposal contract that it has with the city of Alexandria, because the city refused to change the contract to meet higher costs from the wage increase. Veolia is claiming additional damages because the local police failed to prevent the widespread theft of trash cans by Alexandrians.

"This is a taste of what the EU-U.S. trade deal TTIP could bring us if it is implemented," Global Justice Now said.