Monday, June 6, 2016

Obama's Criminal Government. Swiss Muslims Shake Matters Up.Dilbert on Trump.


   The IRS and Its Law Breaking Management         A Catholic nun being frisked by a Muslim                                                                                                security agent at Detroit Metropolitan Airport!                                                                                         At least they are not being beheaded.
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When citizens cannot defend themselves against criminals and the government is already run by criminals you can kiss freedom goodbye. (See 1 below.)

If you lie to a federal agent you go to jail. If federal employees lie they get a bonus and/or a promotion.

The IRS administrators defied orders issued by a federal judge, withheld information, dragged their feet, assumed a fetal position and forgot everything but their constitutional right not to incriminate themselves. This is called criminal justice Obama style.

The Veteran's Administration administrators treat their patients  in a manner that were they a public entity they would be driven out of business.  They are allowed to build structures with huge cost over runs, they lie and cover for each other, cannot be fired, are unaccountable and this happens on Obama's watch but he too is not held accountable because his race makes him teflon.

We have the EPA which decides what new regulations they will create and enforce and when the federal court tells them they acted beyond their legal rights they simply continue with their arrogance knowing they are doing Obama's bidding and will be protected by his equally corrupt Justice Department.

Ah, now we come to Obama's corrupt State Department and its cadre of liars who erase unfavorable material which proves they lied to the people they supposedly are sworn to serve faithfully.

When asked who authorized this behaviour they cannot tell yet, amnesia was not a problem when they went after the same reporter who caught them red handed.  They knew exactly who was spying upon him.

This is the government Obama presides over, sanctions and has staffed and which serves his monarchical presidency.  The people be damned and particularly if they are conservative because they are to be denied their legal rights and investigated for holding views anathema to Obama.

The consequence of all of this, of the divisiveness Obama has wrought with his wedge issues, arrogance and hubris is a nation on fire.

Meanwhile, supporters of Hillary accuse Trump of being a racist, a fascist, anti-Semitic but somehow overlook the IRS lies, The State Department lies, the attacks on Trump supporters by organized paid thugs, liberal inspired anti-Semitism on campuses, attacks on those who come to speak on college campuses, the appointment of Bernie's three choices to the DNC , two of whom are as anti-Israel, anti-Semitic and even anti-American as you can get,  Then there are Hillary's acts of willingly seeking contributions to her foundation while a paid employee of our government and the cloud of alleged illegal acts she brushes off in her usual dismissive manner followed by cackles.

I am not defending Trump or his obnoxious style of campaigning just trying to provide a bit of goose and gander balance.
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Swiss Muslims shake matters up! (See 2 below.)
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The fix is in but will it hold? (See 3 below.)
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Save for the future. (See 4 below.)
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Dilbert on Trump! (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)

Hillary Clinton Refuses To Say We Have A Constitutional Right To Bear Arms

Hillary Clinton Refuses To Say We Have A Constitutional Right To Bear Arms
On Sunday, former Clinton political operative and host of ABC News’ This Week George Stephanopoulos interviewed Hillary Clinton, where the Second Amendment came up due to Donald Trump’s attacks that the former secretary of state will essentially abolish our right to firearms. Stephanopoulos asked if Clinton felt the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual right to bear arms under the Constitution, wherein the former first lady walked a waffled line on the matter. In the end, she refused to say if this was an individual right, instead opting to hit back at some of Trump’s claims and focused on what she would do to curb gun violence.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's talk about the Second Amendment. As you know, Donald Trump has also been out on the stump talking about the Second Amendment and saying you want to abolish the Second Amendment. I know you reject that. But I want to ask you a specific question: Do you believe that an individual's right to bear arms is a constitutional right — that it's not linked to service in a militia?
HILLARY CLINTON: I think that for most of our history there was a nuanced reading of the Second Amendment until the decision by the late Justice Scalia, and that there was no argument until then that localities and state and federal government had a right, as we do with every amendment, to impose reasonable regulations. So I believe we can have common-sense gun-safety measures consistent with the Second Amendment. And, in fact, what I have proposed is supported by 90 percent of the American people and more than 75 percent of responsible gun owners. So that is exactly what I think is constitutionally permissible and, once again, you have Donald Trump just making outright fabrications, accusing me of something that is absolutely untrue. But I'm going to continue to speak out for comprehensive background checks; closing the gun-show loophole; closing the online loophole; closing the so-called Charleston loophole; reversing the bill that Senator Sanders voted for and I voted against, giving immunity from liability to gun makers and sellers. I think all of that can and should be done, and it is, in my view, consistent with the Constitution.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And the Heller decisions also does say there can be some restrictions, but that’s not what I asked, I said do you believe that their conclusion, that an individual’s right to bear arms is a constitutional right 
CLINTON: If it is a constitutional right, then it, like every other constitutional right, is subject to reasonable regulations. And what people have done with that decision is to take it as far as they possibly can and reject what has been our history from the very beginning of the republic, where some of the earliest laws that were passed were about firearms. So I think it’s important to recognize that reasonable people can say, as I do, responsible gun owners have a right, I have no objection to that, but the rest of the American public has a right to require certain kinds of regulatory responsible actions to protect everyone else.
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2) Hugh Fitzgerald: Switzerland: What’s in a Handshake?
 
 
Sometimes it’s the little things that are most telling. In Switzerland it has long been customary for students to shake the hands of their teachers at the beginning and end of the school day. It’s a sign of solidarity and mutual respect between teacher and pupil, one that is thought to encourage the right classroom atmosphere. Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga recently felt compelled to further explain that shaking hands was part of Swiss culture and daily life.
 
And the reason she felt compelled to speak out about the handshake is that two Muslim brothers, aged 14 and 15, who have lived in Switzerland for several years (and thus are familiar with its mores), in the town of Therwil, near Basel, refused to shake the hands of their teacher, a woman, because, they claimed, this would violate Muslim teachings that contact with the opposite sex is allowed only with family members. At first the school authorities decided to avoid trouble, and initially granted the boys an exemption from having to shake the hand of any female teacher. But an uproar followed, as Mayor Reto Wolf explained to the BBC: “the community was unhappy with the decision taken by the school. In our culture and in our way of communication a handshake is normal and sends out respect for the other person, and this has to be brought [home] to the children in school.”
 
Therwil’s Educational Department reversed the school’s decision, explaining in a statement on May 25 that the school’s exemption was lifted because “the public interest with respect to equality between men and women and the integration of foreigners significantly outweighs the freedom of religion.” It added that a teacher has the right to demand a handshake. Furthermore, if the students refused to shake hands again “the sanctions called for by law will be applied,” which included a possible fine of up to 5,000 dollars.
 
This uproar in Switzerland, where many people were enraged at the original exemption granted to the Muslim boys, did not end after that exemption was itself overturned by the local Educational Department. The Swiss understood quite clearly that this was more than a little quarrel over handshakes; it was a fight over whether the Swiss would be masters in their own house, or whether they would be forced to yield, by the granting of special treatment, to the Islamic view of the proper relations between the sexes. It is one battle – small but to the Swiss significant – between o’erweening Muslim immigrants and the indigenous Swiss.
 
Naturally, once the exemption was withdrawn, all hell broke loose among Muslims in Switzerland. The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland, instead of yielding quietly to the Swiss decision to uphold the handshaking custom, criticized the ruling in hysterical terms, claiming that the enforcement of the handshaking is “totalitarian” (!) because its intent is to “forbid religious people from meeting their obligations to God.” That, of course, was never the “intent” of the long-standing handshaking custom, which was a nearly-universal custom in Switzerland, and in schools had to do only with encouraging the right classroom atmosphere of mutual respect between instructor and pupil, of which the handshake was one aspect. 
 
The Swiss formulation of the problem – weighing competing claims — will be familiar to Americans versed in Constitutional adjudication. In this case “the public interest with respect to equality” of the sexes and the “integration of foreigners” (who are expected to adopt Swiss ways, not force the Swiss to exempt them from some of those ways) were weighed against the “religious obligations to God” of Muslims, and the former interests found to outweigh the latter.
 
What this case shows is that even at the smallest and seemingly inconsequential level, Muslims are challenging the laws and customs of the Infidels among whom they have been allowed to settle [i.e., stealth jihad toward sharia dominance]. Each little victory, or defeat, will determine whether Muslims will truly integrate into a Western society or, instead, refashion that society to meet Muslim requirements. 
 
The handshake has been upheld and, what’s more, a stiff fine now will be imposed on those who continue to refuse to shake hands with a female teacher. This is a heartening sign of non-surrender by the Swiss. But the challenges of the Muslims within Europe to the laws and customs of the indigenes have no logical end and will not stop. And the greater the number of Muslims allowed to settle in Europe, the stronger and more frequent their challenges will be. They are attempting not to integrate, but rather to create, for now, a second, parallel society, and eventually, through sheer force of numbers from both migration and by outbreeding the Infidels, to fashion not a parallel society but one society — now dominated by Muslim [sharia].
 
The Swiss handshaking dispute has received some, but not enough, press attention. Presumably, it’s deemed too inconsequential a matter to bother with. But the Swiss know better. And so should we.
 
There’s an old Scottish saying that in one variant reads: “Many a little makes a mickle.” That is, the accumulation of many little things leads to one big thing. That’s what’s happening in Europe today. This was one victory for the side of sanity. There will need to be a great many more.
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3)

WHY U.S. DIPLOMACY CAN'T FIX THE MIDDLE EAST

By Aaron David Miller

Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault at a Middle East peace conference in Paris on Friday. Neither the Israelis nor Palestinians attended. (Stephane De Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images)
Israel wanted no part in it. And neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians were scheduled to attend. Yet Secretary of State John Kerry remained optimistic ahead of Friday’s sure-to-go-nowhere Middle East peace conference in Paris. “What we are seeking to do,” he said, “is encourage the parties to be able to see a way forward so they understand peace is a possibility.”
I recognize that sentiment: wanting to remain upbeat, even while knowing that the odds are long. For much of my 24-year career as a State Department Middle East analyst, negotiator and adviser, I held out hope that a conflict-ending peace agreement was possible. I had faith in negotiations as a talking cure and thought the United States could arrange a comprehensive solution. I believed in the power of U.S. diplomacy.
But by the time I left government in 2003, I was a disillusioned diplomat and peace processor with serious doubts about what the United States could accomplish in the Middle East. I realize now that, like Kerry, I was tilting at windmills. U.S.-brokered peace in the Middle East is a quixotic quest. And the more we try and fail, the less credibility and leverage we have in the region.
Looking back now, the high point of my optimism was probably in 1991, the year we orchestrated another, more productive Middle East peace conference in Madrid. I remember that on one of nine trips that led to the conference, a large fly boarded the plane with us at Andrews Air Force Base and buzzed annoyingly around the staff compartment. I was vainly trying to swat it when Secretary of State James Baker walked by to brief the press in the rear of the aircraft. Hours later, while drafting talking points, I felt a presence over my shoulder and turned just as Baker’s large hand dropped the fly onto my yellow legal pad.
That kind of sums up how I thought about our diplomacy back then: With good timing and assertive American leadership (something short of fly-crushing brute force), we could solve festering problems once and for all. My memos at the time had a yes-we-can edge.
The moment seemed ripe for a Middle East breakthrough facilitated by the United States. Our influence in the region was at an all-time high. The U.S. military had just pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, and the Israelis and Arabs were off-balance — in the case of Jordan, Syria and the Palestinians, they were looking for ways to ingratiate themselves into America’s good graces. We were respected, admired and feared in the region to a degree we haven’t been since.
Baker, meanwhile, was probably the best U.S. negotiator to tackle the Middle East since Henry Kissinger brokered three disengagement agreements in the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. I watched Baker cajole, pressure and threaten to walk out on both Israel’s Yitzhak Shamir and Syria’s Hafez al-Assad, and I saw him huddle with Palestinians like a football coach to encourage them to attend the peace conference. It helped that he had the full backing of President George H.W. Bush — his close friend who cared about Mideast peace and was making good on a pledge to Saudi Arabia that he’d take on the ­Arab-Israeli issue after the Persian Gulf War.
The Madrid conference produced the first direct bilateral negotiations and peace process success between Israelis and Arabs — Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians — since the Egyptian-Israeli agreement 12 years earlier. I reveled in our achievement and marveled at what U.S. diplomacy could accomplish when it was tough, tenacious and strategic.
My mistake was in believing that Madrid, which really produced only a procedural breakthrough, would necessarily create a foundation for progress on the substantive issues. I thought if we just kept the process going, if we were committed and creative, we would somehow find our way to agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians on Jerusalem, borders and refugees, along with agreement between the Israelis and the Syrians on the Golan Heights. But we never got there. Process can’t substitute for substance.
I maintained my misplaced optimism into the Clinton administration. Sitting with my family on the South Lawn of the White House in September 1993, watching President Bill Clinton preside over the historic handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, I believed, in what had to be one of the most stunning misjudgments of my career, that the peace process had become irreversible.
The Israelis and the Palestinians, without U.S. involvement, had reached an agreement on mutual recognition and a declaration of principles that was supposed to get them toward talks on the big issues. I really thought they had taken ownership of their negotiations and would dedicate themselves to making the Oslo Accords stick.
Through the crises of the next seven years of the Oslo process — Palestinian terrorist attacks, Israeli settlement activity, the assassination of Rabin by an Israeli extremist opposed to Oslo — I kept the faith that the almighty peace process ultimately would succeed. I convinced myself that with added urgency from the United States, the confidence-building, interim measures laid out in the Oslo agreement could be made to work and pave the way for negotiations on the core issues. Early in 1997, literally down on my hands and knees in the West Bank city of Hebron measuring the width of a street that figured prominently in the negotiations, I felt both small and ennobled. This was important, and I’d do anything to keep the process alive.
My commitment, and the illusions that sustained it, would take me all the way to the ill-advised, ill-timed and ill-prepared July 2000 Camp David summit: a last-ditch effort to save the Oslo process. During a briefing a week before, Clinton went around the room asking everyone to gauge the prospects of the summit. And everyone, from the national security adviser to the secretary of state, said more or less the same thing: There was a chance; Ehud Barak and Arafat would make decisions only in the heat of a summit; the president owed it to the cause and to himself to pursue peace before the end of his term. The assessment we all should have given him was that there would be no conflict-ending accord or even a framework agreement, because neither Barak nor Arafat were ready to pay the price, and the president was unlikely to bridge the gaps. But I brushed aside my doubts and echoed the others. Part of me was concerned about pissing off everyone else in the room. The invitations to Arafat and Barak had already been issued, so the briefing really was a formality. But part of me still wanted to believe that we could make peace.
The president thought that if he could just get the Israelis and the Palestinians in the room, he could somehow get them to an agreement, building on what Barak was prepared to offer and using the famous Clinton powers of persuasion. But we had no strategy, we coordinated too closely with the Israelis, and we had no Arab buy-in on issues such as Jerusalem nor any sign that the Palestinians would move off their core demands. We didn’t run the summit; the summit ran us.
When I think back about that fateful period, I shudder. With the best of intentions, in eight months, we planned three presidential negotiations (two on the Syrian track and one on the Palestinian) and failed at all three.
What I should have realized all along was that strong U.S. mediation can’t make up for weak leadership of the parties to a negotiation. We can’t talk them into getting control over their political constituencies. And we can’t expect that our enthusiasm will persuade them to invest in solutions, take necessary risks or recognize that a negotiated settlement is in their interest (and not just ours).
In March 2002, during the height of the second intifada, President George W. Bush’s Middle East envoy, Anthony Zinni, and I were sent to negotiate a cease-fire between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. But that was either the Bush administration’s idea of a cruel joke or just a throwaway talking point before the final break with the PLO leader.
That week, a Palestinian suicide bomber had blown himself up at a Passover seder in Netanya, killing 30 Israelis and wounding 140. Israeli forces responded with Operation Defensive Shield, entering the West Bank and imposing closures on most major Palestinian cities and towns.
I’ll never forget the scene in Arafat’s compound. The place reeked of foul air, body odor and too few working toilets. The only light, in what had been in better days a reasonably well-lit conference room, came from candles and a bit of sun that managed to peek through windows that were almost completely blacked out for fear of Israeli snipers. And there in the gloom sat a self-satisfied Arafat, his black machine gun ominously displayed on the table, holding forth about how he’d be rather be martyred than surrender to Israel’s diktats.
There was no longer any way for me to rationalize the importance of process without direction, negotiations without substance or even the use of the word “peace.” Our overinflated optimism at Camp David had had real costs. After raising expectations we couldn’t deliver on, we blamed Arafat for the summit’s failure, and that made it easier for him, in the wake of Sharon’s provocative visit to the sacred Temple Mount, to acquiesce to and encourage the violence that would become the second intifada.
U.S. diplomacy can be effective when we have partners willing to make decisions, when all parties feel an urgency to make those decisions and when gaps separating the parties can actually be bridged. The Iran nuclear agreement, while greatly flawed, is a case in point. It succeeded because it was not a transformational but a transactional arrangement, a highly detailed arms-control accord of arguably limited duration and scope that both the United States and Iran wanted for their own reasons.
But when it comes to matters that cut to the core of people’s identities — such as Jerusalem or Palestinian refugees, or the social engineering required to end Syria’s civil war — or creating an outcome in Iraq or Libya that produces stability and good governance, the United States doesn’t have the horses to pull the wagon. The inconvenient reality is that we will never have a greater stake in this region, or more power to remedy its ills, than those who live there.
I haven’t given up hope for smart and well-timed U.S. diplomacy. But I’ve abandoned my illusions of just how much America is able and willing to do to repair a badly broken, cruel and unforgiving Middle East.
As the fix-it people, Americans have a hard time accepting that we can’t sort out conflicts when those directly involved aren’t willing or able to do so. But sometimes, it makes more sense for our diplomats and negotiators to stay home rather than look weak and ineffective while searching for solutions to problems they simply cannot resolve.
Aaron David Miller is a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. He served in the State Department from 1978 to 2003.
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4)In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years - and most people don't see it coming. 
Did you ever think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper or film again???  Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The problem was that the first ones only had 10,000 pixels and it took time to develop more definition in photos. So, as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became way superior and became mainstream in only a few short years thereafter.

The above will now start happening with artificial intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture, jobs and many other important parts of daily life.
 SO, Welcome to the 4th industrial revolution or should I say welcome to the exponential age.
Software

Software will change and disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.
Uber is just a software tool/app, they don't own any cars, but are now the biggest taxi company in the world. 

Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

Artificial intelligence

Computers will become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected. In the US, young lawyers already don't get jobs because legal advice comes from IBM’s Watson where you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds with a 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans.  There will be 90% less lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain.

So, if you study law, stop immediately!!!

Medicine

Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 times more accurate than human nurses. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Transport

Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars will be available for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You won't want to own a car anymore however if you do want a car then electric cars will already start becoming mainstream by 2020. Furthermore, cities will be less noisy because all cars will run on electric. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver's license and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars for that. We can transform former parking space into parks.

Today 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 100,000 km, with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 10 million km. That will save a million lives each year.

Most car companies may become bankrupt. Traditional car companies still try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will take the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. (I spoke to a lot of engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; they are completely terrified of Tesla.)

Insurance

Insurance companies will have massive trouble. This is because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Real Estate

Real estate patterns will change. If you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood.

Electricity.

Electricity – This utility will become incredibly cheap, and clean Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can only see the impact now. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. The price for solar will drop so much that all coal companies will be out of business by 2025.

Water

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter. We don't have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.

Health

Health - The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There will be companies who will build this type of medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone taking your retina scan and will also be able to take your blood sample when you breath into it. It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medicine, nearly for free.

3D printing

The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. 

All major shoe companies started 3D printing shoes. Spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past. At the end of this year, new smartphones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home. In China, they have already 3D printed a complete 6-story office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that's being produced will be 3D printed.

Work

70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enoughnew jobs.
Agriculture and food.

There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all days on their fields. Aeroponics will need much less water. The first petri dish produced veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows. Imagine if we don't need that space anymore. There are several start-ups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. This will contain more protein than meat. It will be labelled as "alternative protein source" (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

Human feelings

There is already an app called "moodies" which can tell in which mood you are. Until 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it's being displayed when they are telling the truth and when not.

Bitcoin

This currency will become mainstream this year and might even become the default reserve currency.

Longevity

Right now an average life span increases by 3 months per year.Four years ago, a life span used to be 79 years, now it's 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more than one year increase per year. So we all might live for a long, long time, probably way more than 100.
Education
The cheapest smartphones are already sold for $10 in Africa and Asia. By 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone and that means that most will have the same access to world class education.

 Business opportunities:

If you think of a niche you want to go into, ask yourself, "in the future, do you think we will have that?" If the answer is yes, you should 
ask yourself how can you make this happen sooner?

THE 2 BIG CLUES

If it doesn't work with your phone, forget about the idea! Any idea that was designed for success using 20th century thinking is doomed for failure in the 21st century.

Why don’t you bury this mail somewhere on your computer under the header “To be opened on1 January 2025” and on this date (if you are still around) look back to see how much of the above has come true. You might be in for a huge surprise and you will not be able to say “Nobody warned me that this was going to happen.” If you are not around, then leave guidance to your grandchildren to find the hidden file where they will probably have a wonderful laugh at your expense for not listening to your own advice. 
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5)Here's an interesting blog by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. Much more thoughtful than you might expect.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145309172876/the-risks-of-a-trump-presidency


What exactly is the risk of a Trump presidency? Beats me. But let’s talk about it anyway.
Your Abysmal Track Record
For starters, ask yourself how well you predicted the performance of past presidents. Have your psychic powers been accurate?
I’m not good at predicting the performance of presidents. I thought Reagan would be dangerous, but he presided over the end of the Cold War. And I thought George W. Bush would be unlikely to start a war, much less two of them.
But it gets better. Even AFTER the presidency, can you tell who did the best job? I can’t. You think you can, but you can’t. And the simple reason for that is because there is no base case with which to compare a president. All we know is what did happen, not what might have happened if we took another path. You can’t compare a situation in the real world to your imaginary world in which something better happened. That is nonsense. And yet we do it. Watch me prove it right now.
So, how did President Obama do on the job? Was he a good president?
If you have an answer in your head – either yes or no – it proves you don’t know how to make decisions. No judgement can be made about Obama’s performance because there is nothing to which it can be compared. No one else in a parallel universe was president at the same time, doing different things and getting different results. 
I’m not a fan of everything our president has done, but I feel as if historians will rank him as one of our best presidents. Definitely in the top 20%.

Wait, what? Am I crazy?
Many of you think Obama nearly destroyed civilization. You and I can’t both be right. But both of us can be irrational in trusting our opinions. We are literally comparing Obama’s actual performance to imagined alternatives that exist only in our minds. Maybe you think the imaginary president in your mind is way better than the real one, whereas I think the real one did well compared to my imaginary alternative. 
That isn’t thinking. Science is pretty clear on that.
And how about your ability to predict the future of your own relationships? Most relationships end badly, so we know that the majority of Americans are not good at predicting the future. Have all of your relationships worked out the way you expected? Mine haven’t. 
I think you’ll agree that humans are terrible at predicting the future. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that we think we are not terrible at predicting the future. Our certainty in the face of overwhelming uncertainty is irrational.
Do you think President Trump would be extra-dangerous to the world? If you have an opinion on that – either yes or no – you’re being irrational. 
The FBI Profiler Approach
When FBI profilers are trying to figure out who perpetrated a specific type of crime, they can often narrow it down to people who have done the same sort of thing in the past. Arsonists have played with matches in their youth. Serial killers have probably been cruel to animals. Abusers have probably abused people before. Pedophiles have often been victims themselves. Patterns of this sort can be predictive, at least when viewed by experts.
Donald Trump has about five decades of track record in business that includes no violent acts whatsoever. Nor have we heard stories of any Trump temper tantrums in the business world that go beyond the scope of what any CEO does on a bad day. Somehow Trump built hundreds of business entities, amassed great wealth, and raised a great set of kids. And nowhere in the story is the part where he did something scary or dangerous. That sort of behavior doesn’t pop up suddenly when you’re a grandfather.
The Scary Talk
Trump does talk tough. He talks of expelling illegals from the country. He talks of waterboarding. He talks of bombing the shit out of ISIS. He talks about going after the families of terrorists.
But Trump also openly talks about the value of hyperbole (also known as bullshit). He wrote about it in The Art of the Deal. Trump tells us – in the clearest possible language – that he always sets the table for negotiating by making a big opening offer. If Trump is consistent with decades of history – and with what he says about his approach to negotiating – then his more extreme statements are just psychology. That’s what an FBI profiler would tell you. People don’t suddenly change their basic mode of operation at age 69, especially when it is working.
Chemical Cyborgs
In my view, we are already in the Age of Cyborgs. You probably have a friend who has one kind of personality without drugs (legal or illegal) and a completely different personality when using drugs, including alcohol. Maybe the drugs are curing depression, or anxiety, or loneliness, or something. But people are different when they are on them. That’s the point of taking drugs.
Trump doesn’t drink. He never has. He doesn’t take illegal drugs either. He’s the same guy at night that he is in the morning. He’s not a chemical cyborg with a personality that is driven by big pharma.
Clinton, on the other hand, is part human, part pharmacological grab-bag. Her personality is at least partly determined by whatever cocktail of meds and wine are in her system at any given moment. In  other words, she is just like most adults. Our personalities are the product of the drugs in our system, for better or for worse.
Do you make the same decisions when you are tired? Do you make the same decisions when you’re angry, depressed, or in pain? Probably not. So if meds are fixing those conditions, those meds are also controlling your decisions. And that introduces risk.
Trump brings with him all the risks of being Trump, but he does seem to be the same person every day. Clinton brings with her all the risks of being Clinton, plus any extra risks from a glass of wine or doctor-prescribed meds. That risk could be nearly nothing. Or not. We have no way to know.
Scaring Foreign Leaders
I hear voters say they worry about Trump offending world leaders and triggering wars. But keep in mind that world leaders have been putting up with dangerous and shitty U.S. presidents for hundreds of years. It hasn’t been a problem yet.

One of the things Trump has going for him is that he’s a well-known entity. People hate surprises. Any foreign leader would know exactly what they are getting with Trump. Like Reagan, a President Trump would talk tough – for effect – but he is likable in person, and he has a strong bias to avoid any problems that are bad for business. China would have no problem with any of that. Putin would have no problem with Trump either. They know what negotiating looks like.
Do foreign leaders WANT a President Trump? Hell, no. Trump says he plans to negotiate better deals for America, which means worse deals for everyone else. Of course foreign leaders are going to tell us Trump is risky, scary, and anything else bad, just to stop him.
I doubt any foreign leader is literally afraid of Trump. But they might want you to think they are afraid of him, so you won’t elect him. Foreign leaders are not idiots. To some extent, they are playing us.
Racism
What about all of Trump’s racism? An FBI profiler would assume a person’s pattern of racism would continue, maybe worsen.
But Trump’s racism exists solely in the minds of his opponents. He has proposed no racist policies and he has no racist acts in his past.
Trump opposes illegal immigration. But he loves legal Americans of every color and flavor. He says so often. That’s not racism. That’s more like the opposite.
Trump did say Mexicans are rapists. But you’d have to be dumb to think he meant every single Mexican coming into the country is a rapist. Literally no one – ever – has believed all Mexicans are rapists. If you think Trump believes it – or wants us to believe it – you have abandoned any hold on reason. 
But we agree that Trump says outrageous things, because doing so gets him elected, apparently.
Religious Discrimination
What about Trump’s idea to temporarily ban Muslim immigration until we figure out what the problem is? Isn’t that religious discrimination?
Yes, it is. But it is the legal kind because it would only apply to non-citizens trying to enter the country. And keep in mind that Islam – as commonly practiced in Muslim countries around the world – is not compatible with the Constitution of the United States. That’s different from the situation with Presbyterian immigrants, for example, whose beliefs fold neatly into the current system.
I don’t have an opinion on the best way to handle Muslim immigration because I don’t know how effectively we can screen people. But common sense says we should treat different risk classes in different ways. That’s the way we price car insurance, and it is the way we make all data-driven decisions. Ignoring risk is noble, but it isn’t always smart.
Trump also suggested creating a government list of which residents of the country are Muslim. That’s some scary shit. Until…you realize the government already has that list. You know they do, right?
And if they don’t, they can pull it together from existing Big Data any time they want. That risk is already baked into our current situation. The government knows what you are up to as well. They know your religion (with high probability), your spending habits, your porn preferences, and your health. Or at least they can know those things any time they want.
The privacy ship already sailed.
War Crimes
Trump famously suggested we use torture to fight terrorism. Torture is not legal. And he suggested going after the families of terrorists. That’s a war crime too.
Did he mean any of that?
Trump is always operating on the dimension of emotion and persuasion. He wants you – and the terrorists – to know he’s the most bad-ass player running for president. That gives him an edge in getting elected and it gives him a psychological advantage against ISIS. If you’re a potential suicide bomber, you don’t worry about President Obama killing your family. But President Trump? You’d better think this through.
Personally, I think it would be a terrible idea to torture terrorists (unless it works), and always a bad idea to target families. But saying you might do those things is effective both for winning a Republican primary and for keeping the enemy off balance.
I think I’ve mentioned that Trump says things for effect. 
Risk of Business as Usual
Have you wondered why Republican Bill Kristol and others are looking for a third-party candidate who will guarantee a Clinton win over Trump? That’s probably because they know Clinton is in the pockets of the defense industry, and perhaps so are they.
The defense industry needs America to fight wars. History suggests Clinton will be a normal president who starts wars when the defense industry tells her to do so. Trump is less likely to play that game because he doesn’t need their money. That makes Trump the lower risk of starting a war. He has no profit motive.
When to Increase Risk
As a general rule, you want to keep risks low when things are going well and nothing is broken. But when things are heading in the wrong direction, sometimes the only way to fix the situation is to introduce a reasonable, entrepreneurial risk.
So, if you think the country is heading in the right direction, you probably don’t want someone like Trump as president. Trump is more likely to introduce change than Clinton. But if you think the government is broken, you might want some Trump-like entrepreneurial risk in your future.
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