Quick Shots 14 Dec 2021

Yikes It's December Already 

Sorry I've been away. I've been meaning to write about a few things along the way but life has a way of just making you do other stuff than just blog. 

Through the 24months of this Pandemic so far, I've been re-mixing and re-mastering stuff. I'll have a new album of songs coming out in March next year. It's all brand new songs - nothing from the dim dark past or back catalog of stuff. But I've also been going back in time and I've gone through the stuff I did over on iCompositions between 2012 and 2014. It's like 50 tracks I'm sorting through as I do other projects so I've been stupid-busy. 

I Got Asked About Hillary Rodham Clinton

I think HRC must have some book coming out because she's started to surface in the media a bit more. She made some post about the speech she would have given if she had won the Presidency. Look, I get it. It was an awful moment not just for her, but for America and the free world. The Donald Trump Presidency was like a populist enema that collectively gave us the shits non-stop for 4years, culminating in the storming of the US Capitol. The shit, so to speak, has been running long and hard. So believe me as somebody who would have preferred not to go through that said shit that a HRC Presidency would have been much more preferable to the shit-fight we went through. 

Be that as it may I think HRC in 2016 might have been the worst candidate the Dems might have settled upon - orthodoxy or not. I know, that in the end Bernie Sanders is just too weird for the Democratic power brokers and that it really felt like it was her turn. And yet she proceeded to lose the Rust belt to DJT, and that was that. There was an inherent problem in sticking a candidate up whose husband effectively sold out the Rust Belt with NAFTA. She couldn't very well get up there and disown and lambast Bill Clinton's Presidency, could she? And in any other election where the Republicans put up a candidate like a Bob Dole or a John McCain, maybe Hillary might have slid by that issue; but of course she was up against a populist monster who managed to successfully mine that exact resentment against 'the elites' - which undeniably, of whom she was one.

So all in all HRC had to be a case of the right candidate, wrong election. 

The question I got asked was whether I thought HRC was right. Of course she was right. But if the question concerned whether it had to be her to save the day in November 2016, we now know that was not the case. And again, I'm not saying this as a Bernie Sander supporter - I'm saying, of all the candidates in all the Democratic Party machine apparatus, they had to insist on HRC as the candidate in the exact election she was the worst candidate to win back the Rust Belt. She was right about America, but she was wrong about the legitimacy of her candidacy. However, I don't think she'll ever wrap her head around that. Because if she did, she sure as hell won't be coming out with some book now. 

Comic Book Movies

I've decided I'm okay with comic book movies. I know Martin Scorsese spoke up against the And then it was Ridley Scott. And then eventually it was Jane Campion who offered up the critique that she just hates them. Okay, if we had any pride as film makers, it would rankle that that such toy fiction - as finely tuned and amazingly honed as they are - would blow away what serious adults are trying to do in fiction. Then it occurred to me we're still talking movies. Movies are populist. If the crowd loves it, then there's probably something in that. As it is, the corporate entertainment machine is trying to make Star Wars films to make lots of money and none of those recent ones have exactly won over the crowds. So whether it's SciFi or comic book movies or serious drama, there's a certain level at which good, is good. And maybe even that kind of bland ordinary unassuming good, is good enough for the crowd.  

The thing that tipped me off to this conversion in my head wasn't Jane Campion telling us how she "just hates them" and me wincing when I read that. It's the fact that I enjoy them in spite of my general blasé contempt for comic book movies. I know it's only comic book stuff where Spider-Man swings from buildings and stops the bad guy. But if I'm being honest - on a visceral level - I'm probably going to enjoy that spectacle much more than 'The Irishman' or 'The Last Duel' or 'The Power of the Dog'. I can guarantee you that these serious movies don't and won't hit an emotional high mark that Spider-Man likely will. And maybe that makes me really anti-intellectual. But if I'm the anti-intellectual for liking Spider-Man over what Marty, Ridley and Jane have got on offer, I would like to posit that maybe they're just pseudo-intellectuals. After all, as Hitchcock put it so eloquently, "it's only the movies!"

Yes, for fuck's sake. 

Trump Wins! (The World Loses!)

If The Cubs Can Win, Anybody Can Win This Year

And by anybody we mean even the much reviled Donald Trump.

Where do you start? I guess we start by the inordinate amount of uncertainty that went into the election day itself this year. Contrary to the two previous elections, FiveThirtyEight led by Nate Silver was incredibly mealymouthed with his prognostication. He cited just how many people were 'undecided', and that the distribution of Hillary Clinton's votes were too concentrated in urban areas, leaving the rural electorates wide open for speculation. This view stood in stark contrast to the definitive pronouncement he was able to make going into the two Obama elections, and so therein we could see ample ground for the kind of seismic shift we saw.

The way things turned out, all those 'undecided' people were in fact Trump supporters. They were just too embarrassed to tell the pollsters they were actually going to vote for Trump, and therein lies the clue to understanding what the hell just happened. The media collectively created an environment where it was shameful to support Donald Trump by stigmatising him with everything from racism through to sexual assaults (hey, count me in on the guilty side there), and they did such a good job of it, the people who agreed with key planks of his platform felt ashamed to say they supported a man who was allegedly all these terrible things.

Now, let's not get too carried away. There is nothing sensible about most of Trump's policy platform. But it was very direct and very simple; clearly simple enough that the lefthand side of Bell curve could understand. And just as it happened with the Brexit vote in the UK, all it took was enough from the right hand side of the Bell curve to defect to the stupid side for catastrophic electoral consequences to unfold. In that light, it's amazing how the media convinced itself Hillary Clinton was actually a good candidate.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, A Candidate From Hell

I was a Hillary Clinton backer back in 2008. Obama blew her away in June that year and the rest is history. One of the frustrating things about Hillary in that campaign was how she couldn't articulate a position that transcended bits of policy positions cobbled together. She might have been great with details, but she had no way to present the big picture. It stood in stark contrast, not only with Obama who came in with a big picture vision of hope, but also her husband an ex-President Bill who was marvellous at presenting a picture of where he wanted to go.

After that election, I browned off from the idea of Hillary Clinton as presidential candidate. This year's run was always on the cards since that defeat in July, but you never really saw that she became a better candidate in the intervening 8years. The public office record of Hillary Clinton is actually much shorter than her public profile. In 2002 she became a Senator for New York state, and ran for POTUS in 2008, after which she managed to get a seat at the cabinet table for four years. During which time she presided over rather hawkish events in Libya as well as Syria with a dose of shooting Osama bin Laden. So, really she had 10years as a public official, added on to which she was First lady for 8years, but that's really not a political office so much as a ceremonial seat. She was short on experience, on top of being a not very good salesperson for her policy position.

And yet, this is the person the Democratic National Committee chose to line up behind, and to the extent that they gerrymandered their own system so well (i.e. by hobbling Bernie Sanders' legitimate campaign), the DNC in fact set the whole world up for this marvellous bit of political failure we see today.

The DNC has a lot to answer for. Yet, it's clear Hillary was the Regressive Left's candidate from day one, and here we are, watching that project burned down to the ground. I'm just wondering if any of these Regressive Left types are going to take note, let alone understand the significance.

Because Bernie Would've Beaten Trump

This was one of the crucial things about the Bernie Sanders candidacy - as an outsider, he was in position to take a sledgehammer to the machine that made so many voters unhappy and outside. Of course, that would have meant the DNC would lose out on its vested interests as well, so they decided the safer candidate was Hillary Clinton. It overlooked the fact that the electorate was looking for a big change. Theft that the electorate was looking for a big change probably goes to the heart of what's wrong with the DNC. If you ask the DNC, they would tell you that the 8 years of Obama's presidency were an outright success. If Obama's presidency were such a success, why are there so many people unhappy and on the outside?

Obama's presidency was a massive attempt to shore up the status quo in the wake of the GFC. If you lost your life savings the GFC, and then never recovered it during the anaemic growth of the last8 years, then you might not be so positively disposed towards President Obama. Combine that with being called a racist any time you object to any of his policies, and maybe you start getting a picture of how vast swathes of white flyover-land might have decided they wanted a big change. As an encore to the Obama administration, the DNC managed to pick the candidate who promised in no uncertain terms that she was for more of the same.

As for Bernie, he was addressing the grassroots and they were responding. It is not hard to believe that those same people might have voted Trump to punish the DNC, or simply stayed home. The DNC will want to blame them, but they would be wrong. They had a candidate who could make inroads into the real plight of the American people, and they decided they wanted the pre-fab apparatchik. They've only got themselves to blame.

End Of The Clinton Dynastic Politics

I write the subheading, mostly in hope. Just as we don't need more Bushes, we don't need more Clintons running for high office. Age would suggest it would be unlikely that Hillary would run for office again. I guess Bill would want Chelsea to run for President one day, but that's exactly the problem, the dynastic politics begets the kind of corruption that hobbled Bernie Sanders' campaign, which in turn hobbled the Democratic Party. You don't get something for nothing in the world of politics.

The election machine of the Clintons would likely stay in place, and maybe somebody can ride upon it to challenge Trump next time; that's entirely conceivable, for it's hard to imagine the Clintons bowing out of politics completely, or for them to abandon the apparatus that so efficiently delivered Hillary to the doorstop o theWhite House this time. Yet in all honesty, we're sick of the dynastic politics and the American electorate is showing signs it wants to move on.

It's Not One Thing

There's this vein of critique doing the rounds that the Trump victory proves that America is one racist nation, or that it is one sexist nation. I would warn people from trying to compress the entire meaning of the Trump victory into a trite one-liner.

I confess I do find it a little amusing that the women who are shocked by this are saying this like this:

Many women in the empty Javits Center concluded that the country was sexist and rejected Clinton in a large part because she was a woman -- and was now headed backwards when it came to women’s rights.

“If Hillary Clinton were a man, tonight would be a much different night,” said Dana Nicolette, who manages a wellness center on Martha’s Vineyard. “Do people not know what autonomy over our own body means? They haven’t read history books? I have no words. I have no idea. I don’t know how as a woman, you could vote for that person who I don’t even want to say their name right now.”

Maybe the electorate simply don't buy any of your discourse? I know, it's hard to believe, but maybe the brand of academic feminism that places such an importance on Hillary being a woman is exactly the wrong kind of intellectual tool to understand what people didn't vote for her. My two cents would be to suggest that it's not that these people don't value these things, it's that they value other things more - and a vote for one or the other candidate is an incredibly un-nuanced tool to dissect thought.

Not even the KKK are voting Trump on just the race issue alone. They are likely voting on a whole range of issues. Similarly, there are non-racists voting for Trump and for that matter non-sexists, non-misogynists and non-capitalists even. The above kind of academic feminist discourse attempts to label-and-shame these people when it is exactly what foments their resentment towards the 'elite' who push Hillary Clinton their way.

Indeed, the label-them-and shame-them routine that has become the staple of the internet era radical feminism is in essence driving more people away from their candidate than it attracts them. The reductio ad absurdum of such electorate support is 100% of the women vote, but 0% of men vote. You'd still only get to a split result with 50% of the population; and frankly presidential politics has to be much bigger than that.

Equally it can be observed that if Trump's support truly were white, male, and old, he shouldn't have enough of a constituency to get to 25%. The fact that he got over 50% in enough electorates clearly demonstrates he wasn't a candidate that could be boxed into this kind of discourse. It's not like Trump is some Mens' Rights Activist either.

Making Trains Run On Time

Before Mussolini tagged up with Hitler, he had along run presiding over a growing Italian economy. The fascist playbook of state and corporate interests looking for synergies while marching a lot of people around actually did okay. Could have done better? Possibly - but there were real reasons why Fascism found adherents around the globe, as a competing ideology to communism. Of course, Mussolini's better moments have been summarised as "he made the trained run on time," so we should all take it with a grain of salt.

Now, I'm NOT a fan of fascism, but in President Donald Trump, we have to understand that his policies are fascist, and so we have to parse how this might play out. If we're lucky, he won't appoint himself dictator, and when he does leave office, he just might have presided over some economic growth. That wouldn't be something to sniff at; but to get to that point, he's going have to break some eggs in the classic fascist playbook. One imagines Wall Street is in for a surprise.

I'm also not being hopeful; instead I'm offering up the tiny possibility that Trump's time in power is not going to be a total and utter loss.

Having to go through Mussolini's track record to find some hope is a tough call, I admit.

Twilight Zone Of Politics

We're So Screwed It's Not Funny

Just check out this list:

• The first day of the new sitting week began with a government MP calling for Labor leader Bill Shorten to resign if Donald Trump is elected US president.
• One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts then released a 42-page document claiming the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology corrupted climate data and that global warming is an international scam.
• Roberts was flanked by fellow climate science deniers, Tony Heller (left) and Tim Ball. The latter claimed the ~global climate conspiracy~ was all the fault of a group of elites called the “Club of Rome” and an international businessman named “Maurice Strong”.
• It was later discovered that Tony Heller blogs under the pseudonym Steve Goddard and has written conspiracy theories about the events surrounding the Sandy Hook massacre.
• When journalists at the event started asking questions about fellow One Nation senator Rod Culleton, party adviser James Ashby yelled at the media and the press conference was shut down.
• The Senate spent most of the morning discussing the plebiscite on same-sex marriage. But with Labor, the Greens, the Nick Xenophon Team and Derryn Hinch all pledging to vote against the bill, it’s going to fail.
• During that debate, David Leyonhjelm dismissed the argument that the plebiscite will be hurtful to LGBTI people, comparing it to Martin Luther King halting his advocacy for fear of hurting “psychologically fragile Negroes”.
• OK, back to the House of Representatives… government MP (and former whip) Scott Buchholz accidentally seconded a motion criticising his own government for “short-changing pensioners”.
• Then One Nation senator Rod Culleton got up in the Senate and delivered a bizarre speech defending himself from claims he’s actually ineligible to serve as a senator because of a previous conviction (since overturned) for stealing a truck key.

And if you go to the link, there's more!

Like, uh, what the fuck has happened to our polity to throw up such idiots into seats of power and high office of this land? This is the like the Peak Stupid, the Apotheosis of Climactic Idiocy, The Apocalypse of Dumb, the Twilight of the Idles, the Dance the Sugarplum Morons... you get the picture. If you had a competition to see how much stupid you could fit in a Volkswagen and replaced the venerable wagon with Parliament House, well then you'd get what we seem to have right now running our nation. Really, never has the fine line between *running* and *ruining* been so fine.

It's Coming To An End

We can almost see the finish line. It'll be about 36hours from now before we'll know who is going to be the next POTUS. At this point the smart money - and I do emphasise the smart bit - is on Hillary Clinton. The dumb, deplorable, miserable, crass, ill-educated money is on her opponent Donald Trump, from whom if we never heard anything ever again after this election, would be too soon. 

The FBI have now cleared Hillary. This has been one of those issues that make you scratch your head; especially the zombie movie like second life this idiotic email server business got in the wake of James Comes announcing that there might be something in Anthony Weiner's laptop that might pertain to Hillary. Well of course there *might*, seeing that Weiner is the rare talent who combined his name into his behaviour and managed a political career of some description while doing so and -let's face it- being so. If anybody's computer could possibly connect dick pics with blown covers on classified information, it would be Anthony Weiner's laptop. 

I have to say it's a brave officer who wants to even touch said machine. 

Anyway, what surprises me about the FBI is that they want to search through that stack of emails in search of something upon which to indict Hillary Clinton. The better stack would be the stream of emails that Wikileaks are releasing. 

JOHN PILGER: In terms of the foreign policy of the United States, that’s where the emails are most revealing, where they show the direct connection between Hillary Clinton and the foundation of jihadism, of ISIL, in the Middle East. Can you talk about how the emails demonstrate the connection between those who are meant to be fighting the jihadists of ISIL, are actually those who have helped create it. 

JULIAN ASSANGE: There’s an early 2014 email from Hillary Clinton, not so long after she left the State Department, to her campaign manager John Podesta that states ISIL is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Now this is the most significant email in the whole collection, and perhaps because Saudi and Qatari money is spread all over the Clinton Foundation. Even the U.S. government agrees that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIL, or ISIS. But the dodge has always been that, well it’s just some rogue Princes, using their cut of the oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves.
But that email says that no, it is the governments of Saudi and Qatar that have been funding ISIS. 

JOHN PILGER: The Saudis, the Qataris, the Moroccans, the Bahrainis, particularly the Saudis and the Qataris, are giving all this money to the Clinton Foundation while Hilary Clinton is Secretary of State and the State Department is approving massive arms sales, particularly to Saudi Arabia. 

JULIAN ASSANGE: Under Hillary Clinton, the world’s largest ever arms deal was made with Saudi Arabia, [worth]more than $80 billion. In fact, during her tenure as Secretary of State, total arms exports from the United States in terms of the dollar value, doubled. 

JOHN PILGER: Of course the consequence of that is that the notorious terrorist group called ISIL or ISIS is created largely with money from the very people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation. 

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yes. 

JOHN PILGER: That’s extraordinary. 

JULIAN ASSANGE: I actually feel quite sorry for Hillary Clinton as a person because I see someone who is eaten alive by their ambitions, tormented literally to the point where they become sick; they faint as a result of [the reaction]to their ambitions.
She represents a whole network of people and a network of relationships with particular states. The question is how does Hilary Clinton fit in this broader network? She’s a centralising cog. You’ve got a lot of different gears in operation from the big banks like Goldman Sachs and major elements of Wall Street, and Intelligence and people in the State Department and the Saudis. 

She’s the centraliser that inter-connects all these different cogs. She’s the smooth central representation of all that, and ‘all that’ is more or less what is in power now in the United States. It’s what we call the establishment or the DC consensus. One of the more significant Podesta emails that we released was about how the Obama cabinet was formed and how half the Obama cabinet was basically nominated by a representative from City Bank. This is quite amazing.

So yes, that would be the person who is most likely going to be the next POTUS. Amazingly, the FBI won't be investigating this stack of emails because it wants to busy itself with the other emails. Unbelievable. 

I sure as hell don't want to be on the side of Trump, but honest to goodness, Hillary Clinton is a really tough sell as the 'good' alternative to the 'bad' choice of Donald Trump.

Not A Circus, A Dumpster Fire

Can It End Now Please?

Well, the second debate came and went and it was divisive and crazy. I can't believe that there are people who thought Trump was a good idea when he was labelling Mexicans rapists, denigrating the disabled, accepting support from Ku Klux Klan members, and all the other crazy antics like the 3am tweets, abusing a Miss Universe contestant (a woman he once defended no less) - and then turning around to abandon Trump because he talks incredibly disrespectful-dirty shit when he thinks nobody's recording. It's actually hard to tell if that's worse than continuing to support the man in spite of all the crazy plus the leaked audio. At least sticking with the man shows loyalty. If they're abandoning him now after this recent scandal, then it's really hard to understand what exactly they stand for but that they draw the line at white women. Which is fine, but it's no endorsement of these people's character, because if one was willing to line up with the lunatic extremist and populist that is Trump while ignoring all the signs that he was a contemptuous human being full of bile, resentment, class entitlement, race entitlement and gender entitlement, it doesn't say much for one's judgement or character, does it?

That's all on the one side which is hellaciously awful.

But giving the Clintons a pass because Hillary isn't Bill is disingenuous; the Clinton Foundation and its inner workings would be problematic tif Bill and Chelsea were to remain part of it, and you'd think the American public would wonder out loud if having Bill back in the White House as a househusband on the loose was really what America wants. Is Bill a reformed philanderer or a better philanderer at covering his tracks? Not that it really matters where he sticks his genitals but last time he was in the White House he made a spectacular job of making it the world's business. If Hillary is in the White House, it stands to reason she brings with her the baggage of the first Clinton presidency.   Will the more serious questions like the dismantling of the Glass-Steagle Act be revisited? Can Hillary reinstate it without damaging Bill's legacy? Highly unlikely; and if not, then is this a decent candidate to be having? What about all those leaked memos over at Wikileaks confirming she' a hawk and wants to go boots and all into war over Syria? Is that even safe?

The only reason she looks reasonable is because her opponent is Donald Trump, Man of Abject Intellectual Misery. A pile of hot steaming shit on a plate next to a poisoned pizza can make the poisoned pizza look like the palatable option.

It is an utter failure on the part of the Republicans that they couldn't come up with single credible candidate to face Clinton this year. The irony is that her toughest opponent was Bernie Sanders in the primaries. All this speaks volumes to the credibility loss trickle-down economics and globalisation and all these other Reaganomic claptrap economics has suffered. It also underlines the intellectual failure of the neo-con framework for government and the fact that the Republicans could not repel the insurrection from the right bodes ill for its future. I guess the problem now is what is going to replace it. If the Tea Party was an early harbinger of the shitstorm to come, then maybe we shouldn't be hoping for the demise of the Republican Party.

I do pity the American electorate. Neither candidate is exactly enticing. One is a disaster, while the other proves the failure of American politics through her victory - which is pyrrhic to say the least. Yet by extension of her powers, American politics affects us all, and so it is that this tragedy belongs to us all.

Midnight In The Garden of Democracy And Failure

Sign O' The Times

It didn't take long...

Hey, it's a new day. 

The obits are coming in for Bernie Sanders' campaign. This one here is worth the read, even though it hails from Rolling Stone.

Democratic voters tried to express these frustrations through the Sanders campaign, but the party leaders have been and probably will continue to be too dense to listen. Instead, they'll convince themselves that, as Hohmann's Post article put it, Hillary's latest victories mean any "pressure" they might have felt to change has now been "ameliorated." 

The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide. 

This is especially the case now that the Republican Party has collapsed under the weight of its own nativist lunacy. It's exactly the moment when the Democrats should feel free to become a real party of ordinary working people.
But they won't do that, because they don't see what just happened this year as a message rising up from millions of voters. 

Politicians are so used to viewing the electorate as a giant thing to be manipulated that no matter what happens at the ballot, they usually can only focus on the Washington-based characters they perceive to be pulling the strings. Through this lens, the uprising among Democratic voters this year wasn't an organic expression of mass disgust, but wholly the fault of Bernie Sanders, who within the Beltway is viewed as an oddball amateur and radical who jumped the line. 

Nobody saw his campaign as an honest effort to restore power to voters, because nobody in the capital even knows what that is. In the rules of palace intrigue, Sanders only made sense as a kind of self-centered huckster who made a failed play for power. And the narrative will be that with him out of the picture, the crisis is over. No person, no problem.

Yep, it'll go by like it was on skates. The Democrats don't want to deal with this because dealing with it  will turn the party inside out an if you're on the inside, it's always better to stay there. The way it is with most institutions is that the institutional culture is preserved at the expense of the mission statement. The Democratic Party is clearly exhibiting signs of a thoroughly ossified institution. It is going hand in hand with the Republicans who are also ossified to the point of immobility, and so cannot catch out a rogue insurgent candidate like Donald Trump. American democracy is deeply in the poo.

We're not exactly too behind in Australia if this year's Federal election is anything to go by.

Julia, Hillary, And The Things That Maybe Don't Matter Like Legitimacy

I mentioned Hillary's candidacy in relationship to Julia Gillard's prime ministership yesterday and had some more thoughts about all this. I'll be honest, I didn't think Julia Gillard really established her  legitimacy with the electorate as evinced by the hung parliament of 2010- very much like how Malcolm Turnbull has failed to establish legitimacy for his government.

Generally speaking politicians and legitimacy is a funny thing. It's even harder in a democracy where leaders come to power on vote and not by the sword. Consider Machiavelli's take on legitimacy.


So who comes to mind as not having solved the legitimacy problem in a democracy? Kristina Keneally as NSW Premier was a fraught figure because she too always had the problem of legitimacy in the eyes of the public. I've been told by those who worked the Department of the Premier how on top of her brief Keneally was and how sharp she was in negotiations with Kevin Rudd (something which Kevin Rudd himself conceded), and even then I never warmed to the premier who got the nod on the back of failed Premiers and backroom deals. But then again Nathan Rees and Morris Iemma weren't exactly people who sparkled with legitimacy. That entire musical-Premier-chairs phase of the NSW Labor Government was strange and demented, infested as it was with Morbid Obeidity to boot. Yes Eddie Obeid had a marvellous way of subtracting from the sum total of legitimacy right across the board.

In that light, and while we're talking about female politicians  I do want to say I liked Anna Bligh a lot. I wish she'd run for Federal office. I liked Joan Kirner - I think she got a raw deal. And going back a fair way, I liked Janine Haines; I was indifferent to Dr. Carmen Lawrence (I sure didn't dislike her but the Easton Affair was troubling); and well, Cheryl Kernot was great until she jumped ship to the ALP - again legitimacy was an issue there. The Anna Bligh thing was interesting because at the hight of the Brisbane flood waters, Anna Bligh looked so much more the states-person than the visiting PM, Julia Gillard. In fact it made Julia Gillard look so bad, it probably wasn't worth her while standing next to Bligh in the big press conference, which was surprising.

The point is, regardless of gender, it's important to look like you got your office fair and square and in the right way. You could be an utter dickhead like Campbell Newman, but at least you have to hand it to the dickhead that he stormed to office on an agenda that was voted in in a landslide. He was eminently despicable, but while he was in office, legitimacy wasn't an issue. It's deeply ironic, isn't it?

Which brings me back to Hillary Clinton who basically has a legitimacy issue not unlike the one Julia Gillard carried through her tenure as PM. Now that it's out in the open that the DNC manipulated the system to Hillary's advantage and did its best to bury Bernie Sanders, she's never going to escape the lack of legitimacy this 'win' gives her. Now, legitimacy is one of those iffy things where it's hard to pin it to a person or an office, but when the role is head of government, you sort of need that thing to beat over the heads of your opponents both domestic and foreign. Indeed, Barack Obama does an excellent job of wielding his legitimacy to beat up on the GOP.

Things worked out the way they did because clearly the Clintons own the Democratic Party and the party owes the Clintons too much not to give Hillary the nod. To that end it burnt its own constituents as well as the youth vote, condescending and patronising them as they disenfranchised them. Legitimacy is in short supply now. She might be the world's best candidate, but we've seen what happens to a head of government who struggles to establish legitimacy. To that end, it's just like the Rolling Stone article linked above says, the Democrats have poisoned themselves, just to deliver the nomination to Hillary Clinton. We'll see if the poison ends up killing them.

Wall Street And The Dems

Wall Street told Hillary Clinton that she couldn't pick Elizabeth Warren as her running mate.

NEW YORK — Big Wall Street donors have a message for Hillary Clinton: Keep Elizabeth Warren off the ticket or risk losing millions of dollars in contributions.
In a dozen interviews, major Democratic donors in the financial services industry said they saw little chance that Clinton would pick the liberal firebrand as her vice presidential nominee. These donors despise Warren’s attacks on the financial industry. 

But they also think her selection would be damaging to the economy. And they warned that if Clinton surprises them and taps Warren, big donations from the industry could vanish. 

“If Clinton picked Warren, her whole base on Wall Street would leave her,” said one top Democratic donor who has helped raise millions for Clinton. “They would literally just say, ‘We have no qualms with you moving left, we understand all the things you’ve had to do because of Bernie Sanders, but if you are going there with Warren, we just can’t trust you, you’ve killed it.’” 

Most big donors don’t want Warren on the ticket because she is the most accomplished anti-Wall Street populist in the Democratic Party. But many also think her presence would drive a potential Clinton administration too far to the left, poison relations with the private sector from the start and ultimately be damaging to the economy.

And so it came to pass that Elizabeth Warren wasn't the VP nominee and running partner to Hillary Clinton. I'm sure it's some kind of pragmatism but this is the very kind of deal that browns off people  from the Clintons. Then some person tells you it's because you're a misogynist. How can you be a misogynist if you want a woman to be a VP to go with the female POTUS candidate?! 

More importantly, the fact that Hillary couldn't run it past Wall Street tells you just how much Wall Street has it all over the politicians. Wall Street got TARP and the bail out in 2008 because it was Wall Street. Did you get a bail out? No? See what I mean? Jokes aside, all this proves that there's too much money in US politics as well as outline the unlikelihood of Bernie anders getting up as the nominee. If people really want the political revolution, we're all going have to dig in a lot harder to dig out these banksters.

View From The Couch - 28/Jul/2016

What Need For Terror Laws?

Since 9/11, all the western societies have seen a steady erosion of privacy and rights as governments have sought more powers to contain the terror threat. Each time a bill has come up, more rights have been curtailed and more powers given to the security forces of the western world. At this juncture, it is worth asking if these powers are actually helping at all.

Consider Man Monis, our very own terrorist dickhead. The AFP had him on their watchlist and he fell off. Then he acquired a gun and did what he did at the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place, Sydney. The argy-bargy to do with the Lindt Cafe Siege has been going for a number of weeks now, and nobody exactly has explained how Monis slipped off the AFP's watch list and nobody has reported just how Monis got hold of a weapon.

This is notable because since 2007's APEC in Sydney, there have been APEC Anti-Terror laws in place without a sunset clause. We're all still in danger of being arrested without charge on alleged suspicions of terror links and being refused a lawyer - because hey, we don't have Miranda Rights in this country, and that's all okay by our state governments as well as Federal Government.

And yet with all this great power (and as follows Spiderman "comes great responsibility"), the AFP completely missed Monis. The NSW police had no chance as it went around looking for drugs at festivals rather then round up Monis with its great powers.

The same goes for the bastard who shot up the gay bar in Orlando, the truck driving bastard in Nice, the neck-slitting bastard in Normandy, and all the bastards who participate in the big Paris terror attack. Each and every one of them it turned out was on the radar of the authorities and somehow slipped the net togged through and do their dastardly bastardly deeds.

So today, we must ask, what good are these powers given to our police? What good is us citizenry giving up our privacy and rights to these governments whose security apparatuses still fail to stop these bastards anyway? Ed Snowden tells us the governments of the world are listening into everything we say on the phone, everything we write on emails an so on. With all this omniscience, you'd think they'd be doing a better job of stopping these bastards.

There's even a school of thought out there that they want these attacks to happen so they can justify their vast power and surveillance budgets. It's looking more believable by the day as more anymore terror attacks happen, only be revealed the perp was on some watch list but dropped out.

I say, we need a drastic re-think of these terror laws because they seem to be doing sweet fuck all. really. The bastards keep getting through. I am not fearful, I am angry at the rights of mine they are curtailing.

Privatisation Killed The Economic Growth

Pleiades alerted me to this one. The ACCC thinks privatisation kills economic growth.

Selling public assets has created unregulated monopolies that hurt productivity and damage the economy, according to Australia's consumer and competition tsar, who says he is on the verge of becoming a privatisation opponent.  

In a blistering attack on decades of common government practice, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims said the sale of ports and electricity infrastructure and the opening of vocational education to private companies had caused him and the public to lose faith in privatisation and deregulation.

"I've been a very strong advocate of privatisation for probably 30 years; I believe it enhances economic efficiency," Mr Sims told the Melbourne Economic Forum on Tuesday.

"I'm now almost at the point of opposing privatisation because it's been done to boost proceeds, it's been done to boost asset sales and I think it's severely damaging our economy." 

Mr Sims said privatising ports, including Port Botany and Port Kembla in NSW, which were privatised together, and the Port of Melbourne, which came with conditions restricting competition from other ports, were examples where monopolies had been created without suitable regulation to control how much they could then charge users.

"Of course you get these lovely headlines in the Financial Review saying 'Gosh, what a successful sale, look at the multiple they achieved'," Mr Sims said.
"Well of course they bloody well did: the owners factored in very large price rises because there's no regulation on how they set the price of a monopoly. How dopey is that?"

Nice to see it told straight out for once. The question is will anybody listen? Or is the greed factor just too good to let go?

No Country For Old Warhorses

Here's something on Kim Carr.

In 2006 Carr cultivated an alliance between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, convincing them they should join forces to depose Beazley. 

In government he supported Gillard's leadership challenge before later becoming a leading agitator for Rudd. 

"Shorten is the first leader he hasn't ratted on," a colleague says.
Gillard dumped Carr from cabinet after many colleagues concluded he had been leaking damaging stories to the media. Carr, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has denied this charge. 

Carr's rivalry with Albanese deepened during his leadership battle with Shorten in 2013. After winning the vote among Labor members, Albanese would have become leader if left-wing MPs locked in behind him. 

A furious Albanese has told colleagues Carr promised him his support only to vote for Shorten and encourage his allies to do the same. Carr denies reneging on any deal.
Laurie Ferguson, a left-wing Labor MP who retired at at this election, says the move against Carr was clear "payback" from Albanese and his allies.

It's probably not right to say this from a clinical perspective because I'm not qualified (educated yes, but not qualified) and Kim Carr is not my patient but I'll say it anyway. That prone-to-dramas thing is a dead giveaway for a personality disorder. It is conceivable that the schizo-genic nature of the ALP in the past two decades could be a function of this guy being an influence broker.

Speaking of this kind of thing...

No Country For Old Female Politicians

Okay, a bit distasteful, but only because it's in reference to the sexism referred to here.

At the Republican Convention last week, attendees had the chance to wear their sexist derision for Hillary Clinton with pride. Just outside, hawkers sold T-shirts emblazoned with "Trump vs Tramp", bumper stickers proclaiming "Life's a bitch, don't vote for one," and the badges printed with "KFC Hillary Special: 2 fat thighs, 2 small breasts, one left wing". 

If that last one sounds familiar, it should. Almost exactly the same "joke" was made at the expense of Australia's first female prime minister in a menu at a fundraiser for Liberal MP Mal Brough: "Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail - Small Breasts, Huge Thighs & A Big Red Box".

That 'menu incident' was about as low as 'politics' in this country got. It's one thing to dislike the Prime Minster because you disagreed with her position on policy. It's another thing to go ad hominem and liken people to poultry as a sex joke - that's all kinds of wrong and it was about as much disrespect as one could take.  And let's not forget, the Opposition that presided over that kind of sexism is now our government to this day.

Anyway, Julia Gillard is backing Hillary Clinton. No surprises there. To give Ms Gillard her due, I should quote this bit, which is important and something I agree with greatly. More people should have called out the rank sexism for what it was. Not doing so robbed the moral authority from the genuine criticism of her office.

No one called for my execution by firing squad, as a supporter of Donald Trump did for Mrs. Clinton, but a radio talk-show host did say I should be put in a bag and dropped in the sea. Witches can’t be drowned, I cynically joked. 

I have often reflected how powerful it would have been if, at that moment, a male business leader, especially one who opposed my policies, said, “I may not support the prime minister politically, but Australia must not conduct its democratic debates this way.” 

Unfortunately, that never happened. 

To my dismay, some of the young women who chat with me are not asking for political insights. Instead, they tell me that, having seen how I was treated, they have decided politics is too punishing for them. I always try to talk them out of this position. Sometimes I succeed. 

In 2016, I hope there are many brave voices naming and shaming any sexism in the presidential contest. The next generation of potential female leaders is watching.

I guess in Hillary's case, she didn't exactly knife Obama to get into her current spot, but she did do her damnedest to hobble Bernie Sanders' campaign, and with it shred the credibility of the Democratic Party. That would definitely get Hillary Clinton into the same hot-seat as Julia Gillard's time in office, which is kind of where she is in Philly right now. They have more than one thing in common.

No Country For Old Perverts

Cardinal George Pell is getting investigated after all.

The ABC's 7.30 program has revealed that Taskforce Sano has been examining allegations from complainants in Ballarat, Torquay and Melbourne for more than a year, and is looking into incidents that allegedly happened during Cardinal Pell's time as Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s. 

The program has obtained eight police statements from complainants, witnesses and family members who are helping the taskforce with its investigation. The allegations were repeated on 7.30 on Wednesday night, and include: 

• that Cardinal Pell would touch the genitals of children while swimming in a public pool in Ballarat in the late '70s
• that he was naked in the change rooms on a regular basis in front of children
• that he exposed himself to three young children in another change room, at the Torquay Surf Club in 1986 or 1987.

Cardinal Pell vehemently denied the allegations, with his office saying he "emphatically and unequivocally rejects any allegations of sexual abuse against him".

This is going to get good.

View From The Couch - 28/Jul/2016

What Need For Terror Laws?

Since 9/11, all the western societies have seen a steady erosion of privacy and rights as governments have sought more powers to contain the terror threat. Each time a bill has come up, more rights have been curtailed and more powers given to the security forces of the western world. At this juncture, it is worth asking if these powers are actually helping at all.

Consider Man Monis, our very own terrorist dickhead. The AFP had him on their watchlist and he fell off. Then he acquired a gun and did what he did at the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place, Sydney. The argy-bargy to do with the Lindt Cafe Siege has been going for a number of weeks now, and nobody exactly has explained how Monis slipped off the AFP's watch list and nobody has reported just how Monis got hold of a weapon.

This is notable because since 2007's APEC in Sydney, there have been APEC Anti-Terror laws in place without a sunset clause. We're all still in danger of being arrested without charge on alleged suspicions of terror links and being refused a lawyer - because hey, we don't have Miranda Rights in this country, and that's all okay by our state governments as well as Federal Government.

And yet with all this great power (and as follows Spiderman "comes great responsibility"), the AFP completely missed Monis. The NSW police had no chance as it went around looking for drugs at festivals rather then round up Monis with its great powers.

The same goes for the bastard who shot up the gay bar in Orlando, the truck driving bastard in Nice, the neck-slitting bastard in Normandy, and all the bastards who participate in the big Paris terror attack. Each and every one of them it turned out was on the radar of the authorities and somehow slipped the net togged through and do their dastardly bastardly deeds.

So today, we must ask, what good are these powers given to our police? What good is us citizenry giving up our privacy and rights to these governments whose security apparatuses still fail to stop these bastards anyway? Ed Snowden tells us the governments of the world are listening into everything we say on the phone, everything we write on emails an so on. With all this omniscience, you'd think they'd be doing a better job of stopping these bastards.

There's even a school of thought out there that they want these attacks to happen so they can justify their vast power and surveillance budgets. It's looking more believable by the day as more anymore terror attacks happen, only be revealed the perp was on some watch list but dropped out.

I say, we need a drastic re-think of these terror laws because they seem to be doing sweet fuck all. really. The bastards keep getting through. I am not fearful, I am angry at the rights of mine they are curtailing.

Privatisation Killed The Economic Growth

Pleiades alerted me to this one. The ACCC thinks privatisation kills economic growth.

Selling public assets has created unregulated monopolies that hurt productivity and damage the economy, according to Australia's consumer and competition tsar, who says he is on the verge of becoming a privatisation opponent.  

In a blistering attack on decades of common government practice, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims said the sale of ports and electricity infrastructure and the opening of vocational education to private companies had caused him and the public to lose faith in privatisation and deregulation.

"I've been a very strong advocate of privatisation for probably 30 years; I believe it enhances economic efficiency," Mr Sims told the Melbourne Economic Forum on Tuesday.

"I'm now almost at the point of opposing privatisation because it's been done to boost proceeds, it's been done to boost asset sales and I think it's severely damaging our economy." 

Mr Sims said privatising ports, including Port Botany and Port Kembla in NSW, which were privatised together, and the Port of Melbourne, which came with conditions restricting competition from other ports, were examples where monopolies had been created without suitable regulation to control how much they could then charge users.

"Of course you get these lovely headlines in the Financial Review saying 'Gosh, what a successful sale, look at the multiple they achieved'," Mr Sims said.
"Well of course they bloody well did: the owners factored in very large price rises because there's no regulation on how they set the price of a monopoly. How dopey is that?"

Nice to see it told straight out for once. The question is will anybody listen? Or is the greed factor just too good to let go?

No Country For Old Warhorses

Here's something on Kim Carr.

In 2006 Carr cultivated an alliance between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, convincing them they should join forces to depose Beazley. 

In government he supported Gillard's leadership challenge before later becoming a leading agitator for Rudd. 

"Shorten is the first leader he hasn't ratted on," a colleague says.
Gillard dumped Carr from cabinet after many colleagues concluded he had been leaking damaging stories to the media. Carr, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has denied this charge. 

Carr's rivalry with Albanese deepened during his leadership battle with Shorten in 2013. After winning the vote among Labor members, Albanese would have become leader if left-wing MPs locked in behind him. 

A furious Albanese has told colleagues Carr promised him his support only to vote for Shorten and encourage his allies to do the same. Carr denies reneging on any deal.
Laurie Ferguson, a left-wing Labor MP who retired at at this election, says the move against Carr was clear "payback" from Albanese and his allies.

It's probably not right to say this from a clinical perspective because I'm not qualified (educated yes, but not qualified) and Kim Carr is not my patient but I'll say it anyway. That prone-to-dramas thing is a dead giveaway for a personality disorder. It is conceivable that the schizo-genic nature of the ALP in the past two decades could be a function of this guy being an influence broker.

Speaking of this kind of thing...

No Country For Old Female Politicians

Okay, a bit distasteful, but only because it's in reference to the sexism referred to here.

At the Republican Convention last week, attendees had the chance to wear their sexist derision for Hillary Clinton with pride. Just outside, hawkers sold T-shirts emblazoned with "Trump vs Tramp", bumper stickers proclaiming "Life's a bitch, don't vote for one," and the badges printed with "KFC Hillary Special: 2 fat thighs, 2 small breasts, one left wing". 

If that last one sounds familiar, it should. Almost exactly the same "joke" was made at the expense of Australia's first female prime minister in a menu at a fundraiser for Liberal MP Mal Brough: "Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail - Small Breasts, Huge Thighs & A Big Red Box".

That 'menu incident' was about as low as 'politics' in this country got. It's one thing to dislike the Prime Minster because you disagreed with her position on policy. It's another thing to go ad hominem and liken people to poultry as a sex joke - that's all kinds of wrong and it was about as much disrespect as one could take.  And let's not forget, the Opposition that presided over that kind of sexism is now our government to this day.

Anyway, Julia Gillard is backing Hillary Clinton. No surprises there. To give Ms Gillard her due, I should quote this bit, which is important and something I agree with greatly. More people should have called out the rank sexism for what it was. Not doing so robbed the moral authority from the genuine criticism of her office.

No one called for my execution by firing squad, as a supporter of Donald Trump did for Mrs. Clinton, but a radio talk-show host did say I should be put in a bag and dropped in the sea. Witches can’t be drowned, I cynically joked. 

I have often reflected how powerful it would have been if, at that moment, a male business leader, especially one who opposed my policies, said, “I may not support the prime minister politically, but Australia must not conduct its democratic debates this way.” 

Unfortunately, that never happened. 

To my dismay, some of the young women who chat with me are not asking for political insights. Instead, they tell me that, having seen how I was treated, they have decided politics is too punishing for them. I always try to talk them out of this position. Sometimes I succeed. 

In 2016, I hope there are many brave voices naming and shaming any sexism in the presidential contest. The next generation of potential female leaders is watching.

I guess in Hillary's case, she didn't exactly knife Obama to get into her current spot, but she did do her damnedest to hobble Bernie Sanders' campaign, and with it shred the credibility of the Democratic Party. That would definitely get Hillary Clinton into the same hot-seat as Julia Gillard's time in office, which is kind of where she is in Philly right now. They have more than one thing in common.

No Country For Old Perverts

Cardinal George Pell is getting investigated after all.

The ABC's 7.30 program has revealed that Taskforce Sano has been examining allegations from complainants in Ballarat, Torquay and Melbourne for more than a year, and is looking into incidents that allegedly happened during Cardinal Pell's time as Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s. 

The program has obtained eight police statements from complainants, witnesses and family members who are helping the taskforce with its investigation. The allegations were repeated on 7.30 on Wednesday night, and include: 

• that Cardinal Pell would touch the genitals of children while swimming in a public pool in Ballarat in the late '70s
• that he was naked in the change rooms on a regular basis in front of children
• that he exposed himself to three young children in another change room, at the Torquay Surf Club in 1986 or 1987.

Cardinal Pell vehemently denied the allegations, with his office saying he "emphatically and unequivocally rejects any allegations of sexual abuse against him".

This is going to get good.

Democracy Is Deeply Wounded

The Deep Blue Sea

For some days I've been trying to write something sensible about the end of Bernie Sanders' Presidential campaign and how Hillary Clinton is now the last standing hope in stopping Donald Trump from becoming POTUS. The thing is, if Donald Trump is the devil, then Hillary Clinton surely is the deep blue sea, and so one cannot in good conscience say that the latter is a better candidate because they are the lesser of two evils.

This is not to be childish and scream Bernie-or-Bust, but more a long distance sketch of how things stand. In many ways it reminds me of the 2013 Australian Federal Election whereby PM Julia Gillard mired in bad polls would point at Tony Abbott as the terrible threat coming our way. In the end she was ousted by her own party and worse sill, the electorate voted in the dreaded Tony Abbott and Australia has had a basket case government ever since. It has the same quality of a not very popular person pointing at a terrifying opponent saying they are the only person who can stop the unspeakably awful from happening. We in Australia have been here, and continue to live through the horror of government by oligarchical interests with scant attention for good public policy. There's not much advice we can offer Americans in how to survive this horror.

Of course in that likening, I do Julia Gillard an immense disservice, for as unpopular as she was, she was not wrapped up in some strange twilight zone of corruption and coverups that is the hallmark of the Clintons. There was Whitewater, there was Mena Arkansas and the gun-running, the Vince Foster thing, the Monica Lewinsky affair (and the distraction of Operation Desert Fox), and above all else the strange charity that is the Clinton Foundation which takes money from dodgy oligarchs to create access in very strange places while the Foundation itself accepts colossal sums of money in exchange for the influence of the Clintons. It's nuts. It really is. That's not a few skeletons rattling around in the closet, it's like a mass grave after a genocide hiding in their closet. It's so bad that when Wikileaks leaks more and more emails from Clinton's past revealing terrible deeds and judgment, the world greets it with an indifferent shrug because we are so inured to the Clintons being scandal-prone.

It goes without saying hat Donald Trump is a terrible candidate. He is such a bad candidate that people really think it's some kind of elaborate hoax or joke. And yet the opposite number American democracy has managed to throw up against him is Hillary Clinton, the dodgiest nominee since maybe Richard Nixon. Talk about your wildest nightmares. If democracy really was just a popularity contest, it's amazing the two finalists are two of the most disliked candidates out of a field of dregs. They've scraped the bottom of the barrel and found there was shit down there - and they must really love shit because they're waving it around like a trophy.

The End Of Bernie's Run

It all came out in the leaked emails how the DNC were far from impartial and went out of their way to hobble Bernie Sanders' campaign. In the end, Bernie Sanders ended up being the only sane candidate with a decent plan and policy platform that withstood rational scrutiny out of a large field of candidates. He's still more popular than Hillary when polled and more importantly far more popular than Donald Trump. And yet the DNC is hellbent on going with their gal Clinton, so it's anybody's guess what's going to happen to the Democratic Party after this election.

It tok more than a generation since Robert F Kennedy's ill fated campaign in 1968 to Bernie Sanders' campaign in 2016 to bring the properly progressive agenda back to the Democratic Party. 48years is a long time between drinks. Maybe the good news is that the Progressive bas that supported Bernie is young, and so the future belongs to them to push forwards. Things can still change in the future, but for now the progressive push back into the Democratic Party platform is stalled. The flip side of the constituency dialogue is that the Baby Boomers are not yet the minority and with the help of a few dirty tricks can keep the Boomer candidate in Hillary Clinton going.

This may not work out the same way in say 2020. The youngest Boomer will be 55 then. One would imagine it would be harder to wage the kind generational demographic war the Boomers of the DNC waged this time around. They would have fewer numbers and less of an influence. Whatever happens in the next 4 years, Bernie sure won't be back to run again next time, and that is the shame of it.

In the mean time, the sensible people are asked to get behind the corrupt candidate to beat the unthinkably awful candidate. The DNC created this mess by insisting on the corrupt candidate - surely they will rue the turn of events they fomented by trying to manipulate the democratic process.

Quick Shots - 21/Jun/2016

Trying To Read The Electorate From Headlines

This election certainly is tight. It's probably as tight as the 2010 contest which saw the Hung Parliament. There's a swing calculator on this SMH article which is worth playing around.

Stirton notes further, on the state data, that Labor could pick up 16 seats, getting it to 73 - just three short of a majority and ensuring a hung Parliament. 

Seat-by-seat, Turnbull may be ahead. But when Labor won the unwinnable in Queensland, some pointed back to polls asking why they'd been ignored. Good question.

The uniform swing needed to put the ALP back into government is 4.5%. At 4%, which is where the polls are now sitting, it gives rise to a result of 73 seats each for the ALP and Coalition respectively with 4 seats in the cross bench, just like in 2010. Both parties have disavowed forming a minority Government, and in the case of the ALP, you can fully understand why bad on their experience. As for the Coalition's disavowal, one is struck by the oddness of the luxury provided to them through being the incumbent, and how they will likely retain the role of caretaker government.

All of this goes to show the rearguard action of fighting the 2013 election with a a restored Kevin Rudd was in fact, the correct move if only to "save the furniture" as they said at the time. The furniture saved in 2013 is roaring back after only 1 term of the Coalition Government which was a truly shambolic, pathetic, idiotic  government if there ever was one. 

The bigger question mark is if the demographic has changed somewhat since 2010. It's been 6 years of lots of people dying and presumably those deaths would have - excuse the word - 'favoured' the older voters siding with the Coalition. It is eminently possible that the polls are under-reporting the sea change in the demographics and that maybe the ALP has more support than shows up in polling. 

The Never-Ending Campaign In The USA

Goodness, if you thought this current election unleashed by Malcolm Turnbull was seemingly without end, then the 18month epic preselection and then election process of the US Presidential elections is just interminable. At this point in time, Hillary Clinton is claiming she has enough votes to win the Democratic nomination, although this point is contested by Bernie Sanders' camp because those 'Super Delegates' don't get to vote until the 25th of July - which is a whole month and a bit more away from this writing. 

I'll be honest, I think Bernie's been licked, but I refuse to piss my pants; and thus I say to anybody who listens, let's see how this plays out. As they say, a week is a long time in politics. There are four and a half of those "long times" between now and when the Super Delegates decide who will be their nominee. There are already disturbing revelations being thrown out to the media about Hillary Clinton, thanks to Wikileaks. 

Yeah. That right there is Hillary Clinton recommending Regime change in Syria. What's coming out of this is the notion that Trump might be scary because he's a bigoted xenophobe with little tolerance for anything that requires nuanced thinking; Hillary Clinton is just as scary being a hawk of unrivalled dedication to toppling Middle Eastern regimes just to 'protect' Israel. You'd think that maybe the Super Delegates might want to ponder if they want to line up behind a President who is going to go to more wars to 'protect' Israel. 

In other news, Trump's campaign might be running out of money. 

News That's Fit To Punt - 05/Apr/2016

The Panama Papers

This business of the Panamanian leaks is turning out to be quite the treasure trove. It is, to be blunt, quite a spectacular outing of a whole bunch of people who can now no longer deny they are tax-dodging crooks.

Caught in the web of leaked emails so far are:

• Vladimir Putin, and all his crony Kleptocrats in Russia. The Russians have hit back and said this is 'Putinphobia".
• Xi Jinping of China. Turns out it is no ordinary sum that he' got sheltered in the Mossack and Fonseca network. Naturally the topic of these Panama papers is blocked in China.
• David Cameron's father. David Cameron won't disclose if he or his family still have money offshore with Mossack and Fonseca.
• The Prime Minister of Iceland Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson. 
• President Mauricio Macri of Argentina
• Petro Poroschenko of Ukraine. 
• Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan
• King Salman of Saudi Arabia
• the former emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and its former prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani; FIFA; 
• and the Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi
• Not that he's all that important but...Paul Hogan. Who had money with Mossack and Fonseca that he needs to payback the ATO for his tax settlement. 

I think it's quite excellent to see these people exposed. All these people probably thought they were as safe as banks with the security surrounding their dealings but in this digital age that's proving to be illusory. it's not even ironic that the first entry after my 'Mr. Robot' entry is to do with a massive data leak that essentially changes our understanding of global tax avoidance by the rich and powerful. 

If you want more detail, here it is.

How Bad Is Abbott's Legacy? Catastrophic

Peter Hartcher had this article here today. 

"It's only a hypothesis, but I think there's been a peaking of interest or concern" in matters related to climate change. 

"It's seen as something a bit from the past, as if getting rid of the carbon tax meant we'd got rid of climate change. It's a funny one." 

This is partly an achievement of Tony Abbott and the climate change sceptics and deniers who were among his most fervent supporters. 

Australia had a bipartisan consensus on climate change under John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull. The consensus was that climate change was real and that pricing carbon through an emissions trading scheme was the best way for Australia to respond. 

Abbott shattered the consensus. He rode to power a conservative reaction against climate change action. He used it to destroy Turnbull's leadership and then Rudd's and, finally, Julia Gillard's. 

Together with his footsoldiers in politics and the media, he succeeded in muddying the public's understanding of climate change in the process. The conservative reaction intimidated some scientists, news editors and commentators. And Turnbull, in fear of reviving an angry conservative rearguard, has bound himself to the Abbott policy.
The net result today is Australia's muted debate and confused response to climate change.

Actually, the whole 'debate' seems to be on ice, and is going to stay on ice until after the election. The electorate's fatigue about the issue is palpable, and while the need to do something has only increased, everybody is aware that Malcolm Turnbull at least is not in any position to do much about it - and that being the case, it's a waste of breath to even start discussing what the Coalition need to do about it because they got elected on the ticket of deny it was even a problem and dismantling the carbon price. 

That Tony Abbott managed to wreak so much havoc upon the consensus is at once alarming but also strange. Especially because back in 2007 Kevin Rudd came to power with a solid mandate to do something. In the 9 years since, we've gone from that mandate to this current abysmal arrangement of paying polluters to stop, while not enforcing any accountability. It's hard to see where things can go from here because if Turnbull wins the next election, he's still going to have his hands tied by his right-wing-loony colleagues, while if the ALP manage a win, it's anybody's guess how they setback to an ETS without the Coalition behaving like utter wreckers once again. 

It's staggering that the current Coalition don't want to do what is right. They want to fight tooth and nail for the vested interests of the fossil fuel lobby instead. You sort of wonder why they even have an Environment Minster when they clearly don't believe in any science. 

That being said, hope springs eternal;. The ALP slipped ahead of the Coalition in the polls, apparently. 

Laughable It Has Come To This

Yes, that's right. None other than the Murdoch rag the Daily Telegraph is concerned that we've become a nation of Anti-Intellectuals. 

When asked what they want to be when they grow up, kids reply: “famous.”
And what about the number of people who brag they haven’t read a book since leaving school? 

My heart breaks. 

Topical TV discussion shows use celebrities, sportspeople or someone from the station’s stable of stars to discuss controversial issues eschewing experts and reducing complex subjects to clickbait. 

Why aren’t academics and other experts used anymore? 

Simmonds explains “…as a country we are hostile to those who are well-educated. We prefer homespun wisdom to years of research. Our language is peppered with vitriol reserved for those who think for a living: ‘chattering classes’, ‘latte-sipping libertarians’, ‘intellectual elites’.” 

Universities are changing as a consequence of anti-intellectualism. Instead of teaching students the joy of learning and critical thinking, we train them for jobs. 

An anti-intellectual society is a fearful one. Lacking reason, it seeks action and reductive explanations, abandoning emotional maturity and, as Niose notes, is “prone to violent solutions”.

I've never heard of 'latte-sipping libertarians' myself. That's a bit of a new one right there. 

The predominant anti-intellectualism as characterised by the likes of Kyle Sandilands has always been around. The Daily Telegraph complaining about it is ironic because they themselves exercise the very same anti-intellectualism in their editorials. Not to mention Rupert Murdoch owning other things in their stable like Fox News which spreads anti-intellectualism very happily. 

Most days, it suits the right wing to have an uneducated unquestioning populace who buy all the bullshit sold by the media owned by the wealthy. To that end, these same powers have lobbied their conservative politicians to cut education and make it less inaccessible to the majority of people. The same media outlet that pushes that wheelbarrow for those interests can't very well complain about the anti-intellectual landscape it worked very hard to creating its own interest. 

I mean, really... It's nothing short of laughable. 

Lois Lane Rides Again

Here's something completely different!

Pleiades sent this one in. It's actually long and it's a doozy. It's a piece written by Margot Kidder, about how the Clinton campaign bought state Democratic Parties wholesale. 33 of them, to be exact.  

What do billionaires like Esprit Founder Susie Buell of California, and businessman Imaad Zuberi of California, and media mogul Fred Eychaner of Chicago, and Donald Sussman hedgefund manager from New York and Chicago real estate mogul J.B Pritzker, and gay activist Jon Stryker of NY, and NRA and Viacom lobbyist Jeffrey Forbes and entertainment mogul Haim Saban all have in common? 

They all appear to be brilliant business people who have all given millions to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and to her various PACS. And they all gave the Montana State Democratic Party $10,000 each in 2015. It is doubtful that many of them have any interest in Montana politics, or that they have even bothered to visit. 

None of these are awful people; they are simply awfully rich. And they like their friend Hillary and want her to be the president. And if some of their millions will buy her way into the White House then so be it. None of this is illegal. But it makes a mockery of Ms. Clinton’s pledge to further the cause of campaign finance reform. 

And the Hillary Victory Fund’s marriage of convenience with the Montana party negates Governor Steve Bullock’s eloquent insistence that he will do anything necessary to overturn Citizen’s United. And the coldness of the deal’s intention of doing anything it can to further Hillary Clinton’s chances for becoming President brings Senator Jon Tester’s stated neutrality in the Democratic primary into a sharp and unflatteringly hypocritical focus. 

One doubts that most of these one percenters adore fly fishing. Or care much about mountain climbing, or skiing, or collecting morel mushrooms along the edges of the Yellowstone river in the fall. We can safely assume that they will not be raising buffalo for meat in the near future, or buying an organic farm next to Senator Jon Tester’s. In fact we can probably assume that most of them have never been to Montana.

It's kind of cool that Margot Kidders doing this today. I like how she's not writing one-sentence paragraphs either. 

Grumpy Again

But That Trick Never Works

That old rapscallion and former Howard Government chief of staff, Cabinet SecretaryArthur Sinodinos was on television today, pitching a corporate tax cut. He was saying yes, an income tax might stimulate the economy but a corporate tax cut would stimulate investment and that would stimulate the economy more. This seems to be the mantra of the big end of town which is thirsting for the corporate tax rate cut.

"At least 50 per cent of the impact of cutting company taxes goes in higher wages for workers and higher employment," Senator Sinodinos said. 

"Putting money into the hands of consumers obviously encourages more spending and disposable income and has good incentive effects. But cutting company taxes also has good effects.

"It can encourage investment, it can encourage higher productivity, it can encourage more investment from overseas."

Would that if it were so, Mr. Sinodinos. Earlier in the month there was a report about that sort of thinking which, in a nutshell claimed that it was tried in Canada already and had no such desired effect. 

The Canadian federal government implemented three successive federal corporate tax reductions over the last generation. (Provincial governments also levy their own corporate taxes, averaging around 10 per cent, added to federal levies.) The first stage occurred in the late 1980s: the statutory rate was reduced from 36 per cent to 28 per cent, but various loopholes and deductions were closed in the process. The second reform occurred early this century: the general rate fell to 21 per cent, and preferences for manufacturing and resources were eliminated. The latest cuts were implemented beginning in 2007 by former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper (defeated in last year’s election): he cut the base rate to 15 per cent, and eliminated a 1.1 per cent CIT surtax. Those last reductions alone still cost the federal government over $15 billion (Canadian Dollars) in foregone revenue each year. 

Together, these successive cuts reduced combined Canadian corporate taxes (including provincial rates, which also fell in several provinces) from near 50 per cent of pre-tax income in the early 1980s, to 26 per cent today. In theory, the resulting boost to profits should have stimulated a strong response in business investment. Unfortunately, hopes for this “jobs and growth” dividend have been repeatedly dashed.

Hence, for all this talk about how cutting taxes for businesses would spur investment, I think we need to take that with a dump truck load of salt. The big end of town is simply going to pocket that difference and probably won't even pass it on as a dividend. In the absence of things to invest in, investments tend not to be made. Given that the Australian economy post-Commodity Supercycle is distinctly looking like a services-based economy, there really isn't a whole lot of places investments can be made. There's a great deal of non-incentive (as opposed to an active disincentive) for capital investment to take place. This is why the government ought to be pushing for infrastructure investment and not trying to run back to surplus by cutting budgets for everything. 

As for the claim that would make wages go higher, that's a bit fanciful too because the big end of town has spent the post-GFC years pocketing all the productivity gains and not let wages rise. It's hard to see how money saved on top by these companies would translate into a burst of higher wages, or for those imaginary higher wages to go into the economy as spending when the most likely scenario is for that money to be spent on paying down mortgages - and then the bank sits on that money not investing it in things. I understand the Coalition government wants to help the big end of town but really, this is not going to have any effect. Arthur Sinodinos is simply wrong, working off ideologically driven bad advice. 

Why The Government Fighting For A Surplus Now Is A Bad Idea

This one's a few weeks old, but worth dredging up because of Arthur Sinodinos above. 

Here’s a little thought experiment to check the familiar argument that Abbott gave for the need to get to surplus: “Governments, like households and businesses, have to live within their means.”

Imagine that there is an economy where the money supply consists of a single dollar, which is exchanged 100 times per year among this economy’s inhabitants — thus generating a GDP of $100 per year. Then imagine that the government in this economy sets itself the target of running a surplus equivalent to 1 per cent of GDP. If the government achieves its objective, what will GDP be the following year?
Zero. And, if the government debt ratio was more than 1 per cent beforehand, it will be infinite afterwards. 

Why? Because the economy had only one dollar of money in existence, and the government’s surplus took that $1 out of circulation, leaving the economy with precisely zero dollars for commerce the following year. The government budget affects GDP by changing the amount of money in circulation in the economy, and a government surplus effectively destroys money. 

This is utterly unlike a household. Household saving does not destroy money, nor does it materially affect the household’s own income, since a single household is such a small part of the national economy (even if we’re talking James Packer’s household).

Got it? 

If, - like Worst-Treasuerer-Ever Joe Hockey did, - you go around telling important people from around the globe at things like the Brisbane G-20 that what the world needs now is economic growth and lots of it, the last thing you should be doing is busily taking money out of the economy - i.e. don't go around cutting the budget in the hopes of getting back to a surplus. It's akin to saying you want your car to go farther because that's what is needed, and then busily syphoning out fuel from the tank. It's self-defeating and self-contradictory. 

I bring this up, just in case you were wondering why WTE Joe really was WTE, and why Tony Abbott really deserved the tag 'Stupidity' in every post I made about his government. You can lie your way into office, but you can't work out of the office without facing up to facts. And logic. 

You wonder about the education these men failed to get in their fancy-pants private school.

The Devil And Hillary Clinton

Here's something from Pleiades that you might find interesting. 

Donald Trump is as frightening as his opinions are poorly considered. His life has been lived around people whose livelihoods depend on not telling him to shut the fuck up. His nominal constituency by-and-large has no context for this— what to them appears as ‘speaking truth to power’ is in fact a privileged bully enamored with the sound of his own voice. Mr. Trump was born into the class that establishment Democrats and Republicans have spent the last four decades making so wealthy that it separates them from the consequences of their socially destructive actions. Donald Trump is an inheritance-baby insider who plays an outsider on television. It is hardly an accident then that Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton have been friends for over twenty years.

The Democratic establishment is in the process of shoving Bernie Sanders out of the way to put Hillary Clinton forward as the candidate to beat Donald Trump. The term too-clever-by-half comes to mind. The ‘missed opportunities’ of the last seven years are in the process of asserting themselves. Mrs. Clinton is a war-monger, free-trade-agreement loving friend of Wall Street at a time when a fair portion of the conscious public would just as soon burn the whole mess to the ground with Mr. Trump. The question for those who would vote for Mrs. Clinton to ‘stop’ Donald trump is: who are you going to vote for to stop Hillary Clinton?

It's not like it's even a surprising call. 

As the years go by, the Bill Clinton presidency seems more and more like one big wasted opportunity. The number of things they botched up in the process has been a parade of negative consequences both intended and unintended. For all the popularity he had, Bill Clinton never really did the things for his constituents that made their lives better. He and his wife Hillary did things for their Wall Street friends first and foremost. The America we see today that puts Donald Trump as the Republican frontrunner is a result of the Clinton Presidency as much as both Bushes. It's hard to understand why the Black leadership really want to go around the block again with the Clinton election machine. After 24 years, you'd think it was obvious that they don't get out of it nearly as much as the Clintons do.