In another
sign that a head-to-head featuring Sanders and Biden would mirror the
2016 primary in fundamental ways, preliminary exit polls showed a stark
generational divide in support for the two septuagenarian men.
In
the seven states where polls have closed so far, Sanders has led by a
median 37 points among 17-to-29-year-olds and 20 points among
30-to-44-year-olds. But Biden has led by 24 among 45-to-64-year-olds and
by 33 among seniors.
Mind you, I think it is really guesswork how Sanders would perform in a Presidential campaign. On the other hand, I don't have any doubt that Biden will appear somewhat doddering and "past it" on more than one occasion.
I don't understand why Warren is not appealing to Democrats as a more youthful version of Sanders, and with more detail in her policy ideas too. I can imagine her being more aggressive with Trump in debates than Hillary, which could play well if done right. Will Wilkinson has expressed a fair bit of qualified support for her.
But, as we all know, American politics is a bit weird.
Update: just saw over a late lunch that Warren ran third in her home state of Massachusetts (!)
She's out.
PS: I was watching on Youtube the coverage by the Washington Post - it's very professional.
Obviously, I was never likely to become a fan of Scott Morrison as Prime Minister, but as I have mentioned before, I have been willing to ignore him in the role for the most part.
But after seeing the 7.30 interview with him last night, I think I can safely predict that the historical verdict on him is already done and dusted - a waffly, smirking lightweight of a politician who got the top job with no inspiring policy ideas on anything, who's obviously against enforcing any reasonable standard of accountability and openness in his government, and with a puzzling propensity to lie and stonewall even on relatively unimportant matters.
I even have a suspicion he might not make it to the next election. We'll see....
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Monday that "millions"
of migrants would soon head for Europe, drawing accusations from EU
leaders that he is trying to pressure them into backing his incursions
into Syria.
Turkey gave the green light to refugees and migrants on Friday to leave for the European Union and thousands have since massed at the Greek border, triggering fears of an influx like that which poisoned European politics in 2015.
German
Chancellor Angela Merkel described Turkey's move as "unacceptable" and
EU migration commissioner Margaritis Schinas said nobody could
"blackmail or intimidate the EU".
But Turkey, which hosts roughly four million refugees, is trying to hold
off another mass influx from Syria – where government forces backed by
Russian air power are advancing into the last rebel stronghold of Idlib.
Man, that part of the globe is such a never ending mess.
* In case you haven't noticed, season 3 of Babylon Berlin is up on Netflix (yay). The first episode (the only one I have seen) was pretty good, even if the main crime looked a little overly theatrical in execution. Also - the opening sequence would seem to indicate that the stock exchange in Berlin really did not take the stock market crash of 1929 at all well. Was it a dream? What was the end sequence about; that was a little confusing too. Anyway, I'm happy to be watching again.
* Another favourite, Occupied, continues to impress into its 3rd season too. It reinforces my distrust of everything Russian - and I am curious as to whether Bente, or her daughter, is going to somehow end up in some Russian mafia prostitution ring. Thinking about it, though, I guess every character is flawed, or does something ethically dubious, in one way or another. But that's life. Bente does seem particularly corruptible, though, boo.
* I saw the Australian made, low budget time travel movie Predestination on the weekend. It's (loosely, I think) based on a Robert Heinlein short story, and it's quite a handsome looking film despite an obviously small budget. (Made by German born twin brothers who grew up in Brisbane! They have gone on to make bigger budget films, even if they are far from famous.) I was getting tired and started having trouble staying awake near the end, but I understood the silly time travel paradox that it showed. I thought it wasn't bad, but perhaps needed a more compelling "hook" in the first act - waiting for the story to unfold without understanding where it was going lost my son's interest. Anyway, a nice effort.
Yeah, I thought the "Wuhan foot bump" greeting video looked pretty cool, but it is only practical for people with no balance issues who are quick on their feet. Old people at risk of a hip fracture just shouldn't try it.
I'm sure lots of people must have been saying it on social media, but the obvious replacement for the handshake greeting should be the Japanese bow. (I see that someone suggested the Vulcan hand greeting, but not everyone can easily get their hand to do that quickly - including, if I recall correctly, Leonard Nimoy!)
This turned up on Youtube suggestions for me, and it was surprisingly interesting - how they make Tabasco sauce. It is a huge enterprise, still family run, with production methods pretty much unchanged, and all from the same place in Louisiana since it was first made 150 years ago:
A bit of personal history: my first exposure to it was when I was perhaps 8, and my sister's then husband, from America, put a few drops of it into some tomato sauce which we were eating with some prawns. It couldn't have been much, because I thought it nice, even though (of course) as a child of 1960's Australia, I had no previous exposure to chilli in any form.
So, Pete Buttigieg has dropped out of the race. As I have said, I never saw much of him and didn't work out why a lot of journalists and Democrat sympathisers I follow on Twitter found him so annoying.
I also had missed, until this weekend when I saw it on a Conan O'Brien sketch (which is sort of funny)....
Maybe I haven't been following conservatives sites closely enough, but it's pretty remarkable that there wasn't some sort of meltdown about this.
And, to be perfectly honest, it's not unreasonable to have misgivings about it. Not so much about Buttigieg's supportive response - he could hardly say anything other than what he did - but more about the world view of modern liberal identity politics, wherein it is taken as a given that a 9 year old has a sufficient understanding of sexuality such that it is entirely natural that he or she should already have picked out a sexual identity.
Now, I don't doubt that the following statements are true:
* there are kids whose parents suspect from a young age will be gay when they grow up;
* there are kids who know from a young age that they are "different";
* there are people who work out that, in hindsight, some childhood feelings were consistent with their older sexual feeling;
and yet I still think it's only sensible for adults and parents to teach pre-pubescent kids to be cautious about thinking they fully understand themselves in the matter of sexual and emotional attraction and attachment before their body and life experience is even close to that of an adult yet.
To my mind, people of any political persuasion should be able to live with something like this as a response:
"We love you regardless of who you may want to love and be with; and we will support you if anyone gives you a hard time over your identity in future. But as for deciding on a sexuality identity to tell "the world" right now: to be honest, both your body and emotions should be given a bit more time to develop before you say to everyone that you understand yourself in that aspect. At this stage of your life, worry more about studying hard, treating other people well and just being a good person. That's what important now."
PS: I see that they are saying Buttigieg gave up because he was getting no traction with black voters whatsoever. Given their relative conservatism regarding homosexuality, why on Earth did the people managing the campaign event think it would be helpful to highlight a 9 year old bringing up the topic?
Basically, I don't understand why, in order to maintain their reputation, RMIT doesn't tell Sinclair Davidson that he can't run a blog for appalling, racist conservatives and still work at a university that hosts a lot of foreign students.
Look at these examples: he doesn't expand on it in the post itself, but it is clear from the post title that Catholic conservative-in-denial CL thinks Trump is on a winner with corona virus because he will be able to play it as a case of "filthy foreigners bring in disease":
Good luck: Disease-o-crats campaign on open bug borders
(I won't link - you can google it if you want.)
But even worse is this comment in a thread (which is fully supported by other regulars) by another crusty Catholic, who even has an Asian wife (probably Filipino - so she's OK, she's Catholic.)
The World Health Organisation is utterly useless. It is run by palookas
like that Rudd sheila for Pete’s sake! … who cannot even spell “honest”,
let alone know what it means. The executive board is 34 nations – they
include Sudan, Djibouti, Tanzania, Zambia, Burkina Faso (say what?),
probably Haiti and a whole lot of other failed tribes of no consequence –
directing how the civilised world should keep is people healthy.
Fabulous – they are barely literate, you can forget them....
The demanding unpleasant little Irish p00ve from Qantas will have
been throwing his weight around Canberra on Week One protecting his
airline’s cash flow and his massive pay packet, followed by a conga line
of tourist associations, the retail traders representative, heads of
commerce flogging insurance and bank loans, the English language schools
and universities who rely on their Asian students for their very
survival, and so on. Not one of these people has any interest in public
health protection – its someone else’s problem. They will lie handsomely
to safeguard their corner.
Further, we have a government and a bureaucracy that is still
shipping in illegal Centrelinkers from North Africa, the Middle East and
other primitive places, people who routinely have a bog in the street
and who don’t bother bathing. When they spit everywhere and shove their
dirty mitts into the bowl from which the reffo next to them takes his
next mouthful – and contract a gutful of Corona Virus 123 by hundreds –
these public servants will ship ’em in by the truckload to the same
hospital wards as Australians, because diversity is our strength.
Sinclair even appears in the comments thread, with apparent intention to mock the catastrophising of the fatality of the disease, but not to tell anyone that they are racist pigs.
PS: I acknowledge that there is not likely to be any easy, face saving way for the US to get out of Afghanistan. But it seems pretty clear that this attempt at such looks doomed from the start, and that Republicans supporting it reeks of political hypocrisy. (Obama doing something similar would have been the end of American greatness and a shameful capitulation to the "real" terrorists.)
I presume this photo from Trump's "we're getting out of Afghanistan, I'm terrific for that; and by the way, coronavirus is not a hoax after all" press conference has had some filtering:
but it's still true that he has been looking exceptionally tired at recent appearances, no doubt caused by the trip to India followed by flying to some completely unnecessary and self indulgent "maintain the cult" rallies. In fact, given the huge rally he must have known the dangerous nationalist Modi had organised for him, does Trump ever go anywhere other than to places where he knows his elephantine ego will be massaged?
Anyway, here's a shot from a video of the same presser:
As lots of people have been noticing, his right eye is much more squinty than his left eye over the last few days. And he did sound tired.
I cannot fathom how his supporters (or those who make excuses for him, or just keep silent) can stomach the way he tries to turn every single topic into ridiculous self praise. I also have some sympathy to the critics of media who point out that mainstream media reporting, by editing down his statements, are inadvertently constructing a greater coherence to his media performances than what you get from viewing longer stretches.
On a cheerier note, kinda: the Colbert 8 minute piece he did with Elizabeth Warren earlier this week really shows her as very likeable. She looks great for her age, too:
I really think a Sanders/ Warren ticket would stand a chance...
Another great piece at Vox by David Roberts, arguing that the sickness in American politics, caused by the American brand of conservatism, is a systemic one about which only Elizabeth Warren seems to have clearly thought about.
His summary of the problem is not new, but I like it nonetheless:
As I have recounted at great length in other posts,
over the last several decades, conservatives have waged war on social
and political trust, calling into question the fairness and independence
of almost every major US institution from journalism to academia to
science. They have created parallel institutions of their own, meant to
support their factional interests. And they have relentlessly cast
“libs” as an enemy within — an alien, hostile, and ultimately
illegitimate force.
As a result, a large faction of the country has descended into paranoia and conspiracy theories,
fighting intensely against the basic rules, norms, and post-war
assumptions of American life. And because that faction has successfully
rendered all political fights — even fights over basic facts — as
vicious, zero-sum partisan struggles, another large faction of the
country has simply tuned out, coming to regard politics and public life
generally as corrupt and fruitless. Americans’ trust in their
institutions and in one another is at record lows.
This serves the right’s purposes. If all common identity
is dissolved, all transpartisan facts and norms, then there is no longer
any ability to communicate across factional lines. What remains is raw
power struggle. That is the milieu in which an identitarian like Donald
Trump feels at home; witness his purging of public servants he deems insufficiently loyal.
But it works against the left’s purposes. The left needs
for voters to believe that effective, responsive governance is possible —
that we can, in fact, have nice things. The left needs social and
political trust. Without them, collective action for collective benefit,
the left’s stock in trade, becomes impossible.
This is the left’s challenge in the US: how to break out
of the doom loop and get on a trajectory of better governance and rising
trust.
As to the difficulty of addressing this, politically, you should go read the rest of the article.
Look, even though I can enjoy a good steak, a 250 to 300 g cut is plenty. But the American way with meat can be pretty over the top and look distinctly unappealing. And what is it with the meat on the rib? Looks like it is charcoal:
Talk about your trivial First World problems, but The Guardian has an article speculating on who a good replacement director should be for the next Indiana Jones film, now that Steven Spielberg has dropped out.
I don't know anything about most directors on the list, but I agree with the section on Gore Verbinski: he is extremely talented with protracted action sequences, and I would love him to have a go at an Indiana Jones.
The success of the film, however, will be extremely dependent on its screenplay, and who it sets up to taking over the hat. The idea flown in the last film obviously didn't pan out. (Not that it was as bad a film as everyone makes out.)
I am not at all convinced that it is a good idea to be making another one at all. Harrison Ford looks very old now, and films in which ageing actors are trying to appear too active often look a bit pathetic. (There are many examples in recent years.)
BUT I STILL SAY THIS: the perfect last appearance for Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones would be for him to be one of the astronauts going into the Mothership at the end of Close Encounters.
I usually notice what fruit and vegetables are good each season. A couple of summers ago, I think it was, stone fruit seemed to have an exceptionally nice season. After that, maybe a year or so ago, we seemed to have a flood of cheap but good quality pineapples.
This summer, I have often been impressed with - tomatoes. I don't know who is growing them now, and how they have got them to develop better flavour and colour, but I reckon tomatoes have been really good, and often not very expensive, this summer.
While this guy bemoans (rightly) the politicisation of COVID-19 by Trump, he doesn't go on to note that it's possible that the result of the gullibility of believing Donald and his conspiracy mongering mates might be a reduction in the population of Donald Trump supporters (seeing the virus is most deadly in the older demographic):
As for a more, slightly paranoid, pondering about what might happen:
I got given a couple of Google Home Minis (now called Google Nest Mini) for Christmas, and I have set one up in the bedroom, and one in the bathroom.
I don't do all that much with them: listening to radio streams is one useful thing (so I no longer need to use a portable radio in the bathroom to listen to the ABC while shaving in the morning); asking it to find my mobile phone by making it ring is another useful feature, as is asking for the day's weather. I've played guessing games, or quiz games, and asked it to play named songs from Spotify too. I see that you can also buy screen "hubs" for the system too, as well as lights controlled by it. Also a combined pack with a Googlecast for the TV with a mini speaker too, presumably to help make searching for content easier.
Despite the limited use to which I have put mine, using it has made me think that it must have considerable potential to help older people fight loneliness, and cope with technology in the easiest way possible. Having a voice respond to a request is surely a more psychologically comforting thing than poking at a screen.
I would guess that some psychology department somewhere is already doing a study along these lines: perhaps setting up Google Minis in half of a retirement village and training the residents how to use it, and comparing their mood after 6 months to those residents who don't have access to the service?
I would not be surprised to find it has a positive influence.
Yeah, I have been aware of this for some time (and although the figures are for America, I think it is similar here):
One in five pounds
of beef sold come from Holstein or Jersey cows, which frequently are
decommissioned dairy cows past their prime. Almost all of the meat from
dairy cows is ground (it’s generally not marbled enough or muscled
enough for steaks) and made into inexpensive hamburger for food service.
So, it’s our consumption of milk and cheese that ultimately fuels the
avalanche of burgers at fast-food restaurants.
I think young male calves from dairy production often face the same fate.
When buying cheap mince from Coles or Woolworths, it usually does cross my mind how it is from cows, which I like to think don't suffer much in the milk production phase of their life. (Although they do get calves taken away from them.)
At least steak from adult cattle is from an animal that had a pretty good life.
While I enjoy a good steak, I can imagine a life in which I give up beef. I can't bear the idea of giving up on cheese, though. Which reminds me - why don't we hear more about the question to make "cow-free dairy products"? The company is apparently selling (on a very small scale, by the sounds) an ice cream product, but it attracts very little attention.
China on Monday declared an immediate and “comprehensive” ban on the
trade and consumption of wild animals, a practice believed responsible
for the deadly coronavirus outbreak.
The country’s top legislative committee approved a proposal “prohibiting the illegal wildlife
trade, abolishing the bad habit of overconsumption of wildlife, and
effectively protecting the lives and health of the people,” state
television reported.
Previous temporary bans have been put in
place, including after the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)
virus killed hundreds of people in China and Hong Kong in 2002-03 and was also traced to wild animal consumption.
That
prohibition was short-lived, however, and conservationists have long
accused China of tolerating a cruel trade in wild animals as exotic menu
items or for use in traditional medicines whose efficacy is not
confirmed by science.
Sounds as if the government might be serious about keeping this as a long term ban.
