Trump’s Nicknames

~ Mr. Rantastic

Ever notice that whenever Donald Trump comes up with new nicknames for his rivals it is when he is feeling some heat himself? Trump gets some criticism for being too ready to bomb the shit out of ISIS, so he comes up “trigger-happy Hillary” for Hillary Clinton.

Ted Cruz accuses Trump of lying about his plans to build a wall along the Mexican border and the next thing you know Trump has come up with “Lyin’ Ted Cruz”.

Marco Rubio belittles Trump’s claims of strong leadership as a bunch of puffery and Trump comes back with “Little Marco”.

And so on. I think the shrinks call this ‘projection’.

 

 

The Uber Ankle Bracelet

~ Mr. Rantastic

The other day I grabbed an Uber to meet my wife at an Italian restaurant. On the way there I had the car stop at a flower stand and picked up a rose for her. On the Uber back home we were wishfully chatting about how much fun it would be if we were actually eating Italian food at a restaurant in Italy.

When I got on the internet the next day I got ads for flower delivery and tour packages to Italy for my wife’s upcoming birthday.

The above is fantasy (especially the part about the rose!) but not by much. Uber has already said it may track you even when you are not using its service. Is it really that much of a stretch to think that it will listen to your conversations whenever you are riding in one of its vehicles as well? It would be like Alexa, but listening all the time. Wait a minute, isn’t Alexa already listening all the time . . .  ?

Once self driving cars become the norm, and they are all wired into Big Highway Brother, you really won’t be able to go anywhere at all without being tracked. The assumption will be that anyone manually driving a car is trying to avoid tracking and up to no good. Not only that, since self driving cars can be safely compacted much closer together on the road, manual  drivers will be considered selfish for taking up more space on the roads. So the rap on manual drivers will be that they are selfish and shifty (pun intended). Or rich.

The rich, of course, will find a way around this, as they usually do. So they’ll still have some privacy. But the companies they own and run will know everything about you. Doesn’t the future sound fab?

 

Good News / Bad News

~ Mr. Rantastic

During the final 60 days of the US presidential campaign, the media will be reporting a lot of news. My guess is that it will be good news about Donald Trump and bad news about Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s new team came in and everyone said they would let Trump be Trump. However, he has mostly not been the Trump we knew from the primaries. His wilder statements have been curtailed. He is starting to moderate his views. The media is waiting for major gaffes, and they may not get them, but they are addicted to the Trump story so they will report whatever they can. And it will be mostly positive.

Trump has set an extremely low bar for himself – there really isn’t anywhere go go but up. Anything remotely moderate or statesmanlike that comes out of his mouth will be a win. Any increase in the polls will be a win. It will not be hard to make the tone of the news about him positive.

Clinton has the opposite issue. Almost everything she touches generates negative press for her. The email issue keeps coming up. Despite (or more likely, because of) 3 years of investigations, Benghazi continues to be in the news. The Clinton Foundation is now a target. The issue is conflict of interest (president Trump’s conflict of interest potential is so much bigger, but this is getting no press).

The only thing that has generated positive coverage for Clinton lately is when she attacks Trump, for example calling his politics bigoted. But this means she has to play scrappy, and Clinton is anything but scrappy.  So the news on her is likely to continue to be mostly negative.

Given sixty days of mostly positive news about one candidate and negative news on the other, which one is likely to win the election?

Financial Security in Sports

~ Mr. Rantastic

The other day I read a quote from a professional athlete that had just signed a contract. That previous sentence is actually contains a tautology, because if he was not playing professionally in one of the major sports leagues, there is no way I would have seen an article on him in the news. But no matter.

Anyway, he said something to the effect that he was glad to have signed the contract as doing so gave him financial security. Now this particular individual is not a rookie – he’s a veteran and making millions. Financial security? Really?

The minimum salary for a player in the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League is about $500,000. Half a million dollars.

A professional athlete that works for two years would make at least a million dollars, less say 5-10% for his agent. That puts them in the 1%. It would take over 18 years for the average Joe to make that kind of money.

I am sure a lot of professional athletes don’t even make it to play for two years at the rookies’ salary, and many that do make it don’t manage their money well. But it is clear that there is a huge gap between their definition of financial security and the definition most of the rest of us go by.