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.

Is It An Election Or A Circus?

One Of The Most Disturbing Things

By this time all of you with a connection to the internet should know that Donald Trump took a big hit last week, when a 2005 recording was released wherein he displayed the most misogynistic frat-boy sensibility we all suspected he had. In fact if you didn't suspect it or felt compelled to defend it, it probably meant you had it as well. Since then his polls have plummeted, and it's been such a meltdown in the media about it. Republicans who once offered their support to the Donald are now withdrawing it; some are even calling for him to pull out. It's all looking a bit untenable for the Donald.

President Obama has said:

"One of the most disturbing things about this election is just the unbelievable rhetoric coming at the top of the Republican ticket,"

"I don't need to repeat it. There are children in the room."

... which pretty much sums it up. If you thought Mitt Romney giving a speech about the 47% of Americans being freeloaders was damning, this bit of audio consigns Trump to the ranks of those who truly did not deserve to run.

The more interesting thing this week is that Donald Trump's 2005 leaked audio has become something of an enabling cipher for our politicians to discus the American election - something that politicians rightfully avoid doing.

A handful of Australian politicians have now expressed their opinions on the Trump scandal ahead of the second presidential debate. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull labelled Trump's comments "loathsome" and said they deserved the "absolutely universal condemnation that they have received". 

Minister for Women Michaelia Cash said Mr Trump's comments were "demeaning, they were disappointing and they were wrong, full stop". 

Deputy Prime Minister Barnarby Joyce, while labelling Mr Trump's comments as unacceptable, criticised both the Democrats and Republicans for digging up rubbish from each other's past. 

"I just think this whole debate in the United States is turning into a dirty, filthy concoction which belies the respect the American people deserve," he told ABC radio.
"They're all digging up rubbish from each other's past and I just think the whole thing is pretty unsavoury."

It's not just a bunch of nobodies saying this stuff in the press, and that's a little surprising.

Regular sparring partners Pauline Hanson and Derryn Hinch, two of the most outspoken crossbench senators, have exchanged heated words in the hallways of Parliament House about Trump's attitudes to women. 

Fairfax Media's political reporter Fergus Hunter reports that the spat, caught on camera, followed a television interview where the pair were asked about whether Trump should quit the race for the White House. 

As the pair left the television studio and walked on to their next Parliament House engagements, Senator Hinch pursued his Senate colleague over her attitude.
"That you, as a woman, could even make any justification for what he has said and what he has done is just ...," he said. 

"Well, I didn't condone what he said," responded Senator Hanson. 

"No, you said the people of America will decide. If you are even slightly right, then God help the country and God help the world. The man is a sexual predator and he is a disgrace," the former broadcaster said, before getting a lift.

Great Googly-moogly. One can only imagine the rest of that conversation. On the one hand you have the crank Pauline Hanson tacitly trying to continue support for the unsupportable Trump, and on the other side you have a shock-jock-turned-pollie looking for some moral high ground; The two of them arguing over a candidate whose approach to elections was to turn it into a reality show. You can't come up with this stuff.

Australian Labor senator Doug Cameron doubts there will be a Trump presidency.
"Why would any woman in America vote for Trump?" he asked. 

"The sooner he's defeated, or the sooner he gives in the better." 

New Labor MP Emma Husar said Australia would work with whoever was elected, but called Trump a "pig". 

"He's an absolute repugnant animal who deserves to have every single Republican who is well-respected over there walk away from him," she told reporters.

You know, in the days not so long ago, our politicians would have refrained from saying stuff like this. What the hell is Senator Hussar going to do should the Donald pull out an unlikely win and visit Australia? Hide? Apologise? Yes the Donald is a terrible human being, but is it that necessary for a Senator in Australia to be hammering in nails of his political coffin when others inches own country are doing a perfectly good job? It actually doesn't say anything good about our polity. If lack of restraint is Donald Trump's problem, then our politicians could have done better showing that very same restraint.

A World With POTUS Trump

Peter Hartcher has this article:

The US under a President Trump would withdraw Australia's security guarantee and become a "rogue superpower", according to a scholarly analysis commissioned by Australia's Lowy Institute. 

The results would be so dire that the US election is the most consequential for world order since World War II, and the most consequential for the US since the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the report says. 

"For the first time one of the two major party nominees for the presidency, Donald Trump, is campaigning on a platform of weakening the core elements of the international order, including the US alliance system and an open global economy," concludes Thomas Wright from the Brookings Institution in Washington. 

He says Australia's alliance with the US would suffer directly as a result. 

The Republican candidate has said he'd be prepared to re-negotiate or abandon US alliances with Japan, South Korea and NATO, but has not specifically mentioned Australia. 

"Honestly, I think you are probably in the same category" as those US allies, Dr Wright told Fairfax Media. "He just hasn't been asked.

It's a genuinely scary world where Trump's in charge. There's not a lot of conversation about it in Australia, but there's quite a bit of it in Japan where they've budgeted the possibility of a complete US Withdrawal, and just how much money would have to be spent by Japan to fill that vacuum. In short, Japan would have to re-arm in a way that would bring back a proper military. A Trump-led US pull out to from Japan and Okinawa will necessitate Japan return to being a military power.  Presumably the same would apply for Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. Not only would that be a more dangerous world, it would be more expensive in a time when governments don't have money.

Peter Hartcher is so disturbed by this, he wrote a further comment piece on the same topic:

In trying to make believe that Donald Trump is not as dangerous as he promises to be, millions of people have resorted to denialism.
On three levels. 

First, that he could not possibly win. This remains in the hands of events, of course. But even after he was exposed boasting of sexually assaulting women, US betting odds on Sunday gave him one chance in five of taking the presidency. 

Two, that he could not possibly be serious about the things he's said. He does enjoy being outrageous. And on many issues he has had more positions than a yoga instructor. 

(edit) 

The third and final level of denialism is that even if he's elected and even if he tried to press ahead with his policies, the American system would stop him.
Wright agrees that Trump would be frustrated on domestic initiatives by the Congress or Supreme Court. 

But on his foreign policy ideas? Wright's analysis paper, to be published by the Lowy Institute on Monday, says: "He will have a freer hand internationally. There is no body or law that can prevent him from aligning himself with Putin, ignoring an ally, or shaking things up with a far-reaching foreign policy statement. And, as we have seen, grievance against the rest of the world is not just a part of Trump's ideology, it is at its very core."
Denialism is no defence. Trump, even now, is possible. He's serious, and some of his most dangerous ideas could become real.

Well that's all well and good, but our country has very little sway over the electoral outcome in the USA. So denialism or not, there's solid chance that Donald Trump might still survive this round of scandals and end up POTUS and unleash fresh hell. Should that happen, those Australian politicians who slammed him are going to look really dumb for having done so.

Yeah, it's a problem.

Populism And The Politics Of Blame-Throwing

As with Australia, you do wonder how in the hell America got to where they are now. After all, if Pauline Hanson is back, and she's sort of okay with Donald Trump, you know he's appealing to the demographic of wilful ignorance and cranks. That there are so many of them attests to the 'success' of conservative governments who tried to create a populace more prone to populist arguments by degrading the quality of public education.

In ever way possible, the Donald Trump candidacy is a symptom of the anti-intellectual malaise thetas endemic amongst the conservatives. What the Republicans didn't count on was for the election to be hijacked by a reality show host who understood the schema of democracy's prime election as nothing but a popularity contest; And this, was essentially made possible by the very education-deprive populace the conservatives helped neglect - not nurture - who decided to choose the person who made the show more interesting.

The impact of Reality TV in the last 15years has been devastating. It's no coincidence that Pauline Hanson herself was a contestant on dancing with the stars. If one thing these shows have taught the populace, it is the entertainment to be had by having fractious, conflict-generating individuals on the show to stay longer. Donald Trump himself understands this very well, and so went about the primaries behaving more like a boor than a candidate, and still managed to win because he drew upon the votes who understood this dynamic the most. If the Republicans didn't see this coming, that would be because they were complaining about a black man being in the White House a little too much. It would appear their neurosis was entirely misplaced.

View From The Couch - 01/Oct/2016

A Nation Of Cranks

I recently got back my copy of John Gardner's 'The Art of Fiction', and not having looked at it in a number of years I decided reread from the front. Interestingly enough the first big section covers why one must have a literary education in order to tackle being a writer and heroes through all the arguments in favour of having an education. If one had to distill it into a two sentence pitch, it boils down to this:

1. You need to have some kind of intellectual context and framework for doing your writing.
2. If you don't have any context you're very susceptible to being a crank. 

It's a little bit like how John Goodman's Walter thunders at Steve Buscemi's Donnie in 'The Big Lebowski', "you don't have the context Donnie!" The above two points would be John Gardner thundering at any novice writer attempting to write without a literary education of some description.

Which led me to ponder about pedagogy and why we insist - in general - on people getting any kind of education in anything, and it comes down to the fact that without it, your thinking could be that of a crank. When you look at the One Nation senators Hanson and Roberts, you take Gardner's point. If those people had an education worth spit, they wouldn't be saying the things they say. The fact that they don't possess the education to be Senators of this land, is betrayed by the very crank opinions they cast about.

That might sound like snobbery towards a woman whose main careers running a fish-and-chip shop and found her calling in politics relatively late. Back in 1996, she was the sort of talent the Queensland Liberal Party could find to run for them, and illustrates the low level education of that state. And while not everybody needs an education in order not to be a crank - as was the case with Paul Keating - most mortal minds cannot negotiate the path away from crank-dom without an education.

In fact, the path around crank-dom is so fraught, one can be susceptible to its gravitational pull, even with an education - as is the case with Malcolm Roberts. Roberts' case is more egregious because he had the opportunity of being educated as an engineer, which means he would have spent a minimum four years at a university, and for him to have formed the idiotic opinions he has formed and is trying to foist upon this very land, is nothing short of a tragedy; The 'reverse-miracle' whereby it is both unexpected, irrational, inexplicable, yet totally undesirable. The institution who conferred a degree upon Malcolm Roberts should be ashamed of itself for sending out into the world a mind so barren and misshapen.

As to the portion of the population to whom we apportion the blame of voting in this bunch, the same can be said. Back in the first incarnation of One Nation,the demographic support for the said party was always heavily distributed towards those with less or completely without an education, and least amongst those who could boast of an education. The fact that the nation could produce so many people who could be persuaded by such cranks, leads one to conclude that our education system has been subpar for quite a number of years. Funding Gonski isn't exactly going to fix this problem in a hurry. Worse still, if the conservatives of this land are a little taken aback by their brethren in rightwing politics, they only have themselves to blame for perpetuating the kind of class society that breeds such ignorance and cranks.

Cranks And Conservatism

On the Left, you used to have hard core Marxists. I don't know if they're still around rabbiting on about the eventual and imminent collapse of capitalism and citing page from 'Das Kapital'. They were cranks. Notably they went into hiding after the collapse the USSR. They're not coming back anytime soon, which is a kind of blessing. Of course, they've been replaced by the sort of Regressive Left social justice warrior types that make you cringe so maybe the Left is not freed from crank-dom either

Be that as it may, the Right had fewer cranks until relatively recent times. This was because they were cowed into hiding by the utter historic failure of Adolf Hitler who was chief amongst cranks to represent the right; it was Hitler who amassed a compendium of crank opinions and turned them into apolitical manifesto which resulted in catastrophic consequences. Citing right wing crank notions easily bought them comparisons to Hitler, which is about as favourable as being likened to shit on a stick.

The problem lately has been that the memory of Hitler is too far away and there are people with not-enough-education willing to try out some of these right-wing-crank opinions. Worse still, there are enough voters with not-enough-education to think these are somehow novel solutions to complicated problems with which they do not wish to entangle themselves, and this breeds the kind of crankiness we see in politics today. Any (pardon the pun) right thinking person would recoil at being compared to Hitler. Some of these people don't think it's such a bad thing.

Anyway. The point I want to make is that the Corgi Bernardis of this world might have an education, but are choosing to be wilfully ignorant when it comes to crucial issues such as climate change. it is then utterly unsurprising that he would like the Liberal Party to adopt some of One Nation's policies. He seems to have no idea how that reads on the headlines. The fact that he is oblivious to its impact tells you that his education, much like Malcolm Roberts' education was entirely faulty.

Similarly, the Prime Minister's desire to pin the event of the power outage in South Australia upon renewable energy illustrates the kind of wilful stupidity bolstered by crank opinions, shows just how far our nation has fallen in the intellectual stakes. It is hard to believe that at some point only half a decade ago, we viewed Malcolm Turnbull as a man of good sense and genuine advocate for having sensible climate policies. Now we can understand him as being no less a crank than Barnaby Joyce or Tony Abbott or worse still, Malcolm Roberts.

The take home message is this: a democracy is only as good as the education of its citizens, and judging from our politicians, we can see our education sector has failed us utterly.

On The Name Malcolm In Australian Politics

Just as an aside...
They say history repeats first as tragedy, then as comedy; thus, if Malcolm Fraser was the tragedy and Malcolm Turnbull the comedy, Malcolm Roberts must be the unwanted Hollywood sequel no one wants to see.

News That's Fit To Punt - 20/Jul/2016

Haters Are Gonna Hate

Kevin Rudd wants to be Secretary General of the UN. To run for that office he needs the backing of the Australian Government and of course, it's nominally a Coalition Government. And of course they're split over that choice of whether to back Rudd or not.

But the possibility of the former Labor leader achieving these new-found heights has attracted scorn from Liberal figures, including firebrand senator Cory Bernardi, South Australian MP Tony Pasin and, in the past, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. 

Mr Pasin, who said in April that "this guy did his best to ruin our country" and shouldn't be imposed on the world, said on Tuesday he still has serious reservations. 

"We shouldn't nominate him because to nominate him is to provide tacit support for his candidacy and I don't think we should do that," Mr Pasin told Fairfax Media.

Yeesh. It's the usual cabal of hateful cunts like Bernardi and Dutton objecting. Don't you love that bit of tautology in Pisan's comment to Fairfax Media? Goodness, the depth of dimwitted-ness seems to know no bounds with the coalition's hard right. 

Pauline's Got A Score To Settle With Little Johnny

Politics is going to be weirder than ever in this coming Parliament. The Libs with their reduced majority added to the increased contrariness of the new cross benchers in the Senate would make for some interesting blogging. 

Pauline Hanson of course headlines the monster cast of weird dumb and ignorant; and before the parliament's even sat down, she's slinging mud at the legacy of John Howard. 

Queensland senator-elect Pauline Hanson has fought back tears recounting her 2003 jailing over quashed political corruption charges, blaming Tony Abbott and John Howard for a "political witch-hunt" against her. 

Following her resurgence at the July 2 election, a new SBS documentary about the 1990s rise and fall of One Nation has been brought forward for broadcast later this month.

Ms Hanson promises her maiden speech in the Senate will be just as controversial as her explosive 1996 parliamentary debut, in which she said Australia was at risk of being swamped by Asians. 

The film, directed Anna Broinowski, explores One Nation's impact on multiculturalism in Australia and includes interviews with Mr Howard, incoming Labor federal MP Linda Burney and Indigenous leader and academic Marcia Langton.

Good ole' Anna Broinowski. Don't think she's ever seen a controversy she wouldn't court. 

Choice! The fun is just beginning. Grab some popcorn and pull up a deck chair. This sucker hit the iceberg a lo-o-ong time ago and there's no life boat for you or I. 

The Third Man Strikes Again 

This is kind of wild, like throwback right to that movie starting Orson Welles.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Monday called for calm after revelations that four criminal syndicates have allegedly been producing counterfeit vaccines throughout Jakarta and Java for up to 13 years. 

Police have named 14 hospitals and eight midwife clinics which allegedly administered the bogus boosters, creating havoc as angry parents flocked to the facilities. 

Although corruption is endemic in Indonesia, a scam that knowingly put the lives of infants at risk has caused widespread anger and disbelief. "Producing false vaccines is a crime against humanity," thundered an editorial in Tempo magazine.

That's some pretty amazing kind of criminality right there. I mean like the man Harry Lime says, "five hundred years of peace and what did the Swiss produce? Cuckoo clocks. So long, Holly."

The Strangeness Of Celebrity-hood

God, this Kanye West Taylor Swift saga sure keeps going doesn't it? 

I'll be honest, I've never sat through a single song by either one of these people who have amassed multiple Grammys between them, which in a weird way has dismantled any kind of residual respect I had for the said awards because, well, I'm an old fart and at least what Kanye' peddling isn't exactly music while what Taylor's peddling is bland as lo-fat yoghurt watered down. Anyway, things get more trashy with the Kardashian woman being Kanye's wife and all; and somewhere in there is a line of exes being artistically skewered by Taylor Swift in her lyrics; and not heeding those cries Tom Hiddleston is doing Tay-tay which may be true love and not just a publicity stunt, but far more likely just a future double album for Tay-tay. Yay!

Kim Kardashian West gave the FBI, the CIA and the illuminati a run for their money when she delivered on her promise by providing evidence that America's sweetheart and media manipulator extraordinaire, Taylor Swift, knew about Kanye West's infamousFamous lyrics. 

Kardashian West set the internet ablaze when she revealed her greatest home video to date - the possibly illegally taped conversation between West, 39, and Swift, 26.

Not satisfied with dismantling Swift's public image, Kardashian West, 35, decided to keep on trolling the Shake It Off singer, along with three of her adult sisters. (Their youngest sibling, Kylie Jenner, 18, had the sense to sit this one out, instead using the media scrutiny on the family to promote her beauty range, like the good little capitalist that Kris Jenner has reared.) 

While Team Kardashian-West had ammunition on their side, Team Swift were not going down without a fight. 

Swift's squad of besties, namely singer Selena Gomez, actor Chloe Moretz and Australian actor Ruby Rose, rallied and jumped on social media to support their leader (and definitely not because it was the biggest story of the day and it would send some publicity their way).

Life's good, right? I mean what more do we need in life but this kind of gossip? 

Look, Taylor Swift says the video of her giving approval to Kanye West to write lyrics about her amounts to "character assassination". For that term to work, you need to have 'character' in the first place.

Absence Of Adults

Politics By Permadolescents

Here's an article by Peter Hartcher in the SMH.

Tony Abbott is trying to restrain Barnaby Joyce from blurting nonsense, but who will restrain Tony Abbott?

The opposition leader has shown that he can't tell a kiwi from a kangaroo, a plus from a minus, wreckage from recovery.

In a fundamental error, he has told Australians that we would do well to follow New Zealand's lead in managing our economy.

''There are other countries which have chosen a different path, and there is no evidence that their response has been any less effective than ours,'' Abbott told ABC Radio National yesterday.

''For instance, in New Zealand they have tried to reform their way through the global financial crisis under the new government's leadership, and they seem to be doing pretty well. What Mr Rudd chose to do was to spend his way out of the crisis.''

''He's wrong,'' said the ANZ Bank's chief economist in New Zealand, Cameron Bagrie.

''We became the unlucky country. We're doing better than the US, Britain and Europe, but we're not Australia.''

As the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said in December: ''The crisis and the follow-up of the crisis . . . has been really well managed by the Australian government.''

Indeed, guess which country the conservative Prime Minister of New Zealand, John Key, is holding up as his model? ''Our vision is to close the gap with Australia by 2025,'' Key said.

Which is bad enough, before we even come to Abbott's so-called policy for curbing emissions. Anyway, the article goes on to point the stupid disconnect between the amount of money being spent in the stimulus and why it was spent. More interestingly, it closes with this:

As the opposition pursues Peter Garrett over implementation of a part of the government stimulus, Abbott's remarks raise the question of whether he understands the policy choices that decide not details but the fate of nations.

Where are the grown-ups?

Indeed. Although it is hard to say just what exactly *is* grown up in Australian politics at any given time. I guess Abbott and Joyce aren't it.

You get the feeling that the Coalition and conservatives the world over are trying to make a whole pile of post-hoc arguments for the sake of something to rally around. The world had a GFC thanks to unbridled de-regulation of the banking sector and absence of proper oversight. In order to stop the massive collapse of the global economy, governments around the world assumed the bad debts to save the system so that we didn't have another great depression.

Suddenly, the conservatives around the world are taking this rather silly tack that the government debt that these governments took on to save the day, are actually the problem.

Take this article here on the 'Tea Party' movement.

One thing that became clear in Nashville however was that the 600 or so solid conservative types, mostly middle-aged and many of them women, who shelled out $549 for a ticket to attend were not interested in minor modifications of Mr Obama’s health plan, budget or cap-and-trade legislation. As a name that harks back to the Boston Tea Party suggests, they see themselves as revolutionaries, or counter-revolutionaries. They want to “take back” an America which they say has been going wrong for generations as successive administrations have bloated the federal government and trampled on the constitution and the rights of states and individuals. Many of those attending said that Mr Obama’s election and big-spending, deficit-expanding first year had been a sort of negative epiphany. “Suddenly I’m awake,” said Kathleen Gotto from Colorado Springs, who had not previously been involved in politics.

<edit>

For all the talk about practical electioneering, some of those in Nashville teetered on the edge of the extreme and wacky. Thus the newly awakened Ms Gotto said she was researching Mr Obama’s family records for evidence that he was not eligible to be president. Mr Tancredo denounced the “cult of multiculturalism” and accused immigrants of swamping America’s Judeo-Christian values. “This is our country,” he declared to wild cheers, “Take it back!” Andrew Breitbart, the founder of a news site (Breitbart.com), railed in a speech against the hostile “mainstream media” in hock to the far left. At one point he had almost the entire audience on its feet, turned to the reporters and cameramen at the back of the room, pumping fists and yelling “USA, USA”

And the mind boggles. By the way, check out that photo at the top of that link. It's like a remote viewing window into the world of Whitopia where paranoid white people go on about encroaching US Federalism and International conspiracies to limit their freedoms and other insane delusions parading as fact. I guess they do have something to be scared of - their conservative politicians have pissed off a lot of folks around the world.

You read between the lines of these non-arguments and you get the picture of bunch of people who are shocked that a black man is in the White House and just realised their political consciousness was about race after all. It's enough to creep you out.Isn't this a repeat of 'One Nation'? Great Scott Batman, Sarah Palin is America's answer to Pauline Hanson! In fact, Pauline and Palin are almost anagrams of each other! You gotta laugh.

Well, if one thing is for certain, the media won't be able to lay off the catnip-like allure of Sarah Palin, and so her anti-intellectual, ignorance-is-strength persona is going to be shoved into the face of America by their media for a long time and drag down the tenor of US politics for years to come. Unless of course an adult comes along and pulls her into line, or she grows up an gets herself educated.Somehow I doubt that's about to happen.

Whatever the case, American politics is in for a rough ride having unleashed the genie of idiotic homilies in the guise of Sarah Palin.

I guess what looks fucked about Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce is that these private school grads are driving the discourse of the nation into the ditch by simply being so simplistic, just for the rhetorical effect. What happened to all that vaunted Private School education? There's no telling where the money went - and as such you'd have to say their parents wasted their money.

More to the point, in such delicate times you'd think Abbott and Joyce would have the better sense not to indulge in this kind of politics. Perhaps this is asking too much.