Donald Trump's "Liberal Heresies"?

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones doesn't understand why Donald Trump's "liberal heresies" aren't costing him political support. But I'm surprised he's surprised. I could quibble with Drum's list, but let's assume for sake of argument Drum has accurately reflected Trump's current views. Let's take a look at the list:

1. Affirmative action. That hardly matters if Trump wants to deport about 11 million undocumented immigrants immediately, does it? If you're compiling an Anti-Brown Person Score, Trump gets one zillion points for that and minus three for affirmative action among those who are left in the country, and that's still a great score. Besides, Trump is a beneficiary of affirmative action. He inherited a great deal of wealth from his father (and he made it bigger). That's also affirmative action of the most potent kind. Moreover, most importantly, Trump particularly favors affirmative action for beautiful women. cf. Omarosa. What red blooded Republican male doesn't?

2. Funding Planned Parenthood except for abortion. See above re: beautiful women.

3. The progressive income tax. The Republican Party's billionaire donors support a flat tax, i.e. cutting their taxes, sure. Republican Party rank-and-file members? Not so much. Besides, Trump favors dramatically simplifying tax filing. He says he wants to "put H&R Block out of business." Even the so-called flat tax always has at least two brackets: 0% and something else. So this is a distinction without a difference for voters, rightly so. Top 0.01% donors of course care intensely about the progressive tax rates they already don't pay often enough.

4. Not being able to fire gay employees. Well who needs the workplace competition for those beautiful women (see above)? And who's going to help with their hair and makeup to keep them beautiful? Besides, where is Trump going to find the artistic people to design his "beautiful" wall to keep out the Messicans?

5. No cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Republicans overwhelmingly agree! Even the Republican Party itself officially runs campaigns against cuts to Medicare -- successfully in the last Congressional election -- so Trump can hardly be faulted for being doctrinaire Republican. There's a long history of the Republicans trying to sell to their rubes: publicly defend Medicare (in particular) and Social Security but then try to get the Democrats to do the dirty cutting work they really want on behalf of their big donors. Pete Petersen and his followers have about 6 primary and caucus votes between them.

6. Favors an assault weapons ban. So do most gun owners, and nuttiest gun nut Ted Nugent apparently likes Trump.

7. Invited Bill and Hillary Clinton to his wedding. And they attended, and he brags about it, claiming he bought Hillary. He tested political corruption, it worked, and he tells voters all about it. Voters understandably love him for unmasking the corruption (or at least "corruption"). And who hasn't had a guest at a wedding, later regretted? Who wouldn't want a famous person at her wedding? Who wouldn't want Trump's billions and be able to "force" the Clintons to attend his wedding? It's a raw demonstration Trump's power and prestige, and they love him for it.

8. Doesn't "fully" believe in supply-side economics. OK, he lost Arthur Laffer's vote, but so what? That's a top 0.01% "issue" again, and maybe not even that.

9. Believes that Germany should take the lead in Ukraine. Well sure, and so do most Republicans! Messing around in some furrin' place that Republican voters couldn't even find on a map and that doesn't have oil is, to quote Trump, "stupid." The Trump Wall™ will keep out the Ukrainians, too. Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul tapped into the isolationist streak in the Republican Party, and if anything isolationism is a bigger, majority segment of the Republican Party today after the Iraq debacle. OK, he lost Dick Cheney's vote, but so what? Does he need Lockheed Martin's PAC money? On top of all that, there's a certain segment of the Republican Party that admires the Germans for the wrong reasons, know what I mean? (They do.)

10. Hates the Iran deal but would respect it in office. Yes, because he's a businessman, and businessmen honor their contracts. Except when they don't, frequently -- see Trump, Chapters 7 and 11 -- but never mind that. Republicans love businessmen, particularly loud ones and those who were fired from HP. Haven't you been paying attention?

I'm not at all persuaded that Drum has compiled a compelling list of "conservative" objections to Trump's candidacy.

Apple, iMessage, and Satellites?

Rumors abound that Apple is interested in satellite technologies, and the company has reportedly spent a bit of money on securing satellite-related talent.

The "killer feature" that I'd like to see Apple implement in its iPhones is truly global text messaging: the ability to send and receive both SMS and text-based iMessages anywhere in the world. That would presumably also include "SOS" messages with geographic coordinates, for example. All at a cost of about $5/month -- and free for a basic SOS service.

Text messaging is a limited bandwidth application that even today's satellite technologies (e.g. Iridium) can support at scale. The antenna(s) would have to be part of the existing iPhone form factor, but that too doesn't seem to be a significant engineering problem within even today's state-of-the-art.

Such a killer feature would continue to differentiate iPhones and would also fit well with the brand. It'd be entirely consistent with the "active lifestyle" image that Apple often conveys -- think mountain climbing and Antarctic expeditions, basically. Such a feature would also be a great fit for the iPod touch, iPad, and even (in the future, as the electronics get better) Apple Watch. Many people don't need or want cellular voice and data. Global satellite messaging would also find a ready audience among the Apple-IBM enterprise customers.

On a $5/month plan SMS would probably need a monthly cap due to carrier charges, but it could be something pretty high like 500 messages/month. Apple might also need to set an overall cap of, say, 2000 messages/month, to keep the satellites from getting too burdened. The free tier could be, say, 20 messages/month. All that'd work.

Let's hope Apple brings truly global text messaging to its devices soon. That'd be really exciting.