Nathan Myhrvold, Using his Billions to Help Humanity

I just saw  Nathan Myhrvold interviewed by Charlie Rose. He is super-intelligent and super-rich. He's one of the few super-rich guys I can think of who's also super-intelligent. 

You don't have to be super-intelligent to be super-rich. Many, if not most super-rich people, like the six Walton heirs [net worth estimated by Forbes in 2013: $144.7 billion] or 91-year old Liliane Betancourt, the world's richest woman and the sixth richest person in the world [estimated 2013 net worth: $30 billion], just got their billions by inheriting it, without performing a single day's worth of honest labor in their entire frivolous and pathetic lives. 

And even super-rich billionaires like Carlos Slim Helu, CEO of Mexico's  América Móvil [the world's second richest man, 2013 estimated net worth $69 billion] or Warren Buffett [2013 estimated net worth $53.5 billion] are not remarkably intelligent, but have one idea and just relentlessly focus on that idea to the exclusion of all others. 

You don't need lots of books or even a high-school or college diploma to explain how Warren Buffet became a super-billionaire.  [By the way, it's interesting to note all the super-billionaires who were college drop outs: here's a list of 34 of them.]  

Warren Buffet's entire investment philosophy can be summed up in one sentence: "Be greedy when others are fearful and be fearful when others are greedy." Now anybody, even my archetypal third-grader, can understand that, but maybe only one person in 10 million or 100 million can actually apply it relentlessly and ruthlessly.  

In Carlos Slim's case, he just ruthlessly obtained a virtual monopoly--70%--of the mobile telephony market in Mexico and charged rates that were so exorbitant that the Mexican government eventually slapped him with an unprecedented $1 billion fine in 2011 for unfair trade practices, a fine he avoided by reluctantly agreeing to slash his rates by 20%!  Slim has applied the same formula in other countries, particularly in Latin America. You don't have to be very intelligent to do this, you just have to be extremely focused and extremely ruthless.

Anyway, on the other hand, Nathan Myhrvold [2013 net worth $650 million], being not only super-rich, but super-intelligent, actually spends the millions he made as Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft for 13 years for useful purposes that can benefit the entire human race, most particularly the two or 3 billion people who eke out a precarious living and survive on less than two dollars a day.

So I went to his website and read Descended From Apes, Acting Like Slime Molds, an article he posted on Bloomberg, in which he articulates some of his ideas. What a brilliant metaphor to compare human societies to slime molds--I told you the guy was intelligent! 

Shocking! Walmart Arrests Santa Claus!

By now, everybody should know that the Walmart plutocrat billionaires pay their employees slave wages, terminate them or shut the store if they attempt to exercise their inalienable right to form a union and sign new hires up for food stamps so the American taxpayers can subsidize their grocery bills.

But if you ever wondered about how bad Walmart really is, now you know: the Walmart plutocrats had Santa Claus busted in Ontario, California!

See the shocking photo posted on Twitter of the goons handcuffing Santa Claus and read the the full sordid story on NBC News.

 

I think that after seeing this picture, all the kids in America will tell Mom and Dad to boycott Walmart and buy their toys at Costco or Target.

What dastardly act will Walmart commit next – slaughter all of Santa's reindeer and grind the venison into hamburger?

The Worst News for Democrats in 2016

The following quotation by House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy [R-CA] is from an article in the November 20, 2013,  Washington Post entitled, "Republican elders increasingly view members of Congress as too tainted."

"I don’t think anyone should become president if they haven’t been a governor first..." 

Read the full text of the article.

This is the worst possible news for the Democrats the the 2016 presidential election and the best possible news for Republicans.  Republicans have figured out history, they've read history, and they've finally come to understand that the most qualified people to be president of United States are governors, not senators. 

If the Democrats can't find a governor who's capable of winning the presidential election, they can say goodbye to the White House in 2016, because there's no better proof of how bad senators can be  as presidents than the current ocupant of the Oval Office who, to quote a golf metaphor by the immortal Pearl Bailey, "does a whole lot of swinging, but ain't got no follow-through."

The truth is that the Republicans already had the right idea in the 2012 election. Mitt Romney was a carpetbagger Republican from Michigan who succeeded in getting elected governor in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the most Democratic state in the Union, whereupon he successfully implemented socialized medicine for all its citizens. 

Romney lost the presidential election not because he had been a bad governor but because he flaunted his elitism, didn't pay his taxes, betrayed his country by stashing millions of dollars in the Cayman Islands and--most important of all--although he wanted to be president, he didn't really believe he could win the election.

If the Republicans nominate a successful governor for president in 2016, their candidate wipe the floor with Hillary Clinton, who's been the media darling since she was first elected junior senator from the state of New York and who is notoriously unqualified for the job of president of United States.

It is astonishing that so many people believe that just because Hillary Clinton flew all over the world and has the stamps of 112 countries in her passport she is therefore qualified to be President of the United States. Rather it makes her qualified for elite status in a  frequent-flier club.  Or, as an John Cassidy put it somewhat more kindly in the pages of The New Yorker, "Hillary Clinton was a great ambassador, not a great Secretary of State."

But it doesn't have to be as bad as the Democrats might think. Governors, whether Republicans or Democrats, have to be realists. That means that unlike the ignorant and fanatic teabagger ideologues strangling the Congress,  they have to know how to compromise. 

So a good, successful Republican governor--and I'm excluding the current media darling Chris Christie of New Jersey who, in addition to his record making him vulnerabe to attacks by the Democrats, should be staggering to the nearest WeightWatchers instead of running for the White House--could easily become a very successful president.  

I'd suggest someone like Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico who, if elected, would not only be the first woman president, but the first Hispanic/Latina president as well.  With her, the Republicans could capture two birds at once.

After all, there have been a few good Republican presidents, among them Abraham Lincoln,who freed the slaves and saved the nation, and Theodore Roosevelt, who busted the trusts and punished the plutocrats, to name just two. 

The Filibuster is Dead!

Below is an excerpt from an article dated November 21, 2013, in the Washington Post by Ezra Klein entitled "Nine reasons the filibuster change is a huge deal."

"The filibuster now exists in what you might call an unstable equilibrium. It theoretically forces a 60-vote threshold on important legislation. But it can — and now, in part, has —been undone with 51 votes. Its only protection was the perceived norm against using the 51-vote option. Democrats just blew that norm apart. The moment one party or the other filibusters a consequential and popular bill, that's likely the end of the filibuster, permanently."

Read the full text of the article.

Comment:

According to the Constitution, there are only five instances where a supermajority is unambiguously required:

1.  Approval of an amendment to the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote of both House and Senate plus the approval of three-fourths of the state legislatures.  
2. A two-thirds vote of both houses is required to override a presidential veto of a bill.  
3. A two-thirds majority of the Senate is required to convict a president, vice-president of "officer of the United States" impeached by a majority vote of the House.
4. A two-thirds vote in either body is required to expel a disorderly member of that body.
5. Treaties must be approved by a two-thirds vote of the Senate to enter into force.

The Senate filibuster, which was never in the Constitution but was simply a rule of the Senate, is, for all intents and purposes, dead.

The only people who'll be weeping are Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell [R-KY], alias Mister Filibuster--who holds the record of over 400 filibusters--and his plutocrat paymasters, whose generous bribes have made him a multi-millionaire.

But now, Senator Filibuster's chances of losing his reelection bid to Allison Grimes in 2014 in the Commonwealth of Kentucky are greatly enhanced, because the plutocrats will now have less incentive to bribe him due to his diminished ability to do their bidding through his filibusters. 

 

In short, why should the plutocrats bribe Mitch, when he can't do what they want any more?  

So, the irony is that the plutocrats, his erstwhile allies and fairweather friends, will be just as eager to throw Senator Filibuster under the bus as the Democrats.

 

There IS a God!

Plutocrat Kills Gandmother, Faces $2,500 Fine

From Forbes, October 30, 2013

Billionaire Jacqueline Mars Charged With Reckless Driving In Fatal Car Crash

[Seventy-four year old] billionaire Jacqueline Mars, heiress to a $20.5 billion candy fortune that makes her the third-richest person in the United States, was driving her 2004 Porche SUV when it crossed the center line on Route 50 in Aldie, VA on the afternoon of October 4th.  Her car struck a a 2013 Chrysler minivan carrying six women, killing 86-year old grandmother Irene Ellisor...[T]he pregnant driver of the van suffered critical injuries and lost an eight-month-old unborn baby in the crash.

Mars escaped the fatal car crash she was involved in without any life-threatening injuries. However, she won’t avoid criminal charges. This week, a misdemeanor charge of reckless driving was levied against Mars, which comes with it a punishment of no higher than a $2,500 fine and jail time no longer than 12 months...Mars allegedly told a witness that she had fallen asleep at the wheel. Full text of article.

Jagor’s comment:

I personally would recommend raising the fine to $20,000,000,000.00--twenty billion dollars. That's "Jacquie's" entire estimated net worth.

That twenty billion bucks could be used, for example, to provide cradle-to-grave heath care for every citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia for the rest of their lives. 

The punishment would be particularly appropriate because Mars, Inc, the 3^rd largest privately-owned company in America, makes most of its money peddling sugar-loaded junk foods in over 150 countries thereby destroying the health of tens or hundreds of millions of people all over the world.

But that makes far too much sense to actually occur, doesn't?  Talking away a social parasite plutocrat's ill-gotten gains as punishment for killing an innocent victim and an unborn child to use the money to heal the sick just isn't done, is it?