News That's Fit To Punt - 06/feb/2017

Australian Kakistocrats

A long time ago, Don Chipp defected from the Liberals to form the Australian Democrats, a party that was eventually brought to ruin by its own careerist apparatchik Natasha Stott-Despoja. Anyway, we are finding out today that careerist, right-wing-nutter, Senator Cory Bernardi is splitting from the Liberal Party to form his own right wing party.

Cory Bernardi is set to upend centre-right politics in Australia and announce on Tuesday that he is resigning from the Liberal Party to head his own conservative movement in a stunning move that will rock the Turnbull government as Parliament returns for the new political year. 

Fairfax Media has learnt that in recent days Senator Bernardi informed his staff of his decision to defect from the party he has represented in the Senate for a decade. He will join the crossbench as an independent conservative senator for South Australia, fearing that populist parties will continue to rise if right-wing voters aren't given a viable alternative.

That's all very interesting as a rationale. He's indicating that there is a crowd of deplorable people out there that need a Fuhrer, so to speak, and he's nominating himself. Its interesting how fascists always think alike that way.

It would be interesting to see if Fatuous George goes with him from the Queensland LNP. It would be a party of pretty awful kinds of reactionary fascists wanting to attract the worst elements of society. I think the term to describe that is 'Kakistocracy'. So it would be appropriate to call themselves the Australian Kakistocrats.

What Aussies Want (But Won't Get)

Pleiades alerted me to this one today. This one is an interesting bit of polling.

In a survey covering dozens of hot-button issues put to a representative sample of Australian voters, a desire to rely less on imports and to manufacture more at home stood out as the number one thing most people agreed on.

In the aftermath of Mr Trump's US election victory, where he strongly advocated reviving that nation's manufacturing industry, nearly 83 per cent of surveyed Australian said they strongly agreed (42 per cent) or agreed (40.5 per cent) with the notion we are too reliant on foreign imports. Only 6 per cent disagreed.

Support for an expansion of Australia's manufacturing sector was robust regardless of age, gender, income or locality.

This striking finding comes from the Political Persona Project, one of the most comprehensive attempts ever made to profile different types of Australians based on their lifestyles, social values and politics. Conducted by Fairfax Media in collaboration with the Australian National University and Netherlands-based political research enterprise Kieskompas, the project revealed seven types of Australians, representative of the seven most dominant patterns of thinking in Australian society.

I hate to break it to people, but this is not what the future holds. Manufacturing jobs are disappearing, even in China. Even Foxconn, the famed manufacturer that produces stuff for Apple sacked their workers and replaced them with robots. Even over in America, Elon Musk's Gigafactory opened and it is entirely 'staffed' by robots. The assembly line jobs are not coming back to Australia or America if they're being lost even in China. In fact the trend has prompted Elon Musk to declare that Universal Basic Income will become the future because he sees no other way giving enough people, enough jobs.

Thus our politicians can posture all they like, but those manufacturing jobs aren't coming back. In fact, even the service sector jobs will also be under threat, and basically humans are going to be superfluous to the economy with the vast majority not being beneficiaries of the said economy.  In the past, the work ethic was used to compel people to work the boring jobs, but if those jobs won't exist, it's going to be harder to sustain a culture on work and valued labour. The near future will be the government flogging people for not getting work that doesn't exist... which of course is what Centrelink is doing already.

More importantly, China is trying to re-gear its economy so that domestic consumption can sustain its own manufacturing behemoth as the combination of automation and rising wages eats into the long standing competitiveness of the Chinese exports. China is going to be hard pressed to keep its manufacturing as time goes on, and then they will have the same question of just what kind of industries are meant to emerge to keep people employed. Against that context, it's hard to imagine manufacturing making a big come back in Australia. If it ever comes back, it will come back as robots.

It's amazing that neither political party is spelling it out, because not being honest with the public is what is going to give rise to the Deplorables who vote for Brexit, Trump and ... well, Abbott.

The Crazy Is Everywhere (Please Don't Go Encouraging It)

I have to say, Paulin Hanson is the herpes infection of Australian politics, a despised, socially embarrassing irritation that keeps coming back.

Senator Hanson told Sunrise on Channel 7 on Monday she was thrilled with the strong performance of One Nation and even speculated that one day she could be Prime Minister.

"To be PM, what an honour that would be. It is a privilege to be the leader of the nation. But it is a tough position and I can understand that you can't please everyone all the time," she said. 

"My job now is to represent the people of Queensland and to build the party. Maybe one day, let down the track, in 15 or 20 years time, who knows what will happen."

It's cloud-cuckoo-land, that conversation where Pauline Hanson is casting herself as a Prime Minister. I guess our society is dumbing down and the more and more of the worst elements are getting their way, but if it ever turns out that One Nation is producing a Prime Minister for this country, it is the end.

News That's Fit To Punt - 08/Nov/2016

On Political Correctness

Don Watson was on Q&A and summed up what the majority of intelligent people think.

Of political correctness, Watson said: "I hate political correctness. I hate anti-political correctness more, though, and I'm much more suspicious of it. It's nearly always an agenda underneath it. So it is the quintessential vexed question and the reason I gave up dinner parties."

This is pretty much it. Unfortunately the solution with dealing with political correctness isn't the kind of harsh reactionary bullshit peddled by those who declare themselves to be anti-political-correctness, but to take it case by case and use discernment and judgment - which is a lot more tedious and boring a task, and hence the retreat from dinner parties.

I don't think the advocates of political correctness correctly understand how idiotic it is to push a one-size-fits-all language experiment as if it deals with the nuances of the world. I don't think the anti-political-correctness groups understand how they too ignore the nuances of what they say. It is like two tone deaf parties trying to shout out competing songs, neither of which are well written but the yelling part seems over-rehearsed.

While we're sort of on the topic, this IPA thing is turning into bit of a joke. Their alumnus-turned-Senator James Paterson is the same idiot who mused about selling off 'Blue Poles' because it wasn't Australian enough, and the other IPA flunky Georgina Downer aren't exactly what you might call scintillating intellects. The IPA clearly is a bastion of neo-liberalist rhetoric practitioners, more than actual *thinking* as advertised by its self identification as a think-tank. This is evinced by just how predictable and monotonous are the entreaties that emerge from the IPA grandees. It has to be some kind of rort that such non-thinking can disguise itself as actual thinking and earn airtime on Q&A. It makes you wonder just how far the Right has sunk in terms of being unable to offer up a principled argument, whether it be economic or sociological. It's the same downward trend that led America to Tea Parties and Trump. Our misery it seems is to deepen further than a mere Abbott Government - the stupid is readily being embraced by the Right, all over the world. it's going to get worse before there's any recovery.

Here's the rest of it from Mr. Watson about political correctness and its strident opponents:

And of the Turnbull government's contortions over the Racial Discrimination Act and the right or otherwise to cause offence, he confessed to a confusion that seems common even to the cause of it: George Brandis.

"Brandis said everyone had a right to be a bigot and everyone has a right to be a fool. On the other hand, it's funny, because in Brandis's workplace, the mildest slur, let alone a religious or a racist slur, would have the president of the Senate pulling that person into order and ruling it out of order. He works in the safest workplace possible. I'm not sure the parliament should have other rights the rest of us don't."

That sounds about right.

George Christensen Is Still Stupid (And Fat!)

Speaking of safe work places...

Victorian Liberal Russell Broadbent used a speech to Parliament on Monday to express regret for not immediately criticising a speech Mr Christensen made in September, calling it a "diatribe about the rise of Islam" and accusing the Queensland National MP of "cuddling up to Hansonite rhetoric". 

"The issues swirling in our multicultural nation are for me public and passionate, but for me they are not personal," Mr Broadbent said.

"The truth is I didn't act as I should have because I am not Muslim, Chinese, Afghan or Greek looking. Not Italian, Sri Lankan or Sudanese. Not Aboriginal."

That's not all that surprising. It's all classic conservative-speak in line with Winston Churchill and all that guff. It's nothing new; this is exactly what somebody in the Liberal Party should be saying if they want to go around calling themselves the Liberal Party. While I myself am a pinko,  I'm inclined to accept an argument from a Liberal Party member citing liberal principles at face value. That should be par for the course.

Of course, George Christensen's response is as predictable as it is (pardon the pun) fatuous.

Mr Christensen hit back on Tuesday, saying Mr Broadbent was like other "politically correct hand wringers" in Parliament.

"Mr Broadbent is part of the elitist set here in Canberra that we find on all sides of politics," he wrote on Facebook.


"This is confirmed by the fact he told Parliament last night that MPs shouldn't reflect the concerns of their electors but instead should be 'leading' them.
"The last time I checked I sat in the House of REPRESENTATIVES not the House of Lords.

"This is why many people are coming to the conclusion that politics is broken: MPs of all political persuasions don't listen much at all to the public's concerns and they hardly ever act upon them." 

Mr Christen said his critics did not hear the word "radical" when he speaks against perceived threats from "radical Islam". 

"Islam is a religion and we have freedom of religion in this country. Radical Islam or Islamism is an ideology and a dangerous one at that.

"Nowhere in the speech Mr Broadbent has criticised me for will anyone find any criticism of Islam," he said.

It's astounding to see a MP talk Parliament like it's a schoolyard with bullies. Here's poor little George Christensen trying to represent his electorate of xenophobic homophobic reactionaries as he imagines all good Australians ought to be, being picked on by the big city politically correct brigade. I know philosophically - as per David Hume - an *is* does not give rise to an *ought*, but in his case we should make an exception and say he ought to give up and go home and the LNP find a better candidate, because he is a truly fatuous moron.

As I wrote above, the problem for the Liberal Party is that their future belongs to the Christensens of this world and not the Broadbents.

The Future Is Not Only Here, It Too Is Stupid

They've started counting the votes overrun the USA. It's looking like Clinton is maintaining her edge in the polls into the voting booths. I myself can't believe that too many women would want to vote for a man as contemptuous of women as Donald Trump, so that's like 50% of the vote right there! You can tell Nate Silver won't be asking me to join his team at FiveThirtyEight anytime soon.

Just how will things turn out after this irascible, execrable, awful US election? Here's a glimpse:

Politico magazine sets out a troubling scenario: "Suppose on Election Night, Pennsylvania's secretary of state announces that Clinton has won the state, and with it the presidency, but Trump says, 'Prove it.' The secretary of state responds, 'That's what the machines tell us'. Trump responds, 'Well, how do I know that the machines weren't hacked?' What is the secretary of state supposed to say then? 

"So who will resolve the conflict if Trump loses Pennsylvania and insists on seeing proof, and the state can't provide it? The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, despite being dominated by Democrats? The US Supreme Court, despite being hamstrung by a vacancy and thus at risk of a 4-4 split? Congress, paralysed by partisan gridlock?"
The extent to which the GOP establishment backs any trump challenge will be the first post-election measure of how seriously the GOP establishment will be in fighting to regain control of the Republican Party. 

A natural segue from a Trump challenge to the result would be for him to assume a leader-of-the-opposition role, to become a freewheeling face and voice of all opposition to the Clinton presidency – its existence and all that she might do. 

When Trump was not running his "rigged" argument in the last days of the campaign, he was crying "constitutional crisis" – warning of back-to-back congressional committees investigating Clinton and likely efforts to impeach her. Loser Trump will be deeply conflicted – wait for the Twitter storm.

Or you know, Donald Trump could suck it up and declare himself a loser. Likely, he won't. And if he starts insisting on these kinds of recounts it's going to be more of the same hell, with no end in sight. 

I guess this is the bit where I join the chorus and say how amazing it is that American politics has come this point of immense stupor, but I don't want to go there. The Republicans had all the opportunity in the world to reform themselves with a coherent policy platform after Mitt Romney's defeat in 2012. In fact, the writing on that wall was there after Obama defeated McCain in 2008. Instead dealing with it as an anomaly, they should have engaged with the challenge as a demographic shift. That they didn't and doubled down twice (call it quadrupled down, I guess) on pretending none of it was real, has resulted in the Republican party identifying itself as the party of racists, fascists, misogynists, rapists, and disgruntled white people without a clue or an education, which is kind of sad.

Of course, this kind of politics is well on our horizon as well. The stupid is heading our way like a wayward iceberg, ready to sink our little ship Democracy.