A bit busy here....

I'll be going on a short holiday later this week, and have an embarrassingly large pile of paper on my desk to try and move around before then.

So I might not be able to post much for a few days.

But you never know - if really interesting stuff pops up, there's always some time to be found :)

Anyway - some random thoughts:

 *  reading online reaction to the latest Trump rally, I think it's pretty clear that even Trump sympathisers recognise that a 2 hour performance of his greatest "hits" is looking very stale.  Groupies will still go to it, but I have read that even they start to leave before it's finished (I think that has happened before.)  I also noticed someone on Twitter saying how many MAGA characters (especially the dumb and awful Marjorie Taylor Greene) are more about wanting to be a celebrity than anything else.  Just a case of following their leader, I guess.

* Lots of positive twitter reaction to that son of the late Foo Fighter drummer standing in for his Dad.  Only trouble is, I don't understand the appeal of any Foo Fighters song, even though their lead singer seems a nice enough guy.

* Lots of talk on American twitter last week about how school closures under Covid had a very negative measured effect on kid's education level now.  Has the Australian system found the same thing?  I get the impression not, or not as bad as America.   I wonder whether we did a better job at coming up with teaching via the internet than the Americans did.

*  I haven't had time to watch the Biden "we must defend Democracy" speech.  Am surprised that the Washington Post chose to editorialise it somewhat critically (although, of course, just about all of their regular commentary team that I follow praised it.)   The reaction from the Right is pretty much what was always to be expected - if they are stupid enough to still prefer Trump over any Democrat despite Jan 6, there is no hope of convincing them that they are "semi-fascists".   

Update:   Oh, Ross Douthat did a Sunday column arguing that Biden and the Democrats don't really believe democracy in the US is in crisis, otherwise he wouldn't sound so partisan (or something.)   You can read it here, but do read the hundreds of comments following criticising this take, too.

He also went on Twitter to defend the column, but the best rejoinder is this:

There is a simple rule to understand about Trump and pro-lifers like Douthat: they will bend over backwards to excuse him of anything because he facilitated the overturning of Roe, which is in their minds the biggest political issue ever.