Open Forum March 13, 2010 at Catallaxy Files

Open Forum March 13, 2010

657 comments

Written by Sinclair Davidson

March 13th, 2010 at 12:07 am

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657 Responses to 'Open Forum March 13, 2010'

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Laying it on a bit thick, “mate”:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/im-no-silvertail-insists-tony-abbott-my-mercedes-is-second-hand/story-e6freuy9-1225840208351

steve from brisbane

13 Mar 10 at 12:47 am
For Sinclair mainly: the issue of “random walks” in the temperature record gets a run in sceptic circles a bit lately, but there is a very lengthy technical post about it (from the pro-AGW side) at Tamino’s blog. The detail is very far above my head, but it seems a serious discussion of the issue for someone who can follow it:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/not-a-random-walk/

steve from brisbane

13 Mar 10 at 12:53 am
Steve thinks politicians shouldn’t try to attract voters to their side.

He’s also obssessed with Abbott in a very unhealthy way.

JC

13 Mar 10 at 1:01 am
1 out of 2, Steve. Keep that ratio up!

Michael Fisk

13 Mar 10 at 1:06 am
Fisk:

I’m suffering from Abbott fatigue as a result of all these lefties like Steve absoltuely obsessed with him.

Steve dreams about Abbott in speedos. While others simply spew hate.

It’s frightening what’s happening.

JC

13 Mar 10 at 1:09 am
And to finish with a flourish to display broad interests: I see Hoodoo Gurus have a new CD. I was surprised to hear Dave Faulkner on Spicks and Specks recently saying that, apart from New Zealand, they never made it big in any overseas country. That would have to make them the most globally, unfairly, under-appreciated band Australia ever produced.

steve from brisbane

13 Mar 10 at 1:20 am
If it weren’t for the 3 – 6 comments referring to speedos that follow every one of mine which dares mention Abbott, the Open Forum would not be so dominated by his name. Let me diss him in peace and we’ll all be much happier.

steve from brisbane

13 Mar 10 at 1:26 am
Let me diss him in peace and we’ll all be much happier./i

Okay fine. Have it your way.

JC

13 Mar 10 at 1:28 am
Sean Penn says his political opponents should die of rectal cancer, but doesn’t like to be questioned on it.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/blogs/yeas-and-nays/Yeas-_-Nays-booted-from-event-87415962.html

JC

13 Mar 10 at 1:49 am
Steve, you shouldn’t bother with those diversionary “alternate” comments. Nobody around here believes that they have any purpose other than artificially bumping your Abbott post ratio down below 1:1. We will just have to assume that every post you write is really about Abbott until proven otherwise.

Michael Fisk

13 Mar 10 at 4:56 am
And to finish with a flourish to display broad interests: I see Hoodoo Gurus have a new CD. I was surprised to hear Dave Faulkner on Spicks and Specks recently saying that, apart from New Zealand, they never made it big in any overseas country.

Steve, you’re not fooling us. “Broad” was an obvious allusion to Abbott’s manly shoulders. As for “big”…

Michael Fisk

13 Mar 10 at 5:00 am
Steve – thanks for the link. Good discussion. I did have a chuckle at this

When it comes to predicting the future, it’s well to compare the truly astounding successes of, say, physics, to, say, economics.

the man claims to be able to predict the future, but isn’t rich.

Sinclair Davidson

13 Mar 10 at 7:42 am
That would have to make them the most globally, unfairly, under-appreciated band Australia ever produced.
.
There are a few bands and singers in that status; although these days the reverse is true. We’re sending half-baked, moderately talented performers overseas with unrealistically high expectations.
Here are some other talented Australian musicians that failed to find an equivalent audience overseas:
Hoodoo Gurus
Mental as Anything (remember “live it up”?)
Cold Chisel/Jimmy Barnes
Dragon

daddy dave

13 Mar 10 at 7:50 am
A blog post I found yesterday. Some back-of-the-envelope calculations on population growth and debt.
The argument is that an expanding population (e.g., US, Australia) can carry about twice as much debt as a contracting population (e.g., Greece, Japan).

daddy dave

13 Mar 10 at 7:53 am
Dragon were transplanted Kiwis.

badm0f0

13 Mar 10 at 7:58 am
still underrated

daddy dave

13 Mar 10 at 8:25 am
The Mentals at least had one international hit with “live it up” because of Crocodile Dundee.

steve from brisbane

13 Mar 10 at 9:11 am
Laying it on a bit thick, “mate”

Are you serious, Steve? I have a friend who works on a production line and drives a 2002 Mercedes CLK. Do you also imagine he’s a ‘silvertail’? You’re laying it on a bit thick at the moment.

dover_beach

13 Mar 10 at 9:12 am
I don’t think any of those bands were really that good. It is hard to think of Aussie bands that have a good enough body of work to achieve more success overseas than they actually experienced. I think you’ve got to accept that the band in question has to really stand out in a crowded foreign market.

If the Hoodoo Gurus had been american then would have made more money, but still would not have been a classic band. Dragon and the Mentals at best would have been one hit wonders. I never much liked chisel.

Saints and Radio Birdman maybe, if they’d started later.

pedro

13 Mar 10 at 9:13 am
I think you’ve got to accept that the band in question has to really stand out in a crowded foreign market.
.
That’s fair. Like Conrad says, humans tend to ignore base rates. In this instance, you can’t judge quality in isolation, it has to be in the context of the market, including global competition.

daddy dave

13 Mar 10 at 9:49 am
I just always thought the Hoodoo Gurus had so many songs that were instantly likeable…

steve from brisbane

13 Mar 10 at 9:55 am
Fake Bird tweeting at the *real* Greg Mankiw

http://twitter.com/wingedmenace

@gregmankiwblog Well, you’re either pigouvian or just pig.

Other classics:

about 6 hours ago via web in reply to gregmankiwblog @kfc_colonel You’re an American hero. No funny money in your locker.
about 6 hours ago via web in reply to kfc_colonel @Chiropractors I’m not a registered chiropractor, but I do some spinal readjustments in the Dobell area.
about 18 hours ago via web

Jason Soon

13 Mar 10 at 9:58 am
People who were on this bluntly named program at least had no illusions as to why they were doing it:

“IF YOU’RE going to try to reform society’s most dangerous members, do it properly. That’s the message from a new review of the Dangerous People With Severe Personality Disorder programme, run over the past decade in two jails and two secure hospitals in England.”

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527513.000-england-has-failed-with-dangerous-disturbed-offenders.html

steve from brisbane

13 Mar 10 at 10:01 am
I just always thought the Hoodoo Gurus had so many songs that were instantly likeable…
.
we agree on something, Steve.
and speaking of agreeing with lefties (in this case THR), from your link is a testament to the ineffectiveness of CBT

Under the programme, some 450 men considered to have a “dangerous and severe” personality disorder, or DSPD, have received intensive cognitive-behavioural therapy.
But after 10 years and despite a budget of around £200 million, there is scant evidence of its effectiveness, says a group of psychiatrists and psychologists in a paper to appear in Medicine, Science and the Law.

daddy dave

13 Mar 10 at 10:08 am
Here is the counter-punch to Tamino’s post:

http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/tamino-vs-random-walk.html#more

dover_beach

13 Mar 10 at 10:26 am
Do you really understand the details of the statistics talk in both of those posts, d_b? (I admit I don’t.) I do know, however, that Lubos is a deeply unpopular (among physicists) character, who seems to like drawing attention to himself via abuse, which makes me deeply suspicious of any of his commentary on AGW.

steve from brisbane

13 Mar 10 at 10:42 am
So popularity denotes credibility?

JC

13 Mar 10 at 10:45 am
In both of those posts I think they explain their arguments well. But neither of them go much beyond explaination. Show us a trend estimate and the standard errors.

Sinclair Davidson

13 Mar 10 at 10:53 am
JC – a comment of yours got spammed and I accidently deleted it while cleaning out the filter. It had a link to science and policy or something. Sorry. can you repost it?

Sinclair Davidson

13 Mar 10 at 10:54 am
Naaa Don’t worry Sinc. Can’t recall what it was. Thanks for telling me though.

JC

13 Mar 10 at 10:57 am
Rudd caught attacking a woman again.

C.L.

13 Mar 10 at 11:22 am
Latest warmening “science”:

“Climate change” causing hurricanes and cyclones which kill more women than men leading to a “marriage famine” which makes females more vulnerable to STDs.

C.L.

13 Mar 10 at 11:31 am
Do you really understand the details of the statistics talk in both of those posts, d_b? (I admit I don’t.) I do know, however, that Lubos is a deeply unpopular (among physicists) character, who seems to like drawing attention to himself via abuse, which makes me deeply suspicious of any of his commentary on AGW.

Truth be told, I’ve only skimmed Tamino’s post but I did read Motl’s post and more or less understand his point which is straightforward. And seriously, I don’t really care if Motl is “deeply unpopular” or not; and I’m not sure what popularity has to do with the coherence of anyone’s argument but if you can’t follow an argument then, I suppose, you are going to have to depend upon surrogates, like popularity, as you seem to be doing here.

BTW, what in Motl’s post don’t you follow? I think he makes an excellent attempt to explain an otherwise technical argument in words an intelligent layperson can grasp.

dover_beach

13 Mar 10 at 11:37 am
Heh heh:

“The hole was tiny. I have no idea how he did it.”

C.L.

13 Mar 10 at 11:38 am
I understand the statistics. But I’ll tell you that I’m mightily tired of it all. In particular, what I’m tired of is this:
every time I say I’m an AGW skeptic, along comes an AGW advocate who insists that I go toe-to-toe with them for fucking ever, and that the minute I bow out, I obviously “don’t understand the science.”
JM, who comments here a lot, would be the classic example of this. If you’re not prepared to go cage-match with them you’re obviously not serious.
Also, not here but at other venues, every fucking response by the alarmist has to be accompanied by premature victory punches, abuse, and accusations of bad faith.

daddy dave

13 Mar 10 at 12:31 pm
In the leftist police state of Britain, the centuries-old Whitsun cheese-rolling race has been banned by “health and safety” officials.

C.L.

13 Mar 10 at 12:34 pm
Pedro – It is hard to think of Aussie bands that have a good enough body of work to achieve more success overseas than they actually experienced. I think you’ve got to accept that the band in question has to really stand out in a crowded foreign market.
.
I’ve found myself listening to James Reyne a bit. His first solo album he’s trying to be Sting. I think a lot of Aussie bands try and follow some overseas style guide and end up getting dismissed. Thing is the guy is a far superior songwriter to Sting. The most recent disc I’ve heard Every Man A King is true class.

Adrien

13 Mar 10 at 12:37 pm
I should add that maybe the reason a lot of people don;t realise Reyne is an excellent lyricist is because they can’t understand a single word he sings.

Adrien

13 Mar 10 at 12:39 pm
Hoodoo Gurus
Mental as Anything (remember “live it up”?)
Cold Chisel/Jimmy Barnes
Dragon
.
The Models. Up until and including Pleasure Of Your Company. Then it went schmaltzy.

Adrien

13 Mar 10 at 12:45 pm
Hoodoo Gurus would have been bigger worldwide but, unfortunately, Dave Faulkner went bald – which never worked well for a retro-hippie band. It was like the moment Axl Rose started wearing bike pants at Guns ‘n Roses concerts. It was all over. Frankly, I don’t care because Faulkner proved himself to be a gigantic dickhead during the Matty Johns sex scandal, abusing a reporter who’d arrived at the airport to question the snivelling former Knights gang-banger.

C.L.

13 Mar 10 at 12:48 pm
I love the Australian music from the era discussed above. I’ve been getting into CHISEL lately.

I love this, pre-dating Jimmy’s descent into the cover-band embarrassment of screeching wannabe soul brotherdom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcjZrf_g-lQ

He could really sing.

Also been YouTubing this lately. Love the Crawl.

Ultra cool dude, the late Guy McDonough, takes the lead here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynLRKpQFs04

(Love the white trousers, James).

C.L.

13 Mar 10 at 12:58 pm
I don’t think we can blame the Gunners demise on Axl dressing like Drexl Spivey from True Romance. Like all great rock bands they were destroyed by chicks, drugs and paranoia. I bought Chinese Democracy and didn’t mind it, but no one will ever top Appetite For Destruction – the best heavy metal album of all time.

Infidel Tiger

13 Mar 10 at 1:08 pm
no one will ever top Appetite For Destruction – the best heavy metal album of all time

big call mate. You’re saying it’s better than Number of the Beast?

daddy dave

13 Mar 10 at 1:23 pm
Yes.

I love Maiden and Bruce Dickinson is one cool guy, but they can’t top Appetite For Destruction.

Infidel Tiger

13 Mar 10 at 1:29 pm
Heartbreak: cricketing loafer splits from modelling airhead.

C.L.

13 Mar 10 at 2:23 pm
Heartbreak: cricketing loafer splits from swimsuit airhead.

Added bonus: Dermott Brereton very credibly demolishes Bingle’s crapola about not knowing Brendan Fevola (apparently, a player of Victorian “football”) was married.

C.L.

13 Mar 10 at 2:27 pm
Not good. With Michelle absent, I fear a possible sexual harrassment incident involving a randy Kevin Rudd:

Obama to visit Australia alone.

C.L.

13 Mar 10 at 2:30 pm
Via Bolt, a direct link to notorious misogynist Rudd being rude to Kristina Keneally. Did she forget the chicken sandwiches or what?

C.L.

13 Mar 10 at 2:36 pm
Does anyone understand the big deal over Bingle and Clarke? The freaking media has been on about these two numbskulls for a week now.

Okay so there were apparently nude pics of her floating around the web. Big deal. She’s okay looking but she’s 7.5 and not exactly a 10. Who gives a toss.

JC

13 Mar 10 at 3:55 pm
Does anyone understand the big deal over Bingle and Clarke? The freaking media has been on about these two numbskulls for a week now.
.
Yep. PR Campaign.
.
Also been YouTubing this lately. Love the Crawl.
.
You know we’d get along as long as we decided to stick to music and leave politics and religion out of it. )

Adrien

13 Mar 10 at 3:59 pm
These two numbskulls would Twitter each other from separate rooms.

JC

13 Mar 10 at 4:22 pm
Gunners, Chisel, crawl were all good bands but this is a great band.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mCoOlUjhlc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGXdXcpNsv4

Steve Edney

13 Mar 10 at 4:46 pm
Bingle is overrated, and the story is overhyped… one crappy shower photo, taken on a mobile – big deal.

Fleeced

13 Mar 10 at 4:54 pm
Bingle looks ok in a bikini, but quite frankly isn’t what I would call beautiful.

On this topic Miranda Kerr? Megan Gale was stunning as is Jennifer Hawkins, but Kerr looks like a pretty but akward looking school girl. I don’t get it,

Steve Edney

13 Mar 10 at 5:00 pm
I know fleeced. It’s not as though she’s straight out of the nunnery either. She’s a swim suit and undies model for lord’s sakes. She shows off her attributes for a living, so where’s all the new found virtue coming from and it’s not as though you can see anything in he pic other than her scowling at the lens.

Anyone know where she got the Aston Martin from as I thought I heard it was a stolen car, but I’m not sure if that’s right.

JC

13 Mar 10 at 5:10 pm
Yea Steve. She’s over cooking the omelet. She looks great in a two piece and of course would be worth a second look but she’s not a 10. No where near it.

Had to laugh though… the first stories coming out were that she was mortified her pics were on the web and the next thing we hear/read is that her manager is skulking around looking for the million dollar interview.

Someone should have told the idiot she wasn’t worth the money he was asking and I’m sure he scared potential bidders away.

The interview was worth 10K tops.

JC

13 Mar 10 at 5:15 pm
Pixies, yes…
I find that I have blind spots for bands that are well known; there’s all this great music hiding in plain sight. For instance I never paid much attention to Led Zeppelin, due to the over-saturation of Stairway to Heaven, but discovered them only a couple of years ago, songs like All my Love, Fool in the rain, and In the Evening.
I was just blown away. I didn’t know a rock band could be this good. They’ve got superhuman mastery of their instruments, song composition, and emotional tone. They’re freaks. “How come nobody told me about these guys before?” I complained to my friends, to much mirth.
Similar story with Janis Joplin. I heard “Summertime” on the radio in the car and was like, who the fuck is this? That’s awesome! and waited for the back-announcement to find out who it was. It was kind of embarrassing that it was someone who’s so well known she’s a rock legend.
But it’s good… it makes me wonder what other delights are out there in popular culture that I don’t know about.

daddy dave

13 Mar 10 at 5:23 pm
“Megan Gale was stunning as is Jennifer Hawkins…”

Megan is not quite as stunning as Jen

I would also rank Kerr well above an awkward school girl!

Fleeced

13 Mar 10 at 5:36 pm
I just noticed a $1 coin from 2009 commemorating the “centenary of Commonwealth Age Pension”

We celebrate welfare on our coins now?

Fleeced

13 Mar 10 at 6:44 pm
The endorsement big A begins:

Bingle and Clarke dumped by Synergy Drinks.

C.L.

13 Mar 10 at 6:54 pm
The Pixies are the best band on this thread.

The Gunners lost the plot not because of women and drugs, but because somebody thought it a good idea to bring a piano into the band. As a consequence, the Use Your Illusion albums are filled with bloated ballads, instead of the cock rock which they’d done pretty well previously. To the extent that there are any decent rock songs, they’re ruined with cheesy piano lines.

THR

13 Mar 10 at 6:55 pm
The Pixies are the best band on this thread.
.
I introduced Janis Joplin and Led Zep, but I guess I included too many links, because it’s still in the spam bin

daddy dave

13 Mar 10 at 7:06 pm
speaking of celebrity couples, I noticed in the news there’s an “explosive” book about Brad and Angelina, and I thought…
it’s not right that a family, where the adults are private citizens, are subjected to this amount of exposure of their personal lives. Even if they are celebrities. I don’t buy the argument that it’s “the price of fame.” The same applies to breathless reportage of Britney Spears et al. Citizens should be guaranteed a certain level of privacy, including successful citizens. The price of success should not be that the multitudes get to pick over your bones.

daddy dave

13 Mar 10 at 7:18 pm
I have a strong suspicion that ‘Brad and Ange’s’ marital problems are about Ange’s decision to reverse her sex-change operation, so she now insists Brad call her by her birth name, Andrew.

Peter Patton

13 Mar 10 at 7:25 pm
“I introduced Janis Joplin and Led Zep, but I guess I included too many links, because it’s still in the spam bin”

yeah 3 hits the bin, otherwise I would have kept listing more songs.

Led Zep are of course great but I still prefer the Pixies.

My personal favourite Led Zep (well one of) shame there is no proper clips for these.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbJQT2eDseA

Steve Edney

13 Mar 10 at 7:59 pm
my point was more broadly about belatedly “discovering” the music of famous musicians, even though you might have been familiar with the names for years. I heard Janis Joplin singing “Summertime” on the radio in the car and was basically, “who the fuck is this? This is awesome.”

daddy dave

13 Mar 10 at 8:26 pm
THR, you and I have found common ground. As soon as GN’R introduced the keyboardist I hated them! His name was Dizzy Reed I think and came from The Cult… aagh! Keyboardists spell death for rock bands!

Use Your Illusion was overblown cock rock and made my ears bleed. November Rain? Pleeeease.

Infidel Tiger

13 Mar 10 at 11:26 pm
“Australia can do very well without Quadrant, the Institute of Public Affairs and The Australian…

…We cannot do without science and scientists. The time has come to make a choice.”

Feel free to make that choice

rog

14 Mar 10 at 8:18 am
“Feel free to make that choice”

Charles De Gualle to LBJ

JC

14 Mar 10 at 11:03 am
Feel free to make that choice
.
choice a) we have a free press, and scientists get criticised sometimes
choice b) news outlets that are giving “wrong” information are forcibly shut down by the government.
.
Yeah, real hard choice there rog, you little tyrant.

daddy dave

14 Mar 10 at 11:15 am
We will continue to make that choice, Rog. You little tyrannical turd wannabe.
As they say in the classics. Fuck off.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 11:41 am
Is Kevin Rudd losing the plot? Even Laborites in NSW are describing his behaviour with the Premier as bizarre.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 11:55 am
Socialist astroturf “coffee party” movement holds first rally.

Only 30 show up.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 12:03 pm
The way he treated Christine Kenneally was appalling. Almost makes me want to vote for her, just to show him a thing or two.

daddy dave

14 Mar 10 at 12:19 pm
LP intellectual, Paul of Berwick – high on born-to-rule hubris – brings some IPCC methodology to Australian Federal psephology:

It seems as through the natural party of government in Australia is the ALP. Since 1983 they have been in office, on a aggregate basis, for 6 out of every 10 years.

Time in Office
1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

ALP LNP

Overall 62% 38%

The Liberal Party was founded in 1944, 66 years ago. In that time, they have held government for 43 years.

LNP ALP

Overall 65% 35%

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 12:23 pm
“The time has come to make a choice.”

Why can’t we have both?

Paul Williams

14 Mar 10 at 12:36 pm
So professor Quiggin has finally joined the militant brownshirt wing of warmening movement? Figures. Hansen wants show trials, Hamilton wants democracy suspended and now their St Lucia comrade jokes about banning the free press and free association.

It always surprises me that anyone takes what this decades-long ALP hack says seriously. He said deficit financing was the only path back to full employment when Howard was elected. Wrong. He said a few years ago that Moqtada el-Sadr had definitively won the Iraq War. Wrong. His understanding of military history and its meaning is so laughable that he’d fail an undergraduate course in the subject.

There could be no better sign that warmening millennarianism is 1) a vast cosmic irrelevancy; and 2) an ideological bandwagon driven by leftist state worshippers than the fact that he supports it.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 12:48 pm
Caught in Catallaxy’s weird JQ moderation filter.

[Cute way to circumvent the filter - but the link caught you. I've corrected the 2gs bit. You should try it again, it might work. Sinc]

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 12:50 pm
Kwiggin!

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 1:17 pm
One for robot fan, JC.

Very cool:

http://viralfootage.com/?p=6224

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 1:36 pm
in what sense is JC a “robot fan”?

daddy dave

14 Mar 10 at 2:37 pm
The old romantic thinks they make housework far easier for women.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 2:54 pm
“… Tim’s lecture would have to have been the worst presented, most head-bangingly-boring and uninformative address that this writer can remember.”

Lambert at the Sydney Writers’ Festival?

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 2:57 pm
WOW. Great robot there, CL..

Dad’s Cl is referring a birthday present I was thinking bout for the little lady to help her with her domestic duties.

A roomba.

http://www.roomba.com.au/roomba530.php

But I got chewed out.

It’s a fantastic device.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 3:04 pm
During debates Lambert now has people that pretend they’re others on recordings to try and fool the audience.

I can’t wait for his next appearance a the Sydney’s writers festival.

Note that last time he was invited by Jeff Sparrow, “an activist” whose last book, “Communism: A Love Story”, sits at “Amazon.com Sales Rank: 5,311,802″.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 3:14 pm
and speaking of agreeing with lefties (in this case THR), from your link is a testament to the ineffectiveness of CBT

It’s odd, in a way, that we see this conflation of criminal behaviour with psychopathology. But then, I’ve long been skeptical about ‘rehabilitation’. The disorder is one I’ve never heard of.

THR

14 Mar 10 at 3:24 pm
Shiny gets laughed at in the London Times.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article7043753.ece

Lambert, 50, is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales who spends up to six hours a day blogging on climate change. He supports Mann’s hockey-stick model and has posted tirades against bloggers and science journalists, including Jonathan Leake, The Sunday Times environment editor. Lambert acknowledges that the facelessness of blogging can encourage more personalised attacks. “If you’re writing something on a computer and you’re not face to face with someone, it’s quite a different way of communicating,” he says. “Someone might be more inclined to be aggressive.”

Let me see… there are 24 hours in a day.

24 – 6 hours of blogging leaves 14. Assume the dwarf requires 7 hours sleep, which leaves 8 hours.

Shiny has 8 hours a day to teach kids and spend the rest of the time thinking about food.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 6:13 pm
oopw I meant 18 hours. Leaving 11 hours a day.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 6:15 pm
Axl bails again.

Guns N’ Roses spark A-list riot in Brazil.

AN A-list crowd of Brazilian billionaires and supermodels rioted after waiting hours for Guns N’ Roses to perform, and then learning Axl Rose and his band wouldn’t play.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 6:17 pm
Fascists…

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/qlueensland-to-consider-lower-drink-drive-limit/story-e6frg6n6-1225840586024

… everywhere

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/14/2845257.htm

This country is going to shit.

Infidel Tiger

14 Mar 10 at 7:20 pm
Brilliant! The trailer for every Academy Award winning fillum:

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/03/13/comedy-gold-academy-award-winning-movie-trailer/

Infidel Tiger

14 Mar 10 at 8:09 pm
Hilarious “review” of black fat chick movie, err “Precious” by American shock jock Howard Stern.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVzv-SmPtbU&feature=player_embedded

” Opera lies to the actress, who’s the size of a planet, she’s going to be a successful actress”.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 8:33 pm
Also re the Academy, Andrew Klavan’s latest: The Best Films Never Made.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 8:39 pm
Oh God, here we go. The Reverend Rudd wants to nationalise the Bligh .02 proposal:

Rudd weighs into drink driving debate.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 8:45 pm
Imam Rudd has lost the plot. The odds on this twerp going postal are shortening all the time.

Infidel Tiger

14 Mar 10 at 8:51 pm
His father, Bert, drove his car into a power pole after a day on the sauce. Look out for the Gordon Brown-like emotional angle being brought to bear. Or maybe not: the sad circumstances surrounding his father’s demise could undermine various fables he’s propagated about his upbringing: victim of unavoidable tragedy, evil doctors botched Bert’s treatment etc.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 8:59 pm
Still on matters filmic:

BOX OFFICE FLOP: Matt Damon’s ‘Green Zone’ Could Open to Less Than $15 Million.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 9:00 pm
Remembering Rudd’s lies about the past.

Excerpt:

Mr Rudd said in later years he heard reports that surgeons at the Brisbane Royal Hospital had failed to take proper care of his father. But according to Channel Nine’s Sunday program, which obtained a copy of the coroner’s report, the coroner had cleared doctors of medical malpractice.

The report said Albert Rudd had been drinking before driving, that he kept falling asleep at the wheel, and that when the car hit a power pole, he was not wearing a seatbelt and suffered massive internal injuries.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 9:05 pm
Rudd’s panicking. I always thought he had a glass jaw and I also think the reasons he’d run with new policies is not that he’s a workaholic. It’s to hide incompetence by never allowing the public to focus on one thing that he could be measured by.

He was trying to hide how bad he was. The blood level thing is another example of him trying to grope at any policy that he thinks will make the electorate avoid thinking bout his incompetence.

We’re dealing with a punk way over his neck with a large dose of ambition for himself and realizing the game may be up.

It’s going to be an ugly fall and also quite dangerous for the country.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 9:48 pm
His behaviour with Kristina Keneally was really weird.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 10:19 pm
It was weird, but I think actually quite readable.

He knows NSW labor is a lost cause even with Keneally and he dissed her to make himself appear Mr. Independent and that he’s on the voters side disliking this government like they do and like them pissed at the mess the hospital system system is in.

He’s so freaking phony he’s perfectly readable and predictable. There’s nothing really complex about the little creep.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 10:31 pm
Adrien if you want to check someone turn out awesome work as a post-band solo artist may I suggest Steve Cummings.

Pixies are the best band on the thread (not counting the Saints – original line up only please), and playing Thursday night.

“His behaviour with Kristina Keneally was really weird.”

I honestly believe Rudd has a serious personality disorder. He is truly fucked in the head.

pedro

14 Mar 10 at 10:31 pm
JC, I didn’t think it was an act. I think he’s shitty as hell cause she’s torpedoing the great re-election policy.

pedro

14 Mar 10 at 10:32 pm
It’s all an act with him, Pedro. She’s the most compliant actually.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 10:37 pm
He knows NSW labor is a lost cause even with Keneally and he dissed her to make himself appear Mr. Independent and that he’s on the voters side disliking this government like they do and like them pissed at the mess the hospital system system is in.
.
Nah, you’re giving him too much credit. No spin-doctor PR advisor would have suggested to him “now go out there and just be a rude prick to her.”
Nobody in their right mind could think that is a good strategy, regardless of the opinion of NSW Labor.

daddy dave

14 Mar 10 at 10:38 pm
You guys don’t know what a complete dirt bag looks and sounds like.

Everything about Rudd is appearance, calculation and mow panic.

This is a fucker that took 135 to the Copenhagen Haj thinking it was a great act.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 10:43 pm
I agree there is plenty of acting, but I still think the man is fucked in the head. He’s not the usual pollie-fuckwit. When everything is an act you’re some type of sociopath.

pedro

14 Mar 10 at 10:44 pm
Answer me this then. Why was rude to Keneally. I don’t buy that he was pissed as consequences of that too were taken into calculations.

This little creep doesn’t place his foot in front of the other without thinking about how it looks to the public.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 10:45 pm
I don’t think he’s a sociopath. He reminds me very much of a former boos I worked for years ago that was just like him, totally incompetent and thoroughly dishonest about his abilities.

Everything the douchebag did was to look good to the higher ups. We finally fucked him good and got rid of him.

This is the dude without much competence and is winging it the whole way but with a ton of ambition and was beginning to think he really was good until reality hit.

He’s the most manufactured little phony I’ve ever seen on the political scene. Everything he does is calculated.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 10:51 pm
Everything’s just hunky-dory under Hugo Chavez’s Marxist regime in Venezuela:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/11/venezuela-energy-crisis-chavez

An energy crisis has battered Venezuela’s economy and President Hugo Chávez’s popularity, prompting severe rationing to avert nationwide blackouts and paralysis.

One of the worst droughts in decades has crippled the hydroelectric plants that supply most of Venezuela’s power, plunging cities into darkness and forcing industries to go slow and even shut down.

The emergency has closed offices, halted escalators and turned off air conditioning, leaving the capital, Caracas, sweltering in 35C heat (96F).

Businesses have reported a collapse in sales and employment, which is expected to aggravate a recession already the deepest in South America, and compound the president’s woes ahead of legislative elections.

…

A recent opinion poll found 62% thought the country’s situation was negative and 54% had little or no confidence in Chávez. Almost 60% disapproved of the government’s handling of the crisis. Critics say the drought would not have been so damaging had there been more investment in power plants.

Michael Fisk

14 Mar 10 at 10:52 pm
No wonder Chavez is having to crack down ever harder on the independent media. He’s toast.

Michael Fisk

14 Mar 10 at 10:53 pm
Micheal:

The fucking moron has blown through $1 trillion in oil money. All Huggy Chavez had to do as sit back and let the money roll in. He’s blown through a trill and there’s nothing to show for it.

Leftism at work, fellas.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 10:54 pm
JC, you’re saying everything’s calculated with Rudd, but the Kenneally incident disproves that. There is no rational calculation that makes his behaviour a good idea.

daddy dave

14 Mar 10 at 10:55 pm
Dad’s.

Yes, I’m saying the Keneally incident was manufactured. He miscalculated. That’s all.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 10:57 pm
Dave might have a point. Botox Bligh’s government is even more despised – corruption inquiries, tanking in the polls etc. But he he played Mr Wonderful with her.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 11:06 pm
Here is a list of Hugo Chavez’s useful idiots Down Under – the usual crowd of Islamists, Commies, ABC presenters, Greens Senators and former Democrats politicians:

http://www.venezuelasolidarity.org/?q=node/341

For a moment there I thought I’d stumbled on the membership list of the Australian anti-Mensa Society.

Michael Fisk

14 Mar 10 at 11:06 pm
OK, this is pretty funny. Patrick Kennedy has bailed from politics but now we know where he got his speaking style. Total plagiarism!

Ace has the YouTube:

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/299337.php

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 11:09 pm
“I don’t think he’s a sociopath. He reminds me very much of a former boos I worked for years ago that was just like him, totally incompetent and thoroughly dishonest about his abilities.”

JC, check this story then

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1360571.htm

pedro

14 Mar 10 at 11:15 pm
I’m saying the Keneally incident was manufactured. He miscalculated. That’s all.
.
my take is that when you’re in the public eye a lot, it’s hard to fake it. In Rudd’s case, he’s passive-aggressive, and used to being vindictive and freezing people out. This is how he behaves when the cameras are not on. We’ve heard the story about the hostess, and this is more of the same.
And seriously, he looked like an utter arsehole.
.
And yeah okay, NSW Labor is unpopular, but Kenneally herself isn’t. She took over, like three minutes ago. People don’t hold her personally responsible for Labor’s failings.

daddy dave

14 Mar 10 at 11:17 pm
Hey Fisk:
For a moment there I thought I’d stumbled on the membership list of the Australian anti-Mensa Society.

Now I find that really offensive as I’m on the freaking list.

Take a look:

I’m running “the Global Warming and Fair pay institute”.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 11:18 pm
Okay Pedro. He’s a sociopath. You won me over without a lot of convincing.

He’s a sociopath as well as a manufactured little turd.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 11:21 pm
Carmen Lawrence, Joan Kirner, Anna Bligh and Kristina Keneally…

Piers Akerman on how Labor uses the little ladies to project a fresh clean image when their support is in the toilet.

Why Labor looks to women to save face.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 11:24 pm
Let’s be under no illusions why Christina is the NSW Premier. No Illusions whatsoever.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 11:26 pm
I’m running “the Global Warming and Fair pay institute”.
I’m guessing that’s someone’s idea of a joke at your expense. The only google or bing results for “Global Warming and Fair Pay Institute” are that list. Even if you google “fair pay institute” the same thing happens. It doesn’t exist.

daddy dave

14 Mar 10 at 11:28 pm
In fairness, Bligh survived an election, and Keneally may yet, if the NSW libs manage to yet again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

THR

14 Mar 10 at 11:28 pm
Dad’s no no, it was me. I did it. Just wanted to see how dense they could be.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 11:29 pm
I know it doesn’t exist as I made that shit up.

JC

14 Mar 10 at 11:30 pm
The Global Warming and Fair Pay Institute.

HAHAHAHA!

Memories.

C.L.

14 Mar 10 at 11:30 pm
Gotta love the doctor in that Catalyst story about psycopaths:

“Dr John Clarke: There are 20 characteristics to define a psychopath. Really the fundamental factor is an absolute lack of remorse or guilt for their behaviour, pathological lying, manipulative, callous, egotistical, very kind of self centred individual, glib and superficial charm.”

pedro

14 Mar 10 at 11:40 pm
JC, you almost killed me with that! Nice work.

Michael Fisk

15 Mar 10 at 1:57 am
David Smith again calls out Malcolm Fraser for lying.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 2:32 am
Bill Leak on the Henry review:

http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2010/03/14/1225840/653754-cartoon-150310-leak.jpg

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 2:33 am
Pawned by Bolt

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/carltons_mistake_to_assume_his_foes_are_as_bad_as_himself/

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 9:45 am
Abbott’s right. This acknowledgment of “the original owners is horseshit.

TONY Abbott has opened up a new front in the culture wars by declaring that Kevin Rudd and other Labor ministers demonstrate a misplaced sense of political correctness when acknowledging the traditional owners of land at official functions.

Ms Gordon also noted that it had now evolved into a situation where the same people performed the welcome-to-country ceremony at government functions.

“Comment has been made to me that it’s just become a money making venture for some Aboriginal people,” she said. “There’s certain people who always know they will be asked because you get paid $300.”

JC

15 Mar 10 at 10:01 am
correlation or causation?

http://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp2103.html#abstract

This paper provides evidence that daughters make people more left-wing. Having sons, by contrast, makes them more right-wing. Parents, politicians and voters are probably not aware of this phenomenon – nor are social scientists. The paper discusses its economic and evolutionary roots. It also speculates on where research might lead. The paper ends with a conjecture: left-wing individuals are people who come from families into which, over recent past generations, many females have been born.

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 10:04 am
Bird got into a scrap with someone called Ben Eltham?

JC

15 Mar 10 at 10:22 am
http://twitter.com/wingedmenace

Another possible AVO in the mail. Just because I was homesteading under a neighbour’s house.
about 19 hours ago via web

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 10:26 am
Fuck you Jason. You beat me to it. I’ll have to go with:

“Anybody know a decent plasterer? Some wall damage at home after removing the copper wire.”

BirdLab

15 Mar 10 at 10:37 am
Reason Magazine has a good piece on the self-destruction of the Demolition party.

The ObamaCare Quagmire
Launching an optional war against the American health care system will sink the Democratic Party.

here is no tactic too low to deploy—and no cause too sacred to abandon. If Americans are unenthused about universal coverage, screw ‘em. If it is necessary to use reconciliation—meant strictly for budgetary matters—to ram the bill through Congress on a strictly partisan vote, then so be it. If filibuster rules that Democrats themselves restored in 1975 are now coming in the way, get rid of them.

The prize for the most bizzaro accusation, however, goes to Katha Pollitt of The Nation who blamed ObamaCare’s woes on the two-senators-per-state rule that she alleged the Founding Fathers had enshrined in the Constitution as a sop to slave states, thereby diluting the voice of populous multiethnic powerhouses such as New York and California. But this fundamental principle of our bicameral constitution had nothing to do with slavery, a fact she was forced to finally admit. It was meant to give the underdogs of the day—rural, relatively powerless states—constitutional parity, a concern that one would have thought progressives would applaud.

But egged on by the progressive punditocracy, Democrats are behaving as if, once they jam ObamaCare through, nothing else matters. It’s like they’ll never have to worry about being the minority party in need of constitutional checks and balances.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 11:20 am
My god. Joe, what do you make of this trainwreck?

http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/new-co-ordinated-leftist-campaign-to-rewrite-history-by-harassment-and-incitement-launched-march-2010/#comment-27751

BirdLab

15 Mar 10 at 11:27 am
Mission Impossible star Peter Graves dead at 83.

He was very good in Stalag 17 and, of course, Flying High.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 12:03 pm
Supposedly there was an atheists convention in Melbourne over the weekend.

WTF? What the hell do you talk about at an atheists convention?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/celebrating-life-beyond-belief/story-e6frg6z6-1225840634149

JC

15 Mar 10 at 12:09 pm
This paper provides evidence that daughters make people more left-wing. Having sons, by contrast, makes them more right-wing.

China and India will be lurching to the right then.

Infidel Tiger

15 Mar 10 at 12:10 pm
Yeah, Abbott is right. Australians don’t require any “welcome to country” in their own country. Rudd’s use of this contemptible mumbo jumbo at the opening of the last Parliament was a disgrace.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 12:10 pm
What the hell do you talk about at an atheists convention?

You talk about Christianity and how much you hate it. Then you discuss the twentieth century’s atheists – Hitler, Stalin, Mao – and how they made the world a far better and more rational place.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 12:14 pm
JC

the talk by Taslima Nasrin would’ve been interesting. Interesting to see the Australian atheists are not taking a PC line

The mood sobered when Taslima Nasrin arrived and three dark-suited security men arranged themselves around the base of the stage.

The Bangladeshi writer and women’s rights activist, who was exiled from her homeland 14 years ago, then physically attacked in India when she sought refuge in Bengal, placed under house arrest and finally hounded out of there too, still has several fatwas hanging over her and a price on her head. India, the country that likes to think of itself as the largest democracy in the world, she pointed out, placed the religious rights of its Muslim minority above her freedom of expression.

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 12:14 pm
This is what you talk about at atheist conventions:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/barbarian_savages_christians/

For Robyn Willimas to abuse anyone’s intellect is laughable. Firlding’s not my cup of tea, but the man did earn an engineering degree.

Infidel Tiger

15 Mar 10 at 12:15 pm
The speech by Tamas Pataki at the convention looks interesting.

THR

15 Mar 10 at 12:17 pm
Williams likes to channel Noah on crack with predictions of 100 metre sea rises and then has the temerity to criticise religion.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 12:20 pm
The left’s religious piety on display:

http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2010/03/subtle-obama-imagery-from-new-york.html

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 12:25 pm
More “rationalism” from the “science” set:

Scientific American: hey, there might be something in that whole 2012 end of days threat and Sarah Palin is definitely involved.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 12:36 pm
Jase:

I’ve got no problem at all with what people believe in. One can revere goats or worms for all I care.

I’m sure that Pataki has interesting things to say.

However when you have Robyn-80 meters-Williams hanging around those sorts of things, you just know it’s not going to turn out good.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 12:38 pm
Wow. Bolt’s fired up over Tim Flattery. He’s been giving Tim a bettering lately.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 12:47 pm
oops battering.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 12:49 pm
It is very likely that human activities have caused most of the global warming observed since 1950
There is greater than 90% certainty that increases in greenhouse gas emissions have caused most of the global
warming since the mid-20th century. International research shows that it is extremely unlikely that the observed
warming could be explained by natural causes alone.

In other words, they haven’t done any research themselves and are depending soley on “international research”. I’d like to know how they, who ever they are, determined with 90% certainty that GHGs are the principle cause of the recent warming.

dover_beach

15 Mar 10 at 1:03 pm
Oops. The above is a response to Homer’s quote in another thread made here to stop derailment there.

dover_beach

15 Mar 10 at 1:05 pm
Budget-wrecking wacko Kevin Rudd pulls another half billion out of his bottom.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 1:26 pm
Welcome to McDonalds.

Wilson Tuckey weighs in to the ‘welcome to country’ debate:

Mr Tuckey has also criticised some Aboriginal dancers who perform welcome to country ceremonies as “grossly overweight” and says things have gone “downhill” for Indigenous people ever since the 1967 referendum.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/15/2845854.htm

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 1:37 pm
Oh fuck no. Please Kev. Don’t ruin the pretty decent profession.

Rudd commits $632m to train more GPs

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/rudd-commits-632m-to-train-more-gps/story-e6frg8y6-1225840842092

He’ll singlehandedly wreck the medical profession without a doubt.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 1:39 pm
I’m truly shocked. Vic Police Commissioner wants people to be responsible for their own actions. If this catches on, there’s no telling where we’ll end up.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/seven-dead-in-horror-weekend-on-victorias-roads/story-e6frf7kx-1225840706332

Infidel Tiger

15 Mar 10 at 1:42 pm
At the atheism convention they are probably laughing at this story.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7056689.ece

Pedro

15 Mar 10 at 2:18 pm
Those comments Bolt cites are nasty. Religiopn might be dumb, but it is no reason to be so awful.

Pedro

15 Mar 10 at 2:21 pm
At the atheism convention they are probably laughing at this story.

Have kids, Pedro? Never thought you needed an exorcist at times with the little blighters.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 2:24 pm
I’ve got one JC, we call it the spatula. The head-spinning stops real quick when it appears on the kitchen bench.

Pedro

15 Mar 10 at 2:27 pm
But you have to admit that was a funny story. I doubt even CL would credit that rubbish.

Pedro

15 Mar 10 at 2:28 pm
C.L. is an exorcist. He’s been sapping leftists of their spirit for years.

Infidel Tiger

15 Mar 10 at 2:32 pm
Yea, it was kinda funny. The dude in the pic seems to take himself really seriously.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 2:32 pm
Exorcist needed:

http://reason.com/blog/2010/03/12/for-nancy-pelosi-there-is-no-s

Infidel Tiger

15 Mar 10 at 2:34 pm
No she doesn’t, Infidel. She doesn’t need an exorcism. she needs to get off the Botox as it’s effecting her brain.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 2:36 pm
Botox is a paralysing agent. Maybe they should push the needle a bit deeper.

Pedro

15 Mar 10 at 2:41 pm
This line from the Age report on the atheist convention is a doozy:

“Many speakers spent more time ridiculing religion than advancing an alternative vision.”

Pedro

15 Mar 10 at 2:52 pm
exactly Pedro

why should there be ‘alternative visions’. Visions tend to lead to Hell

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 2:53 pm
For the love of Mike. That picture of Nancy is horrific.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 2:54 pm
Visions tend to lead to Hell.

Indeed. As the atheist visionaries of the 20th century so ably demonstrated.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 2:56 pm
I’m glad it’s not just here in Qld that people go nuts over daylight saving.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/03/a-confession.html#comments

Pedro

15 Mar 10 at 2:56 pm
let’s not go through that argument I had with Andrew Reynolds ages ago.

Atheists are more likely to be libertarians and classical liberals than hard line communists. There is no logical relationship betweeen the two at all. One could just as equally argue that Stalin was a failed priest who in fact made abortion illegal but that doesn’t prove Orthodoxy is pro-Stalinist.

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 2:59 pm
More religion funny stuff:

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/barro/files/Saints%2Bpaper%2B020910.pdf

CL, I don’t think Hitler Stalin and Mao murdered all those people in pursuit of atheism. In fact, are there any mass murders or wars motivated by the desire to impose atheism?

Also do we know that H S and M truly were atheists or just avowedly so? It’s pretty obvious that their beef with religion is as a competing vision and not a very wide-spread delusion.

Pedro

15 Mar 10 at 3:03 pm
Hitler was in fact into his own brand of mysticism which led him to fund expeditions to Tibet to prove the Tibetans were remnants of the ancient Aryan race.

Stalin and Mao were amoral sociopaths that came to power. The fact that sociopaths exist among atheists just as well as theists proves nothing.

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 3:05 pm
Re Stalin, you couldn’t argue that because it isn’t true. Stalin was bright enough to earn a spot in a seminary school. He never trained to be a priest. That’s like saying everyone who ever went to Riverview was training to be a priest. Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Mussolini were all passionate Church-hating atheists. When weirdo Dawkins and company wish to envision a world with his mob running things, they needn’t look forward. They merely need to read the history of the twentieth century.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 3:06 pm
Dawkins is good on some things and not so good on others. I don’t think that makes him a totalitarian.

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 3:09 pm
Hitler was in fact into his own brand of mysticism…

True enough but so is a man (Dawkins) who flies around the globe to join fellow cultists at a “conference” examining something he doesn’t believe in. What next? A seminar on the tooth fairy? Dawkins’ reference yesterday to Benedict XVI – one of the finest minds of contemporary Europe – as “Pope Nazi” proves beyond doubt that he’s a cockhead with a screw loose.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 3:10 pm
Why is it a weird cult when atheists get together but not when Christians get together to read a work of fiction?

The report noted a good mix of speakers, some who clearly had things to say other than mere bashing of the Church, for instance Taslima Nasrin noted above and the philosopher AC Grayling.

Given your support for Ayaan Hirsi Ali why do you dismiss Taslima Nasrin’s perspective as ‘cultist’?

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 3:14 pm
I’m not saying atheism transmogrifies somebody into a totalitarian. But it cannot be denied that the new atheism cult is largely actuated by the notion that an atheist world would be a better, kinder, fairer world. Well, the twentieth century was the laboratory for that thesis and it ended with the worst body count in human history.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 3:15 pm
“…why do you dismiss Taslima Nasrin’s perspective…”

I hadn’t mentioned it but I note that Dawkins mocked Mary MacKillop yesterday. Presumably she did less for humanity than this snobbish scion of Britain’s lesser poobah-ocracy.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 3:26 pm
Dawkins is nothing if not a yellow bellied poof:

When asked when he would be willing to criticise Islam as he did Christianity, the response was pragmatic. “I personally believe we shouldn’t go out of our way to do things that will get our heads cut off.” To the Islamist he would make it clear that this reticence is “because I fear you. Don’t think for one moment it’s because I respect you.”

Hat tip (Bolt)

Infidel Tiger

15 Mar 10 at 3:30 pm
I don’t know if it has been noticed but most academic philosophers don’t do ethical philosophy on the basis that ethics has been handed down by a religious books. Yet there is an extensive academic literature some of which raises pretty interesting issues on the foundations of ethics, the epistemology of belief, etc.

I don’t find it so surprising that an atheist foundation meeting might have lots of interesting things to talk about which aren’t just about church bashing.

So why that dopey Age writer would expect atheists meeting to reinvent ‘alternatives to religion’ or why an atheist meeting necessarily has to be talking about ‘nothing’ escapes me. Non theism raises interesting sociological and philosophical issues which are interesting for atheists to discuss and debate among themselves.

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 3:33 pm
What exactly is wrong with the statement IT?

he is merely making the pointed criticism that insofar as Islam achieves silence it is from fear not respect. Conservatives have made that point themselves.

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 3:34 pm
It proves he’s a smidgen less courageous than the martrys of Chirtisnity for one thing.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 3:36 pm
I presume regulars are not going to take the side of the doctor over Rudd on this one

http://www.smh.com.au/national/cuba-does-it-better-doctor-diagnoses-ills-in-rudd-heath-reform-plan-20100315-q6w0.html?autostart=1

Dr Jeannie Ellis, a local GP and also director of the hospital’s emergency system, said the federal funding takeover should be 100 per cent and not the proposed 60 per cent.

She said she had done training in Cuba and lived there for a long time and that the system was cheaper and more efficient.

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 3:43 pm
jason,
I agree with you. However he attacks Christianity with what can only be described as gusto. He’s vitriolic and abusive. He goes for soft targets such as televangelists rather than hard targets such as theologians like Spong. He is contemptuous, dismissive, and condescending.
.
So then we find out that he’s targeting Christians simply because he’s not scared of the consequences of targeting Christians. He does it because he has nothing to fear from speaking up. It’s so hypocritical, pathetic and contemptible I can barely express it.

daddy dave

15 Mar 10 at 3:44 pm
I tend to agree with Jason, Tiger. Why criticize a religion or whatever if there is a threat of your head being forcibly removed.

I can’t stand Dawkins either for many reasons but I think his comment was perfectly reasonable.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 3:46 pm
Dads;

I think that’s fine. Dawkins is perfectly fine to go after religion and I’m sure the ones that are most secure in their belief system aren’t threatened by him.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 3:48 pm
DD
I personally find Dawkins boring when he talks about religion. I think he is a great populariser of evolutionary theory and remains so in spite of all this, I do wish he’d cut down on the religion baiting overall.

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 3:50 pm
Was didn’t Dr. Jeanne Ellis stay in Castro land. Did she perhaps give a reason why she came back?

JC

15 Mar 10 at 3:50 pm
It makes him look like a bully and it’s very boring. He should be proudly trying to chalk up as many fatwas as possible. If the Vatican rebuked him, he’d no doubt get wood, but the threat of some crazed Imam has see him left impotent and with soiled strides.

Infidel Tiger

15 Mar 10 at 3:51 pm
yeah, frankly I think Dawkins is sullying his own reputation. His early books were brilliant. This later stuff on religion is really just self-indulgence.

daddy dave

15 Mar 10 at 3:52 pm
in his partial defence, actual Muslims feel differently about Dawkins

http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2009/2/26/dawkins-on-islam.html

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 3:54 pm
That stupid doctor says the the Cuban system is cheaper to run.

Well how about we cut her fucking medicare payment by 9o%, get the bint’s income down to Cuban levels and see if she thinks we’re then competitive with Cuba’s.

Freaking moron.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 3:55 pm
He clearly hasn’t been that inconsistent

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2494397/Richard-Dawkins-Muslim-parents-import-creationism-into-schools.html

Prof Dawkins, a well-known atheist, also blamed the Government for accommodating religious views and allowing creationism to be taught in schools.

“Most devout Muslims are creationists so when you go to schools, there are a large number of children of Islamic parents who trot out what they have been taught,” Prof Dawkins said in a Sunday newspaper interview.

“Teachers are bending over backwards to respect home prejudices that children have been brought up with. The Government could do more, but it doesn’t want to because it is fanatical about multiculturalism and the need to respect the different traditions from which these children come.”

“The Government – particularly under Tony Blair – thinks it is wonderful to have children brought up with their traditional religions. I call it brainwashing,” he added.

“It seems as though teachers are terribly frightened of being thought racist. It’s almost impossible to say anything against Islam in this country, because [if you do] you are accused of being racist or Islamophobic.”

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 3:57 pm
Dawkins is a hypocritical nasty little creep too.

He always seems to bring up the fact that lots of killings have been historically done by religious people, which is true.

However the little fucker doesn’t accept and tries to evade the fact that there were lots of atheists that ended up being first rate killers in the 20 th century.

I’m think the nasty little fucker is as religious about atheism as any religious believer is about theirs..

JC

15 Mar 10 at 4:00 pm
Jason
I think the problem with Dwarkins is that he seems to be equally dismissive of all religions and brands of Christianity which people think is really avoiding the some of the real serious issues they have with Islam.

Like I find the Druid of Canterbury to be contemptible is some many ways I’ve lost count. However I wouldn’t for a moment think the bearded fucker is preaching Jihad to his younger congregation and suggesting ways to take out the London Underground.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 4:06 pm
That’s pretty weak tea, Jason. He’s not really consistent as he himself admitted. For example, if he ambushes an Imam and engages him in hostile debate with a TV crew filming the whole thing, then he’d be consistent.

daddy dave

15 Mar 10 at 4:11 pm
revealing interview with the head of the Sea Shepherds

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/whale-watch/sea-warrior-20100313-q5cp.html

“I happen to think that whales are more intelligent than people,” he says. “Certainly their languages are more complex and their communication skills are more complex.

“I think there’s a lot for us to learn. It’s kind of like us going to another planet, finding another intelligent life form and killing them for oil.”

Watson certainly seems tired of all the focus on human activities. To him, we’re just another species among the millions on Earth. It’s his belief that the world is already massively overpopulated and he openly advocates reducing the world’s population to 1billion by people voluntarily having fewer children.

well, some people anyway

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 4:16 pm
Dads:

He’s already admitted he isn’t going there due to the small problem with fatwas that have been placed on other people that were found to be critical of the prophet and doesn’t want such a thing happening to him.

I really don’t think that’s being hypocritical.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 4:16 pm
I love the “voluntarily having fewer children” bit.

How exactly does he propose we deal with people that;

1. Don’t want to have fewer children

2. That do end up having more kids.

What are his proposals on that? My guess is that they would be as intolerant as the intolerance he shows towards people that don’t think those fat blubbers are any different to cows.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 4:20 pm
“I happen to think that whales are more intelligent than people,” he says. “Certainly their languages are more complex and their communication skills are more complex.

By his criteria, Homer would have to be the smartest man on earth.

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 4:22 pm
Cowardly perhaps, but not hypocritical… and no more cowardly than I would be – courage can get you dead.

His religious discussions are often over the top though… as a “born-again atheist” I know there’s a lot of minds out there open to reason, but his kind of arguments cause a reactionary response.

These days though, I can barely even think of Dawkins without remembering the disturbingly hilarious “pound my monkey hole” scene with South Park’s “Mrs” Garrison.

Fleeced

15 Mar 10 at 4:23 pm
I really don’t think that’s being hypocritical.
.
No… but it’s not principled either. Having decided that he lacks the courage to publicly take on a major religion, there’s only one principled course of action, and that’s to publicly take on none of them.
Consider this analogy- imagine that you’re in a city where there are two powerful politicians, call them Bill and Ben, competing for control of the city; and you have dirt on both. but you know that if you reveal the dirt on Bill, he’ll have you assassinated. it is not principled, in this situation, to then provide all your info on Ben to the local papers, but give them nothing on Bill. It’s actually worse than doing nothing.

daddy dave

15 Mar 10 at 4:26 pm
yeah, frankly I think Dawkins is sullying his own reputation. His early books were brilliant. This later stuff on religion is really just self-indulgence.

Damn right. This atheist stuff is tiresome because Dawkins doesn’t seem to realise that if you’re going to attack peoples’ religious beliefs you are also attacking their culture and their very selves. Given the low probability of success with such a tactic the result is more likely to be increased friction in the general community. Great idea Mr. Dawkins. That’ll work. The more morals you have the more reasons you have to hate people. Mr. Dawkins wants more reasons.

John H.

15 Mar 10 at 4:28 pm
DD
I really don’t see what the big fuss is about. He clearly hasn’t said that he won’t criticise Islam, just that he won’t do things that will have his head chopped off.

In practice he has criticised Islam where it mattered to him sufficiently as in the Creationism debate. He’s been on record saying the same things as many conservative columnists re multiculturalism, etc. What more exactly do you want him to do and why do you want him to do more than what Andrew Bolt, Mark Steyn etc have done? He has explicitly made the link between Islamists and terrorism, and talked about the creationism issue?

what exactly do you think he should be doing which he hasn’t done which makes him fall short as an intellectual? why should he be drawing Mohammad cartoons if he’s not a cartoonist?

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 4:30 pm
I don’t even agree with your analogy DD.

why shouldn’t you choose your targets?

and it’s not even a precise analogy because in reality he attacks both, just one harsher than the other. and he goes on record and says it’s not out of respect

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 4:33 pm
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155369/

Fleeced

15 Mar 10 at 4:34 pm
what exactly do you think he should be doing which he hasn’t done which makes him fall short as an intellectual?
.
two things.
First, he should take on modern theologians – real theologians, – and explain why they’re wrong, rather than soft targets and straw men.
Second, he should either start being insulting to Muslims, or stop being insulting to Christians. Either way, I don’t care. But pick one.

daddy dave

15 Mar 10 at 4:40 pm
hahahahahahhaahhahaah Did the south park dudes do that?

ROTFL

Those dudes are the most cynical, funny people on earth. No one is beyond their mockery.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 4:43 pm
Here’s a petty decent debate where Richard pound-my -monkey-hole” Dawkins doesn’t really shine that well.

His opponent is an Oxford math professor.

http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php/video/35-full-length/164-the-dawkins-lennox-debate

JC

15 Mar 10 at 4:47 pm
Yeah, it was a double ep of South Park called “Go God Go” – very funny…

In the year 2546, the entire world is atheistic and supposedly dedicated to rationality and science, yet atheism itself has splintered into several mutually hostile denominations: bloodthirsty wars are waged in the name of “Science” and “Almighty Logic;” a very different depiction of the violence-free atheist world thought by Dawkins.

Fleeced

15 Mar 10 at 4:48 pm
and it’s not even a precise analogy because in reality he attacks both, just one harsher than the other
.
but in one situation – Christians – it goes beyond his ideas as an “intellectual” and descends to namecalling. Literally name calling. That’s what he’s reduced himself to.
Then to say that he won’t do it to Muslims because he’s scared of them… it leaves me shaking my head in disbelief.
Look, if you can respect his behaviour, then fine, we just have to agree to disagree.

daddy dave

15 Mar 10 at 4:48 pm
…Surprised by the question, Parker and Stone emphatically said that they didn’t consider themselves to be atheists—leading to a phone call shortly thereafter from their friend Penn Jillette, an outspoken advocate for atheism who’d seen the interview and was evidently disappointed to learn that the two weren’t “on the Atheist team.”

Their subsequent conversations with Jillette about atheism and related topics (e.g., the difference between “atheism” and “agnosticism”) gave rise to the idea of satirizing the “militant” or “evangelical” atheism as represented in the episode by Dawkins and Garrison.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 4:54 pm
The namecalling doesn’t achieve anyhing constructive regardless of whether it’s against Muslims and Christians. The non-name calling stuff he does against both I tend to support.

So yes he could drop the name calling stuff. It’s pointless and boring (same way I feel about the Mohammad cartoons as opposed to say Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s more cogent criticisms). But Christianity can take it because the Christian world is more civilised and I don’t think it detracts from his good work.

jtfsoon

15 Mar 10 at 4:55 pm
Thing about Parker and Stone is that everyone cops it. They are critically non-partisan in their mockery.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 5:00 pm
Bolt hammers Professor Kwiggin.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 5:41 pm
Latest from the man who promises to build a new hospital system throughout Australia:

PM gives no guarantee on batts safety.

KEVIN Rudd is under pressure to guarantee householders and installers are free from the risk of cancer-causing agents carried in imported insulation…

Today he was asked by the Liberal MP for Forrest and Opposition Deputy Whip, Nola Marino, whether he could guarantee that all installations were compliant with the national code of practice for the safe use of mineral fibres.

“Can the Prime Minister also guarantee that under his home insulation scheme no householder or installer is at risk from imported insulation that may contain or have been treated with cancer-causing agents?” she asked.

Mr Rudd said he could not issue the guarantee and referred Ms Marino to previous statements made by himself, Greg Combet, who is chraged with cleaning up the home insulation scheme, and Mr Garrett.

“We’ll be dealing with each practical problem as it arises for the households concerned,” he said.

Last month claims emerged Mr Garrett was warned of cheap batts smelling of formaldehyde being imported from China, Thailand and the US.

Formaldehyde is a harmful chemical that can cause respiratory problems and cancer.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 5:44 pm
Stalin was a very garden variety logical product of Bolshevism. Un/fortunately we were spared who would have turned out to have been the real deal, Satan On Earth; Trotsky.

Peter Patton

15 Mar 10 at 5:51 pm
October 27, 2007:

ALP will overhaul freedom laws.

LABOR has pledged to break “the code of silence” it says has developed under the Howard Government, promising to extensively overhaul the freedom of information laws.

As accountability shapes as an issue in this election, Labor said its changes would foster open government and relate to journalist privilege, whistleblower protection and privacy laws…

Mr Rudd and Senator Ludwig said the Howard Government had shrunk away from the light of public scrutiny and transparency by abusing the current law and called for a more open system.

Today:

Rudd won’t release insulation correspondence.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 6:20 pm
CL

I don’t know if you have ever had to access FOI, but it is quite extraordinary. We recently had a family drama, which involved having to get to the bottom of a hushed-up family medical issue from the 1960s. With not too much effort involved, a few of us put together a number of FOI requests from the 1960s and 1970s, all of which were mailed to us within three weeks. The amount of paper, files, and sheer detail was astonishing, and extremely helpful.

Peter Patton

15 Mar 10 at 6:28 pm
Yes but the prime minister is answerable to Parliament in our system.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 7:20 pm
The namecalling doesn’t achieve anyhing constructive regardless of whether it’s against Muslims and Christians.
.
Yeah, I agree with that.
It’s really a debasement of public discourse, regardless of who is doing it, and whatever the topic. Therefore, he’s doing more harm than good. The cause isn’t so important that it warrants the corruption of public debate.
My other concern is the quality of his arguments. He seems to have comprehensively refuted Sunday School.

daddy dave

15 Mar 10 at 7:46 pm
Iraq further destabilising Mid East. Neighbours threaten backlash:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/oil-cartel-fears-losing-control-over-supply-as-iraqi-output-hits-20-year-high/story-e6frg9ef-1225840982995

Infidel Tiger

15 Mar 10 at 7:57 pm
“Dawkins is a hypocritical nasty little creep too.

He always seems to bring up the fact that lots of killings have been historically done by religious people, which is true.

However the little fucker doesn’t accept and tries to evade the fact that there were lots of atheists that ended up being first rate killers in the 20 th century.”

JC, you make the same mistake as CL. There is a difference between:

1 being a believer and killing people because of your and their religious beliefs; and

2 being an atheist and killing people because of psychotic beliefs about capital or nationalism.

In the second case you cannot blame atheism for the killings.

pedro

15 Mar 10 at 8:47 pm
“My other concern is the quality of his arguments. He seems to have comprehensively refuted Sunday School.”

In my experience, the “sophisticated” criticisms of Dawkins largely amount to: “don’t worry whether god exists, Dawkins is crap on theology.”

pedro

15 Mar 10 at 8:48 pm
A good read:

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/04/wall-street-excerpt-201004?currentPage=1

Semi Regular Libertarian

15 Mar 10 at 8:52 pm
“don’t worry whether god exists, Dawkins is crap on theology.”
.
Yeah, and?
Whatever happened to the merit of the argument? Isn’t that what he’s supposedly fighting for – reason?
It’s not good enough to descend into polemics simply because one’s conclusions are correct.

daddy dave

15 Mar 10 at 8:55 pm
In the second case you cannot blame atheism for the killings.

Not at all. Religious groups were sort out and killed by the atheistic murderers. In other words they were targeted because of what they believed.

Jews were targeted because of their beliefs and who they were by the Nazi atheists. Sorry , pedro, but it’s not a bed of roses of that side either.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 10:42 pm
There is a difference between:

1 being a believer and killing people because of your and their religious beliefs; and

2 being an atheist and killing people because of psychotic beliefs about capital or nationalism.

Oh how convenient. Atheists who committed mass murder thus have their behaviour medicalised as psychosis or contextualised as mere politics gone awry. In fact, the atheistic mass murder of the twentieth century was the ineluctable corollary of philosophies in which humankind’s highest principles were held to inhere in the state-become-man, which placed itself dogmatically above all conceivable objective goods and criteria for moral conduct. The outcome was slaughter on a scale never before seen in human history. It is axiomatic that history’s worst ever murderers – and its most wildly irrational purveyors of life-threatening and world-historically poisonous superstitions – were all atheists.

C.L.

15 Mar 10 at 10:46 pm
Stalin.

He was a seminarian and an alleged atheist. Neither are relevant. He was an opportunist.

Semi Regular Libertarian

15 Mar 10 at 10:48 pm
Japan

Japan is slowly becoming irrelevant as a part of the global economy, said Kirby Daley, senior strategist at the Newedge Group.

“The problem is , demographically, it is beyond the point of no return. And there is no catalyst that we can see out there, where Japan has an edge,” Daley told CNBC on Monday.

He disagreed with the views of noted investment analyst Byron Wien, vice president of Blackstone Advisory Services, who told CNBC in January that Japan could surprise in 2010 by being the best-performing major industrialized market.

“Byron Wien and some others have said that this could be the year for Japan to have a renaissance in the equity markets, but it won’t be real, and I think it could be a last gasp,” Daley warned.

Japan cannot sustain itself on domestic demand, its citizens don’t have the propensity to consume, Daley explained. “Demand can never pick up in Japan as long as the fiscal situation is so bad.”

“The government is going the wrong way — They’re exacerbating the fiscal issues, they’re holding back the domestic consumer in Japan,” Daley added.

“(The) consumer does not have the firepower anymore largely because they’ve lost a lot of it in the carry-trade, in the reversal of the carry-trade, and also they’ve been buying JGBs for years at the urging of the government to keep the whole system afloat.”

JC

15 Mar 10 at 11:54 pm
oops forgot italics.

JC

15 Mar 10 at 11:54 pm
Newspoll: support for Rudd crashes.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 12:17 am
One of the better put downs in a while.

Speaking of the legacy media and conservatives, Howell Raines (the man who brought you Jayson Blair because it made him feel “more diverse”) has an hilarious piece in The Washington Post on Roger Ailes and Fox News:

For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party.

It’s quite an achievement to be so lacking in self-awareness as to be capable of typing that sentence with a straight face. But Mr Raines dutifully hammers home his point:

Mark Steyn of course.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjFmZWUxYWM3MDQ4ODNmOWVhZGMxNzEyOWFiZTc3ZjY=

JC

16 Mar 10 at 12:18 am
Abbott came across rather well on 4 Corners tonight. Sad old Mal Warmbull looked like his footy team had lost the Grand Final by 1 point and he’d just run over the family pet. And dear Tim Costello gave Abbott a spray that made him sound like a free marketeers wet dream.

Speaking of wet dreams and Abbott, when steve from brisbane has finished wearing out his pause and rewind buttons, I’d like to hear his take.

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 12:21 am
“…the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party.”

Yes, that major news organisation is called MSNBCCBSABCCNNNYT and it has been devoted to promoting the Democrat Party for at least 40 years.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 12:23 am
From Cl’s link:

KEVIN Rudd’s personal approval is at its worst since he became Prime Minister and his satisfaction with voters is at its worst since he became Leader of the Opposition in December 2006.

After taking the blame for Government mistakes and broken promises and releasing his public hospital plan Kevin Rudd’s satisfaction rating has dropped three points to 48 per cent, in the last two weeks according to Newspoll, the first time he’s below 50 per cent as Prime Minister and dissatisfaction with Mr Rudd is at a new high of 41 per cent.

The two bit little bureaucrat’s fucked I think. That’s the reason we saw another spending promise today where we were promised $650 million more for doctors.

This is the most dangerous time for the country as the little clown is cornered and he’s say anything do anything to get his poll numbers back. He’ll take us down the river too if he drowns.

The problem for him is that he doesn’t know and is capable of getting himself out of this slump as its permanent. The voters never knew the little creep and the more they get to him about him the less they like.

He’s done like a dinner and his poll numbers will continue to collapse.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 12:23 am
Sportsbet have still got the Coalition at $4.70 to take government. Those odds are crazy. I’ll have to have a dabble.

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 12:26 am
oops he’ll say anything, do anything….

…..and isn’t capable…

JC

16 Mar 10 at 12:26 am
FFS. It’s time to form an angry mob and lynch these health-nazis. WTF is happening to this country?

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/battered-chiko-roll-fights-to-survive/story-e6freuy9-1225841110616

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 12:37 am
FM. We all know they’re not the culinary apex but many a chiko have I gleefully and harmlessly demolished while worse for wear.

It’s one of the great ironies of history that the true heirs to Fred Nile and Mary Whitehouse are the prohibitionists of the interventionist left – Rudd, Bligh, Conroy, Roxon, Hamilton, Brown, Livingstone, Flannery, T. Costello et hoc genus omne – allied to their fellow paternalistas in the utopian fascist medical establishment.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 12:51 am
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned:

NSW Premier Keneally sceptical of Rudd health plan.

She’s making it known Kev’s plan is crap.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 12:55 am
The chiko roll link seems to be dead… funnily enough, I searched google and their link is dead as well – I guess they either removed the story or changed its location.

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 1:23 am
This is what I’ve been saying for ages now. A future 4G network will basically make the Controy/Rudd NBN plan a huge freaking mistake that will end up costing us 43 billion and more.

Or as one industry expert predicted last night: “Within 10 years at the latest the use of 4G wireless services will show that Rudd’s decision to extend the broadband rollout from the node into the home was just plain stupid.”

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/broadband-network-will-be-43bn-white-elephant/story-e6frg6zo-1225841083908

The quicker the government is shown the door the better it is for all our sake.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 2:07 am
It’s great, isn’t it, JC? I suppose if all else fails they could always point to the useless investment as another job-creating “stimulus” exercise.

What will people in the future call the ’00s decade? I’m increasingly of the view that it will be considered the dawn of a global idiocracy, with utter morons firmly in control on every continent. It’s a nightmare.

Michael Fisk

16 Mar 10 at 2:27 am
The future seems to be in Asia, Fisk. They don’t seem to be as infected with the same illness.

Did you read the piece? It’s going to turn into another fucking shambles of a policy but this time costing 43 billion unless some stops. That’s real money.

The plan is useless unless the wiring in the home is changed and people are not going to be spending all that money when their services are okay and the $G rolls out. Furthermore you’ll need to spend 400+ bucks every few years to upgrade the set top box.

These freaking morons are going to commit a huge amount of money on essentially a useless project and it’s also retarded any future investment in communications for years from the private sector as they wait to see what happens and how much thieving goes on from Telstra.

I never in my wildest dreams they would be this bad, but they’re even worse than I thought.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 2:36 am
We probably shouldn’t laugh too hard at Venezuela. We’re not that far behind them.

Michael Fisk

16 Mar 10 at 2:44 am
Magazine editor’s compliment:

Obama is providing very “womanly” leadership.

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/03/15/valerie-jarrett-hurray-for-obamas-womanly-leadership/

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 4:09 am
I saw the 4 corners profile too.

Come on IT, Turnbull was actually gracious and discreet in that segment. It’s clear he decided to quieten down and support the party now. That Hewson is a snake though.

Jason Soon

16 Mar 10 at 7:53 am
Well well well. Bolt catches out Mr Litigious himself.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 9:27 am
Melanie Phillips demolishes cult wacko Richard Dawkins.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 9:32 am
I’m really not going to fault someone for rushing to amend his blogposting after being advised it may be defamatory. I’ve done the same myself.

But my that’s a bad shot of the Quiggler.

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 9:37 am
Devastating if true:

“If any of your staffers come near my office, I’ll throw them out myself,” Mr Combet had reportedly told the PM.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 9:40 am
As for last night’s Four Corners: nothing too dramatic, but doesn’t make me feel any better towards Abbott. Of course, I agree totally with Turnbull’s assessment of his switch on AGW. Abbott got lucky with how bad Copenhagen turned out (which went much worse than I think even skeptics expected). I also think Abbott is lucky with the timing of the problems with the insulation scheme.

But the overall impression of Abbott painted by Hewson (and to a degree supported by some other people) as someone who is prepared to grab headlines by making a big statement, then retreating from it somewhat, seemed pretty accurate to me. Which basically means he is not a “conviction politician” at all, and in fact he shares some of that do anything to get your face on screen characteristic with Rudd.

I liked him more when he was a politician who spoke bluntly from a Catholic perspective and didn’t really care much how it was taken. The new Tony, who has to watch his image more, strikes me as much less sincere.

steven from brisbane

16 Mar 10 at 9:40 am
Rudd is starting to remind me of the Talented Mr Ripley.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/rudds_woman_problem/

Rudd did not seem to have the same carefree time as a student. We know he cleaned Laurie Oakes’s house and met Rein, but around Canberra Rudd is remembered less flatteringly as a dobber and a wowser. Fairly or not, fingers were pointed at him when a fellow Australian National University student was expelled from the campus residence after authorities were told he was living with a woman who later became his wife. Years later, as Prime Minister, Rudd stripped the respected public servant Hugh Borrowman of a decent diplomatic posting.

There are those who say there is a connection between these two events, decades apart. I couldn’t possibly comment on that, but simply ask whether it is conceivable Rudd would carry a grudge for so long.

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 9:42 am
From the original piece, comparing Abbott to Keating

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/memo-to-tony-and-kevin-no-sex-please-were-voters/story-e6frg6zo-1225841086597

And I know one should not make too much of this, I am only throwing it in because it might be vaguely pertinent, but another Catholic leader, Paul Keating, used to talk a lot about sex too.

After one budget that Keating was especially proud of, he wanted to emphasise to me the importance of a new family benefit initiative. “It’s a pro-f . . kng measure,” he said. “You know, we Catholics, we just love f. . . king.”

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 9:45 am
Yeah I saw that. Rudd is a very weird person who, unlike Abbott, seems genuinely to have a problem with women.

Although we keep hearing about how women feel threatened by Abbott, and there is a bit of truth to that, it is Rudd who comes across as the one who has trouble dealing with women. Rudd has gone through more than half a dozen female personal assistants since he became Prime Minister. He reduced a female flight attendant to tears, allegedly disparaged a woman working on her PhD, and was overheard abusing Keneally over hospital funding.

Abbott seems to have an easy relationship with his daughters. They mock him affectionately and he takes it in good humour. Both in government and now in opposition, he has always employed women in senior roles in his office either as press secretaries, policy advisers or chiefs of staff. They have all remained incredibly loyal to him and keep coming back to work for him.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 10:04 am
“…I agree totally with Turnbull’s assessment of his switch on AGW.”

From the man who switched opinions on Nelson’s fuel excise tax proposal on an almost daily basis, that is especially hilarious.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 10:07 am
A humilation for Kevin:

Barack Obama cuts Down Under trip to 24 hours.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 10:08 am
Both in government and now in opposition, he has always employed women in senior roles in his office either as press secretaries, policy advisers or chiefs of staff. They have all remained incredibly loyal to him and keep coming back to work for him.

That basically tells you if the sisterhood has a problem with him or not.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 10:31 am
Barack Obama cuts Down Under trip to 24 hours.
.
Sounds like he wanted to cancel completely but his advisors explained that it would be a diplomatic disaster, which of course it would be; so this is the next best thing.
We’re a stopover, with coffee and a muffin.

daddy dave

16 Mar 10 at 10:44 am
You stay classy, Democrats:

John Edwards sex tape is real and shows Silky Pony going down on several months pregnant Rielle Hunter.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 11:10 am
Another stunning endorsement for Abbott:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/paul-keating-ridicules-nutter-tony-abbott/story-e6frgczf-1225841256973

Things are going swimmingly for him.

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 11:36 am
as if Menzies House couldn’t get any worse

http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2010/03/our-australian-way-of-life-is-indeed-under-threat.html#more

The Judeo-Christian tradition is targeted for elimination because it is perceived to be an obstacle to the imposition of an ideology of “sexual diversity”. This ideology goes much further than same-sex “marriage”, to cover sexual perversion, such as paedophilia.

Later we learn

Nona Florat is a retired academic librarian

Some of the points the article makes are actually good ones but hyperbole like the one above just makes it all laughable

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 12:30 pm
Freedom or die? Britain has made its choice.

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/airline-passenger-asked-to-turn-threatening-freedom-or-die-tshirt-insideout-20100316-qa52.html

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 1:04 pm
Hope Catherine Deveny has a good lawyer.

Actually, no I don’t.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 1:08 pm
QANDA last night was the most cringe inducing TV I’ve seen in a long time. All Deveny needed was some shit stains on her night gown and a cat or two in her hair ad it would have been complete.

Waleed Aly is a smug little tool, too.

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 1:15 pm
I wish Bolt would stop playing out that stupid atheist angle. Yes there are mentally ill people in our atheist community too.

Deveny is a right twat and the atheism is the only thing we have in common with her.

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 1:20 pm
I see the Birdbrain doesn’t think so, Jase.

BirdLab

16 Mar 10 at 1:27 pm
Who’s “we” in that last comment, Jason?

steven from brisbane

16 Mar 10 at 1:29 pm
The atheist community steve. I’m being cheeky in my expression since Bolta seems to think one person can represent all atheists.

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 1:31 pm
Deveney’s the most unfunny ‘comedian’ around, but Dutton’s refusal to acknowledge the injustices done to Aboriginals reeked of petulance and thinly veiled racism.

THR

16 Mar 10 at 1:36 pm
He’s probably just reacting to the situation where the atheist community seems to derive all of its publicity from public figures who are irritating/condescending in manner.

steven from brisbane

16 Mar 10 at 1:37 pm
Rudd government scheme burns down another home.

The Metropolitan Fire Brigade says fires from faulty insulation have more than doubled from last year.

Burning voters’ houses down – what a great government!

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 1:41 pm
Yeah, I didn’t see it all, but I thought Dutton did himself no favours last night. Shorten seemed a bit less irritable than the last time he was one. Deveny’s talk of paid parenting gave me the impression she wants society organised so you can have kids and both parents can take off 10 years on full salary.

steven from brisbane

16 Mar 10 at 1:42 pm
Deveny should be sectioned. Along with with most of the QANDA audience. If you can’t ask a question without reading it, don’t ask.

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 1:45 pm
Whenever liberals and lefties “acknowledge the injustices done to Aboriginals,” black fellas should run for their lives because you can guarantee that things are about to get a lot worse for them.

To take two examples: the ‘acknowledgement’ of wage injustice on the big stations led to the destruction of Aboriginal employment in the cattle industry.

‘Acknowledgement’ – which is to say, invention – of the “stolen generations(s)” has led to children’s lives being lost or wrecked as welfare agencies hang back, terrified of ‘steeling’ black children from child abusers.

On the question of welcome to (your own) country ceremonies, Abbott was right. Tuckey was less prudent and more harsh but he spoke truthfully when he referred to blubber-gutted dancers wobbling about with spears at official functions. It’s embarrassing and inappropriate. And, to borrow some liberal morality for a second, it Sends The Wrong Message about the acceptability of obesity – which, as we all know, is an “epidemic.”

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 1:53 pm
Whenever liberals and lefties “acknowledge the injustices done to Aboriginals,” black fellas should run for their lives because you can guarantee that things are about to get a lot worse for them.

Nonsense, CL. Symbolism doesn’t build houses or put food on the table, but it’s important all the same. Aly was quite correct to say that there’s no opposition between ‘practical’ measures and symbolic recognition. Arguably, the latter is even the precondition for the former. Morally and intellectually the Wilson Tuckey’s of this world are on a par with the David Irvings.

THR

16 Mar 10 at 1:58 pm
CL, if you want really eye-rolling aboriginal welcomes, you should see the ones done by some women occasionally at “St Mary’s In Exile”. Maybe I can track down a video of one tonight on their website.

steven from brisbane

16 Mar 10 at 1:59 pm
By the way, can anyone think of any other country doing the same thing at the government level? I imagine New Zealand might…

steven from brisbane

16 Mar 10 at 2:02 pm
Maybe Canada. In fact Canada probably started this phony bullshit.

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 2:05 pm
…the Wilson Tuckey’s of this world are on a par with the David Irvings.

Well, I can’t see the equivalency. Irving denies the Holocaust. Tuckey denies that fatsos in loin cloths are the best people to have jiggling about in front of dignitaries.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 2:08 pm
Deveney’s the most unfunny ‘comedian’ around, but Dutton’s refusal to acknowledge the injustices done to Aboriginals reeked of petulance and thinly veiled racism.

What injustices have you or I committed, THR. For that matter what injustices have both our parents committed?

As for that tokenistic crap that goes on now with every speech, fucking spare me.

I really dislike Tuckey, however his comments about those overweight professional aboriginals dancers is on the mark.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 2:12 pm
What the fuck is it with labor and tokenism. It’s really freaking creep stuff.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 2:13 pm
I see from CL’s earlier post that another house has burned down as a result of bad insulation install.

Where’s homer to tell us his mate possum has stuck that fire into a monte carlo odds synthezizer and come out with … it wasn’t Rudd’s fault.

Possum and Homer….. about to take statistics by storm. The veritable Penn & Teller of the left.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 2:17 pm
I agree with the earlier comment. The entire Quanda audience ought to be sectioned in a mental asylum.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 2:19 pm
Yeah, the Metro Fire Brigade says insulation-related fires have doubled. Genius ‘Possum’ said they’d fallen. He ‘proved’ it with a graph and stuff.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 2:20 pm
What injustices have you or I committed, THR. For that matter what injustices have both our parents committed?

We haven’t done anything. It’s about acknowledging past traumas and injustices. The Aboriginals were Untermenschen until the 60s, not even having the vote. Wilson Tuckey is the sort of piggish fellow who’d bring beer and bratwurst to a remembrance ceremony at Dachau.

THR

16 Mar 10 at 2:21 pm
hahahaha

Paul Norton has a post up about how poor uni lecturers might be affected by the welfare quarantine system because some of them might be on the dole for part of the year.

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/03/16/pssst-thats-our-lecturer-in-the-susso-queue/#more-13032

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 2:25 pm
hat happens, however, if casual academics find themselves having part of their incomes quarantined and managed? We could find the students doing their weekly shopping at their local Woolies, lining up in the ordinary checkout queue and seeing one of their lecturers or tutors standing in the Centrelink smart card queue. Such sightings would inevitably be reported by the students to their peers, and judgments formed.

HAHAHAHA!

Why don’t they get temporary jobs installing insulation?

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 2:29 pm
Here’s a must read. Alan Kohler: China’s Playing With Fire. China and America are on the brink of a trade war. If it happens it will not be good for us or China at all.

China is not as strong as it thinks, and is extremely vulnerable to a trade war with the United States. It is not, as is often believed, the financial equivalent of the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that underpinned the nuclear standoff of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and America. This relationship is far more one-sided: China needs America far more than America needs China.

daddy dave

16 Mar 10 at 2:30 pm
um… that might be in violation of my subscriber agreement… Sinclair can you snip the link to the Eureka Report? (the quote is probably fine).

daddy dave

16 Mar 10 at 2:32 pm
Not only “fallen”, CL, but if you extended that gooses logic further down into the intellectual toilet of idiocy it would have meant that Rudd’s plan should be extended as mass installation caused less fires and damage.

Possum inferred that Lurch and Rudd’s plan was actually reducing fires.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 2:51 pm
listen stupid before you go off and again show your profound ignorance about statistics try and get someone to explain it to you.

no-one here got within cooee of doing it and you still do not understand his work nor does that other statistical wonk CL.

Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop

16 Mar 10 at 2:56 pm
lol… academics shouldn’t be on welfare during the “off-season” – they should get a job like their students… if they’re on welfare, they SHOULD be outed.

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 2:58 pm
exactly Fleeced.

what happened to the days when the middle class considered it absolutely shameful to be on the dole?

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 3:03 pm
Homer:

You can of course prove me wrong with a statistical comment showing clearly where I was wrong and how.

But you won’t, you innumerate rude intellectual hobo, because you know I’m right.

You goose Homer.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 3:03 pm
What’s wrong about a part time English or Media tutor working as a builder’s laborer, as I’m sure there are plenty of those jobs going.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 3:05 pm
Birdy always suggested the LP crew would be better off in plumbing or hairdressing.

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 3:06 pm
you haven’t made any stupid.

just saying it is wrong means nothing particularly coming from someone who confused the numerator with the denominator in one famous exchange

Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop

16 Mar 10 at 3:07 pm
I suspect Paul would consider a job stacking supermarket shelves as even more embarrassing that receiving welfare… after all, they deserve welfare – but nobody deserves to be stacking shelves!

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 3:07 pm
It could be worse.

You could end up working in the pastry factory where Birdy is the foreman.

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 3:08 pm
yea, hahahhahhaah Bird…

the nasty top hens go plumbing or bricklaying while the beta boys go hairdressing. It’s role reversal they would certainly approve of is my guess.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 3:08 pm
It would be great to see the beta boys getting a job with Bird as the foreman and overseeing their “work”.

” WTF are you doing mark, I told you to run the power washer on heavy duty, you f..king moron”.

That would be a reality show worth watching.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 3:11 pm
I’m pretty lazy, so I don’t begrudge other people their laziness. What I find intolerable though is their sense of entitlement. If you can’t afford to be lazy, get a job… there is ALWAYS something available – though it might not always be pleasant.

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 3:12 pm
Homer:

I’ve already shown the dolt was wrong. If you can’t prove your case by posting the argument clearly then piss off and get behind the garage, you innumerate goofball.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 3:13 pm
here’s a constructive idea

Tutoring centres. There would be great demand by these places for well qualified people.

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 3:18 pm
Paul N uses this argument to glom more cash for part timers.

There is another possible consequence. The international student market is a major export earner for Australia and a major source of funds for Australian universities. What will happen if it becomes widely known that a precentage of Australian academics have to augment their academic pay with government benefits?

He thinks the fact that part timers having to get the dole wouldn’t go down well in Asia where most of the students come from.

I agree actually. The students and their parents would be wondering what sort of place pays the dole when they could be out there earning money by getting a part time job.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 3:18 pm
Fleeced are you in IT stuff?

JC

16 Mar 10 at 3:19 pm
you have done nothing of the kind.

sinply saying he is wrong is not even close!

Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop

16 Mar 10 at 3:21 pm
@JC – yes

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 3:23 pm
Homer I didn’t just say he was wrong. I showed why he was wrong with some pretty basic arithmetic and logic.

You know that as you commented there in that perversely stupid and dense tone of yours when things go over your head or as a result of simple dishonesty, as you can never man up to a mistake.

If you can’t demonstrate why my logic and calcs were wrong then fuck off and sit behind the garage.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 3:26 pm
Here’s a story about a fat woman who wants to double her weight to become the world’s fattest.

What I found most amusing is that she earns extra money (to pay for her massive food bills) by running a pay-site where people can watch her eat. This shows two things:

1) The internet has something for everybody; and
2) Whatever you have to sell, someone will buy it

Perhaps our casual academics could try something like that…

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 3:38 pm
Here Homer. I’ll post the stuff again, you fat headed ignorant, layabout dolt.

Information

Oz wide

67,500 homes were being insulated before the lurch plan which was the normalized market.

1,100,000 homes insulated under the Lurch plan.

90 odd homes burn down in both instances according to possum. That is the same number burn down under normalized market conditions and under the Lurch plan.

90/67500

90/1,100,000

On those number, according to your stupid mate, Possum, the Lurch plan not only should go ahead but also be expanded as it causes less fires in a relative sense..

You know what my real worry is?

The ALP tried to use the Possum argument in parliament after having glommed it off Croakey, which means those freaking no-hopers are just as innumerate as you.

Reaction?

God freaking help us.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 3:39 pm
that is disgusting.

and the partner only weighs 150 pounds.

obviously only the missionary position is viable if he doesn’t want his pecker snapped in half

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 3:43 pm
That’s really ambition, Fleeced. I admire her.

The entire LP brigade ought to try something like that.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 3:44 pm
Jason, please. The woman seems to have a ton of ambition. No one should be-grudge her.

You go girl. Don’t listen to these naysayers.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 3:46 pm
Birdie would like her. He seems to love fat gals.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 3:48 pm
The ablution situation always concerns me. If you wanna be a fat fuck, go right ahead, but don’t expect other people to wipe your arse.

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 3:48 pm
IT – she could probably charge for showing that as well…

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 3:55 pm
Here’s a story about a fat woman who wants to double her weight to become the world’s fattest.

She’s got more ambition in one of her chins than the male women’s studies tutors of Larvatus Prodeo put together.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 3:55 pm
This is Britain. A nation of hypochodriac sooks.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article7063249.ece

Actually it sounds exactly like Australia.

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 3:59 pm
nothing at all wrong with hypochondriacs, Infidel.

In fact I once suggested to my Doc that he ought to set up a Concierge arrangement where for a flat fee you could contact him ever which way to assist you with ailments.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 4:03 pm
No problemo, Tiger.

It’s all “free.”

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 4:05 pm
This is great site for those deeply concerned about their health.

http://skepticalhypochondriac.com/

I’m heading off to the Big Apple soon and have already booked myself in with a great NYC ENT guy to figure what should be done about my ongoing sinus problems. It’s my version of medical tourism

JC

16 Mar 10 at 4:08 pm
Hey, great innovation. But, of course, it has provoked OUTRAGEOUS OUTRAGE!

A MELBOURNE bookstore has sparked outrage after being discovered selling a “control a woman” remote – on International Women’s Day.

The ABC reported Borders was forced to defend the $15 novelty product after a woman told of her anger at seeing it during last week’s celebration of female rights and achievements.

Katie Robertson told ABC Radio she was “troubled” by the toy, “mainly because it encourages a stereotype of women as submissive, who are to be controlled”.

“There are certain buttons on there. For example, the male may decide that he wants beer, sex or food,” she said.

“He may press a button in which he requires the woman to remove her clothes, cook, clean, leave, (or) say yes.

“There’s also a button in which you can increase her breast size.”

That famous feminist sense of humour strikes again.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 4:12 pm
Infidel Tiger

A tad ironic of Keating to demand what Abbott’s ‘conservative’ vision is, when Keating’s own labour vision amounted to the biggest weakening of trade union power in Australian history, unprecedented post-war unemployment, tens of thousands of men in their 40s and 50s consigned to the dustbin of the DSP, spending his entire Prime Ministership sneering and lecturing the “labour” base as cheap-suit wearing racists.

Some vision Paul!

Peter Patton

16 Mar 10 at 4:16 pm
ummm…What a damn great idea.

Are they still for sale, as I may run down to Borders and buy one? I’m sure my better 1/2 would love the concept

That’s why a find free markets so fascinating, as people are always figuring ways to make a buck with terrific products such as this one.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 4:17 pm
lol… you can get guy remotes as well. I really hate humourless gits like that. I love the opening statement “on International Women’s Day” – haha. How insensitive.

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 4:17 pm
Supply creates demand, JC – the Internet has many great example of that.

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 4:19 pm
Needs a mute button.

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 4:19 pm
Exactly fleeced. This product pretty much proves the Mises doctrine of supply creating its own demand. There was no demand for a control-a-woman gadget until this showed up.

I’m sure Steve jobs could improve on it by incorporating it into the iphone.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 4:21 pm
and thinly veiled racism.

Of course. What else could it be?

Peter Patton

16 Mar 10 at 4:22 pm
Actually, I know I jokes earlier about those “casual academics” setting up a pay-site like that fat woman’s – but there’s an element of truth there.

It’s easy-peasy to set up a shopping cart website. The software is free (and installation automated), you can use paypal to accept payments (no processing cheques or begging the bank for merchant account), and if you sell virtual goods, can deliver via email.

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 4:23 pm
A casual tutor should be easily able to whack together some study guides for various subjects and sell them at $10 a pop.

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 4:26 pm
Fleeced,

But in way you should also be practicing a form of caveat emptor in reverse though.

You could end up selling that sort of junk to people like Homer who would be wasting their money. In other words the web presents real weaknesses like that.

There was a saying in banking ” Know your client” which I think also applies here.

I mean anyone selling ed tutoring stuff over the web could end up with homer on the other end. It would be wrong taking his money.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 4:32 pm
THR

If you feel that you cannot get up in the morning without naming and acknowledging your “past injustice” du jour, that’s fine. Self-flagellate away. But to expect the rest of us to have the same needs is a bit weird. Go and study a bit of History. Actually don’t. If you became aware of what the history of humanity involves, you’d either never get out of bed, or your body would be tattooed with abscesses.

Peter Patton

16 Mar 10 at 4:32 pm
Money will never stay with people not up to the task, JC – so feel not guilty.

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 4:35 pm
Acknowledgement is not the same as ‘self-flagellation’, except to mental cripples like Dutton and Tuckey. If you wish to be in their esteemed company, fo right ahead.

THR

16 Mar 10 at 4:36 pm
Isn’t the idea that if you are on Newstart you are unemployed and looking for work? Therefore, surely these academics should be doing precisely that; Looking For Work! If your idea of fulfilling your Newstart obligations is just to look for part-time work, then surely it is questionable you should be getting Newstart at all.

Peter Patton

16 Mar 10 at 4:40 pm
I simply do not care about the alleged “injustices” of the long dead. Jesus mate, we’re here for a good time, not for a long time.

Peter Patton

16 Mar 10 at 4:44 pm
THR.

To be perfectly honest I felt like Dutton over the apology thing and I admire him for taking a stand.

The world is replete with indig being displaced by new comers or borders changing etc. In fact the entire course of human history is about masses of people moving around from place to place.

In fact I’m not altogether certain who exactly we were apologizing to as the so called “aboriginal race” isn’t really a race at all as there were movements of people from different parts of the Pacific and different times.

If an apology was due to the ways they were dealt with them, it should have come for the representative of the state, not the political side. That would have been the governor general on behalf of the queen.

In the early cases, any bad dealings towards the Aboriginals was caused by state governments for the most part and it was only in 1967 when the assistance to aboriginals became a Federal issue.

How could say a Victorian be responsible for shit happening in WA?

And why apologize to dead people?

Lastly, what’s with the stupid tokenism of having to start every major government speech with a recognition of the natives? It’s embarrassing and gauche (and labor really know how to do gauche).

It’s really condescending and in a way it places the rest of us below them. I was born here. I have as much right to live here as the aboriginal 2000 miles north.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 4:49 pm
Do Sudanese refugees who get of the plane tomorrow have to apologise to the Aborigines as well?

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 5:00 pm
Wind turbines may add to global warming:

Even if wind turbines produce only 10% of the electricity consumed in 2100, their effect will translate to 1 °C of warming locally but, because of the extended effect of the local changes, it will also add 0.15 °C to the global mean temperature.

The sign could be reverted – to cooling – if the wind turbines were built on the ocean.

See Motl’s post for a summary and link to full paper and press release:

http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/wind-turbines-will-add-up-to-015-c-to.html#more

dover_beach

16 Mar 10 at 5:06 pm
From the same post of Motl’s, one reason why iron enrichment of the oceans may be a bad idea:

AFP and others inform about a work done by Ontario researchers. They looked what iron enrichment, a proposed method to encourage life in the ocean which would store CO2, does to the composition of the phytoplankton. They found out that Pseudo-nitzschia, a subspecies, would grow a lot. This creature produces domoic acid which is a neurotoxin.

So you should better be a bit careful with similar untested chemical experiments at the global scale. You know, unlike CO2, domoic acid causes amnesic shellfish poisoning to humans. Happy swimming and drinking in an ocean cooled by 0.01 °C.

See the following for more info:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hiDcFEvT9skh7X40lCavxX5rQiWw

dover_beach

16 Mar 10 at 5:11 pm
JC

Indeed. Tragically, I fear that the whole reorientation of the Aboriginal industry, in the direction of Mabo and Native Title, is going to prove even more disastrous that the Socialist Whitey brigade’s disreputable misleading them down the passive welfare path in the 70s and 80s.

People now just think, ‘oh well, you got your land rights, Mabo, and ow even a new ‘Native’ title, to burn your incense, paint your bodies to the Nines, and dance about till your hearts content.’ Now, you can stop boring the rest of the nation, and allow us to get on with the job of civilization!

Peter Patton

16 Mar 10 at 5:13 pm
Wow this turned really personal. Agassi is a thin skinned dick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QSK9t6OrgU&feature=player_embedded#

JC

16 Mar 10 at 5:22 pm
If you seriously think that accepting historical fact and acknowledging Aboriginals as symbolic equals – not tasks that are greatly difficult – are akin to painful ‘self-flagellation’, then you suffer from smallness of soul. The problem lies with you, not ‘self-flagellating’ lefties.

THR

16 Mar 10 at 5:23 pm
this week’s Badass of the week is hilarious

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/pujol.html

After a couple of meetings, the Abwehr hired Garcia on to spy against Allied interests in England. This is sort of an impressive posting to attain – Pujol was able to somehow convince his contact at the Nazi spy office that he was a diplomat working in England, thereby guaranteeing that he’d be an ideal candidate for spyhood, but he inconcievably managed to do this despite the notable shortcoming that he didn’t speak English, had never been to England, and forged his own passports and visas without actually knowing what the real documents even looked like. Nevertheless, the German Abwehr hooked him up with three grand, a vial of totally bitchin’ invisible ink, a cipher for encrypting secret messages, and a code name: ARABEL.

Well instead of moving to London and becoming a Nazi spy, Pujol moved to Portugal and flexed his mad B.S.ing skillz to the max. From his home office in Lisbon, armed only with a Spanish-language version of Frommer’s Guide to England, a British railway schedule, and a couple road maps, he somehow convinced the Nazis that he had established himself as a secret agent working deep undercover in the British Isles. As if magically teleporting himself across the Channel to a country he’d never seen before wasn’t enough of a feat, he then fabricated an entire organized network of badass fictional spies to come work for him and do awesome things in his name. Before long, this crazy imaginary spymaster built a network of twenty-seven (!!) fake men and women ranging from a Swiss banker who was horrified by Liverpool orgies to a Venezuelan dock worker trading wine bottles for information in Glasgow, and they were all feeding him intel about places he’d never actually been before, which he then relayed to the Germans. I probably don’t need to mention that the Nazis weren’t exactly known for taking it easy on guys who royally cocked them over, but Pujol apparently didn’t even give a shit that he was playing with radioactive fire here – he was so balls-out that he mailed the letters from his local post office, passing it off as though he had a KLM pilot under his power that was flying the letters across the Channel and dropping them in a Portuguese mailbox. Incredibly, they bought it.

jtfsoon

16 Mar 10 at 5:24 pm
THR

I have never said anything remotely like all that guff you just posted. I simply do not think like that, live like that, and would be ashamed of myself if they were my priorities as I went through life encountering other human beings. I do not even acknowledge such a thing as an “Indigenous” person. They’re just folks.

Peter Patton

16 Mar 10 at 5:41 pm
Aborigines are only “symbolic equals,” THR?

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 6:06 pm
They’re not even that in the eyes of those petty souls who don’t acknowledge them, CL.

THR

16 Mar 10 at 6:09 pm
THR:

Acknowledge what exactly? That they’re aboriginal?

Why the need to acknowledge them?

JC

16 Mar 10 at 6:25 pm
C’mon Joe didn’t you try to get in on the act and claim Potts Point as your people’s land?

tal

16 Mar 10 at 6:29 pm
Who doesn’t acknowledge them? We’re talking about the recently invented “welcome to country” ceremony and how stupid and offensive it is. No Australian needs to be welcomed to any part of the country. It’s ours.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 6:29 pm
No Tal, I’m going for Olympic Dam, which as the largest uranium reserves in the world, as that’s where my people came from. I could end up becoming the uranium equivalent of a Sheik. If all goes well in my claim, you can refer to me as sheik JC. Of course the white turban comes with the “job”.

Hey CL:

Rog is on this vid with Geoffrey.

http://player.video.news.com.au/theaustralian/#1441453006

JC

16 Mar 10 at 6:34 pm
Ah that’s right JC you hail from that very famous Aboriginal/Italian tribe

tal

16 Mar 10 at 6:44 pm
The Gulpililianis.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 6:53 pm
Enough nukes and JC’s tribe will be all virgins..

..just like CLs tribe, the Onans

rog

16 Mar 10 at 6:56 pm
I wonder what Geoffrey sees in Mrs Edelsten.

Mmm.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 6:56 pm
CL
You mean , you wonder what Geoffrey sees in Rog?

Yes Tal, it’s a very distinct tribe. I kinda like the idea of wearing a turban, white robes and having the long range gulfstream 650 parked ready to go at short notice.

Hey, Tal. I have some real juicy gossip I got from a plugged in broker about the CEO at John Deere.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 7:01 pm
Onan wasn’t a virgin, Rog, almost by biblical definition.

“Richard Carlton stood 100m outside the plant with a geiger counter and said that after 5-6 hours he would have been exposed to the same amount of radiation as an x-ray.”

- Rog (pre marriage to Dr Geoff), scoffing at Chernobyl exaggeration, April 26, 2006.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 7:02 pm
CL

You have to wonder how Rudd can maintain the cognitive dissonance involved in The Apology and his increasing ‘welcome to country’ zealotry, yet steadfastly deny the Commonwealth owes compensation/damages.

Peter Patton

16 Mar 10 at 7:02 pm
How juicy JC?

tal

16 Mar 10 at 7:03 pm
CL leaps to defend Onan, nice handwork!

rog

16 Mar 10 at 7:04 pm
Real juicy, Tal.

I heard from an I- banker friend that the wasteful dick uses the private jet to fly to another plant which is only an hours drive from the office.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 7:08 pm
Hey CL, your Rog link isn’t working and love to see what he says.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 7:19 pm
And just in from The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues we have this:

The Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth

The Secretariat of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has been informed by the Permanent Mission of Bolivia to the United Nations that the Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth will be held from 20 to 22 April 2010 in the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/index.html

Peter Patton

16 Mar 10 at 7:35 pm
Onan didn’t use his hand, Rog. You’re confusing the eponymous sin against obedience to God with your own more tangible specialty.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 8:06 pm
JC, Morohasy has taken down her old posts – perhaps owing to the gold mine of mockery to be found amongst them pertaining to Rog in his spinster years. Fortunately, I was able to post some classics here at Catallaxy before the great airbrushing.

Re nuclear:

Australians can declare a moratorium on nuclear power but so what? – the rest of the world will have moved on.

Australia should be reasonable and work to be included in policy not adopt of policy of denial.

- Rog, calling for full-on Aussie nukes, May 29, 2006.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 8:15 pm
You have to wonder how Rudd can maintain the cognitive dissonance involved in The Apology and his increasing ‘welcome to country’ zealotry, yet steadfastly deny the Commonwealth owes compensation/damages.

It’s worse than that, Peter. He wants to acknowledge the “traditional owners” of the land wherever an official speech or ceremony is held, even in one of our capital cities, but won’t transfer title on the actual land itself to those deemed the “owners”. So we’ll happily squat on your land and refuse to let you excercise any ownership rights over it (giving you the right to collect interest on your investment or sell it), but you still get to keep the fancy title of “owner”. It’s incredibly hypocritical and insulting.

Unless the ceremony takes place on a piece of land that is held by the traditional owners or custodians (like Cape York or Arnhem Land), the government has no business acknowledging or paying their “respect” to anyone.

So Abbott is right and Rudd is wrong yet again.

Michael Fisk

16 Mar 10 at 8:20 pm
Hey CL I see our newest recruit is doing well
http://babyelephant.taronga.org.au/

tal

16 Mar 10 at 8:21 pm
Thanks Cl.

So Rog was all gung-ho for nukes, calling those against it as being in denial (denialists dare I say). However since the sex change, he’s been full on against nukes.

WTF?

Not only has he taken a rabid anti-nuclear stance that would rival Lurch’s in intensity, but he’s also become a wind aficionado.

Hey Rog, want to explain yourself here, girly.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 8:22 pm
LOL. Labor is really panicking.

Feminist garden gnome, Jenny Macklin, is attacking Abbott for a view he expressed as a 21 year-old student. Lindsey Tanner – accomplice mastermind of such policy triumphs as GroceryWatch – also weighed in, repeating the hospital funding lie.

Families Minister Jenny Macklin seized on Mr Abbott’s failure to repudiate an opinion he expressed as a university student on “equal representation” and Finance Minister Linsday Tanner stepped up accusations that Mr Abbott ripped $1 billion out of the health system when he was health minister.

Macklin made no comment on Kev the Sleaze scaring off a half dozen personal female assistants, ogling strippers, verbally assaulting flight attendants, mocking female PhD students or monstering the NSW Premier.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 8:24 pm
Macklin rivals Christine Milne for the anti-Einstein award. Not far behind is the never seen Max Mckew who probably is smart enough to realize that too much public exposure may not be a good thing for obvious reasons.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 8:27 pm
Note to all industrious researchers:

Find stuff Kevin Rudd said as a band camp evangelical when he was 21 and let’s watch Jenny spin.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 8:29 pm
I think Gillard said a few choice things in her youth

tal

16 Mar 10 at 8:30 pm
Spin? How about roll.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 8:31 pm
KR (21 years old): If that bitch fucks my sandwich order up again I’ll fucking scream.

KR (52 years old): If that bitch fucks my sandwich order up again I’ll throw her off the plane.

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 8:32 pm
Blame his mother. He wanted the breast and he got Nestle instead. I’d be upset too.

Adrien

16 Mar 10 at 8:34 pm
Michael, I have been chiding myself recently for keeping quiet when these “thank you to the traditional owners” spiels occur while I am in the audience.

Perhaps, we should start a movement that whenever this happens, we immediately stand up and shout:

“And now, let us all charge our glasses and cheer the actual and real owners of this building. For without their industry, education, and the institutions of our modern civilization, we might all be living in a mud humpy!”

Peter Patton

16 Mar 10 at 8:34 pm
CL release the elephants,Rome needs them
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4030.htm

tal

16 Mar 10 at 8:35 pm
Kev the Sleaze scaring off a half dozen personal female assistants, ogling strippers, verbally assaulting flight attendants, mocking female PhD students or monstering the NSW Premier.
.
CL – I thought you were an Abbott supporter. When did you get the job managing Kevvie’s publicity to the Bogan demographic?

Adrien

16 Mar 10 at 8:36 pm
Next time there’s a welcome to country from the traditional owners, we’ll all stand and toast Her Majesty the Queen.

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 8:39 pm
Tal, Shuffles is a cutey alright.

In time, though, we’ll have to send him to the Pachyderm SAS training HQ (in Western Australia) so he can learn heathen stomping fieldcraft.

First mission: flattening Hamas ‘clerics’ with extreme prejudice.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 8:40 pm
Hey Adrien, remember the greatest Westerns of all time thread? You rated OUATITW as the best ever.

Well, I watched it in two parts, finishing last night.

Yeah, it’s very very good. Ponderous, occasionally annoying, sometimes confusing but indubitably very very good. Fonda was just brilliant, wasn’t he? What a revelation as the evil bastard. Robards too was great. And of course Charlie.

Look, it was first rate. But but… I’m not sure I truly enjoyed it as much as, say, Josey Wales or even Pale Rider. Was it too long, too slow, too difficult to engage with any one character? Dunno. Can’t put my finger on it but I don’t quite rate it as enjoyable. Brilliant, though, in so many other ways. The cinematography, the effects, the extras (epic), the main cast, the mysticism – the ocean, the puffing of the train like a hospital ventilator (a reminder that time and life are running out) – etc etc.

Truly a masterpiece from Sergio.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 8:52 pm
Actually, Peter, I favour a more Mugabist approach to drive home the logic of this. We should demand that these ceremonies be accompanied by a formal transfer of land title to the nearest 1/16 caste Aborigine who happens to be in attendance. Every single time the government identifies the “traditional owners”, we must insist that they be allowed to take back their stolen land by force, no matter how many people have to be evicted. We cannot allow these liberals to escape the necessary consequences of their advocacy.

Michael Fisk

16 Mar 10 at 9:12 pm
Metropolitan Fire Brigade Commander Ian Hunter has compared Kevin Rudd’s insulation/incineration scheme to a “war zone” – “the war might be over but all the mines are still there.”

This is the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil since the Whiskey Au Go Go fire in 1973.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 9:30 pm
Speaking earlier of how supply can drive demand – here’s a wonderful (and amusing) sketch on the topic:

http://feedru.multiply.com/video/item/10

Fleeced

16 Mar 10 at 9:53 pm
Article on the American healthcare debate:

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/11/obama-family-health-care-fracas/

Michael Sutcliffe

16 Mar 10 at 10:02 pm
Hitchens flays Ratzinger, catholicism is a religion of abuse and denial

rog

16 Mar 10 at 10:26 pm
Bizarre. A Tea Party Rally in the UK:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100027834/brighton-tea-party-packed-out/

I love the American commentator on the forums who describes the British as a bunch of subservient pushovers with a slave mentality.

Michael Sutcliffe

16 Mar 10 at 10:34 pm
Hey Rog:

I distinctly recall CL putting up a link of you applauding Ratzi and Catholicism. What happened since then?

Perhaps CL could put up that link again or post what you said and then allow you time to state your new “position”.

You clown.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 10:39 pm
I dont support sexual assault and child abuse, do you?

rog

16 Mar 10 at 10:49 pm
Hitchens flays Ratzinger…

LOL. The third class Oxford degree bum “flays” Ratzinger. I doubt it.

“Go Archbishop Pell, lay the boot in to secular democracy and militant Islam.”

- Rog, November 13, 2004.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 10:49 pm
Nice try Rog. I never went into your link as they work.

In any event your comment is directly opposite to what you used to say.

Want to talk about that, you clown?

JC

16 Mar 10 at 10:51 pm
I love the American commentator on the forums who describes the British as a bunch of subservient pushovers with a slave mentality.

Nice rejoinders on there too about the British not having a Marxist Muslim for a leader!

Infidel Tiger

16 Mar 10 at 10:54 pm
Of course you nincompoops only option is to continue with your double act of denial

The revelations come as the Catholic Church worldwide grapples with accusations that it covered up abuse by priests.

In recent months paedophile scandals have rocked the church in Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany.

rog

16 Mar 10 at 11:01 pm
Hitchens is a well-known alcoholic with psychological problems – and known to be obsessed with the Catholic Church. His article pretends to link the Pope to the child sexual abuse. He presents no evidence for this. He even cites the pope’s brother’s recent expression of regret about corporal punishment in Catholic schools – of the sort practiced in all state and religious schools for most of the twentieth century. This is a tactic which also fails.

Mismanagement of child abusers in all state institutions was a given for generations – sad though that older dispensation was. We saw just how sad when former head of the Church of England in Australia, Peter Hollingworth – a decent and good man, to be sure – mispoke rather badly on the subject of child sexual abuse that occurred on hi watch.

Hitchens also fails to mention that serious physical and sexual abuse of children, institutionalised homosexuality and systematised batardisation were all standard features of life in English schools – whose religiosity was overwhelmingly Anglican, not Catholic – for centuries.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 11:04 pm
JC,
It is not the opposite of what I used to say.
I will be interested in C.L.’s comments if it turns out that Hitchens is correct. I am content to wait and see, though. I find it hard to believe that the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church would be so stupid as to promote someone to such a leadership position if it were true.

Andrew Reynolds

16 Mar 10 at 11:04 pm
Rog:

Nice try at implying I condone child abuse you disgusting little gutter snipe.

I relied on your comment without even bothering with the link as most of the time you post one it doesn’t work.

You clown

JC

16 Mar 10 at 11:07 pm
It is not the opposite of what I used to say.

I never mentioned you nor even remotely thought you made any comment, Andrew.

I can’t see what brought on your comment.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 11:09 pm
Club Troppo, December 2008:

Denialist Rog militantly defends Benedict XVI against the Hitchens-like weirdness of anti-Catholic zombie Nick Gruen.

A year later – post sex change – Rog hates Benedict XVI.

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 11:13 pm
JC,
You seemed to be implying that what rog is saying now can be discounted because it was the opposite of what he used to say. I was listening to a piece on this one the ABC this morning. The evidence, as they put it in the transmission, looked pretty damning. On that basis I think it is worth pay attention to it – even if by “a well-known alcoholic with psychological problems”. As I said, though, I am not convinced as I do not think the cardinals would have been that stupid as to elect him without checking on this sort of thing given the publicity it has attracted recently.

Andrew Reynolds

16 Mar 10 at 11:14 pm
Ah. I thought Andrew would show up.

It is not the opposite of what I used to say.

Andrew, you’re actually Rog?

C.L.

16 Mar 10 at 11:16 pm
It will take years to clean up Rudd’s incineration stimulus package. But Keynesians should welcome this. Destruction is also stimulus according to Keynesian theory, so long as you go into massive debt to pay for it. Isn’t it reassuring to know that our leadership believe in such sound economic principles.

Michael Fisk

16 Mar 10 at 11:39 pm
Why Fox News is worth watching:

http://mksviews.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/msnbc/

Michael Sutcliffe

16 Mar 10 at 11:49 pm
Andrew, you have me a little confused now.

You first suggested I had made a comment directed toward you, which I later explained that at no time did I have you in mind and my comment directly mentioned Rogered.

You’re now agreeing that Rog made the comment? Is that right?

I took rogered’s comment at its face value without looking into the link, as most of the time they don’t work or seem not to say what he thinks they are.

Therefore having taken his comment at face value I recall that the dishonest little turncoat gutter snipe had previously said things diametrically opposite to what he says now. Hence the attempt at putdown.

I really have no interest in discussing child molestation accusations in the church, as Hitchens seems to suggest, as I really don’t know enough about the evidence. Those sorts of discussions don’t really interest me.

However they seem to interest Rog, as he’s either linking to these stories or accusing people of being one, which seems to me to be like a creepy form of projection. He seems obsessed with child molestations discussions. I nearly always stay way away from that sort of discussion.

JC

16 Mar 10 at 11:52 pm
The newspaper running the breathless (and utterly mendacious) story is the London Times – which is ginning up a “scandal” preparatory to the pope’s upcoming visit to England. Phil Lawler at CatholicCulture.org has already demolished the story.

We saw something similar in Australia too with Tony Jones on Lateline running a series of failed attempts to link Cardinal Pell to an abuse case prior to World Youth Day – a case of taxpayer-funded bigotry and vilification for which he ought to have been fired.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 12:11 am
Andrew, can we have an explanation? Unless you ARE Rog, your statement that JC had accused YOU of changing opinion is one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen in a thread discussion.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 12:18 am
Got his log in details confused. Multi-accounting is hard.

Infidel Tiger

17 Mar 10 at 12:21 am
C.L. & JC,
I am not rog. I was not attempting to imply that as, if I had, it would be wrong. All I was saying (to make it perhaps a little clearer) was that you seemed to be implying that you could discount the story based purely on your understanding that rog seems to have reversed his opinion – a fact (if it is a fact) that is totally irrelevant. As I have never said anything of the kind, I thought then that you may want to evaluate it as I have never said anything of the kind.
My apologies if that was too subtle for you – I hope that clears it up. Perhaps you can now actually address the questions raised in the article – or will you continue to play the man, not the ball?

Andrew Reynolds

17 Mar 10 at 1:24 am
Andrew:

I never suggested you were Rog. I wouldn’t suggest that to the worst offender here.

I’m not playing any man because as I said, Rog’s comment doesn’t lead anyone to to believe anything other than that he’s simply beating up on the Catholic Church of which I have no interest in defending by the way.

I never looked behind the link to see what the story was about until he brought up the accusation of being soft on child molestation- a position the gutter rat seems to head to more and more these days.

I really have no interest at all in discussing the story as I have no knowledge of it and wouldn’t rely simply in Hitchens polemic to make up my mind as I know he’s militantly anti-religious.

I hope I clarified the situation.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 1:52 am
Andrew, Rog accused JC of “support[ing] sexual assault and child abuse” and said the Catholic Church was “a religion of abuse and denial.” This was on the basis of a boilerplate rant by alcoholic nutball Christopher Hitchens which, as we now know, is factually wrong.

Furthermore, it’s fair to say that Rog raised the subject in the first place only to attack me (he thinks it’s wounding). He called JC a child molester a few weeks ago for no apparent reason. It is not unreasonable to conclude that Rog has personal issues of a possibly – shall we say – emotional kind.

In light of the abovementioned, your claim that it is me who is “play[ing] the man, not the ball” is both dishonest and, frankly, deeply odd.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 1:59 am
C.L.,
If we now know Hitchens to be “factually wrong”, can you please point out where this rebuttal occurred. As I said earlier, I would be interested in reading it as I cannot believe that the College of Cardinals would have made such an error.

Andrew Reynolds

17 Mar 10 at 2:09 am
I’ve already linked to the rebuttal, Andrew.

The College of Cardinals haven’t made an “error.”

If you want to ponder an error in the appointment of a high ecclesiastic, perhaps you could spend some time contemplating how a Sharia-advocating Druid was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.

And Andrew, why don’t you try commenting on all the other subjects on offer here at Catallaxy at any one time?

Nobody here really wants to talk about popes.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 2:24 am
C.L.,
I comment on posts and comments here as and when I please. I am not, like at least one person here, a commenter that feels a need to comment a few hundred times on each open thread and at least a few on just about every thread. This story interested me because, as I said, I could not believe the College had made such an egregious error as Hitchens (and, I might add, the BBC) seemed to be implying that they had.
If, as it turns out, that Lawler is right then my faith in them is at least somewhat restored.
They have, like other people of faith, made errors from time to time, but I am happy that it seems as if this is not one of them.

Andrew Reynolds

17 Mar 10 at 2:32 am
I comment on posts and comments here as and when I please.

Sure but you’re especially drawn to popes – even to the point of vicariously becoming Rog in the bizarre episode above. That you could give his slanderous comment about approving child molestation (directed to JC) a pass before going on to accuse me of playing the man is despicable.

I don’t really wish to discuss the matter further.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 2:44 am
fuuuccckkk!

Ratings agencies are pushing for European governments to adopt more stringent fiscal plans, but no one seems to be seriously biting as the threat of real sovereign crisis continues to loom.

According to Edward Hugh at Fistful of Euros, the problem isn’t just the new spending states like the UK, France, and Spain engaged in during the financial crisis. The problem is the off balance sheet pension programs that make current debt levels look like mere introductions to Europe’s debt Bible.

Greece, which has stomached the most ridicule thus far, is a perfect example having a staggering 875% of its GDP in debt if you include pensions. That’s nearly 8 times what the government acknowledges now.

But the problem isn’t just in the continent’s weakest link. France has 549% of its GDP in debt if you include pensions and Germany has 418%.

While national accounting practices may make these numbers easy to hide, sovereign debt and CDS markets won’t remain as oblivious to these problems if appetite for sovereign debt plummets.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/clusterstock/~3/t5aNhJ7d6-8/europe-wide-pension-crisis-is-looming-2010-3

JC

17 Mar 10 at 2:52 am
No C.L. – I am drawn to argue against overblown windbags that are prepared to misrepresent what they read to try to make a point that they obviously take too seriously.
If you do not want to discuss it any more then feel free to take your toys out of the sandpit.

Andrew Reynolds

17 Mar 10 at 2:53 am
Obama’s America is now becoming a Third World tyranny:

The Washington Post reports:

House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it.

Yes, you read that right. Horrifying, yes. “But I like it,” Nancy Pelosi said of the parliamentary trick being contemplated, “because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.”

No surprise that the author of the “Slaughter Solution” also wrote the Fairness and Accountability in Broadcasting Act – whose purpose is to shut down non-leftist media outlets.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 2:57 am
The sandpit isn’t mine, Andrew. You and your alter-ego Rog wanted to talk about popes or something. Nobody else is interested. Why don’t you try commenting on some other subjects? I’m sure your views on film, culture and politics are truly fascinating.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 3:01 am
Perhaps it is just your reading skills that are lacking, and it is not that you intend to misrepresent. Nowhere did I say it was your sandpit.
That said, with 97 of the 428 comments so far, you certainly seem to be treating it that way. I think that proportion is positively Birdian.

Andrew Reynolds

17 Mar 10 at 3:13 am
Misrepresent, Andrew? You claimed JC said something to you that he didn’t, you falsely accused me of playing the man – after casually passing over an accusation that JC supported child molestation – and you have once again proved to all other contributors that you’re 1) dishonest; 2) obsessed with popes; and 3) a terrific bore.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 4:30 am
C.L.,
1. What “claim”? I made no such claim. JC and I merely misunderstood each other.
2. You were playing the man – or does casually mentioning a person’s medical history in a discussion about some possible errors by a Pope not count as playing the man?
3. I passed on no such accusation, casually or otherwise. See 1. above.
4. As for bores, I think that is 100 comments from you now. Yawn.

Andrew Reynolds

17 Mar 10 at 5:55 am
Mike Tyson becomes a pigeon racer

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/heavyweight-to-featherweight-tyson-races-pigeons-20100317-qcz8.html

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 10:08 am
Those pigeons must be shitting themselves

tal

17 Mar 10 at 10:20 am
Jase and JC, I think I may have finally discovered a clinical definition for what ails Lardiculous:

“A fucktard is a special variety of retard whose condition arises not from clinically demonstrable neurological impairment, but from buttersnap shitfuckery of the mind.”

‘Buttersnap shitfuckery of the mind’ certainly seems to cover it.

BirdLab

17 Mar 10 at 10:28 am
I recall frequently seeing his red rolls Royce convertible parked in a midtown street near a well known bar area.

How did I know it was his? The license plate was “Tyson”.

The car had a bright red body and a white soft top.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 10:30 am
This is OTT
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1257905/Equality-Bill-Health-clubs-warning-women-lift-heavy-weights-face-prosecution.html

tal

17 Mar 10 at 10:49 am
Tal:

That’s even the worst of it. My family has a business that at times requires heavy lifting, or lifting stuff over 25K’s which incidentally is the max legal limit for women in terms of occupational laws.

When they’ve advertised for position they aren’t allowed to mention the requirement that it’s for a male position, as lifting requires upwards of 25K. It’s illegal to mention the job is for a male despite that legal limitation.

Consequently they have to either lie or tell potential phone in applicants the job can’t be offered to females wasting everyone’s time and their money.

Welcome to the idiocracy.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 10:57 am
Now this would be a tricky situation Joe
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7446850/Briton-is-recognised-as-worlds-first-officially-genderless-person.html

tal

17 Mar 10 at 11:02 am
We still haven’t gone as far as the UK thankfully – there you can’t even advertise for a competent worker.

JC, can your ad have other descriptive info such as, “Note: requires heavy lifting above 25kg”?

Fleeced

17 Mar 10 at 11:05 am
Officials there altered the Briton’s birth certificate to include the new no-gender classification after doctors were apparently unable to determine the sex of the expat’s body.

Great use of our civil service. Re-writing birth certificate to whatever anyone wants them to say. Is this now some new parallel universe we’re living in.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 11:05 am
Yea, Fleeced but most females don’t really know the law either, so it doesn’t help to screen calls.

You can’t really blame the applicants.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 11:07 am
females aren’t allowed to lift more than 25 kg occupationally?

seriously?

dumbbells in the gym go way past 30 kg

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 11:09 am
Objectivity takes second place to people’s feelings, tal… I’m not exactly an objectivist in the Ayn Rand sense, but the trend to classify obvious realities as subjective is yet another disturbing trend she warned about.

Fleeced

17 Mar 10 at 11:11 am
The birth certificate thing is strange, isn’t it? We had a transgender person working for us once, and I committed something of a faux pas when, upon seeing her birth certificate, I blurted out, “Oh wow – they actually backdate it?”

Awkward.

Fleeced

17 Mar 10 at 11:14 am
Yeah I thought Birth Certificates were set in stone

tal

17 Mar 10 at 11:17 am
I believe it is, Jase. Dunno if it’s a state issue as I would expect Queensland gals to be able to heave much heavier objects in boganland.

(Just kidding CL)

———-

Look to be honest if it helps people’s mental state there should be a problem changing their sex on a bleeding certificate. The non gender crap is going a little too far, but if it makes that person happy, who really gives much of a rats… as long as THEY”RE paying for it.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 11:22 am
which toilet does a genderless person go to? I presume the thing has been chopped off so by default it has to be ladies.

I’d just apply the toilet test. if you have to use the woman’s loo you’re a woman.

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 11:25 am
Ooops Shouldn’t be a problem.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 11:26 am
pic of the most winsome, likable personality in the US congress.

Steve from Brisbane… What do you make of the eyes?

http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/Harry-Reid.jpg

JC

17 Mar 10 at 11:31 am
Apropos of almost nothing, a colleague and I used to sit through head office meetings marking comments as positive (good idea, let’s give it a go) or negative (no, we can’t do that because..)
It was remarkable that managers’ scores were quite consistent over time.
6/2 or 2/6 were typical scores.
I reckon that if political/economic bloggers were scored the same way the results would be similar.
Some are consistently negative – taking down others – others are constructive.
A deep lesson there about human nature, tho I’m not sure what it is…

ken n

17 Mar 10 at 11:32 am
I’ve no problem people changing their gender (or even just their name), and for these identity changes being reflected in their current id’s – it just seems odd to change historical records.

Of course, birth certificates are more than just that, they are required as forms of current identification (often by private organisations,) and the trouble a transgender person would have explaining those differences would certainly be a source of frustration. It was just something I’d never thought of, and was surprised enough to see it that I stupidly blurted it out.

I agree that creating whole new genders is just absurd.

Fleeced

17 Mar 10 at 11:33 am
I’ve really no problem changing gender on birth certificate. In fact I would even go as far as allowing, or in Homer’s case demanding changing the species classification to other than human.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 11:39 am
I’d love to see this couple’s marriage certificate
http://www.weirdasianews.com/2010/03/15/lovelorn-loner-weds-comfy-pillow/

tal

17 Mar 10 at 11:53 am
LOL. JC was part of the ‘misunderstanding’, was he Andrew? You weirdly wrote that JC had claimed that YOU had changed your mind on the subject. JC was talking to Rog. You weren’t even involved, having posted no comment till then on the entire thread. So you’re lying.

I mentioned the fact that Hitchens is an alcoholic nutball and also posted a rebuttal of his latest boilerplate rant – a rebuttal from which there is no recovery. You later asked for a rebuttal that I’d already posted, then accepted it under pressure. Topic played by me, man only played by Rog who accused JC of supporting child molestation – an accusation you ignored because you’re a coward.

Statistically, 100 percent of your comments on this thread are about me. The reason you’re jealous of me is because nobody ever takes much notice of what you write. You’re boring. Your favourite topic is popes and none of us really want to discuss popes. Why don’t you try posting a comment on other subjects – like you pretended to do when I last embarrassed you about your strange monomania? That at least was amusing.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 12:05 pm
Report: Rudd held meeting Monday night to deal with a crisis in his government caused by the fact that Labor MPs are sick of him and his abusive behaviour.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 12:07 pm
Gillard hoses down leadership talk.

“My answer couldn’t be clearer – complete nonsense,” she said.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 12:16 pm
Catallaxy’s own Steven Kates gives the Mises Lecture
at the Mises Institute

http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=author&ID=412

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 12:37 pm
He got back yesterday – but couldn’t get onto Catallaxy to post the lecture.

Sinclair Davidson

17 Mar 10 at 12:39 pm
He’s gone, CL. One more bad poll and he’s gone. Good riddance.

This means of course that I’ll lose my bet as Gillard would win the second term. Damn.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 12:53 pm
JC, if you’re that confident, Centrebet are still offering decent odds on Gillard being next PM. They’ve shortened lately, but they’re still offering 4.15.

Fleeced

17 Mar 10 at 12:56 pm
Interesting study on psychopaths and dopamine. John H please comment if you’re reading

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/007018.html

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 12:58 pm
In fact, looking at the centrebet odds, it seems that Abbott is clearly in a safer leadership position (1.09) than Rudd (1.20)…. even moreso when you consider Rudd’s 1.20 odds aren’t really pro-Rudd odds, but anti-Gillard odds.

Fleeced

17 Mar 10 at 12:59 pm
Fleeced:

I have enough on Abbott at 4.25 ( I think). It’s still a long shot so I’m not going to be chasing another long shot bet and averaging down in a way.

I should have split the bet Gillard and Abbott to win at the beginning, but I couldn’t see this idiot unraveling so quickly, as I thought he’d hobble on to the election.

It’s like he’s got a gelignite stick going off every time Lurch-gate causes another house to burn down.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 1:03 pm
The awfully misnamed Australian Human Rights Commission takes legal action against a satirical website for being racist.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/sickipedia-bid-to-shut-offensive-encyclopedia-dramatica-20100317-qdv7.html

The first act of the Abbott govt should be mass sackings of that institution, followed by the levelling of its offices.

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 1:09 pm
here’s the link to their entry for Australia.

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Australia

The Human Rights Commission can go sodomise itself

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 1:12 pm
their entry for Kevvy

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Australia

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 1:14 pm
oops I mean

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Kevin_Rudd

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 1:14 pm
Bird begs Jason to beg Sinc to be allowed here. (hate it when he grovels)

Maybe you could lobby Sinclair to give me special dispensation to have access to Catallaxy just to lavish great praise on Australia’s own returning hero, and long-suffering warrior in the cause of righteousness?

Following on from Jason’s link about the possible need for psychopaths requiring medication to compensate for screwy brain chemical levels….

Perhaps Birdie could be allowed if he shows proof each time that he is on requisite medication prescribed to calm him down his severe and debilitating reflexes several notches.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 1:14 pm
I’d much rather read GMB than BBB.

Infidel Tiger

17 Mar 10 at 1:16 pm
It’s a socially inclusive site, Infidel. There’s room for Homer and Birdie if both take their meds, although I don’t think they have developed smart pills past the test trial stage yet. Perhaps they could use Homes as a clinical test case.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 1:23 pm
Another historical achievement:

National Debt Up $2 Trillion on Obama’s Watch

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 1:30 pm
Thanks for the link, Jason.
“Reason: The Websense category “Racism and Hate” is filtered.”

Andrew Reynolds

17 Mar 10 at 1:38 pm
I love their take on the Australian states (lots of bad language)

South Australia. Old wowsers in crumbly ass churches take pride in being the only state to which no convicts were sent. It is also universally recognised as a shitheap.

New Zealand. Androgynous sheep-rooting hobbits. Unlike Oztrollia’s convict past, the kiwis were founded by christfags. New Zealand now has a larger prison population than Australia. To curb this trend, the NZ government is sending failboats of maori to Australian shores.

Victoria. Three kinds of people live here: hipster jew faggots sipping soy lattes at art gallery openings, poofy eurasian scenesters doing the ketamine-induced shuffle on top of trams, and agro bogan cunts who spend their days glassing the two previous groups in the face. Tourists flock to Melbourne (moar like Melburn, amirite) to experience art, cuisine, and multicultural harmony.

New South Wales. Sandniggers, curryniggers, yellowniggers, niggerniggers, and convictniggers living side by side in a vast ghetto sprawl. Someone nuke that shit. Oh, and there’s also a big bridge. Don’t forget the big bridge.

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 1:43 pm
Obama makes some wacky pledges on the stump:

Now, so let me talk about the third thing, which is my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for families, for businesses, and for the federal government.

So Americans buying comparable coverage to what they have today — I already said this — would see premiums fall by 14 to 20 percent — that’s not my numbers, that’s what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says — for Americans who get their insurance through the workplace.

How many people are getting insurance through their jobs right now?

Raise your hands.

All right. Well, a lot of those folks, your employer it’s estimated would see premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent [sic], which means they could give you a raise.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2010/03/transcript_of_president_obamas.html

The most “brilliant” President ever!

Michael Fisk

17 Mar 10 at 2:11 pm
I agree the Human Rights Commission should be bulldozed but that site isn’t particulary funny. I don’t there’d be much difference in their take on any parrticular place or people. Lots of faggot and bestiality references etc etc – clearly they ran out of creative steam somewhere along the lines.

OK, funny and true about Sydney’s “big bridge,” though. There is nothing else particularly noteworthy about Sydney. It has a big bridge and a famous Opera House.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 2:26 pm
Barry says insurance premiums might fall 3000 percent, eh?

Who’s doing his numbers, Homer’s numbers man, Possum?

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 2:28 pm
hipster jew faggots sipping soy lattes at art gallery openings, poofy eurasian scenesters doing the ketamine-induced shuffle on top of trams, and agro bogan cunts who spend their days glassing the two previous groups in the face.
.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
.
It’s funny ’cause it’s true.

Adrien

17 Mar 10 at 2:28 pm
Payback: a leak from Christine Keneally’s NSW:

Small hospitals ‘could go broke’ under Rudd model.

MORE than a quarter of Australia’s hospitals could go broke under Kevin Rudd’s activity-based funding model, according to expert research commissioned by the NSW Labor government.

Not content with burning houses down, Kevin now plans on demolishing hospitals.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 2:52 pm
I’m going to back NSW Labor being returned and Fed Labor being dumped. It’s a long shot that’s shortening by the day.

Sportsbet have wound the Coalition in from $4.70 on Monday to $3.50 today.

Infidel Tiger

17 Mar 10 at 3:14 pm
Ties in nicely with the Larva Prats whinging about academics lining up on dole queues.

Hipsters on the dole in the US using food stamps on gourmet food

http://www.salon.com/life/pinched/2010/03/15/hipsters_food_stamps_pinched/index.html

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 3:46 pm
I dunno, Tiger. I strongly doubt the electorate will get rid of a Federal government after one term. I think the story is more likely to be one of ‘landslide checked’ than ‘Rudd loses.’

That the Labor backbench hates Rudd’s guts and wants Gillard slotted in as First Female Prime Minister, however, is now undeniable.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 3:51 pm
lol… that’s pathetic. These people have no shame at all, do they?

Fleeced

17 Mar 10 at 3:52 pm
That academics in the dole queue thing was so ridiculous. Get a proper job FFS.

Sinclair Davidson

17 Mar 10 at 3:52 pm
Speaking of hipsters: http://unhappyhipsters.com/

Fleeced

17 Mar 10 at 3:56 pm
I can understand the beta boys at LP being upset having to get in line at the Dole office. Perhaps we ought to simply arrange they get their share of the loot by electronic transfer the minute they’re thrown back in the work force in the off season.

Or perhaps we should have a special line at Centrelink.

It’s a hard choice they’re throwing at us, as to what to do with them.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 4:02 pm
No no subsidised work experience at Birdy’s pastry factory is the answer JC.

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 4:11 pm
The threatened strike at UNSW has as one of its complaints the claim that much teaching is done by part time teachers, rather than permanent staff.
I wonder how much of this is due to the fact that many university staff these days are in non-teaching jobs: running research centres, supervising postgrad students, doing work under research grants and such. And administration, of course. Once it was common for very senior academics to teach a first year course but it seems that this does not happen these days.
Does anyone have any numbers? Or impressions? Or am I totally wrong?

ken n

17 Mar 10 at 4:14 pm
@JC – they should be named and shamed. A little embarrassment is a small price to pay for being leeches. Hell, with the audacity of their sense of entitlement, I’m amazed that they’re capable of feeling embarrassed… maybe they’re not a lost cause after all.

Fleeced

17 Mar 10 at 4:19 pm
those hipster houses have nothing on this

http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/specifications-for-a-generic-factory-built-survival-structure/

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 4:19 pm
Ken – don’t know. Whether senior academics lecture first year students varies from institution to institution and even within institutions. The NTEU has a very strange approach towards casuals – they are simply pawns in the broader dispute between management and the union.

Sinclair Davidson

17 Mar 10 at 4:21 pm
Fleeced:

I think Jason’s answer is the best one. I think shipping the entire traveling troupe in old military truck over to Birdie’s haunt err workplace would do then the world of good.

I’d be a little worried if the mass sackings routine he often talks about would end up being an Australian version of the concentration camp with all the accouterments, such as firing range if they missed a spot of cleaning inside the mixer.

In any event Birdie could be could be the answer to getting them back to earth, as he usually shows very finely honed in leadership and management skills. Birdie after is a people person and has the requisite leadership skills to handle these workaholics.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 4:29 pm
Here is a photo of Bird getting the LP crew to build a pyramid:

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2005/01/11/granerpyramid_wideweb__430x354.jpg

Infidel Tiger

17 Mar 10 at 4:33 pm
Birdie could even get them tunneling his new “homestead” 50 feet under his neighbor’s homes. That would certainly toughen them boys up a little.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 4:47 pm
From Bolt’s blog:

Liberal senator Simon Birmingham attacked the SA Labor Party for preferencing the Independent Climate Sceptics…

The moral issue of our time seems to have been trumped by electoral preferences which now by default becomes the moral issue of our time.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 5:07 pm
What’s that dispute about Sinc – just money?

ken n

17 Mar 10 at 5:23 pm
Money, working conditions, ‘will the uni buy some unnecessary insurance product so the union can get a kick-back’, the usual …

Sinclair Davidson

17 Mar 10 at 5:26 pm
Work experience at Graeme Bird’s factory.

The scene: Somewhere in the south western suburbs of Sydney

Bird: Bahnisch! Where the f*** are you you f***ing boot******?!!

Bahnisch: For heaven’s sake, give a man some time to sip his soy chai latte frappucino

Bird: Time is money, you commie bastard. Now I want you and Paul Norton to get in the cement mixer with me. We have to clean it up. Norton! Where the f*** are you you genocidal Stalinist c***sucker???

Now no funny stuff. I want you two in front of me, not behind me so I know there’s no funny tricks.

Paul Norton: Mr Bird, given that you obviously had vindaloo last night that is my first preference too.

Will Norton and Bahnisch survive their ordeal in the cement mixer with Bird? Tune in to the next episode…

jtfsoon

17 Mar 10 at 5:35 pm
lol.

Bird will leave them in there in and turn it on. Man’em up a little.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 5:44 pm
Mr Bird, given that you obviously had vindaloo last night that is my first preference too.
.
And so sustainable energy was finally developed. Endless supplies of natural gas mixture. One part 70s radical relic to one part insane redneckand a dash of po-mo esoterica.
.
We can power the nation for a thousand years.
.
Who the Hell let the Bird manage labor at a pastry factory. ‘S like letting Homer Simpson be the quality control inspector on a donut production belt.

Adrien

17 Mar 10 at 6:01 pm
imagine the screaming going on and the absolute fear he would build in these new “un-acclimatised” workers he’d be in charge of.

He’d be building Homer’s work camps.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 6:25 pm
Take look at what The Age’s lickspittle Political editor (michelle Grattan) had to say about Costello’s opinion piece today.

Splashed as front page news was, “Costello’s big swipe at Abbott”.

This was a piece that took the front page by the way. The lying distorting ALP goon didn’t really tell you that Costello was taking a swipe at both Rudd and Abbott.

This is the reason The Age is now down to around 200,000 circulation. It’s basically become a lying, dostorting piece of turd rag and will continue that way until they get rid of dead wood like Michelle Grattan.

JC

17 Mar 10 at 6:44 pm
http://www.theage.com.au/national/costellos-big-swipe-at-abbott-20100316-qckw.html

JC

17 Mar 10 at 6:44 pm
jftsoon

There is a very good argument to be made that the Human Rights Commission and its advocates are indulging in a form of treason for demanding the parliament respond, not to the citizenry, but not to a ‘foreign power’ – the UN ‘Human Rights’ committees.

Peter Patton

17 Mar 10 at 7:57 pm
Apparently the Irish government has criminalised or recriminalised blasphemy.

http://www.atheist.ie/2010/01/25-blasphemous-quotations/comment-page-1/#comments

Michael Fisk

17 Mar 10 at 8:06 pm
ABC Online and other puiblications pulled the same trick, JC. Now, you could argue that the headline angle re Abbott was fair enough because – after all – Costello could be expected to disagree with and slam Labor, having been a Liberal Treasurer for years. I’m sure Grattan would argue that it was the intra-party disagreement that was truly newsworthy. However, if that’s true, how do the same journalists justify the wall-to-wall coverage they give the periodic anti-Liberal expectorations of Paul Keating – which are usually presented as straight, worthwhile news? The other day, Keating actually did criticise the Rudd government on super. So why – applying Grattanesque news values – was that not the headline story? To wit: ‘Keating slams Rudd over super.’

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 10:46 pm
Keating’s outbursts are a little more colourful and entertaining than Costello’s, and I say that as somebody who isn’t a particular fan of Keating.

THR

17 Mar 10 at 10:58 pm
Entertaining for Labor supporters, yes.

And the press gallery.

But I repeat myself.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 11:08 pm
Archibald finalists here. There seems to be a definite drift back to realism in portraiture – abstraction seems to have run its course. The one of Fraser is good, conveying who he is these days. But I’ll back Ruddy’s ‘Prince of Darkness.’ Literally iconic.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 11:12 pm
I’m not such an ALP supporter. And with the benefit of hindsight, even you might have a couple of malicious chuckles at the expense of Hewson and Peacock if you ever re-read some of Keating’s vitriol.

THR

17 Mar 10 at 11:13 pm
“colourful and entertaining” yes, that’s PK but Costello is more thoughtful and insightful.
Personally, I wish all retired politicians would shut up. I guess it’s Gareth Evans’s “relevance deprivation syndrome”.

ken nielsen

17 Mar 10 at 11:21 pm
THR, I don’t really rate Keating as a comic. He mostly just abuses people with the macho argot of a working class he never belonged to. Like all thugs, when someone returns fire he usually folds like a girl – as he did when Wilson Tuckey kneecapped him in parliament for abusing the families of conservative frontbenchers. His schtich undoubtedly appeals to the gentrified bourgeois left – who think it’s naughty. But as Alan Jones pointed out today, whenever Keating appears in order to abuse someone, it usually signifies that Labor has made massive blunders and is in deep trouble. The wider public hates him, which is only to the advantage of his targets. I think the really funny thing about Keating’s latest rehearsed performance is that a man who believes jumping on a trampoline prevents cancer called Tony Abbot a nutter.

C.L.

17 Mar 10 at 11:46 pm
..a man who believes jumping on a trampoline prevents cancer called Tony Abbot a nutter.

Can you elaborate Please.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 12:05 am
Laurie Oakes revisited the Captain Wacky trampoline story recently when he launched Niki Savva’s political memoir: So Greek: confessions of a conservative leftie.

John Edwards, a former Keating staffer, wrote Keating: The Inside Story, but that was a rather different situation from Niki’s. Keating employed Edwards as an adviser expressly so that he could gather material for the biography. Keating knew what Edwards was doing and paved the way for it. He was rather less happy when the book was published though. Edwards revealed that, as Treasurer, Keating set up a trampoline in the backyard of his Canberra house because he quite seriously believed “that the few moments of perfect stillness at the apex of a jump, those few moments when you had risen as high as you would but had not yet begun to fall, when your blood, bones and organs were suspended momentarily in space, were the moments when any cancer cells in your body would be annihilated.”

Barking mad.

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 12:22 am
I think Keating is a phony, but not in s shallow sense. I think he really masks what he believes in and he does so to continue favor with the side of politics he grew up with. In other words he’s a phony from a point of substance rather than shallowness.

He’s stuck me time and time again in interviews that he’s about to jump over the cliff and then holds back what he really thinks to keep good with the tribe he no longer really believes in.

I think Keating believes everything Michael Costa believes in terms of free markets but unlike Costa he hides his Hayek and Mises behind under the bed in a locked bag.

He doesn’t seem to have the guts to come out of the proverbial closet and admit what he really believes.

There no way in the world Keating doesn’t believe in free labor markets these days and most of the things the Libertarians support. The sad thing about him is that he just doesn’t have the guts to admit it.

I saw an interview he did with O’Brien over Workchoices and it almost appeared then that he had to remind himself what he had to say to stay to keep good.

No question he despises the liberals, however he despises them for his own petty reasons and also for the fact that they weren’t as reformist as he was was.

As a said Keating is a phony.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 12:23 am
oops .. as reformist as he thinks he was.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 12:25 am
The sad thing about Keating’s vitriol is that it’s all rehearsed. He doesn’t have the wit to scythe an opponent on the spot with a verbal parry. His best line were either stolen or prepared earlier. Much earlier.

The trampoline won’t cure cancer. Anyone of sound mind knows it’s the hula hoop.

Infidel Tiger

18 Mar 10 at 12:35 am
“Here’s our quote for the school. Don’t forget to add our 100% stimulus levy”:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/school-ber-costs-double-quoted-price/story-e6frgczf-1225842080073

I imagine in Keynsiana this blow out doesn’t matter?

Infidel Tiger

18 Mar 10 at 12:46 am
Yeah. There was a story related (book or feature article I can’t remember) about Bill Clinton’s visit to Australia, the presidential briefing notes for which having apparently sketched Keating as a “noted orator.” It was said later that the US party was shocked when they finally got to listen to Keating’s wooden, daft and cliche-ridden utterances.

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 12:49 am
Shiny appearing as himself in this You tube vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMEe7JqBgvg&feature=player_embedded

He really does terrific mock ups of how he appears.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 12:53 am
Well, they’re notoriousy violent events – what did they expect?

Mum-to-be beaten and man shot in baby shower brawl.

A HEAVILY pregnant woman was beaten with a stick and a man was shot after a brawl broke out a baby shower.

Three people were arrested after the fight, which police described as a “baby shower gone bad”, Fox News reported.

Police said the brawl started when one of the guests, Aristotle Garcia, became abusive towards a man who was dating his former girlfriend.

The argument, over whether the woman had let their five-year-old daughter drink beer, escalated and drew in two other guests, Jazz Rivas and Juan Velazquez.

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 12:57 am
Actually, I think the visiting president in the anecdote above was Bush 41.

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 1:02 am
Non reading JC and his bro likes to take the side of Judy Curry when it suits them but she aint on their side

rog

18 Mar 10 at 6:02 am
In the future, we’ll have a sorry day for everything.

Fleeced

18 Mar 10 at 8:01 am
Christ you’re a poisonous, sack of shit, Rog.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 8:12 am
Interesting – Shiite Islam uses temporary marriage contracts as a means of allowing casual sex

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/temporary-marriage-iran-islam

I’m starting to form the view that of the two branches of Islam, the Shiites might be capable of greater modernisation mainly because they’re like the Muslim equivalent of Catholics. They place greater emphasis on interpretation of the Koran by their religious authorities and allow greater textual innovation whereas Sunnis are more like your down the line textual literalists (the Muslim Homers).

So all it takes is for a particularly modern minded Mullah’s interpretation to catch on. Iran already has made a lot of innovations to accomodate stuff like allowing people to change sex.

jtfsoon

18 Mar 10 at 8:22 am
Judging from what has been going on Iranian youth will destroy Islam I reckon. They hate everything about the religion and would tear the mullahs limb from limb if they had a chance.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 8:28 am
Non reading JC and his bro likes to take the side of Judy Curry when it suits them but she aint on their side

Its not a matter of taking sides, rog, that is Curry’s point. It’s one of the reasons she’s gone out of her way to engage McIntyre, etc. in civil conversation. She, for instance, invited McIntyre to present a seminar at Georgia Tech in 2008:

http://climateaudit.org/2008/02/06/off-to-georgia-tech/

But you probably failed to notice.

dover_beach

18 Mar 10 at 9:27 am
Infidel tiger never heard what Churchill said about his ‘off the cuff’ witty remarks made in Parliament.

If anything Costello’s remarks always looked rehearsed and so was the laughing.

I have never heard of Keating ever been called any sort of orator.

his speciality was always off the cuff remarks made to questions at functions where he talked.

Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop

18 Mar 10 at 9:28 am
you really have to wonder at the IQ of the person guarding this monster.

and the 2 and a half years he got for his first offence

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/child-sex-offender-raymond-warford-on-the-run/story-e6frf7jo-1225842066955

A POLICE manhunt is being stepped up this morning for a child sex offender on the run after giving prison officers the slip.
The notorious child sex offender is supposed to be held under strict supervision but is on the run after walking out the back door of a suburban cafe.

Raymond Warford, 36, one of the state’s worst sex offenders, gave a prison escort the slip after telling him he needed to go to the toilet.

It was the second time Warford, who has a shocking history of child sexual abuse, has escaped custody.

jtfsoon

18 Mar 10 at 9:49 am
Watched Ep. 1 of ‘The Pacific’ last night. Not bad. Not bad at all.

BirdLab

18 Mar 10 at 10:43 am
http://twitter.com/wingedmenace

Birdism: a doctrine that is the precise synthesis of Rothbard, Pinochet, and David Icke.

jtfsoon

18 Mar 10 at 10:52 am
Dover:

Rog is as thick as the bricks he’s now laying.

Curry is now perhaps the most articulate, engaging climate scientists around. She shows what is best about science. Totally open, engaging and very smart.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 10:55 am
Statman you cannot have a literalist in Islam as there are no original texts.

I will leave you to find out why.

Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop

18 Mar 10 at 10:59 am
great
Now Homer has become the expert on Islam who apparently knows more than actual Muslims who believe in the primacy of the Koran.

jtfsoon

18 Mar 10 at 11:02 am
err Statman you are wrong .Fancy that.

guess what happened to all the original texts? no you can read about it. Well it might even be in Wikipedia or you might even find out at a dinner part in the Eastern Suburbs

Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop

18 Mar 10 at 11:05 am
Now Homer has become the expert on Islam

Let him, Jason. Let him become the Islamic expert. No question he’ll fuck it up good and proper offend the world’s population of Muslims and end up with a fatwa on his stupid head.

Don’t stop him.

Homes , I want loudly proclaiming your expetise in Islam.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 11:05 am
Statman you cannot have a literalist in Islam as there are no original texts.

Hey Homer

How about we send you over to the Middle East to set up a madrassa in Jeddah. After a few years I’m sure you’ll have reformed Islam and turned all those Wahhabis into boring Presbyterians.

jtfsoon

18 Mar 10 at 11:07 am
Homer,

if you end up with a bunch of really angrifed Muslims after your scalp rest assured I will be helping locate you if I’m asked.

You know that right?

JC

18 Mar 10 at 11:13 am
Is Homer suggesting we have the original texts of the gospels?

Steve Edney

18 Mar 10 at 11:15 am
They’re under his bed, Steve.

jtfsoon

18 Mar 10 at 11:16 am
He’ll also be under the bed some some mullah in Saudi issues a beheading fatwa against the nimrod.

The idiot is going get himself snuffed out as a result of his doofusness.

Of course I will be appearing in front to the Sharia court as a witness for the prosecution on this one. I have no qualms in explaining how the moron offended the prophet.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 11:36 am
oops when some mullah

JC

18 Mar 10 at 11:37 am
sorry fellas even Muslims agree they do not have original texts.

Can I suggest you examine what happened when Muhammad died!

good to see the crackpots are up to speed on this subject as they are on other subjects

Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop

18 Mar 10 at 12:15 pm
No one is saying they have the original documents Homer. The point is no one has the original gospels, but that doesn’t stop christians being literalists.

Steve Edney

18 Mar 10 at 12:19 pm
What happened when Muhammad died, Homer? Hit us with this one.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 12:23 pm
yeah homer please tell us more.

also feel free to share your thought about the sixth imam.

jtfsoon

18 Mar 10 at 12:28 pm
Wasn’t Mark Latham the Hidden Iman?

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 12:57 pm
It thought it was Skank-ki Ho. Hell, maybe it was Super Mac.

Infidel Tiger

18 Mar 10 at 12:59 pm
really Steve ever heard of transmission in history.

now when you learn what happened after the Big M went you will understand how it couldn’t occur under Islam.

Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop

18 Mar 10 at 1:07 pm
One for the fans of IQ testing:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/unhappy-lefties-tend-to-be-too-clever-by-half/story-e6frg6zo-1225842050686

THR

18 Mar 10 at 1:11 pm
The Big M? Bwahahahahaha!

Infidel Tiger

18 Mar 10 at 1:12 pm
Homer,
Are you referring to the Qu’ran or to the Hadith? If it is the Qu’ran, then I suppose you could be called sort of correct, as it was not written down during Muhammad’s lifetime. Muslims, however, generally agree that there is little or no chance of transcription error as so many memorised it and crosschecked against both other Muslims and with Muhammed. It is (IMHO) much more likely that the Qu’ran is free from transcription error (factual or religious error being another matter) than any copy of the Bible. It is therefore (to me at least) much more logical to be a literalist if you believe in the word of Muhammed.
The Hadith are much more uncertain, but, in any case, are recognised as being inferior to the Qu’ran.

Andrew Reynolds

18 Mar 10 at 1:18 pm
So THR what are you, sad smart person or a happy dummy?

tal

18 Mar 10 at 1:33 pm
jtfsoon

Shia Islam developed in the former Nestorian Christian lands of Persia, and was very heavily christian-inflected right from the start.

Actually, there has always been a huge cultural chasm between the Sunni and Shia. But that chasm is not simple textual theological differences. It is the great difference between Persians and the rich civilization they had built, and the marauding soldiers of Muhammad galloping out of the desert, sword in one hand, bastardized/Arabized Judaism and Christianity in the other.

Peter Patton

18 Mar 10 at 1:34 pm
I see Lardiculous is off his meds again, Jason.

BirdLab

18 Mar 10 at 1:36 pm
THR

Crowing over an average IQ of 103 is a bit tragic.

Peter Patton

18 Mar 10 at 1:36 pm
Peter,
Perhaps a few very intelligent but also very arrogant lefties are skewing things. That believe themselves intelligent enough to understand everything and so fit to tell everyone else what to do.

Andrew Reynolds

18 Mar 10 at 1:42 pm
That believe themselves intelligent enough to understand everything and so fit to tell everyone else what to do.

I believe this trait isn’t unique to the left.

THR

18 Mar 10 at 1:45 pm
Andrew
My experience is that it is the modern university system that overwhelmingly produces the left-wing mind. Until very recently, universities were small in number, and restricted to the more challenging disciplines; and mostly the VERY challenging disciplines.

The modern university system that has has grown exponentially since the 1980s, has long grown beyond strict academic “disciplines” to focus on “Studies” attended by dumber and dumber people (mainly through the social science departments). These people never had a chance. They simply were neither born with, nor were exposed to at school, intellectual rigor and discipline. So they lack the skills required to stand above their “Studies” with a critical eye.

Peter Patton

18 Mar 10 at 1:55 pm
THR,
No, you are right. There are many conservatives that seek to tell others what to do with their lives. There is really only one mob that seeks to minimise this sort of thing, but the conservatives and the socialists keep managing to drown them out.

Andrew Reynolds

18 Mar 10 at 1:55 pm
THR,
This is a good piece from the article “in historical terms, there is no example of a people becoming prosperous because strangers wanted them to be. … perhaps being a leftie is not such a clever idea after all.”

Andrew Reynolds

18 Mar 10 at 1:59 pm
I bet those leftists who scored 105 on the IQ test will crow over their results one minute, denouncing IQ tests as totally unscientific and even racist the next.

Michael Fisk

18 Mar 10 at 2:04 pm
There is really only one mob that seeks to minimise this sort of thing, but the conservatives and the socialists keep managing to drown them out.

Yes, liberals haven’t been telling anyone how to live over the last two centuries?

dover_beach

18 Mar 10 at 2:04 pm
“Danner met his wife five years ago, when she was 17 years old and he was a church youth counsellor.”

Hmmm, I wonder where that story could be heading
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/man-accused-of-using-craiglist-to-hire-wife-out-for-sex/story-e6frf7lf-1225842285018

Pedro

18 Mar 10 at 2:05 pm
What a cheery article. Chinese Superbubble burst imminent:

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0316/China-the-coming-costs-of-a-superbubble

Infidel Tiger

18 Mar 10 at 3:30 pm
This is fascinating. Hitler and cricket:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/adolf-hitler-played-cricket-and-tried-to-change-the-rules-john-simpson-book-reveals/story-e6frg6so-1225842369506

Infidel Tiger

18 Mar 10 at 3:41 pm
Rudd has apparently gone mad.

He has suspended Question Time.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/kevin-rudd-halts-qt-to-ambush-tony-abbott-on-health/story-e6frgczf-1225842383418

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 3:42 pm
Good heavens:

http://gbirdconcretecutting.co.nz/

BirdLab

18 Mar 10 at 3:45 pm
Yes folks, Tom Hanks is a grade A dickhead.

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 3:48 pm
Spammed.

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 3:49 pm
This is fantastic. Hitler played cricket… once.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/adolf-hitler-played-cricket-and-tried-to-change-the-rules-john-simpson-book-reveals/story-e6frg6so-1225842369506

Infidel Tiger

18 Mar 10 at 3:49 pm
Liebestraum Before Wicket.

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 3:54 pm
Dickie Bird: Sieg heil!

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 4:00 pm
Sounds like Crazy Kev’s “ambush” of Tony Abbott in Question Time was something of an own goal. Abbott must really have the government rattled.

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 5:00 pm
To uses Barnaby terminolgy – Psycho Chook has had a spac attack.

Infidel Tiger

18 Mar 10 at 5:05 pm
dover_beach,
“Liberals” as used in the US means democratic socialism anywhere else. I like to use the English (or the Australian English) meaning, not the American English one.

Andrew Reynolds

18 Mar 10 at 5:06 pm
They’re rattled because their own polling is telling them they’re in serious trouble and that people are starting to desert Rudd faster than F1 cars down the straight.

He’s a politically dead man still walking.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 5:07 pm
AR, liberals of the English variety have also told people how they should live, Mill, being one of them.

dover_beach

18 Mar 10 at 5:11 pm
Obamacare is sure going to work. Lol

Walgreens: no new Medicaid patients as of April 16

Walgreens will stop taking new Medicaid patients in Washington state as of April 16, saying it loses money filling their prescriptions.

Effective April 16, Walgreens drugstores across the state won’t take any new Medicaid patients, saying that filling their prescriptions is a money-losing proposition — the latest development in an ongoing dispute over Medicaid reimbursement.

The company, which operates 121 stores in the state, will continue filling Medicaid prescriptions for current patients.

If and when he shows up here, Obama and Rudd could turn the meeting into a losers convention.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 5:23 pm
dover_beach,
I said “minimise”, not “eliminate”.

Andrew Reynolds

18 Mar 10 at 5:39 pm
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4111832/worlds-worst-driver/?playlist_id=87485

Jeez.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 5:42 pm
Wonderful stuff, an example of why I abandoned the “gene as instruction set” idea.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100317162000.htm

Chemists Influence Stem-Cell Development With Geometry
….

The cells are seeing the same soluble proteins. In both cases it’s the shape alone that’s dictating whether they turn into fat or bone, and that hasn’t been appreciated before,” said Milan Mrksich, Professor in Chemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, who led the study. “That’s exciting because stem-cell therapies are of enormous interest right now, and a significant effort is ongoing to identify the laboratory conditions that can take a stem cell and push it into a specific lineage.”

John H.

18 Mar 10 at 5:53 pm
I said “minimise”, not “eliminate”.

Well, the same could be said about conservatives then.

dover_beach

18 Mar 10 at 6:08 pm
JohnH

That’s interesting, right? I have basic knowledge of this stuff and my understanding was that the code to cell telling them what to become was embedded inside them.

This however suggests that it’s the shape that is doing that so it makes things much easier.

I suppose it’s too soon to ask what tells the cells which shape to become.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 6:13 pm
No, dover_beach – there is a clear difference between a liberal (properly so called) and a conservative, at least as practised in Australia. To me at least a conservative here is one with a culturally conservative approach to social issues – like drug policy, immigration, abortion policy and such. While they may have a similar approach to economics (although big government conservatives like Abbott and Howard seem to ignore this) they differ distinctly on the social policy issues.

Andrew Reynolds

18 Mar 10 at 6:21 pm
It’s on!
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/prime-minister-kevin-rudd-coalitions-tony-abbott-to-debate-health-policy/story-e6freon6-1225842495792

Pedro

18 Mar 10 at 6:21 pm
JC,

There are even studies showing that creating an electrical gradient across a wounds increasing healing. The study touches on another developmental variable: geometry. Genes are better thought of as “response sets” or “adaptation sets”, the idea that genes encode some “developmental program” is phooey, not possible. We tend to adopt a very gene centric view of developmental processes but over the last decade a great deal of research has begun to explore the real causal nexus: when Life confronts the environment.

What we now understand of life processes may very well be very limited not because we have explored the chemical realm sufficiently but because we have ignored the causal relations arising from electrical gradients, geometry, EM fields(fascinating stuff there but largely unexplored), and god knows what else. It may even be the case that a fundamental problem with understanding the brain is because we have failed to appreciate the role of EM fields in neural function. I’m not sure about that but there is evidence out there that gives me headaches.

John H.

18 Mar 10 at 6:21 pm
Funny. Hanks’ statements seem entirely unremarkable.

BirdLab

18 Mar 10 at 6:25 pm
BirdLab

One comment not entirely repudiating the multiplier at Birdy’s place = 5 ‘gook’ or ‘wog’ comments. That seems to be the exchange rate

jtfsoon

18 Mar 10 at 6:27 pm
The Allies were waging a gratuitous race war against the Japs, were they, BirdLab?

And you criticise Bird for being stupid.

Hanks is covering his arse with Hollywood liberals for making another series on war by arguing that both sides are somehow moral equivalents – both then and now vis-a-vis Islamic terrorists.

“They were out to kill us because our way of living was different.

“We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different.

“Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

We didn’t want to “annihilate them because they were “different.” We responded to the war the Japanese started and to the hellish political system they and their Axis allies had imposed extensively already and were seeking to impose on humanity in general. For Hanks to suggest we were motivated by a desire to liquidate the yellow race because it was “different” is an obscenity.

The man is an uneducated moron.

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 6:37 pm
So they lack the skills required to stand above their “Studies” with a critical eye.
.
As the holder of a PhD in Neo-Fuliginous Sub-practicom from Dept of Gastrobombastic Studies I find I must object. Is it too complicated for you to understand that the analysis of morassian vectors subliminating codes of phallo-ethnotrasitory discoursive conventions is vital for the structural integrity of post-logocentricity?
.
How can you not see that we need more of this in society?

Adrien

18 Mar 10 at 6:38 pm
This is strange coming from Tom Hanks.

Forrest Gump wasn’t exactly a pro-hippie movie. The antiwar protesters were by and large depicted as hypocrites and losers.

jtfsoon

18 Mar 10 at 6:41 pm
We responded to the war the Japanese started and to the hellish political system they and their Axis allies had imposed extensively already and were seeking to impose on humanity in general.
.
1. The Japanese system was different to Fascism/Nazism. They all suck, but still.
.
2. the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour because the Americans were inhibiting their access to resources. In other words the causes of the Pacific Theatre were analogous to the causes of the Punic Wars. It was about money. It almost always is.

Adrien

18 Mar 10 at 6:42 pm
The only thing funny about Hanks statement is that HBO spent $250 million producing Pacific and unless there’s a dramatic ratings increase it’s not going to end well. He’s just another Ho’wood fuqtard.

Infidel Tiger

18 Mar 10 at 6:43 pm
liberal whiteys who think the US soliders were anti-Jap should meet some of the older generation of my family who lived through the Japanese occupation of what was then Malaya.

I recall one family member not too long ago refering to the Japs as ‘poison dwarves’.

jtfsoon

18 Mar 10 at 6:46 pm
No, dover_beach – there is a clear difference between a liberal (properly so called) and a conservative, at least as practised in Australia. To me at least a conservative here is one with a culturally conservative approach to social issues – like drug policy, immigration, abortion policy and such. While they may have a similar approach to economics (although big government conservatives like Abbott and Howard seem to ignore this) they differ distinctly on the social policy issues.

And what of a conservative properly so-called or big government liberals? It seems to me you like to qualify the use of liberal but you’re happy to generalize about conservatives. The hypocrisy that I intimated at with my initial off-the-cuff remark was precisely the one in which liberals pretend they do not tell others how to live and yet liberals are at the forefront of promoting social policies that promote or neutralize activities of which we previously disapproved.

dover_beach

18 Mar 10 at 6:46 pm
Peter – I think you’d benefit from reading my latest submission to the The Journal of Cultural Exhudation, ‘Neo-Effluent Expulsions and the Relevancy Sub-Codes of Passport Application Design Practices where I show beyond the shadow of a doubt that ‘intelligence’ is a purely conventional function of Phallo-Industrialisationary Hegemony.
.
It’s a real page turner.

Adrien

18 Mar 10 at 6:49 pm
Why do people always want to read political shit in movies. Just enjoy the shit for what it is or don’t. If you want history read a history book, or watch the Hitler Channel (history channel).

Hanks isn’t a historian. He’s a FAG member, in the Parker and Stone sense….. a member of the Film Actors Guild.

Anyone see that shitty hair style he presented in Da Vinci Code.

All of America was laughing at him.
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3476265728/tt0382625

This FAG member appeared on Love Boat FFS and we’re debating his knowledge of what happened in the Pacific war?

Give me a break.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 6:52 pm
liberal whiteys who think the US soliders were anti-Jap should meet some of the older generation of my family who lived through the Japanese occupation of what was then Malaya.
.
Jason you’re obviously a self-hating Asian. Buy a crystal pyramid, smoke some safron, chant and make offerings to Isis. And maybe some Group Hug Therapy Workshops.

Adrien

18 Mar 10 at 6:54 pm
He’s a FAG member, in the Parker and Stone sense….. a member of the Film Actors Guild.
.
Are you intentionally being funny? It’s SAG.

Adrien

18 Mar 10 at 6:55 pm
dover_beach,
As I said – a “big-government liberal” (a US term again) would IMHO properly be called a social-democrat in Australia. I would suggest that, while you are commenting on an Australian site you try to use Australian terms. Mixing up the US meaning of liberal with the Australian meaning of liberal is not going to contribute to clarity.
.
On the substance of the matter, though, I see a big difference between telling someone that they must not do something (say take recreational drugs) or they will go to jail and telling someone that, if they choose to, they make take recreational drugs but also telling them that there may be adverse effects on their health and that, should they commit crimes while under the influence it will be no excuse to blame the drugs for it.
One is telling people how to live their lives. The other is letting them choose how to live their lives. You seem to be confusing the two.

Andrew Reynolds

18 Mar 10 at 7:03 pm
Are you intentionally being funny? It’s SAG.

Really? According Parker and Stone’s Team America it’s FAG, not SAG.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 7:06 pm
Adrian,
cough.

Andrew Reynolds

18 Mar 10 at 7:06 pm
I recall one family member not too long ago refering to the Japs as ‘poison dwarves’.

It was the great error of the Japanese. They were originally seen as liberators from Western oppression and turned out to be much much worse than we could ever hope to be. Another example of why I get annoyed with some people who think we are so bloody evil.

Even veterans from the Pacific hold onto enmity towards the Japanese and I don’t blame them for that. My father wasn’t in the Pacific but he did tell me stories of how Japanese soldiers would tie Australian nuns in the compound, staked out on the ground, and raped until dead. The Japanese were the most brutal in World War 2 and we had very good reason to hate them and want them dead. People like Hanks needs to distinguish between hatred and racism. If racism was such an issue would he care to explain the massive rebuilding of Japan by the USA and how McArthur came to be highly regarded in Japan? (I think it was him who led the rebuilding campaign.)

Today, hey I love their cars and I don’t give a damn.

John H.

18 Mar 10 at 7:07 pm
… the Japs as ‘poison dwarves’.

Nonsense, there’s only one poison dwarf I know of.

JC

18 Mar 10 at 7:09 pm
I think your over-egging it a bit CL. I may be reading Hanks’ comments a bit differently, but I interpret them to mean that racism was a strong element in the Pacific War on both sides, which it undoubtedly was, partly because of the nature of the battlefield.

Adrien’s right of course. No disputing the economic causes of the war.

BirdLab

18 Mar 10 at 7:10 pm
Implying moral equivalency between the Allies and Japan is worse than offensive – it’s flat out wrong. Hanks said that the Allies wanted to “wanted to annihilate them because they were different.” This is a disgraceful, ahistorical falsehood for which Hanks should apologise. It was the Japanese who exterminated large numbers of their “fellow Asians” as a matter of policy.

That said, there certainly was an element of racism on our side. The ALP government ran a hateful propaganda campaign against Japanese people, which Robert Menzies courageously opposed. As Menzies said:

Is it thought that Australian civilians are so lacking in the true spirit of citizenship that they need to be filled artificially with a spirit of hatred before they will do their duty to themselves and to those who are fighting for them? It is an offence to an honest citizen to imagine that the cold, evil and repulsive spirit of racial hatred must be substituted for honest and brave indignation if his greatest effort is to be obtained.

A very enlightened and progressive statement at the time. It is unfortunate that 30 years after John Curtin’s discredited hate campaign the ALP was back to denouncing “fucking Vietnamese balts” while employing holocaust denying envoys to procure loans from Saddam Hussein.

Michael Fisk

18 Mar 10 at 8:05 pm
I mad just add that I do agree that the Japanese leadership was in fact stone-cold barking, fucking, mad.

BirdLab

18 Mar 10 at 8:17 pm
1. The Japanese system was different to Fascism/Nazism.

You don’t say. Whose side were the Japenese on? What were Japan’s allies doing in Europe and elsewhere? What were the Japanese doing to the peoples and polities they encountered? As I said, we responded to the war the Japanese started and to the hell they and their Axis allies had imposed or sought to impose on humanity in general. We didn’t go after them because of their race – because, as FAG maestro Hanks would have it, they were “different” – nor did we fight them any differently to ‘our’ fellow whities in places like Dresden.

Hanks is worried that his serial artistic revisitation of the ultimate Good War will see him labelled a lioniser of Allied heroism in the old John Ford sense. So he’s heading that off at the pass with some traditional Hollywood left-wing moral equivalency.

Victor Davis Hanson deals with the idiot here and here.

Excerpt:

…Hanks did not back away from his theses that the Pacific war was predicated on racism (I wonder whether our WWII alliances with China and the Philippines, or our prior alliance in WWI with Japan, were as well?), and thus similar to our attitudes in the current war on terror. (Racism apparently explains the American effort to foster democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and save Muslims in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Somalia.)

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 8:31 pm
YouTube: Anatomy of a Cable News Story:

Very funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4Ha9HQvMo

Via Ace.

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 8:55 pm
Thank heavens dumb Sarah Palin was kept well away from Number One Observatory Circle.

Biden mistakenly blesses Irish leader’s mother.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden asked for God’s blessing for the late mother of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen during a White House celebration of St. Patrick’s Day — except the elderly lady is very much alive.

“God rest her soul,” Biden said Wednesday night as he introduced Cowen and President Barack Obama.

C.L.

18 Mar 10 at 10:01 pm
Humphreys vs Rudd

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/tamed-idealist-after-pms-seat/story-e6frg6nf-1225842558731

jtfsoon

19 Mar 10 at 8:12 am
Hey, if it was just a race based on who knows more economics Rudd would receive 5 votes- his wife and perhaps a few of their kids.

Here’s hoping John becomes the new Maxine Mckew figuratively speaking of course.

JC

19 Mar 10 at 8:35 am
CL,

You’re up there. You ought to do some work for John and try and dislodge Chuckie from his seat.

JC

19 Mar 10 at 8:36 am
As I said – a “big-government liberal” (a US term again) would IMHO properly be called a social-democrat in Australia. I would suggest that, while you are commenting on an Australian site you try to use Australian terms. Mixing up the US meaning of liberal with the Australian meaning of liberal is not going to contribute to clarity.

AR, small-l liberals in Australia or England are no different from their American counterparts since on the social issues you mention they are like to have the same or similar opinions. And for that matter small-government liberals are likely to be ‘conservative’ in Australia rather than anything else. It seems to me your quite conservative in your use of ‘liberal’ but your quite liberal in your use of ‘conservative’.

On the substance of the matter, though, I see a big difference between telling someone that they must not do something (say take recreational drugs) or they will go to jail and telling someone that, if they choose to, they make take recreational drugs but also telling them that there may be adverse effects on their health and that, should they commit crimes while under the influence it will be no excuse to blame the drugs for it.
One is telling people how to live their lives. The other is letting them choose how to live their lives. You seem to be confusing the two.

Not at all. Even where the use of recreational drugs is illegal no one is telling them how to live their lives, and the law is here no more restrictive than warning these same people of its ill-effects, effects that might themselves be borne by their immediate family or the public, or its absence as a defence in case of the commission of a crime.

Anyway, this wasn’t the substance of our dispute; the substance of the dispute was your presumption that liberals had preferable opinions on social issues in comparison to conservatives, which isn’t true. We are likely to find the same range of views on these issues, but conservatives will prefer not to burden the taxpayer with the costs of liberalisation.

dover_beach

19 Mar 10 at 9:58 am
More on Keynesian policy:

http://michaelscomments.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/unemployment-projection-march-2010.gif

Semi Regular Libertarian

19 Mar 10 at 11:54 am
IMO on global warming policy:

“AGW is a cinch – 100% tax exemptions for 30 years for firms and individuals for all taxes for the extent that you are carbon neutral.

(A nuclear power plant with 95% carbon offsets and a $10 mln tax bill would pay $500 000 tax).

A farmer who offsets 100% by practising carbon sequestering sustainable agriculture would pay no tax.

A no regrets policy like this would be far better than a cap and trade or another tax.

If Penny Wong doesn’t exaggerate sea level rises, we’re sweet.”

Semi Regular Libertarian

19 Mar 10 at 11:55 am
a much better explanation of the policy is here

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/110xx/doc11044/02-23-ARRA.pdf

Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop

19 Mar 10 at 11:58 am
Results, not some “estimated” balderdash from Prof. Poindexter is what matters.

Semi Regular Libertarian

19 Mar 10 at 12:00 pm
On health care “reform,” Democrats have voted to abolish voting in the House of Representatives. Marxist el presidente, Barry Obama, will sign a bill ‘passed’ through the Slaughter House.

Even some lefties have had enough:

“The Dems Are Communists” – Howard Stern.

C.L.

19 Mar 10 at 12:14 pm
Dear god, Andrew and dover. Is Catallaxy doing nuance now?

BirdLab

19 Mar 10 at 12:25 pm
We’ve always done nuance, birdlab.

dover_beach

19 Mar 10 at 12:36 pm
You might have dover. Otherwiswe it’s mainly just a massive pissing-contest.

BirdLab

19 Mar 10 at 12:47 pm
the Libs must be disappointed with Tasmania.

The government should have been toppled last election and they have performed poorly since then.

I would have thought the libs should be in a winning position despite the silly system they have there.

Tasmania needs a change of government.

SA appears to be on a knife edge. Again a change of government is needed but it appears the ALP will scrape back in.

Again this is a shame.

of course it is no coincidence since howard lost changes of State government look more likely.

Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop

19 Mar 10 at 12:50 pm
Interesting article on Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, the Jap who refused to accept the war was over for 30 years after the conclusion of WWII. Amazing dude, still alive.

C.L.

19 Mar 10 at 1:21 pm
Lord, what a nation of bed-wetters we’re becoming.

He’s a copper. Relax, you sissies.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/19/2850425.htm

C.L.

19 Mar 10 at 1:31 pm
Bronwyn Bishop is right. Darling of the sheltered workshop media, Julia Gillard, is “a socialist who has taken to wearing pearls.” She’s also being given a lefty lady’s pass for the BER disaster.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/19/2850553.htm?section=justin

C.L.

19 Mar 10 at 1:39 pm
According Parker and Stone’s Team America it’s FAG, not SAG.
.
I’ve seen it. Forgot that bit. Those guys are really infantile but they always make me laugh. I thought the dicks, arseholes and pussies thing was a bit too naff.

Adrien

19 Mar 10 at 2:13 pm
Adrien, I belatedly got back to you re Once Upon A Time In The West way up thread.

C.L.

19 Mar 10 at 3:05 pm
I’m worried – seems someone has stolen Homer’s identity..
“Tasmania needs a change of government.”

Ken Nielsen

19 Mar 10 at 4:33 pm
Leftist comedienne incites violence against…Bindi Irwin. Does anyone think these people could possibly get any more PATHETIC?

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/tv/comedian-fiona-oloughlin-says-bindi-irwin-creepy-needs-slap-in-face/story-e6frf9ho-1225842542438

Michael Fisk

19 Mar 10 at 4:40 pm
Nah, Ken. Traditionally, when Homer believes Labor will win, he declares that it was important that they lose.

C.L.

19 Mar 10 at 5:38 pm
MF

To be fair, FO’L is an alcoholic and comedian (but funny, unlike that Deveney woman) whose shtick is being brutal about being an Alice Springs Catholic breeder with the standard Catholic 123,678,234 children, and what a pain they are. If you know anything about Alice Springs, you will know it is not known for producing Australia’s most PC citizens.

The comments about the Irwin brat are more restrained than she says about her own kids. And yes, the little Irwin brat is a pain in the arse.

Peter Patton

19 Mar 10 at 5:44 pm
Socialist in Pearls!!! Priceless.

Peter Patton

19 Mar 10 at 5:47 pm
Rudd government dunce, Anthony Albanese, takes responsibility for yesterday Question Time bungle.

Albanese’s previous contribution to parliamentary tactics was The Friday Sitting – a probably illegal debacle I blogged about in 2008.

Arguably, the dopiest Leader of the House in a generation.

C.L.

19 Mar 10 at 5:48 pm
Adrien

Come on. Jesus Tittie Fucking Christ in Nobel material!

Peter Patton

19 Mar 10 at 5:49 pm
dover_beach,
Same “on social issues” or not, they are not the same on economic issues. That is where the difference is that I pointed out at the beginning. That is the point I was making. Did you get it this time?
A conservative viewpoint (at least as I understand it) is that you are reasonably liberal (i.e. small government) in economic issues, but believe in using the power of the State to enforce certain moral issues. A liberal (as it should be used) is someone who believes that the power of the State should be used as little as possible in both the social and economic spheres.
.
I found this section priceless:

conservatives will prefer not to burden the taxpayer with the costs of liberalisation

The reason I found it funny is simple – you have an inbuilt presumption that the costs of letting people live their own lives is higher than the costs of interfering in them. If you have some evidence for this I would be interested. Perhaps, for example, you can show that the costs of allowing choice in drugs is going to be higher than the costs of all the police time, the time spent by customs officers, the costs of the court system, the costs of the prison system, the health costs of users that are sold bad junk, and the costs to society of having a police force (and all the rest) that are spending time on drugs rather than actually stopping or punishing crimes where people are really hurt by others.

Andrew Reynolds

19 Mar 10 at 6:11 pm
You just have to love Scott Sumner:

“My claim is that in 40 years most economists will agree with Krugman. I mean the good Krugman. The guy who wrote Pop Internationalism. Not the guy who says we’re “stuck” in a liquidity trap and who ends his NYT editorial with the crude populist slogan “It’s time to take a stand.””

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=4422

“So we have to adopt suboptimal financial system bailouts, auto bailouts, and massive deficits that will hurt our efficiency down the road, all because monetary policy isn’t doing its job. It like when you are at the zero bound all the laws of economics go out the window. We can justify all sorts of bailouts because we have to worry about declines in velocity (even though a forward-looking monetary policy can deal with falling velocity.) And we have to have big deficits because we’re told Bernanke won’t consider a 3% inflation target. And now we are being told we must risk a trade war. All because in the General Theory Keynes showed that in a liquidity trap mercantilist policies might actually “work” as beggar-thy-neighbor policies. ”

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=4441

Pedro

19 Mar 10 at 6:12 pm
Andrew Reynolds

You have got things the wrong way around. Issues such as taking drugs and libertine sex are issues about individual’s rights. They are “civil rights” issues, not “social policy.”

OTOH, policies removing anti-market restrictions are social policies, precisely because of the alleged ‘freer the market, freer the society.’

Peter Patton

19 Mar 10 at 6:21 pm
Not familiar with the Urban Dictionary Peter?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jesus%20titty%20fucking%20christ

BirdLab

19 Mar 10 at 6:53 pm
I like the way the ABC News website is currently using the worst looking photo ever of Bronwyn Bishop for a link. Don’t show the children. Forgive the link to myself, but ‘cos it may disappear from ABC site soon, I took a screen shot to preserve it forever:

http://opiniondominion.blogspot.com/2010/03/evil-in-pearls.html

steve from brisbane

19 Mar 10 at 7:54 pm
The Devil Wears Pearls!

Peter Patton

19 Mar 10 at 7:56 pm
Andrew Bolt destroys atheism cult leader Richard Dawkins.

C.L.

20 Mar 10 at 12:23 am
Oh Mama:

McLaren throws down the gauntlet to Ferrari, Porsche.

And how.

C.L.

20 Mar 10 at 12:27 am
Na CL Doesn’t grab me.

This dude does though…

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.globalmotors.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/mercedes-slc-gullwing-2010-001.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.globalmotors.net/rendered-speculation-2010-mercedes-benz-slc-gullwing/&h=534&w=800&sz=104&tbnid=8xqpXR8QW2YfMM:&tbnh=95&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3D2011%2Bmercedes%2Bgullwing&hl=en&usg=__kOTrwnBiqSuf3R0QosmJ5FrdsrU=&ei=FYCjS_2kE4PetgPs6uTGAw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=3&ct=image&ved=0CA0Q9QEwAg

JC

20 Mar 10 at 12:46 am
Oh yeah. That’s a car.

C.L.

20 Mar 10 at 12:48 am
or this one. This just just magificant if it gets off the ground.

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.globalmotors.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/mercedes-slc-gullwing-2010-001.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.globalmotors.net/rendered-speculation-2010-mercedes-benz-slc-gullwing/&h=534&w=800&sz=104&tbnid=8xqpXR8QW2YfMM:&tbnh=95&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3D2011%2Bmercedes%2Bgullwing&hl=en&usg=__kOTrwnBiqSuf3R0QosmJ5FrdsrU=&ei=FYCjS_2kE4PetgPs6uTGAw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=3&ct=image&ved=0CA0Q9QEwAg

JC

20 Mar 10 at 12:49 am
jeez this one.

http://jalopnik.com/photogallery/bertonemantidestudio/1007989561

JC

20 Mar 10 at 12:53 am
I saw last week that Simon Cowell has bought himself a Bugatti Veyron. Price tag: £810,000.

Jeremy Clarkson’s review:

“Utterly, stunningly, jaw droppingly brilliant.”

C.L.

20 Mar 10 at 1:12 am
If one had the money the Bugatti is actually an amazing deal, CL. It cost Audi around $3.5 million per car and they’re selling them for around $1.5ish. I don’t know why but they just happened to do a really bad deal in terms of figuring out the cost structure and stopped making them.

There are only 60 or so if I recall correctly so once most if them get into strong hands the price ought to take off and settle above the cost of production as a result of scarcity value as well I think.

JC

20 Mar 10 at 1:17 am
Basically, super-expensive cars like the Bugatti are subsidised by the buyers of lesser luxury marques – which is pretty amusing. It’s like the rationale for having a cash-hungry F1 team: it’s a price the top makers consider worthwhile for brand supremacy and R&D spin-offs.

C.L.

20 Mar 10 at 1:27 am
Column of the month:

Paul Kelly on the true Tony Abbott and the media’s – especially the ABC’s – disgraceful prejudice and deceit by omission:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/looking-for-the-real-abbott/story-e6frg6zo-1225843015862

C.L.

20 Mar 10 at 1:31 am
Bloody hell smell the testosterone here tonight boys

tal

20 Mar 10 at 1:41 am
More like wishful thinking.

C.L.

20 Mar 10 at 2:03 am
Yeah you’re right CL I was a little harsh X

tal

20 Mar 10 at 2:11 am
Not at all. It was testosterone-driven wishful thinking.

C.L.

20 Mar 10 at 2:24 am
Heh:

Cartoonist Bill Leak sums up the Rudd rot:

http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2010/03/19/1225842/994704-100320-leak-cartoon.jpg

C.L.

20 Mar 10 at 2:25 am
Same “on social issues” or not, they are not the same on economic issues. That is where the difference is that I pointed out at the beginning. That is the point I was making. Did you get it this time?

AR, you certainly weren’t making that point when you said:

There is really only one mob that seeks to minimise this sort of thing, but the conservatives and the socialists keep managing to drown them out.

or when you said

To me at least a conservative here is one with a culturally conservative approach to social issues – like drug policy, immigration, abortion policy and such. While they may have a similar approach to economics (although big government conservatives like Abbott and Howard seem to ignore this) they differ distinctly on the social policy issues.

So you see, I couldn’t “get it” the first time or the second time because “it” wasn’t ever the point you were making.

Now you go on to say (emphasis mine):

A conservative viewpoint (at least as I understand it) is that you are reasonably liberal (i.e. small government) in economic issues, but believe in using the power of the State to enforce certain moral issues. A liberal (as it should be used) is someone who believes that the power of the State should be used as little as possible in both the social and economic spheres.

Firstly, this simply confirms what I’ve repeatedly said, you understand the word conservative liberally but you understand the word liberal conservatively. Secondly, almost every important conservative political philosopher of the last two hundred years would satisfy your description of a ‘liberal’ so I dare say there is a problem with your definition. And thirdly, its not quite clear that there is any difference between “but believe in using the power of the State to enforce certain moral issues” and “the power of the State should be used as little as possible in both the social and economic spheres” since the use of ‘certain’ qualifies the extent to which the state’s authority can be employed in such matters while “as little as possible” still leaves some room for laws regarding certain moral issues, and a great many liberals would have no problem with either.

The reason I found it funny is simple – you have an inbuilt presumption that the costs of letting people live their own lives is higher than the costs of interfering in them. If you have some evidence for this I would be interested.

Its not a presumption, the evidence is all around you. It appears in the great extension of welfare beyond that provided for temporary emergencies. The counterpart of almost every liberalisation is more often then not the proliferation of this or that government program.

Perhaps, for example, you can show that the costs of allowing choice in drugs is going to be higher than the costs of all the police time, the time spent by customs officers, the costs of the court system, the costs of the prison system, the health costs of users that are sold bad junk, and the costs to society of having a police force (and all the rest) that are spending time on drugs rather than actually stopping or punishing crimes where people are really hurt by others.

This is a rather difficult area because I’m torn between a variety of approaches, but let me say, the idea that legalisation would lower costs seems far-fetched. Firstly, even if we were to legalise the use of recreational drugs it will still be unavailable to minors and therefore you are going to have drug crimes involving the manufacture, distribution and supply of drugs to minors. And these same groups will target those over-age since many regular drug users will want drugs above whatever quota is legally available to them. Secondly, who is going to pay for the drugs that are going to be made legally available? Thirdly, legalising their use will likely increase the size of the pool of current drug users and this will have its own social consequences. Fourthly, the health consequences will be borne largely by the tax payer. This is the rationale for treating drug use as a health problem rather than a legal problem. All those resources you see tied up in law and order won’t be liquidated and returned to the taxpayer, they’ll simply be transferred from one department to another.

dover_beach

20 Mar 10 at 10:01 am

Catallaxy Files

Open Forum March 13, 2010

657 Responses to 'Open Forum March 13, 2010'

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