Analysis of news and views - from all fields of human interest across the globe - with a view to highlight and promote information useful for human enlightenment and development.
Said Prof. Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago Law School as per an article titled "Trump-Putin summit mystery: What about Snowden?" written by Stephanie Murray in today's Politico. Murray notes that as a candidate, Trump “guarantee[d]” he would bring home the infamous National Security Agency whistleblower. But as president, however, he has shown no desire to bring Snowden back. Murray in his article writes "some experts think handing over Snowden would be an easy way for Putin to do Trump a favor — giving the president a victory that would especially please intelligence and national security officials angry he hasn’t done more to counter Russian election meddling. Before Trump was sworn in in January 2017, former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell wrote that handing over Edward Snowden would be “the perfect inauguration gift” from Putin to Trump."
Source: sputniknews.com
“If Trump wants this as a victory then I don’t see why Putin wouldn’t give it to him. If Putin wants to either do a favor for Trump or make Trump look good, and if Trump wants this, it would be an easy thing for Putin to do. You can almost see the picture of Snowden in handcuffs being dragged into Air Force One,” Prof. Stone is reported saying. Read the full article here.
Said: Felix Salmon, a regular Slate contributor and host of the Slate Money podcast, in his July 8, 2018 piece "Takeaway From the New Billionaires Ranking: Zuckerberg and Bezos Don’t Give Away Enough Money" in slate.com. Felix explains how and why 'Mark Zuckerberg Tops Warren Buffett' in the Bloomberg’s list of world’s-richest people. In the same way how Amazon's Jeff Bezos has now become richer than Bill Gates. The difference in the net worth is the result of the fact that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are also in "the competition to give away the most money in service of making the world a better place." Bill Gates has donated more than 700 million shares of Microsoft since 1994 and Warren Buffett some 290 million Berkshire Hathaway B-shares since 2006 for the charity work being done throughout the world. Felix writes that if they’d simply held on to those shares instead, Bill Gates today would be some $71 billion richer having a net worth of $165 billion, making him comfortably the world’s richest man. Similarly, Warren Buffett would have about $54 billion extra to his current net worth of $81.2 billion, and he would be worth roughly $135 billion today. That’s way more than Zuckerberg. It’s to their credit that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett aren’t in the world’s-richest-man competition, and both are quite happy to be overtaken in the richest-man stakes by others. "The important thing to remember is that capitalism is not a game where the person who dies with the most money wins. Wealth is deferred consumption, and if you die without spending your money or giving it away, then, assuming you’re not interested in starting a dynasty, you’ve deferred that consumption a bit too much. If Gates wanted to play the wealth-maximization game, then he would still be the world’s richest person by a comfortable margin. It’s to his credit that he isn’t playing that game, and it’s to Buffett’s credit that he’s happy to be overtaken in the richest-man stakes by Zuckerberg," Felix observes.
Said: Maya Kosoff in her column titled "[“I Want No Part In It”: The Hysterical Debate Over Silicon Valley’s Next Big Thing"] in Vanity Fair of June 14. Her comment was based on the astronomical rise in the valuation of Bird, the electric-scooter start-up, from $300 million in March this year to $1 billion at the end of May and now the startup is seeking a fresh round of $200 million funding at $2 billion valuation - double the valuation in less than one month!
Maya beautifully illustrates the arguments for and against the scooter culture that is gripping the Metros like San Francisco and Los Angeles where the sudden preponderance of Bird scooters has created a cottage industry of people who collect and charge Bird scooters, known as “Bird hunters.”
Positive:
True believers see things differently. “It’s been [over] a decade” since the Segway, another scooter-start-up investor told me of the inevitable comparison. “Plenty of things didn’t work a decade ago that work now, due to cultural shifts.” Car- and bike-sharing services have already inaugurated a new way of thinking about public and private transportation, acclimating consumers to the idea that they don’t need their own vehicles to get around. Kevin Roose, reporting for The New York Times, grudgingly admitted that electric scooters, while “kind of dorky,” are also weirdly useful, under the right circumstances. “I wanted to hate the scooters. I really did,” he wrote, before traveling to Los Angeles for work. “Tech hubris on wheels - what’s not to loathe?” Instead, he fell in love. The scooters are ubiquitous, easily discovered and unlocked via smartphone app, and driving is simple: a throttle controls the speed, which tops out at a breezy 15 miles per hour, and a hand brake brings you to a smooth stop. When you arrive at your destination, you leave the scooter wherever you like and lock it with the app.
Negative:
Indeed, the vigor expressed by Bird enthusiasts may be matched only by the company’s detractors, who have condemned the scooters as a plague, a nuisance, and even an existential danger. “It’s wheelmageddon,” one San Francisco resident told me in April. “They are everywhere . . . People are zooming past pedestrians without a single fuck to give.”
Said Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer commenting on the functioning of Sarah Sanders who replaced him in July last year. The comment appears in The Washington Post story on "As a willing warrior for Trump, Sarah Sanders struggles to maintain credibility."
“Sarah has done a fantastic job of keeping in line with understanding how to effectively communicate what the president’s thoughts are at any given time, recognizing that it is a very dynamic and fluid situation in many cases,” Spicer said. “What she has done is, she has realized, you can’t get in trouble for what you don’t say.”
Read the full story here. Watch Sarah Sanders' press briefing below:
Said: Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor and Professor from Practice at University of Michigan. She was commenting on Rudolph W. Giuliani’s statement that the president paid his lawyer Michael Cohen $35,000 monthly to reimburse him the costs he incurred in the widely publicised Stormy Daniels settlement for which he paid $130,000 from his personal funds. Giuliani is the most recent entrant to the Trump’s legal team. “I’m sure Giuliani's strategy was damage control but I’m not sure he controlled much,” said McQuade as quoted by Washington Post's Analysis: "Giuliani’s media blitz gives investigators new leads, new evidence" According to the Washington Post's analysis, Giuliani asserted that Trump fired James B. Comey as FBI director because Comey would not reveal publicly that the president was not under investigation. Commenting on this McQuade said “I think even Trump's asking Comey to publicly exonerate him does interfere with the investigation and could constitute obstruction of justice.” Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is also investigating whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey. McQuade said investigators are also likely to explore money-laundering issues. Giuliani’s TV interviews might have been an effort to speak to Cohen and to reassure him that the White House still has his back. “Maybe the strategy there is to try to calm him down so he’s not tempted to cooperate,” she explained. Investigators are likely to ask witnesses about the topic and compare what Giuliani said publicly about Trump’s arrangement with Cohen with what people have told them in the past, McQuade said. Lying to federal investigators is a crime, though lying on TV is not. Read the full story here.
Said: Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein responding to a question from the CNN reporter Laura Jarrett about possible articles of impeachment by the House Freedom Caucus over his handling of document requests. Her question was "As you think about the importance of separation of powers on the day, any reaction on the news that certain members of the House Caucus have drafted articles of impeachment?" Answering the question, Rosenstein said: “I saw that draft. I don't know who wrote it. It illustrates the important principle of the rule of law. We make mistakes. That is not to say we are flawless. But the way we operate is if we can accuse someone of wrongdoing, we have to have admissible evidence, credible witnesses and be able to prove our case in court and fix our signature to the charging documents. There is a lot talk about FISA applications and many people I see talking about it seem not to recognize what a FISA application is. It is like a search warrant. In order to get a FISA search warrant, you need an affidavit signed by a career federal law enforcement agent. If it is wrong, that person is going to face consequences - you can face discipline or even prosecution. That is the way we operate. We have people who are accountable. I just don't have anything to say about documents like that nobody has the courage to put their name on an State leakage that way, but I can tell you there have been people that have been making threats privately and publicly against me for quite some time and I think they should understand by now the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted. We are going to do what is required by the rule of law and any kind of threats will not affect the way we do our job. We have a responsibility. We take an oath. You raise your right hand and swearing of to defend the United States - swear in an oath to defend the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. That is your responsibility. Everybody in the department takes that oath. If they violate it, they know they will be held accountable.” Rosenstein was speaking on the rule of law, the first amendment, and the mission of the justice department at the Newseum in Washington.
