Rising Inequality and its apologists

There's a good and enlightening review from last month at The Economist about another book on inequality, this one by British economist Anthony Atkinson.

We get to see this chart:

and these bits of explanatory comment:

Inequality across rich countries was high before the two world wars of the 20th century. It fell to striking lows after 1945 and then began growing again around 1980 (see chart). Rising income inequality is a feature of most rich countries, especially America and Britain, and parts of the emerging world, including China. Sir Anthony is not interested in outlining any fundamental economic rules. Instead he carefully walks the reader through the ways that different forces have pushed incomes apart historically.

In America, for instance, incomes at the top of the scale began pulling away from the rest quite soon after 1945. Yet household inequality—taking account of taxes and transfers—did not rise until what Mr Atkinson calls the “Inequality Turn” around 1980. Several factors contributed to this, including changes for women and work. After the second world war, when female labour-force participation grew rapidly, high-earning men tended to marry low-earning women; the rising numbers of working women reduced household inequality. From the 1980s on, by contrast, men and women tended to marry those who earned like themselves—rich paired with rich; rising female participation in the workforce exacerbated inequality.

This line from the review:

Sir Anthony dwells on one class of contributory factors above all others: the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways the rich are able to influence government policy in order to protect their wealth.

 put me in mind of some commentators in Australia.  Who could they be*?:

Anyhow, The Economist reviewer is critical of many of Atkinson's suggestions as to reigning in inequality, basically saying they are unwelcome throwback to the 1960's and 1970's.   And to be fair, the criticisms on some points ring true.

But overall the review obviously considers the book an important contribution to an important issue. What irks me most is the effort those in the ABC** collective put into arguing there is no issue at all.

* words in their mouths are mine, but as far as I can tell, represent their positions with only mild exaggeration, if at all in some cases

(** the Australian, Bolt, Catallaxy)

A troubled life

Literary Review - Donald Rayfield on Stalin's Daughter

Well, amongst the many things I didn't know much about until now was the turbulent life of Svetlana Alliluyena, Stalin's daughter.  She defected from Russia in 1967.  This paragraph  from a review of a new biography gives some details of her, shall we say with understatement, troubled life:

Svetlana emerges as a remarkable, largely generous, sometimes heroic
figure. Whatever she inherited from her pathologically cruel and
vindictive father and from her neurotic, suicidal mother she did her
best to overcome (her brother, Vasili, succumbed and destroyed himself
with drink and sex; her half-brother, Yakov, who grew up fostered in
Georgia and did not meet his father until he was a teenager, was
captured by Germany during the Second World War and effectively
committed suicide by provoking his German captors to shoot him).
Svetlana's childhood and youth were as traumatic as any of Euripides's
tragedies: her mother shot herself when she was six; Stalin had nearly
all the maternal aunts, uncles and cousins of his children arrested and,
in many cases, shot. Svetlana's first love was badly beaten and sent to
the Gulag; her first husband was erased from her passport after they
divorced; her second husband was the withdrawn son of one of Stalin's
cronies. She barely saw her father after she ceased to be a living doll
that he could play with: her most searing memory is of Stalin in his
death throes on the floor, soaked in urine, threatening her with a
raised left hand. Yet after his death she negotiated a career for
herself and refused to be a mascot for the party or for anyone else. In
the prestigious Gorky Literary Institute she stood up for the first
dissident writers to fall victim to the Brezhnev regime. She dared to
live openly as Singh's partner.

She did not have a particularly good time after her defection, either, but you can read the review to see what went wrong.

A tad misleading by the publisher?

Maybe I just hadn't bothered to read up on it, but I hadn't realised until now where this new Harper Lee book stood in relation to Mockingbird:

Though “Watchman” is being published for the first time now, it was essentially an early version of “Mockingbird.” According to news accounts, “Watchman” was submitted to publishers in the summer of 1957; after her editor asked for a rewrite focusing on Scout’s girlhood two decades earlier, Ms. Lee spent some two years reworking the story, which became “Mockingbird.”

So, although it is set ahead of the first book, it's a bit like a first draft of the famous one.

I wonder how many people ordered the book on the basis that it was a sequel written after the first?  Because coming to the book on the basis of how it was really written may well lower ridiculously high expectations.

The Guardian did have a lovely graphic/audio accompaniment to the first chapter, though.  (Actually, I don't care for the audio.  It quickly becomes tedious.)

Krugman on Greece

Greece’s Economy Is a Lesson for Republicans in the U.S. - The New York Times

I find Krugman pretty convincing on most things.  His summary of Greece, and implications for American politics, sounds reasonable, too.

That odd topic again

Do I Sound Gay? Film-maker's personal journey explores the 'gay voice' | Film | The Guardian

So, an entire documentary has been made by a gay man about the "gay voice".  Looking at the trailer for it (it's in the article linked), it seems an earnest effort.  Perhaps too earnest.

I think I have written here before that the topic is of interest because I once shared an office with a gay guy, who was surprised to learn that I could readily tell when he was taking a call from a gay friend.  Not one with a terribly masculine inflection at the best of times, his voice clearly became "gayer" when he took calls from certain friends.  As his sexuality was a potential issue for his job (we're back in the 80's now),he was concerned that his voice gave him away.

It's unclear whether the documentary offers any clear explanation as to how the stereotypical gay accent developed (and develops in individuals);  as far as I know there is not really one simple answer.

Sort of encouraging

Richard Ackland's Gadfly column in today's Saturday Paper summaries an article by academic Rod Tiffin a few weeks ago, concerning the diminishing influence of the Murdock press:

It seems the News Corp sheets have a diminishing ability to influence elections. They are simply lecturing to the same ageing, welded-on conservatives and reactionaries, so the “conversion factor” is nil.

Tiffen goes through the data, which is sobering. Last year the total circulation of all Australian daily newspapers was about 2.1 million, one million lower than 15 years ago.

In the past 18 years the “penetration” rate of newspapers has declined to such an extent that Moloch papers, with roughly a 60 per cent share of daily newspaper circulation, are now bought by a gritty hardcore of 4 per cent of the Australian population.

Apart from that, Essential Research has discovered that about half the readers of the Moloch tabs don’t trust what they’re reading.

The ability to influence, because of the uptake of tabloid content by the radio shock jocks, is also limited. Again the elderly listeners are a similar demographic to the readers of these jaunty sheets.

As Tiffen puts it: “Together, the two media form a self-aggrandising and self-referential noise machine, and their volume and bluster should not be mistaken for outreach.”

When it comes to web readership the picture is even grimmer because, of all the newsprint products, tabloids are the most challenged by the digital revolution, with the exception of Britain’s Daily Mail.

Difficult as it is to believe, Tiffen says most visits to The Daily Smellograph’s website are “fleeting”, often only 30 seconds or less, with much less “political impact”.

Confused over the "culture war"

Culture War Two: conservatives get high on their own supply | Jason Wilson | Comment is free | The Guardian

Jason Wilson's discussion of the culture war raises in my mind the uncertainty of what can or cannot be included under the umbrella of that idea.

Wilson says that it all started as follows:

Culture war arrived in Australia as a wedge tactic borrowed from US Republicans. There, it was crafted in the late 1980s, as a way of shifting debate from the inequalities brought about by Reaganomics to the more advantageous terrain of morality and values. Culture war also allowed conservatives to substitute an internal enemy for the collapsed USSR.

In Australia, Howard used an adapted version to court the votes of blue collar conservatives – Howard’s battlers, who were promised “An Australian nation that feels comfortable and relaxed about three things: about their history, about their present and the future”. The ABC
“luvvies”, who had been tarnished by their association with Paul Keating, became the enemy.

What started as a cynical ploy has apparently become a deeply-held belief for some conservative politicians and pundits. The right are now high on their own supply, and some of them may never come down.

Seems to me that the article suffers a bit by lacking a definition of "culture war".

Gerard Henderson is quoted as saying that Howard lost the culture war with the ABC.  By which he means, ABC analysis still typically skews soft left.   (What Henderson overlooks is that this does not necessarily help the political Left:   the Labor reforming governments of the 80's were often attacked on ABC current affairs from the left, too.)   The reality is that journalism is always going to appeal as a career to people on the soft Left.   Obsessing about that is like complaining there are too many gay guys serving you your drink on Qantas:  it's not going to make any difference in the big picture, even if you would prefer to be handed your scotch by an attractive woman, and running a campaign against it is going to make you look like a  controlling nut.

I tend to view the big "culture war" issues of my lifetime as being the silly post-modernist movement and its rub off effect on history and education (and, possibly, sexual identity politics.)

On these matters, I say the Left mostly lost - no one treats post modernist guff seriously anymore, and despite the complaints of old time culture war warriors writing in the Australian, extremes in education theory have swung back to an evidence based centre, as has history.   And starry eyed views of aboriginal issues influenced by such things are not so prominent now as well.

The one area where you could perhaps say the Left had a spectacular culture war win has been sexuality (what with gay marriage.)   But it's a bit hard to pin down the Left/Right divide on that - I mean you have the libertarian Right supporting gay marriage as much as former "anti-marriage for anyone" Left.  And I have a theory that a change in public attitude towards heterosexual reproduction, with the technological revolution in simple contraception and IVF, has had a big influence on how people perceive homosexual relationships.  I don't think it was so much the Left driving the culture change here; it just evolved through several strands of societal change.

Next you get to the tricky area of how culture war ideas effect economics theory.  I guess there is appeal in saying that Thatcher's "no such thing as society" sounds like a "culture" statement, as does Libertarian fetishism over doing what they want whenever they want to ("how dare you propose locking me out of a Club at 4 am even if I have never wanted to go there at that time before"), but I suspect these are more properly characterised as ideological or philosophical positions rather than cultural ones.

In any event, there is no doubt that the political Left has tended to become more centrist in it adoption of economic policy over my lifetime - another way in which you can argue the Right has been the "winner".

I'm think Wilson's article supports the view parts of the Right have gone rather nutty in several respects because it has already had the reasonable wins it could expect, and has been left with a sense of no where else to go.   (Amusingly, pop analysis of the Labor movement is that it has lost its heart because of falling relevance of trade union membership.   This is simply a factor of rising wealth and a move to the sensible centre.  And yes,  a move to centrism can represent an identity problem for either side, but to its credit, it's not Labor which has swung to an anti-evidence ideological extreme in response.)

So, unfortunately, much of the Right has chosen to be ideological over evidence based, and to unjustifiably interpret everything through a "culture war" lens no matter how inappropriate or redundant that approach may be to the practical matter at hand.   In a weird role reversal, they have become the ones now who think evidence is unimportant, not because (as the Left thought for a while) that everything is relative and a social construct, but because they think everyone else except them are the ones making stuff up.  They already know from their ideology how the evidence should really go.

A sad situation...

Little doubt what people would have assumed...

Cairns bomb plot: Accused had car full of fuel, court hears | The Courier-Mail

Some fascinating details here from a court case of an alleged plot to blow up an Australian Naval base, which appears to have been prevented in the nick of time.

I can just imagine how, if this happened, the media speculation (and Abbott's reaction) would have been assuming it was a likely Muslim terrorist attack.

Tiny hero?

Ant-Man Reviews - Metacritic

Surprisingly, this Marvel entry is getting some good reviews.  As there appears to be humour in the film, possibly it is worth seeing.  Silly science fiction can be quite OK, if it is reasonably funny along the way.

Philosophy in comic form

I was fairly amused by this installment of Existential Comics.

Actually, the previous installment was good too.   Perhaps I need to spend a while at that site...

Weather comment

So, we are now clearly in an El Nino, and one that is quite likely to continue strengthening.

I can't remember what the winter in Brisbane was like during the last strong one, but my impression of this current one is that the nightly temperatures have been unusually cold/cool for quite a protracted time, by local standards.

Yet down South, as far as I know, it has been cold but with relatively little snow.  But a very large system of snow bearing weather is about to hit, apparently.  At IPA headquarters, the cabal will be rubbing their hands with glee.  

The true effect of this El Nino won't really be apparent until our summer.   The likelihood of terrible drought in Western Queensland (and New South Wales) becoming ever worse seems pretty high, though.

An issue with maturity

It has to be said:  what with David Leyonhjelm's continual sweary ripostes on twitter; his 70's era attempt at humour about how to trick a woman into letting her breasts be fondled; and Helen Dale's spectacularly high regard for her own abilities (yesterday's example from Facebook:  "Since I have probably forgotten more about how to write well than most people will ever know, any and all literary advice is received with due consideration and a grain of salt")  I can't help but conclude that there is a glaring problem with immaturity in the Australian libertarian scene...

As for Jeff Sparrow's lengthy re-visit of the Demidenko affair:  it seems quite an accurate account that aligns with my understanding, although I do think the connection with the wind turbine enquiry is a bit of stretch.  

Helen Dale actually deserves a backhanded compliment for letting the cat out of the bag about her and her boss being mainly interested in infrasound sickness as a means to an ideologically motivated economic policy end.  In that social media episode, her problem was being too honest, not dishonesty.

Bad timing for Tony

I would bet my last dollar that someone in Tony Abbott's office, if not Abbott himself, has said in the last 24 hours "*$&#...why did Heydon have to let Shorten appear on State of Origin final day?"

Shorten's appearance is being desperately oversold as a matter of interest by political journalists - especially if they write for The Australian - but I strongly suspect the public's interest is fairly limited.  Here's Grattan's less hyperventilating take on it, anyway.

The things scientists go looking for...

Nerves found to exist in male spider genitalia: A trio of researchers working in Germany has discovered that male spiders do indeed have nerves in their genitalia, overturning prior research that has suggested otherwise.

Carbon economic modelling uncertainty and its real mis-use

This post is inspired by a couple of tweets by Jason Soon, who links to a short article by Mark Lawson in the AFR citing Robert Pindyck's recent paper arguing that the Integrated Assessment Models used to predict economic costs of action (or non action) on climate are actually so full of uncertainty they are useless.

A few observations:

*  I started quoting other sources for pretty much the same argument a year or two ago.

*  It's pretty clear that Lawson, who wrote a book with the title "Climate Change Lunacy" which was launched by Ian Plimer (who shares the same publisher), wants to rely on this uncertainty argument to suggest no government action is warranted because no one can be sure of the economic benefit.   But in fact, Pindyck has been arguing for some years now that the best response is to price carbon and adjust the price as needed.   He wrote in a Cato publication in October 2013:

I have argued that we simply don’t know the SCC and won’t be able to determine it from the set of IAMs currently available. If we focus on “most likely” scenarios for which temperature increases are moderate and effects are small, the SCC is probably in the $10 to $40 range, justifying only a small tax on carbon emissions. But the “most likely” scenarios are not the ones that should be of major concern. We should focus more on the unlikely but devastating scenarios, i.e., the possibility of a climate catastrophe. Depending on the probability, potential effect, and timing, that might lead to an SCC as high as $200 per ton (although I have not tried to actually estimate the number).
That leaves us with two policy priorities: First, we should take the $20 Interagency Working Group estimate as a rough andpolitically acceptable lower bound and impose a carbon tax (or equivalent policy) of that amount. Of course, climate change is a global problem and we should pressure other countries to adopt a similar abatement policy. There will always be “free riders” (China, for example), but that is not a reason to delay action.

Would anyone reading Lawson's article quoting Pindyck get the impression that this is what Pindyck actually advocates?   I think not.

*  While the Cato Institute has been giving room for some to argue the case for carbon pricing, this is the line up of its "experts" on energy and environment part of their website:

  I don't recognize every name, of those I do, they are a rogues gallery of discredited climate science "experts" all determined to convince that government should take no action.

*  With a line up like that, and in Australia the likes of Sinclair Davidson, and the Senator who, by his own staffer's admission on twitter, is interested in infrasound mainly as a backdoor way of attacking an economic policy he doesn't like, the libertarian wing of the Right be it in the States or here remains a determined enemy of good policy response to climate change.

Fish and a certain river

Last weekend, people would have heard the odd but sad story of a 5 year girl killed by a jumping sturgeon on the Suwannee River in Florida.

Overlooking the human sadness element of this, Googling about it has led to a few improvements to my general knowledge:

1.  I never knew sturgeon, a weird looking fish I first became aware of as a child because a giant one features in an Uncle Scrooge story, had such a wide range.   Although, now that I look back on it, the Uncle Scrooge story in question was actually set in North America.   Sorry, it must be my later reading about Russian sturgeon and the caviar business that must have made me imagine that were mainly on another continent.

2.  Is the Suwannee (or Suwanee) River the same as the Swanee River of politically incorrect song fame?   Yes, turns out it is, and according to Wikipedia, Stephen Foster never saw it, and it doesn't even make much sense as the setting for the song.   (It's also the river the subject of the Al Jolson "Swanee" song, with music by Gershwin.)     Other sources say that Foster in fact first wrote the song using the name of a different river (the Pedee - which seems to now be called the Pee Dee - Americans seem to have trouble with consistency in river names)  and that river, being located in the Carolinas, makes a bit more sense for the song's story.

3.  Googling the Swanee song led me to this Youtube of Hugh Laurie doing a version of it.  I knew he sang, but he really is quite the jazz pianist:

But all cheese is magic...

Frenchwoman behind Chile 'magic cheese' scam jailed for three years | World news | The Guardian

Michelle Grattan on this weird government

Q&A affair has become theatre of the absurd: Has Q&A put some spell of madness over the government and their media mates?

I would like to point out that I was making references to mental illness on this issue before Michelle. 

No questions asked

The current revolution in the West in terms of both private and State treatment of homosexuality is, as I have argued for years, based on an assumed certainty of human psychology that reflects more of a social zeitgeist than a solid scientific understanding.

There are two things on the net recently which I think back me up on this.

One is the outpouring of Facebook support for a young male of indeterminate age looking sad and making the statement that he's homosexual and is worried that people won't like him.

I find it remarkable that (as far as I can see) no media outlet dealing with it has questioned the delicate matter of the age of the boy.   The reason is pretty obviously because it has become terribly, terribly politically incorrect to question whether a person is clearly understanding their own sexuality, regardless of their age.  (And sure, there are some people in threads following reports on this who are questioning whether the kid is "jumping the gun" here, but my point is that journalists seem loathe to raise the matter.)

Some media reports put him as a "young teen", which many would say is an age at which the sexuality self identification may very well be established.  Apparently, the Facebook site he appears on never reveals age, so it is all a guessing game.  (It's very hard to be sure, but I would say he is pre-teen.)   To some commenting about him, he could be as young as 7 or 8, and the issue of at what age kids clearly understand their sexuality simply doesn't matter to them.  

I know this for sure as I was listening to a discussion of the Facebook post on local ABC radio yesterday, where the two people specifically thought he looked all of 7 or 8, and the matter of whether he fully understood self identification as homosexual at that age was simply not an issue to them at all.

So, at what age do most adult gay people say they realised they were gay?  I've heard it said in a couple of places lately (one was Julia Zamiro - a dislike of whom I find impossible to fathom - talking to British comedian - who I don't find very funny - Matt Lucas, who came across as much more likeable than I expected) that it was a case of waiting for an expected attraction to the opposite sex to develop as a teen, but it never arrived.   I think this makes some sense, and appears confirmed by some survey evidence:

A national survey of 1,752 college students found:

48% of self-identified gay and bisexual college students became aware of their sexual preference in high school while 26% found their true sexuality in college

20% of self-identified gay and bisexual men knew that they were gay or bisexual in junior high school, and 17% said they knew in grade school

6% of self-identified gay or bisexual women knew that they were gay or bisexual in junior high school, and 11% knew in grade school."

Allowing for the fact that there may well be a bit of retrospective revision going on here (where what at the time of grade school was an understanding that they were different, with a later identification that it was homosexuality)  I think it seems pretty safe to say that a clear self identification as homosexual at the age of 7 or 8 is quite unusual.  Dare I say, but it may not even be entirely reliable. 

So why do people not factor that in to their response to this story?    It's clearly a case of an over-reaction to previous conservative shaming or even criminalization of homosexuality, but can't people see an over-reaction when it's in front of them?  


The second story is the terribly interesting one about the attack a decade ago on J Michael Bailey, who questioned whether all transexuals' self understanding was really accurate.   This is dealt with in a recent book which is mentioned on Greg Laden's blog, but I first read about this via a link earlier this year from Jason Soon to some (I think, conservative?) site that had a lengthy interview with Bailey.   Bailey's theory, as explained by him, sounded quite plausible to me, and I meant to link to it at the time but forgot to.

I see that Bailey is probably continuing to upset the transgender activists by weighing in on the "Caitlyn Jenner" kerfuffle, where, again, it is viewed as completely improper to question the self reporting of transexuals as to how they got there, so to speak.  Here's Bailey talking about it:

WT: Do you believe that Caitlyn Jenner is autogynephilic? If so, why?
MB: I believe it is very likely that Caitlyn Jenner’s transition was motivated by intense autogynephilia. I believe this because the best science suggests there are two completely different reasons why natal males become women: because they are feminine androphiles (lovers of men) or because they are autogynephilic. Jenner’s history shows none of the former and is very consistent with the latter. I refer specifically to his previous heterosexual marriages and secretive crossdressing.
WT. She says she always had gender dysphoria and that there was no erotic component. Would she say this if she were autogynephilic? Why?
MB: Autogynephilic individuals experience gender dysphoria, typically beginning in adolescence, when their intense erotic longing for female characteristics almost always begins. There is evidence (John Bancroft published an article long ago) showing that after changing sex, some show memory distortion. They begin to assert that their gender dysphoria began in early childhood and was far more overt than they had alleged before. They also deemphasize the erotic component, even if they admitted it before. I think they do this for at least two reasons: shame (because: sex is involved) and the desire to believe they really have the brains of women (as Jenner suggests she does–um, how does she know that?). I think also that Jenner (and others in the spotlight) likely enjoys the media spotlight, and the mainstream media loves the “was always a woman trapped in a man’s body” story and can’t deal with the “experienced intense sexual arousal when crossdressing or imagining I had a woman’s body” story.
WT: If Jenner doesn’t want people to think her transition was due to autogynephilia, why shouldn’t we just go along? 
MB: This inaccurate denial of autogynephilia is not for the good, because being honest could help lots of males struggling with their autogynephilia. (And there are lots who are.) It might help them understand themselves. It might help them accept themselves. It would at least say “Autogynephilia is nothing to be ashamed of.” I would say that people who admit and deal with their autogynephilia are even admirable.
Falsely misrepresenting one’s gender issues is also bad for science. It’s not good for people to believe false things merely because journalists don’t want to go certain places. Even among scientists, too many don’t bother to learn about the relevant literature and just listen to transgender people’s explanations (“I have the brain of a woman.”). This leads to bad scientific studies and ideas.

Well, that'll upset the transgender support movement, which appears to be reaching some sort of zenith at the moment in the West.

Update:   Some survey results from 2013 in the US (although not with all that many participants) indicates that relatively few adult gays find their sexuality is a "negative" factor.

Terrible tax plans from the Right

Lessons On How Not To Run Your State Government

Funny how you don't hear the IPA or the group of "we hate Keynes" columnists at The Australian talking about the Laffer inspired budget disasters going on in some American States over the last few years, with Kansas as the prime example.  But I see that Bobby Jindal has been doing silly things as well.

As the writer of this column says:

First, no leader should promise never to raise taxes because, frankly, there are times when it is necessary.

It's a statement of common sense under which David Leyonhjelm fails at the first hurdle.   

Polling talk

Last week I was waiting for a Newspoll that never arrived, but now it has, along with a Fairfax poll.

In news to cheer the soul, I see that despite what was supposed to be a good recent run for the Abbott government, it is still stuck on 52/48, or worse. 

Even the Essential Report of last week, which for some reason is the slowest changing poll, seems to confirm the Greens are improving slightly under their new, less sour looking, leader, which is leaking to improved TPP vote for Labor.  

The main hope for the Coalition would seem to be that it is doing well in New South Wales, which I half expect is due to the boyish charms of their Premier who, I gather,  has managed to balance budgets due to the huge amount of stamp duty from the Sydney market falling into his Treasury.  

I have been intending to do a post about the extraordinary talking up of security crisis with last week's "Border Force" press conference, but I've been a bit busy. 

Indebted to pond scum

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150701-the-origin-of-the-air-we-breathe

Gee blogging with a tablet is still harder than it should be. I'll try the link again, and fix it latter from the laptop if it doesn't work.

Life and movies

After a recent spate of shark attacks along one part of the American East Coast, some people were quoted as saying it was rather reminiscent of "Jaws".

It seems we might have a similar thing developing around parts of the Australian coast, at least if this morning's story is true after yesterday's shark attack just down the road at Ballina.

Some action required...

...not about the ABC or Q&A, but the extraordinary, are-they-quite-right-in-the-head obsession that (The Australian editor) Chris Mitchell/Tony Abbott/ whoever-the-heck-is-behind-all-this have about Q&A and the ABC.

It's getting so bad I'm starting to wish something actually bad would happen at the head office of The Oz so as to give them justification for the tens of thousands of fevered words being written about the ABC and its role in the Muslim threat, amongst other tabloid obsessions.

I'm daydreaming along these lines:  Tony Jones' secret ice addiction finally sends him into a psychotic episode in which he dresses up as a Muslim terrorist, breaks into the Oz's offices and holds Mitchell and his editorial team hostage with a semi automatic he found under the seat on the ABC bus they use for Q&A audience runs from Western Sydney.    If only Tony Abbott was visiting the office at the time it would be even better.  

No, wait:  if only Jones could also threaten the room with a rabid dog that Jonny Depp secretly didn't return to the US, we would have the Most Perfect Murdoch Tabloid Story ever conceived. 

Thank you.

Oh great...

ISIL warns Hamas in video message - Al Jazeera English

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has threatened
the Palestinian armed group Hamas, vowing to end the faction's rule in
the territory.

In a 16-minute long video shared by social media accounts sympathetic
to ISIL on Wednesday, fighters based in Syria's Aleppo province
condemned Hamas for its crackdown on Salafist groups in the Gaza Strip,
and its failure to implement a rigid enough interpretation of Islamic
law. ..
"The road to liberate Palestine goes through Iraq and we (ISIL) are
getting closer, day by day ... while they (Hamas) are moving away from
that goal."

Another fighter condemned the Palestinian faction for referring to
ISIL and its supporters as "khawarij", a term used to refer to a group
of Muslims in early Islamic history, meaning "those who have
transgressed".

The fighter later refers to ISIL's seizure of parts of the Yarmouk
refugee camp in the Syrian capital of Damascus after clashes with
Palestinian groups, including a faction associated with Hamas.

"What is happening today in Syria, especially in the Yarmouk camp, we swear by God, will happen in Gaza," the fighter said.

Hamas has clamped down on alleged supporters of ISIL in recent
months, in a campaign to snuff out purported attempts by the group,
which controls large parts of Syria and Iraq, to establish a foothold in
Gaza.

Planets approaching

A nice view could be had from Brisbane tonight of the close approach of Venus and Jupiter in the evening sky.  It's not a great or carefully planned photo, but it gives you the idea:

As if written by the IPA

Palm oil: scourge of the earth, or wonder crop?

Actually, the headline of this article written by a Professor described in part as an "independent researcher" (a term I'm more familiar with as being applied to climate skeptics, I have to say,)  and an adviser to the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, should just have been "Palm Oil:  Wonder Crop".

It's a piece that is so obviously PR spin that it automatically engenders skepticism.  

Just following the Saudi lead

Isis militants behead two Syrian women for witchcraft | World news | The Guardian: Islamic State militants have beheaded two women in a province in eastern Syria after accusing them of witchcraft, the first time such an execution has been carried out under the rule of the self-proclaimed caliphate, activists said.

This is terrible, of course.  But I would have thought it could have been mentioned in the article that Saudi Arabia still executes people (including women) for witchcraft and sorcery too.

To go a bit science fiction-y for a moment, this horrible playing out of a centuries long religious war between the two arms of Islam is something that 20th century science fiction writers  might have resolved by using advanced technology to send a peace message that people would perceive as supernatural.  (I dunno - giant holograms in the sky, or something like that.)  I would presume that there is a team in PsyOps in the US who has been thinking about this; certainly they have a target audience primed to believe in the supernatural.   I wish they would try something:  it could hardly hurt.

Why staffers shouldn't use social media

That Jason Wilson in The Guardian wrote at length about how Lefties can't trust libertarians (rather obvious, really), but he did do us a service by linking to a site showing a twitter exchange which shows Helen Dale being upfront about the cynical use of "wind turbine sickness" by her boss to attack the wind energy sector.

Here is part of the relevant sequence:

Of course, everyone sensible knew that this is the motivating factor behind Leyonhjelm and his adviser's interest in wind turbines and infrasound.

But it's funny to see his staffer confirming it....
 

Appeal

I know little of defamation law, but it is rather odd that, apparently, you can be defamed by a headline on a poster when the newspaper article itself does not defame.  Who believes that newspaper headlines are always literally true?   Are Gillard and Rudd now free to cast their eyes back over 5 years of stupid Daily Tele and Herald posters to see which are defamatory?

I hope there are grounds for appeal on the Hockey case.

Even if there are not, unless this dud of a Treasurer declares that he is giving his damages to charity, the win is not actually likely to improve the public's poor perception of the guy.

Update:  having watched 7.30's explanation last night, the most interesting thing is the way the case found that the tweet with a link to the story (with the story itself not defamatory) was still defamatory.   The logic was that the hundreds of thousands who saw the tweet but did not follow the link had been given the defamatory claim without checking the detail which would have set them straight.

But surely the fact that so few people who got the tweet clicked on the link can be used to argue that people know not to trust headlines, and the fact they didn't follow the link shows they did not interpret the headline to be literally true.   I mean, if they thought the tweet meant that the Treasurer had literally changed policy due to a bribe, then many more would surely have wanted to follow the link to the story.

I can't see why the judge made law shouldn't be aligned with what people actually expect from the media:  attention grabbing headlines that are given proper explanation in the article.   

Not allowed to take comedy seriously?

Manohla Dargis gave a detailed, serious minded critical review of the latest crude movie by the wealthy, but tragically stuck as a permanent 14 year old, Seth MacFarlane (the move being the not particularly well performing Ted2), and people (including Steve Sailer) are mocking her for it.

I dunno.  When a movie features an attempt at humour described as this:

Mr. MacFarlane’s fixation on anatomy is especially striking and reaches its nadir in a scene at a sperm bank. There, John accidentally knocks over a shelving unit and ends up splashed with ejaculate that, a nurse explains, has been excluded because the donors have sickle cell anemia. As John writhes, Ted laughs. “You’re covered in rejected black guys’ sperm,” Ted says. “You’re like a Kardashian.” Mr. Wahlberg plays the moment with the right level of desperation, but Ted’s lines are depressing and desperate. 

I don't see at all what is wrong with some serious discussion of what is meant to make comedy funny.  This section by Dargis is spot on:

In “Ted 2,” he generates squirms, largely because his humor is so tone deaf. A Freudian might enjoy trying to figure out if his repeated references to black male genitalia represents a fear of black (male) power or something a wee more personal. And Mr. MacFarlane may believe that mechanically reciting words will drain them of their force, which superficially recalls Lenny Bruce’s idealistic claim that the repetitive use of a familiar racial slur would do the same. “The word’s suppression gives it the power,” Bruce said in 1962, “the violence, the viciousness.” History has proved otherwise, and the word, its violence and viciousness are still with us. I think that Mr. MacFarlane knows this, and that’s why he cast a few well-known black actors in authority roles, as if to signal, wink-wink, that the race stuff is just all in good fun.

She talks a lot more about the race aspects of the attempted jokes.

There is nothing wrong with a review of this kind.

The party line fails

What, so I don't get a fresh Newspoll after all?  Disappointing.

But what wasn't disappointing was Media Watch and Q&A last night, which made it perfectly clear (if it wasn't already) that the Abbott government massive over-reaction to the Mallah appearance on Q&A was ridiculous from the get-go and utterly fails to bear calm scrutiny.

It was hard to pick who came out looking stupidest last night - bloviating, needs-to-retire bore Paul Kelly, fumbling his way around trying to explain why his paper could do an article painting Mallah as a reformed jihadist but Q&A was the worst show in the world for having him ask a specific question about how proposed citizenship rules could affect him; or Tim Wilson getting upset that people laughed at him when Jones had a silent dig at his selective take on when we can hear free speech on the ABC and when we can't.  

The most absurd thing about all of this Abbott hypersensitivity to his government being asked pointed questions is that, in fact, the Australian media (including the ABC) has collectively  let his government get away with unjustified secrecy and cover up of a major issue of national interest (boat turn backs, lock ups on the high seas, and what goes on in Manus Island and Naru) to a disgraceful extent.

But Abbott, being the dumbest Prime Minister of at least the last 50 years, doesn't realise the soft glove treatment he's received on this. 

Update:  am amused to read that the readers of Catallaxy seem to think Wilson and Kelly came out looking good last night.  It's like a public service now, that blog:  it lets the dumb, the blind, the immature and the offensive who can't get a gig on Bolt's threads comfort and support each other in one little corner of the 'net that's safely cordoned off for people who don't want to hear from them.

Weekend movies reviewed

Far From the Madding Crowd:  unfamiliar with the source material, or the 1967 version which seems to be held in pretty high regard, I was quite satisfied with this beautifully shot romantic melodrama.  I should really write melodrama with a capital "M":  I didn't realise that Victorian authors other than Dickens were so much into co-incidence as a plot driver, but Hardy certainly was.  As reviewers have noted, the movie makes the story feel modern, but now having read a bit about Hardy's work more generally, I see he tended to upset quite a few with his take on marriage, women and sexuality.  (And he wasn't gay - something that the 1990's run of Merchant Ivory films has sort of conditioned me to expect for the source material of period drama.)

There's a very enthusiastic review of the film in Salon which I pretty much agree with, as well as fascinating article in The Conversation about some real life women who managed agricultural estates in that period.

The movie is well worth seeing - but if you are male, be prepared to be in an audience that is about 80% not of your gender, and to look out of place if you are there alone...

Noah Goes Psycho:   That's what they should have called that Noah movie from last year.  What a disaster, from concept to execution.   I just can't get my head around the point of it all:  reinventing a Bible story to make it a modern eco parable and in the process attempting to make some of it more "plausible" to modern minds (by the "drugging the animals" bit, so they don't eat each other) while making other bits more bizarrely improbable (rock encrusted angels - apparently the "giants in the earth" - but of somewhat uncertain allegiance; the Tolkien-esque CGI fighting off the hoards; not to mention the glowing Adam and Eve.)   In this movie, God sure has an oblique way of passing on messages to Noah, so much so that he seems not to understand the ultimate point at all and starts to go all serial killer.   And while the issue of God and "natural evil" may be one that a modern agnostic Greenie does not fret about in his or her love of all animals not human, surely any sensible post-Fall Old Testament figure would have worked out that nature as it is around them is not the same as it was meant to have been in the Garden of Eden?  

Look, getting into the mind of the authors of some of the Old Testament is a challenge as it is*; but I hardly see the point of making odd myth even stranger than it was originally.   None of this movie made sense at any level.  If you want a detailed explanation of where it invents things for no clear reason, you can check out  this article in Slate.

* Eg, no one seems to have a clue what the whole Noah getting drunk and being seen naked was all about, but the movie keeps it in, and indicates it's mere prudery.  So something that deserves some creative explanation doesn't get tackled at all.)

Jurassic World:   a lot of fun and a very worthy sequel; in fact, probably what should have been the only sequel to the original movie.  (I consider Lost World to be a one of Spielberg's worst, perhaps second only to Always, which I think is at the bottom by a country mile.  I haven't ever watched the whole of JP3, but it didn't seem too bad.)

The movie looks fantastic from the very start (that's one realistic dinosaur hatching that alone indicates how special effects have improved since the original) and the theme park setting as a whole looks completely convincing, no doubt due to the wonders of modern CGI when used to make realistic looking sets as opposed to gloomy, fantasy landscape.   (It also looks like it has a budget significantly bigger than the first film - but with the way they can fake crowds and buildings these days, who knows?)  The dinosaurs all look great and all, to my mind, significantly better than in the first film.  The least realistic looking thing - the oversized mosasaur - was still fun to watch.

The movie reminded me somewhat of the disaster films of the late 70's but with some mild modern skewering (the near kiss of the co-workers was quite witty), and it was about ten times better than any of Emmerich's awful films. 

Sure, it's not perfect, but well directed, likeable enough actors and moves with a pleasing amount of mayhem.

I really don't think they should try to re-visit it, but the huge success means they inevitably will. 

It's the vibe

I'm curious to see what Newspoll says tomorrow (even if one poll is never entirely trustworthy, especially when the company is changing its polling methods) to see whether it reflects what the nation's political commentators have already decided.

It seems to me that we're in one of those weird bits of self fulfilling punditry you see overwhelm the Australian media from time to time.  They've all decided, whether from the soft Left or the tabloid right, that Tony Abbott is looking in "winning" form again, and Shorten is on the skids.   And all this despite nearly all polls being stuck for a very lengthy period on a Labor winning 52/48 TPP, not to mention the latest polling appearing to boost the Greens to 13%.  And also despite the fact that, as even a cursory look at social media show,  Abbott's performance last week on "national security" bombast has confirmed him in the minds of a huge number as the biggest numbnut of a Prime Minister in a lifetime.

We've seen odd periods like this before, and I'm not sure how it happens.  Gillard had terrible runs with media commentary too, when Labor polling was behind but not necessarily disastrously so.    I guess it could be that they (Canberra journalists) get the inside mood from the dissatisfied in the parties, and then that colours their own views; but it always strikes me as having a enormous amount of seemingly unrealised self fulfilling prophesy to it, yet they keep at it.  

Inappropriate, alright

Today's Saturday Paper alerts me to Helen Dale's 14 June Facebook post which is, indeed, completely inappropriate for a Senator's staffer to be writing with respect to a person her boss wants called to give evidence before his committee.  In full:

Okay, this is a message for those skeptics friends of mine in Australia who are into Public Health.
You need to pull the likes of Simon Chapman and Nathan Lee into line. First, you need to teach both of them to stop with the ad hominem. Then you need to teach the former statistics and how to read them. Then you need to teach both of them how to argue and clarify their thoughts.
David and I can turn both of them into mince on Twitter - yes Twitter - without much effort. This should not happen. I'm a lawyer with a finance major and David's a vet with an MBA.

Now while it's very nice to win arguments all the time, that's not the same as being right. And I'd rather be right than feel smug about my own argumentative aptitude.
My suspicion is - like many people on the left - they live in a bubble and get neither their arguments nor their evidence tested severely or regularly (the very opposite of this Facebook page, for starters).
I'm relying on you to fix this. And if it isn't fixed, I will take great pleasure in ensuring the individuals in question aren't just minced on Twitter.
Getting minced by a Senate Committee is a lot less fun, I assure you.

It also shows her tenuous relationship with sound judgement in that it is extremely unlikely that in a Committee match up between Chapman and Leyonhjelm that it's Chapman who will come out looking bad.

Dale doesn't seem to realise that outside of her small circle, most of the public already consider Leyonhjelm an eccentric kook.

Conspiracies considered

Why Conspiracy Theories Aren’t Harmless Fun

Not a bad article here, arguing that conspiracy-think is not the harmless, funny thing that some like to think.

Not that they get a mention in the article, but this is particularly true when it comes to the gullibility of large parts of the Muslim world, and climate change deniers.

Weekend movie plans

I am planning on going to see the rather Merchant Ivory-ish sounding, but well reviewed,  Far From the Madding Crowd tonight (I have a cinema gift voucher to finish using, and frankly, I would prefer to see it over ugly Australian Mad Max violence), and Jurassic World tomorrow.   My wife will only be accompanying me to the latter.  My gender reassignment surgery is booked in for the end of the year.*

*  not really.  The waiting period is 12 months.**

** none of the above is to be taken seriously, unless you are a reader from Catallaxy, in which you are free to believe this along with all the other nonsense filling your head.

Leyonhjelm and his "look at me" enquiry

So the Bald One with interests in seriously minority views on anthropology, inaudible sounds,  climate change, compulsory voting and gun control is now wanting to hold an enquiry that will include the following topics in bold that the Commonwealth doesn't even legislate about?

So we'll be looking at the sale and service of alcohol, smoking and e-cigarettes, bicycle helmets I've already mentioned, classification of films and video games. That sort of stuff.

OK, the Commonwealth taxes alcohol, but AFAIK it doesn't legislate about opening hours and who it can be served to.   Bicycle helmets probably have a national standard, but that's it for the Commonwealth.

Even most smoking laws are State based, no?  

But anything to have an attempted "look at me" moment, hey?; pretty much like the way the Republicans call pointless committee meetings that invite that handful of climate change contrarian scientists to give evidence again and again each year while their actual reputation in mainstream science diminishes.

Leyonhjelm and anthropology

Apparently, David Leyonhjelm is up on anthropology to a much greater extent than the average person who has a fair idea that aborigines as a group who looked pretty much like the ones when the First Fleet arrived had been here for some thousands of years previously.

He's quite the woo-meister, hey Jason?

I'm interested in his views on UFOs too.

The worst thing about the ABC...

...is listening to them being enthusiastic about women's team sports.

It's unnatural and there ought to be a government inquiry into it.

(Even allowing for the fact that I can barely muster interest into men's teams sports more than 3 times a year, I still have my doubts more than perhaps 10% of the total population have any interest at all in women's team sports.*  And every single one of them apparently listens to the ABC.)    

*  women who do well at individual sports like swimming or running - that's different.

Grow up, media

A minor kerfuffle going on about Bill Shorten lying about the leadership situation.

Come on, media morons.  Everyone knows politicians on all sides of politics lie to the media in the lead up to a spill.  It's unfortunate, but routine. 

California drought charts

CA H2O | Open Mind

I'm not sure if El Nino is likely to put a sudden end to it, but here are some worrying graphs about the current state of the Californian drought.

What an absurd, glass jawed, posturing government we have

I was reminded on Radio National this morning that on Q&A years ago, John Howard had a shoe thrown at him, was offered immediate and sincere apologies by a clearly upset host, and he (Howard) reasssured Jones not to beat himself up about it.

Fast forward to the obnoxious Abbott government, and a posturing minor figure in it gets to tell someone that he deserves to be booted out of Australia under laws which in fact will not apply to him (assuming the reports I read are correct that the guy in question is not a duel citizen, just an Australian citizen.)    The ex-crim in question, who has appeared on other shows without the hosts being in fear that he was going to knife them live on screen, then says that this sort of talk encourages some to go join ISIS. 

Well, according to the Murdoch press, this is the biggest outrage to have ever occurred in the history of the ABC.

This government is a clown act supported by a clown press.

How do the "middle of the road" Murdoch journalists live with themselves?

Malcolm putting on a show?

The Coalition's reaction to Mallah's appearance on Q&A is completely over the top, with our proto fascist  PM delivering his obnoxious "you're either with us or agin us, ABC" line again today.



But not only that, in what one suspects is a bit of Malcolm turning it on to placate the idiots in his own party, we get this:

Politics Live: June 23, 2015: 3:03pm: Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull is asked about Zaky Mallah's appearance on Q and A.

Mr Turnbull essentially asks what would have happened had Mr Mallah threatened the safety of guests and audience and crew members present for the filming.

"Mr Mallah was a known quantity....It beggars belief that he was included in a live audience. Surely we have learned to take threats of this kind, people of this kind, extremely seriously. The idea that there were no physical security checks on this audience or that this man was allowed in is extraordinary."

 I presume he hasn't read what appeared on the News.com website today:

Back home he has spoken out against clashes between the Islamic
community and police and actively discouraged radicalised Australian
Muslims from joining the Islamic State.

“Young people in Sydney
and Melbourne who are considering joining ISIS, you don’t know what
you’re doing to your family,” he told The Project.

“You are harming yourself, you are harming the Islamic community.”

He called young Australians fighting in Iraq and Syria “idiots and wankers who are giving Islam and the Muslim world a bad name.

“I hope ASIO is on to you, I hope your passport is refused and I hope you’re arrested and locked up.”....

Mr Mallah said: “The Islamic community in Australia is one of the worst communities in the world.

“Every
time I jump on Facebook, all I see is negativity ... Look at what we
have become. I don’t care if you follow a specific ideology or school of
thought, the Islamic community has dropped to a new low.”

Sure, the Mallah's still an idiot for his temper tantrum too, but it sure doesn't sound like he's someone who's a threat to a studio audience.  Can everyone calm down?

 

Victoria gone thoroughly Labor

Wow.  Even with the total cost of the cancellation of the East West link now known, Victorians appear completely happy with their new Labor State government:

Matthew Guy shrugs off Newspoll gloom on Victorians voting Liberal | The Australian: Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has shrugged off polling showing less than one third of Victorians would vote Liberal if a state election were held now.

Responding to the latest Newspoll in Victoria — the first major published poll since the election — Mr Guy said today it was early days and his personal numbers were strong.

The poll put Daniel Andrews’ Labor government in a commanding position with a 58 to 42 lead after preferences that would translate to a landslide victory if replicated in an election.

Judith Sloan must be contemplating a permanent move to Queensland.   Oh wait - Labor seems pretty settled here too.  New South Wales then, which might be the main place where Liberals are looking strong(ish).   

As noticed on Landline

I forget to watch it most weeks, but Landline remains a quality show (and of the kind a commercial TV network is never likely to make.)

Two interesting things in last Sunday's episode.  First, this commentary on free trade agreements:

The Australia-America freed trade agreement signed in 2005 is a classic example of how hype rarely matches reality.

Australia was promised an el-dorado - but as far as benefits go, we've ended up in that well-known proverbial street.

The figures don't lie - the bilateral trade gap between the United States and Australia continues to grow - in America's favour.

American goods exports to Australia in 2013 - 26 billion dollars - Australia's exports to the U.S. - 9.3 billion.

So the lesson is - when politicians talk about the Australia-China free trade agreement meaning an 18 billion dollar boost over ten years - take that advice with a cupful of salt - and remember what was said about the deal with America.

However, on the plus side - farmers and graziers should be happy - in fact Chinese dairy farmers are said to be very unhappy - which can only be a good thing for our dairy farmers.

 And second, this fascinating story (you must watch the video) about cave diving beneath farms in South Australia.  Wish I could embed the video...

Gravity and that Cat

I strongly suspected that there was some poor science reporting going on with that story in Nature News "How gravity kills Schrodinger's Cat".  And I was right.

Go read Bee's explanation of the matter to understand it properly.

Quite a range

Charles Aznavour: 'I wanted to break every taboo' | Music | The Guardian

Well, who knew this guy was still out there, making music?  

In truth, I know little about him, but am kind of amused to read about the topics of his songs:

When Aznavour began writing in the 1940s, sex was something that
happened with the light off. It was OK for women singers to howl over
their broken hearts, but men didn’t sing about their own emotional
despair – and later their dodgy prostates. Aznavour shone a spotlight on
masculinity and libido, singing about depression, sex, prejudice and
rape. His hits ranged from the 1970s story of a gay transvestite in What
Makes a Man, to the once-banned ballad of muggy, post-coital
exhaustion, Après l’Amour, and the controversial You’ve Let Yourself Go –
the plea of a man whose wife has grown dowdy and fat (“I gaze at you in
sheer despair and see your mother standing there”).

Apart from what must be a poor reputation amongst feminists, he's written a song referencing prostate problems?  

Um, what are the chances that Adani donates to the IPA?

The life saving potential of coal | Institute of Public Affairs Australia

According to Four Corners last week, the high cost of getting coal from Queensland's Galilee Basin to off shore markets make it a marginal proposition, at best.

Never mind, here's the IPA with its attempt to convince everyone that coal is the only way to make the poor in India get the electricity which they presumably are meant to use to run the air-conditioner without which they will increasingly die during heatwaves caused in part by the CO2 burnt from the Galilee Basin.  [Not entirely sure that airconditioners are commonly afforded by the poor in India, even if they have electricity, but that's a minor detail when it comes to Coal Being the Glorious Future! (Trade Mark, the IPA.)]

Update:  I see that it is Pakistan's turn to be having lots of heat stroke deaths.

Marxist racism

You Have Only Your Chains to Lose (Unless You Are African) - Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Beachcombing reminds us that Marx was certainly not above the racism of his century.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

Big, fast money

I see that Jurassic World is already close to making a billion dollars, and will cross that line in record time:

And that globe continues to be dominated by Jurassic World. Add its overseas take of $583.1M to its estimated domestic take of $398.2M and the film sits with an estimated worldwide cume of $981.3M in worldwide grosses. Given that pace World will likely handily beat the record for fewest days to $1B worldwide, on its 11th or 12th, whereas the previous record holder, Universal's Furious 7, did so in 17 days in April. World has opened in all territories save Japan where Universal says it's now opening August 5th.

One thing I've noticed in the discussion of the film is the enormous goodwill that people now seem to feel towards Jurassic Park.   (Many words have been written on how well the special effects in that film hold up.)

I haven't seen World yet; probably next weekend.

About that flag...

I was last in the United States in, I think, 1990, and was surprised to learn that some of the southern states still flew the confederate flag on government buildings.   I remember a Canadian in the circle I was in during the visit thought this was nuts;  I did too, but neither of us made our views know to the others in the group, as it was clear there were some there (from the south) who disagreed.

So it's interesting to see that, finally, some Republicans are telling a hold-out like South Carolina that it's time to ditch the symbol, and for reasons that were obvious to an Australian and Canadian 25 years ago.

This is causing major ructions within the Right wing websites such as Breitbart (plainly for the flag and putting the boot into Romney), Hot Air (against the flag and getting a hiding for this position in comments) and even National Review is having a bet both ways, but I see the "don't remove the flag" article has got 14,500 "shares".   (Actually, one of the smaller entries for its removal in NR notes that a report in 2000 make a compelling case that by the 50's and 60's, the flag had been adopted by some States as a clear symbol of their resistance to racial integration.)

Obama was wise to let some Republicans make the running on this.   It will be interesting to see what happens...