Daily flash briefing

Daily flash briefing - from the Wall Street Journal:

Clinton launched a tirade against Trump, unfortunately for her, her supporters in San Jose let the air out of this balloon by attacking, and injuring a number of Trump supporters. The San Jose story will have more legs, than a boring story about a tedious woman hectoring The Donald. Add to that the story about Ryan now backing Trump and Clinton really does become the incredible shrinking woman. 
Sanders is giving Clinton a run for her money in California, and what with her shrinking stature, it seems like The Bern could pull off yet another win. A win in California for The Bern would weaken Clinton as she staggers into the convention. Expect the convention to be interesting even if The Bern does not win Cali, but if he does, it will be raucous.
Apparently Christopher Hitchens fans are in a snit because a new book says he took faith seriously. If religion is reasonably defined as "any whole or partial world view significantly reliant upon faith or belief" then Hitchens took faith seriously. There is no doubt Hitchens took atheism seriously, and there is no doubt atheism is a whole or partial world view, so the question is only whether atheism is significantly reliant on faith or belief. Here faith is theistic, and belief is non-theistic. One, not even Hitchens, cannot prove the existence or nonexistence of God, believing either is either faith or belief. Therefore, Hitchens took faith seriously. 
ECB President Mario Draghi urges patience on ECB stimulus. Maddog channels Ronald Reagan, and the writers of Strange Brew when we note this sounds suspiciously like "Don't worry, we are from the government and we are here to help ourselves to your wallet, you knob. This is just more QE Infinity nonsense and time wasting. 
In Mexico, the governors races are being spotlighted due to complaints of huge local government debt, economic mismanagement, and corruption. Maddog livid in Mexico, he liked the Mexican people very much, the system was shockingly, and intractably corrupt. Good luck to the voter, corruption, and economic mismanagement will be very difficult problems to cure. The entire system, the entire country is reliant on them.
The WSJ has found the the highest performing CEO's received the lowest median compensation. No surprise here. The really high fliers are surrounded by sycophantic boards. The lower paid are not. 

Musk is predicting an iCar by 2020. Again, this is not particularly surprising. And even if Apple does not make the car it will likely be targeting some or all of the human/auto interface, as likely will Amazon. Apple has Siri, Amazon has the Echo, both work in the voice interface arena, and this is likely to be the big new human computer interface. We shall see if Musk is correct in just a few years. Oh, and Maddog as well.

In the related, and rapidly accelerating service of self drive cars, ride sharing, and parcel delivery, Walmart is partnering with Uber and Lyft to assess last mile delivery. Amazon has already said it will not be building a parcel delivery business including last mile delivery, leaving UPS, FedEx, and USPS as the primary carriers. However, there are other options, Amazon attempted to use customers who would agree to deliver other packages for free or discounted Prime memberships (if we remember correctly), and now Walmart is partnering with Uber and Lyft. Things are moving apace in this arena.

From the Financial Times:
OPEC still can't get its act together. Don't expect this to change in the near future. A proxy war is being waged by Iran on behalf of the Shia, and the House of Saud, on behalf of the Sunni. This means both sides need to pump as much oil as they can. 

France remains embroiled in labor issues after it enacted some trivial reforms. Unions are in arms, and it looks like a summer of strikes, turmoil, and disturbance is in stock. France needs to follow Reagan's Patco actions, but will not. And, so, France will slowly continue to wither.

A century ago, the Ottoman Turks caused an Armenian genocide which resulted in the murder of 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians. The German's just condemned that genocide, causing Turkey butthurt over the whole ordeal. We are sure the dead Armenians were pretty butthurt as well. Suck it Turkey. Grow up, accept responsibility for what your nation, and you as a people did in the past. Then move on.