Factoid: Last Widow of a Revolutionary Soldier Died 130 Years After DofI

Vita Brevis has a piece on  the longest-living widows of veterans of our wars.  Some vets got old, married young, and their widows lived long.

Did Ukraine Pay Its Share of NATO?

My title asks a question arising from DJTrump's weekend ABC interview, the one where he promised Putin would not go into the Ukraine.  All the attention has been on the question of whether he knew that Russian troops, under the guise of separatist rebels, already control the eastern part of the country.  (Trump later said he knew, that blamed Obama, and when he was president there would be no change.

Earlier in discussing Estonia, I believe, Trump said that it was foolish for the US to protect nations in NATO if they didn't pay their share. (That's a loose paraphrase.)  So putting the two together, I have to assume that not only is the Ukraine a member of NATO, or would be admitted on January 21, and they have borne their full share of defense costs for NATO.  Otherwise Trump is inconsistent, or perhaps like other 70 year olds (and older) he's forgotten what he said before.

Issues We Need Discussion On

What we really need from the presidential candidates is a discussion of their post-election financial plans.  Is Trump going to put his operations into a trust?  If his children play a part in the administration how is that going to work (i.e., they can't administer the trust). As for Clinton, how is the family going to separate itself from the Clinton Foundation?

Trump's Ag Man

Here's a Tom Philpott piece on Trump's key man on agriculture issues.  I don't know that we learn much about policy issues--the idea is first win, then develop policies.  Sounds like Trump.

Weak Cosmopolitanism and Immigration

Ran across the term "weak cosmopolitanism" in a newspaper piece today (don't remember which paper or whether it was op-ed or book review).  Apparently it's  a standard term in philosophy--just try Googling it: "strong cosmopolitanism" is much the same to my eye as Christianity or libertarianism: the brotherhood of man, meaning everyone is equal in the eyes of God and other distinctions are meaningless and should be ignored; the "weak" version says that humans favor their kin, their neighbors, their tribe, their nation and there's no way that such distinctions can be ignored.

The strong version would eliminate all immigration controls; the weak version permits controls but requires universalistic criteria for admission. 

E-Residents in Estonia

I've blogged before about the great Estonia digital infrastructure supporting government.  Now they're trying to take advantage by offering e-residency to businesses.  See this Technology Review article.

Genetics and the Precautionary Principle

Read an article yesterday about concerns over manipulation of the human genome.  Forget where.  Some issues were over correcting genetic problems which cause diseases versus modification of the genome to improve human capacities.  And then you bring in the problem of non-genetic modification: we don't permit performance enhancing drugs in sports, but we no doubt approve of our surgeon drinking a cup of coffee in the morning before she operates on our brain.

Anyhow, it's a deeper subject than I can deal with, but two aspects strike me:

• it's highly likely that benefits from such things will not be equally divided: as usual the rich will get richer (taller, smarter, less disease-ridden, whatever) and the poor won't.
• our discomfort with some of the modifications tends to be higher at the margins.

Accordingly, I'd propose a couple of rules, somewhat similar to the precautionary principle (which can be summarized as: "when in doubt, don't"--not that I like the way it's often been applied.

• before you undertake any modification, determine whether the result will push the existing bounds of  normal human capability.  We don't make a society of Einsteins.
• in undertaking any modification, consciously try to counter the "golden rule" (i.e. the rich get richer).

Why the Russians Don't Matter

Sometimes I have kneejerk reactions based on ancient history--that's today's post.  Back in the 50's and 60's conventional wisdom believed that the Soviets wanted Democrats to win presidential elections because they were "softer" on nuclear weapons, test moratoriums, test bans, etc.  This was probably true.  But I felt then and feel now that in principle what the Soviets wanted, what the Russians want, what whoever wants, is basically irrelevant.  It may be the same sort of reaction as the Brits had when Obama spoke in favor of their remaining in the EU.

When we look at foreign policy, it's a question of our values, of our interests, and of the realities.  Now one of the realities may be a nation's attitude, but the real questions lies in our power.

Carolyn Hax is an advice columnist for the Post; one of her refrains in giving advice is to take responsibility for what you control, don't get tortured by what the other people want, do, say. Same applies in foreign affairs: is it wise for us to continue NATO guarantees to the Baltic countries or not? That's a different issue than whether Putin is trying to install in office someone who might not continue NATO guarantees.  We shouldn't react against Trump on the basis of Putin's supposed support for him; we should react against Trump because he would be a bad protector of our values and interests in the midst of world realities (mostly because he doesn't know our values, interests, or the realities.

Those Damn Russians

Not content with messing with the 2016 elections (see Josh Marshall at TPM), they're now messing up my statistics for my blog.  I don't quite understand what's going on, but apparently there's an automated process called "referer spam" which hits a blog and increments the pageview count in Blogger Stats, and Russians are using this process, apparently much more in the last 10 days or so than they have before.

If I understand, as long as I don't click on any of those sites, there's no problem.

Most Surprising Paragraph of Yesterday--M.Obama

From Powerline, the conservative blog, Paul Mirengoff writes:

Sanders’ address was preceded by a speech by Elizabeth Warren and an introduction by Keith Ellison. Before that, Michelle Obama spoke. I didn’t hear her speech, but assume she was good. She always is. [Emphasis added.]

Powerline hasn't gone completely soft; Scott Johnson was not impressed. 

I'm avoiding watching the convention, but given the praise for Michelle's speech I just watched it on Youtube. Glad I missed it--I'm too old to cry.