Category: Politics

Regular readers know I’m pretty liberal politically, but I read all kinds of blogs. Red State has been holding the line on their principles and committing to vote for neither Trump nor Clinton. The site was largely for Cruz, so none of the bloggers are happy right now.

Still, this article by Leon Wolf amused me. Titled “The Trump Fans are Totally Not a Cult” it has the great line:

My working theory on Coulter … is that she’s just been drunk tweeting for nine solid months

If I were snarky I’d ask how you could tell, but a great line regardless.

Via Mark Thoma, I came across this post. I haven’t digested whether I agree or not, but interesting:

Increasing the number of police on the street, for example, would increase capture rates and deter crime and by doing so it would also reduce the prison population. Indeed, in a survey of crime and policing that Jon Klick and I wrote in 2010 we found that a cost-benefit analysis would justify doubling the number of police on the street. We based our calculation not only on our own research from Washington DC but also on the research of many other economists which together provide a remarkably consistent estimate that a 10% increase in policing would reduce crime by 3 to 5%. Using our estimates, as well as those of some more recent papers, the Council of Economic Advisers also estimates big benefits (somewhat larger than ours) from an increase in policing. Moreover, what the CEA makes clear is that a dollar spent on policing is more effective at reducing crime than a dollar spent on imprisoning.

Unfortunately, selling the public on more policing is likely to be difficult…

The term fiduciary is actually in the news as a new standard is proposed for investment brokers. Here’s an old video explaining the difference:

Via Daring Fireball, from the husband of a victim in the San Bernandino attack:

In my opinion it is unlikely there is any valuable information on this phone. This was a work phone. My wife also had an iPhone issued by the County and she did not use it for any personal communication. San Bernardino is one of the largest Counties in the country. They can track the phone on GPS in case they needed to determine where people were. Second, both the iCloud account and carrier account were controlled by the county so they could track any communications. This was common knowledge among my wife and other employees. Why then would someone store vital contacts related to an attack on a phone they knew the county had access to? They destroyed their personal phones after the attack. And I believe they did that for a reason.

In the wake of this terrible attack, I believe strongly we need stronger gun laws. It was guns that killed innocent people, not technology. I also believe the FBI had and still has access to a lot of information which they have ignored and I’m very disappointed in the way they’ve handled this investigation.

Finally, and the reason for my letter to the court, I believe privacy is important and Apple should stay firm in their decision. Neither I, nor my wife, want to raise our children in a world where privacy is the tradeoff for security. I believe this case will have a huge impact all over the world.
You will have agencies coming from all over the world to get access to the software the FBI is asking Apple for. It will be abused all over to spy on innocent people.

I’m clearly going for click bait headlines today. From Nate Silver:

So even though the battle between Donald Trump and the Republican “establishment” has been a story since the summer, we should still pause now and again to gawk at the spectacle. On Thursday, Mitt Romney, the previous Republican presidential nominee and the closest thing the GOP has to a party elder, denounced Trump in the strongest possible terms. Trump responded by making what sounded to me like a blow job reference.

This is really happening. At least I think.