Not a lot of owning this going on

As Adam Server writes in The Atlantic,  Trump's caravan hysteria (promoted, even with the Soros conspiracy theory connection, on Fox News) clearly motivated the Pittsburgh Synagogue killer.    

Of course, those on the Right in media commentary have rushed to the fact that he was not a Trump supporter, thinking that he had also sold out to the Jewish globalists.   It's a pretty lame excuse to say "hey, you can't blame us:  he started with a completely made up conspiracy supported by Trump and his virtual State television network - but then he went too far!"

As Slate writes in one article:

He was a staunch anti-Semite. A few hours before he set out to kill as many Jews as he could, he echoed a vile conspiracy theory that blames George Soros for most of America’s evils—the same conspiracy that the president himself validated as recently as Friday. And yet, unlike the man suspected of manufacturing the mail bombs, one of which was sent to Soros, the Pittsburgh suspect does not appear to have been a fan of the president’s.
Rather, he regarded Trump as a “globalist” who had sold out to the Jewish world conspiracy.

In another Slate take:  Why Did Synagogue Suspect Believe Migrant Caravan Is Jewish Conspiracy? Maybe He Watched Fox News. 

I note also that there is not a lot of "owning" of this going on in Right wing commentators:   Bolt, Blair, Hot Air - all saying nothing about how a Fox News promoted meme fitted right in with right wing terrorism.

I mean, two of those are unlikely to attack Uncle Rupert, but I was hoping someone at Hot Air might have the courage to address it.   Probably Allahpundit - as he is hated by many of its readers for being too critical of Trump.

I see that at least Jonah Goldberg has written about how dismaying he finds Right wing belief in conspiracy theories.  But this was written before the Saturday killings.  He should update it.

Update:   Also interesting to note the slackness of Twitter in dealing with false memes, debunked years ago, of a kind that are dangerous in the hands of nutters, so to speak:

Did God send Trump to Earth to flush out fools?

With all the false flag BS about the US mail bomber now evaporating away, we are left with Donald Trump whining like a 7 year old that of course he's entitled to use the appalling rhetoric about the media* being "the enemy of the people" and his political opponents deserving jail, because the media is "so mean" and "unfair" to him and Republicans.

The media, and his political opponents are, presumably, meant to ignore that his White House has leaked like a sieve about his child like attention span, the odd near fist fight between staff, his self-disclosed lack of understanding about economics and trade, and the stream of lies and BS that comprises his constant, narcissism fuelled mini Nuremberg rallies.  Oh, and his refusal to disclose his tax returns.  Or that his tax cuts are fuelling an unsustainable growth in the deficit, exactly how everyone except Laffer-ite fantacists predicted.

I am constantly aghast that he has any supporters at all - and in all honesty, when I read someone who I used to think was at least a well intentioned, if wrong, conservative defending him, or using their  "whatabout-ism" tactics to downplay how unprecedented, nasty and so patently narcissistic his behaviour is, it makes me feel not just that the culture wars can make people believe ridiculous things, but that they must have been secret idiots all this time. 

It's like he was sent here to flush out the secretly stupid.

Maybe I should call this my Trump Theodicy.



* except Fox News

Top TV

I have to say, Episode 6 of Fargo Season 2 was just fantastic.  The acting, direction, writing:  just all brilliant.  Maybe not entirely credible - I mean, how many black underworld killers can recite Jabberwocky?   But no matter - maybe it was just my mood, but I find it hard recalling another hour of TV that was so pleasingly well executed.

Have to get in some more Leyonhjelm ridicule before he departs the scene

I should have known that David Leyonhjelm would have voted for the stupid, Pauline Hanson "it's OK to be white" motion dog whistle last week.    Well, he said (stupidly), he felt if he didn't vote for it, it might be interpreted as meaning he doesn't think it's OK to be white.   He says that even while acknowledging that he knows that it's a favourite saying amongst white supremacist groups.

I suppose it's nice that he parses all motions just at their face value -  he won't miss the meaning when I say he's a woeful, grating, arrogant, moral moron who demonstrates all the reasons libertarianism is rightly regarded by 99% of the public as a stupidly over-simplistic, self indulgent wank of a political philosophy that appeals primarily to the selfish who fall somewhere on the Aspie spectrum. 

He will be missed by no one, save for the (in a political sense) handful of people in his party.*

There, I feel better after that...

Anyway, this post was inspired by an amusing bit of ridicule I can see by Ben Pobjie at the start of piece I can see at Crikey, (which I wish would sack Helen Razor so I can subscribe to it in good conscience that I'm not helping pay for her absurdly self indulgent word-spews):

Every now and then, in the course of history, it falls to one brave individual to draw a line in the sand. It should come as no surprise that in our age, that individual is David Leyonhjelm: he is after all the man who reintroduced guns as a valid sexual preference in this country. And it is Leyonhjelm who has today stared down the forces of Stalinist mind control and said “No More”, by stating clearly the simple truth that “if it is OK to be white, we should be able to say so”.

As the Senator says, by allowing ourselves to be cowed into not saying that it’s OK to be white, we are letting the white supremacists win. For just as if we make guns illegal, only criminals will have guns, if we make saying “it’s OK to be white” illegal, only criminals will say it’s OK to be white. Is that a future we want, or even understand?

*  Which reminds me - how well did it fare in the Wentworth by-election?   I'm glad you (by which I mean, "I") asked:  Came in behind the Animal Justice Party, Sustainable Australia, the Science Party, and even (in harbourside Sydney, about as psychologically far from outback Northern Queensland as you can get) - Katter's Australia Party (!).

Um, if anyone thinks there's a future for the LDP from people actually intentionally voting for it: well, you don't need legalised drugs - you're already living in a fantasy land.   

Damaged goods

Yeah, I heard Barnaby get very upset with Fran Kelly for even mentioning there had been a sexual harassment allegation against him (the one to which the internal investigation had found a solid "We dunno.")

He is very damaged political goods, I reckon.   Should give it away and become a house-husband, or something.  It would lower his Child Support Assessment, that's for sure.

A potentially dangerous pill

I didn't know that some people taking a green tea supplement in capsule form have had severe liver damage from it:

While millions of people take green tea supplements safely, at least 80 cases of liver injury linked to green tea supplements have been reported around the world, ranging from lassitude and jaundice to cases requiring liver transplants. Those harmed after taking green tea pills have included teenagers, like 17-year-old Madeline Papineau from Ontario, Canada who developed liver and kidney injury, and an 81-year-old woman diagnosed with toxic acute hepatitis.

The article says the dangers are highest if they are taken as a dieting aid. 

When the WSJ has to keep correcting Trump...

...you would think that at some point, Murdoch would tell his editors to start softening their support for him.  Latest example:

“We don’t have tariffs anywhere,” President Trump said in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal. In fact, his administration this year has placed levies on more than $300 billion in imports.

Mr. Trump said he views tariffs as a trade negotiating tactic. “We don’t even have tariffs,” he said in the interview. “I’m using tariffs to negotiate. I mean, other than some tariffs on steel—which is actually small, what do we have? ... Where do we have tariffs? We don’t have tariffs anywhere.”

He was right when he asserted in the interview that not all tariffs threatened in trade negotiations have been imposed, such as tariffs on car imports.

And yet, so far this year, the U.S. has acted on threats to impose tariffs -- ranging from 10% to 50% -- on several classes of products. Here’s a list of the tariffs that have been put into place.

I strongly suspect that there are few businessmen who genuinely think Trump knows what he is doing, or understands anything properly.   It's just that they find him a useful idiot to get some of what they want by working on the people around him.

Thank you, internet repair men/persons

(I'm sorry, but they have all been men, in my experience.)

I'm here to praise the internet, and give myself a pat on the back, for having solved a dishwasher problem last night.  (I had no idea that solid material as small as a few lemon seeds, in the right spot, could result in a dishwasher leaving a substantial pool of grotty water inside.)

I think this is the third time in a couple of years where I've found the answer to an appliance problem on the internet (last night, courtesy of Youtube) and fixed it in light of the helpful information other people put up there.

One other thing - I was cynical about the use of bicarb soda and vinegar as a cleaning agent, but it did help my dishwasher problem last night in a very indirect way.   I didn't have the right tool to get a screw out (it needed a hexagonal head, like an allen key, OK?) to remove a plastic cover over a part of the machine I wanted to get to.   But I put in bicarb and a cup of vinegar in a general hope it would help de-grease things.   The fizzing up of the mix was what actually floated upwards, out from beneath the cover I couldn't remove, the lemon seeds that I suspect were at the heart of the problem.

Fascinating, I'm sure you'll agree.

Everyone needs a hobby, I suppose..

Human urine bricks invented by South African students

Actually, it's (literally) a cool technology idea for developing countries:

The engineering students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) have been harvesting urine from men's toilets.

After first making a solid fertiliser, the leftover liquid is then used in a biological process "to grow" what the university calls "bio-bricks".

The process is called microbial carbonate precipitation.

The bacteria produces an enzyme that breaks down urea in the urine, forming calcium carbonate, which then binds the sand into rock hard, grey bricks.

The advantage:

Normal bricks need to be baked in high-temperature kilns that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide.

And the final round goes to: China!

Gee, in what has sadly become an unusual event, an interesting, detailed post has turned up at Club Troppo again.

Paul Frijters argues that China has got a lot of long term strength behind it, which means it will beat the US in the long run in any "one on one" power fight.  His concluding paragraphs:

So if you look carefully, America has no chance of really ‘winning’ a cold war against China. If the US teams up with Europe, which is still the likely longer-run scenario, it can hold its own against China. If it furthermore teams up with large parts of Latin America and India, it will for another 20 years or so be the largest player in the block facing China.

So, the US is no longer the biggest single economic or political player on the planet. That mantle already belongs to the Chinese whose only competitor this century will be India. The Americans just have to get over it, and the current phase of denial was probably inevitable in their grieving process. We should help the Americans get over it. Part of our task as allies.

In many ways, the relative weakness of the Americans is probably a good thing. It bodes for a relatively ‘warm’ cold war that makes it easier for the Europeans to push the US from its dominant Internet and financial positions, paving the way for a more multi-polar world where large blocks keep each other in check. If the Europeans can limit the damage that the Americans will inflict in their grieving process, there are good reasons to be optimistic about peace in the 21^st century!

And Republicans carried on about Hillary's emails being a security risk...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chinese spies often eavesdrop on President Donald Trump when he uses his unsecure cellphone to gossip with old friends, and Beijing uses what it learns to try to sway U.S. policy, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing current and former U.S. officials.

Trump’s aides have repeatedly warned him that his cellphone calls are not secure and that Russian spies routinely eavesdrop on the conversations, but they say the president still refuses to give up his cellular phones, the Times reported.

The officials said U.S. spy agencies had learned from people in foreign governments and by intercepting communications from foreign officials that China and Russia were listening to the president’s calls.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the Times report.

China has a sophisticated approach toward the intercepted calls and is seeking to use them to determine what Trump thinks, whom he listens to and how best to sway him, the Times reported, cited the officials.

Of course, I can imagine his conversations with "old friends" probably contains a ridiculously high noise to useful information ratio.   I can imagine some intelligence analyst in Beijing grimacing about having to listen again to the time he got some model or other into his bed.

Update:  Allahpundit at Hot Air is pretty much spot on, I expect:

 The view on both left and right for the most part will be a fatalistic “this is just how things are now” even though there absolutely would have been impeachment chatter among the House GOP if the Times had dropped a story like this on Obama. (If you thought Emailgate was a strong attack line against Hillary, imagine if she’d been caught using a phone which she knew had been tapped by foreign spooks.) In fact, if I know MAGA Nation, I bet we’ll see a few hot takes online tomorrow that this is all eight-dimensional chess and that Trump wants the Russians and Chinese listening in because it’s easier for him to feed them disinformation that way.

 He also finds amusement (and/or dismay) with this:

Administration officials said Mr. Trump’s longtime paranoia about surveillance — well before coming to the White House he believed his phone conversations were often being recorded — gave them some comfort that he was not disclosing classified information on the calls. They said they had further confidence he was not spilling secrets because he rarely digs into the details of the intelligence he is shown and is not well versed in the operational specifics of military or covert activities.

He just doesn’t pay close enough attention to the details of his job to pose a real security risk. Whew?

Just the title is likely to cause Steve Kates to have a nervous breakdown

And Jason Soon will probably enjoy it too:

She should be pleased

That looks like a very flattering, and somewhat unconventional, official portrait of Julia Gillard:

It does look like a selfie blown up large, though; which I think will make it look out of place with the others.  Still, she should be happy with it.

And by the way - she continues to be one of the most dignified and likeable public figures around.   History will remember her as a basically good Prime Minster who had the job under very difficult circumstances.

Localised drug problems

I find it interesting how localised certain illicit drug problems can be.   I've posted about this before.  I think it's odd how, say, meth can be the problem drug in outback Australia, but hardly used at all in rural Britain.  Not entirely sure how that happens - some combination of cost and marketing decisions by the suppliers I suppose.  But there seems to be a bit of social contagion about it too. 

Anyway, the illicit problem drug of choice, so to speak, in New Zealand is apparently synthetic cannabis, and it does sound quite dangerous:

Daniel says synthetics have become the drug of choice because they are cheap and easy to buy. He believes the death rate is far higher than official figures.

Despite the risks to users, New Zealand is struggling to contain a synthetic cannabis epidemic, with children as young as 11 using the drug and entire neighbourhoods collapsing under the strain of addiction.

The government has been urged to confront the crisis after 45 people died from using the drug in the past year, making it the nation’s most deadly narcotic. In September dozens were hospitalised after a bad batch circulated in Christchurch, claiming two lives.

The grip of the drug re-emerged after a Radio NZ investigation found the entire suburb of Maraenui in Napier had been “swallowed” up by synthetics, with not a single person unaffected. 

I am told by a New Zealand born friend that cannabis itself was readily available when he was a young man there, which surprised me a bit, as I would have guessed that the climate there wasn't really ideal for its outdoor cultivation.

I wonder if there is any push there for legalisation of the natural product as being a better alternative than the black market of the synthetic.

But honestly, I still find it hard to believe that there is much benefit to adding more drugs into the mix of existing legal ones, particularly in poorer areas where drug use seems tied up with boredom and lack of economic opportunity.

A completely normal White House

It's kinda incredible that a story like this is not really attracting all that much attention.  But that's what happens when you put in a narcissistic lying idiot in the Oval Office:

The New York Times, citing half a dozen sources, reported that an altercation in February between White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Corey Lewandowski turned physical, requiring the Secret Service to intervene in the episode outside the Oval Office.

According to Maggie Haberman and Katie Rogers, the near-brawl happened after a joint meeting between the men and President Trump. After a shouting match, Kelly grabbed Lewandowski by his collar and tried to push him against a wall. Lewandowski did not get physical, and the two men agreed to move on after Secret Service agents appeared on the scene.

Another teeth grinding piece at The Conversation

At the risk of upsetting one of my rare regular readers - this article at The Conversation "Why 
rapid on-set gender dysphoria is bad science"  shows what a ridiculously partisan and untrustworthy field this is.

As I said in my earlier post, it is patently clear that those with intense "pro transgender" take on the matter feel they must immediately attack and try to shut down anyone who dares suggest that there might be more to look at than just what a transgender child/person says about themselves. 

It is a ridiculous attack on the paper surveying parents which made it plain it was aware of its limitations, and acted more as a call for further research.

But no no no, we can't have that, can we?

If you enjoy grinding your teeth over cultural appropriation handwringing...

...you should try reading this article at The Conversation.

But make sure you read comments too.  There really is quite a pushback against this confected  grievance industry.

Or..they could try wearing a shirt?

An article at Medicalxpress notes that some Indian researchers have come up with a topical gel which "can be used by farmers to prevent nerve damage due to chemical crop spraying."

The article is accompanied by a video starting with this image:

Maybe I am too easily amused, but apart from the silly Bollywood macho vibe, my other thought is  "Hey, put a shirt on for your own protection, and stop waving about that poisonous chemical!"

Perhaps teenagers should read this...

Fewer Sex Partners Means a Happier Marriage
People who have had sex with fewer people seem to be more satisfied after they tie the knot. Is there hope for promiscuous romantics?

Actually, the article notes lots of cautions about how this research survey was done, but still, this graph is interesting:

Here's one paragraph from the article:

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, when it comes to sex, less experience is better, at least for the marriage,” said W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist and senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies (and an Atlantic contributor). In an earlier analysis, Wolfinger found that women with zero or one previous sex partners before marriage were also least likely to divorce, while those with 10 or more were most likely. These divorce-proof brides are an exclusive crew: By the 2010s, he writes, just 5 percent of new brides were virgins. And just 6 percent of their marriages dissolved within five years, compared with 20 percent for most people.

How to stop this level of paranoia?

I know that old pessimists have always been with us:  I remember a neighbour when I was a kid once  chatting to my father about how everything was dire and the world (and country) were getting worse and worse.  Mind you, this might have been in about the late 60's, when there was a considerable amount of bad news on the TV: Vietnam, the sexual revolution and doubts about capitalism's ability to thrive without environmental disaster were all key themes.  Not to mention what was going on in China and Russia and the possibility of nuclear war. 

But as a kid I was inherently optimistic (I suppose techno optimist, given my interest in science in the space program), and so it seemed to me that the neighbour was a sad case.  And, to his credit, my father thought so too.   "He's always thought everything was bad and getting worse. Some people are just like that." was his observation once the neighbour had gone back into his house.  (Well, I think that's a pretty close recollection.)  

Today, the problem of pessimism is exacerbated by online communities where the paranoid and conspiracy minded find it easier than ever to form a mutual support network.   You might think that this is harmless in some ways - keeping a small community of sad sacks in their own little world - but  the problem is, it surely works to deepen their paranoia and pessimism, and probably to bring others into the fold as well. 

Take this recent, fairly typical comment from (what I assume is) some older bloke in Queensland:

This comment comes in a Steve Kates thread about how "socialism kills".   The American "hard Right" started this "any policy involving any government intervention in anything is socialism" nonsense, and Steve Kates, a political idiot, sucks it all up and passes it on the blog of the (marginally) more sensible Sinclair Davidson.  

Then, in a post in which Keryn Phelps' Labor-like environment/refugee policy positions are listed he notes "These people are your enemy."   What uncivil and paranoid talk for an Australian.  

Basically, in their mind, centrism has become "socialism" - and all part of an evil plot involving culture, schools and political plotting many decades in the making. 

It's hard to say how influential or widespread such thinking really is - I mean, I can't even tell how much it is hurting the Liberals internally, given that so many at Catallaxy say they are abandoning the Party for the likes of Australian Conservatives, and will not vote for the Coalition in the next election.  (Or so they say - of course I don't believe that all that many will follow through, and in any event, their preferences will still go to the Coalition candidate.)  

But to the extent that there are "hard Right" members who really do want the Party to reject climate change action, privatise the ABC, and go all the way with whatever Trump thinks, it surely is hurting it internally.

The paranoia needs to stop and be wound back - but how?

I think a real problem is that no one within the Liberals is prepared to call it out.  They still linger on in the hope a "broad church" approach can work, when it is very clear it cannot.  

Malcolm Turnbull, you are now free to speak your mind - save your party by talking out about this.