It took Richard Nixon to go to China and to start the Environmental Protection Agency. Now it seems that it’s going to take another right-wing president, Donald Trump, to come to terms with North Korea over its nuclear missile program. It’s tempting for Democrats to mock everything Donald Trump does, but let’s face it, this is exactly the kind of dealmaking America needs if it works out.
The U.S. armed forces have a major recruiting problem: 71% of adults age 18 to 24 in are too overweight to qualify for service. Experts believe there won’t be enough soldiers by the year 2020 as a result.
The booming economy has created a labor shortage. So why are wages still low? Because employers are conspiring to make workers, even in low-wage sectors like fast food, incapable of leaving. Welcome to the era of monopsony-driven slave labor.
Two phone companies are working to bring 4G cell phone service to The Moon. What about all the parts of the United States, including within major cities like Los Angeles, that don’t have decent reception? Not as sexy as a frozen lifeless rock.
Confronted with an aging population, Japanese robotics developers are working on conversational human companions for the elderly. Some are extremely realistic and the technology is very promising. On the other hand, in the United States, there seems to be little interest in such projects. Instead, artificial intelligence and robotics are mostly being dedicated to replacing manual laborers and service workers. It probably won’t happen, buy what if America took a cue from the Japanese, who are far more forward looking?
There still isn’t any convincing evidence that Russia “hacked” the US election in 2016. But there were clearly bots that were programmed somewhere in Russia. It might not be perfect behavior, but it’s more than a little galling to hear the US, which has overthrown countless governments using coups and regime change via brute military force, complain about a foreign country interfering and meddling with its sovereign political situation.
Russian bots allegedly were deployed online in order to amplify and exploit America’s long-neglected problems. So are we going to do something about them now? Guess again.
A company called Skydio Is marketing a $2500 consumer autonomous drone that can track the face of someone who has had their image uploaded to the Internet. Given the fact that in 2015 a father and son in Connecticut mounted a pistol to a drone and shot it remotely into the woods, this seems like cause for concern. However, we live in a society where technological progress is a given and the idea of regulation is anathema. So we will just sit back, and I would say enjoy the ride, but this is more like hunkering down while the future goes by. Adding to the frighteningly freaky aspect of this particular invention is the fact that it doesn’t need to be piloted. It’s all automatic.
You know it’s a wild crazy world when liberal Democrats find themselves in the position of having to defend the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies that spy on Americans and violate their rights simply because those agencies have bureaucratic disagreements with President Donald Trump. That’s exactly the position that we are in now. So the question is, when are people going to realize that we can break out of this binary crap and just simply say that we don’t like anyone involved?
White House staff secretary Rob Porter was forced to step down after it turned out that high-ranking White House officials failed to make sure that he passed his security check even though he handled highly classified information for the present. Although there were a variety of changing narratives coming out of official spokespeople, it now seems clear that they knew that he stood credibly accused of domestic violence against his former wife, yet decided to keep him on board anyway
