How is the effect of conspiracy and poisonous partisan performative narrative ever going to be stopped??

On the matter of Joe Biden and his mental acuity:   of course he's not going to be as sharp as person 20 or 30 years younger, and all politicians will make rhetorical slips.

But frankly, I find it sickening to read the wingnut Right (or anyone, really) continuing to tell each other that he is dangerously senile.   I mean, to anyone who has ever watched a close relative develop dementia, the idea that a person can deliver a hour long address, or this shorter one, and still be suffering dementia is ridiculous, and I find it actually offensive:

 

Yes, I know this is largely a speech read off a teleprompter with a few asides - but it is delivered fluently, at quick pace, with barely an error.   What's more, the argument presented is cogent and rhetoric reasonable. And yet, the wingnut Right will claim he should be shunted out of the Presidency due to mental health; and the effect of edited bits of other appearances has some broader effect on the public - with too large a number buying into this narrative.   (Fortunately, there is some sign of a recovery in his approval ratings, no doubt due to a solid performance on Ukraine.)  The wingnut Right will circle jerk themselves into all kinds of bullshit fantasies - that Biden's frailty tempted Putin into the Ukraine invasion (when they're not blaming Western defence departments for going too gay and woke). 

Certainly, the wingnut Right have built themselves a fantasy world and they aren't leaving it anytime soon. 

I just don't know it is going to be broken - certainly, I reckon there should be a lot more calling out of the media and any politician being offensive idiots who need to stop building performative* false narratives as a way to make money - in the US, they are on the verge of killing democracy.   

*    This is what makes me so sick watching clips of Fox News or Sky News here - there is so clearly performance as part of the show, with no care at all about the effect of it. 

Update:  more on the matter of "conversative" criticisms just being performance art -

A reminder: record rains and climate change

I wrote this in 2011 (unfortunately without a link to the CSIRO report it extracts):

In terms of the climate change debate, I have never paid all that much attention to the particular regional rainfall changes for Australia forecast by CSIRO and the like. I just always assumed that regional forecasts under climate models were going to be more rubbery than the general effect of increased heat waves, which I consider a big enough worry. This explains why I wasn't really aware that there had been predictions of both extended droughts and intense rainfall under AGW. But as Tim Lambert notes, the report Bolt tries to slur as being warmenist propaganda that puts the emphasis all on drought, has this:

Climate change is also likely to affect extreme rainfall in south-east Queensland (Abbs et al. 2007). Projections indicate an increase in two-hour, 24-hour and 72-hour extreme rainfall events for large areas of south-east Queensland, especially in the McPherson and Great Dividing ranges, west of Brisbane and the Gold Coast. For example, Abbs et al. (2007) found that under the A2 emissions scenario, extreme rainfall intensity averaged over the Gold Coast sub-region is projected to increase by 48 per cent for a two-hour event, 16 per cent for a 24-hour event and 14 per cent for a 72-hour event by 2070. Therefore despite a projected decrease in rainfall across most of Queensland, the projected increase in rainfall intensity could result in more flooding events.

Very prescient, as it turns out. (Not to say that you can directly attribute any particular extreme weather event to AGW yet.)

Last week, I pointed out a different paper which indicated the same thing (modelling indicates longer droughts but broken by intense rain) at Catallaxy, a.k.a the "centre right" blog where climate science goes to die. This was followed by the glib "so, everything's consistent with AGW" response that shows that even though a weather event may (after all) be consistent with climate modelling of some years ago, they will insist on claiming that it either isn't, or that it doesn't matter.

And what is Andrew Bolt doing today, 11 years later?:

 

Jowl vote noted

Allahpundit from Hot Air notes:

And he explains well at Hot Air the appalling state of the Republicans:

The flaw in Barr’s logic about supporting a primary challenger to Trump while committing to supporting the eventual nominee in the general election is that it ignores the fact that the GOP has been in a hostage crisis since 2016. There are two major camps in the party, the Trump-loving MAGAs and the Trump-tolerating “Never Democrats.” (Never Trumpers are a third component but a small one at five to 10 percent.) Since 2016, Trump and his MAGAs have threatened constantly to bolt the party if they don’t get their way. Trump palpably doesn’t care about the GOP as an institution; if he did, he would have held his fire against top-tier candidates like Doug Ducey and Brian Kemp this cycle rather than settle election grudges with them. Meanwhile, something like a third of Republican voters say they support Trump more than they do the party.

If Trump left the GOP out of pique and demanded that his fans come with him, there’s no telling how many would do so but it would almost certainly be enough to spoil Republicans’ chances in the general election. Because of that, the party has no choice but to cater to him and them even though they’re a minority of the base. By comparison, 56 percent of Republicans said they support the party more than they support Trump according to a poll released in January. That’s the “Never Democrats” group, the Bill Barr contingent that’s open to (or even enthusiastic about) a different nominee in 2024. But the GOP establishment feels free to take that majority for granted in pandering to Trump and his whims. Why?

Because the “Never Democrats” won’t shoot the hostage. They won’t stay home or bolt the party if they get stuck with Trump as nominee again but the MAGAs will if they get stuck with someone else, and that explains the entirety of Republican politics over the last six years. Barr’s embarrassing capitulation in the interview captures the asymmetry as succinctly as we’ll ever see. “Never Democrats” means … never Democrats. If that requires reelecting the tinpot authoritarian who inflamed a mob on January 6 to try to hold on to power illegally then so be it....

Few Republicans have been as critical of Trump over the past year as Chris Christie has but Christie won’t rule out voting for Trump in 2024. Mitch McConnell delivered a floor speech after Trump’s impeachment trial blaming him for the insurrection, an attack that permanently ruptured their relationship, yet McConnell has pledged to support Trump in 2024 if he’s the nominee as well. To find a Republican willing to say that Trump’s attempt to seize power illegally in 2020 is disqualifying for future office, you have to look to a critic as strident as Liz Cheney. The “Never Democrats” wing, true to their name, simply won’t withhold their votes or even threaten to withhold their votes in a general election.

And so we’re almost certainly going to get more Trump. Congratulations to Barr, Christie, McConnell and all the rest.

 

Nuance on NATO

A good column at the Washington Post looking at the conservative's "but it's our fault for encouraging NATO expansion" line - especially with respect to the version espoused by the dribbling bow tie on Fox News that it's specifically Biden's fault.

Best Batman takes

Matt Y has been repeatedly tweeting sarcastic takes on Batman (due to the new movie) and I agree entirely.  (Although I would go as far as saying I don't care for the character in either campy or dark modes.  It's just an inherently silly concept.)

Poor medical outcomes in remote aboriginal communities

I watched the 4 Corners show last night on aboriginal deaths from rheumatic heart disease in the remote community of Doomadgee.   

This is a difficult issue, as the individual treatment the three women received appeared inadequate.  (Although, it should be noted, there was really not enough detail provided to make confident assessments of what was going on.)

But - there was absolutely no contextualising the difficulties of providing good medical treatment in those communities.   And perversely, Aboriginal leadership (and locals) crying "racism" - as they did repeatedly on this show - as the root cause is not going to help.  It's already hard enough to get medical staff to work at remote aboriginal communities, because they are isolated, often socially dysfunctional, and dangerous.   Throw in "and the locals will riot and call you racist if they think you caused someone's death" and you are only going to exacerbate the staffing problems.

I mean, there was frequent reference to the ill women being assessed at night through a metal grill at the hospital.  Was there any attempt to explain why these places have to be run like that at night?  No, none at all.  

This is a well known problem, and the ABC has at times run stories on nurses who bravely try to work at remote locations.  (In fact, I heard one story again on the radio today.)   And here are some extracts from an article in BMJ Open last year:

 

As I said, this seems some really important background if you're going to talk about cases involving poor outcomes, even in individual cases.   

Update:   I think I should also have added - given that the problems of working in these remote communities are well known, it would suggest that those who nonetheless try to give it a go are far from racist.    

Conservative blogger watch

As far as I can make out, over years of reading, Currency Lad is about 50 and never been married.  I wonder if he ever wonders why:

  

Less than optimal

This is a pretty surprising image to see out of Sydney, where (apparently) you can lose your car to a flood while on top of a high bridge above other water:

 

Sounds like an interesting, if depressing, read

At Slate, a review of a book about the incredible scandal that is Alex Jones and the Sandy Hook "truther" movement.   Just an appalling situation that it has taken so many years for the American system to deal with. 

Some random notes

*   Forgot to say during last week's flood event - doesn't anyone question the number of private pontoons that are allowed on the Brisbane river?  I mean, the last big flood taught us that they need to be super secure or else they cause havoc downstream, but this time there seemed to be dozens nonetheless careening down the river.

*  I couldn't believe some of the stories from Hertz in America, where they report a car stolen if a credit card is knocked back when someone rings up wanting an extension.   Then years later, hapless renters can be arrested even when they know the card payment later went through and the car was returned.   Just hopeless administration, probably worsened by having so many different states with different laws complicating matters further. 

* You want to know about an academic who seems to be a one person grievance industry?   (I think Greg Jericho, who I think is sensible on most things except trans matters, re-tweeted - them? - complaining about the ABC doing something apparently wrong when referring to drag and trans during the Gay Mardi Gras telecast).  Here are some selection from their (I think that's right?) twitter account:

And yet, I still don't think the West is militarily weak and swooning for Putin and Christofascism is the way forward.

*  Speaking as I was of the Brisbane River - it makes no sense whatsoever that my city, with its shallow, flood prone river, and big but shallow bay with one deep channel through it, should be being considered at all for a new defence base for nuclear submarines, as I heard on the radio this morning.

*  Trump, being an idiot, all over again.

*  Helen Dale, writing about the Ukraine war on 28 February, makes some bad calls:

We now know that not only does Nato lack the capacity to intervene militarily on Ukraine’s behalf, but it also can’t even impose effective economic sanctions. Germany is so dependent on Russian gas that, while Western powers work to suspend Russia’s participation in the SWIFT international banking system, Germany has won itself a special carve-out, otherwise it won’t be able to pay Gazprom and German grannies will turn into popsicles next time there’s a cold snap. ‘We are currently seeing the downsides of a sovereign nation constructing a barrel-shaped pipeline and then obligingly bending over it,’ Bond observes drily.

She should stick to esoteric fiction.

 

What, indeed...

Update:  lots of people saying this was a big exaggeration for propaganda purposes.  All the same, it's a worry to hear of any military engagement anywhere near nuclear power plant.

I'm feeling more convinced that internment camps for key members of the Murdoch family and all of Fox News is warranted

 

Superyachts considered

Am I alone in this?   When I see pictures of Russian owned "superyachts" that look like this:

 or this:

my thoughts run to "why does anyone want to own something that looks a mini cruise ship anyway?"

I mean, they must cost a mint to operate (although maybe that can be charged to a company?), but seriously, who has that many family and friends that they can entertain on it and make it seem inhabited?    I imagine most of the time they are far from fully occupied, and feel kind of empty and wasted.

And if you let people you don't know well take a holiday on them, as some sort of reward for hard work, or for sleezy deal making, don't you get problems with bad behaviour?

 

That was hard

I lucked out and got Wordle today, but gee, it was a hard one.    

More of the same

There are storms and heavy rain passing through Brisbane this morning, but it seems more like the "normal" fast moving storms...so far.  Some big wind damage at Beerwah, north of Brisbane, they were saying on TV this morning, but without any images yet.

The news from Ukraine is sort of moving slowly now, it seems, making the doom scrolling feel a bit tedious.   (Makes it sound like I'm demanding more disaster so I can be more engaged with twitter - sorry.)   

Anyway, on the up side, even if it is sort of taking some pleasure in negatives:   seems to me a lot of people are over Stan Grant's weird positioning into some sort of soft-ish left wing contrarian, willing to entertain the "it's the West's fault that they've gone all squishy liberal and can no longer understand salt of the Earth conservatives like Russians".   Bernard Keane's been a strong critic of Grant and his fatuous writing:

And his free to view article on Crikey is pretty good.

Gray Connolly has copped a lot of flak for his SMH article too, which I didn't bother reading as I've already decided he way, way over-rates himself as a pretend historian.   He's just too full of conservative Catholic biases to be taken seriously.

Oh, and I just looked at Twitter and see this idiot making a deeper idiot of himself:

Update:   Bernard Keane mocks John Pilger as a Putin apologist, too.  (And from the photo in the article, Pilger could now pass for the decrepit as John Laws now.  Not a good look.)

Anastasia comes out looking OK

Just noticed this tweet, which I would say is very effective (and super efficient) in explaining to the public that rail services in Brisbane (and elsewhere) are out for good reason.

 

I also think she presents very credibly during a natural disaster like this. 

Day 3 of no power

At least (one of the) fridges got cleaned out.  I'm pretty sure that if this hadn't happened, in 30 years time, my kids when dealing with the last of their parent's deceased estate would have have been throwing out egg whites in a plastic freezer bag from 2012.  

Update:  power's back.  Yay.  (And ancient frozen egg whites collected in the rubbish today.)

Rainfall records break, and floods follow

Graham Readfearn in The Guardian notes:

The Bureau of Meteorology has been checking the rainfall data from the floods in south-east Queensland, revealing a string of broken records and a stunning amount of rain.

In the six days from 23 to 28 February, at least 33 places recorded more than one metre of rain, including an astonishing 1.77 metres falling at Mount Glorious, just east of Wivenhoe Dam that helps reduce flooding in the city.

Parts of south-east Queensland and north-east New South Wales had at least 2.5 times their average rainfall for the month, with some areas getting five times the average.

In Brisbane, 792.8mm fell into the city rain gauge over the six days to 9am on 28 February, which is above the previous six-day record of 655.8mm set in January 1974.

For the first time ever, the city had three consecutive days when more than 200mm fell. Before last month, there had only been eight previous days when the city had seen more than 200mm in one day.

The BoM national manager of climate services, Dr Karl Braganza, said this meant the city had received almost 80% of its annual average rainfall in only six days.

In northern New South Wales, several places in the northern rivers region had daily totals above 500mm up to 9am on 28 February.

Braganza said preliminary analysis of rainfall in Lismore, which is currently inundated, suggested more rain had fallen in the town than the previous record in March 2017 when the remnants of Tropical Cyclone Debbie passed through.

As I've been noting for years - climate change and its effect on rain and floods was the massively disruptive and costly effect that was not discussed enough in early talk about climate change, and just imagine how much worse it may get with another .5 to 1 degree temperature rise.

Oh look, two stooges

 

No power (continued)

It seems the estimate for the repair time for power to houses in my neighbourhood has stretched out to Friday!   I know this happened to other houses in my area in the 2011 floods (5 to 7 days with no power), but my particular neighbour only lost it for one day.  Hence we were not particularly worried when it first went off yesterday morning.

Now, a friend has lent us a generator.  Noisy, smelly things they are.   But I think the idea is to run them for a couple of hours to get the fridge cold, then turn it off for an hour and don't open the fridge.   We have eskys and plenty of ice too.  And a gas stove (yah).  

Speaking of gas stoves, I know they are getting so much bad PR for their health effects now, but I'll put on my populist "it didn't affect me, so it can't be so bad" hat now and mention that I grew up in a house with town gas and therefore a gas stove top and oven, in a rather small three bedroom house in which I sometimes shared with older brothers who would smoke in bed.  (!)  I have now lived in a house for nearly 20 years with a gas stove top from bottle gas. 

No one in my family (6 siblings, and parents) ever suffered asthma or any lung disease*.  Neither of my kids (now adults) suffered asthma.  Same with allergies to anything (which I mention because of asthma's connection to allergy.) 

Is it because I live in a warm climate, where kitchen windows are nearly always open during cooking?   But my life experience is not consistent with "gas is really bad for health".

Anyway, back to the floods.   This report concentrated mostly on suburbs on my side of town, so I'll put it here.    

 

The estimate of the number of houses affected seems to be about 15,000 to 20,000. 

But the Lismore flood is more remarkable - highest known historical flood exceeded by 2m! I mean, that's really incredible.

 

*  Whoops - I forgot that I had included both parents in that explanation, but my father did die of lung cancer.  However, he was a life long smoker who gave up only a few years before the cancer was diagnosed.   All of my brothers eventually gave up smoking - I think by their 40's at the latest.