News That's Fit To Punt - 12/Mar/2012

All The Best Cowboys Have Their Eyes on China

The GFC story keeps spreading and spreading and the many headlines it has spawned are like the snake heads on Medusa's head. This one comes from Pleiades. We all ought to be a bit more discerning about what the economic picture coming out of China looks like.  Of course it's easier said than done and everybody has a fragmented picture of what this could mean.

The reality is that a part of China's growth has been an illusion. Since 2008, China’s headline growth of 8-10 per cent has been driven by new lending averaging around 30-40 per cent of GDP. Given that (up to) 20-25 per cent of these loans may prove to be non-performing, amounting to losses of 6-10 per cent of GDP. If these losses are deducted, Chinese growth is much lower.

The China economic debate is focused on the alternatives of a soft or hard landing. Both scenarios assume a slowdown in growth and transition to a troubled maturity.

The case for the soft landing assumes that the investment and property bubbles are less serious than thought. Beijing has sufficient financial capacity to boost growth by loosening monetary policy and bank lending, while adjusting specific policies, such as lifting restrictions on housing sales to prop up prices. China is able to boost domestic consumption, replacing investment as the key driver of its economy. Excess capacity is gradually absorbed as the world economy recovers.

Growth comes down gradually, without causing social and political disruptions.

The case for the hard landing assumes the rapid and destructive unwinding of asset price bubbles and problems within the Chinese banking system. A poor external environment and losses on foreign investment exacerbates the problem. Growth collapses triggering massive social unrest and political tensions.

The end of a cycle of debt and investment driven growth is typically disruptive. Japan's experience, which China has drawn on in shaping its economic model, is salutary. Japan grew by 10 per cent in the 1960s, 5 per cent in the 1970s, 4 per cent in the 1980s, and has remained stagnant since, adjusting to the deflation of its debt fuelled bubble.

A bit reductionist, but you get the picture. China's taken on a whole heap of debt and shoved it into infrastructure that is not needed immediately in order to stimulate the economy. If and when those debts come home to roost, then China's going to have a big credit crunch all of its own making. But let's say for the moment that is abject pessimism. What are we looking at right now?

The latest SMH headline on China has this article saying:

"The point is to make sure there are smooth liquidity conditions that are supportive to growth, but not necessarily a very aggressive easing that would invite future inflation risks," HSBC China economist, Sun Junwei, told Reuters.

In other words, a decision to ease monetary policy is not necessarily about having snuffed out inflation risks at all. Indeed, those risks start to loom larger barely six months from now, and grow even more intense when inflation is viewed as an expression of economic constraint - too little supply relative to demand - rather than expansion.

China has a shrinking labour force, mandated double digit wage hikes, an export sector losing its competitive cost advantage and an insatiable thirst for raw material imports.

"With China's working-age population set to decline steadily from 2012 onward due to retirement, the notion that a minimum of 8 percent GDP growth is necessary to sustain full employment and preserve social stability is now outdated," analysts at Nomura said in a note to clients.

It also means that inflation pressure will build at a much lower rate of growth going forward, a fact unlikely to be lost on China's leadership, which has seen periods of high inflation often coincide with protests and social unrest.

That actually doesn't sound as neutral as it is written. Reading it in the context of other articles, a picture emerges where China's economy could actually stall, if not tank.

Coincidentally Skarp sent in this article which has this tidbit:

But sooner or later there has to be a reckoning. Australian real estate prices have grown out of line with the rest of the world and, more importantly, ahead of even the strong growth in Australian income.

If China has a medium-to-hard landing – and the China boom is not likely to extend past the next few years in its current form – the bloom will come off the Australian economy.

If people start losing their jobs, and are unable to pay their mortgages, it will start creating problems in Australia’s credit markets. That, in turn, could begin the process of finally rectifying the growing imbalance of debt to income in the Australian economy.

Yes, the writing's on the wall. China probably can't continue its boom in its current form, which means at some point it's going to have to have some kind of landing - and knowing they've never tried one of these landings before it will likely be a hard one. Should that happen, Australia will be in for all sorts of fun and joy.

Now, it has to be said that whatever is going on right now is not some sustainable 'new normal'. We're effectively living in an insulated bubble but one that is destined to pop.

Japan, In The Headlights

Just before the last little bit in that link from Skarp, there's a discussion on Japan I also want to touch upon briefly.

One other thing that has provided stability in Japan and solace for investors in Japanese bonds has been Japan's consistent current account surplus. However beginning before, but obviously accelerating after the earthquake, tsunami and accident at Fukushima, Japan has seen its trade balance decline sharply. The reactor meltdowns and subsequent closure of the vast majority of nuclear plants has forced Japan to aggressively shift away from nuclear base load power. But that has meant it has had to pay a lot for LNG, oil and coal for its power generators.

Last year, Japan’s ran a full-year trade deficit for the first time since 1980. The just released data for January show that Japan also ran the largest single month full current account deficit (in unadjusted terms) since the oil shocks of the 1970's. In addition preliminary data show Japan on track for another trade deficit in February, despite it being traditionally the strongest month for trade performance.

Now, one of the things that the market relies on for Japan is that it is a net saver because it runs a current account surplus – take that support away and the market's sentiment on Japanese debt sustainability could change very quickly and very aggressively.

We think a Japanese crisis is going to happen – there are some clear warning signs. And we think it will happen sooner rather than later. At present, the market view is that a Japanese crisis as an impossibility because there is so much committed capital that relies on stability that there is a cognitive bias and willful blindness to the risk that it will blow up in their faces.

If that Japanese Crisis mentioned towards the end happens, it will trigger big problems for China, because China holds a lot of Japanese bonds as well.  So all the things people are living in fear of about China, will be on the cards. So the question about Japan is when is this going to happen? Some people are saying 18 months but if Noda calls an election, it might be in 6months that the crisis will be in full bloom because basically, Noda doesn't have a mandate to be raising the consumption tax and he knows it; but the electorate is dying to dispatch the DPJ, so all of this year's policy agenda in Japan is looking unstable, if not outright impossible.

If they're forced to the polls and it produces another LDP led government, things could get really bad up north.

A year on from the Tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster, we're looking at a serious maelstrom brewing.

News That's Fit To Punt - 08/March/2012

Thought We Were In The Clear Did We?

One of the mysteries of the GFCs and the stupendous amount of mass debt that we as a civilization accrued, and brought down Lehman Brothers, Bears Stearns Northern Rock and all of Iceland amongst other things, is what happened to all those CFDs and CDOs. It turns out a lot of municipal councils bought them exactly because they were rubber-stamped AAA by the ratings agencies. And yes, those would be the very same ratings agencies suddenly handing out very tough marks to governments of the world here and there; but once upon a time before the GFC blew things up, they would rubber stamp AAA on to all kinds of things at the behest of the banks.
Today's lovely article then is this one here about Ku-ring-gai Council, and how it is hounding the one councilor who dared to ask what the huge hole in the accounts were and why these CDOs were blowing these holes into their accounts.

His interest in the matter of CDOs was first aroused in 2007 when he noticed a $1 million loss in Ku-ring-gai Council's investment portfolio.

“All councillors have a duty under the NSW Trustees Act 1925 to investigate finances,” he told BusinessDay. Although, he didn't actually know at the time what a CDO was, he began asking questions of the then Mayor and the council's Director Finance.

“They wouldn't admit that they had bought derivatives. But then, who would know what a derivative was?” As far as Hall and his fellow councillors knew, the councils were just supposed to buy AAA-rated investments. He has some sympathy for the original investments, just not with the way it had been handled since.

“Well-backed investments, was what we were told. CDO lines such as Oasis and Black Rock. Both of those are gone now. Maple Hill was another. That's still alive.”
Ku-ring-gai also bought the deadly Rembrandt CPDO's from the local arm of Dutch bank ABN. These were even more poisonous than a regular CDO and are subject of the above-mentioned court battle.
When Ku-ring-gai was approached to join the action, it found it owned a different issued note (no2) .

“The Rembrandt No.3 note lost 90 per cent of their value within one year,” says Hall. “With the No 3 note suffering a 96 per cent loss, ABN came back to my Council and said, we can save yours if you put in another 200 per cent of your original investment and we will capital guarantee your product with quarterly paid interest, to maturity in 2016”.

Lehman had struck similar deals, one by one with its various council clients whose investment values were plummeting. “Restructuring” it was called and it often involved buying more of the same product but with the promise of greater security. Hall said it was another form of gambling but using public money.

Tony Hall didn't see this as much of a deal. After all, ABN was later bought by Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) which was bought by the UK government and whose ownership may soon change hands again soon. “The prospect of having such a commitment honoured seemed to be a risk”.

The article then goes on to describe the council turned on Mr. Hall even though he was trying to bring to light just how exposed the council was to the GFC. Unfortunately, there are $300million dollars of these CDOs still waiting to blow up , owned by assorted councils. When they do blow up, these councils are going to be incredibly distressed all of a sudden. Which would be a rather interesting sight to behold but only if you like watching slow motion train wrecks.

Tony Hall is proposing a debt swap with the NSW Government to get the councils out of the mess but one wonders if the current NSW Government is philosophically capable of seeing the merits of the argument when the remedy essentially amounts to what conservatives called a moral hazard back in 2008 when the GFC was kicking in.

Whatever the case, you know it's going to be the tax payers who will pay for these losses through raised rates by councils or heavier duties imposed by the state government. Of course it will have knock-on effects as asset prices will have to fall in the wake of such payments. If you thought we dodged the GFC bullet, perhaps we only kicked the can down the road. The ramification of these CDOs blowing up in the faces of our councils is going to be very expensive for our country. It goes to show the GFC really hasn't played itself out at all.

The article is worth a read, if you can stomach the scary nature of it.

In Case You Were Wondering, Greece May Yet Default Totally

The ugliness that is the Greek situation rolls on. Today is the day the debt swap deal has to take place. The problem is that the deal set in place months ago back in December may still topple over if not enough of the creditors sign up for the deal.

So this is it. After three years of high drama, the European Union is staring at its first ever sovereign default and, ironically, unlike every other deadline so far, this one looks set to be adhered to.
At 8pm GMT tonight (7am, AEDT, Friday morning), the authorities will know - or have a very good idea - how many of Greece’s international creditors have accepted its 206 billion euro ($256 billion) bond-swap offer.
The results will probably take a few days to come out - Athens has to put its decisions through Brussels’ sluggish decision making processes - but this time it isn’t up to the politicians so the possible outcomes are clearer.

So if more than 86% don't sign up for the deal, it could all fall apart. It's hard to understand what that *means* because as Bill Clinton famously observed, "that would depend on what you mean by 'mean'". If it's short of 86% who sign on for the miserable debt swap that socks 69% of value off the bonds, then there is no deal and Greece defaults 'totally'. Banks immediately go into crisis, global credit seizes up, the clock of financial sectors hits midnight and everything turns into a pumpkin. Which is fine, because you can take that pumpkin, issue a derivative against the pumpkin maturing and on-sell it in debt parcels...

Anyway, jokes aside, the Greek government is pretty adamant about the "this deal or no deal" stance. You can hardly blame them. After two years of being told what nincompoops they are for not being able to manage their finances (and, yes they are the said nincompoops), and having the deal thrust at them from the 'The Troika' of the IMF, World Bank and the ECB, and having to push through hideous austerity measures one after the other (against the will of their own people) to attempt to meet these demands, just to get a cash float, it would be hard to imagine the same crew of people would be sympathetic to stragglers who want a better deal. Everybody wants a better deal, but in these circumstances, nobody's going to get one. Would you be open to separate side deals if you had to live through the torment and insults of the Greek leaders for the lats two years?

So, there you have it. Debt swapping, even if agreed upon is this aggravating. Can Ku-ring-gai and other councils even stomach a single directive from the NSW Government if they had to undergo a debt swap deal? One wonders.

Where Did All This Water Come From?

Jeez that was a lot of water.

Sydney has suffered its heaviest rainfall in five years, bringing the city's transport system to a halt and causing hundreds of rescues and evacuations.
About 120 millimetres of rain fell on parts of the CBD this morning, with the Bureau of Meteorology's Observatory Hill weather station recording its highest daily rainfall total since 2007.
In the city's west, 146mm fell on Merrylands.

There's a La Nina going on at the moment so we're bound to get a lot of rain. but parts of NSW are seeing rain that hasn't been seen in 160 years. As anomalous weather events go, citing 160 years is pretty wild. You shouldn't really expect to see weather events that happen in that scale of time in one's lifetime. We've seen worst in 30year events followed by worst in 60 year events. now we're hitting once in 160 years. It's worth pondering if this is even statistically normal in a lifetime to witness so many events that smash record books. Either that or the weather is on steroids, competing for something.

What nobody is saying is that all this water is now in the system thanks to global caps melting. There are a bunch of idiots who still want to argue that there is no such thing as man-made climate change, but this mad rainfall event can serve as an extra data point.

Planet Terror Compendium

Replacement Level Parts, Playable Strat

Last year when I built Sexcalibur from parts, I have to say it was a pretty deluxe kind of operation. If there was a wonderful thing I could throw at, I wouldn't hesitate to grab it and stick it in. To date, it is the most elaborate electric guitar I own. It may get even more elaborate if I decide one day to put in the super-switch to replace the current 5 way switch. Sexcalibur was supposed to be the electric guitar to end all electric guitars for me, and it sort of was until after I finished, I got the bug to simply put together more projects because the assembly process was such fun.

This of course led me to the Moby Rick Rickenbacker 4001 re-conditioning project that ate my brain, and then a kit guitar and fixing my friends multiple guitars... In all of this frenzy I came up with the concept of doing a project where I would source third party guitar parts and create what is known as a Parts-caster. And being a bit of a sometime baseball stats nerd, I thought it might be fun to source particular parts; that is to say, source parts that were the least expensive but still reliable. In short, a Parts-caster made up of replacement level parts.

Working The Problem

There are some things in a guitar that demand a higher standard than other parts. The canoe jack plate should look good, but the variance in function between a cheap Chinese steel one and a nice chrome one from North America is not much.

The place where you cannot give up any performance on a guitar equipped with a tremolo is in fact the tuners. There are a lot of dodgy tuners available  out there for joke-like prices for Chinese tuners, but you want something that either locks or is geared at a high ratio, if not both. Fortunately Wilkinson make such a tuner. These babies have thumb wheel locks, much like the Spertzels on the real US Fender Stratocasters. The saving is only $20 compared to a set of Fender locking tuners, but this is the bit you just can't compromise.

The search for a neck was interesting. There are quite a few third party makers for guitar necks, but it's actually hard to find the right price for the right neck. I guess that's the nature of most markets, but careful parsing of all the necks available yield a a Squier Fender neck from the 1980s or 1990s. It is a fairly thick neck with minimal camber. It is maple with a rosewood fretboard, and a badly done black paint job on the front of the headstock. All the same, the frets were impeccable and the rosewood fretboard was actually one of the best I'd ever felt. Rather ironic for a piece that as being sold for a give-away price.

The body also took me on a wild goose chase. the first body I tried was made of Paulownia, but it turned out the neck pocket was out of alignment an incorrectly routed. It was a shame because it promised to sound very good. This led me to a alder body out of a supplier in HK who sells these for an ungodly cheap price of $45. This one fit the neck like a glove. However, it is very heavy.

The other part I should mention is that there are quite a few manufacturers out there doing interesting things. They sport their own little brand names such as 'Guitarheads' and 'Diesel'. While I haven't fully explored their wares properly, I will vouch for their hot rail pickups. they're very gritty and have a healthy output with plenty of articulation.

The Parts, Costed


The neck was $50.

The body was $45.

Tuners are from Wilkinson.  $35

I got a pair of roller string trees. $5.

The Tremolo comes from Canada. It's the old style 6 screw version. $20.

The Knobs are from Japan. I got a full set of 3 pot knobs and 1 knob for the 5 way switch.  $15

The harness is some kind of Korean or Chinese Strat harness. The pots were in metric. It saved me a load of hassle, so it was worth just grabbing a whole harness. $20.

I pulled off the ceramic capacitors and put in a paper oil capacitor I got for $6.

The 'Planet Terror' Scratchplate and Backplate came in from Canada as well. $45

The pickups are generic Hot Rails. I don't know where they are made, but they're dirt cheap and actually sound really good. They even come with 4 wire config which means I could theoretically coil tap; for the life of me I can't bring myself to do it. Set of 3: $45.

That comes to about $286. Having assembled it and played it, I can tell you it's much better than anything you can buy for that price; it plays like something at least twice as expensive.

The Yumi Stynes Furor

They Just Got It In For Ya

Dear Yumi Stynes,

I don't really know you at all, in fact I didn't even know of our existence until this recent fracas. Colour me ignorant, I'm not a big watcher of the idiot box unless it's the news; and that's kind of how I glommed on to the fact that you said a few things that you regret and have since apologised for - twice - and you're still getting hostile notes and threats from an angered public. I even understand that you have been in touch with the ADF person who you implied was bad in bed and he's forgiven you, so I'm not really writing to you about that.

I'm writing to you more for the fact that you're probably thinking "why me? why have they got it so in for me?"

I mean, let's face it, Kyle Sandilands has said much more hostile, aggravating, obnoxious things than about conjectures about people's sexual prowess (or the absence thereof) - and yes, he too has had sponsors walk away from him.

The short answer I have for you is that no matter how Australian you might feel, having been born and raised here, when the stakes matter the most your half Japanese ancestry singles you out as Australia's favourtie object of hatred and scorn. I know this might strike you as odd and even counter to the ideological framework that an upbringing in multicultural Australia might have provided for you, but this is just the simple truth of it.

In my experience, the Australia can cope with the black fella and the wog and the Jew and the chink and the Vietnam boatperson and perhaps even a burqua-clad muslim doing 'alright' in our society, unfortunately the Japanese remain the unforgiven. This is ever so true in the history of this nation. If you were taught that it was the Chinese during the gold rush that brought about the declaration at the Eureka Stockade that Australia should stay white, then you are wrong. It was in fact the vast number of Japanese divers and crew working in the pearl diving business at the end of the 19th century up at the top end that prompted the actual implementation of the policy.it was the fear of the Japanese.

This policy was defended vigorously at the Paris Peace Conference by Billy Hughes, as he fought to keep a line about universal equality of mankind kept out of ay declaration for the Treaty of Versaille after World War I. Of course World War II didn't help either, in cementing the deep-seated (and officially sanctioned) hatred and dislike of the Japanese. I guess things like Changi POW camp didn't help either because Australians delight in telling the injustices that befell "their people" at Changi as if it were an isolated event in the history of mankind. "Brutal," they say. When I've pointed them in the direction of brutalities carried out by the allies in World War II, they've told me invariably the Japanese deserved it. No two way street there.

It's been a good 70 years since World War II, but the passion invested on hating on the Japanese is pretty intense out there. 70 years is a long time. It's longer than the length of time between the US Civil War and World War I; but the heat is still out there. You sure as heck don't hear the same kinds of things about Koreans or Malaysians or Vietnamese or Indonesians in East Timor, even though Australians went to some kind of war with them as well since the time they fought the Japanese. We don't even get the same level of visceral dislike about the Iraqis with whom we were so recently at war, or the Afghans with whom we are still at war. Bruce Ruxton used to famously bang on about the Japanese being a 'treacherous race'. (Thanks Bruce, I hope your fresh grave gives you all the comfort you need.)

Even from my own experience of growing up in Australia during the 1980s when multiculturalism was actively promoted, I would have to say that being Japanese was a separate kettle of prejudicial fish. That people would say quite openly they could handle black fellas, Wogs, Jews, Chinks and Lebs, they drew the line at the Japs. Indeed, while there were always pockets of places welcoming the Japanese, for the better part of the Twentieth Century the Japanese were the objects of scorn, ridicule, fear and hatred; which, incidentally are the very four things being directed at your way right now as you are vilified.

It continues even today. When you read the comments on news sites to do with whaling, one comes to understand that most of that passionate defense of the whale is the flipside of having a need to vilify the Japanese; it helps to have a justification as to why they are allowed to keep vilifying the Japanese.  "Oh look," they seem to say "the Japanese are all whalers. I like whales. All Japanese are my enemies!" Sea Shepherd supporters have a disgusting way of tucking their racism behind a vocal support for an extremist group. And the Australian government never really says anything to dissuade its own public of these kinds of ugly sentiments because, well, votes are nice to have in politics. If the  majority get such a kick out of Japan-bashing, why take it away from them?

I'm afraid this is the general level of cultural understanding that is out there in the Australian public of Japan. Do not be deceived by the inroads made by luminaries such as Tetsuya or Japanese cuisine in general; or even the kids who are really into anime and Pokemon. The reality is, when it comes to prejudice, the Japanese have a special place in the hearts of prejudicial Australians. And the only way to face this is with as much steel as you can muster and tell them they are the inadequate, the insufficient, the improper, the ugly, and the under-developed.

As somebody who is Japanese by blood, but Australian by nationality, I cannot begin to express my deep empathy for your situation right now. I do not even know if you feel any pride or affinity for your heritage seeing that you were born here and grew up here (and I won't conjecture or presume to know); But in case you were wondering why the baying public were going after you much harder than Kyle Sandilands or George Negus, well, it's because you are by birth eminently hate-able to the wider, prejudiced parts of the Australian public. Especially the types who think the ADF can do no wrong. Deep down, they don't like you because you're half Japanese. God forbid if you were fully Japanese, they'll demand a Senate inquiry into the media for putting you on screen.

It's a shame there's not much of a choice in it for you. It would be one thing to be properly criticised, only for the things you did. The ugly truth is that you are being criticised for being who you are for which you had no choice. The hypocrisy of the media going on about feigning surprise as if this is an exceptional case is breathtaking. I will quote something here from the article linked above:

Associate Professor Scott McQuire, from the University of Melbourne's school of Culture and Communication, said online forums such as Twitter and Facebook encouraged participation in public debate from a broad range of people with differing views.

"If you spend a lot of time online you see there is a group of people who will have particular political diatribes, a group of people who will respond in offensive manners and very dismissive manners," Associate Professor McQuire said.

"But there are other people who engage in much more thoughtful, compassionate, reasoned debates at times. We don't want to throw that bit out because of the fear that can come around through this kind of amplified extremities.

"The way in which these things comes to people's attention is through mainstream media. One of the responsibilities of the media is to think about what parts of the debate we fan."

That, is a crock of shit. It merely tells you the people have the means to express their fucked up opinions. The fact of the matter is, these views are out there, in our very own community, harboured by people who can fire them off like a drive by shooting. All you've done is given them an opening, a reason to express these ugly, fucked up opinions of absolute no merit.

The negative things the public are saying to you and about you are unwarranted, evil, nasty, small-minded and wrong. So while I don't know you from a bar of soap, and am merely a blogger in the wilderness of idiotic discourse, I just wanted to express my support for you, and solidarity with you, as is warranted.

Yours Faithfully,

Art

The Help

Are We Sure America's Come A Long Way?

Any time Hollywood makes a movie about the civil rights movement or things that happened in the Mississippi in the 50's and 60s, you know you're getting a snow job. No matter how badly they portray the way things were, you know it had to be worse. Over the years I've come to see these films with more and more scepticism, for it is obvious to the outside viewer that they are partly to assuage white guilt and partly to pretend things have moved on by making a period picture.

And really, by dint of time rolling on, the 1960s is more or less a historic epoch of the mid last century, more than it is a connected cultural terrain. And therein lies the deceptive shift that by couching these things in the past, the audience can pretend the conflict is over and done.

Anyway, when I sat down to watch 'The Help', it gave me nothing but dread for the onslaught of political correctness hypocrisy and a dose of revisionism. You see, I have my own prejudices about movies about racial prejudice.

What's Good About It

Viola David and Octavia Spencer turn in great performances in this film. Viola David had that standout scene in 'Doubt' when she played a tough scene opposite Meryl Streep.Octavia Spencer of course won a best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role and it is a very deserving accolade for the performance she turned in. Emma Stone (who was in 'Superbad' as the vague love interest only a few years ago) turns in a surprisingly full performance as well. The directing is pretty ordinary for camera but the work with actors is obviously good.

it's solid work that doesn't try to reinvent the wheel - but then how could you be that kind of director with this kind of material? It was hardly going to be Tree of Life.

What's Bad About It

I can't tell who the main character is supposed to be, and so I can't tell which is the main conflict. Is Abilene the main character because she is the narrator? Or is it Skeeter who is doing the documenting. Similarly I'm not sure about the authorship of the fictional book in the fictional universe. When it says on the cover 'Anonymous', does it mean the author is left unsaid because the central conflict as to who owns the narrative is undecided even in the movie that surrounds it?

Because the film is bookended by Abilene's narration, we are led to believe she believes she wrote the book. But what we've seen is Skeeter do all the writerly business of making notes, typing up the manuscript, calling the publisher and seeing through the publication. By any stretch of the definition, Skeeter wrote that book and Abilene was the subject.

This confusion is a terrible thing because it means that the film tries to tell us the issue of ownership over the narrative is settled, when in fact the film itself shows it is dead opposite, it is left in confusion and ready to be contested. There's no point in talking about black people getting emancipated and getting ownership of their lives through ownership of their narrative when the authorial voice is presenting it as otherwise.

What's Interesting About it

All of the above leads me to wonder if the original author of 'The Help' has really untangled this mess herself. If I were a prying person, I'd imagine some of the stuff in this film has deep factual roots, right down to the shit-in-the -pie episode. In fact, the shit-in-the-pie episode essentially holds together the film as an essential truth of the South in Jackson Mississippi. Having denigrated and stomped all over the aspirations of black people after their emancipation, they live in abject fear of the comeuppance. The shit in the pie is more than just symbolic of the fear of retribution, it is the structure of their society.

The white people in this film's universe have lost the ability to cook for themselves and raise their own children and have become totally dependent on their black maids. All the while they live in abject fear that the black people are spreading diseases and putting shit in their pies. Which, is essentially the thesis of this film and everything else that goes around it is an elaborate charade to pretend there is something more profound than the threat of the shit-in-the-pie.

There's an old joke from the Wild West where a cowboy says to his Chinese servant, "Hey Chink, this soup is really good. You make me this soup every day and it's always good. I've decided I'll stop calling you 'Chink'."

His servant replies, "Thanks boss. I'll stop peeing in your soup everyday too."

And that's your movie right there and there.

Isn't This Film Worse Than A Cliche?

This is a 'worthy' film that comes along once in a while and browbeats people into saying it is good. but it has to be said, without such films, where else would Viola Davis or Octavia Spencer find such juicy roles?

Right now there's debate in Australia as to whether the TV shows in this country are divers enough and many saying it is not. The producers argue it is because there aren't enough good actors in the non-mainstream white groupings. It doesn't occur to them this is chicken or the egg because if you weren't white in Australia, what chance have you got as an actor? Why would you choose to be an actor unless you were totally driven by the craft? And if you do, you may never see the light of day.

A lot of this goes hand in hand with the very slow process of getting over the race issue. The truth is, nowhere on the planet is over race, because no group on the planet can get over itself. It's a shame, but it is what it is. So I guess I should applaud the 'worthy' film, even though I am acutely aware of its  deep flaws and faults.

But really, this is a frustrating movie to watch.

Fixing The Mess

Julia Gets Her Way

And amazingly, Bob Carr is now a Senator replacing Mark Arbib, and Foreign Minister to boot. One marvels at how this deal got done, but it did.

Just hours before this morning's announcement, one minister, who like everybody else, was in the dark that Carr was back in the game, said: "She looks like she's lied and has no authority.
"This is not good for her; it's not good for us.
"I despair, I really do."
The truth is that, by Tuesday, the prospect of Carr coming to Canberra was over.
Gillard, stung by the criticism, rang Carr yesterday and put the offer to him again.
Carr accepted and, once more, Smith took one for the team.
Gillard ends the week as she began it - her leadership ascendant.

I guess it's a case of crash or crash through. You'd hate to be Stephen Smith, but them's the breaks.

The way I figure it, this doesn't really do much to add back credibility to the Federal ALP in as much as they had recruit a retired politician from the State ranks. Makes it look like the ALP in NSW really is short of talent. I probably shouldn't keep bagging Julia Gillard because this is a big victory on her part, but it says a lot that this is a big victory for her. Unfortunately I've made up my mind and i won't be voting for her; doubly unfortunate is the fact that Bob Carr isn't really in my good books so this leaves me cold; triply unfortunate is that I don't really care about her accomplishments in technical aspects of politics. She can be deft, so what?

All of this sort of explains why Kevin Rudd came out smiling from the caucus meeting in which he only got 31 votes. It's all a set up including Simon Crean smoking out the Rudd supporters to the brazen hypocrisy of Arbib claiming he's quitting politics for family to the yes-no-yes drafting of Bob Carr. how could one not laugh?

All it takes is for a couple of backbenchers on the Rudd side to call it quits and it's back to a hung parliament and they'd better damn well call an election - but  Julia Gillard would lose that too if polls are to be believed. I short, this is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. The Federal ALP government is as lame as any lame duck government has been.

Colour me unimpressed.

ALP Hanging Itself Out To Dry

A Turd By Any Other Name Is...

This isn't meant to be a blog about politics. It just goes that way because it's stuff from which I can't run away in the news cycle. believe me it's more fun watching movies and listening to rock albums. Still, the recent debacle is the gift that keeps giving.

I'm trying to keep a straight face as I try and decipher what allegedly happened last week coming into this week, including this odd business of Bob Carr. What we've gleaned so far is that Bob Carr got tapped to fill in for Mark Arbib's Senate seat at about the same time Simon Crean started mouthing off about Kevin Rudd not being a team player (while Kevin Rudd was in Washington DC). Bob Carr's condition for going to Canberra was that he would get the Foreign Ministry portfolio.

Of course, Kevin Rudd resigned the Foreign Minister role on Thursday going on to Friday in Australia time, so this means Julia Gillard tapped Bob Carr for the job before they'd ousted Kevin Rudd. So whatever was going on in caucus, it was decided early last week that Kevin had to go back to the backbench, Mark Arbib had to go, and Bob Carr would parachute himself into Kevin Rudd's job AND Mark Arbib's job in one fell swoop - but somehow this wouldn't look like typical ALP machinations where something inherently undemocratic was going on.

What a facepalm moment.

Didn't Paul Keating call the Senate 'unrepresentative swill'? I think such a move would have reinforced that notion. Come on peeps, get your act together...

But it gets worse than that. It turns out Stephen Smith wanted the Foreign Minister job he vacated for Kevin Rudd back and put the Kaibosh on the Bob Carr move. Bob Carr was already at the airport waiting for a plane when told there were objections and he wouldn't get what he wanted - so he went home. It turns out, everyone wants something more for their loyalty for Julia Gillard when in fact it's a zero sum game because it's not like she's going to create more ministries in order to have more ministers to please her backers.

Anyway...

I got some sound rebuking by some ALP friends about the way I was stumping for Kevin Rudd (with the humiliating reminder "that this is Australia where we are still under the Westminster system and we don't elect Presidents" - as if I don't know...) who told me that Julia Gillard was the superior politician, and therefore the superior prospect "going forward". The ins and out of it were how hard the ALP works and secures the future of workers and how all these ructions are not playthings for the commentariat - "and fucking bloggers at that!" - but momentous decisions undertaken by the party - and that Kevin Rudd really wasn't a good Labor man at all. In short, if I truly were a progressive, then I was way out of line for writing the things I'd written here and worse, the outbursts I'd written over on Facebook. No matter how sharp my criticisms were, I wasn't actually in the party having to do the things the party does to make things right for the working families of Australia. Yikes.

And it's true, I've been rather flippantly cruel and most unkind about the members of caucus who would not and did not vote for Kevin Rudd. And it's true I won't go join a party to hand out leaflets at polling booths, just so I can be closer to the faceless men in the vain hopes of influencing them. Who am I really to critique the mighty ALP? "Pull your fucking head in" they said (most undemocratically, I might add).

Nonetheless the fact remains, only 24hours after the triumphant moment where Julia Gillard's told us she's going to do a better job, here we are with this fiasco. As one Rudd supporter quipped, "you can't blame this on Kevin too."

Ain't that the truth?

A Different Kind Of Truth

The Old Is Not The New, It's Just Good

Van Halen came out with a new album about three weeks ago. I rushed out and got it at Utopia records in town. May as well do these things the old way. I know people are downloading these things but being a fetishist (as Rob Gordon would have it) I need to own plastic. I don't know, if I ever wanted Lady Gaga, I might download that, but a new Van Halen album deserves my full purchasing commitment. The point is to not give into the ravages of time; not surrender to the seduction of the new. If you truly love rock music, there's no way you're not going to fork out the money for the CD. Mine even came with a free poster, so suck on that iTunes!

What's Good About it

The word out there is that these aren't even new-new songs but re-arranged and re-written old songs, some of which were on that legendary demo tape to Warner Brothers. From the first note to the last, the Van Halen you hear sounds as bristling and energetic as any and all of the early Van Halen records that featured David Lee Roth. And really, that's what we expect, and that's what they deliver.

The playing is superb, the engineering is great, the mix is lively, and it just plain rocks. At the heart of it is Eddie Van Halen, still doing his remarkable guitar playing that changed the landscape for guitarists for a generation. The whole package might not sound fresh to music critics, but it sounds real, and lived in. You know, being 'good' is fresh enough for me.

What's Bad About It

Are you kidding me? Uh... It's not a double album?.

What's Interesting About It

Well, that's an interesting title for a start, that poses some epistemological questions. I don't know how philosophical a bent David Lee Roth has developed - judging from his solo works, maybe not much - but the line evokes two discussions about knowledge. One is whether we can ascertain truth and one is whether truth is multiple and that there can be conflicting, contradictory but simultaneous truth. The song 'Bullethead' suggests that reality might be a bit more vague than any definition we give it.

I'm sure the guys in the band aren't thinking about this sort of thing to much, and yet you get the feeling from the record that fame and success actually wore on them a lot more than they admitted. truth, as they found out was a socially determined construct, so they want to throw it back on us saying absolutes are questionable.

The long absence between '1984' and this album for David Lee Roth is the stuff of rock legends so I won't go into it here, but it has to be said, he's slipped right back into the soundscape like he had never left. It makes you think, if it's so damn easy, what took you guys so long to get back? The answer to that might be the GFC wherein a lot of bands have hit the road again in order to scare up some cash after investments were burnt in the GFC.

At least this is the silver lining on that very black cloud - and it shines too.

Going Black And White

I've noticed over the years that when bands want to hit the reset button, they come out with black and white video clips. 'Tattoo' and the other bits of video that's been released are all in black and white. Unfortunately it reminds me of the time The Who took on Kenny Jones to replace the deceased Keith Moon and came out with 'You Better You Bet'; The time the Police came out with 'Every Breath You Take'; and the time U2 went all bluesy and did 'Rattle ad Hum', half in black and white. I don't know if it really means anything but the black and white thing always seems like a statement, but ends up being something else.

The band is resetting in the sense that they haven't had an album out since 1998, and they're doing this one with David Lee Roth so it stands to reason. The problem is that the Who only really had one more album in them and then stopped putting out material for along time, and the Police really only had the 1986 remix of 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' left in them. It's really not a good sign. Speaking for myself, I haven't done anything since I worked in black and white, so... I'm just saying.

"Can He Still Do The Splits?"

I've had a few people ask this question of David Lee Roth. Because the question never crossed my mind, it kind of took me by surprise that quite a number of people are asking this question. I don't understand how this comes to the forefront of people's minds when it comes to David Lee Roth rejoining the band, seeing that my own consciousness of the band totally revolves around Eddie' guitar playing. I mean, it's like asking if Dennis Rodman still has weird hair when the subject of the Michael Jordan era Chicago Bulls comes up. I mean, yeah, no, maybe, but were you watching what that team did at all? David Lee Roth's splits? Come on, this is Eddie's band. :)

ALP Finishes Rinse Cycle

What Came Out In The Wash

Even though we all knew what the outcome was going to be going into the meeting today, I'm still of the opinion that these ALP power brokers are full of shit for picking Julia Gillard over Kevin Rudd. In the last 5 days of blogging (and energetic commenting over at Facebook), we kind of figured out that these people would much rather face electoral oblivion than work under Kevin Rudd. That it wasn't just Nicola Rocks-in-her-head Roxon that had this asinine opinion,it was 71 of them, plus Julia Gillard who naturally voted for herself. It would have been funny had she voted for Kevin, just to rub it in, but... no. there is no humour in politics.

I know I'm being harsh when I call these 71 members of caucus assholes but in the past I have actually been quite generous when it came to ALP leadership issues. I didn't think much of Kim Beazley and was dismayed by his willingness to embrace anti-terror legislation as if tougher-than-Johnny was going to get him over the line. Not a great moment in progressive side of politics, but ... I voted for him. Simon Crean was another leader I felt iffy about, what with his perennial inability to get some kind of narrative going against the tidal wave of conservative patter coming from the Liberals. He was like a tongue-tied mute when you needed a bard. Then there was Mark Latham - less experienced, brash, scary, violent (but exciting if you ask me) who the faction bosses hobbled on the way to the polls. I sure as hell voted for Kevin'07; and as a side issue which is what State politics is, I voted for Bob Carr, Morris Iemma and maybe even Barry Unsworth way back when. And each and every time, I didn't really question the progressive cause, nor did I stop to consider the weird bedfellows I had in rabid socialist unionists and former communists and former student politicians and even people with whom I disagreed outright.

But here's the thing: I could not bring myself to vote for Kristina Kenneally, and I couldn't bring myself to vote for Julia Gillard in 2010 because I just couldn't take the machinations that brought these people to the top of their resepective totem poles. I've wondered if this was because I was some kind of political misogynist, but no, I would have voted for Joan Krrner and Dr. Carmen Lawrence and Anna Bligh if they were in my State. (Had I been American I would have voted for Hillary Clinton over anybody except Obama). But I drew the line with these two.

What they have in common is this: Mark Arbib did the politicking to swap leaders to install both these women when it was unnecessary to do so in both instances, and was in fact detrimental to my trust of the ALP. I've been pondering about my rage and really, it comes down to Mark Arbib and his apparatchik ways.

So it is with great pleasure today to find that Arbib has resigned from Parliament.

Senator Arbib - often described as one of the "faceless men" for his role in helping remove Kevin Rudd as PM in 2010 - described his shock resignation as a "gesture of goodwill" to the party to help it heal.
Senator Arbib, who also served as Sports Minister, said that he was also resigning from the Parliament for family reasons.

He said that after he was promoted to the ministry late last year, his daughter cried because it meant he would spend more time at work.

"Don't take the job, Dad," she said.

Unlike a lower house seat, his resignation from the Senate will not force a by-election. The NSW Parliament will choose a replacement from the Labor Party.
Senator Arbib said that the past week in politics had been one of the "most difficult" weeks in Labor Party history.

He said that leadership ballots were "difficult complex and emotional" events.
Senator Arbib said that he believed Prime Minister Julia Gillard could and would win the next election but it required a commitment from the caucus to put recent events behind them.

"What it requires is professionalism," he said.
Senator Arbib said that healing the party's scars required more than talk.

"It requires more than words, it requires action," he said.
"Everyone has a responsibility, all of us have to play a part. And that includes me."

It's a real bummer that Kevin couldn't persuade his colleagues to give him another shot. I won't vote for Julia Gillard - ever - so that is just that. Yet, it is some kind of consolation that Mark Arbib has been sent packing. Oh, he'll still collect that big pension that pollies get to pull down, but it is best for the ALP that he be sent packing. Nobody's going to convince me this man was an asset for progressive politics in this country.

Good riddance.

Not Done With Despising

All this has lowered my estimation of these people in caucus, especially the ones who voted for Gillard in the face of the numbers. They're dicing the future of Australia with Tony Abbott. Which is why I am not contemplating a donkey vote at the next election. If these people are willing to dice the future of Australia with Tony Abbott, then I'm entitled to do the same with my vote.

Machiavelli said contempt was corrosive. A leader can be loved, or feared, but the option is not there to be held in contempt and unfortunately what we have here is a situation where I now hold these people in contempt. I don't think I'm alone on that little count. The tenor of people who were hoping Kevin Rudd might have persuaded a few more people are particularly frutrated today.

Here's an example - Sam deBrito:

I tell ya, every time I'm about to get well and truly sick of Kevin Rudd's two-year-long temper tantrum, someone on Mount Hubris reminds me just how out of touch much of the Labour Caucus is and how they'll happily convince you piss is Perrier depending on the day.

Tell me Brendan, Greg, and Ms Gillard; if the ballot for the Labor leadership is not a celebrity poll why the hell did you get rid of Rudd 20 months ago?

The rationalisation since has been, as O'Connor repeated Sunday, that it was "about who should lead the nation. Getting things done and doing things in the nation's interest is not always immediately popular but it's very important."

And I thought it was about Kevin Rudd's plunging opinion polls back in 2010 when you cut his throat?
Since then we've had all the words in the world telling us what a hard man Rudd was to work for, that he was a nightmare boss, but you know what?

WE DON'T CARE.

We have nightmare bosses out here in the real world and we don't get to sack them when they drive us batshit.
We don't get paid $300K like ministers do either (plus allowances!)
We don't have any of your power or influence, except for one itty bitty thing: our vote.

And you ignored this, you took it away from us back in 2010 when you sacked a democratically elected Prime Minister - in a process some might uncharitably liken to a popularity contest - and we haven't forgotten that.

And if that doesn't sound angry enough to you, here's Peter Hartcher:

The people consistently prefer Kevin Rudd to Julia Gillard as Labor leader by a factor of about two to one. But Labor has gone the other way by a factor of more than two to one. For a party that is on a steady trajectory to electoral defeat, it was an extraordinary act of steely resolve. Or suicidal madness.
Under the Gillard leadership, Labor lost its parliamentary majority and then proceeded consistently to register the lowest primary vote on record.

And the only polling figures to shift in the past week beyond the margin of error was Gillard’s approval rating.
Yet the vote of 71 to 31 for Gillard suggests that Rudd, on net, has failed to win over any votes since last week. Even more remarkably, he has failed to win any votes since losing the leadership 20 months ago.

Some names have moved from one column to the other on the caucus voting lists, but, on a net basis, the caucus has shown itself to be deeply entrenched in defending Gillard.

This is a violation of one of the customary laws of leadership challenges – that the challenger carries momentum.

Mr. Hartcher's trying to be fair where perhaps between the lines you can almost see him gritting his teeth. Something's gone seriously wrong on the progressive side of politics, and this fiasco didn't come close to fixing it.

Alone, Alone, Alone

Just so I'm making myself absolutely clear once more, I will not be voting for the ALP with Julia Gillard as the Prime Minister at the next Federal election. But I won't be voting for the Libs or the Nats. I won't even vote Green because they support Sea Shepherd. I won't vote for an independent, without knowing what they stand for, but I don't imagine I'll find such an independent I can identify with.

It's actually a lonely feeling to know this much, that I've cast myself adrift from all the mainstream options.  I'm all alone out here without an option.

So the Donkey is suddenly looking like an eminently respectable candidate.

ALP In Spin Cycle Day 4

Ain't Gettin' It Done

It's not entirely Kevin's fault, but he's not going to get it done tomorrow. he won't have the numbers. Julia Gillard is looking smug so she probably knows what the vote number will be based on the factional bosses doing a headcount. That's kind of that. I was swearing my head off about an hour ago, but that's probably the anger phase of mourning. The fact of the matter is, the Australian public are not going to get their man back, no matter how much they support him through polls. His own party hate him even more.

In fact it's being reported that some Labor MPs would rather be voted out at the next election than put Kevin back in the Lodge, so that explains the stodgy score line that really hasn't moved in 3 days of speculating. They hate him so much like there's no tomorrow; and quite frankly there won't be too many tomorrows for the current ALP government. They will get tossed out at the next election no matter what. All this has done is to revive the emotions from the time Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd. Clearly she is a better operator than Kevin Rudd, but her place in history won't be as good as his thanks to her own government. It's going to go down in flames.

At this point in time, I've decided I'll brace for the inevitable Coalition win to come and years of living under the unscientific stupidity, willful ignorance, pathetic prejudice, and medieval mindset that is Tony Abbott. I don't think I'm alone, with this dawning realisation. It's a real shame it has come to this, and the ALP had better learn some thing from all this because the voters who supported Rudd and got burnt by Gillard are not going to be wooed back easily. As Mark Latham advised at the last Federal election, donkey voting may well be the best option. They got their minority government hung parliament for a reason last time. All this kerfuffle did was to remind us why we should dislike and despise Julia Gillard so much.

As Niccolo Machiavelli once pointed out, contempt is the most corrosive force to a leader's standing. Let me just say my contempt runs deep for Julia Gillard and the current ALP faction bosses. If these MPs would prefer to lose office than see Kevin Rudd back, I am willing to help them out the door into the wilderness; and make no mistake, the ALP will be in the wilderness for a very long time after losing office this time. If an ALP party member should ever ask why I stopped voting, I will say, "your party broke faith with me first. You cannot un-fuck all that."

I guess I'm pre-empting the vote tomorrow, but all indications are that Kevin Rudd hasn't got the numbers. Simon Crean was smart in trying to nip it in the bud early. The unintended consequence is that it reminded me of my rage about the change in June 2010 and now I will never vote for the ALP as long as Julia Gillard is their leader.

ALP In Spin Cycle Day 3

OMG Kev Is Still A Rock Star!

The newspaper headlines this morning were blaring out something that everybody knows. Kevin Rudd would trounce Tony Abbott. Polls also indicate people prefer Kevin Rudd to Julia Gillard by a big margin. This much we suspected, and now we knew as of this morning's reporting. Julia Gillard said this isn't supposed to be like 'Celebrity Survivor', but neither is it supposed to be like the US Presidential election, nor is it meant to determine the future of Australia; well, maybe the last bit is true.

Slowly the idea seems to be cottoning on out there that if you put the past in brackets and not worry about the argy-bargy of today, what Monday's spill is going to bring is the long term future outlook of the ALP - and lo and behold Anthony Albanese has declared he'll pitch in behind Kevin Rudd. It wasn't expected, but it was greatly welcomed by the Rudd camp. The point to be drawn from Albanese making his decision was that he probably got an ear full from his constituency that it had to be Rudd or else.

Or else what? They only had to point at the rabid Mr. Rabbit.

It's pretty sobering for us punters as is; imagine what that's like for a dyed-in-the-wool ALP man like Albanese? Who knows? Maybe Carmel Tebbutt had something to say after her near-loss of her seat at the last state election. The electorate were out to smash the ALP, and most of that public anger could be sheeted home to the incredibly unpopular, un-embrace-able, eminently dislike-able, thoroughly-contemptible Kristina "The Haircut' Kenneally. Yes, Ms. Tebbutt probably had plenty of scars to show for the last campaign she went through, she must have said "ferfuxake Albo, bring back Kevin and be done with it!"

I don't know. I'm just guessing. But how hard could it be to pick the leader? There are only 2 horses in the race; one very popular and one very unpopular. Urm... Ahh.... "Bueller!? Bueller?!"

A lot of people are telling me that they want Kevin back, and that they don't really care if he yells at hosties or cabinet ministers; swears like a sailor in between takes for a video; goes to strip clubs; says really long words that is not in the common parlance or vernacular. They just want him back because it would be the right thing. Which makes Julia Gillard the wrong thing, no matter how she positions herself.

I'm now wondering how in the hell the faction bosses are going to rein in the impulse to jump ship from the Gillard-is-PM project. how viscerally do MPs feel this kind of thing? Is it like a punch to the nuts or a blowtorch to the eyeballs or just a good gut punch? Judging from Anthony Albanese's strained, teary expression it might be a combination of all of the above. He looked pained. How are the backbenchers in the Gillard faction holding up? Especially those sitting on marginal seats? Isn't this the coalface of the problem? It's not Rudd's fault they're on marginal seats. It's Rudd's fault they lost their margin - if the stories about the leaks are to be believed. But if they then stick with Julia...

You get the feeling that the public are making themselves very clear. They want to be heard, and what they're saying is bring back Kevin Rudd. It's a remarkable turn of events.

ALP In Spin Cycle Day 2

Kevin For President!

I watched Kevin Rudd's press conference today. It was a remarkable performance. I didn't expect to be roused by it, but it was quite the rousing gee-up. I don't know if I should be surprised or not, after all Kevin Rudd in full flight is capable of some pretty emotive speechifying, and getting off the first plane back from Washington DC seemed like as good a time as any to launch into one of his special speechifying moments. He has a soaring kind of flare in his rhetoric and his perspective is decent and big.

It was also interesting because he worked backwards from a problematic like some Roman orator in the ancient Senate. The problem stems from the simple fact that the Opposition Leader is Tony Abbott - arch-conservative nutjob - and the nation might have to end up with Tony Abbott in the lodge, thanks mostly to Julia Gillard not winning. When you put it like that, it's not just an emergency for Julia Gillard or Kevin Rudd or any faction of the ALP, it's freaking national emergency! And so, like Scipio or Pompey the Great, he's promising to go vanquish the cultural barbarian (yes, Tony Abbott, that's you) on behalf of all of us.

That’s why I’m here today, because I believe that to do the best for Australia and Labor, things have to change. It’s no secret that our government has a lot of work to do if it is to regain the confidence of the Australian people. Rightly or wrongly, Julia has lost the trust of the Australian people, and starting on Monday, I want to start restoring that trust. That’s why I’ve decided to contest the leadership of the Australian Labor Party, at the ballot in the caucus of the Australian Labor Party on Monday.

Well, my fellow Australians, that there is an announcement Kevin is running to be the first President of Australia. Of course, that's not how our system works, so you wonder how effective this construction is, given that it is aimed squarely at Caucus.

If I might add at this juncture, a good many of this Caucus is in the Senate, so a good many of Caucus could rightly be called (or re-called) unrepresentative swill, for if they don't vote for Kevin on Monday, they're going against the will of the people. Stick that in your history books Nicola Roxon.

Until Kevin came out with his statement, I spent the morning quite morose because it was obvious by the deafening silence that Tony Abbott and his Liberal Party colleagues were just enjoying this in the glorious comfort of being totally uninvolved; and of course they are going to be the net beneficiaries of this ugly fracas. So, I was sitting there thinking "bloody hell, it's going to be a Tony Abbott Liberal Government all because the Australian Labor Party would much rather have faction fights than do what's right. This is a long way away from the days of Hawke-Keating, even though people are trying to use that as a model. Kevin Rudd says he won't be challenging a second time:

Question: Mr Rudd if you lose on Monday how would you channel your passion for policy from the backbench?

Rudd: Well there’s a great tradition in politics in many countries for this being done. If you look at the older history of this country and various individuals have served as prime minister in one position or another they have continued to contribute in the public policy debate. Similarly in the United Kingdom they’ve done the same as well from the back bench or other positions on the front bench over time. I’m quite relaxed about that. What are my passions? Australia’s future in the world and how we carve out a future for a country such as ours in a very uncertain environment. Plenty of opportunities to shape the national debate on that. I’d also say I’m pretty passionate about my local community. My local community is something which means a lot to me. It’s where we have all had our being and it’s our place that we call home and we intend to stay there.

Question: If you go to the backbench would you rule out being drafted at some stage as opposed to challenging?

Rudd: I will go back to exactly to what I said before, I think it’s very clear-cut what I have said, I don’t propose to add to it.

Thus the point is, if any of the MPs are hoping for a second shot at a Rudd challenge to Julia Gillard in 6 months time, don't bother. This is it. Monday is do-or-die for the party, thanks to Kevin Rudd, no, really thank you very much Kevin Rudd. Ouch.

So the reason you would vote for Julia Gillard is not because she did the stuff she did, but because you think she's going to beat Tony Abbott. The reason to vote for Kevin is because he's a better bet to beat Tony Abbott. If you put it that way, I can't see why loyalty would mean so much that you'd lose your job over it. Dump Julia now!

Remember Obama vs. Clinton?

I'll get hate mail again, but if I don't say it, I'll regret it. Here's one from an 'unreconstructed male chauvinist pigs', to all the 'unreconstructed male chauvinist pigs' out there.

There's been this asinine commentary that says Kevin Rudd's no good with women. The nutshell version is that all the women in Caucus are supporting Gillard, therefore he must be shit with women. i.e he's some kind of sexist shit.

If you think about it, it's hard to imagine some of these women not lining up with Julia Gillard because Julia Gillard's Prime Minister-ship represents the great feminist agenda come to fruition. Whatever her faults, she's the pinnacle of that movement's success. I cannot for the life of me imagine the likes of Kate Ellis, Nicola Roxon, Penny Wong, Tanya Plibersek, Sharon Bird, and Jenny Macklin walking away from that Quota Affirmation agenda.

The other thing that should be noted is the spitfire barrage that came from Maxine McKew today. It doesn't seem like Maxine had too much trouble working with Kevin Rudd - but hey Maxine McKew comes from the ABC where genuine meritocracy actually was the way things went. You sure don't win a Walkley Award on the Quota Affirmation agenda. So Kate Ellis and Nicola Roxon - who have been vocally trashing Kevin Rudd in the press - can stick Maxine McKew's resume in the objectivity pipe and have a good smoke. Ladies, it's bad form to be playing the gender card and pretending it's not on the table. If I played the race card that way, you'd seethe at it at every turn pointing at my genitals reminding me I'm male (which is the way all these discussions went in the 1980s and 1990s).

All of this brought back memories of the denouement of Hilary Clinton's campaign to be the Democrat candidate for the Presidency back in 2008. She started as the front runner but slowly found herself falling behind the more charismatic Barack Obama, who in the end beat her by a long stretch. Afterward there were huge recriminations from the feminist camp about it, but the polling numbers simply said Obama being black and charismatic was more important than Clinton being white, female and not as charismatic.

I think we have exactly the same situation except Kevin Rudd isn't black - instead, he's an egghead from Queensland, which makes him a kind of minority all of its own. At the end of the day, what the 30% electoral support for Julia Gillard means is that the merits of Julia Gillard as seen by the feminists just isn't translating to blokes or the unwashed masses in the middle and the manicured upper crust entitled. She might be the politically correct (and therefore 'right') candidate for the Canberra insiders, but that's exactly her problem. The wider community just isn't going to get that.

 

The Tumbling Machine

And I have One More Thing To Say, Advance Australia Fair

What a day it's been for politics. I've been pondering today what good would come of Kevin Rudd returning to the hot seat of Prime Minister. One wonders if he really will be an improvement on his former self. I know the plan is that he is trying to leverage his immense popularity in the electorate, but is he really going to be better than before? Will he even be better than Julia Gillard who can at least rightly claim she got a Carbon Tax and Mining Tax of some sort through. I might ave been a bit rash in selling Julia Gillard down the river last night. 24hours on, I'm trying to be a bit less knee-jerk, and more 'ordinary jerk' about all this.

The balance sheet would have it that Julia Gillard actually got some policy material underway and enacted handily in spite of her minority government. It is even conceivable she might have been able to do even more had Kevin Rudd not sabotaged hr election campaign and turned this parliament into the mess that it is now. Even then, I sort of think the only reason it came to that pass was directly because of the manner in which she rose to her office; but I have to put that out of my mind. Has Julia Gillard's performance as a Prime Minister been that bad? My brain says no, my heart says yes.

It won't matter. We don't get to vote - the ALP Caucus does. Peter Hartcher made the funny observation that the MPs get to decide whether they want to work for a bad boss or face unemployment. It's a terrible choice that many Australians get to face. When I think about the fact that it is Tony Abbott lurking out there hoping to cash in on this fracas, then I want the ALP to pick who ever they think they can win with; not whoever they think they can live with as PM. That still means Kevin Rudd, and he told us so himself in his press conference.

We sure live in interesting times, that's for sure.

 

The ALP Tosses Itself Into A Washing Machine

What A Mess

It's a good a time as any to come back and write something here, now that Kevin Rudd has tipped his hand and resigned as Foreign Minister. I've been gingerly watching this saga of Rudd vs. Gillard unfold for some weeks now as incessant reporting made out the picture the Rudd's challenge was imminent and immanent. I just figured that the election in Queensland was enough of a sideshow that Kevin Rudd would have his hands full being helpful up there that this challenge would not come for a good few weeks. As they say, a week is a long time in politics and now it's all on.

Long time readers of this blog know that in the balance of things I'm probably leaning to the centre-right of the ALP in policy issues, which means my horse in this rate ought to be Julia Gillard backed by the likes of Bill Shorten and Simon Crean. Except it's not. I vowed I wouldn't vote for her in protest of the manner in which Kevin Rudd's prime minister ship was cut down mid-strream. I'm sorry, but I have principles. I have spine. And so I voted Greens for the lower house and the Sex Party for the Senate, largely in protest. I've written this before but Kristina Kenneally and Julia Gillard represent a certain kind of quota-driven politics that elevates mediocrity dressed as elites.

While Kevin Rudd might not have been my preferred Labor leader, the 'coup' (as the SMH calls it), essentially highlighted what a bunch of conniving bastards the ALP power-brokers were - and for heaven's sakes these bastards have never apologised for it. So there's something in me that approves of Kevin Rudd trying to have another shot at office, even if it gets really messy.

I've been searching my feelings about how I feel about Julia Gillard but all I come up with is a blank. Kevin Rudd might not be everything I'd want in the PM - he's no Gough, Bob or Paul - but there's something critically lacking in Julia Gillard (and no, it's not a penis or a pair of testicles). I've been told she does committee well, and policy has been sound, but it's essentially a Prime Minister-hood that started in connivance and conspiracy; and both the nature of her rise to office and the manner have constantly cast a dark shadow over her work. It's a weird thing to say but she has the same lack of moral authority that say, George W. Bush had when he came to office in the USA in 2000. Just as the sense of dodginess never left Dubbya's side, the 'coup' has stayed wit Julia Gillard.

Everything that her time in office has accomplished has been compromised by the lack of moral authority, which in turn caused the election result of a hung Parliament which made her enact policies she promised she would not do and made her look even dodgy. Which is what a lack of moral authority on a politician can do for you. It is exactly like that joke, "You fuck one goat". In her case, her goat is coming back mighty angry,bearing a grudge, claiming it was rape.

I understand that in Canberra, Kevin Rudd has been seen as the terrible outsider hijacking the ALP, but from outside of the political sphere, it simply looks like the ALP drifted off into the land of self-interest and forgot public interest until Kevin Rudd came along and said it was important again. Even if I don't agree with everything he says or does, it wasn't as if Kevin Rudd was not a good Labor leader in his time. It is also entirely self-evident to the people outside of Canberra that Julia Gillard has been at best a mediocre leader, and it does not matter one bit how good her policy work has been. She's been compromised and then went on and compromised herself further.

And this is what is really interesting about these two people and the ALP. While questions of performance might actually be of value in understanding and assessing Kevin Rudd's place in our polity, with Julia Gillard these questions are moot because her own integrity got severely compromised on the very day she came to office. It begs the question, was it really worth it to Julia Gillard, to squander so much, to be Prime Minister? Stranger still, it seems the ALP cannot get to its future without having this stoush. So this is it. Like it or lump it, the ALP has to have this leadership challenge. As ugly as it's going to get, this is their destiny.

It raises even more questions too.

• For instance if the point of the Centre Right and the vaunted NSW Centre Right was to win at all costs, then how can they justify sticking with Julia Gillard with her bad polls?


• If Kevin Rudd is so bad for the ALP, then why don't they just kick him out than suffer this leadership tussle?


• And if they aren't kicking out Kevin Rudd, doesn't sort of mean that the various factions are essentially just grubby little interest groups pushing their self-interest agendas? Isn't that exactly what the Liberal Party is, except with different paymasters? When is principle going to come into any of this?


• And if they do bury Kevin Rudd this time and chuck him to the gutters, you have to ask yourself what the hell is going on with the ALP that it has burnt through two leaders - Kevin Rudd AND Mark Latham - to keep pushing these self interest agendas?


• Even if she survives this spill, will winning this spill give Julia Gillard any bounce in the polls? The electorate is not warming to this PM.

I don't think I'm being all that cynical in asking those questions. Inquiring minds would want to know the honest answers to those questions from 'the faceless men'. I kind of held my tongue and stayed my pen this early part of the year because I thought I should give Julia Gillard a fair crack of the whip but the more I think about it, I can't see how the ALP can't go back to Kevin Rudd and hit the polls. Unless they really want to be in opposition for another 10 years. I guess for the insiders, this is a terrible choice, but ...don't they want to win? Or can they really hate Kevin that much?

Still Staying Away In Droves

Here We Go Again!

Pleiades sent in this link today. It's the aftermath of the AACTA Awards.

The Australian Academy is, by all reports, the brainchild of cherished Australian actor and current Australian of the Year Geoffrey Rush. It emerged from a review of the AFI conducted last year. Among its many laudable goals are celebrating the craft and skill of filmmaking, enhancing public interest in Australian screen culture and, perhaps most importantly, rescuing the annual awards ceremony from the increasing irrelevance it was sliding towards under the old AFI structure.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. The AFIs were dowdy and unpopular. Australian film seemed perennially to be in the doldrums. No one wanted to watch the films that won prizes, or the prize night itself.
And so the new awards were moved to the January-February window, to take advantage of Oscars fever in the US.

As the AACTA’s website relates:“In line with international best-practice models, AACTA draws upon some of the well recognised and understood elements of the AMPAS (USA) and BAFTA (UK) models, while tailoring these to meet local industry needs and traditions, and to ensure that the AACTA organsiaton model and the AACTA Awards remain distinctly Australian.”

A new TV deal was signed with the Nine Network. Hollywood A-list stars were lured back to our shores to present awards — or at least to an accompanying US-based event, where they could be beamed to the Sydney Opera House on the night to show their long-distance support. No effort was spared to spruce up the glamour, and put back a little razzle-dazzle.

Judging by the ratings, however, it didn’t work. The AACTAs largely failed to catch fire with Tuesday night television audiences, attracting a desultory 314,000 viewers nationally for a delayed 9.30pm telecast. That’s a little bit better than last year’s AFIs, but well short of what Nine would have been hoping for.

Why the hell would you watch it? I don't even understand why people watch Awards shows like the Golden Globes and the Oscars so it escapes me what possible benefit there could be in watching an Awards show built around Australian film & TV content. I know it's curmudgeonly to say it, but it's true. Awards shows suck. The concept of handing out industry awards - in general - suck. Look, if they were handing out an award and they gave it to me for my film effort, I'd take it. You'd be a mug to turn it down, but it doesn't change the fact that an award for a film is a bit like a derivative of a derivative of the film, with no immediate connection to the value of the film itself. So apart from the people who are actually there to feel like they're in the running for a statue, what on earth could possess any entertainment value? And what if you just didn't care about the people or the films being talked about? - because let's face it, the Australian public sure as hell don't care. Why would there be an audience for an Awards show for a a film industry people didn't watch? Explain me that, Batman! :)

So naturally this is the bit that I beg to differ:

It is possible that Australia is on the cusp of a new golden era of cinema, if only we’re prepared to recognise what it looks like. The future of media in general is likely to be split into ever more and smaller niches, and in a sense this levels the playing field to allow small-budget Australian films to compete at festivals such as Sundance. In contrast, cinema in its big-budget manifestations may well have had its day, at least in the dominant sense of blockbuster mass-market culture.

If it were, I did not notice. I'm not being gratuitously mean; I'm just being as sanguine as I can be.