In the Wall Street Journal, Australian journalist, Janet Albrechtsen gets on her high horse and tells the US how great Australia is on housing. Apparently, she claims that houses are not collateral in Australia and that if you take out a loan, regardless, you are liable for it. I am no expert on bankrupcy law but I assumed we had them and that these put creditors at some risk.
She goes on … Read more »
ABC Radio National’s Counterpoint seems to draw on the right-wing think tanks for many of its guests. Jennifer Marohasy, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, well known climate change denier, is a regular on ABC radio. Read more »
Is the penny starting to drop about Turnbull? Maybe it’s the polls. The latest one, Morgan, gives a new twist to the non-existent Turnbull ‘bounce’ by reporting a move away from the Liberals since Turnbull took charge. Of course, this modest shift to Labor is as meaningful as the AC Nielsen poll that showed one the other way. It is just that the AC Nielsen was the hook on which the media hung its ‘game-is back-on’ narrative over the last three weeks.
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A few months back i praised the then Liberal shadow minister for education, the guy with the pedophile smile on saying something decent about education. He didn't say anything that amazing, it just took me back because i think it was the first time i had ever heard a Liberal MP say anything about education that wasn't about "SIMPSON AND HIS DONKEY, POSTMODERNISM, UNIONS, LEFT WING BIAS, FLAGPOLES" Read more »
Barrister Peter Faris exposes our secret agenda:
I'm perfectly comfortable with [the anti-terror laws], as are 99% of Australians, certainly all right-thinking Australians. So this is a non-issue, this is a non-debate. These are complaints by the disgruntled lawyers whose clients were convicted, and/or the left wing and their campaign really in support of terror and against Australians' rights not to be murdered. Read more »
The way the proposed bailout is being talked up, you get the impression that the whole world depends on the Bush administration and the Fed coming to the party with the best part of a trillion dollars. The US economy depends on it, our economy depends on it, the capacity of the US to resist wicked people in foreign lands, even the ongoing success story of the Chinese powerhouse (and hence our mining sector) etc. The implication is that we are all being bailed out. Read more »
Typical moral cowardice from the world's newspapers today, declaring the US Presidential Debate held over the weekend "too close to call".
What absolute garbage! My candidate won easily. Read more »
Do you know what I think is most depressing about the reaction to the Republican Administration's plan to give $US 700 billion with no strings attached to one guy who can then give it to the rich guys who've dragged the US into a financial black hole in the hopes that it'll somehow save the system (which otherwise WORKS REALLY WELL) from imploding? It's how downright mean everyone's being about it. Read more »
Whether it’s the three-point improvement recorded by AC Nielsen, or the one-point ‘bounce’ recorded by Newspoll, neither seems to suggest that Turnbull’s accession to the Liberal leadership has done much for the party’s standing. Such a movement for a new leader looks modest by historical standards. Read more »
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Nicholas disapproved of Charlie Gibson’s ‘trick question’ to Sarah Palin about the Bush Doctrine. He was especially struck that the question ‘was asked by an interviewer who then went on to demonstrate that he didn’t know what it was’. Read more »
OK all you ESL teachers out there, any of you know Alaskan? I’m trying to get the following paragraph translated into English: Read more »
“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”
—Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, acceptance speech, September 3, 2008
In response to expansions on this theme from several speakers at the RNC, Christy Hardin Smith on Firedoglake:
Cleaning up a local riverbed or a walking trail with your kid’s scout troop? Republicans think you’re a loser.
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As journalists at The Australian and elsewhere know, many of us bloggerers think they are increasingly shit at their jobs.
I’ve had a quick google of the news on Senator Fielding’s vote against the luxury car tax. The tax would have applied to cars costing over roughly $57K. Senator him say:
“There’s no way that Family First can vote for a bill that’s going to put up a tax for farmers and tourism, that’s just crazy.
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Bolt has been going on a bit of a Sarah Palin binge in the last few days, but just how much does he know about American politics? Apart from the Republicans being the goodies and the dems the baddies. Read more »
Further to what I raised in my post last night, this morning I saw the first article I've seen so far in the mainstream media linking the Bristol Palin pregnancy with her mother, Republican VP nominee, Sarah's position on abstinence-only sex education.
Palin herself said she opposes funding sexual-education programs in Alaska. She has supported abstinence programs in schools. Read more »
Nothing that has happened in the last few weeks has done anything to change my mind on this … pet theory, offered only half in jest: markets should only be reported once a month. Thus: “The Dow went up and down on an almost hourly basis over the past month, the net result has been a slight decline. And now, in sport … ” And we should all walk more. Probably plant a small orchard, and certainly grow our own vegetables. Developing a touch for watercolours would be good. And there you will be, painting under a tree nibbling your own carrot. Oblivious. Read more »
If the latest Essential Research poll was any guide, Rudd's overseas trips are more a concern for the media than the electorate. But his last trip did expose an important weakness of this government. The reason why the latest four days overseas was a problem for the media, compared to the previous forty-three, was that the purpose of the last visit was not clear. The reason why the purpose was not clear was that the original one, climate change, was swept away by events. Read more »
In a recent post, Rafe quoted Frank Shostak as one of the dissenters who are critical of the bailout proposal, not only in its particulars, but in principle. Shostak sees all interventions of this kind as economically damaging as well as adding to the already existing mountain of moral hazard. His recommendation, in brief, is that markets be allowed to find their own way, however painful that path may appear in the short term. Read more »
I thought I do this quick post to note the passing of Tim Dunlop’s Blogocracy Blog at News Ltd.
This will be the last weekend open thread; in fact, it will be the last thread of any sort here at Blogocracy. I have handed in my notice and I am finishing up today. I do this with a great deal of sadness but also with a sense of excitement about new prospects.
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The argument by talking point style that characterizes all sections of the political right in the US has been evident as usual in relation to the financial crisis, so I guess it’s time to play whack-a-mole yet again. The most prominent points I’ve seen are Read more »
It is perhaps not surprising that Newspoll’s reporting of a Labor polling slump in Queensland and South Australia is being seen as another sign of the eternal pendulum working its way back to the coalition now that Labor holds power in Canberra. Read more »
The last two days have been a reminder why psephological sites are a popular alternative to the mainstream press in this country. Once again political journalists have shown that they never let polling numbers get in the way of a good narrative, namely that Nelson was an aberration and the Liberals are back in the game.
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Tony Abbott trotted out the line on Q&A tonight that the ALP is scared of Malcolm Turnbull, hence the attack on him. This meme - which I think originated with the claims that the government were trembling in their collective boots at the spectre of Peter Costello becoming Opposition Leader - is dumb. It was hardly worth going after Brendan Nelson - he did a good enough job on himself. But what politicians do is attack their opponents. It’s hardly rocket science. Read more »
One theme that’s come up in commentary on several threads about the Liberal leadership here is that the political suicide of Brendan Nelson has the potential to put the Howard years to bed at last. One other sign of this is how underwhelming and plain boring many of the “revelations” in Yesterday Man’s Memoirs have been - who really cares now about the accumulated ressentiment of a decade and a bit of internal treachery under the Dear Leader? (Howard’s poisonous human legacy, of course, lingers, as last night’s Four Corners demonstrated). Peter Costello is now history, and if he hasn’t acknowledged that, then the man is a greater and more self-serving fool than even most of us suspect. His book launch - presumably televised still today - is a sideshow. Read more »
Real or not - this is the sort of image projected by Palin. I’m glad it appeals.
Sarah Palin produced a stunning performance when she spoke at the Republican Convention yesterday. She scared the pants off the pseudo-lefty blogospehere. When put to the test, McCain’s “idiotic” and “uniformed” choice of running mate revealed herself to be more than a “confused fundie airhead”. Turns out he knew what he was doing. It’s panic all around. Maybe the End really is nigh! Could The Messiah be running out of luck? Read more »
Watching what i saw of the Republican convention, when they do negative they really go negative. Fred Thompson was one of the few who still has some class by praising McCain instead of the childish taunting of Giuliani and Palin. Read more »
Family First senator, de facto Liberal Steve Fielding, is opposing the Rudd government's luxury car tax. His failure to vote for the bill means it will fall in the Senate. The Greens and Nick Xenophon have already pressed for and received some worthwhile alterations to the bill in the form of exemptions for hybrids and other very fuel-efficient cars, but Fielding has got his knickers in a knot about 'tourism and farmers'. Read more »
Although the AEU has been dismissed as one of the dreaded teachers’ unions by Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, some others have actually been looking at the evidence in the evidence-free policy of the Kevin Rudd “education revolution” narrative. Read more »
Back on July 18 Andrew Bolt said that we should “forget media scares about a melting North Pole”. As with almost everything he said in that article he was wrong. This graph from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows how things are progressing: Read more »
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