Archive for 2016
October 5, 2016
THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THE ROBOTS WANT YOU TO THINK: No, robots won’t take your job.
ACHIEVEMENT, UNLOCKED: Tim Kaine is as unlikable as Hillary Clinton.
COMPETITION IS GOOD: Boeing CEO Vows To Beat Musk To Mars As New Space Race Beckons.
THIS SEEMS WISE: Thousands of Americans Head Inland to Escape Hurricane Matthew. “In Florida, there were empty shelves and long gas station lines as residents of coastal communities stocked up on supplies and fuel and prepared to make their own exodus.”
CONFESSIONS OF A SILENCED PROFESSOR: Afraid to speak up: In the era of trigger warnings, a tenured professor stays silent. Note that this is not an unintended consequence of PC thought, but its goal.
MY CHILD, MY CHOICE: Parents Report Kids’ School Lunches Taken Away by Teachers.
Tami DeVries said that when her son took his lunch to kindergarten, it was confiscated. A teacher took away his kielbasa, cheese, and Wheat Thins crackers, replacing them with Cheerios. Alicia Nesbitt reported that her stepdaughter, in first grade, had chips removed from her lunch during the first week of school.
“She came home and told me they weren’t a ‘healthy choice,’” Nesbitt said. “That may be true, but the rest of her lunch and snacks were very healthy and it’s up to parents if they want to put a little treat in for their kids. Unless the school wants to provide lunches, I don’t really think it’s their business.”
Read the whole thing.
THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: Kim Kardashian and the price of preening narcissism: “Of course, you wouldn’t wish an armed robbery on anyone. Not even someone daft enough to post a picture on Instagram of themselves wearing a £3.5million diamond ring. Security experts believe that the reality TV star’s obsession with social media updates, allowing fans to keep track of her every movement, may have helped the masked gang that ransacked her luxury Paris apartment. When your whole blingtastic existence is dedicated to showing off how rich you are, then greedy, unscrupulous men trying to get their hands on you’re the bling is regrettable, but hardly surprising.”
ROGER SIMON: Trump Must Learn from Pence to Win.
Is Trump prepared to go “Back to School” to win it all?
IN THE MAIL: The QBQ! Workbook: A Hands-on Tool for Practicing Personal Accountability at Work and in Life.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Save 38% on Tristar 10″ Round Copper Chef Pan with Glass Lid.
And, also today only: Save on “Sex and the City” and “Entourage” complete series.
Plus: Save on Select Yukon Outfitters Survival Kits.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1245.
SUPERCUT: The Kaine Interruptions.
THE COMING LAWLESSNESS: Both choices this election are bad news for the rule of law, John O. McGinnis writes at City Journal:
The question, then, of which candidate will advance the long-run rule of law isn’t an easy one to answer. We are left with the choice of a candidate who will be inclined to lawlessness by temperament and one who will be inclined to lawlessness by ideology and circumstance. This unhappy dilemma is more evidence that we face the least inspiring choice for president in our entire history.
No one should be surprised if the coming lawlessness doesn’t begin to trickle down to the middle class as well.
SKYNET SAYS TO WIPE THEM ALL OUT: MIT Game Asks Who Driverless Cars Should Kill.
MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH: Are the Democrats America’s Religious Party?
[Kenneth] Woodward wrote in the Journal that Clinton “is by far the more religious candidate” and also that “hers is the more religious political party.” The first observation cannot be doubted, but what about the second? Woodward’s argument, grounded in his reporting, is that since the early 1970s “the Democratic Party has advanced a righteous politics that mirrors the political righteousness of the United Methodist Church.” Notably, even as early as the 1970s both the church and the party were framing the nation’s economic ills as “systemic,” and in need of “wholesale transformation.” Clinton in her campaign for the White House often uses “systemic” to describe racial problems in need of “transformation” by government.
They’re not a religious party, but from climate change (where Gaia replaces God) to the often hilariously pious virtue signaling of food and lifestyle choices, “Progressivism” is certainly a substitute for religion.
Which isn’t all that a new phenomenon – the second half of the title of Tom Wolfe’s epochal 1976 article, “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening” more than hints at the transformation of American culture a decade after Time magazine (founded by the son of Christian missionaries, no less) paraphrased Nietzsche and asked, “Is God Dead?”*
As Wolfe wrote, “It is entirely possible that in the long run historians will regard the entire New Left experience as not so much a political as a religious episode wrapped in semi military gear and guerrilla talk.” Today, a man who began his political career in the living room of the founder of the Weathermen sits in the White House, and during his presidential bid was frequently described as a substitute God by self-deluded elitists.
Exit Question: Will the left start reviving religious tests for public office?
* Linking to Kenneth Woodward’s article, Rod Dreher adds, ‘God Is Dead, And We (Boomers) Have Killed Him.’
PUTIN’S PLUTONIUM GAMBIT:
Putin justifed Russia’s withdrawing by pointing to “a core change of circumstances, arising from: a threat to strategic stability, resulting from the unfriendly actions of the United States towards Russia; the inability of the U.S. to live up to its responsibilities under international agreements for properly disposing of excess plutonium; and with the need for urgent measures to be undertaken to defend the Russian Federation”.
But the three preconditions for the resumption of the agreement listed in Putin’s bill are more telling: 1) the United States must repeal the Magnitsky Act; 2) the United States must abolish all sanctions in place against all Russian citizens and organization currently in place; and 3) the United States must pay for the damages incurred by the Russian Federation as a result of the aforementioned sanctions, including any costs born from counter-sanctions the Russian Federation was forced to undertake.
Trying to so brazenly blackmail a counter-party by threatening to walk away from a treaty speaks volumes about the way Putin sees the world. Needless to say, the plutonium agreement, which was signed and ratified by the Russian Duma, contains no provisions for simply pausing its implementation, by act of President or otherwise. . . .
This is not the first time that Moscow has tried to bully Washington over sanctions relief. Just over a year ago, Vladimir Putin addressed the United Nations General Assembly, and met with U.S. President Barack Obama. In his speech, Putin presented Russia as a vital peacemaker in the Middle East, and the key to effectively combating ISIS. He also bitterly complained about “unilateral” use of sanctions, in contravention to the UN charter.
If the linkage was not clear enough in the speech (and whatever was said personally to Obama), the Kremlin was good at following up. Several messengers from the Kremlin have passed through Washington in the intervening months to lobby the White House, arguing that effective anti-terrorism cooperation between the two countries is impossible while sanctions are in place.
The sanctions are hurting.
JUST ONE TIME? Tim Kaine Left Out That Time Hillary Appeased Russian Oligarchs To Enrich A Donor.
Kaine repeatedly attacked Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence for calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “better leader than president Obama.”
But Kaine left out an inconvenient fact about his running mate. Specifically, reports Clinton’s non-profit took money from a Canadian businessman looking to cut a deal with Rosatom — Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy company.
The Clinton Foundation got millions from people associated with Uranium One, a uranium mining company, after Clinton helped approve the company’s selling shares to Rosatom in 2010.
Clinton was one of the voices on the Committee on Foreign Investment to approve the deal, but she didn’t disclose people associated with the Uranium One deal donated $8.65 million to the Clinton Foundation between 2008 and 2010.
To be fair, you can’t expect Kaine to interrupt with every little thing.
TO BE FAIR, THIS FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION HAPPENED QUITE A LONG TIME AGO: ‘Disturbing’ photos highlight drug, homelessness issues in San Francisco’s SoMa.
The scare quotes around “disturbing” are a nice touch, San Francisco Chronicle. As Harry Stein quipped in his 2000 book, How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace), you can tell if you’ve already joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy when “Someone’s going on about how fantastic San Francisco is, and it suddenly hits you that’s one place on earth you never want to live.” When I was visiting both San Francisco and Manhattan during the pre-de Blasio era, I often thought how much cleaner and safer New York seemed to be. But Manhattan seems once again eager to outpace San Francisco in their Red Queen’s Race to the bottom.
San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left office in January of 1964.
VENEZUELA: Health Crisis Means Kid’s Scraped Knee Can Be Life or Death.
It was just a scraped knee. So 3-year-old Ashley Pacheco’s parents did what parents do: They gave her a hug, cleaned the wound twice with rubbing alcohol and thought no more of it.
Two weeks later, the little girl writhed screaming in a hospital bed. Her breathing came in ragged gasps as she begged passing patients for a sip of water.
Her mother stayed day and night in the trauma unit. She kept Ashley on an empty stomach in case she might cut in front of hundreds of other patients for emergency surgery in one of the hospital’s few functioning operating rooms.
Her father scoured Caracas for scarce antibiotics to fight the infection spreading through his daughter’s body.
They had no idea how much worse it was going to get.
Venezuelans chose a crooked political system cooked up the the 19th Century, and now they’re enjoying 19th Century medicine.
TO BE FAIR, CALIGULA WASN’T THE END OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE: Neither Trump nor Clinton Is the End of the Republic.
AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.
Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.
Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.
And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!
MAYBE THEY’LL ASK TIM KAINE SOME TOUGH QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS IN TONIGHT’S VEEP DEBATE: New Cold War? Russia, U.S. Relations At Lowest Point Since 1970s.
Oh, right…