Omnibus Obamacare repeal down again, but don’t be fooled. The Senate Republicans will keep trying, because if they can’t undo everything Obama ever did, their donors will reckon them as failures and give the money to someone else. Until then, the House will continue to prioritize legislating against women’s health, because they’re already proven what losers they are, notably in regard to over 200 failed votes to repeal the ACA. Trump’s bankrupt golf course in Puerto Rico leads him to revenge himself on the island by pretending it’s so remote as to make even the US Navy helpless, plus of course he would: Puerto Ricans aren’t white enough are they even part of America? Build a wall! Watch for a Ten Commandments monument on the Washington Mall, now that we have one more crazed religious zealot in the Senate. Seriously, how does this man keep going? Fuelled on hate like Trump, but couldn’t even get Comrade Oompa-Loompa’s endorsement. Just because you don’t like what someone says, Jeff, doesn’t mean it isn’t legitimate or anything less than the same free speech you’d be applauding if you agreed with it. And if you really want to stand up for freedom of speech, you might want to try facing up to it, instead of hiding in your own echo chamber. Animal cruelty isn’t art. You want to comment on animal cruelty, o.k., or whatever your statement is intended to be, but being cruel yourself just makes you a monster, not an artist. If no prosecutions arise from the actions of Equifax executives in the lead-up to the revelation they’d been massively hacked, the system isn’t working. Yes, Comrade President, your fight with the NFL is over race alone. Australians will bet on anything. We are a gambling-crazy nation. Meanwhile, there is no valid argument against allowing same-sex couples to marry. Freedom of speech? No, shut up. I mean, no, you can say what you want, but you cannot deny someone the same rights you have because you don’t have the same sexual preference. Family and children? What about older couples, infertile couples, couples who choose not to have children, or to adopt? Would you legislate against them marrying? Then you can’t legislate against same-sex couples marrying. “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”? That’s not an argument; it’s a slogan. Tradition? Tradition used to involve marrying children. We’re not doing that anymore. Tradition changes. But their sex is yucky? All sex is yucky. Grow up. Enough. Whew.\

2020 Foresight It is a serious mistake to underestimate either the likelihood that Trump will run or his chances for re-election, as we learned to our cost in the last election. Making fun of him or his supporters is entertaining, but it will not get a more reasonable person in the White House or a different political distribution in the House or Senate. Opposition to Trump must assume he will complete his term of office and that he will run for re-election. Opposition to the Republicans must assume that Republican governors and legislatures around the country will do whatever they can to suppress voting and shape electoral districts to their advantage. If we want to take back the White House and Congress, we have to start locally and build. We have to take back municipalities, and the states. We have to have not just viable candidates, but compelling candidates.

The American Oligarchy I’ve just finished an article about Putin’s oligarchs, and I’ve got to say the correlation to Trump is patently obvious. Reading this article explained why Trump wanted to be President and his admiration of Putin. Sure, he’s a cheeto-faced fascist, as corrupt as the day is long, but being President gives him everything he needs to enrich himself in ways he’s never been able to use before. Whereas in the past Trump’s various businesses were subject to lawsuits and bankruptcy and profitable on the basis of stiffing his contractors and reneging on debts, now he makes money hand over fist, profiting from everyone who wants to do business with the US. Putin’s oligarchs operate outside of government, it’s true, but profit from it, and if Putin isn’t salting away his dictator’s portion of the proceeds, it would only be with the expectation of the payoff when he has to step aside. Trump is his own oligarch, along with many of his Cabinet of conmen, and the Republicans in Congress are more than happy to have it that way. They and their friends benefit, too, if less directly. Even if the current lawsuit against Trump based on the emoluments clause is successful, he is likely to continue his self-enrichment, but more in line with the Putin oligarchic model. Unless at some point even the Republicans have to acknowledge his corruption, based on some final act so egregious it cannot be ignored – like shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue – he will serve his full term, possibly – even probably – be re-elected, and drag the US into an unethical morass it may not be able to recover from, all to benefit himself and the monstrous children he’s engendered.

Covfefe Stroke.

Trumpian The Guardian had a piece wondering if Australia had already been through its Trumpian political phase, but the answer is no: It’s only just begun. Immigrants, whether they pass the stringent requirements to enter the country as residents at all, or as refugees (especially), cannot be expected to have university-level English. That may not be a requirement for the jobs they take up even for native-born Australians. But now, in order to vote, we expect them to be able to compose an essay suitable for academic credit? This is just the usual Liberal hate and fear of brown people. They would end all immigration from everywhere but white Britain if they could, and probably those whinging Poms, too, except that “real” Australians aren’t having enough babies. The rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation didn’t coincide with Tony Abbott becoming Prime Minister. He hated them. Mostly, he hated them because they took votes from the Liberal-National coalition, reducing their power to impose their race-hate on the country. No, One Nation rose because Abbott’s star fell, replaced by the smiling face of Malcolm Turnbull. But Turnbull kept the far-right on the front bench, like Peter Dutton, whose brainchild the new citizenship test is sold as. Don’t be fooled. Turnbull and the LNP today aren’t centre-right. They’re virulent extremists and always have been. Turnbull’s pleasant façade of reasonableness is the cover they give to controlling the population through hate and fear, causing internal divisions among us, the better to eliminate the middle class and create the new feudalism they believe is their right. They mean to rule, not govern, and to do that there must be Lords and Serfs. They know which group they belong to, and which group the rest of us are in. We’re the only ones fooling ourselves, continuing to vote against our own best interests, as the US did electing Trump and keeping the Republicans in power. Our “Trump moment” isn’t past, it’s prologue.

You Won’t Believe This One Simple Trick to What Happens Next Fairfax is shedding jobs, and moving to rely for content on “contributors”, which sounds like paying freelancers to do the work reporters and editors used to do. This is a shame, as the content of the Sydney Morning Herald is pretty much all click-bait at this point, and badly edited to boot. Online content is fairly rife with poor grammar and typos, but the Herald and its sister publications aren’t any different in print. Having shed editorial staff multiple times over the last couple of years, it’s only getting worse. It’s inevitable that media will move more and more to being fully digital, and that the content will, at least partially in consequence, rely less on the printed word and more on audio-visual presentation. The arrival of radio and television promised this long ago, but the platforms have finally arrived to make it happen. We can watch MSNBC or CNN or Fox on our phones and tablets, laptops and desktops, and many people do, but we can also access breaking news and news-related content via these services, too, which makes operations like Fairfax or the New York Times. etc., in many ways uniquely positioned as distinct providers. The loss of print media won’t be felt by the younger generations, but the degradation of content should be. That’s not a small reason to support the week-long strike, even if it won’t actually change anything that hasn’t been underway for a long time now. I’d cancel my subscription, but the only option is Murdoch’s Australian, and that son of a bitch doesn’t need my money any more than I would ever want to count towards that rag’s circulation. (I won’t even take a free copy of its sibling, the Telegraph, when it’s offered, so it can’t be counted.) It was once a better publication, but the Murdoch model means it’s all alt-right hate all the time for the last ten years and more. The ABC is useful, so long as the LNP don’t amputate its funding to the point of no return, but there’s no print option. So long, SMH; you’ve given up.

Emoluments Trump has been here before (and failed) and may try again, through Joo Kim Tiah, a Malaysia developer, with two hotels in Australia already – neither of which is planned to be branded with the Cheeto-faced fascist’s name in the immediate future. But if Mr Tiah wants to “know the sentiment of the Australian people or their mood”, I’d say there are no small number of them who would gleefully welcome the Pumpkin Fuhrer having a larger orange profile here, and many more who would take the opportunity to protest, boycott, and otherwise ensure it became an opportunity to deride and denigrate the Swamp Thing currently occupying the White House. In regard to whether pressuring foreign leaders to open their countries to Trump businesses constitutes corruption or not, yes, it very well may be, as it amounts to Trump being enriched and open then to influence by those same foreign governments, whether they hire prostitutes to urinate on him or not. And now that I know Trump and his fellow swamp-dweller Rex Tillerson are involved in BHP Billiton, I’m out, and hope others follow. Their pledges “to divest” aren’t worth the noxious fumes expelled from their lungs to make the statement.

End of Days? The Anti-Christ is in the White House, and Westminster Kennel Club is including cats in its annual dog show.

More Elliott Richardson's Congratulations Sally Yates, Acting Attorney General of the United States, for standing against Donald Trump's white supremacy, anti-establishment clause executive order.

Death and Disability Of course Monster-in-Chief-elect Donald Trump wants a review of vaccination, he doesn’t believe in vaccines. But there’s more to it: who will go unvaccinated? Children of the rich who can afford to keep their children away from those of the dirty poor as well as the increased cost of health care if they do fall ill, and the children of the poor and ill-informed sufficiently frightened away from vaccination as a result of the lies people like Trump peddle – and these latter are the ones most likely to end up most adversely affected, disabled or dead. Never forget: Donald Trump and the Republicans think being poor, sick, or elderly is a moral failing, deserving only the wrath of God, never any compassion from fellow humans. Vaccinations, especially anything paid for or subsidised by the government, is not something poor people should have, and Trump and his GOP majority flunkies will do everything they can to legitimise taking it away.

Theatre Notes We’ve been planning this for a year. In 2014, for Wagner’s 150th anniversary year, Opera Australia put on a new production of the full Ring cycle. B’s son, J was in it, having been hired for his expertise in adagio, even getting to be on stage for Siegfried’s death scene (so that the lead wouldn’t get hurt while dying). B didn’t get to see more of the show than a dress rehearsal of one of the four, so when I heard they were putting on a revival this year, and having a bit of cash from being made redundant at my last job, I got us tickets to the whole thing. I figure, B’s a classical music fan, I enjoy mythology and theatrical spectacle, what could go wrong? B came down with appendicitis, that’s what could go wrong, so we can’t go. She’s fine, now, or will be soon, but not soon enough to make the trip and sit through 20 hours of opera, fan or not. Meanwhile, Opera Australia very kindly offered no option for off-loading the tickets (no waiting list, no resale capacity), other than a store credit for upcoming productions – good for one year, but including purchases in both the 2017 and 2018 seasons – with the suggestion that maybe we’d like to see “My Fair Lady”. AU$2800 worth of opera tickets to a spectacular classic like the Ring, and they offer “My Fair Lady”? High school amateurs and community theatre troupes put on “My Fair Lady”. The movie plays on television fifteen times a year, and that’s the best they’ve got for two years? #OperaAustraliaFail.

Time for Change Time magazine has continued it’s “person of the year tradition”, a practice that may need review, given the selection this year - yes, an obvious choice, as was their selection in 1938.

Trumped Up It's going to be a long four years, but I don't think it'll be eight. The danger in 2020 is Pence, a man who believes you can "pray away the gay" and has nothing but contempt for women and minorities. Unlike his boss, Pence can give the appearance of being reasonable, and a lot of people will fall for it. We'll face that hurdle when it comes, however, and I hope we'll have a better candidate then. Meanwhile, farewell Obamacare, it was nice for millions while it lasted, but now you're uninsured again. Time to buy stock in health insurance companies, as their revenues will skyrocket on the increased premiums they'll charge. Farewell any chance of a left-leaning Supreme Court. There's one vacancy already, and Kennedy, Bader Ginsburg, and Breyer are over 80 or getting there. That's going to be a problem for equal rights, voting rights, and campaign funding reform. The House and Senate have, effectively, a rubber stamp in the White House, so we can expect them to try on many bad plans, including tax cuts to increase income and wealth disparity, defunding Planned Parenthood, cutting welfare, gutting Social Security and Medicare, and generally driving the economy into the ground. Would we have done better with Sanders? I doubt it. We might have done better at getting out the vote if the Democrats had put up someone other than Clinton, but her candidacy was pretty much inevitable after 2008. Any who stayed home or went third party because Clinton beat Sanders were foolish, and while you can say that Johnson took votes from Trump, that ignores a lot of one of the things wrong with many liberal voters: they think "libertarian" candidates are more liberal than they actually are. Look at the support Rand Paul gets. A competitive third party wouldn't be a bad thing, but they aren't. They siphon votes and voters we need. I won't be putting my American passport into the post to the State Department. I sure as hell will be supporting the Democrats still in Congress and in the mid-terms in 2018. This fight's just getting started.

You May See the Doctor Now And it's totally worth it. Doctor Strange is easily in the top tier of Marvel movies: funny, when it needs to be, with especially fun special effects, and a stellar cast, all performing comic book material with fun and brio. I especially like how it treats magic as the manipulation of physical laws as they exist in one dimension in another. It's the String Theory of magic. But anything with Benedict Cumberbatch was going to be good, wasn't it?

President Ryan I think I know why Paul Ryan won't say Trump's name, even though he'll confirm he will vote for him: He's hoping it goes to a tie, and he gets to be President by default. Say it goes 269-269 Clinton-Trump. Say then it goes to the House for a vote on the candidates. Given that the Republicans control the House, but most of them don't actually want Trump in the White House, regardless of their actual behavior at the polls, which is driven solely by party loyalty), and given that the Freedom Caucus madmen want to control the House agenda regardless of the leadership and in opposition to anything resembling reasonable, it's possible for there to be no decision. Assume Pence is Vice President-elect, by virtue of the Senate being in Republican control and having that decision, instead of sticking with the Oompa-Loompa, he goes for Ryan. Or, if the Senate can't work it out, given the original tie starting point, Ryan just gets the job. Yea! In your face, Mitt Romney!

You Break It, You Bought It Should the Republican Party stop funding Trump's campaign? Why? They made him, they own him. The Republicans have spent decades on increasing wealth and income disparity, increasing racial tension, and increasing the size and scope of the police militarisation the outcomes of which we see play out nearly daily in our news. They are the party of Trump. Besides, it's not as if they have to spend all that much, as the compliant media give him all the free air he needs to bury himself and his party at the general election, or to gain the White House, for that matter, the latter being an outcome I suspect many in the media would welcome, as it would ensure lots of click-bait and airtime teasers to capture eyeballs.

Their Way Is Only the Highway Traffic in Sydney is bad, and anyone can see it. But Liberal promises to fix it rely on more and bigger highways from the west into the CBD. Problem is, that isn’t the problem. The current project underway, Westconnex, aims to expand and extend the M4 and M5, but in the end dump the increased volume of traffic into the inner west, along already the already highly congested King Street and Parramatta Road. Worse, this project will use “spaghetti junctions” at these interchange points, and the junction at St Peters will take up newly transformed green space, the only parkland of any significant size for kilometres. In addition, many kilometres of tunnels will be required, not a bad thing in themselves, but you have to consider the 35-metre tall exhaust stacks, concentrating particulate pollution and sending it out and across the city. The planning for Westconnex, a pet project of current NSW Premier Mike Baird, but supported by NSW Labor as well as the Federal Liberal and Labor parties, actually shows the project won’t achieve its stated goals. The new roads will reach capacity within eight years and the overall reduction of time spent in traffic will be a grand total of five minutes. The Liberal government in Canberra, under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, stated that public transport was not an option at all anywhere ever. This policy continues under Malcolm Turnbull. Labor’s official position is also in support of Westconnex, even though they have the example of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, who canned the East-West link the previous government had planned, so that better mass transit could be implemented instead, even in the face of the Abbott government withdrawing co-funding. Mass transit won’t be improved by Westconnex. It will be the same limited trains and busses serving the same routes – and at the same volume and level of service. But new rail links, service improvements, better capacity, would improve traffic congestion, and air quality, along with emissions reductions. Bigger transport projects, such as the long-proposed and postponed heavy rail link from Brisbane through Sydney to Melbourne, would do their part, removing freight by trucking. But we get no traction. Urban planning is hard, but there are lots of examples of getting it right, all around the world. A new tram service, currently under construction in Sydney, will link the Eastern Suburbs with the CBD; and the existing lightrail, extended out to Haberfield, has already achieved its utilisation goals, despite naysaying from the state government. London has more bicycle usage, and bike-share projects are popping up all over, opening city centres in ways not seen in decades. We don’t need Robert Moses-style projects, projects designed to destroy neighbourhoods. No Westconnex!

Brisk It's the Brexit, and Britain's out, or as they are supposed to have had it in a headline once: EU Cut Off. Personally, I think it was a foolish thing to do. But I don't live there, so it's not up to me. Still, even with the pound dropping to 1985 levels, I'm sure they'll survive. They're the fifth largest economy globally, after all, which is pretty good for a former world power. Plus, or although, it's going to take two to five years to sort out the exit in full, even if Brussells says o.k., and possibly a decade of QEII announcing new laws on her birthday, as they sort out re-regulating the nation. Or KCIII. Whatever. More importantly, if the anti-immigrant forces and political far-right can be fingered as the drivers of this move, and it has a sufficiently noticable and lasting effect on the US economy, how much can this affect the Presidential race? Will America find itself driven to vote Trump, get a wall along the Atlantic? Will they fear the invading hoards of Scottish refugees? Yeah, actually I don't think it will have much effect, barring a substantial and lasting downward pressure on US markets, which seems unlikely. Meanwhile, Happy Birthday, Your Majesty, QEII, your present is a face-palm moment.

No Shame How Republicans - and some recalcitrant Democrats - can continue their inaction on even minor improvements in gun controls, let alone actively vote them down when they even do have an opportunity to act, defies explanation. Don't give me Second Amendment (or Fourth, for that matter), especially when we're talking about reasonable measures to keep weapons of mass destruction (yes, semi-automatic rifles count, when they can kill dozens in moments) out of the hands of persons who have already been deemed suspicious to law enforcement. And weapons like the AR-15 have no place in any citizens "arsenel": they are not hunting tools, unless you are hunting people. The Democrats sitting on the floor of the House of Representatives are showing up the Republican Congressional leadership for what they are: cowards in the pay of unconscionable weapons manufacturer lobbyists. Every Republican who voted in the Senate against the amendments - their own included - should be voted out of office at the first opportunity, and every member of the House leadership, Paul Ryan in particular, should suffer the same. They have sold out the American public for a few filthy coins towards re-election. Show them what that means.

Mouth Agape So it’s Trump. Wow. Just how batshit crazy are the Republicans? Well, their 17 candidates were a pretty crazy slate to begin with. Another Bush? Sure, why not. Just because the first one was a nonentity voted out after one term and the next was a disaster of economic destruction and illegal war, that doesn’t mean the next one won’t be the good one. “Oops” Perry, “Can’t-Google-Him” Santorum, “Pyramids” Carson, “College-Boy-Ignorance” Paul, “Lucifer” Cruz . . . name one of the candidates for the Republican nomination that wasn’t, at best, a hold-your-nose-and-choose choice. I never thought he’d last past the initial paperwork filing, let alone go the distance. Even though, as of today, it’s still possible the convention could be contested, it’s increasingly unlikely. At this point, all the candidates who haven’t actually withdrawn can still keep garnering delegates and deny Trump the outright majority he needs, but it’s more likely that GOP voters will shrug and pull the lever for The Donald, and he’ll roll into Cleveland unopposed. I never thought enough people could be that stupid, but forgot just how easy it can be for hucksters – political or not – to run their cons. And regardless of how serious Trump takes himself and how gullibly the public takes up his policy proposals, they are cons. Mexico isn’t going to pay for Trump’s wall and he isn’t going to build one. A Republican majority in the House and Senate will present a bill to repeal Obamacare and he will sign it, but the disaster of health care that will precipitate will quickly cause such damage to the economy that the US has only the comfort of knowing Trump’s Presidency will be one-term-only. I certainly thought the Republican Party would pull out all the stops to put an end to his candidacy, but that presumed that they hadn’t created this golum to begin with, which they did, pandering to all the worst impulses of their base. There is some media complicity in Trump’s success. They gave him a lot of free air time. Why not? It was considered endlessly entertaining for such a buffoon to be showing up the mainstream candidates, let alone the behaviour of the buffoons among his supporters (is that all of them? Or only most?). So the only question left is: Does Trump stand a chance against the Democrats in the general election? Everybody said he didn’t stand a chance to go this far, at every stage of the campaign. Everybody says he’ll lose to Clinton or to Sanders in November, and they’ve been saying it, louder and louder, at every stage of the campaign. They say the Electoral College math won’t add up his way, but that’s on the basis that everything’s pretty much the same as it’s been these last few Presidential elections. Trump’s success suggests it may not be so simple anymore. We have to hope the people Trump has marginalised come out strong and the people he frightens – Republicans as well as Democrats and independents or swing voters – do, too, along with the committed Democrats, or we’ll see what happens when America is forced to accept the Trump branding. It won’t be pretty.

Partnerships It's probably smart for Cruz to go early, announcing Fiorina as his VP, because it solidifies his candidacy as a ticket, cuts out anyone else (cough, Kasich, cough) from making that choice, and puts up a more viable woman VP than Trump would have with Palin (which is an unlikely selection - he might put her in the cabinet somewhere, but that's about it). It also iproves his standing against Clinton: see? no woman problem here. Except that Fiorina is as extremely anti-woman as Cruz himself. You'd think intelligent women wouldn't have that problem, but they do. Privilege does weird things to your head, sometimes. Too bad it won't really help him, in the end, with the delegate count.

Pain So Neurofen has been found guilty of deceptive practices, marketing its product with different packaging, different names, different prices, and different claims, all when it was the same stuff all along. Now they'll be liable to anyone who can prove they bought into the marketing, which won't come to much. But what's especially funny? I was in a shop just last week and saw all these products still on the shelves and still priced differently - albeit on sale, presumably to clear them from the store in advance of the judgment. But will there be any liability on retailers for continuing the deception?

Form Bad to Wurst The last thing the Sydney Morning Herald needs is cuts to editorial positions. Some of the worst typos, twisted syntax, and just bad writing you'll ever see in a major metropolitan newspaper, and that's leaving aside the extraordinary focus on misleading click-bait headlines, cutting editorial staff can only make things worse. At this rate I'll have to go to Murdoch's Newscorp (which will surely give me apoplexy). I've said it for years: the Herald's new stories read like bad sports writing, and their sports writing is nearly unintelligible. If anything they need more editorial staff, not fewer. The death of print media continues apace.

Memo to Mitch Obama has nominated his replacement for the execreable Scalia, and, if nothing else, Merrick Garland has a classic Supreme Court name, right? Also, it isn't possible to "politicise" a process that someone else has already decided to play partisan politics with, in total abrogation of their duties. I'm looking at you, Mr. Turtle. (What is it with this generation of Republicans? Are they so embarrassed by W. that they have to go to extreme lengths to prove they aren't? Are they flat-out racists that cannot abide an African American President? It's too late to fulfill the promise to make Obama a one-term President, by about four years, so well-past time to get over it. Whatever, this is the reason we have Trump. Thanks.)

Trump Trump The BBC has an outline of how Trump can still be beaten, mainly by the other remaining candidates suddenly performing better. My favourite? ”Some Democrats appear to be openly cheering for Trump to burn the Republican Party to the ground, figuring he will be easily defeated in the general election. Besides, the Bernie Sanders v Hillary Clinton battle is still going strong, and they might be more concerned with actually picking their party's nominee.” One option they don’t reckon on is that Trump, having secured the required delegates, at the convention announces he’s a Democrat, Bwa-ha-ha, and announces he’s open to being nominated by both parties. Everyone wakes up to the incredible stupidity chosing him as their candidate has been and the crowds quietly leave the convention hall, head to the airport and expect to vote Democratic come November. Why it doesn’t happen? Even Trump isn’t that much of an ego maniac. Although it’s a close call.

1-2-3 Big Bad Trump has his hat handed to him by Cruz, but the bigger story is that tyro Rubio managed to pull into third place, with a credible percentage well beyond what the rest of the remaining contenders could manage. Cruz, an “establishment candidate”, insofar as he has a seat in the Senate, where everybody hates him like the poison he is, is only a couple of points ahead of Trump, leaving the man wearing a fake-tan marmoset on his head as still viable in New Hampshire, managed to get enough Republicans to hold their noses long enough to make him the front runner, for now. He had been leading in Iowa polls a bit ahead of the caucuses, but Trump looked to be the lead contender in the more recent polls, so it’s a bit of an upset. I’m sure it is from Trump’s perspective, as “nobody remembers who came in second”. It’s more upsetting to those of us who think that Cruz the Destroyer would be a bad choice for the US in general, since anything that makes such an ass a leader in the race is just embarrassing. Better than Cruz? Not Rubio, who hasn’t even managed to do his job as a Senator for more than a few days at a time before deciding to become the next one-term Senator to attain the Presidency, the GOP answer to Obama, with maybe a bit more State House experience, but no clue and no capacity for actual leadership. Trump makes Rubio look like a schoolboy, even taking into account the fascist bullying and childish Twitter taunts that characterize The Donald’s campaign (and adult life in general). Trust the media pundits to continue their dismissals and denigrations of Trump, pushing Cruz or Rubio, but don’t “misunderestimate” the American people’s capacity to nominate a demagogue or a buffoon. Reagan and G W Bush both served two terms. Clinton and Sanders remain neck-and-neck, and that’s all to the good for the Democrats, as it keeps Clinton honest, and a bit more left than we might have otherwise been able to hope for. New Hampshire ain’t nothin’, but it will be the March primaries that turn the tide.

Criminal Anyone who goes into Malheur National Wildlife Refugee and provides supplies of any kind to the Y'all Qaeda terrorists is an accessory and should be arrested. Just because the terrorists of Vanilla ISIS are old white men doesn't mean they're patriots. They're criminals. Aiding and abetting is also criminal. Why are is Federal law enforcement treating them any differently than they do other armed and dangerous criminals?

Theatre Weekend For the Sydney Festival and our month-without-a-free-weekend, we started at Carriageworks, to see the production of Woyzeck, based on a Robert Wilson collaboration with Tom Waits. For German Expressionism, Waits made a great fit, but how much of the original 1823 play remains is highly questionable, aside from the plot overall. Nevertheless, it made a very enjoyable piece of theatre, especially the set, which consisted mainly of a stage-sized grid of net, raised and lowered at various angles, and through which the cast played their scenes. We followed this on Sunday with a revival of Fase, a set of four dances to Steve Reich's music, by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, which she performed herself, with Tale Dolven. Reich's music might be described as mathematical, in its cycling through repetitions, with different streams eventually coallesceing, and de Keermaeker's coreography matching it, without describing it. The interplay of the dancers and their shadows added an element of complexity to help in matching the music and movement. We've got Festival performances - one of music by Bach and one of Beethoven - plus a music festival at St John's College, "So Frenchy So Chic", and an Open Air Cinema screening of Youth, by the director of one of my recent favorite films (The Great Beauty). This will leave us with very little time to get any substantial bushwalking done prior to our NZ trip in February, but it will all be worth it.

Happy New Year (Eve, technically, as this is from the 9pm show.)

Pictures as Sculpture While in Hobart for Christmas, we took in an exhibition at MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art, of the artist duo, Gilbert and George. They’ve been around since the late sixties, and I’d never encountered them previously, but am now a fan. The exhibition was extensive, exhaustive, and gave a very good overview of their career, including a couple of films, one of their work and another documenting them. They have been what we would now refer to as “performance artists”, but refer to themselves more as sculptures, even though it appears that most of their work is photographic. However, the installations of their photographs are wall-sized – “mosaics” rather than collage, although using that technique, too – so the chosen appellation seems apt, nevertheless. MONA itself is an eclectic collection – as the name says – of ancient and modern art, presented according to the whim of its founder, David Walsh, without labels, largely in darkness, so that each piece is highlighted and separate from those around it. Like much of modern art, a fair bit of it is museum-only in style, and much of it is fairly confrontational. Gilbert & George certainly fall into the latter category, and largely into the former, but what they’ve done certainly does what great art always seems to: It makes you think. Primarily it makes you think about your own thinking: Are you simply reprocessing received opinions or are you trying to understand something new? Not for everyone, certainly, but that’s also true for most great art.

Why Are Republicans So Extreme These Days That’s the question the Sydney Morning Herald asks, and correspondent Chris Zappone answers. He tells us that: 1. The demographics are changing and the Republicans are losing their core constituency to age and increasing inequality. 2. This has led to a loss of direction and floundering leadership. 3. As a consequence, the Republicans are using increasingly strident and hectoring tactics, relying on fear rather than substance, but this is actually driving what’s left of their constituency away. 4. Donald Trump. How true is this? Well, Trump used to be registered as a Democrat, but since Trump is Trump, political affiliation isn’t any reflection of core principles. He’s an opportunist, entirely self-serving. There’s only one reason he’s running for President, and it has nothing to do with immigration, terrorism, or “making America great”. It’s about him. Unlike other immensely wealthy people, like Bill Gates or even, more lately, Mark Zuckerberg, Trump’s status as wealthy is all he cares about. His wealth serves him and he serves it. Running for President is like a perk. He does it because he can, and because it increases his personal brand penetration. The Republicans shouldn’t be running away from Trump. They have to bear the responsibility for having created Trump the Presidential Candidate, even if not Trump himself. They’ve ginned up the hysteria, left the power vacuum, and abandoned any attempt at running the government. So instead of running away, they should be rolling up their sleeves to get down to business, and meanwhile roundly and loudly condemning every word that comes out of their monstrous creation’s mouth, including, but not limited to “and”, “the”, or “an”. They won’t, of course, because if Trump is right about one thing, it’s that the Republicans are stupid. Yes, he also says that about the Democrats, and a lot of them are, too. The Democrats, even when they had the Congressional majority, spent an inordinate amount of time being proud of themselves rather than working, and then let the Republicans steal the majority. But the Republicans have built a trap for themselves, a tar baby named Donald whom they now can’t escape. The Republicans, if they tried, could find their way back to a reasonable right-of-middle position, one that would allow them to address immigration, accept Obamacare, but since the days of Ronald Reagan have so thoroughly aligned themselves with the extremists on every issue that that’s all they’re left with. The Religious Right has a lot to answer for, but by pursuing that demographic, the Republicans have ended up with the Nativists, as well, and increasingly pursuing law-and-order into something more resembling fascism than any other political philosophy, amply demonstrated by their current campaign leader for 2016. Americans have long held their exceptionalism in an incestuously close embrace, to the point where any perspective on themselves than their own becomes impossible. “O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion: What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, An' ev'n devotion!” The louse is out there, for everyone to see, if they would.

Watch and Wait President Obama has proposed using the Federal “no-fly” list as a register to deny the purchase of weapons. Seems like an easy win. Some say, however, that it would be unconstitutional, violating the Second Amendment, or that it would be simply unworkable due to the errors inherent in the list itself. I don’t buy “unconstitutional”. There’s a provision in the Constitution to protect the “freedom of assembly”, i.e., the right of persons to travel and to associate with one another freely. Banning them from commercial air travel could be interpreted as a violation of this right, but nobody minds that: Because nobody wants to be on the plane one of those banned bombs. Well, nobody wants one of those banned to head to the office and start shooting up the place, either, do they? As for “unworkable”, Carly Fiorina’s “friend” notwithstanding, I don’t buy that either. Her friend got off the list eventually, and now, presumably, flies hither and yon regularly, without guns, of course, but probably still has to take his shoes off and stand in the scanner and have his carry-on bags wanded, etc. Waiting for the next mass shooting or the one after that is what’s unworkable. Watching people buy guns whom you suspect would be trouble on a plane is what’s unworkable. The concern that being unable to buy a gun would tip a suspect off is just stupid. They’re already not allowed on a plane. Don’t you think that might make such a person concerned for their status regarding law enforcement? The NRA bought-and-sold politicians will make up any excuse to do nothing regarding the regulation of firearms. They ignore the part about a “well-ordered” militia in favour of an armed rabble that inevitably includes psychopaths and criminals. “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” come up-front ahead of other rights. Want a gun? Join the military.

All Politics Is Local, II What is wrong with the Republicans in the US? And what is wrong with Barack Obama? Republican governors and the GOP nominees for the 2016 Presidential election are seeking to stop accepting refugees from Syria – refugees from a conflict essentially grown up from the failed and illegal war George W. Bush initiated in Iraq, where Daesh was born – and to go back to another ground war in the Middle East. Even the Republican candidates who have been on the record as relatively moderate have now swung into full-on xenophobic hate. It seems to have started with Trump, the most ludicrous of the candidates, and one of the least qualified on any subject (other than himself, and even that’s questionable), forcing each one after the next to attempt to match or exceed Trump’s vitriol. Meanwhile, Obama, who, as President, has the executive authority to ignore or override the governors now actively rejecting the settlement of refugees – women, children, and infants – has commenced only a campaign of rhetoric, strongly worded as it may be. Time for more Executive Orders, Mr. President. This is Federal, not State’s Rights. I see too many people I once thought reasonable bowing to fear and embracing hate, conflating all Muslims as terrorists (“it only takes one!”) and refusing to listen. Don’t you know anyone from the Middle East, any Muslims? I do. They are just as appalled by Daesh and the actions of terrorists abroad as anyone else. Have you never met a Christian extremist or seen them in the news? I have: Atlanta Olympics bombings, anti-abortion assassins of doctors, Westboro Baptist Church. But the vast, vast majority of people identifying as Christian are just as appalled as anyone else at the actions of these hateful loons. We need to get a sense of proportion. The survivors and family of those killed by the terrorist Dylann Roof, at Emmanuel African Methodist Church, in Charleston, South Carolina, could each stand up in court and offer their forgiveness to that criminal, from their faith, but also their knowledge that he isn’t the whole of whatever social segment he might have been chosen to represent – whites, Southern whites – and we, too know better than to say those fleeing Syria are the same as those from whom they flee. We know better and need to act accordingly, or we give up the same humanity we otherwise deny to them.

All Politics Is Local As Tip O’Neill famously said, and it’s no less true when we consider Daesh, despite Paris, Beirut, Libya, Egypt, etc. The Daesh leadership are politically motivated: they seek to establish themselves as a state. They cloak their ambition in religious justifications, millenarianist claims that their “caliphate” will bring about Armageddon and the return of the Mahdi, the Islamic “second coming” and the kingdom of heaven on earth. There are indications that this philosophical justification is increasingly central to their ambitions, which must be seen, as it is in all apocalyptic cults, as evidence of insanity. Madmen with tanks, guns, bombs, and internet outreach. It’s still political, and they use political tools to promote their claims to legitimacy and to recruit new members. Even the terrible acts of violence they commit are political messages. So, too, are the West’s acts of violence and oppression, especially when we turn on those Daesh’s recruitment pool and those in fear or in opposition to them. The Grand Mufti of Australia, for example, has repeatedly condemned the Paris attacks, as he has other Daesh atrocities, yet the right-wing Murdoch media continually misrepresent or ignore his statements, so as to characterise Australian Muslims as “sleeper cells” waiting to strike. That we have had three violent incidents and can point to a not-insignificant number of young men who have sought to or accomplished travel to Syria to join the criminals there hasn’t helped the moderate Muslims get their viewpoint out or accepted by a large part of Australian society (but there are at least a few of us listening). The Abbott government’s demonization of refugees has also been highly effective among the ignorant and cowardly: all asylum-seekers now appear as potential terrorists, infiltrators and invaders. Labor’s me-too policies on immigration just entrench the problem. Tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Syria, as well as the various conflicts in North Africa, in Afghanistan, continuing in Iraq, along with all the rest of the world’s oppressed who seek a better, peaceful life, are affected by the hateful, political, rhetoric of both Daesh and our own politicians, whether in Australia, Europe, or the US. Daesh would kill or convert them, but succeed in co-opting them as proxies with the complicity of Western populations and politicians willing to let fear trump sense, or doing so in their own pursuit of power. We give too much legitimacy to Daesh by giving them too much air. While Daesh need to be stopped in Syria and Iraq, where they seek to establish their state, they also need to be stopped elsewhere, but that won’t be as easily accomplished with guns and bombs. We need to show that we are not cowards, not fascistic power-hungry ideologues willing to sacrifice a minority to our fears and desires. We can do that by reaching out to our Muslim neighbors, accepting difference, offering tolerance, and by making an honest effort to take in the refugees. We can do more to end terrorism by requiring more from ourselves, and from those we do business with or treat as allies and equals, but it starts at home. If we hold ourselves to a higher standard, we have the right to hold others to the same standard.

Nous Sommes Parisian Paris is one of those cities that people all over the world feel like the “own”. There are only a few of these, I think. We don’t even ever have to have been there. Cities like Paris are, of course, part of and often central to the character of the nation they belong to, but also entirely separate. New York’s like that, and London. So when something like 13 November 2015 happens, we are all of us shocked and outraged. The murderers in Paris have shown just how far Daesh is willing to go in their program: kill and be killed. They never expected to or even tried to get away with the slaughter they inflicted. They sought only death. This isn’t “terrorism”. It’s simply horror. The perpetrators and those who sent them are monsters. How do we respond? Do we, like the torch- and pitchfork-wielding villagers, enraged by the creating of Victor Frankenstein, chase down these monsters and destroy them? The calls for NATO to engage in full against Daesh certainly says so, as does the reaction of the French in immediately stepping up its bombing campaign in Syria. And there is no reason to say we shouldn’t continue to seek the end of Daesh any more than we should seek to stop and punish its predecessor, al Qaeda. But bombs and tanks and massive retaliatory warfare won’t stop criminals from perpetrating acts of violence. We need to know what these monsters want, and we need to keep in mind what’s at stake. In The Atlantic Monthly, in March, Graeme Wood wrote of his research and analysis into the motivations behind the so-called Islamic State. It is, in a word, politics. They call themselves a state, they claim territory, and they administer that territory according to what they consider codified laws. They even have currency. But, like we sometimes see among extremist Christians, who seem to predict the end of the world fairly regularly, and whom we refer to as “millenarian”, Daesh have cloaked their political goals in religious mysticism to accord themselves justification for their actions. They say they believe that in establishing the new caliphate they can bring about Armageddon and the ultimate triumph of Islam. Part of this belief is the expectation of disastrous failure. The forces of the “West” are expected to engage them in battle in the area they claim as their territory and to defeat them. Like the killers in Paris, they expect to die, even relish the prospect, because the battle against them and their deaths is proof of their legitimacy. They are, in a word, insane. It would be equally insane to leave them alone or to engage them in all-out war. Air raids aren’t going to cut it, but to send in the troops of the “West” accords Daesh more legitimacy than their crimes deserve. While a negotiated end to the Assad regime in Syria is undertaken, a coalition of Muslim nations in the region should coalesce and engage in rooting out this band of criminals from amongst them. Either Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. are themselves legitimate states, or ISIL is, and they’ll have to decide which. The selfish sectarian feuding used by these states is no less political than the millenarian nonsense of Daesh, and it must be set aside. If they can do this, they can also then decide to engage with and join the modern world.

Dead I've been reading often too many stories in the last year or so of police abusing and even murdering unarmed persons, both in conducting justifiable and unjustifiable arrests, usually of African-Americans, and I know one thing: it didn't happen to me and this is the indisputable truth of US police are out of control. In 1981, I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a university town and about as peaceful a place you could ever want to be, as well as being about an hour outside of Detroit, even then a place many people didn't want to often be, for its rampant crime and its terrible working class poverty - and yes its racial disparity. A friend and I had gone out to blow a small windfall of money on a nice dinner in an actual restaurant, and were hitch-hiking back to the center of town, at about nine o'clock. We got a ride quickly, we thought, ran up to the car that had pulled over, ebullient from our meal and our luck, only to find ourselves staring into the barrel of a pistol. The person who'd pulled us over was a cop, and he had us at gunpoint. And we didn't die. He didn't shoot us. The story he told us was that he'd had a radio call of two males possibly breaking into vehicles in the parking lot of the shopping plaza we'd been coming from (yes, we'd been to a restaurant in a mall and thinking we'd been somewhere special, but they did serve wine, after all). Not actually breaking into vehicles, just maybe, but you know, maybe. I was 5'10' and about 140 pounds, so tallish, thin, glasses, but yeah, it's dark. My friend was over six feet tall and 300 pounds. Big guy, also white. The suspects? Can't tell you, of course, but just how likely is it that we met any description that cop had? How likely is it that we weren't just two guys leaving the vicinity? And how likely is it that a cop would be within his rights to hold us at gunpoint without backup, without even calling it in - which he did and which he had not? As I pulled upon the front passenger's side door and leaned in to thank the driver, I was inches from being shot, and when my friend and I the next day confronted the officer and his superior, we didn't get an apology, we got an arrogant dismissal. Every encounter with the police in the United States can end up the same way, or worse. I didn't get shot, and I believe it's because I'm white. That if I'd been African-American or Hispanic, that when I pulled open that car door, that cop would have shot me, that I might very well never even touched the door handle and the cop would actually have been out of his car, leaning across the roof and shooting me and my friend both, with no warning and no justification. And I was oblivious enough at the time to have thought myself only aggrieved at having been held at gunpoint, not damn lucky to be alive. I don't believe the police first, not anymore, not since then, not anywhere. They don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. And today they are more heavily armed than ever, and very clearly far more apt to shoot without justification. I'm very sorry for the victims of mass shootings, very sorry that America refuses to do anything about gun control, but also that it refuses to believe it has a problem with its police and that this is part of its problem with being a gun culture, with being over 200 years old and still thinking it's the wild west and that that's o.k.

War We invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 because of a violent act of terrorism that resulted in 3,000 deaths. But we do nothing when, year after year, Americans slaughter one another with hand guns and semi-automatic rifles. The statistics are damning. And it's not just criminals. It's suicides. It's police shooting and killing civilians - even unarmed and even innocent of any wrong-doing. But gun violence still remains a frightening and unsustainable outlier. In the last decade, as shown in the chart accompanying this article, terrorism has killed 3,300 people in the US, but gun homicide accounts for 165,700: 98%! I've written to my Congressional representatives to demand they stand up against the NRA and those constitutionalists who argue spuriously, from whatever motivation, for strict Second Amendment rights. I don't believe the Constitution of the United States should continue to be interpreted as it has been, but I'll settle for sensible and strong Federal gun control measures to stop guns getting into the hands of criminals and the insane. Not another mass shooting should be allowed.

Immortality Did you know there's a Toy Hall of Fame (at all, let alone in Rochester NY)? The current list includes: alphabet blocks, Atari 2600 Game System, baby doll, ball, Barbie, bicycle, Big Wheel, blanket, bubbles, Candy Land, cardboard box, checkers, chess, Crayola Crayons, dollhouse, dominoes, Duncan Yo-Yo, Easy-Bake Oven, Erector Set, Etch A Sketch, Frisbee, The Game of Life, G. I. Joe, Hot Wheels, hula hoop, jack-in-the-box, jacks, jigsaw puzzle, jump rope, kite, LEGO, Lincoln Logs, Lionel Trains, little green army men, marbles, Monopoly, Mr. Potato Head, Nintendo Game Boy, Play-Doh, playing cards, Radio Flyer Wagon, Raggedy Ann and Andy, rocking horse, roller skates, rubber duck, Rubik’s Cube, Scrabble, Silly Putty, skateboard, Slinky, Star Wars action figures, stick, teddy bear, Tinkertoy, Tonka Trucks, and View-Master. Blanket? Cardboard box? What about dining room table with a sheet thrown over it to make a fort? Other nominees this year were American Girl dolls, Fisher-Price Little People, Hess Toy Trucks, My Little Pony, Operation Skill Game, paper airplanes, pots and pans, Slip‘N Slide, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. See? Pots and pans! Anything can be a toy. Why Mr. Potato Head when a real potato will do? And where are chemistry sets? I think that if the Easy Bake Oven can be in the Hall, then the Strange Change machine can be, or one of those other electrical plastic melting devices we loved to burn our fingers on. Like space heaters.

Confessions The Waiting Wall is a public art project that posts messages from anyone of their secrets, dreams, messages they can't otherwise express; sort of like Postsecret online and offline. It's kind of amazing.

Bridge Run 54:23 in the Sydney Running Festival's 9k Bridge Run on Sunday. Just under 6 minutes per K (the course distance is actually just over 9k), so a satisfying result, if not the under-50 minute outcome I'd hoped for. Maybe I shouldn't have gone out to watch the Swans the night before.

Don't Forget Where You Put It If scientists really have created an invisibility cloak, can they prove it? I mean, here's this guy with his hands up as if he's holding something, but you can't see it. Are you sure it's actually there? What happens if you put it down somewhere and can't remember where? I can see this being easily weaponised, too. Remember that jacket with the taser-like electricity delivery system built in? Now add the invisibility cloth as the outer layer.

PM5 Malcolm Turnbull has successfully toppled Tony Abbott to be Australia's fifth Prime Minister in the last five years. There is hope for this kind of churn to now stop, but less for the country to be effectively governed. The next election is, after all, sometime next year, so Turnbull will have little time to get the Liberal house in order and has already set a substantial portion of his side of the House on edge: the Nationals portion of the Coalition is already disgruntled, resentful of Turnbull's action in challenging for the leadership, regarding the move as sidelining and expressing disregard for their role. (Not that they have much role, being effectively the rural rump of the Liberal Party anyway, rather than an effective political force in their own right.) There will be those front-bench ministers dismissed or resigning from their portfolios and the back-benchers who stayed loyal to Abbott, all lined up to help Labor give Turnbull some knocks. Possibly the independent Senators will be more open to Turnbull's overtures, but what actual policy changes can we expect? Will Turnbull's Treasurer, whomever that turns out to be (not Hockey, of course, whose statement of support for Abbott prior to the Party room vote was an exemplar of bullying and a threat of non-cooperation), produce a budget that doesn't direct all its cost-savings at the poor and all its revenue-raising at the middle class? I'm betting not. As Hockey pointed out, Turnbull raised none of his objections in the Party room or in Cabinet previously, so any claims he makes to manage the economy better than Abbott are hollow, as we can anticipate his persuasions to be honeyed attempts to mask bitter pills. Remember: Malcolm Turnbull is a Liberal. He's also of that delusional ilk among Liberals that believes government is a business. He will govern - or attempt to - accordingly. But at least we're rid of that troublesome failed monk, Tony Abbott.

Plague Explain to me why the US military is playing with biological weapons. Other regimes have been overthrown for less.

The Funeral of Kings A state funeral has been conducted for a horse trainer. Why? Because he made a few rich people rich by training horses for races. The wealthy owners then made heaps of money in prizes, funded by all the punters gambling their hard-earned dosh and getting little or nothing in return, unless you count whatever pleasure can be obtained from watching animals being abused. Horse racing, dog racing, it's all just like bull fighting: despicable practices. And for this, politicians and "dignitaries" have turned out, abasing themselves, right along with the "horse racing identities", who will include people with too much money but who won't spend it on helping people, gangsters, and social parasites. No mention will be made of however many horses this animal abuser condemned to early death.

The Changing Society, the Changing Economy Ever read "The Grapes of Wrath"? Probably the closest would be you've seen the movie, but here's a passage I think appropriate to the current crisis of refugees in Europe and disgrace in Australia: ". . . repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. . . . The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on." What's sad is how hopeful of revolt Steinbeck was, and how little and paltry the response required at the time to eradicate its potential, and how cruel the response is today. They've got the guns, the power, and the hate. The rest can only hope to reach a place of sufficient safety to be exploited and denigrated as subhuman. And us in the middle? We're the ones who let our politicians make them subhuman. We're the cowards waiting for our turn and hoping it never comes. And all it takes is a bad bout of ill health, a few extra weeks of unemployment. We're lucky, until we aren't, so we'll dehumanize whom we can and pretend otherwise. Take note especially of the phrase "The changing economy", equating even then society and the economy. It's well past time we stopped that conflation of terms.

Comics I'm only disappointed that Dr. Hormone's super power isn't making teenagers break out.

30 Things So the pretentious lecturing snobs at the Sydney Morning Herald’s section devoted to ensuring house prices continue to rise and ensure that no one they lecture to can even hope for more than reading their columns, let alone implementing their “requirements” (otherwise known as Domain), have now published a list of the 30 things you must have in your home to accompany the 30 things they previously published that you must not have. Must-have’s are: 1. Non-stick saucepans. Really? Because cast iron is too hard or stainless steel too prone to discoloured by inept cooks? Do they not know that even the best non-stick start to lose their virtue and eventually start flaking off into your food? 2. A dinner table. Because we have room, don’t we? Always. Everyone. Especially sufficient room to have a dinner party. 3. “Furniture that didn’t once belong to your parents”, which is probably not much of a problem, if your parents are still alive, as they are likely to still be using theirs. 4. Art. Actually, I can get behind this one. It’s not hard to have a nice piece of original art you like and will enjoy for years. 5. A plant. C’mon, buy some flowers now and then, if you really need indoor foliage. 6. Grow-your-own herbs – on the balcony, if you’ve got one (and doesn’t everyone), or tomatoes in the garden (ditto). Much as I appreciate that the new economy approaching will require us to grow our own food as much as possible or starve, this isn’t very feasible for the vast majority of people desperately searching Domain for a place to rent or to buy. 7. A full set of cutlery. By which they mean a set, matched, not just a collection of knives and forks and spoons. Does anyone actually care? 8. A full set of wine glasses, reds and whites. Nice to have, but how many of each? And did you know that Riesling may use a different glass than chardonnay and so on? It’s true, if you’re pretentious enough. 9. Filing system. An organised drawer to put things in that you won’t look at for years, if ever at all, but are still required to keep for at least seven years, just in case the tax man comes looking. This is item 2 in the actually worthwhile list. 10. Books. Specifically recommended are four worth reading and some crap. 11. An electric blanket. Your power bills aren’t high enough. Use more coal. 12. A cat. Don’t do it. Really. And not a dog, a fish, a bird, a lizard, a snake, or whatever else alive you think you should have. They will rule your life. I love my cats, but if I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t. 13. Home automation. Go ahead, pretend you’re Tony Stark. I know where all the light switches are and the power points and why isn’t that enough? The refrigerator is automatic, but beyond that I really don’t see the point. 14. Good bed linen. This is item 3 on the worthwhile list. (10% Not getting even a D- at this point.) 15. Bread knife. (13% now; still not a pass.) 16. Throw pillows. Because the furniture you bought isn’t comfortable. You couldn’t afford comfortable furniture without stealing it from your parents, not with the rent you’re paying. 17. “A solution to every conceivable household problem”, which specifically mentions mosquito coils – good idea, 15% - and a “failsafe remedy for removing red wine stains” that isn’t throwing out the stained material. Good luck with that; no points. 18. “Cool fridge magnets”, because why? Because no. 19. A bowl near the door to keep your keys. Half points. Having a consistent place to put your keys is smart, but the bowl by the door means a table by the door and you may not have room. (16%!) 20. Board games. I enjoy these, but I don’t need them. Do you? You don’t have enough good books to read. Work on item 10. 21. Teapot and tea cups. Entirely unnecessary. This should garner negative points. 22. A “feature piece” of furniture or furnishings. I’ve got one of these. It takes up so much of my living room there’s hardly room to live. You have art. Leave it at that. 23. Wooden coat hangers. Don’t have to be wood, and only Joan Crawford will be upset if you use wire. 24. Blender, specifically a “whizz-bang blender”, by which I suppose they mean a thermomix or nutribullet. If you’re not making margaritas, you can do without. 25. Tupperware. This will sort itself out, but try applying portion control, too, and avoid storing leftovers you’ll only just throw out in a year. 26. They skip this one. Not sure if that’s a maths problem or editing. As it’s the online edition, I suspect editing, which generally sucks in online publications. 27. Cookbooks. Entirely unnecessary. Read the recipes in the paper, learn a few stalwarts, and move on. These are just dust-collectors and don’t count as books. 28. Toolkit. Definitely. With a power drill, a hammer, adjustable head screwdriver, and a collections of screws etc. Go from there, but keep it limited so you can find what you’re looking for. 20%! 29. Wine decanter. If you’re a pretentious git. Just let the bottle breathe for 30 minutes or more and don’t think it’ll still be good next week. 30. “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”, by someone named Marie Kondo. Just clean now and then, and you’ll be fine. The things you shouldn’t have in your home after age 30? 1. Unframed prints and posters: if they’re worth keeping, they’re worth a frame. I have two. 2. Trophies on display. You kept them? Dude, that was high school. High school sucked. 3. Pine furniture. Purely a matter of taste, although I’d have to agree with this. 4. Ikea anything. Now that’s just silly. Billy bookcases are excellent, and you should see the things you can do with a couple of Lack tables and the stuff in your toolbox. If you can afford better, and more comfortable, by all means, but some of this stuff is too utilitarian to give up. And did you know that their office chair was rated #2 for ergonomics? That was a couple of years ago, but it was the best one I’ve ever used. 5. Incomplete dishes and cutlery. See at 7, above, which doesn’t mention dishes. If you have enough plates and bowls to serve your friends, I’ll bet they don’t care if they match. 6. Shot glass collection. I wouldn’t, but people do. I’ve got more Doc Savage paperbacks from the 1960’s than you do and some other things that could be said to constitute a collection. I’m not entirely proud of them, but neither am I ashamed. Meanwhile, at 18, above, they think fridge magnets are cool. At least with shot glasses you can have a contest, if you’re so inclined. 7. Inflatable furniture. Generally yes, but it doesn’t hurt to have one of those mattresses they’ve got these days, which can be surprisingly comfortable, for as long as they retain the capacity to hold air. 8. Lava lamps. The explanation for not having them is incomplete, at best. It’s because they stop working eventually and then you have to get a new one. 9. Kitschy picture frames. Absolutely agree. 10. Mosquito net. Oh, but mosquito coils are o.k. (see at 17, above)? These things work. 11. Fake plants. Yes, o.k., but you don’t need real ones, either. 12. Unopened mail. You don’t open your mail right away or bin it with the recycling? What’s wrong with you? Most banks and so forth will let you opt for email anyway. 13. CDs or DVDs on display. Where else are you going to put them? They can actually be as decorative as books, and like books you are going to use them. Having them handy is sensible. 14. Anything under your bed. Does that count monsters? Or just storage and dust? 15. Dust. You do it. I hired someone. That’s as far as I’ll go. 16. Beanbags. People still do this? 17. Anything covering a window that isn’t a curtain. Anything fabric that you hang off a rod is a curtain. Venetian blinds, on the other hand, are an abomination (see at 15, especially). 18. Glow in the dark stars. Unless you have kids, sure, o.k. Personally, I say, good luck to you. Have the stuff or don’t have the stuff. Eventually you’ll meet someone and start seeing these things differently and may choose to alter the mix. Unless they like it, too. Then you’ll only have to worry when you have pets or children that will attempt to eat some of these things, at which point you can put them away for later.

Movies Australian movies tend to be very bleak or very silly (much as I enjoyed the last one I saw: Mad Max: Fury Road), but sometimes they're just good. Last Cab to Darwin being an excellent example. Based on a stage play, unlike many other such productions, it's very natural, perhaps because of having the whole of the Outback to be expansive in, but more likely because Michael Caton, as Rex, is just so good. Yes, all the other characters are secondary, yet still drawing on some serious Australian acting talent, so he has to carry the movie, but he does, and it's no mean feat, especially when he's often been a comic actor, perhaps best known for The Castle. Defintely deserves viewing in a cinema.

The Need for Speed A whole minute faster than two years ago's City Mile Dash? That's what it says. Makes my whole weekend.

City2Surf 2015 4 minutes slower than last year, but I'll take it.

Grown-ups To make up for all the B-movies I've been seeing (and will attend later this year), we went to see Mr. Holmes last week. Ian McKellan makes a very fine Sherlock, but for all the Holmes of the movie, this is about memory, how it is a trap of shame and an opportunity for redemption. All the players are terrific, and the movie doesn't really falter in any way until the very end, and even then, it hardly matters, and is of a piece with the MacGuffin of the mystery.

Movies The winter blockbuster season continues. Serious movies have to start coming out soon, or my brain will rot. Terminator Genisys continues the fine tradition of unnecessary misspellings, unless it’s just that Skynet’s spellcheck failed in its mission, as its robots usually do, but manages to entertain, largely with its revisions to the original film, playing with alternative realities like a good time-travel movie should. (Did you know that Twelve Monkeys was made into a television show? Neither did I.) The human heroes of the movie have zero chemistry and the villain doesn’t get really villainous until fairly late, but it doesn’t stop moving and Arnie’s as good as he ever was. For a B-movie, it’s not half bad. Call it a B+. Meanwhile, the Marvel juggernaught keeps churning out enjoyable films. Ant-Man , like Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t take itself too seriously, with decent comical characters, mostly, and gags tossed through to the point where it might as well have been played entirely as a comedy. Certainly the personal-lives plot parallels between the original, Hank Pym, and the replacement he recruits, Scott Lang, are lightly sketched enough to have been dispensed with. I guess it would be asking too much for the sountrack to have been modeled on Guardians. I know I said I was done with comicbook movies, but this is still a movie to see if you’ve got time and a discount voucher, and I had both. So, in another couple of weeks, out comes the latest franchise reboot, with Fantastic Four. Yes, I will go see this.

Bad Burger So David Chang, celebrity chef, thinks Australians can’t make a good burger (except at Mary’s? I’ve had theirs, and once was plenty). Anyone recommending American cheese as the sole cheese for a burger has no taste, or no tastebuds, so I’m pretty well inclined to discount all Chang’s cuisine in consequence, although I agree with the inclusion of pickles – something Mary’s burgers neglect (so go figure why he gives them a pass). American cheese should be called “cheeze”. Is McDonald’s his paragon burger restaurant? On the other hand, scientist chef Heston Blumenthal makes an effort: his burger does it all. I watched this episode of his program, and he was even testing the bite radius. O.k., the grinding and patty formation is a little over the top, but we’re talking science! Notice, however, the use of gruyere cheese. How good is that? Oh, well, it’s not like I was even going to try any David Chang food: his Sydney branch is in a casino. He ever starts selling his recommended burgers, he’s going to lose those stars.

Unextinction As far as I can tell there are two reasons for Jurassic World: reboot the franchise and make a lot of references to past giant-monster movies. It’s entertaining, certainly, and pretty much gets right into the whole running-and-screaming thing, but what I really enjoyed were the references to King Kong, Jaws, etc. That must have been fun for the filmmakers. I think I need to see a French movie, as a palate cleanser, before Ant Man comes out.

Rock Opera One of the great failings of rock ‘n’ roll, especially in its days of aspiration to being “classical”, i.e., the 1970’s, was the Rock Opera. This was, I think a fundamental misunderstanding that all music is folk music, and that rock was, essentially, no different from anything ever written by Mozart or Beethoven or Monk or Parker or whomever you’d like to distinguish the forms as superior/inferior over the ages or just last year. If rock did anything different from classical it was to keep it short, and if it did anything different from the blues or jazz it was, well, to make it more broadly popular for a moment than the form that it was ripping off. One thing that appears to be true, however, is that the overarching category of “rock”, but which encompasses pop music generally, has not actually changed in form in any significant fashion for the last hundred years, effectively since jazz became popular. Nevertheless, it’s no less effective, no less evocative than it ever has been, and is now more artistically representative than ever before. Today, going to a musical stage production, watching a television show, listening to the soundtrack of a movie, you’re very likely going to hear material that is or is more akin to rock ‘n’ roll than ten or twenty years ago, because pop music is at this time more universal than at any time previously. That’s not a bad thing. At least not for most of us living today. Whereas once the ability to play an instrument or sing accompaniment was an important factor in social behaviour, that isn’t true, and hasn’t been for at least fifty years or more. More significantly, we have, since the 1980’s, at least, imbued our lives with our own personal soundtracks, to the point where we can hardly stand, it seems, to be without the appropriate music the appropriate time. Which brings me to B-Girl, a one-act musical production, just finishing up at the Sydney Opera House. It’s the story of a housewife who retreats into fantasies of glam-rock stardom, and it’s a production that deserves a much broader audience than just the basement playhouse of the SOH. I’ve seen a lot of mainstream and off-beat theatrical productions over the years, and I truly believe this one could very easily be the next “Hedwig” or more. I think there are some tweaks yet – as I understand it, some of the more “theatrical” effects had to be abandoned, due to technical issues (and let’s all be grateful for lessons learned from Broadway’s attempt at “Spiderman”, eh?), and their reintroduction could help. Mainly, I’m concerned with getting the spine of the narrative more firmly established before the rest is fleshed out, but it still works, as-is, and that’s important. This is a production that can go far, and with a little push, further still. I’d love to see it at BAM, and it’s almost “Next Wave”, but might need just a little more to get there. Meanwhile, I’m sure it will do well on its global tour, when that comes, including NYC, but Berlin, London, Paris, the world. I am very enthusiastic about this show.

Insane Mad Max: Fury Road is MADNESS! It's beyond good. ZOMG! Tom Hardy channels all the best of Mel Gibson, Charlize Theron is the best two-armed actress playing a one-armed hero you could ever hope for (and more), and George Miller has finally made the Mad Max movie he's always wanted. Unmissable. Yes, it's one big car chase with really loud music and practically no dialog, but it all works, all hangs together. While it feels at first as if it's started in the middle, it has: in the middle of the ongoing heroic epic of Max Rockatansky in the wastelands of the petrochemical-based capitalist extremities when it's finally all gone to hell. And redemption is only possible by sacrifice, which Max enacts to the purest merging of Joseph Campbell and the New Testament, a Moses/John the Baptist merger to Imperator Furiosa's Virgin Mary/Jesus combo. Yeah, a Jesus motif, as so often happens in the movies, but in full action hero mode to boot, driving out the money changers, or the crazy dictatorial war lords controlling the water, anyway. I may not have left this one as jazzed as from a Bourne movie, and more deaf, but it was still an absolute thrill ride.

Weekending So this weekend was, effectively, the end of the Vivid Festival, in Sydney, and although we didn't get out to see the lights, per se, I took advantage to follow up on a birthday present of two years ago, to engage in a little photographic instruction, from Photo Workshop Australia, in shooting at night. Vivid was a great opportunity to pick up a few techniques, although the course wasn't so much in the hows and whys as it was just about getting good shots. Some of which, I think, did indeed turn out o.k. Unfortunately, I didn't think to enroll B. in the course, which I'm sure she'd have enjoyed, but we headed up to the Blue Mountains on Saturday to have a weekend away in the start of the cold. We ended up in Mount Victoria, a bit further on than we usually go, due to booking late for the holiday weekend, but also to have a go at some of the bushwalks we hadn't previously attempted, down the other side of the ridge. We hardly saw anyone else, something very unusual up there, and that was an added attraction. The walks weren't hard, but they weren't all that easy, either, if maybe a little shorter than we sometimes attempt. Very nice scenery, too, including a "bush ranger's cave", a cleft of some considerable depth and notable dryness, from back in the day. Later, Mount Wilson offered a bit of cascades.

Stateless The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is putting forward, at the behest of the most extreme right-wing of his party, a proposal to remove Australian citizenship from dual citizens found to have engaged in terrorist acts, most particularly of going to the Middle East to join ISIS, but without a judicial hearing. The Immigration Minister would be able to judge whatever evidence or allegation and strip such persons of citizenship, effectively removing them from access to the legal system and any hope of redress. Worse, the fascists are proposing that birthright citizens should also be subject to the removal of citizenship, rendering them stateless. I don’t use the term “fascists” lightly. This is exactly how they have positioned themselves politically, making citizens servants of the state, rather than the other way around. This is a bad plan, all up. There is no value in removing people from the rule of law. It makes much more sense to expand the rule of law, if such was necessary (and it isn’t; the law we need are already in place), to embrace them, and hold them accountable properly. It is cowardice, pure and simple. Hysterical fear-mongering cloaked in the flag, and pandering to racists. Andrew Nikolic must be the stupidest man in Parliament.

Billy Two-Toes' Rainbow Opalised dinosaur bones recognised as new species. Found only three years after the Hugh Atkinson novel, it makes you wonder how much else of opals out there are made of monsters from the past.

The Thrill is Gone B. B. King, dead at 89. Good run. A lot of his contemporaries didn't make it so far. "Live at San Quentin" will have to go on rotation.

Sequels It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the sequel to a successful movie is never as good as the first instalment, or it’s even better. Avengers: Age of Ultron falls somewhere in the middle. It’s very entertaining, certainly, if a bit long, but also full of what has become, effectively, stock-standard sequences. There are attempts to develop the characters, a little, but they don’t add all that much depth. Yes, they are comic book characters, so depth is only ever going to go so far. That scene as the team are walking up to a farmhouse highlights the silliness of it all: you are immediately reminded that they are all wearing rather ridiculous costumes out in the world. Looks like Halloween for some seriously embarrassed grown-ups. Ultron himself was something of a disappointment. Sure, James Spader was perfectly cast as the voice of the mechanical monster, but the physical representation probably should not have had lips or expressive eyes, and probably shouldn’t have been making quite so many jokes or using contractions. The purity of Ultron was always what made him most monstrous, after all. Vision was also rather too human; it was inevitable that Scarlet Witch would have her powers reimagined (“probability hexes” was always a bit of a struggle, so telekinesis and telepathy work a bit better); and where did Falcon fly in from? Never mind, it’s all a set up for a spin-off franchise, West Coast Avengers here we come. Joss Whedon will be remembered better for Buffy than for anything he’s accomplished so far on the big screen, but we can hope.. With the trailers for “Ant Man” and the reboot of “Fantastic Four”, and having sat through this film, I think I’m about over the super hero movies.

Misleadership The Liberal Party of Australia hates Medicare. They hate it purely on the basis that it was introduced by the Australian Labor Party and has been a great, transformative success; and that it is a benefit to the poor. Opposition to Labor is ingrained in this mob. They preference the big end of town on the basis that it from this source that they derive their legitimacy. Therefore any success by Labor must be rolled back. That Medicare has been so successful and so popular presents a challenge to them, however, so they must be duplicitous in how they reverse the program. Deep-seated resentment of the poor in a philosophical matter: like puritanical conservatives of the American Republican party, they believe the poor deserve their condition, that it is a moral failing. This extends to the elderly and sick. Wealth and good health are the rewards of providence for virtue and the evidence of it. So when the current Minister for Health, Sussan Ley, announces a review of Medicare, this would be a welcome development, from any other set of politicians. The review will include all procedures, tests and treatments, on the basis that there is a need to reduce “inappropriate tests and procedures”, because, primarily, many are no longer used. Of course, a test, treatment, or procedure that is no longer used isn’t costing anything, but that’s not the point. The point is to simply to stop spending money on health care. The review will also examine new ways of paying GPs, which is fine, potentially working towards a better system of managed care, to reduce the need for more complex procedures and interventions such as now inevitably arise from the lack of management of conditions such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc. Early intervention and management over the longer term means fewer people needing emergency and more costly interventions later. This, of course, costs money now, but reduces spending overall. Don’t expect this to be an outcome of the review. Instead, expect GP care to become part of private medical insurance coverage, shifting the cost from Medicare to the consumer and killing off bulk-billing as effectively as the previously mooted co-pay and rebate reductions. New rules are expected to be implemented to address the issue of Medicare cheats. But it’s actually doctors rorting the system more so than it is patients, and you would be foolish to believe that’s going to be the focus of the review. Instead, the “Medicare cheating” to be addressed will be rules to make it more difficult for the poor and middle class to access Medicare on the basis they are accustomed to, requiring more out-of-pocket expenditures and a reduction in services. The Australian Medical Association and Consumers Health Forum may welcome the review, but they should be cautious in their embrace of it, like the farmer and the viper. We know who these Liberals are, and their nature.

The System Reading the latest New Yorker (the latest I’ve received to date, delivery being somewhat more delayed than it would be if I were still a local), I encountered an article by Adam Kirsch, ”The System”, reviewing two new books on the Nazi concentration camps, both of which sounding quite excellent and quite terrifying. I was struck by the final paragraph, in a more contemporary context: Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. ”The impulse to separate some groups of people from the category of the human is, however, a universal one. The enemies we kill in war, the convicted prisoners we lock up for life, even the distant workers who manufacture our clothes and toys – how could any society function if the full humanity of all these were taken into account? In a decent society, there are laws to resist such dehumanisation , and institutional and moral forces to protest it. When guards at Rikers Isalnd beat a prisoner to death, or when workers in China making iPhones begin to commit suicide out of despair, we regard these as intolerable evils that must be cured. It is when a society decides that some people deserve to be treated this way – that it is not just inevitable but right to deprive whole categories of people of their humanity that a crime on the scale of the [concentration camp] ecomes a possibility. It is a crime that has been repeated too many times, in too many places, for us to dismiss it with the simple promise of never again. Australia, it seems, has decided, and we deserve every condemnation for it.

Happy Easter (Please Stop Raining) It had stopped, of course, or a drive into the Blue Mountains for a bit of bush-walking wouldn't have been part of the plan. These aren't Wentworth Falls, just the Empress Cascade, but very pretty, and a nice section of the walk, albeit all uphill and this point. A very nice way to spend Easter.

Last Time (this time) Last business trip to Auckland. Now I have to arrange a holiday in NZ so I can visit properly.

RIP Astrid Spielman was one of my first Australian friends, and I met her long before I moved to Sydney. Of all the Australians I met in that now brief period of 2000-2002, I think she was the one who really “got” the transition, for myself, and my ex, but could accept it in a way that not a few in the US could, and that was because of her vision and status as an artist. Astrid had been a rocker with Particles, a Sydney punk/post-punk band of the early ‘80’s., and the Yokos - great band name – before moving on to become an artist in the area of photography and video. But she was primarily, to me, a friend, and a challenging one, not content to let intellectual slackness slip by. Astrid had a burst aneurysm recently. The treatment was working, to the extent that it could, but a follow-on stroke took her just days ago. I have had, during this period, occasions to think of Astrid and to hope for the best .and now, in some small, clichéd regard, that’s where we are. I know I haven’t made the effort myself to maintain that friendship, which is a common failing for me, but I held it close in my heart nevertheless, and I will miss Astrid, with love always.

Gritty A Walk Among the Tombstones is a not half-bad adaptation of the Lawrence Block novel, but half of it is the rest of the Matthew Scudder series, and that's at least part of how the movie fails, ultimately. Liam Neeson falls in and out of his hard NY accent, and his team-up with the street kid, TJ, is, as every critic bothering to deal with it has mentioned, inexplicable and ultimately pointless, but my issues are somewhat different. The book left Scudder slightly off the hook for the vengence required by the end, but also left him open in the series to something darker than it had otherwise painted him to be. The movie tries to do the same, to a point, but ties the revenge to his past in a way that makes him out to be incapable of the redemption his sobriety would otherwise. So we're left wondering who Scudder is, without any questioning by Scudder, as is more characteristic, at least to this point in the series, of the literary PI. I'm surprised, a little, that it's taken this long to make even one of these novels into a movie. Neeson is perfect (barring the accent), and the movie captures much of NYC as a lived place. They could have started earlier and had a franchise, but I don't think we're going to get that, but if nothing else, I think I'll go back to the books before long.

Rules of the Road The first rule of cycling in the city: they don't see you. Melbourne is a cycling-intensive city, more so than Sydney, but both cities haven't got the infrastructure or the culture to keep their cyclists safe. What that means is that it's up to the cyclists, so today's rally is important. I commend Sydney's mayor, Clover Moore, for her efforts to establish bicycle lanes, and condemn both Labor and Liberal state governments for their efforts to rid themselves of both her and cycleways. Cities are not for cars, they're for people. That has to be balanced. And bicycles are better for the environment than cars. It isn't just about how many cars can be funneled into the CBD, but that seems to be the motivation of most of our politicians, and, unfortunately, the short-sighted, narrow-minded perspective of many citizens. This, too, is part of how someone can be killed riding a bike, and it needs to change.

Landmark Preservation Still no sign of Miranda.