Deadest dead government walking ever?

What a sense of schadenfreude it is giving me that Victoria, the home of the IPA, Sinclair Davidson, Judith Sloan, Steve Kates, Andrew Bolt and climate change denialism - the issue which is making the Coalition an un-electable rabble - is looking so hostile to the Liberals right now.   And Newspoll at 55/45 TPP! 

It's one of those periods where you wonder how the politicians on the obviously losing side manage to get up in the morning.   Do they mutter to themselves "it's all so pointless" over their corn flakes?

Anyway, let's sit back and enjoy watching the centrists and the science denying, culture warring Right in the Party fighting it out.  (Hilariously, I see at Catallaxy, the people argue that the Liberals need to be led by someone more like Trump.   They have no idea.)

The answer remains clear - you can't have coherent energy and climate change policy without believing in climate change.  That big rump (I'm guessing 35%) of the Coalition that just refuses to believe it is an issue at all need to be told to leave the party.

Update:  and I forgot to mention - the LDP gets 3,000 odd votes in the Upper Lower House - third from the bottom.   More pleasure for me.

Update 2:  As I was rudely told in comments, the votes in my previous update were for the Lower House, not the Upper, and I think the party ran 3 candidates.  So they cracked a 1,000 votes each, or thereabouts?  Congratulations!   As for the number of votes in the Upper House, I don't understand how the voting works there, given we don't have an Upper House in Queensland.  But I see that the LDP did get 50,000 odd votes, which puts it about even with the Animal Justice Party,  way behind   Deryn Hinch's Justice Party, and also behind the Shooter Fishers and Farmers Party.   What's more, at the last election, they got 3.06% of the vote, but at this one, at the moment, the vote is at 2.3%.

So, they're going backwards?  Again, congratulations. 

There's no there there

Did the Coen Brothers overcome the Netflix curse for having big names make only middling to bad movies? 

Well, I'm only 2/3 of the way through Buster Scruggs, and I think it is safe to say already that they have not.

The first story is absurdist, and violent (as indeed, it seems most episodes are) - I mean, seriously, as I said before JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN SHOW A GRAPHIC, BRAIN SPLATTERING SHOT TO THE HEAD, HOLLYWOOD, DOES NOT MEAN THAT GRAPHIC, BRAIN SPLATTERING SHOTS TO THE HEAD SHOULD BE ENTERTAINMENT.

Did you notice, it bothers me a great deal, this nihilistic use of heat shot special effects??

Anyway, even ignoring that, the first story is still mainly just peculiar - seemingly a thought bubble they had for a silly musical Western that they couldn't work out how to stretch to movie length.*

The main problem I have had with each story is the lack of dramatic drive.   Particularly in the one with Liam Neeson - I thought it just flat out boring.   And the Tom Waits one too. 

Sure, the cinematography looks great, although these days you never know when even nature scenery is real or faked up.   But really, I think that this movie, to the extent that people like it, is rather like Tarantino - it's a matter of style triumphing over nihilistic content.  There is no there there.


*  Actually, now that I think of it, it perhaps plays more as a mocking mini movie they couldn't cram into Hail Caesar!

 

Recipe noted

Sure, you can buy a jar of sauce to cook your chicken breasts in, but I found out last night that if you have some very common ingredients in the fridge and pantry (just use an onion instead of a shallot) you can very easily make a nice sauce that is cooked in one skillet with the chicken.

The recipe source:  ONE SKILLET CHICKEN WITH LEMON GARLIC CREAM SAUCE

Well, seeing you have to scroll far on the phone to get to the actual recipe, I'll put it here anyway:

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (or thighs)

salt and pepper

1 cup chicken broth

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon minced garlic

½ teaspoon red pepper flakes (or more to taste)

1 tablespoon olive oil

⅓ cup finely diced shallots (or red onions)

2 tablespoons salted butter

¼ cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons chopped parsley or basil

I'll simplify the cooking too -  I found there was no need to finish this in an oven.

Flatten out the breasts so they're more even thickness, season them, then fry in the skillet with the olive oil to brown.  Take out and fry the onion/shallots a little, then throw in the stock, garlic, lemon juice and chilli flakes which you've mixed up in the measuring cup.   A bit of stirring and the brown bits on the bottom get incorporated;  let the liquid reduce to about a third.   Take off the heat, then throw in the butter and whisk it in, then add the cream.  Put the mostly cooked breasts back in and spoon some of the sauce on top.  Put some green herb on top (I only had dried parsley, but it adds to the appearance.)  Put on a lid and back on very gentle heat for another 5 to 10 min.  

And speaking of skillets:  my wife recently bought a large straight sided, stainless steel saute pan, with a glass lid.   It's - really good for a dish like this.

Disney share price expected to do well

So, I just saw a teaser trailer for a "live action" (although really, more a case of differently animated) version of The Lion King, which is due to come out next year:



This will have enormous appeal.  

And they will also have the next Avengers movie out, with the story continuing from the incredibly popular Infinity War. 

I suspect that, in terms of box office competition, all other studios just may as well wave the white flag for next year.   Both of these Disney movies are just going to be hugely popular.

Footsteps in the mist

Regular readers - all 5 of you? - will know that I'm quite partial to accounts of yowies and bigfoot-ish stories of large humanoid things going thump in the night and scaring people.

Therefore, you won't be surprised to know that I quite liked this collection of Scottish stories of mountaineers and hikers, usually in the mist, getting scared by the sounds of footsteps and the occasional appearance of a tall, hairy thing with them.

The aspect of the feeling of dread accompanying these incidents is particularly interesting.   As with the common feature of a strong, unpleasant stink being associated with many yowie and bigfoot incidents, it is the odd extra feature, if repeated often enough, that makes one think that something genuinely unusual is going on.

And you thought Catholic nuns had gone all hip and non-traditional...

Buddhist monk ‘filmed having meth-fuelled gay sex in temple’

(No, I don't consult Pink News as a habit - this popped up on Flipboard.)

Anyway, more detail:

A rising star Buddhist monk in Taiwan has been arrested and expelled after he was allegedly filmed having gay sex and smoking meth in his temple.

Master Kai Hung, 29, was secretary general of the Chinese Young Buddhist Association until his room in Taiwan‘s Chongfo Temple was raided in November by police, who found 19 grams of amphetamine tablets, smoking pipes and a holy water bottle filled with lube, according to Shanghaiist.

Just a graphic reminder

The return of the gnome

Sinclair Davidson seems to be posting more often at Catallaxy again, which gives a sad sort of fun,  watching the hypocrisy and the nonsense coming from him directly rather than from the lazy, wilfully blind old blitherers and assorted guest posters who mainly post there now.  "Quality control" is a concept foreign to libertarians, apparently.

 Anyway, I was taken aback recently to note that he objected to Philip Adams tweeting about his hope that Alan Jones passes on from this mortal coil soon (while noting his ambition to die at the microphone too) with this comment:

...yet I was unaware that it is now entirely acceptable to publicly wish that your ideological enemies should die … and soon too.

while remembering that only last year he was on the defensive for his Quadrant mate Roger Franklin going all death fantasy on Lawrence Krauss and the ABC after the Manchester bombing.  Franklin's words (archived, as even Quadrant took it down after near universal condemnation):

What if that blast had detonated in an Ultimo TV studio? Unlike those young girls in Manchester, their lives snuffed out before they could begin, none of the panel’s likely casualties would have represented the slightest reduction in humanity’s intelligence, decency, empathy or honesty.

Mind you, as Krauss felt his body being penetrated by the Prophet’s shrapnel of nuts, bolts and nails, those goitered eyes might in their last glimmering have caught a glimpse of vindication. 

Nothing like a bit of tribalism to influence offence taking, hey?

A useful reminder

 

What's the bet that Trump will tweet about how the cold blast shows global warming is nothing to worry about?

And lots of dittoheads will agree.

By the way, I just checked the forecast for New York City - Thursday (which, at the time of this post, is still 5 hours away from starting) has a range of -7 to -2 degrees.  Brisk!

Hindu nationalism a worry

According to Crux:

MUMBAI, India - A Catholic priest was attacked by a Hindu mob in northern India, and then arrested by police after Hindus accused him of causing the disturbance.
Father Vineet Vincent Pereira was conducting a prayer service in Ghohana town in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh when right-wing Hindus attacked him on Nov. 14.

Father Pereira has a very hippie Jesus look, by the way, and lives in a ashram.  Seems Catholic clergy in India are always at risk of half going native, so to speak, if the example of Bede Griffiths was any example. 

Anyway, Hindu nationalists are taking the defence of their religion way too seriously:

Right-wing Hindu groups have accused the priest of trying to convert the local Hindu population.

The mob that attacked the priest were allegedly members of Hindu Yuva Vahini, a radical Hindu youth group that tries to “re-convert” Hindus that have switched religions.

After the attack, Pereira said police took him into custody - allegedly for his own safety - but then charged him the next day for rioting and unlawful assembly. 

Not bad humour

GOP Jesus needed editing down - not every bit works well, but quite a few do:

Krugman on why the Trump tax cuts have fizzled

I meant to link to this opinion piece by Krugman before, but it's interesting for his theory as to why the Trump tax cuts haven't achieved much.  The key section, I think, is this:

Now, proponents of the tax cut, including Trump’s own economists, made a big deal about how we now have a global capital market, in which money flows to wherever it gets the highest after-tax return. And they pointed to countries with low corporate taxes, like Ireland, which appear to attract lots of foreign investment.

The key word here is, however, “appear.” Corporations do have a strong incentive to cook their books — I’m sorry, manage their internal pricing — in such a way that reported profits pop up in low-tax jurisdictions, and this in turn leads on paper to large overseas investments.

But there’s much less to these investments than meets the eye. For example, the vast sums corporations have supposedly invested in Ireland have yielded remarkably few jobs and remarkably little income for the Irish themselves — because most of that huge investment in Ireland is nothing more than an accounting fiction.

Now you know why the money U.S. companies reported moving home after taxes were cut hasn’t shown up in jobs, wages and investment: Nothing really moved. Overseas subsidiaries transferred some assets back to their parent companies, but this was just an accounting maneuver, with almost no impact on anything real.

So the basic result of lower taxes on corporations is that corporations pay less in taxes — full stop. Which brings me to the problem with conservative economic doctrine.
That doctrine is all about the supposed need to give the already privileged incentives to do nice things for the rest of us. We must, the right says, cut taxes on the wealthy to induce them to work hard, and cut taxes on corporations to induce them to invest in America.

But this doctrine keeps failing in practice. President George W. Bush’s tax cuts didn’t produce a boom; President Barack Obama’s tax hike didn’t cause a depression. Tax cuts in Kansas didn’t jump-start the state’s economy; tax hikes in California didn’t slow growth.

And with the Trump tax cut, the doctrine has failed again. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to get politicians to understand something when their campaign contributions depend on their not understanding it.

I wonder if this is being challenged by anyone credible (ie, not a Laffer zombie).

We seem to do lettuce better than the US...

I know we have an occasional fresh vegetable/fruit contamination issue, but the US seems to have an awful lot of incidents like this:

Federal health officials are urging consumers to stop eating romaine lettuce and asking industry to halt all sales amid an extensive E. coli outbreak unfolding across the U.S. and Canada.

Even the Americans seem to acknowledge this happens way too often:

“CDC and FDA did the right thing and gave a very broad warning to consumers. Hopefully they will find the source of the contamination and the cause quickly,” said Sandra Eskin, director of food safety at the Pew Charitable Trusts.
“We have seen so many leafy green outbreaks over the last year — it is really undermining consumer confidence in the safety of these otherwise healthy products,” Eskin added.

Comparing disasters

The photos of destruction coming out after the terrible Californian fires are quite something.  

I was curious as to how it compared to the harm caused by the Victorian Black Saturday fires, which sort of set the modern Australian image of how bad our bushfires can be.

A quick Google would indicate that 2,029 homes were destroyed in our home-grown disaster (but apparently another 1,000 or so buildings too.)    Number of people killed: 173.

The Californian fire is being reported as having destroyed about 12,000 homes, and while the death toll is still currently below 100, there's another 700 missing.  (Which really seems an extraordinary number after this time.)

So yeah, at least in property destruction, the Californian fires are already on a much larger scale, and may well end up having killed many more people too.

Elver abuse

You can congratulate me later for the title to the post, after you've  read all about what's possibly the oddest criminal activity in the world:

Billions of euros worth of critically endangered eels are being trafficked each year from Europe, ending up on tables in China and Japan in what campaigners say is "the largest wildlife crime on Earth."

Stocks of European eel (anguilla anguilla) have plummeted 90 percent in three decades as mankind has developed the wetlands and dammed the rivers it needs to grow and feed in, and experts fear criminal gangs smuggling the lucrative fish are pushing it towards oblivion.

The problem, according to Michel Vignaud, head of fishing regulation at France's National Biodiversity Agency, is exploding Asian demand for a product viewed as both a delicacy and an aphrodisiac.

"We cannot legally export eels outside the EU, but the prices are different in Asia. There is a real Asian demand for eel," he told AFP.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said that in 2016 China produced close to a quarter of a million tonnes of eel for consumption, far ahead of Japan—where eating eel is seen as bringing good luck and fertility—and the EU.

The bloc's law enforcement agency EUROPOL estimates as many as 100 tonnes of baby eels—known as glass eels for their translucent skin—are trafficked abroad each year: equivalent to around 350 million fish.

 PS:  if I have to explain - an elver is a young eel.