I have to say...

....listening to both Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison over the last 24 hours, am I the only person who is really sick of them spending so much time on attacking and blaming Bill Shorten and Labor rather than justifying and detailing the benefits of their policies? 

I didn't think much of Bill Shorten's appearance at the Press Club this week, either.

I honestly don't think it is just increasing cynicism with my age:  we genuinely have a very uninspiring and low calibre bunch of politicians nationally at the moment.

By improbable light sail to the stars

A feature at Nature News talks about a rather improbable sounding proposal to sent a small light sail to Proxima Centauri.  Even if it works, the amount of time it spends in the star system destination - 2 hours!

Lucky for me, I guess...

Study provides new evidence that exercise is not key to weight control

A Brexit consequence

Interesting article at a French news website, noting how many expat English men and women living in Europe, and previously able to enjoy reciprocal health care benefits, are now facing a very uncertain future.

I very much doubt Brexit has any chance of being a long term success.  

It has been hot...

January was hottest month on record in Sydney and Brisbane, says weather bureau

I have been meaning to post about how unpleasantly, and continuously, hot and humid it has been in Brisbane this summer, and I'm glad to see it was not just in my imagination. 

A conservative judge and a silly argument

Of course I don't spend much time contemplating the US Supreme Court and how sensible its judges sound, but I do note that an article says of Trump's appointment (Gorsuch):

In the Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor cases, which challenged the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate on religious-liberty grounds and were eventually heard by the Supreme Court, Gorsuch sided strongly with the plaintiffs.

“The opinion of the panel majority is clearly and gravely wrong—on an issue that has little to do with contraception and a great deal to do with religious liberty,” he wrote in a dissent in the Little Sisters of the Poor case. “ When a law demands that a person do something the person considers sinful, and the penalty for refusal is a large financial penalty, then the law imposes a substantial burden on that person’s free exercise of religion.”

But the Little Sisters of the Poor case was based on a contorted and silly argument:  that by the sisters signing a form that said they would not provide an employee cover that included contraception, they were morally complicit in the government then providing the cover  that would cover it.

As this article explained in detail - this was a nonsense argument.  If Gorsuch's line is taken literally, there would be a heap of things the religious could avoid.   

I agree with this explanation

David Roberts at Vox:

Trump isn’t an evil geniusAnd that’s not what matters anyway.

My theory is that authoritarian demagogues are more alike than they are different. Most of them are narcissists. They are, at root, fearful, paranoid, and tribal, which drives the macho posturing and obsession with loyalty. They have a kind of animal cunning for how to manipulate people, dominate, and accrue power.

But for the most part they aren’t evil geniuses. (One of Russian journalist Masha Gessen’s recurring themes about Putin is what a “grey, ordinary man” he is.) Indeed, evil geniuses are pretty rare — or, to put it more precisely, narcissistic, paranoid tribalists are rarely geniuses, because genius requires a certain detached perspective, an ability to step outside oneself, which is precisely what narcissists lack.

What authoritarian regimes do is blunder forward, grasping and grabbing power whenever and wherever they can, building secretive inner circles, surrounding themselves with supplicant state media, demonizing dissenting voices, and punishing enemies. They do this not because of some 12-dimensional chess analysis of the political landscape, but because that’s what narcissism and zero-sum thinking does. They are more like animals driven by instinct than chess masters driven by strategy, though of course there’s a range (with Trump being on the far blinded-by-narcissism end).

If we’re looking to understand the course an authoritarian takes through a country and its history — what’s he’s accomplished, what’s likely to happen next — the place to look is not his intent, but the institutions and norms of the country he seeks to dominate. They, not his ultimate goals and desires, are what most determine the ultimate shape and consequences of a regime.

Rich and weird

From a book review of an autobiography by the daughter of famous reviewer and socialite Kenneth Tynan:

From an early age,” Tynan writes, “I had learned to accept my parents’ aberrant behavior with a kind of voyeuristic fascination.” Recounting a variety of incidents — some intimate, often funny, frequently uncomfortable, bizarre or upsetting — Tracy contends with the bedazzlements of her parents’ world, and her awareness that it fails to deliver the basics required for her well-being. Take this account of a screening her father arranged as part of the celebration of her 21st birthday:

My father told me that our friends George and Joan Axelrod had a special birthday present for me. (George was the writer of many classic screenplays, including The Manchurian Candidate and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Joan was an interior designer.) They wanted to give it to me on the evening prior to the big bash. Their pal, Sammy Davis Jr., was in town, and they had arranged to screen his personal copy of Deep Throat, the infamous porn film that had come out the previous year in the States but was still banned in Britain.

She goes on to state that she’s never seen a porn flick at this point; she barely has managed to get it on with a mellow boyfriend called Mike, also present. The 20-person screening is introduced by Sammy Davis Jr.:

As I watched him, I could only think how incredibly small he was and wonder what kind of a person traveled around the world with a personal copy of Deep Throat. I supposed he did it to impress people like my father — and this night he had clearly succeeded...

When the lights went up, I was so embarrassed I wanted to flee. But as the daughter of Kenneth Tynan, important critic and writer and übercool purveyor of all things sexual, I felt compelled to hang around, chat with the guests, and act nonchalant, as if I’d been watching this kind of thing since I was a toddler. After profusely thanking my father, Michael and his parents quickly left. Actually, I think everyone felt a bit awkward, and as soon as they could, they too escaped.

 This was a particularly 70's "sexual revolution" kind of thing, wasn't it?   That it was a sign of alleged sophistication that you were not only not embarrassed to talk about being a private viewer of pornography, but that it was cool to share in it with a like minded, insider audience.  

I was going to say that I'm glad we're over that;  but then again, I did notice the publicity being given to 50 Shades of Grey being shown on free to air TV soon.  (Yes, no doubt, it's not quite the same as Deep Throat.)

And now I crown you: Mr Supreme Court Justice

With the New York Times reporting:

President Trump summoned his top two candidates for the Supreme Court to Washington on Tuesday as he worked to build suspense around a prime-time announcement of his choice to fill a crucial vacancy, a selection certain to touch off a bruising ideological clash that could shape his presidency and have sweeping consequences for American law.

one can only hope that it will be truly crass and weird in a Trump beauty contest/reality TV kind of way:  make both candidates wait on TV for the announcement, and one have to congratulate the other.  Maybe the winner gets a bunch of flowers.  Or a gown?  Yes:  Melania can bring out a judicial gown and cloak it around the winner. 

More authoritarian dysfunction

As I say, if you can't see the danger and dysfunction in the way Trump and Bannon are trying to run the White House, you're a complete fool.

Message to monty:  why do you continue to comment at a blog full of complete fools?   Seriously, they are too stupid and (in most cases) obnoxious to be seen with in the same room. 

China benefit from Trump

The point made here seems quite plausible, doesn't it?:

Donald Trump Is Handing China the World 

President Donald Trump wants to build up the U.S. Navy, a move that could help the United States counter China’s aggressive expansion into the Western Pacific.

But the new, bigger fleet will come too late to save America from a rising China. That’s because Trump’s other initiatives—rejecting foreign alliances, throwing up barriers to global trade and withdrawing from efforts to combat climate change—are creating a power vacuum that China naturally fills.

I wouldn't be surprised if nearly all of the world moves towards the view that they'd prefer China just to have the South China Sea islands they're building, rather than an outbreak of fighting with a man-child as President who you don't want to see contemplating use of nuclear weapons.

Questions about his mental health

This article from the Daily News:

President Trump exhibits classic signs of mental illness, including 'malignant narcissism,' shrinks say 

is not as over the top as you might think.   Its explanation of what happened with Goldwater is a bit of history I didn't know, too.

What is somewhat interesting, in a way, is the matter of who is using who in the White House at the moment.   Or does the inner circle (which seems to be a mere handful) share Trump's delusions so much that they genuinely share his alternative reality and have no concerns about it?

The psychological trick, that I've noted before, is that if you pretend something is true for long enough, you can inadvertently start to believe it.   That might be what is happening there at the moment, but who knows?  Lots of good insider books to come out in the future, at any rate...

What's it like in the White House at the moment?

I wonder how long it will take before Trump and his White House controllers will admit making a mistake?   Because it seems their "alternative fact" reality-in-their-mind is that the immigration executive order implementation went swimmingly, with the main problem being the media. 

A post at Axios, though, cites someone with inside knowledge summing up the situation realistically:

Despite the bravado, others who are high-up inside the administration worry that the ham-handed handling of the ban and its rollout are indicative of bigger problems ahead. These sources say:

• Big decisions, and edits to crucial documents, are made in the dark of night, with scant input beyond the inner circle. "There are a few guys who keep everything to themselves," said a top official.
• The insular inner circle is getting more insular, as it amasses more power.
• No force within the West Wing is a sure-fire counterweight to Bannon/Miller.
• The inner circle, resentful of leaks, seeks little input from the Cabinet, outside allies or Hill leaders. A leadership aide told us yesterday afternoon: "Congressional leaders had no hand in drafting this and haven't been briefed from the White House on how it works."
• Trump is showing no signs of WANTING order: He loves the competing views, internally and externally, allowing him to be the (usually last-minute) decider.
• The place oozes paranoia. So every bad move is simply chalked up to media-hate.

I can't see an obvious way to link to individual posts at Axios, which is a pain.

A great cover

I happened to watch Late Night with Colbert through to the end last night (the inauguration day episode, where his opening monologue was funny and heartfelt), and so caught this band (The Avett Brothers) who I see have been around for a while and have quite a following in the US.   This is,  I think, a lovely cover of the George Harrison song, and they would have to be the coolest looking folky/bluegrassy band around:

Shorter Kellyanne:

"President Trump can invent facts as much as he likes because none of the mainstream media predicted he would win.  And they're mean.  They should resign and if they don't, be sacked, and leave it up to Fox News."

Link. No absurd and quasi-despotic sense of entitlement there, at all...