A pleasing attack on Rupert by Denis

Denis Muller really puts the boot into the News Corp abandonment of journalism in its coverage of the Australian election.   Good.  [Don't know why I thought it was Michelle Grattan - I was posting in a hurry, of course.  I was a bit surprised if it was Michelle, because I haven't been completely happy with her approach either, this election.]

Asian eating

I've been to a couple of Asian restaurants in the last few weeks, over in the heavily Chinese/Asian part of Brisbane (Sunnybank/Sunnybank Hills/Runcorn).

As I said to my family, there is something very pleasing about the liveliness of the way Asian family and friends gather in groups to eat.  I mean, eating in Western food places just does not have the same communitarian/family vibe as going to Chinese restaurant where the tables have a dozen or more people eating together, often with kids of all ages, and a busy staff running all over the place.  

And you get the impression this is a regular part of their life - good Asian restaurants in predominantly Asian parts of town are very busy.

My son thought I was ignoring things like bar-b-ques at home as a family/communitarian thing that Australians do - but really, we don't hold big ones very often, do we..

  

 

Women I thought had probably died

Over the weekend, I realised that two women who, if I had been asked, I would have guessed incorrectly had already died, came to mind:   Imelda Marcos, and Shirley MacLaine.

I was thinking of Imedla for obvious reasons (her son is probably going to be the next president of her country), but why Shirley came to mind, I don't know.

That is all.

 

Climate change in action

Yes, Andrew Sullivan has become very stupid

Spotted on Twitter:

How old is Sullivan?   58?   He's old enough to know better.

I posted before about a Noah Smith substack post in which he countered the American Right wing myth that America has become some sort of dystopian social nightmare in recent years (all caused by Democrats and "Leftism", of course),  which goes to show that a much younger man (with an eccentric fondness for rabbits) has a much better grasp on history than someone who has been making a living out of political commentary for decades.

Anyway - back to abortion in the US.   I see that Sullivan has joined in with the Creighton  "why are Leftists so scared of democracy dealing with abortion in the US?"  line.  

This is so naive, and so dismissive of the obvious problems with the current operation of democracy in the US, I almost can't be bothered dealing with it.   OK, I will, anyway:

*    of course if the courts have found a constitutional right that was left in place and re-affirmed over 50 years, and then (on what's obviously essentially religious grounds) remove it, the beneficiaries of that right are going to be unhappy;

*  of course the country has enormous problems with how democracy is implemented there - from political interference with gerrymandering, the neverending and politically motivated fiddling with electoral laws, the effort that has to be put in to even get people enrolled and out to vote, to the dubious effect of the Electoral College;   

*  of course, it was via an ethically illegitimate exercise of democracy - the Republican stacking of the Supreme Court, and Republican judges willing to lie and dissemble about the importance they would give Roe as precedent - which is leading to the overthrown of Roe.  It's already an example of the failure of democracy as implemented in the nation right now, writ large! 

*  of course there is a problem with trying to work out a democratic compromise with people who have built themselves into their own belief universe, not just on the question of "when does life begin" but on something as basic as "who won the last Presidential election".   

*  of course it's dismissive of women's interests to take the attitude "pro-abortionists will just have to wait for the inevitable Right wing over-reach" i.e. to wait for the high profile examples of women who have died - or are prosecuted for having an early abortion - rather than relying on the protection of a Court found right.

Roe may not have been perfect, but it was a compromise on an already vexed issue that could have been made to work.   And the likes of Sullivan and Creighton turn a deliberate blind eye to the rise of Christian Nationalism (read "fascism") that has captured a large chunk of the American Right that makes dealing with many issues "democratically" so extremely difficult.

Indications that the Coalition will lose

*  David Koch this morning was extremely dismissive of the answers Peter Dutton was giving regarding the Solomon Islands situation.   He did all but roll his eyes and say "yeah, you're wasting my time"; instead he just seemed to cut the live cross very abruptly.

*  Shortly after that, there was a pretty clear defence of Albanese not being able to list the 6 NDIS policy points without looking at the printed list.  

*  On Twitter, there is a ongoing strong pushback on the "gotcha" style of questions - and although Twitter does not reflect the general public (especially as one tends to follow people already on your own side of politics), I suspect that there is a broad public sentiment that the media is doing a terrible job in this campaign, including with the "gotcha" attempts.

I have trouble taking the Greens seriously

The Guardian notes:

Greens candidate for Brisbane, Stephen Bates, has taken out an advertisement on Grindr, “the world’s largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people”.

“You always come first with the Greens,” one reads, and another says: “Spice up Canberra with a third”.

Speaking directly to a specific market – in this case, a younger, LGBTQ+ market – could work, according to Dr Andrew Hughes, a political marketing lecturer at the Australian National University who says for any other party it might come across as “tokenistic”.

I do find this supports my feeling that while the Greens are in the right space on the environment and climate change, and (possibly) economics, they have a sort of air of immaturity about them (when they're not being overly earnest on "culture war" issues - which I also think is a kind of immaturity) on other issues that really puts me off voting for them.    

Just an attention seeking idiot

A simple, and accurate, proposition

 There has never been a worse Prime Minister for the way he has gone about managing his Ministry.

Impressive engineering

Like most of the world, I expect, I hadn't heard of the major airport runway that is (part) built on massive concrete pylons:

Some attitudes needing reform

In a BBC report:

Last month, police in India arrested a 46-year-old man who allegedly murdered his wife because his breakfast had too much salt.

"Nikesh Ghag, a bank clerk in Thane, near the western city of Mumbai, strangled his 40-year-old wife in a fit of rage because the sabudana [tapioca pearls or sago] khichdi she served was very salty," police official Milind Desai told the BBC.

The couple's 12-year-old son, who witnessed the crime, told the police that his father followed his mother, Nirmala, into the bedroom complaining about salt and started beating her.

"He kept crying and begging his father to stop," Mr Desai said, "but the accused kept hitting his wife and strangled her with a rope."

Some other examples of death for food related matters are listed:

The murder of a woman by her husband, triggered by a quarrel over food, routinely makes headlines in India.

Take some recent cases:

• In January, a man was arrested in Noida, a suburb of the capital Delhi, for allegedly murdering his wife for refusing to serve him dinner.
• In June 2021, a man was arrested in Uttar Pradesh after he allegedly killed his wife for not serving salad with his meal.
• Four months later, a man in Bangalore allegedly beat his wife to death for not cooking fried chicken properly.
• In 2017, BBC reported on a case where a 60-year-old man had fatally shot his wife for serving his dinner late.

But get this:

More than 40% of women and 38% of men told government surveyors that it was ok for a man to beat his wife if she disrespected her in-laws, neglected her home or children, went out without telling him, refused sex or didn't cook properly. In four states, more than 77% women justified wife beating.

In most states more women than men justified wife beating and in every single state - the only exception being Karnataka - more women than men thought it was okay for a man to beat his wife if she didn't cook properly.

The numbers have gone down from the previous survey five years ago - when 52% women and 42% men justified wife beating - but the attitudes haven't changed, says Amita Pitre, who leads Oxfam India's gender justice programme.

 

 

And yet most of the audience probably believes this is correct

The actual number, available at an instant, has dropped to around 800,000 a year.   (Even less on CDC numbers.)

Update:  an important reminder about Roe, and how Right wing politics has changed:

Roe vs. Wade was decided with a 7-2 vote, and not along partisan lines. Those who ruled in favor were as follows, with the president who nominated them and the party of that president indicated in parentheses:

• Harry Blackmun (Nixon, R)
• Lewis Powell (Nixon, R)
• Warren Burger (Nixon, R)
• William Brennan (Eisenhower, R)
• Potter Stewart (Eisenhower, R)
• Thurgood Marshall (LBJ, D)
• William Douglas (FDR, D)

Those who dissented on Roe vs. Wade:

• Byron White (Kennedy, D)
• William Rehnquist (Nixon, R)

 

Lying to get a job

With the news that it appears the conservative majority of the US Supreme Court is set to overrule Roe v Wade, it is of course worth remembering that members of said majority were quite willing to lie about their views:

 

As someone else pointed out in the thread following:

 And:

Update:   Gee, my 2019 post arguing that laws on abortion should be about compromise (of the type set up in Roe) still reads fine to me.  

Fickle market

According to Financial Times:

Shares in the Google parent fell more than 5 per cent in after-hours trading after Alphabet reported a 23 per cent increase in revenue in the three months to the end of March, to $68bn, slightly below forecasts for $68.1bn. A year prior, revenues had increased 34 per cent. Net profits fell 8 per cent from a year ago to $16.4bn.

Shocking but true

I increasingly have the desire for politicians on the Left to tell people that they are simply being stupid if they think the energy status quo is not going to have to change quickly, even if there is a cost.  

In short, people need to be told there has to be temporary sacrifice.