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.