Cab Thoughts 10/8/16

"The concept of the rule of law means that the citizen is protected from the arbitrariness of the State. ... Currently, the rule of law protects the attackers above all". - Yves Michaud, French author and philosopher.

Chris Kyle, of "American Sniper," was known alternately as "The Devil of Ramadi." He had 160 confirmed kills across four tours in Iraq.

"The Economist" has a bone to pick with the new "Star Trek." It seems '"Star Trek's" producers are ....stripping politics out of their movie universe. The television series and some of the films studiously explored the big moral questions facing a bloc as diverse as the Federation, from the limits on cultural integration right through to how a peace-loving organisation should tackle imperial forces. The three most recent "Star Trek" films strip out these moral and global questions, and instead focus on how to stop bad guys who want to kill a lot of people.'
"The film," the Economist argues, "misses an opportunity to probe interesting questions and test the idea of liberalism. The film misses an opportunity to do what "Star Trek" does best."

Explore moral questions? Hollywood? We don't even have that in universities. That seems a lot to ask of an action movie. It's fine to have thoughtful challenges and complications but the idea here is entertainment, isn't it?

Corporate bonds paying negative interest rates now account for about $512 billion of market value, bringing the world close to a total of nearly $10 trillion in securities with yields below zero. Most are government securities.

Clinton's nomination has some interesting elements. Is success as a politician worth esteem? Are the components of political success praiseworthy?  Certainly women have not been highly representative in the political class but they are not equally represented in prisons either; maybe they are just better people. And, if political success is important, is simple representation in the political class enough? Tammany Hall leadership was certainly an Irish political success but few Irish were proud of it. 

Quality is never included in these assessments of sub-group achievements. I certainly take no masculine pride in the nomination of Trump or the election of Nixon. Is the nomination of Clinton a positive simply because she has two X-chromosomes?

Who is...Harvey Milk?

There is, apparently, a growing market for what is call "soft prostitution" where women trade tuition costs for sexual favors. The big website "exchange" is SeekingArrangements, first opened in 2006 and now boasts over 2.6 million participants across 139 countries. Of this figure over 1.4 million were students as of 2014 (this figure has since grown considerably). The site is said to make $10 million a year in revenue.
Anyone with a single scruple may cast the first stone.

The HuffPo has an article on Trump that is just a classic. The idea seems to be he is influenced  by Putin. "His rhetoric about foreign policy neatly matches the message coming out of Moscow: that America has little need for its long-time partners in Europe ― particularly in NATO ― or elsewhere, and that the U.S. should have less influence internationally. Trump has extensive business and financial ties to Russia." And: "And this week, mysterious hackers released internal Democratic National Committee emails ― a move that security experts and reporters are increasingly convinced was an attempt by the Russian government to swing the presidential election to Trump." His "rhetoric about foreign policy neatly matches the message?"  "extensive business and financial ties to Russia?" Wow. Overwhelming. And what about his wife? She has a very suspicious accent. I thought Trump was the ethnic generalizer.

And I thought that Obama's recent attempts were to get us closer to Putin. And the Russians just were responsible for the leaks; they did not write the stuff.

The Republic is safe with these guys on the watchtower.

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 these countries trade with poor countries? Do they have any idea how incompatible those two positions are?

Florida has already seen 381 cases of Zika, all involving people who were infected while traveling to parts of the world where the virus is circulating. there are four cases in Florida that seem not to be travel related. That would mean that the Zika virus has been brought to America and is setting up in domestic mosquito hosts.

Is endorsing a policy which takes money from you and gives it to me "idealistic?"

This is interesting. Prosecutors say they will not retry Ingmar Guandique,  the man convicted in 2010 of killing Washington intern Chandra Levy. He will be released from prison and face deportation proceedings. According to the statement, prosecutors concluded they could not convict Guandique 'based on recent unforeseen developments that were investigated over the past week.' The statement does not elaborate. Levy's 2001 disappearance created a national sensation after the Modesto, California, native was romantically linked with then-Congressman Gary Condit.

"Higher tariffs on U.S. imports will be passed on to American consumers, many of whom are already hurting economically due to the sluggish Obama recovery. Trade wars will also damage U.S. competitiveness. As former Mexican deputy trade minister Luis de la Calle explained in a conference call to investors in New York earlier this month, Carrier Corp.'s production move to Mexico from Indiana-much--assailed by Mr. Trump--means that the company can survive Asian competition and can retain U.S. jobs in research, development, marketing and high-end components."--Mary A. O'Grady. 

This free trade argument is a big deal. Sanders has pulled Clinton further left and she is beginning to sound like Trump. (Remember, Bill Clinton signed NAFTA.) This type of thinking is pretty dangerous to trade and general prosperity and is a good example of the conflict between the voter--who here is wrong-- the ostensible leader--who here has no opinion other than to be elected--and the ideal.

"Remember back in the '90s when the people of Minnesota elected a professional wrestler as their governor? They didn't do this because they're stupid or thought that Jesse Ventura was some sort of statesman or political intellectual. They did so just because they could. Minnesota is one of the smartest states in the country. It is also filled with people who have a dark sense of humor - and voting for Ventura was their version of a good practical joke on a sick political system. This is going to happen again with Trump."--Micheal Moore

Scruple: n: 1. An uneasy feeling arising from conscience or principle that tends to hinder action: "He would have taken any life with as little scruple as he took my money" (Charles Dickens). 2. A unit of apothecary weight equal to about 1.3 grams, or 20 grains. 3. A minute part or amount. ety: Late Middle English: from French scrupule or Latin scrupulus, from scrupus, literally 'rough pebble', (figuratively) 'anxiety'.

qualm, scruple, compunction, demur, mean a misgiving about what one is doing or going to do. qualm implies an uneasy fear that one is not following one's conscience or better judgment qualms about plagiarizing>

scruple implies doubt of the rightness of an act on grounds of principle scruples against buying stolen goods>. compunction implies a spontaneous feeling of responsibility or compassion for a potential victim compunctions about lying>. demur implies hesitation caused by objection to an outside suggestion or influence demur>.

The Navy has a new class of vessel, the John Lewis-class named after civil rights activist and congressman Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). The ships would be named after civil rights leaders. Gay rights icon and San Francisco politician Harvey Milk will be the name of the first ship. Other names in the class include former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren whose court ruled to desegregate U.S. schools, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, women's right activist Lucy Stone and abolitionist and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth.

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2014/04/grading-moocs.html

Charles Krauthammer made the obvious point about Trump asking the Russians for Hillary's e-mails: If the Clinton campaign statement said it would be a "national security issue" was true, then  Clinton's repeated assertions that the missing 33,000 emails were all of a personal nature, not work-related is false. That could be grounds for a charge of obstruction, so the Clinton campaign has been caught in a "complete contradiction." Oh, well.

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From a review of "Clinton Cash" (a book and now a documentary): The worst example in "Clinton Cash," says Schweizer (the book's author), is the Ericsson telecom deal. The Swedish company Ericsson was in trouble with the State Department because it sold telecom equipment to repressive regimes. Says Schweizer, "WikiLeaks cables show the State Department sort of busting up the Swedish foreign minister, saying you need to get Ericsson into line. Ericsson decides that this would be a great time to sponsor a speech by Bill Clinton. They had never done so before. They decided to go big, $750,000 for a 20-minute speech. Bill gives the speech and literally seven days later, the State Department comes out with a statement saying we're not going to take further action against Ericsson. We're going to ask them to police themselves."

One element of the Trump phenomenon is his success despite having little money and almost no advertising. Certainly one aspect is his newsworthiness. He just gets on TV a lot. This has some implications to lunatics who want to get on TV too. (I'm not implying that Trump is a lunatic, only that publicity is cheap and influential.) I wonder what would happen if the news simply boycotted the wackos and did not publicize their mad acts. The news people certainly manage the news; all of them do. CNBC is nothing like FOX which is nothing like NPR. It is not such a stretch.


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