Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Cab Thoughts 10/5/16

The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition." --G K Chesterton


Are the people who believe that the wealth of modern first-world countries is the result of that wealth having been extracted from Third World countries the same people who believe that the wealth of modern first-world countries is threatened when and to the extent that these countries trade with poor countries? Do they have any idea how incompatible those two positions are?

A fascinating aspect of the Politics of Derangement is the effort to inspire lunatics to take up arms--like those group self-identification movements from the past that inspired classes, workers, the poor, farmers or other groups that might organize against an seemingly entrenched establishment. But lunatics, as a characteristic of lunacy, do not identify with others. Unlike gaggle or crowd or flock or whatever, there are no "groups of lunatics." It is an oxymoronic phrase. Whatever the appeal might be, it is not identity.
 
Dolly the sheep's four siblings, Debbie, Denise, Dianna and Daisy, have just celebrated their ninth birthdays - bringing scientists fresh hope for cloning. Researchers feared cloning had not properly worked when Dolly - who they cloned 20 years ago - aged prematurely and developed osteoarthritis. But news the sheep, known as the Nottingham Dollies, are still healthy as they effectively enter old age shows the process doesn't detrimentally affect physical well-being. The four sheep, cloned using cells from the same adult sheep as Dolly, are part of a flock of 13 being monitored by scientists at the University of Nottingham.

“The individual is foolish, but the species is wise. Prejudices and prescriptions and presumptions are the instruments which the wisdom of the species employs to safeguard man against his own passions and appetites.” This is from Russell Kirk, the author of The Conservative Mind, a primer on anti-Progressive thought he wrote in 1953.  Read it again. It has great faith in the history of man, in his accomplishments and subtle creations--like religion and culture. Very much like Edmund Burke. His idea of Conservationism would not be recognized today. He backed the Socialist Norman Thomas for president in 1944, Barry Goldwater in 1964, Eugene McCarthy in 1976 and Pat Buchanan in 1992. He was not nationalistic. American nuclear strategy, the internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II, the country’s treatment of American Indians and Middle East policy at the time of the first gulf war — these outraged him. He had some difficulties in these idealistic demands and turned to Catholicism in the '60s.
 
Who is...Booker T. Washington?

Secretary of State John Kerry said in Vienna that air conditioners and refrigerators are as big of a threat to life as the threat of terrorism posed by groups like the Islamic State.
The Washington Examiner reported that Kerry was in Vienna to amend the 1987 Montreal Protocol that would phase out hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, from basic household and commercial appliances like air conditioners, refrigerators, and inhalers. “As we were working together on the challenge of [ISIS] and terrorism,” Kerry said. “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we–you–are doing here right now is of equal importance because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself.”
So it seems that both the lunatics and the American administration prefers soft targets.
 
I like the  Trump kids and would prefer any of them as president over their father but Ivanka said something interesting that shows a lot of how these people--masquerading as outsiders --think. "He [Trump] is the single most qualified [to]serve as chief executive of an $18 trillion economy." Now think of that. She thinks the government runs the economy and the President is its CEO. That is about as Progressive an error as you can have.
 
Jeff Bezos was recently interview by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.  Asked by digital editor Massimo Russo "what is the recipe for innovation", he gave this answer:
Easy: to improve our customers' experience. To be genuinely innovative, innovation needs to adopted by consumers. If they do not choose it, if they prefer the old-fashioned way to do things, it is not innovation. We love inventing and we are willing to fail. Real winners, such as Kindle and AWS, make up for any losses. Failure is costly, embarrassing, unpleasant. In a number of cultures it can be a reason for being dismissed, for being fired. To invent and to fail are one and the same, you cannot have one without the other.
 
All the information sources in the world about the coup in Turkey and no one had an idea what was happening.

During the five-hour hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch steadfastly refused to answer substantively any questions about the facts or law applicable to Clinton's mishandling of her emails while Secretary of State, at least 74 times by one Congressman’s count. Towards the end of the hearing, an obviously frustrated Congressman Doug Collins of Georgia tried to get Lynch to answer even the simplest question of law having nothing to do with Clinton’s emails when he asked her if someone is driving 65 mph in a 55 mph zone, has that person broken the law? Lynch replied, “You’d have to ask the highway patrolman” to audible gasps and laughter in the audience at her continued refusal to be forthcoming.
What is not a laughing matter are both the “gross negligence” and intentional mishandling of highly sensitive national security information by Mrs. Clinton that was likely accessed by hostile countries, despite President Obama’s uninformed opinion before any investigation was complete that she did not jeopardize national security.  (from The Hill. I don't know The Hill's slant.) 
 
According to a JAMA Internal Medicine report, deductibles are up 86% since 2009.
 
 
During the 1940s, U.S. illegitimacy was around 15 percent. In the same period, about 80 percent of black children were born inside marriage. In fact, historian Herbert Gutman, in an article titled “Persistent Myths about the Afro-American Family” in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History (Autumn 1975), reported the percentage of black two-parent families, depending on the city, ranged from 75 to 90 percent.

In 2012, more than 150 babies were given the name "Khaleesi."
 
How do you get economic growth? More people working, same number of people working more hours or productivity increases.
Economics as an academic discipline gets difficult when the population drops, because declines in output, otherwise known as GDP, become the norm. This is Japan. Shinzo Abe initiated a massive program of quantitative easing in 2012, which involved the printing of yen to buy all sorts of assets—including stocks. Stocks are up about 150%, interest rates are negative, and the yen is appreciably weaker. But there is still no economic growth. Japan is a world leader in the shrinking demographics of population. The Earth has experienced explosive population growth for decades, but the rate of growth is slowing, and before long, we will have reached peak population, and the number of people on this planet will actually be declining. That may be great for the environment, but the economics of the situation are not so clear. The whole profession of economics was conceived and practiced during periods of rising population. It’s easy to get economic growth when your population is increasing. But when the population permanently is in decline, then what?
Where have you gone, Thomas Malthus, a lonely nation turns its eyes to you.
 
Over her 15 year career with Team USA, Abby Wambach has scored 184 international goals, more than any man or woman in history.
 
In the past, conventions have received a federal grant—in 2012 it was about $18 million for each party convention—under the presidential public-financing system. But in 2014, Congress eliminated public convention funding, steering the money instead to pediatric medical research. That same year, Senate leaders tucked a provision into an omnibus spending bill that dramatically lifted the limits on contributions to political parties for special accounts that pay for recounts, buildings, and conventions. That means that big donors, previously banned from giving more than $33,400 a year to the Republican or Democratic National Committees, may now give an additional $100,200 apiece annually—$200,400 per election cycle—to a party’s special convention account. The upshot is that this year’s conventions, which will cost an estimated $60 million or more apiece, will be funded entirely with private money, much of it in the form of six-figure checks from hedge fund donors, corporate executives, and other top-tier contributors. As of March 31, the two parties had collectively pulled in $10.7 million for their special convention accounts, according to the Federal Election Commission.

“Commerce tends to wear off those prejudices which maintain distinction and animosity between nations,” historian William Robertson wrote in 1769.  “It softens and polishes the manners of men.  It unites them, by one of the strongest of all ties, the desire of supplying their mutual wants.”
 
 Booker T. Washington long ago observed, “there is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

 AAAaaaaannnnnndddd.......a graph of previous IPCC forecasts of Earth's temperature (the colored bands) and the actual temperature (the black):

click to enlarge

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