Isn't it truly remarkable that a recording of a behind closed doors Republican meeting (dealing with the huge practical difficulties of repealing Obamacare) should be leaked to the Washington Post, so early in this administration?
There is some internal turmoil going on in that party, the extent of which will no doubt be the subject of many future books.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
The last Sherlock
We watched the last Sherlock last night.
Many readers from The Guardian didn't like it. I thought it wasn't too bad, actually. Rather too James Bond in the settings (both the prison island, and then the house surely reminded people of Skyfall?). Thematically, it reminded me a bit of a minor Graham Greene novel too - Doctor Fischer of Geneva.
It was all very improbable all round, of course, but improbable done with good intensity and directorial flare, most of the time. (The shot of the jump out of the Baker Street flat was very poor, though.)
I would be happy to see the show continue, actually, now that its biggest mistake - the silly story arc of Mary - is well and truly gone, as is Moriarty.
Many readers from The Guardian didn't like it. I thought it wasn't too bad, actually. Rather too James Bond in the settings (both the prison island, and then the house surely reminded people of Skyfall?). Thematically, it reminded me a bit of a minor Graham Greene novel too - Doctor Fischer of Geneva.
It was all very improbable all round, of course, but improbable done with good intensity and directorial flare, most of the time. (The shot of the jump out of the Baker Street flat was very poor, though.)
I would be happy to see the show continue, actually, now that its biggest mistake - the silly story arc of Mary - is well and truly gone, as is Moriarty.
Friday, January 27, 2017
Only took a week...
I'm a bit surprised that the Trump sit down interview of a couple of days ago, in which he continued obsessing about his popularity, has not gained more immediate international attention for the worrying signs it displayed about Trump's basic psychological state. Obviously, you don't want a guy with control of a stockpile of nuclear weapons to be one who is impervious to facts and capable of such self aggrandising obsessions.
But it's clear that a huge part of the problem is the people around him - particularly the unhealthy looking Stephen Bannon, who is obviously either behind, or completely supportive of, Trump's paranoia with how the media presents him. Here he is, quoted by the NYT:
I have been writing for years that, as a pretty safe rule of thumb, if anyone remains a climate change denialist, their judgement on pretty much anything else can't be trusted.
But it's clear that a huge part of the problem is the people around him - particularly the unhealthy looking Stephen Bannon, who is obviously either behind, or completely supportive of, Trump's paranoia with how the media presents him. Here he is, quoted by the NYT:
“The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong,” Mr. Bannon said of the election, calling it “a humiliating defeat that they will never wash away, that will always be there.”“The mainstream media has not fired or terminated anyone associated with following our campaign,” Mr. Bannon said. “Look at the Twitter feeds of those people: they were outright activists of the Clinton campaign.” (He did not name specific reporters or editors.)“That’s why you have no power,” Mr. Bannon added. “You were humiliated.”“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,”“I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”
Yes, just what you want. An unstable, vindictive culture warrior who won't accept that the Trump victory was, in fact, very narrow, advising a vain, insecure man-child who stumbled into a presidency he didn't really expect.
Are Republican politicians worried about Trump? According to Carl Bernstein, some are:
Bernstein said discussions going on in Washington this week were “unlike anything I have seen in 50 years as a reporter”.Are Right wing commentators in Australia commenting about this at all? Of course not - the likes of Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair are still just concentrating on how bad Lefties are for the extremely low level of protest violence and making some nasty signs about the Pres. God knows how they would have coped in the truly violent hothouse political and social environment of the US in the late 60's and 70's.
“I am hearing from Republicans, and other reporters are as well, that there is open discussion by members of the President of the United States’ own party about his emotional maturity, stability,” he said.
I have been writing for years that, as a pretty safe rule of thumb, if anyone remains a climate change denialist, their judgement on pretty much anything else can't be trusted.
Well, this has been supplanted by a even more reliable rule: if a person can't see the danger in Donald Trump's behaviour and statements, he or she is just blinded by culture war foolishness and is completely unreliable on all matters requiring sound judgement.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
My suggestion for a new Australia Day date
I'm starting to think that, like 1950's Catholic CL, Sinclair Davidson is man living in the wrong era - he's a throw back to somewhere, probably pre-war England? (Don't get me started on dover beach - he's an escapee from the 13th century.)
I say this because the way he writes, he seems regretful about missing out on historical chances to physically be able to put the boot into Leftists; perhaps he's a re-incarnation of some upper middle class Englishman in a suit, out on the street to try to wallop unionists during the General Strike.
Not for the first time, I also find his meaning unclear. Writing on Ian McFarlanes' opinion that we should just go and change the date we celebrate Australia Day, he says "caving in to lefty demands is always and everywhere a mistake" while simultaneously acknowledging there are some good arguments for moving it. So good arguments should never win if they are held by "Leftists" who will be seen to be getting their way if you agree? He probably doesn't mean that, but his clarity is, as is often the case, missing.
In any event, his silly post has encouraged me to look around at potential alternative dates for Australia Day, and there is a list at SBS of various dates that have been proposed, and their reasons.
Of course, the obvious one (1 January, when the nation became official) is out for the simple of expediency of it already being a holiday, and one with too many hangovers to do any nationalistic ceremonies.
But it has occurred to me - if Anzac Day is now considered a remembrance of the day the nation first felt all grown up, but it of itself cannot bear a further burden of celebration, why not just make the next day - April 26 - a follow up holiday where we celebrate the nation that it had become? (I see that candy at Catallaxy has come close to that - suggesting that Anzac Day be beefed up into also being Australia Day - but I can't see that working.)
As far as I can tell, there is nothing of particular significance one way or the other to make people question the date for having a particular partisanship to one group or another - which is the problem with going for things like changing it to the date that aboriginals got certain rights.
The benefit - we get two public holidays in a row - this alone will convince many it is a worthy change.
The only downside - it may fall too close to Easter some years. But hey, we can handle that.
I say this because the way he writes, he seems regretful about missing out on historical chances to physically be able to put the boot into Leftists; perhaps he's a re-incarnation of some upper middle class Englishman in a suit, out on the street to try to wallop unionists during the General Strike.
Not for the first time, I also find his meaning unclear. Writing on Ian McFarlanes' opinion that we should just go and change the date we celebrate Australia Day, he says "caving in to lefty demands is always and everywhere a mistake" while simultaneously acknowledging there are some good arguments for moving it. So good arguments should never win if they are held by "Leftists" who will be seen to be getting their way if you agree? He probably doesn't mean that, but his clarity is, as is often the case, missing.
In any event, his silly post has encouraged me to look around at potential alternative dates for Australia Day, and there is a list at SBS of various dates that have been proposed, and their reasons.
Of course, the obvious one (1 January, when the nation became official) is out for the simple of expediency of it already being a holiday, and one with too many hangovers to do any nationalistic ceremonies.
But it has occurred to me - if Anzac Day is now considered a remembrance of the day the nation first felt all grown up, but it of itself cannot bear a further burden of celebration, why not just make the next day - April 26 - a follow up holiday where we celebrate the nation that it had become? (I see that candy at Catallaxy has come close to that - suggesting that Anzac Day be beefed up into also being Australia Day - but I can't see that working.)
As far as I can tell, there is nothing of particular significance one way or the other to make people question the date for having a particular partisanship to one group or another - which is the problem with going for things like changing it to the date that aboriginals got certain rights.
The benefit - we get two public holidays in a row - this alone will convince many it is a worthy change.
The only downside - it may fall too close to Easter some years. But hey, we can handle that.
...makes it harder to believe she won't be around
The post title refers to both:
a. the current use of a slowed down version of "Flame Trees" on a road safety ad on TV here at the moment. I can't find a link to it, which is odd. Are all songs capable of haunting melancholia if the tempo is slowed appropriately? I don't know - but I think it's remarkably effective.
and
b. the death of Mary Tyler Moore. I've long said her 70's show is the best long running sitcom ever made, both funny and endearing because of the realism of the characters. (OK, Ted pushed the boundaries of realism, although I am sure I have read of media insiders who disagree.) It also showed a sense of balance about how life was changing - I thought the way in which Lou Grant's wife left him, not out of anything he had done wrong, but just out of a feeling that for her own growth she needed it, was a particularly poignant example of the more-or-less unintended hurt that women's inevitable increasing independence could cause. And Mary herself could be a bit depressed about her lack of long, deep relationships - do you remember the scene where she did a mental calculation of the huge number of "dates" she had been on since she was 17? I wonder though - that obit from the NYT I linked to calls her character "neurotic": I wouldn't say that, and I wonder if the obit is attracting criticism for it?
I only have the vaguest memories of her on the Dick Van Dyke show, but it was a popular in our household in the 1960's, and I do remember enjoying it.
With the importance of her shows from a feminist perspective, it's some sort of irony that she has died at the start of a period of retro anti-feminism under Trump and Republican dominated congress. I'm not impressed by the crassness of some young comedians (or aging rock stars) who give the impression that sexual promiscuity is to them to be the most important aspect of modern feminism, but I hope Moore took some encouragement from the women's marches last weekend. (I assume she was a Democrat voter - I would be dismayed if she wasn't!) I also hope she can come and haunt the ghastly Kellyanne Conway, whose role in Trump promotion is a betrayal to her gender, not to mention Catholicism.
a. the current use of a slowed down version of "Flame Trees" on a road safety ad on TV here at the moment. I can't find a link to it, which is odd. Are all songs capable of haunting melancholia if the tempo is slowed appropriately? I don't know - but I think it's remarkably effective.
and
b. the death of Mary Tyler Moore. I've long said her 70's show is the best long running sitcom ever made, both funny and endearing because of the realism of the characters. (OK, Ted pushed the boundaries of realism, although I am sure I have read of media insiders who disagree.) It also showed a sense of balance about how life was changing - I thought the way in which Lou Grant's wife left him, not out of anything he had done wrong, but just out of a feeling that for her own growth she needed it, was a particularly poignant example of the more-or-less unintended hurt that women's inevitable increasing independence could cause. And Mary herself could be a bit depressed about her lack of long, deep relationships - do you remember the scene where she did a mental calculation of the huge number of "dates" she had been on since she was 17? I wonder though - that obit from the NYT I linked to calls her character "neurotic": I wouldn't say that, and I wonder if the obit is attracting criticism for it?
I only have the vaguest memories of her on the Dick Van Dyke show, but it was a popular in our household in the 1960's, and I do remember enjoying it.
With the importance of her shows from a feminist perspective, it's some sort of irony that she has died at the start of a period of retro anti-feminism under Trump and Republican dominated congress. I'm not impressed by the crassness of some young comedians (or aging rock stars) who give the impression that sexual promiscuity is to them to be the most important aspect of modern feminism, but I hope Moore took some encouragement from the women's marches last weekend. (I assume she was a Democrat voter - I would be dismayed if she wasn't!) I also hope she can come and haunt the ghastly Kellyanne Conway, whose role in Trump promotion is a betrayal to her gender, not to mention Catholicism.
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Leaks and lies
Yes, it isn't surprising that there is confirmation that Trump himself pushed his press secretary to come out lying about how many people were at (or watched) the inauguration; but what is surprising is the apparent number of White House insiders who have been leaking to the media so soon after the inauguration.
As for the reason Trump would do this - Tyler Cowan's Bloomberg column is getting a lot of attention, and deservedly so:
As for the reason Trump would do this - Tyler Cowan's Bloomberg column is getting a lot of attention, and deservedly so:
By requiring subordinates to speak untruths, a leader can undercut their independent standing, including their standing with the public, with the media and with other members of the administration. That makes those individuals grow more dependent on the leader and less likely to mount independent rebellions against the structure of command. Promoting such chains of lies is a classic tactic when a leader distrusts his subordinates and expects to continue to distrust them in the future.But read the whole thing...
Another reason for promoting lying is what economists sometimes call loyalty filters. If you want to ascertain if someone is truly loyal to you, ask them to do something outrageous or stupid. If they balk, then you know right away they aren’t fully with you. That too is a sign of incipient mistrust within the ruling clique, and it is part of the same worldview that leads Trump to rely so heavily on family members.
In this view, loyalty tests are especially frequent for new hires and at the beginning of new regimes, when the least is known about the propensities of subordinates. You don’t have to view President Trump as necessarily making a lot of complicated calculations, rather he may simply be replicating tactics that he found useful in his earlier business and media careers.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Against pill testing
Those of a libertarian bent tend to support the idea of pill testing at places where youth gather to do things like listen to doof doof music so tedious that they must take mind altering illicit drugs in order to enjoy it for more than 10 minutes.
Yet, as I have seen argued before, this is a position motivated more by ideology than evidence that pill testing is effective. [I'd link to my previous post about it, if only Google wasn't so pathetic in its erratic indexing of this blog.]
The latest article explaining this was at the SMH today. Basically, the testing is far from being very accurate, and even if does identify a substance that is safe at small doses, it can't tell what the dose is.
Sounds pretty convincing to me, even if I have an ideological position against recreational drugs generally.
Yet, as I have seen argued before, this is a position motivated more by ideology than evidence that pill testing is effective. [I'd link to my previous post about it, if only Google wasn't so pathetic in its erratic indexing of this blog.]
The latest article explaining this was at the SMH today. Basically, the testing is far from being very accurate, and even if does identify a substance that is safe at small doses, it can't tell what the dose is.
Sounds pretty convincing to me, even if I have an ideological position against recreational drugs generally.
Silly trivia
On the one hand, when we went through an election campaign in which Trumpkin wingnuttery was full of things like slowed down video of Clinton allegedly having seizures, and a minder who was supposed to be walking around with an injector in hand, ready to sedate her at a moment's notice, I'm inclined to cut the anti Trump side a bit of slack when it comes to their now obsessing over silly things like Melania Trump's facial expression at one point of the inauguration.
But really, to be overanalysing her, and young Barron Trump, is really below the media, including Slate, isn't it?
But really, to be overanalysing her, and young Barron Trump, is really below the media, including Slate, isn't it?
Monday, January 23, 2017
The double slit with a twist: an important quantum experiment?
Just browsing through arXiv, as you do when there is not much on TV, and found a paper from last week by a group of Chinese researchers which sounds very significant. Here's the abstract:
The cartoon they refer to is this:
I'm guessing that there might be a dispute over their interpretation of their experiment, but we'll see. I'd be a bit surprised if this doesn't make it into science journalism soon...
Are quantum states real? How to think about this the most important, most fundamental and most profound question in quantum mechanics still has not been satisfactorily resolved, although its realistic interpretation seems to have been rejected by various delayed-choice experiments. The heart of the matter comes down to what can describe physical reality if wavefunctions cannot. Here, to address this long-standing issue, we present a quantum twisted double-slit experiment, in which orbital angular momentum degree-of-freedom is employed to 'mark' the double slits (mimicked by spatial light modulators). Besides providing a which-slit observation interface, by exploiting the variable arrival time ascribed to the subluminal feature of twisted photons, the behavior of a photon during its time in flight is revealed for the first time. We found that the arrival time of photons does not accord with the states obtained in measurements, but agree well with the theoretical predictions calculated from their wavefunctions during the propagation. Our results demonstrate that wavefunctions describes a realistic manner of quantum entities' existence and evolution rather than only a mathematical abstraction for only providing a probability list of measurement outcomes. This finding makes an important update in understanding the role of wavefunctions in the evolution of quantum entities, inspires a new insight on nonlocality and wave-particle duality, and reminds us there is a neglected powerful resource for quantum science needing revisit.As is common in such papers, the introduction and (this time) even the conclusion are fairly comprehensible, and you don't have to follow the maths in between. Here's their surprising conclusion:
I'm guessing that there might be a dispute over their interpretation of their experiment, but we'll see. I'd be a bit surprised if this doesn't make it into science journalism soon...
Inadequate Google blog searching, revisited
Why does this happen???
This morning I noted how I couldn't find a post I was sure I had made here using Google Advanced search (wherein I searched the word "tempura" in my blog site - both www.opiniondominion.blogspot.com and www.opiniondominion.blogspot.com.au. I also dropped the "www", in case that made a difference. I tried other words I thought likely in the post too, such as "batter").
Nothing came up. Nothing came up when I tried it last night, too.
Nothing came up trying Bing.
I had to resort to doing a word search in a backup copy of the entire blog (opening the .xml backup file in Notepad.)
And here it is: the post from 2015 - a fairly lengthy post which uses "tempura" many times, even in the title, not to mention "batter".
Having found the post on the backup, I even tested Google Advanced Search by cutting and pasting the short sentence "The history of tempura as a Japanese mainstay is interesting" and told it just to search the blog address - and still nothing.
Why does this happen??
I still see in a site counter I sometimes check, for example, that someone has visited the blog because they searched "lucky snakes", and I had a post of that title many years ago. I can also Google (not even Advanced Google) for "ox tail opinion dominion" or similarly for "paella" and I can get the posts I made where I have recorded recipes.
So why is Google so erratically unreliable about search within a Blogger blog? Even using Advanced Search???
I've been complaining about this for years - and I am puzzled as to why it happens.
This morning I noted how I couldn't find a post I was sure I had made here using Google Advanced search (wherein I searched the word "tempura" in my blog site - both www.opiniondominion.blogspot.com and www.opiniondominion.blogspot.com.au. I also dropped the "www", in case that made a difference. I tried other words I thought likely in the post too, such as "batter").
Nothing came up. Nothing came up when I tried it last night, too.
Nothing came up trying Bing.
I had to resort to doing a word search in a backup copy of the entire blog (opening the .xml backup file in Notepad.)
And here it is: the post from 2015 - a fairly lengthy post which uses "tempura" many times, even in the title, not to mention "batter".
Having found the post on the backup, I even tested Google Advanced Search by cutting and pasting the short sentence "The history of tempura as a Japanese mainstay is interesting" and told it just to search the blog address - and still nothing.
Why does this happen??
I still see in a site counter I sometimes check, for example, that someone has visited the blog because they searched "lucky snakes", and I had a post of that title many years ago. I can also Google (not even Advanced Google) for "ox tail opinion dominion" or similarly for "paella" and I can get the posts I made where I have recorded recipes.
So why is Google so erratically unreliable about search within a Blogger blog? Even using Advanced Search???
I've been complaining about this for years - and I am puzzled as to why it happens.
Very witty
Following on from the lying (and pro-Life Catholic - the prime example of the disgraceful low standards of conservative Catholics in supporting Trump) Kellyanne Conway's comments yesterday, this has appeared on twitter:
Cleaning up the vomit story
I did enjoy this lengthy explanation of the rise of the belief that Ancient Romans would use a "vomitorium" while feasting.
Pet rat problem
Eight people who worked at several rat-breeding facilities in Illinois and Wisconsin have been infected with a virus not commonly found in the United States, federal health officials said Friday. This is the first known outbreak of Seoul virus associated with pet rats in the United States, although there have been several outbreaks in wild rats, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Link: 8 people infected in rare U.S. outbreak of rat virus
Seoul virus is a member of the Hantavirus family of rodent-borne viruses and is carried by wild Norway rats worldwide. Most rats infected with the virus do not appear sick.
People typically become infected when they are exposed to body fluids (blood, saliva, urine) from infected rats or are bitten by them. People can't get the virus from other people or from other types of pets, the CDC said in a news release.
Symptoms of Seoul virus infection in people include fever, severe headache, back and abdominal pain, chills, blurred vision, eye redness and rash. In rare cases, infection can lead to kidney disease. Most people infected with the virus recover, according to the CDC.
Update: in defence of rats, don't forget how many people are seriously affected by cat scratch disease in the US each year:
...although it was extremely rare, each year about 12,000 people are diagnosed with cat-scratch disease, and of these, 500 require hospitalization. These incidences were highest in the U.S. southern states and in households with children aged 5 to 9.
The lost post
I'm curious - do any of my vast number of regular readers (ha) remember a post here in the last 18 months or so in which I talked about cooking tempura for the first time? I feel certain I posted about it - including the simple recipe I ended up following despite the many variations on the net.
Yet I can't successfully find any reference to tempura here via Google Advanced Search, blog search, or even Bing.
I tried tempura again last night, and it was not as successful - I blame not being able to find my own post about it.
Yet I can't successfully find any reference to tempura here via Google Advanced Search, blog search, or even Bing.
I tried tempura again last night, and it was not as successful - I blame not being able to find my own post about it.
Not right in the head - in three parts
1. Dimitrious Gargasoulas, the guy who went on the shocking killing rampage on Friday in his car in Melbourne. The Daily Mail has a run down on his recent Facebook entries, all of which indicate he had been ranting and obviously mentally unwell for sometime. Friends are quoted saying he was seriously drug addled by ice; the police knew him from a violent past. The Facebook entries indicate some religious element to his derangement, but none of the entries indicate it was Islamic. If anything, they in fact indicate he thought he was following an esoteric Kurdish, pre-Islamic religion.
2. The people who comment at Catallaxy. If a random attack first appears that it might be Islamic terrorism, there is no persuading them, ever, that it wasn't. Their compelling evidence - the one tourist witness who was on video saying that Gargasoulas was yelling "allah akhbar" from his car. Oddly, it seems no other witness has come forward to confirm it, nor is there any phone video around to back it up. Gargasoulas was yelling and ranting, and his actions did resemble some recent overseas Islamic terrorism: doesn't it seem to reasonable people at least possible - maybe even likely - that the tourist mistakenly thought he heard the phrase? The only other evidence - a friend quoted by the Daily Mail saying that Gargasoulas had recently "converted to Islam." Yet, the Facebook rants don't support that, at all. There has been no one saying he has ever stepped foot into a mosque.
But the high functioning fools of Catallaxy - for that is what most of them are - latched onto "it's Islamic terrorism" and won't let go. Even the weirdo Fisk - who I have not been able to make sense of for years - is seeming to play some sort of anti-immigration game with this.
In any event, even if it were later proved that he had yelled what the tourist thought he did - if every religion is supposed to be responsible for the killings of its clearly mentally ill so-called converts, I'd like to know how many Christian or Catholic "terrorists" there have been over the years.
3. David Leyonhjelm: I've said before he seems to me to be kind of depressed since the last election, probably because all of the Senate balance of power attention has switched to One Nation and Xenophon. But he is a deeply foolish man - one who doesn't have normal sensibilities and constantly seems to seek controversy for the sake of attention - to do what he did on Friday.
2. The people who comment at Catallaxy. If a random attack first appears that it might be Islamic terrorism, there is no persuading them, ever, that it wasn't. Their compelling evidence - the one tourist witness who was on video saying that Gargasoulas was yelling "allah akhbar" from his car. Oddly, it seems no other witness has come forward to confirm it, nor is there any phone video around to back it up. Gargasoulas was yelling and ranting, and his actions did resemble some recent overseas Islamic terrorism: doesn't it seem to reasonable people at least possible - maybe even likely - that the tourist mistakenly thought he heard the phrase? The only other evidence - a friend quoted by the Daily Mail saying that Gargasoulas had recently "converted to Islam." Yet, the Facebook rants don't support that, at all. There has been no one saying he has ever stepped foot into a mosque.
But the high functioning fools of Catallaxy - for that is what most of them are - latched onto "it's Islamic terrorism" and won't let go. Even the weirdo Fisk - who I have not been able to make sense of for years - is seeming to play some sort of anti-immigration game with this.
In any event, even if it were later proved that he had yelled what the tourist thought he did - if every religion is supposed to be responsible for the killings of its clearly mentally ill so-called converts, I'd like to know how many Christian or Catholic "terrorists" there have been over the years.
3. David Leyonhjelm: I've said before he seems to me to be kind of depressed since the last election, probably because all of the Senate balance of power attention has switched to One Nation and Xenophon. But he is a deeply foolish man - one who doesn't have normal sensibilities and constantly seems to seek controversy for the sake of attention - to do what he did on Friday.
When China sounds more reasonable than America
A short post (well, they are all short) at Axios noted that Steven Bannon thought it a good idea to compare Trump's speech to that of China's president Xi Jinping at Davos.
Who knows why he thought that, when Xi sounds like the one being modern, reasonable, and moral:
Who knows why he thought that, when Xi sounds like the one being modern, reasonable, and moral:
Here's Trump today:
For many decades, we've enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military; we've defended other nation's borders while refusing to defend our own; and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay. We've made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon. One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind. The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.
And here's Xi on Tuesday:
We should commit ourselves to growing an open global economy to share opportunities and interests through opening-up and achieve win-win outcomes. One should not just retreat to the harbor when encountering a storm, for this will never get us to the other shore of the ocean. We must redouble efforts to develop global connectivity to enable all countries to achieve inter-connected growth and share prosperity. We must remain committed to developing global free trade and investment, promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation through opening-up and say no to protectionism.
And by the way: isn't it very odd that Republicans (or at least, Trump Republicans) should be concerned about infrastructure, when it's their combination of lower taxes and "must balance the budget" that set up the country for decreasing spend on infrastructure in the first place? (OK, I am assuming that's the story here - I don't have the links at hand to prove it. Oh alright, I'll Google it for this piece last year in The Atlantic:To get a sense of Ryan’s pre-election view of the infrastructure question, however, consider his response when The Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein asked, during the Washington Ideas Forum in late September, whether he would help Trump pass “a $550 billion, or more, infrastructure program.” Ryan laughed loudly and slapped his hand on the arm rest of his chair. “That’s not in the ‘Better Way’ agenda,” the speaker replied, referring the six-point plan he and other House GOP lawmakers unveiled earlier this year as their campaign platform. “Just so you know, we just passed the biggest highway bill since the 1990s.”
After years of delays and stopgap bills, Congress did approve a six-year, $305 billion highway bill last December, but the Obama administration and advocates for infrastructure investment considered the legislation woefully short of the amount needed to bring the nation’s roads and bridges into good repair. Before the 2009 stimulus, infrastructure had enjoyed mostly bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. But while there remain a solid number of Republican lawmakers who want to increase spending on transportation and other upkeep, the hurdle in recent years has been finding a way to pay for it. Congress has not raised the gas tax in more than two decades, and ideas to finance infrastructure in other ways have not gone far.
Sunday, January 22, 2017
New media outlet worth watching
I see that new American on line news outlet Axios has started. (It only came to my attention via noticing Jonathan Swan on twitter said he was starting there.)
The background to this start up is here. I like the description:
Worth following, I think...
The background to this start up is here. I like the description:
What Axios is trying to do is occupy the space that VandeHei feels The New York Times and The Economist could have commanded if they weren’t tethered to their old print roots. He has joked with potential investors that Axios is best described as what you get if the “Economist mated with Twitter,” and “smartly narrated all the good stuff its own reporters missed,” according to someone familiar with the conversation.The article notes that the plan is ultimately to make money from subscriptions, but it's all free at the moment.
Worth following, I think...
The bad reviews are in
For the inauguration, of course. Some of the columns are pretty good:
* George Wills' review in the Washington Post had perhaps the most succinct title:
He writes:
* For a bit of snarky comedy, you can then read an account of the apparently poorly organised inaugural balls, also at Slate. For exampe:
* George Wills' review in the Washington Post had perhaps the most succinct title:
And I thought it was pretty witty in its withering assessment:
* For a much less amusing, but very worthy take down of Trump, I strongly recommend William Saletan's article at Slate:Living down to expectations, he had delivered the most dreadful inaugural address in history.Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s White House counselor, had promised that the speech would be “elegant.” This is not the adjective that came to mind as he described “American carnage.” That was a phrase the likes of which has never hitherto been spoken at an inauguration.
Oblivious to the moment and the setting, the always remarkable Trump proved that something dystopian can be strangely exhilarating: In what should have been a civic liturgy serving national unity and confidence, he vindicated his severest critics by serving up reheated campaign rhetoric about “rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape” and an education system producing students “deprived of all knowledge.” Yes, all.
But cheer up, because the carnage will vanish if we “follow two simple rules: Buy American and hire American.” “Simple” is the right word.
Saletan starts by noting the ridiculous tweet by Trump, trying to look serious, pretending he is writing the inauguration speech:
A normal president doesn’t do this. He doesn’t assert authorship of speeches and fake a picture of himself writing them. At what ought to be the apex of his popularity and grace, Trump is still groping for praise, even for a speech that was supposed to be about other people.
But the real reason the column is so good is because of the comparison Saletan makes with the inauguration speeches George W Bush gave after he won against Al Gore. Given that I have some history of defending the character and actions of Bush, it pleases me to be reminded why I thought Bush was a decent man:
Bush continued this emphasis on humility in his inaugural address. He introduced America as a “slaveholding society,” a land of “flawed and fallible people united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals.” He warned of the persistence of “hidden prejudice.” He praised mosques for cultivating humanity. He said America’s role in the world was to “protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer.” He rejected the notion that “our politics can afford to be petty.” He stressed the importance of “private character,” “civic duty,” and “unhonored acts of decency.”
Trump’s week has been nothing like that. On Twitter, he insulted NBC, CNN, “the Democrats,” and the director of the CIA. He branded Hillary Clinton a criminal. He called Rep. John Lewis, who was beaten for his courage in the civil rights movement, a liar who’s “all talk … no action.” (Trump also said Lewis should stick to fixing “crime infested inner-cities.”) Meanwhile, Trump retweeted a picture of himself as “golfer-in-chief” and quoted a supporter who said it’s not Trump's fault that America is divided.Saletan ends with these withering (sorry to repeat the adjective, but there is hardly one better) paragraphs:
On Friday, a morally empty man gave a morally empty speech. There was no talk of humility, no acknowledgment of enduring prejudice, no plea for decency. Instead, Trump railed against foreigners and “a small group in our nation’s capital” that “has reaped the rewards of government.” In place of Bush’s praise for mosques, Trump spoke of Islam only as a source of terrorism. The man who ran on a platform of “take the oil” fumed that American wealth had been “redistributed all across the world.” He accused countries of “stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.”
This is why Trump is unworthy of your respect. It’s not because he didn’t win the popular vote. It’s not because of his party or his policies. It’s not because of Russia. It’s because of who he is. For all his faults, even those that turned out to be disastrous, Bush was a decent man. He believed in something greater than himself. Trump doesn’t.
So what did I learn about Donald Trump’s inaugural balls after two hours’ worth of circling around outside of them? As I suspect will soon become a theme of Trump’s presidency, they overpromised and underdelivered. And they didn’t even really overpromise! Any ball that starts at 7 p.m. and features Tony Orlando cannot be said to have overpromised anything. I cannot confirm that the balls themselves were lame, but the lines were certainly long, and the people standing in them were cold and angry, though that also might just be their resting state.* Trump is today taking a pounding for his rambling, inappropriate comments to the CIA:
Trump then rambled—as if this were a campaign rally instead of a morale-boosting speech in front of the agency’s most sacred spot—about how smart he is (citing as proof the fact that a brilliant uncle taught at MIT) and about how he’s been on the cover of Time magazine more often than anybody. (In fact, the title is held by Richard Nixon, which says something about what gets a president on a lot Time magazine covers.)
He's off to a flying start, to his failure, then...He also said things that must have baffled many of the 300 CIA employees who gathered for the visit, came in on a day off to see their new boss. He repeated the line, which he’d uttered many times during the campaign, that we should have “taken the oil” in Iraq (a notion that is politically daft, economically unnecessary, and militarily all-but-impossible) and that maybe we’ll have the opportunity to do so now. He also said that he suspected most of the people in the room voted for him in the election—a comment that, whether true or not, is appallingly inappropriate to make to intelligence analysts, who pride themselves on their independence and fear political encroachment above all else.
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Diagnosing America
I see that the erudite Peter Whiteford has re-tweeted about the Niskanen Centre, indicating that he agrees that it's a good site for "bleeding heart" libertarianism. I have looked at something there before, some time ago, but can't remember what, and thought it looked OK. I think it was on climate change, now that I think of it. But it does call itself "libertarian", so I'm sure it's objectionable in one way or another.
Anyway, another specific link to it by Whiteford is to a lengthy piece by Will Wilkinson looking at the various explanations for social and political division in America at the moment. I think it's not bad, but I have some reservations. The best paragraphs are these:
Wilkinson also looks briefly at rising inequality in America, and he seems to have a somewhat more nuanced view than the average libertarian (who doesn't give a toss) in that he says that rising inequality per se is not a problem, as long as poverty is being lifted by deliberate policy action at the same time. (I think that's where he differs from other libertarians, who may argue that the rising tide lifts all boats anyway. Wilkinson seems realistic enough to not trust that unfettered capitalism works that way - government policy is needed too.)
That seems to be his position, as he links back to an 2009 piece he wrote which says:
America Is Even Less Socially Mobile Than Most Economists Thought
Maybe Wilkinson has written about social mobility before (and I admit, I haven't read his 2009 article.) But unless he does, I'll be a bit skeptical about his thoughts on inequality.
Finally, one graphic in the Wilkinson article is really good, I think. It shows economic output according to regions. Here it is:
Interesting how the highest economic output is clearly from such Democrat dominated regions. The highlight of Republican low tax, low regulation policies seems to come down pretty much to only Texas. The importance of Republican policy to regional (and national) economic health looks particularly weak, when you look at it that way...
Anyway, another specific link to it by Whiteford is to a lengthy piece by Will Wilkinson looking at the various explanations for social and political division in America at the moment. I think it's not bad, but I have some reservations. The best paragraphs are these:
It has become conventional wisdom in some circles that “the elites” and “the people” are divided by cultural and informational “bubbles” that offer incompatible perspectives on the facts of the world and the nature of a good society, and thus regard each other with mutual distrust and contempt. All this demographic complexity aside, the conventional wisdom that there is a widening cultural gap between “the people” and “the elites,” and that the rise of populist nationalism is due to backlash against “the establishment,” contains more than a grain of truth. But we need to get much clearer about what exactly that truth is.Further down in the article, Wilkinson relies a lot on the Cato Freedom index (which actually ranks Australia very highly internationally - take that, whining Australian libertarian types); but to be honest, I don't know how reliable that index really is. I tend not to trust anything from Cato.
Because “the establishment” (including the Republican political establishment) is relatively cosmopolitan and liberal (in the broad sense), an outpouring of populist anti-establishment sentiment is going to assume a nationalistic, illiberal form more or less by default. The good news is that anti-elite anybody-but-Hillary-ism doesn’t really imply serious public appetite for anything like alt-right authoritarianism. The bad news is that the liberal-democratic capitalist welfare state and the so-called “neoliberal” global order is far and away the best humanity has ever done, and we’ve taken it for granted. We could very well trash it in a fit of pique, and wind up a middle-income kleptocracy boiling with civil strife and/or destabilize the global order in a way that ends in utter horror.
It is very important to keep this from happening!
Wilkinson also looks briefly at rising inequality in America, and he seems to have a somewhat more nuanced view than the average libertarian (who doesn't give a toss) in that he says that rising inequality per se is not a problem, as long as poverty is being lifted by deliberate policy action at the same time. (I think that's where he differs from other libertarians, who may argue that the rising tide lifts all boats anyway. Wilkinson seems realistic enough to not trust that unfettered capitalism works that way - government policy is needed too.)
That seems to be his position, as he links back to an 2009 piece he wrote which says:
There is little evidence that high levels of income inequality lead down a slippery slope to the destruction of democracy and rule by the rich. The unequal political voice of the poor can be addressed only through policies that actually work to fight poverty and improve education. Income inequality is a dangerous distraction from the real problems: poverty, lack of economic opportunity, and systemic injustice.What I don't see there is reference to social mobility: that was supposed to be the deal with America, wasn't it? - they have a system with pathetic minimum wages, for example, but everyone knew that they were just the first stepping stone that people used to build up to a comfortable life income. But as been noted recently, this isn't happening so much in the US any more. In The Atlantic:
And here's another article from The Atlantic in 2015:
America Is Even Less Socially Mobile Than Most Economists Thought
Maybe Wilkinson has written about social mobility before (and I admit, I haven't read his 2009 article.) But unless he does, I'll be a bit skeptical about his thoughts on inequality.
Finally, one graphic in the Wilkinson article is really good, I think. It shows economic output according to regions. Here it is:
Interesting how the highest economic output is clearly from such Democrat dominated regions. The highlight of Republican low tax, low regulation policies seems to come down pretty much to only Texas. The importance of Republican policy to regional (and national) economic health looks particularly weak, when you look at it that way...
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