The Anti-Targ

I'm not sure the Republicans shooting themselves in the foot on the border bill should be seen as a mistake that requires correction via executive order. Raising the bar for what qualifies as legitimate asylum and having some arbitrary number of crossings that triggers closure of the border doesn't fix a problem, it just makes it the problem of the poor and oppressed that no longer meet some arbitrary and mean spirited standard of misery, or just happen to be the Xth+1 person to try to cross the border. Democrats/Biden being dragged to the right on immigration to improve his elections chances is not something to be happy about at all.

There is no way Big Pharma is the best model for developing new therapies and devices. I would prefer to fund universities and other independent research organisations directly from public finances with a mandate to develop new therapies, including natural and non-pharmaceutical therapies. Big pharma, such as it is, can competitively bid for manufacturing products with an exclusive licence for a period, for treatments that are developed and proven by the research organisations. I have to say that here at least the slightly radical left (i.e. the left that is just mainstream enough to get MPs into parliament) has done a lot to drag the whole political spectrum towards at least admitting something needs to be done about climate change. Was not long ago that the political right here was made up of straight up deniers and people who constantly said its no where near as bad as the greenies claim. These days there is no one in the political mainstream who will say there isn't urgency, at least not in public, while the right still wants to allow companies to find new fossil fuel sources. Their argument seems to be something like, people and businesses are still going to use the stuff for some time yet, so we might as well take the profits rather than some foreign country. There has been other semi-radical left action on the environment that has changed the mainstream. While it is all very late in coming, I'm not sure incrementalism would have moved the mainstream sooner. As far as economic and social policy goes the problem of the left is that when they are in government they haven't been using the right fiscal framework. They still mostly believe in the deficit myth and so will always have a timer on what they want to do because eventually people will start voting for lower taxes.

I wonder why anyone would believe politicians aren't largely cowards when it comes to their own personal safety? They are [mostly] only brave when it's other people's lives at stake.

Also recall it was the German Greens who demanded an end to nuclear power. How different would things be today if the Green movement didn't slavishly adhere to an anti-nuclear ideology when it was clear 20 years ago that nuclear needed to be part of rapid decarbonisation? They won't be seen as the villains of this period in history, but they are not going to come out as the heroes. Indeed I wonder if history will record any heroes in the last 25 years.

While I was watching that video I reflected on the weeks long anti-vax, anti-mandate occupation of Parliament grounds here in 2022. In some ways it marked the beginning of the end for the current government (though it was mostly inflation), so some people might argue that protest was effective and many at the protest would say they achieved what they wanted by helping to get rid of the govt. But really the protest only changed the govt, it did not change the political status quo. We have a new govt, but they continue to shit on the small folk and look after the 1%, including big pharma which was the pretext for what the parliament occupation was all about. If the occupation actually was about the real harms that big pharma has been doing for decades I would have been sympathetic towards the occupation, but vaccines are one of the few things big pharma does that I'm yet to see any serious downsides. Instead it was about sheep dying because someone who was COVID vaccinated stood next to it and other nonsense.

Speaking of protest An interesting video with quite sinister implications if even some of it is true.

This is going to be interesting. I'm guessing this kind of action needs a country to have emissions laws with specific targets and timelines on the books, otherwise there's nothing to sue over. https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018926685/world-first-climate-action-in-nz-s-top-court Of course a govt could swoop in an change or repeal the law to save the polluters. I guess we'll see what all those campaign contribution buys them if the case starts to look bad for the polluters.

When the voting public has to try to choose the least worst option for president / government in so many countries that tells you how phucked things are for the world.

Yes I understand it was strictly about GHGs, not pollution in general. De-smoggifying the local environment is a good reason by itself for converting from coal to gas, assuming you can't make coal plants burn a lot cleaner, so what this study does is suggest that when doing a cost/benefit on whether to go from coal to gas reducing GHG emission per MW shouldn't be included as one of the benefits of changing.

I wonder what the symbolism is of the flag on the back having just 5 stars and three stripes?

One thing to be aware of is that relative population makes a difference. Because Wellington is the capital city and is one of the biggest cities in New Zealand it feels like a bigger city than what just looking at the population would make you think. Newcastle is a satellite city of Sydney, Wellington is the major city for the southern half of the North Island. I can't speak for how LGBTQ people feel in the places they live but there aren't many places in New Zealand where you can't be out and proud. The world's first openly transgender Mayor and MP (same person) was in a small town a little bit north of Wellington, that was 25 years ago.

Not so fast there bud. I've got a documented family tree that goes all the way back to the 15th century, and it's definitely legit because there were way too many cousins marrying each other for it to be fake. If he can convince a Saudi prince to buy one of his inflated valuation properties for the valuation price can he go for a re-trial?

Well Wellington then. I'm not going to ask what "need" means, but I think Wellington has almost everything people might need from a big city even though it's a small city on a global scale.

Which of course was mostly a narrative pedaled by the oil and gas industry as a way to funnel profits away from coal and into gas. Real global warming activists wanted to skip gas and go straight from coal to fully non-emitting power sources. Real real global warming activists wanted investment in nuclear as well as solar, wind, hydro and geothermal.

If this is all true, no wonder we're headed off a global warming cliff, esp the bit about natural gas not really having lower emissions than coal.

If you need to be in a city of at least 1 million people then I guess your only option over here is Auckland. But if you can downsize and consider points south of Auckland then there are several options. Also the further south you go, so long as you stick to the west side the cyclone risk drops away quite fast. Australians are a bit too fearful of Earthquakes I think. I do think Auckland will become unbearable in a decade or two, it is so humid and that makes the heat so much worse, so it's already pretty unbearable to me.

I have to say, resurrecting the commuter rail line naming fracas from the previous threat, If you are going to name a rail line after an international female sports team why not go to a real women's sport: Rugby. And I defy anyone to say the top international women's teams don't play with recognisable skill. The Black Ferns v Red Roses World Cup final was fookin' brilliant.

A good democracy establishes government that guarantees the long term welfare and well being of all the people regardless of the economic system. A good economic system demands little of a govt to ensure those guarantees because it delivers most of them automatically, a bad economic system demands a lot from the govt to ensure those guarantees. So, capitalism demands a lot from govt because it fails so many people in so many ways, current forms of democracy are incapable of delivering the required government. Also, while labour exploitation is a feature, not a bug, of capitalism systemic racism and sexism are not inherent to it. Those are holdovers from days of yore before capitalism existed let alone became the dominant economic system. What capitalism has done is (in the case of the USA) brought large numbers of white men low, which gives vested interests cover to deny the ongoing effects of systemic racism and sexism. Why not fully hijack the US Pol thread, even if just for a moment? New Zealand generally has a fairly high voter participation rate and it has compulsory voter registration (so no one can dick around trying to purge rolls). With 80%+ voter turn out in the general election being the historical norm, and 90%+ happening a number of times, though the last time was 1984. Also there has been no history of significant attempts at voter intimidation. So compulsory voting in New Zealand is kind of a solution looking for a problem. It could be a solution to a significant problem in the USA though with 2020 being a rather historical high with 67% participation. New Zealand has only dipped below 70% once since 1890. Strangely since MMP was brought in voter turnout has been on a downward trend, which you would think the opposite would happen because in theory in MMP every vote counts (though that's not strictly true) so people should be more motivated to vote. Though perhaps what we're seeing is a general voter malaise as they increasingly see neither left nor right govts really being capable of serving the interests of the people...which takes me back to my point about no democracy being better than C tier

Sadly easier to just carry out extra judicial executions.

I know, but it's one of those jokes that initially makes you laugh, but then makes you feel sad about the underlying truth of it. We may meet some day, since my son has his own fantasy of moving to Queenstown to raise his family and if that nice fantasy ever becomes a reality the pressure will be on to follow so we can see the grandchild(ren) whenever we want. My son got married in Queenstown (in August!, outside!!!) and it's always been his and his wife's favourite domestic holiday destination, summer and winter.

Just my personal view, but any democracy that involves 1) political parties and 2) private campaign financing can only ever be C tier at best. New Zealand still has systemic racism and sexism, chronic intergenerational poverty, homelessness and housing affordability crises, high rates of youth suicide, severe and systemic inequality in access to education, creaking and crumbling infrastructure and paralysis on meaningful climate change action. But I will grant you we do have more than 2 political parties in parliament.

Insofar as some statement about Israel goes, completely flew by the New Zealand 24 hr news cycle, or at least the news feed the algorithm has determined I should be exposed to.

Never! Not until Australia concedes flat whites and pavlovas, and takes back all it's unwanted immigrants ruining our country (possums and wallabies). Canada, well we need to crack that dairy trade nut, then we'll be sweet.

I would say one of the basis of a good democracy is no one having that much power to start with. I think you'd have to squint really hard to see the US democracy as a good democracy, not that I know of any examples of democracies I would call good. In the tier list of all democracies that have existed in the last two centuries don't think there would be a single S-tier democracy and I'm unsure if there would be any A or B tier democracies.

Yes, but Trump / Putin can take those votes to the bank, they're not going to abandon Trump for anything Putin says. Putin would be aiming at pro-Ukraine centre-right voters who really dislike Trump and Biden in pretty much equal measure and who Putin thinks might be able to be a little bit swayed by whatever bullshit that comes out of his mouth. I guess in elections the one who wins the middle ground wins everything, and in the Ukraine war the middle ground is largely on the side of supporting Ukraine, I assume. So if you can convince the middle ground that Russia will do better out of the Ukraine war with Biden as president then you've moved the dial towards Trump a bit. If you believe the House will remain Republican in November President Biden will continue to have a shit time trying to get aid for Ukraine for at least another 2 years. And that would be very bad for Ukraine and great for Russia.