A Gen-X View of the Universe.
"The Issue Isn't Pussy, It's Monkey" - from The Right Stuff
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Is There Any Other Way To Put It?
Maybe it's because he insists on being on the outer reaches of ideological extremism, it's easy to confuse Barnaby Joyce with somebody who might have a clue about what is good for the country. He's convinced he's a good man, trying to good by his country but his skewed ideology takes him to places where stupid cohabitates with insanity.
That's really all there is to it.
"One of the most disturbing things about this election is just the unbelievable rhetoric coming at the top of the Republican ticket,"... which pretty much sums it up. If you thought Mitt Romney giving a speech about the 47% of Americans being freeloaders was damning, this bit of audio consigns Trump to the ranks of those who truly did not deserve to run.
"I don't need to repeat it. There are children in the room."
A handful of Australian politicians have now expressed their opinions on the Trump scandal ahead of the second presidential debate.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull labelled Trump's comments "loathsome" and said they deserved the "absolutely universal condemnation that they have received".
Minister for Women Michaelia Cash said Mr Trump's comments were "demeaning, they were disappointing and they were wrong, full stop".
Deputy Prime Minister Barnarby Joyce, while labelling Mr Trump's comments as unacceptable, criticised both the Democrats and Republicans for digging up rubbish from each other's past.
"I just think this whole debate in the United States is turning into a dirty, filthy concoction which belies the respect the American people deserve," he told ABC radio.It's not just a bunch of nobodies saying this stuff in the press, and that's a little surprising.
"They're all digging up rubbish from each other's past and I just think the whole thing is pretty unsavoury."
Regular sparring partners Pauline Hanson and Derryn Hinch, two of the most outspoken crossbench senators, have exchanged heated words in the hallways of Parliament House about Trump's attitudes to women.
Fairfax Media's political reporter Fergus Hunter reports that the spat, caught on camera, followed a television interview where the pair were asked about whether Trump should quit the race for the White House.
As the pair left the television studio and walked on to their next Parliament House engagements, Senator Hinch pursued his Senate colleague over her attitude.
"That you, as a woman, could even make any justification for what he has said and what he has done is just ...," he said.
"Well, I didn't condone what he said," responded Senator Hanson.
"No, you said the people of America will decide. If you are even slightly right, then God help the country and God help the world. The man is a sexual predator and he is a disgrace," the former broadcaster said, before getting a lift.Great Googly-moogly. One can only imagine the rest of that conversation. On the one hand you have the crank Pauline Hanson tacitly trying to continue support for the unsupportable Trump, and on the other side you have a shock-jock-turned-pollie looking for some moral high ground; The two of them arguing over a candidate whose approach to elections was to turn it into a reality show. You can't come up with this stuff.
Australian Labor senator Doug Cameron doubts there will be a Trump presidency.
"Why would any woman in America vote for Trump?" he asked.
"The sooner he's defeated, or the sooner he gives in the better."
New Labor MP Emma Husar said Australia would work with whoever was elected, but called Trump a "pig".
"He's an absolute repugnant animal who deserves to have every single Republican who is well-respected over there walk away from him," she told reporters.You know, in the days not so long ago, our politicians would have refrained from saying stuff like this. What the hell is Senator Hussar going to do should the Donald pull out an unlikely win and visit Australia? Hide? Apologise? Yes the Donald is a terrible human being, but is it that necessary for a Senator in Australia to be hammering in nails of his political coffin when others inches own country are doing a perfectly good job? It actually doesn't say anything good about our polity. If lack of restraint is Donald Trump's problem, then our politicians could have done better showing that very same restraint.
The US under a President Trump would withdraw Australia's security guarantee and become a "rogue superpower", according to a scholarly analysis commissioned by Australia's Lowy Institute.
The results would be so dire that the US election is the most consequential for world order since World War II, and the most consequential for the US since the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the report says.
"For the first time one of the two major party nominees for the presidency, Donald Trump, is campaigning on a platform of weakening the core elements of the international order, including the US alliance system and an open global economy," concludes Thomas Wright from the Brookings Institution in Washington.
He says Australia's alliance with the US would suffer directly as a result.
The Republican candidate has said he'd be prepared to re-negotiate or abandon US alliances with Japan, South Korea and NATO, but has not specifically mentioned Australia.
"Honestly, I think you are probably in the same category" as those US allies, Dr Wright told Fairfax Media. "He just hasn't been asked.It's a genuinely scary world where Trump's in charge. There's not a lot of conversation about it in Australia, but there's quite a bit of it in Japan where they've budgeted the possibility of a complete US Withdrawal, and just how much money would have to be spent by Japan to fill that vacuum. In short, Japan would have to re-arm in a way that would bring back a proper military. A Trump-led US pull out to from Japan and Okinawa will necessitate Japan return to being a military power. Presumably the same would apply for Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. Not only would that be a more dangerous world, it would be more expensive in a time when governments don't have money.
In trying to make believe that Donald Trump is not as dangerous as he promises to be, millions of people have resorted to denialism.
On three levels.
First, that he could not possibly win. This remains in the hands of events, of course. But even after he was exposed boasting of sexually assaulting women, US betting odds on Sunday gave him one chance in five of taking the presidency.
Two, that he could not possibly be serious about the things he's said. He does enjoy being outrageous. And on many issues he has had more positions than a yoga instructor.
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The third and final level of denialism is that even if he's elected and even if he tried to press ahead with his policies, the American system would stop him.
Wright agrees that Trump would be frustrated on domestic initiatives by the Congress or Supreme Court.
But on his foreign policy ideas? Wright's analysis paper, to be published by the Lowy Institute on Monday, says: "He will have a freer hand internationally. There is no body or law that can prevent him from aligning himself with Putin, ignoring an ally, or shaking things up with a far-reaching foreign policy statement. And, as we have seen, grievance against the rest of the world is not just a part of Trump's ideology, it is at its very core."Well that's all well and good, but our country has very little sway over the electoral outcome in the USA. So denialism or not, there's solid chance that Donald Trump might still survive this round of scandals and end up POTUS and unleash fresh hell. Should that happen, those Australian politicians who slammed him are going to look really dumb for having done so.
Denialism is no defence. Trump, even now, is possible. He's serious, and some of his most dangerous ideas could become real.
In 2011, the Coalition threatened to not grant a pair to controversial Labor backbencher Craig Thomson when his wife was due to give birth during heated debate on the Labor government's carbon pricing legislation.
"I think that a party, whose principles around looking after people in the workplace ... it's a really sad day when they say if someone's having a baby they're not going to allow them a pair, if someone's sick they're not going to allow them a pair," he said.
"I don't think it was ever as savage as that [during the 43rd Parliament when Julia Gillard was prime minister]. If they ever say that someone, by reason of infirmity, is not going to be allowed a pair then that doesn't say much about a party that prides itself on looking after the worker."Yes, yes it was. It's like these people have neither memory nor conscience! At the time, Tony Abbott took a no-holds-barred approach to his running of the Opposition and only grudgingly gave a pair for Michelle Rowland. Yes, this extract is from those ugly days:
Mr Entsch says he refused the pair on the basis there was no sense of urgency.
He has now issued a statement saying if Ms Rowland's "child is sick then she should leave the Parliament immediately and a pair will be granted".
Speaking to The World Today, Mr Entsch said he granted Ms Rowland leave when he read about the matter in this morning's paper, but labelled her leave request "a stunt".
"The issue of backbench pairs was raised with me first at a meeting I had with the new chief Government whip on Monday," he said.
"Included in that was a request for Mike Kelly. He sought a pairing for a family medical matter, and I said to him at that time, send it over to me but there's not a lot of detail there, I'll need more than that to be able to approve it.
"There was also a request there from Michelle Rowland where she said due to her child being unwell that she'd be grateful if she could return home on Thursday night.
"My comment to Chris [Hayes] at the time was that if the child is unwell, she shouldn't be down here, she should be with her child.
"It seems rather bizarre to be putting in a request on Monday or Tuesday asking for a leave on Thursday night because a child is unwell.
"If it's unwell now, she should be with it.
"No other information was available to me and on the basis of that I said look, I can't approve it on the basis of the information that's been provided to me.
If it had been me and it had been my sick child, I would have been sitting with my sick child. I wouldn't have been spending a week in the Parliament.
"Now later on [Mr Hayes] came back to me and he said to me that Mike Kelly's wife was sick. She'd been in hospital for a couple of weeks and he needed to sit with her. On that basis I changed my position and approved that.
"At no point from that discussion until I read about it in the paper on Thursday morning had there been any further discussion to me or my office in regards to Michelle Rowland.
"If it had been me and it had been my sick child, I would have been sitting with my sick child. I wouldn't have been spending a week in the Parliament.
He said Mr Abbott and manager of opposition business Christopher Pyne were wrong to take the hardline approach against Ms Rowland.
"If those decisions were made, then I think those decisions were also wrong ... and so I don't think two wrongs are ever going to make a right."
Mr Joyce said the government should be "realistic and decent" in operating the Parliament.
Speaking on ABC radio, Ms O'Dwyer said the dispute was a demonstration of unnecessary partisanship.
"It would be turning about 50 years of convention on its head," she said.
"Frankly I think the Australian people are very sick of party political games.
"We want more women in the Parliament, we want people who have got parental responsibilities putting their hand up for Parliament.
"For Labor to turn around and say, where you've got family emergences you are not going to be able to leave ... I think they need to explain why they've made that decision," she said.*Ugh*. Spew.
And more than a third of voters think we spend too much money on Olympic sports: 36% of voters say we spend too much money — with little difference between voters of different parties — while just 11% say we don’t spend enough; 34% say we spend about enough. Fifty-one per cent of voters say it’s very important or quite important that we win gold medals in Rio; 43% say it’s not important. Greens voters are the most underwhelmed by gold medals — just 29% say it’s important, compared to 63% of Liberal voters. Men — 56% — are more likely to think gold medals are important than women (47%), while older voters are less inclined to view them as important than younger voters. But there are fewer differences between people on overall interest in the Olympics — 19% say they have a lot of interest (21% men, 16% women) and 17% say no interest — although Coalition voters are the least likely to say they have no interest, and women are more likely than men — 20% to 15%.
In a statement, Victoria Police confirmed it has received advice from the Department of Public Prosecutions in relation to allegations of historical sexual assaults committed in Ballarat East between 1976 and 1980, and East Melbourne between 1996 and 2001.
"We have received advice from the DPP and will now take the time to consider it," A Victoria Police spokeswoman said.
Government tender documents reveal the Department of Immigration and Border protection paid the Sydney-based Put It Out There Pictures $4.34 million to produce the movie. It paid a company called Lapis Communications a further $1.63 million for to promote and advertise it, bringing the total to $5.97 million.
By contrast, Priscilla cost less than $2 million, Wolf Creek about $1 million and The Castle just $750,000. Even adjusted for inflation, the total budget of all three films works out at about $5.8 million in today's terms.
Filmed across three countries, the ninety-minute drama tells the story of a small group of Afghan asylum seekers trying to get to Australia by boat. A trailer available on YouTube – which has about 1000 views – shows scenes of asylum seekers talking, arguing and crying in Afghanistan, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Put It Out There company director Trudi-Ann Tierney declined to be interviewed. However she has in the past had some interesting things to say about her own work, describing her films as "propaganda".
The former Australian TV executive and actress moved to Kabul to manage a bar but fell into the local TV industry and found herself producing a highly popular soapie, which she wrote about in her book Making Soapies in Kabul.
In the book she said she was ostensibly head of drama "but in truth I was nothing more than a propaganda merchant". She also says her work was part of the "psychological operations" NATO and its allies used to influence the values and behaviour of its Afghan audience in a way that supported the war effort.
The Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is to be targeted by "far right wing" micro parties directing preferences against him in the seat of New England, according to the preference expert Glenn Druery.
Mr Joyce holds the seat by 19.6 per cent but the micro parties revenge for being bundled out of the Senate is expected to greatly enhance independent Tony Windsor's campaign to retake New England.
Mr Druery said on Friday the right wing micro party candidates would also direct preference against sitting Coalition members in at least 10 marginal seats.
Key Liberal fundraisers sounded out major donors to the party about chipping in to buy a house for Senator Arthur Sinodinos after the collapse of a potentially lucrative money-making venture.
The audacious plan originated in early 2013 after Senator Sinodinos relinquished a 5 per cent stake in Australian Water Holdings, a company that later became the focus of a landmark corruption inquiry.
Fairfax Media had earlier revealed Senator Sinodinos' shareholding in a company that employed Eddie Obeid jnr, the son of controversial Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid.How does that even work? Could, say, Terri Butler the current ALP shadow cabinet secretary go to the unions and ask for them to find money to buy her a house? Wouldn't Malcolm Turnbull and his ABCC bill jump up and down and point to such shenanigans as exactly how the unions and the ALP were corrupt? Isn't that what Sinodinos is being accused at this moment? This is some really weird stuff - especially because you see names like Obeid thrown in there, and we know "Obeid" can only mean "corruption" in this part of the English speaking world.
At the time Senator Sinodonis said that although his shareholding was recorded on his parliamentary pecuniary interest declaration it was not publicly registered with the corporate regulator "because it was on a gentleman's agreement".
The documents were suppressed last week by the head of the Independent Commission Against Corruption after lawyers acting for Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos raised concerns they could be subject to parliamentary privilege.
But the suppression order was lifted on Monday after the speaker of the House of Representatives, Bronwyn Bishop, advised the commission that no claim for privilege would be made.
The emails reveal that, in March 2011, while the Coalition was in opposition, Ms Credlin used a major donor to the Liberal Party, Brickworks, as part of Tony Abbott's campaign against the carbon tax.Oh doesn't that look like a bucket of writhing corrupt worms right there? Turns out Lindsay Partridge of Brickworks - who classifies as a Developer - was donating "illicit money" (The Sydney Morning Herald's words not mine BTW) to the NSW Liberals and Federal Liberal Party through back channels. The emails leave a trail of totally awful illustration of how money buys you so much access you get to put words into the mouth of a Prime Minister.
The Hansard record had been changed to correct an error Joyce made on Monday 20 October regarding the government’s drought assistance package. In the speech, Joyce referred to “over” 4,000 people applying for drought assistance. His office changed that to read “nearly” 4,000. They also added a qualifier line that wasn’t originally in the speech, saying that “recipient[s] of the Interim Farm Household Allowance” would also receive the assistance.
Joyce set the record straight in parliament after question time on Monday, saying the “minor edits were made to Hansard by my staff without my knowledge. My staff have been counselled. Consistent with standing orders, I have asked that the changes requested by my office be removed from Hansard before Hansard is finalised.”
It’s not unusual for Hansard records to be submitted to MPs’ offices so staff can check names, spelling and other small facts. But the manager of opposition business, Tony Burke, said the changes went beyond the normal alterations made by politicians and their staff members.
“Of all the things that you can do in this parliament that carry a penalty, the greatest gravity is reserved for deliberately misleading the house,” Burke said. “Whether it was him or his office, somebody appears to have deliberately doctored the official record of what was said in parliament.”
The matter has been referred to the powerful privileges committee.
The minister for immigration personally ordered protection visa numbers be capped for 2014 – to avoid granting permanent protection to any boat arrivals – before his action was ruled unlawful by the full bench of the high court.
Overruled by the judiciary, Morrison has since employed a previously unused “national interest” clause in the Migration Act to issue unchallengeable “conclusive certificates” to refuse visas, but this is also being contested in court.
Lawyers for the minister are back in court in December.
Documents before the high court show Morrison was told on 15 January, in a brief from his department, that his policy objective of never granting permanent protection to boat arrivals could not be achieved “in the medium to long term” but that he could “delay being forced to grant” visas in the short term.
The departmental brief is confidential, but sections of it are reproduced in submissions before the high court.
"That is my hope," he told Parliament, "that just for once it might be possible for us in this Parliament, one side and the other, the national government and the state and territory governments to have a mature debate rather than a screaming match."
The man who coined such high-rotation gems in the political lexicon as "python squeeze" and "wrecking ball" and "hammer blow" in relation to the carbon tax is hardly well placed to expect meek co-operation now that he's in office himself.Yes, it does seem rather hypocritical to be treated like an adult after you've behaved like a five year old for five years. As Moon Zappa famously intoned, "gag me with a spoon!"
Tony Abbott is trying to restrain Barnaby Joyce from blurting nonsense, but who will restrain Tony Abbott?
The opposition leader has shown that he can't tell a kiwi from a kangaroo, a plus from a minus, wreckage from recovery.
In a fundamental error, he has told Australians that we would do well to follow New Zealand's lead in managing our economy.
''There are other countries which have chosen a different path, and there is no evidence that their response has been any less effective than ours,'' Abbott told ABC Radio National yesterday.
''For instance, in New Zealand they have tried to reform their way through the global financial crisis under the new government's leadership, and they seem to be doing pretty well. What Mr Rudd chose to do was to spend his way out of the crisis.''
''He's wrong,'' said the ANZ Bank's chief economist in New Zealand, Cameron Bagrie.
''We became the unlucky country. We're doing better than the US, Britain and Europe, but we're not Australia.''
As the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said in December: ''The crisis and the follow-up of the crisis . . . has been really well managed by the Australian government.''
Indeed, guess which country the conservative Prime Minister of New Zealand, John Key, is holding up as his model? ''Our vision is to close the gap with Australia by 2025,'' Key said.
As the opposition pursues Peter Garrett over implementation of a part of the government stimulus, Abbott's remarks raise the question of whether he understands the policy choices that decide not details but the fate of nations.
Where are the grown-ups?
One thing that became clear in Nashville however was that the 600 or so solid conservative types, mostly middle-aged and many of them women, who shelled out $549 for a ticket to attend were not interested in minor modifications of Mr Obama’s health plan, budget or cap-and-trade legislation. As a name that harks back to the Boston Tea Party suggests, they see themselves as revolutionaries, or counter-revolutionaries. They want to “take back” an America which they say has been going wrong for generations as successive administrations have bloated the federal government and trampled on the constitution and the rights of states and individuals. Many of those attending said that Mr Obama’s election and big-spending, deficit-expanding first year had been a sort of negative epiphany. “Suddenly I’m awake,” said Kathleen Gotto from Colorado Springs, who had not previously been involved in politics.
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For all the talk about practical electioneering, some of those in Nashville teetered on the edge of the extreme and wacky. Thus the newly awakened Ms Gotto said she was researching Mr Obama’s family records for evidence that he was not eligible to be president. Mr Tancredo denounced the “cult of multiculturalism” and accused immigrants of swamping America’s Judeo-Christian values. “This is our country,” he declared to wild cheers, “Take it back!” Andrew Breitbart, the founder of a news site (Breitbart.com), railed in a speech against the hostile “mainstream media” in hock to the far left. At one point he had almost the entire audience on its feet, turned to the reporters and cameramen at the back of the room, pumping fists and yelling “USA, USA”
