Open Forum: September 1, 2012 at Catallaxy Files

Open Forum: September 1, 2012

1,099 comments

Written by Sinclair Davidson

September 1st, 2012 at 12:01 am

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1,099 Responses to 'Open Forum: September 1, 2012'

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From Canberra’s online mag, The Riot Act.

My daughter, at a very well regarded government primary school, made a cross from two sticks she found as a tribute to fallen soldiers for a Remembrance Day display. She was a Christian for some time before me, and this was totally her own idea on the day.

The cross was confiscated. She was not allowed to display it along with the floral tribute, although other small items (paper flowers and so on) were permitted. When I turned up at the end of the day, the cross was handed to me with the spoken message that ‘no religious symbols are permitted’. My daughter was quite upset, and felt she had done something wrong.

My own view is that her spontaneous tribute was a valuable thing. Turkish soldiers could also be honoured by other symbols. But I found it quite appalling that a primary school child’s respectful tribute to fallen soldiers was disallowed on the basis that it was religious. Of course, and rightly so, Muslim children at the school are able to wear headscarfs, but that is not seen as problematic.

dd

1 Sep 12 at 12:01 am
Potemkin’s Village

Fairy roses, fairy things… here

Grigory Potemkin

1 Sep 12 at 12:05 am
Asylum seeker boats now rescuing Australian Navy vessels and towing them to Christmas Island.

SEAWATER has gushed into the corroded hull of a patrol boat in the waters off Christmas Island, dealing a fresh blow to the navy’s ability to rescue and intercept asylum-seeker vessels.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/defence/hole-in-boat-a-new-blow-to-navys-patrol-fleet/story-e6frg8yo-1226462316958

Luckily, the givernment ripped out billions from the defence budget and transferred some of it to assist asylum seekers.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 12:07 am
The thing that angers me – and I’ve been angry about it all day (in a few conversations) – is the unseemly hysteria and emotional claptrap surrounding the deaths of FIVE soldiers (two in a helo accident).

“OUT WORST DAY SINCE VIETNAM”

Well, fuck me. If losing three soldiers in a war is the worst military disaster abroad in nearly half a fucking century, we’ve had quite the cakewalk. This is not meant as disrespect for those men, I shouldn’t need to add. They were great men. The cream. No, it’s a criticism of the mawkish, oily rhetoric of our politicians – on both sides – who give the world (and our enemies) to understand that we’re a nation of adolescents who need counselling every time there’s a casualty in a war. This is not only contrived but imprudent.

Here is Julia Gillard today:

“I really feel that Australians were yesterday and today not only in a state of shock and sadness and grief, though they were certainly in all of that, but they are wanting to clearly understand why we are still there and what we are doing that matters so much for our nation,” Ms Gillard told reporters.

“After all that we have lost and all that we have been through in Afghanistan, I cannot countenance leaving before the mission is completed.

“I cannot and will not countenance giving a strategic victory to people who have made it their work to kill Australian soldiers.”

Australians were not in a state of shock yesterday.

Nothing we’re doing in Afghanistan matters to our national security.

“All we have lost” is not much (or many) in military terms.

There is no “mission” that Australia will “complete.”

This is a lie.

The “strategic victory” has already been given to our enemy in Afghanistan. Obama decided to end the campaign and even helpfully publicised the exact date of withdrawal. Australia is staying put for one reason and one reason only: because it is bipartisan policy to be – and be seen to be – America’s most devoted and die-hard ally under all circumstances. We’re staying so as not to upset the politics and saleability of America’s draw-down.

Australia needs to grow up.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 12:09 am
Elsewhere in the same article

My daughter also came home from school very upset one day, as she has been told at a special presentation on Aboriginal culture that if she touched a didgeridoo, she would be made sick, and mightn’t be able to have children… certain spiritual beliefs are able to be expressed in government schools, but not others.

It is clear that Atheism, Gaia-worship and Aboriginal spiritual beliefs are the acceptable forms of spirituality in Government Schools. Heaven help the parents who can’t afford to vote with their feet.

Cold-Hands

1 Sep 12 at 12:11 am
My daughter also came home from school very upset one day, as she has been told at a special presentation on Aboriginal culture that if she touched a didgeridoo, she would be made sick…

Those responsible ought to be fired.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 12:14 am
The thing that angers me – and I’ve been angry about it all day (in a few conversations) – is the unseemly hysteria and emotional claptrap surrounding the deaths of FIVE soldiers (two in a helo accident).

I agree, and I get the sense that it’s political posturing. The politician who cares the most is the politician with the most patriotism. But they (and that includes both sides of politics) made the decision to go over there, and they made the decision to stay. This wasn’t foreseen?

dd

1 Sep 12 at 12:15 am
“OUT WORST DAY SINCE VIETNAM”

About the same number were killed in gang violence in Sydney this week than we lost in Afghanistan.

Infidel Tiger

1 Sep 12 at 12:26 am
The politician who cares the most is the politician with the most patriotism.

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

Ivan Denisovich

1 Sep 12 at 12:32 am
No, it’s a criticism of the mawkish, oily rhetoric of our politicians – on both sides – who give the world (and our enemies) to understand that we’re a nation of adolescents who need counselling every time there’s a casualty in a war.

Yep.

This is not only contrived but imprudent.

Yep.

Australians were not in a state of shock yesterday.

Nothing we’re doing in Afghanistan matters to our national security.

Yep and yep.

It’s not unheard of that some defence personnel will die when sent to hostile territory; nothing wrong with observing their passing. And yes, the overreaction and grandstanding observed has been Gillard cutting her trip short, ostensibly due to these latest incidents. btw, I don’t believe for one minute that’s the real reason she scurried back here.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 12:36 am
Luckily, the givernment ripped out billions from the defence budget and transferred some of it to assist asylum seekers.

http://www.rightpulse.com/archives/29486

Ivan Denisovich

1 Sep 12 at 12:37 am
The “strategic victory” has already been given to our enemy in Afghanistan. Obama decided to end the campaign and even helpfully publicised the exact date of withdrawal. Australia is staying put for one reason and one reason only: because it is bipartisan policy to be – and be seen to be – America’s most devoted and die-hard ally under all circumstances. We’re staying so as not to upset the politics and saleability of America’s draw-down.

Well said C.L.

Skuter

1 Sep 12 at 12:41 am
Wow. The Gillard government breaks another promise.

Shocked I am, Shocked.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 12:43 am
My daughter also came home from school very upset one day, as she has been told at a special presentation on Aboriginal culture that if she touched a didgeridoo, she would be made sick, and mightn’t be able to have children… certain spiritual beliefs are able to be expressed in government schools, but not others.

I cannot understand the attitude of those who decry christianity yet say we must respect aboriginal beliefs. Here’s a hint on how to help aborigines: front right up and tell them to stop believing in animistic nonsense.

Dead Soul

1 Sep 12 at 12:46 am
Gab, the article you linked to above is infuriating. Am I the only one who is starting to swing around to the opinion that we should all just vote ALP next election just so these arseholes can reap all of the fucking landmines they have sown? Fuck me. Has any political party so blatantly employed the scorched earth policy?
Oh, and mUnty, shifter, et al…fuck you!

Skuter

1 Sep 12 at 12:54 am
Whoops… Damn auto correct…I meant shit fer…

Skuter

1 Sep 12 at 12:57 am
If I can vote LDP, I will, Skuter. Otherwise I won’t be voting for Ballieau again. Why Bernie Finn is not Lib leader in Vic I’ll never understand.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 12:57 am
That didgeridoo incident is absolutely disgusting and no different to saying that you will burn in hell for not being a Christian. But the Left are fine with violent superstition so long as they approve of the source. They are the new reactionary establishment.

Fisky

1 Sep 12 at 12:59 am
God damn Gab, I’m an LDP member but nothing will teach these arseholes except complete and utter humiliation. Unfortunately for the federal ALP, that means nothing less than complete destruction. Let’s see how a 100 billion + deficit fucks their apple cart…In vic, bailleu has just started to show some balls. Don’t vote him out yet…

Skuter

1 Sep 12 at 1:02 am
Looks like Gillard Labor has written off all the Western Australian seats. Stephen Smith as Leader is no longer an option. With her regime having to pick up two seats just to be where they are now (accepting that Oakeshott and Windsor are cactus), Gillard Labor has given up the fight and have switched to creating a “Legacy” of “Achievements” to point at while they languish in opposition. Never mind the growing deficit or the poison pill legislation that has taken the country backwards forty years.

Cold-Hands

1 Sep 12 at 1:04 am
Potemkin’s Village

To believe in God is impossible… here

Grigory Potemkin

1 Sep 12 at 1:05 am
Obama:

‘Hey, we should amend the Constitution to get rid of this free speech thing.’

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 1:06 am
Never mind the growing deficit or the poison pill legislation that has taken the country backwards forty years.

This, cold hands, is why we must vote them back in. Oh, and unless you reside in Canberra, I doubt your hands are colder than mine…

Skuter

1 Sep 12 at 1:08 am
I like it, Grigory.

And no, folks, ‘scientists’ don’t know how nothing became dinosaurs ‘n stuff.

They have NO IDEA.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 1:09 am
I swear, Obama and Gillard chat on the phone each week agreeing on the same policies.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 1:10 am
Not for nothing, but I like the God one, Grigory.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 1:10 am
I’ve surfed around the US TV morning shows and of coarse all the lefties just want to talk about “how embarrassing/sad Clint Eastwood was”. Clearly he was great because the whole of celebrity obsessed America knows that Clint Eastwood supports Romney. They will remember that, not Obama supporters like Clooney,DiCaprio, Foxx, Freeman,Hanks, Kutcher …[etc]. Thats right Clint Eastwood, who demonstrated that you might as well have an empty chair(suit) in the room as have Obama as President.
__________________________________________

A couple of real stories from people about Romney the man:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7420082n

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7420080n

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 1:15 am
Chuck Norris and Clint Eastwood are Republicans. What else do you need to know?

Skuter

1 Sep 12 at 1:21 am
Today in Islam:

11 year-old Christian girl with Down syndrome in Pakistan languishing in jail for allegedly burning a copy of the Koran.

Christians demand separate province in Pakistan to protect them from persecution.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 1:22 am
Not for nothing, but I like the God one, Grigory.

Seriously, Gab, why do you (and other Cats) like this douchebag? His cartoons are inane, FFS. Seriously. Fucking. Bad.

And yet every one of his cartoons is followed by you saying, “OMG, that is sooooo funny!”

Fleeced

1 Sep 12 at 1:24 am
11 year-old Christian girl with Down syndrome in Pakistan languishing in jail for allegedly burning a copy of the Koran.

Surely not… it’s the religion of peace, no?!

Fleeced

1 Sep 12 at 1:25 am
Do what i do Fleeced. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at them.

Any lefties around we can beat up on.

JC

1 Sep 12 at 1:28 am
Now showing on 1,091 screens, “2016 Obama’s America” tops weekend highest per-screen average despite reports of it being omitted from screenings database, and negative reviews from Film Critics who have yet to see the film.

Cold-Hands

1 Sep 12 at 1:29 am
Oh, and unless you reside in Canberra, I doubt your hands are colder than mine…

Benign Raynaud’s Syndrome is responsible for my cold hands…

Cold-Hands

1 Sep 12 at 1:33 am
And yet every one of his cartoons is followed by you saying, “OMG, that is sooooo funny!”

no, that’s an absolute lie. I do not comment every time Grigory posts, like the one above the God statement, I didn’t comment about that one as I wasn’t too fussed about it. So I refrained from commenting. I don’t comment on many (not that he’s been around here much). You’re just like Steve from Brisbane with hysterical exaggeration.

“OMG, that is sooooo funny!”

I very much doubt I’ve ever made that particular comment. Ever.

Seriously, Gab, why do you (and other Cats) like this douchebag?

For starters, there’s quite a few on here I would label douchebag but, sadly for you, Grigory isn’t one of them.

His cartoons are inane, FFS. Seriously. Fucking. Bad.

I guess that’s just a matter of taste. I don’t really see his contributions as cartoons, I see them as his statements.

Some of your comments are inane and even fucking bad, at times, but not enough to bother me to the point of commenting and telling you “hey, Fleeced, your comment sucks”.

What does make me laugh is your histrionics over someone’s pictorial comment. If he upsets you so much, don’t click on the link.

And in future, don’t exaggerate what I say. Ta

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 1:36 am
Do what i do Fleeced. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at them.

Any lefties around we can beat up on.

You’re right… save the heat for lefties. I just don’t get the Cat defense of this over-spamming over-religious fucking nutbag. He should go hang himself.

Fleeced

1 Sep 12 at 1:36 am
Sorry cold-hands. No offence intended…

Skuter

1 Sep 12 at 1:38 am
None taken- it’s just a fact of life.

Cold-Hands

1 Sep 12 at 1:42 am
over-spamming over-religious fucking nutbag

LOL he’s hardly been here, you drama queen, and most of his graphics pertain to politics.

Seriously. If that’s what upsets you in these trying times then you ought to increase your alcohol intake.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 1:42 am
I don’t see how that cartoon was good? A clichéd caricature that didn’t engage with even the common arguments for against the existence of a God.

You want some food for thought on faith?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/31/trouble-with-athiests-defence-of-faith

does a far better job of it.

Shem Bennett

1 Sep 12 at 1:47 am
… you ought to increase your alcohol intake…yes ma’am
Cold-hands, sometimes moments like that make you want to kick yourself in the teeth…

Skuter

1 Sep 12 at 1:50 am
no, that’s an absolute lie. I do not comment every time Grigory posts

Perhaps, but you seem to be his main cheerleader.

You’re just like Steve from Brisbane

Dems fightin’ words!

with hysterical exaggeration.

What was an hysterical exaggeration? A solid example, please.

For starters, there’s quite a few on here I would label douchebag but, sadly for you, Grigory isn’t one of them.

That doesn’t make me sad. I said he was a douchebag – I never said you believed him to be so (quite the opposite – I simply couldn’t understand why you couldn’t see it)

Some of your comments are inane and even fucking bad

Oh well, now you’re just talking drivel

Fleeced

1 Sep 12 at 1:51 am
Cold hands are manageable. It’s the cold feet that gets you kicked out of bed…

Cold-Hands

1 Sep 12 at 1:52 am
Speaking of bed, ‘ Night all…

Cold-Hands

1 Sep 12 at 1:54 am
It’s the cold feet that gets you kicked out of bed…

Indeed sir…

Skuter

1 Sep 12 at 1:56 am
LOL he’s hardly been here, you drama queen, and most of his graphics pertain to politics.

No, most of his punchlines are, “Abortion is bad!!!111″

Not that I disagree – my “falling out” with LDP was largely a result of my pro-life position (they actually listed abortion as a “victimless crime”!), but even by my standards, Potemkin’s Village was over the top (and obsessed with abortion)

Fleeced

1 Sep 12 at 1:56 am
I can see this topic upsets you greatly but quite honestly if I want to comment on Grigory’s graphics I will. And if you don’t like that, stiff. Suck it up, pet.

I notice you didn’t direct your hysterics at CL, he, btw, commented first and has also commented on Gregory’s work in the past, favourably.

Never mind, I’ll just put it down to you being somewhat insecure and talking shit.

Now could you possibly stop clogging up this thread with trivial matters? Ta

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 1:57 am
Not that I disagree – my “falling out” with LDP was largely a result of my pro-life position (they actually listed abortion as a “victimless crime”!), but even by my standards, Potemkin’s Village was over the top (and obsessed with abortion)

“Quite frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 1:59 am
Agree on the mawkishness over the tragic deaths in Afghanistan. We’re a bunch of cry babies. If one rogue soldier and a tragic accident makes everyone demand we cut and run, god help us should we ever face a full frontal attack.

Agree it was the height of stupidity for Obama to announce a withdrawal (and how committed will a new US administration be to that anyway?) I nevertheless expect a NATO presence will remain for at least another 10 years. A post 2014 presence has already been confirmed.

Disagree that there is no long term mission with clearly defined military objectives. Ask any senior serving officer in Afghanistan.

Our senior military commanders both in the field and at home, would not be advising government to stay put if they thought our men and women were being unecessarily put into harm’s way, or if there were no discernible gains due to our presence there.

CC

1 Sep 12 at 2:04 am
As I predicted yesterday, Clint Eastwood now accused of racist racism through the lens of Gran Torino.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 2:05 am
I notice you didn’t direct your hysterics at CL, he, btw, commented first and has also commented on Gregory’s work in the past, favourably.

[Gab throws CL under the bus]

Indeed he does, but not half as much as you. What’s your point?

Wait… were you doing the Gillard thing? It’s because you’re a woman or something?

Fleeced

1 Sep 12 at 2:06 am
I don’t think I’ve ever looked at them.

Don’t you remember the unfunny one about Obama/Gillard being supported [by the Bilderberg Group] for racist/sexist reasons. I got the fact it was sarcasm but it just wasn’t funny.

The problem with his jokes is that he’s clearly a noob cartoonist and most of the time you have to use the premise and make a new joke yourself to make it funny.

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 2:06 am
I just see Grigory as another person the Cat has dragged in. He comments via those strips. He doesn’t even waste pixels here; just posts a link – click it or leave it. That’s pretty inoffensive. I liked the idea he expressed above – that atheists believe a Flying Spaghetti Nothing Monster miracled everything into existence.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 2:10 am
“And no, folks, ‘scientists’ don’t know how nothing became dinosaurs ‘n stuff. They have NO IDEA.”

So what? Better to admit lack of knowledge, and try to rectify that, than make stuff up like religion does.

Latest theory – the Big Bang was a phase change in space-time.

Jarrah

1 Sep 12 at 2:14 am
Speaking of hypersensitivity to matters unimportant,

John M. Robinson, the Chief Diversity Officer [seriously?] at the U.S. Department of State, wants America’s diplomats to know that common phrases and idioms like “holding down the fort” are, in fact, deeply racist.

Other deeply racist words/phrases on the verboten list:

“going Dutch”, “Handicap” and “rule of thumb”,

But in the end, our eager Diversity Officer says:

“Much has been written about whether the etymologies below are true or merely folklore, but this isn’t about their historical validity,” Robinson writes. “[I]nstead, it is an opportunity to remember that our choice of wording affects our professional environment.”

A man with far too much time on his hands.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 2:15 am
No, Grigory is a spammer. But it’s Sinc’s blog, and he seems to agree with you. Fair enough.

I still think he’s a douche.

Fleeced

1 Sep 12 at 2:17 am
I agree CL, his commentary is through his cartoons and we can scroll down or click the link. He could forewarn however when graphic photos are used in his cartoons be they dismembered bodies or headshots of politicians.

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 2:19 am
No, Grigory is a spammer. But it’s Sinc’s blog, and he seems to agree with you. Fair enough.

I still think he’s a douche.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 2:20 am
Test

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 2:20 am
Fuck this site is playing up again.

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 2:24 am
This is not 1735099, just testing why I’m in moderation

1735099

1 Sep 12 at 2:25 am
test…

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 2:52 am
“My daughter also came home from school very upset one day, as she has been told at a special presentation on Aboriginal culture that if she touched a didgeridoo, she would be made sick, and mightn’t be able to have children… ”

If anyone, ever, said something like that to my primary school aged daughter, I’d have reamed them a new one. And, I’d have done it as publicly as possible.

This is the education system that won’t let kids run in the playground or do cartwheels in case they hurt themselves. But scaring the bejeesus out of them with superstitious nonsense in a government school is just fine, apparently.

johanna

1 Sep 12 at 2:55 am
Blumpkin’s Pottage was way better. Yobbo, are you still publishing that stuff?

Fisky

1 Sep 12 at 2:58 am
1. “Better to admit lack of knowledge… than make stuff up like religion does.”

2. “Latest theory – the Big Bang was a phase change in space-time.”

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 3:14 am
Test.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 3:15 am
Jacques!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 3:42 am
?

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 4:39 am
DD, I thought that the Australian Constitution outlawed making any laws to ban any religion. Except Christianity. Seems public schools aren’t subject to the common law. I wouldn’t bother taking any defense of Christianity to the High Court though. They will find some way to ban Christianity whilst allowing every other religion.

John Comnenus

1 Sep 12 at 5:56 am
My daughter also came home from school very upset one day, as she has been told at a special presentation on Aboriginal culture that if she touched a didgeridoo, she would be made sick…

Those responsible ought to be fired.

They must have a lot of fun at that school during maths ( can’t use the plus sign ) As for the alphabet with that fallen on it’s side X …

steve of glasshouse

1 Sep 12 at 6:35 am
DD, the comments at your Riot Act link are mindboggling.A child sanctioned for making a cross is a Good Thing and religion should be kept out of schools, yet no comment on hijabs or aboriginal religious practices and beliefs?

These people must be so leftarded they walk in circles.

nilk

1 Sep 12 at 7:32 am
Speaking of Grigory and his pictorial comments, I miss The Moronic Lodge.
I thought this one was a crackup.(‘scuse the pun).
I hope she/he is okay.
BTW Grigory, the God one was good.

Rudiau

1 Sep 12 at 7:44 am
“2. Latest theory – the Big Bang was a phase change in space-time.”

The maths checks out for the phase change theory, apparently. How’s the evidence for god(s) going? No rush.

Jarrah

1 Sep 12 at 7:53 am
http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/run-for-it-marty.jpg

Jarrah

1 Sep 12 at 7:56 am
“My daughter also came home from school very upset one day, as she has been told at a special presentation on Aboriginal culture that if she touched a didgeridoo, she would be made sick, and mightn’t be able to have children… ”

From the latest census:

Maningrida, NT.

Uniting Church – 60.3%
Aboriginal traditional – 14%
No religion – 5.1%
Catholic – 5.1%
Christian – 1.3%

Most popular religion in Redfern:

No religion – 34.5%

boy on a bike

1 Sep 12 at 7:59 am
http://imgur.com/C4aAu

OK, I’ll stop now. I’ll use up my Catallaxy-imposed link quota too fast!

Jarrah

1 Sep 12 at 7:59 am
Alan R.M. Jones does an excellent analysis of the yabbys’ presser.

That was not what Gillard saying in her 1995 S&G interview:

GILLARD: This, this was a more substantial job than that and really ought to have been opened on system, but I think, well, I don’t have a specific recollection of thinking to myself should I open it on system or shouldn’t I open it on system, but apparently I didn’t.

Peter Gordon: Response redacted.

Let me guess. That redacted response from Peter Gordon was most likely an expression of absolute astonishment which may well have included [expletive deleted].

[expletive deleted] Fme?..maybe?

Rudiau

1 Sep 12 at 8:19 am
Latest theory – the Big Bang was a phase change in space-time.

Can you elaborate on this Jarrah? I have to keep up.

Grigory is just making comments. No problem IMO.

Ulp. Is there really a link quota?

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

1 Sep 12 at 8:19 am
I don’t bother opening Potemkin’s links any more. They are usually dull and state the bleedin obvious.

Splatacrobat

1 Sep 12 at 8:22 am
Yea – Moronic Lodge is always good.

That link puts a whole new perspective on the terms bug-eyed and prissy-mouthed. Not sure that it’s really what I want to see in the bathroom mirror though, but once you get something into your head etc …..

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

1 Sep 12 at 8:24 am
Is it just me or does everyone now have to retype name and email each time one posts a comment?

I post from three different puters depending where I am and my name/email used to auto default on all of them.

any clues on how to get this back?

Splatacrobat

1 Sep 12 at 8:31 am
Aaaarrrgggghhhh!!!

Minus six here in Zombie Parrotville this morning and the pipes have frozen up.

Cistern not filling and no water getting into the washing machine.

Welcome to Spring!

Rabz

1 Sep 12 at 8:32 am
Pro Tip: It’s easier to have an “open discussion” with people when you’re not dressed as a giant floppy vagina.

LoL

Rudiau

1 Sep 12 at 8:38 am
I can’t design or draw a cartoon to save myself and I appreciate Grigory has a talent. i don’t like all of them, but live and let live.

candy

1 Sep 12 at 8:40 am
Looked at Jason’s Gran Torino link yesterday and sidebar had a thing on a movie, The Stoning of Soroya, so I looked at that extract too. I’m not linking it here, it was just so horrific, gave me bad dreams. Talk about the stone age.

If Aussie guys are dying in Afghanistan to at least suggest to these barbarians and all of their ilk that there is another way to live, then I think they are dying in the name of a great cause, wherever they die and in whatever conflict no matter how ill-judged. I didn’t want them to be in that particular conflict, but I hope their families take comfort in the fact that they add their names to the great list of good men.

Vale, brave fighters for liberty.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

1 Sep 12 at 8:40 am
I spoke too soon in the previous thread when I said that “asylum seekers” were safely landed at Merak without any troble. Turns out the ingrates are criticising their rescuers alleging that food and medical attention was withheld and begging to be taken to Australia. Makes a change from ‘demanding’ I suppose. If these claims are groundless- and I expect that they are, visas should be denied on the grounds of failing the character test. Still if Bowen didn’t even knock back the ones who blew up a boat and killed five, there’s fat chance of that.

Cold-Hands

1 Sep 12 at 8:41 am
It’s easier to have an “open discussion” with people when you’re not dressed as a giant floppy vagina.

The modern left – stark ravin’ bonkers and utterly unrepentant about it.

Rabz

1 Sep 12 at 8:41 am
trouble

Cold-Hands

1 Sep 12 at 8:45 am
Interesting to see that the Australian School of Economics thread is celebrating 1776. Don’t forget the invasion of Australia that followed as a consequence in 1784. History is repeating in 2012. The indigenous founder of the Australian school, the hardworking, unsubsidised bushman and pioneer who carved out the settlement in the bush and gave the school its name has been expelled by the invaders. The school has been captured by the Melbourne factions, the [expletive deleted] tax eaters and moochers! I will probably have to go back to Tasmania to save my life.

Poor Old Rafe

1 Sep 12 at 8:51 am
“well, I don’t have a specific recollection of thinking to myself should I open it on system or shouldn’t I open it on system, but apparently I didn’t.”

It’s amazing really that Ms Gillard was just not outright dismissed. What an actress she is!

candy

1 Sep 12 at 9:00 am
…food and medical attention was withheld

Later today, Stephen Smith is expected to announce that in future, all HMAShips operating up top will include both male and female doctors, halal food and an Independent Duty Bottom Wiper.

lotocoti

1 Sep 12 at 9:01 am
I’ll start Blumpkin up again if Grigory starts spamming again, and I can remember my WordPress login. I’m not exactly flat out over here.

Yobbo

1 Sep 12 at 9:17 am
The maths checks out for the phase change theory, apparently. How’s the evidence for god(s) going? No rush.

Pretty good, actually. Given that no one who found anything in their living room that wasn’t there just a minute before would not conclude that it just appeared out of nothing, Aristotle and later Aquinas developed the argument from motion (motion in classical philosophy means change, not only spatial movement):

The Argument from Motion:
Things are acted on.
Whatever is moved is moved by something else.
Unless there is a First Mover, there can be no motions.
Thus, a First Mover exists.

There is more to the above but that is the argument in its bare-bones. The logic ‘checks out’ and has for over two and a half thousand years.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 9:20 am
Whatever is moved is moved by something else.
Unless there is a First Mover, there can be no motions.
Thus, a First Mover exists.

You didn’t move this, somebody moved it for you.
There ya go! Obama believes in God.

Splatacrobat

1 Sep 12 at 9:27 am
Umbro name a training shoe “Zyklon”.

Ned makes a complaint.

Splatacrobat

1 Sep 12 at 9:39 am
It’s amazing really that Ms Gillard was just not outright dismissed. What an actress she is!

Candy – she effectively was. The accepting of resignation was a foil that S&G could hide behind so as to not have to push the matter further and delve into the muck. Dismissing would have meant a paper trail. Make it clear she isn’t welcome and suggest she leaves. She took the smart option.

brc

1 Sep 12 at 9:43 am
The modern left – stark ravin’ bonkers and utterly unrepentant about it.

Repentance requires the pre-condition of self-awareness. When did lefties ever demonstrate this trait?

Keith

1 Sep 12 at 9:49 am
Make it clear she isn’t welcome and suggest she leaves. She took the smart option.

Wish she would do that right now.

Splatacrobat

1 Sep 12 at 9:49 am
A true test of faith.

“There’s a story about a man who falls over a cliff, and on the way down he grabs hold of a root. He’s hanging there by this root, and he’s hollering to high heaven, ‘Help me, God! Please, help me!’  
And God says: ‘Sure, I’ll help. What do you want me to do?’  
The guy says: ‘Save me. Get me down from here.’  
God says: ‘OK, trust me, and let go of the root.’ 
After a pause the guy says: ‘Is there anybody else up there?’”

At this, Dwayne gave me his best checkmate smile. “You’ve just got to let go of that root.”

That was thirty years ago, and I’m still looking for a suitable cliff.

Pat Condell

Rudiau

1 Sep 12 at 9:53 am
Regarding the ‘occupy RNC’ – at one point in the heady days of summer last year, the ‘occupy’ movement was seen as the ‘yin’ to the Tea Party ‘yang’. The media love a story where there are two opposing sides. So it was Occupy vs Tea Party.

Whereas one has fizzled out to be a bunch of smelly ‘tards moaning about the state of the world, and the other group has gone on to winning seats, influencing republican policy, and arguably being a factor in the choice of Romneys VP pick.

In the battle between fashionable causes and actions based on principle, short the fashionable cause every time.

brc

1 Sep 12 at 9:55 am
Andrew Bolt headline:

Gillard prepares for early election

Please, please, let it be so.

brc

1 Sep 12 at 9:55 am
Who said anything about heaven or faith?

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 10:09 am
Gillard prepares for early election

Splatacrobat

1 Sep 12 at 10:19 am
Who moved the first mover..

Farnsworth: As a scientist, I can assure you that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey-men.

Cory Olsen

1 Sep 12 at 10:19 am
Wow! I have just spent three days (and five hours) being redirected to a “closed for maintenance” page instead of the Cat because of a “DNS propagation delay”. I feel like I’ve been at the bottom of the Beaconsfield mine. Anyone else had the same problem? Good to have access again. Jacques Chester has been very patient in explaining the technical issues to me.

Tom

1 Sep 12 at 10:22 am
Boy on a Bike @7.59,

‘…..as she has been told at a special presentation on Aboriginal culture that…’

when education and employment levels increase as people choose integration, then science might get a look in. There would be many people freed; to never live under the tyranny of forced belief in superstition/sorcery, promulgated over the past 30+years.

Jessie

1 Sep 12 at 10:24 am
Presidential.

Romney visits hurricane-ravaged US region

Also-ran:

President Barack Obama was today forced to announce he will fly to storm-hit Louisiana on Monday – hours after Mitt Romney beat him to the punch by deciding to head there this afternoon.

After it emerged that Obama was still taking time to fit in a campaign stop in Cleveland, Ohio, before checking out how clean-up operations are proceeding in the Bayou state, the Obama campaign abruptly cancelled that event, though he will still hold a rally in Toledo, Ohio before heading south.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 10:28 am
Andrew Bolt headline:

Gillard prepares for early election

Please, please, let it be so.

I thought the blizzard of announcements was to do with displacing the story of Gillard being a lying, corrupt, incompetent disgrace from the front page.

The question is whether an election could be called and executed before MYEFO, otherwise her (wayne) goose is surely cooked.

Keith

1 Sep 12 at 10:29 am
Wow! I have just spent three days (and five hours) being redirected to a “closed for maintenance” page instead of the Cat because of a “DNS propagation delay”. I feel like I’ve been at the bottom of the Beaconsfield mine. Anyone else had the same problem?

Ditto.

This morning Bolt had a link to one of the Catallaxy posts. I was able to follow that, and get through for the first time in days, but otherwise can’t access the site from the usual bookmarked page or even following a Google link.

I got around it by bookmarking the Bolt link. It’s not particularly satisfactory, but it seems to work ok.

James P

1 Sep 12 at 10:35 am
Who moved the first mover..[?]

No one/ thing. Given our experience, that “Whatever is moved is moved by something else”, it follows, if we are to avoid an infinite regress, there must be a First Mover that is, itself, unmoved. If the First Mover is unmoved, it required no prior mover. The logic is impeccable. Of course, this First Mover must be categorically different to the universe otherwise what would be good for the goose would be good for the gander. But, again, this just shows that the laws of thought apply here as they do elsewhere.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 10:43 am
It’s always about funding-raising and campaigning for the One.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 10:53 am
Mark Steyn on Eastwood

Incidentally, I’m not generally in favor of what Rob Long would call “working blue,” but, if you’re going to do it, doing anatomically impossible sex-act cross-talk with an invisible presidential straight-man in front of the Republican Convention is definitely the way to go.

Infidel Tiger

1 Sep 12 at 10:54 am
If you want to understand the phenomena of ‘rogue’ Afghani soldiers murdering US (and Australian) troops, there’s an important article here by Mark Durie, a Melbourne pastor. (It’s sadly prescient, given it was published days before the 3 Australian soldiers were murdered.)

Let us wind the clock back 120 years to Aceh, today part of Indonesia. In 1892 the sultanate of Aceh, a staunchly Islamic region, had been under Dutch military occupation for twice as many years as the Americans have been in Afghanistan. When the Dutch first stormed the Acehnese capital Kutaraja (now Banda Aceh) in 1871 they naively assumed that control of the rest of the countryside would quickly follow. Instead they became entangled in a conflict which lasted for decades.

A poignant legacy of the Aceh-Dutch war is a military cemetery in Banda Aceh, reputed to be the largest graveyard of Dutch troops outside Holland.

As the decades passed, the Acehnese waged a tenacious insurgency from jungle hideouts, and Dutch leaders cycled through various theories to explain their military failures. One theory was that the passing of time would see a steady reduction in hostilities. Time did pass, and this theory ended up in the trash. Another theory was that a “concentration line” of forts could effect a safe haven around the capital to guarantee security, but the attacks continued.

Sound familiar? Durie writes that the Dutch ultimately did manage to pacify the Acehnese, but they could only do so when they realised the reason for the tenaciousness of the insurgency: the precepts of Islam.

Andreas

1 Sep 12 at 10:55 am
The maths checks out for the phase change theory, apparently.

LOL.

The Flying Spaghetti Phase Change caused nothing to become everything and then turned everything into dinosaurs.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 10:59 am
I have just spent three days (and five hours) being redirected to a “closed for maintenance” page instead of the Cat because of a “DNS propagation delay”.

The site worked without the www. At the front, but someone forgot to repoint www to new servers. This was human error – not DNS propagation.

Fleeced

1 Sep 12 at 11:02 am
Mark Steyn:

On the matter of those racist dog whistles all these middle-age white liberals keep hearing, the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto put it very well: “The thing we adore about these dog-whistle kerfuffles is that the people who react to the whistle always assume it’s intended for somebody else,” he wrote. “The whole point of the metaphor is that if you can hear the whistle, you’re the dog.”

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 11:04 am
Our politicians have entered a race of conspicuous emotionism. It’s mawkish and degrading.
Any soldier who signs the unlimited liability contract takes the soldiers chance.
As did many here.

Winston Smith

1 Sep 12 at 11:07 am
The Flying Spaghetti Phase Change caused nothing to become everything and then turned everything into dinosaurs.

I recently had the fortune of learning Aristotle’s definition of “nothing”: nothing is what rocks dream about.

Brilliant.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 11:08 am
The thing we adore about these dog-whistle kerfuffles is that the people who react to the whistle always assume it’s intended for somebody else,” he wrote. “The whole point of the metaphor is that if you can hear the whistle, you’re the dog.

Note to the cool dudes: Stop barking.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 11:09 am
Michelle Malkin: The Condensed Liberal Handbook of Racial Code Words

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 11:14 am
Embarrassment:

Confirmed: Line-up of speakers at Democratic convention is simply terrible.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 11:14 am
So, Mark Steyn joins the wingnut conspiracy that the Eastwood shambolic performance was all a planned shambolic performance with which to further highlight the (allegedly) brilliant cut through lines.

Truly: this is embarrassing, what (large segments) of the Right have become. (Stupid).

steve from brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 11:20 am
Confirmed: Line-up of speakers at Democratic convention is simply terrible.

It’s all structured to make Obama look like the genius in the room. Same reason he pals around with Joey “Pluggs” Biden.

Infidel Tiger

1 Sep 12 at 11:21 am
Who said anything about heaven or faith?

Farnsworth: As a scientist, I can assure you that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey-men.

Me! Watcha wanna do ’bout it!

Rudiau

1 Sep 12 at 11:21 am
‘These people must be so leftarded they walk in circles’.

Most of them would be, err, ‘alumni’ of the School of Education at the University of Canberra.

The ATAR cut-of for entry to teaching courses at the UC has been at around 65 for the last few years. Academically and intellectually, these people are the bottom of the barrell, don’t expect them to be able to think.

Des Deskperson

1 Sep 12 at 11:24 am
Truly: this is embarrassing, what (large segments) of the Right have become.

Steve supports Joe Biden for Vice-President.

Two weeks ago, Forbes called for Biden to be examined by psychiatrists.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 11:27 am
Oh God.

Biden to table of Greek men: “I’m Joe Bidenopoulos”.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 11:27 am
Does Sex Make You Sneeze?

Dead Soul

1 Sep 12 at 11:29 am
Tony Abbott makes rank imbecility on Afghanistan bipartisan:

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has backed the Government’s strategy.

“Another 18 months means another 18 months of mentoring, it means getting the girls to school,” he told Channel Nine.

We’re staying another 18 months to shadow the American surrender, announced by Obama. No other reason – and certainly not the education of little girls. This is despicable, dishonest rhetoric.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 11:32 am
‘Out of Touch’ – Powerful Rebuke of Clinton and Obama from the Heart of a Fallen SEAL’s Mother

Obama: it’s all about me me me. Okay, enough about me, now, what do you thing about me?

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 11:33 am
Yes, Tom, I’ve been out in the cold too, but it seems to be O.K. this morning.

A child sanctioned for making a cross is a Good Thing and religion should be kept out of schools

Just as long as you recognise that Secular Humanism is also a religion/worldview. There is no neutral ground. Everyone has a religion/worldview with unprovable presuppositions. Believe what you will, but don’t pretend it’s not a belief. (Science is wonderful when it sticks to what it’s good at.)

Ellen of Tasmania

1 Sep 12 at 11:34 am
Who moved the first mover..[?]

Maybe Pascal had the answer for the uneducated such as myself.

what planet am I on?

1 Sep 12 at 11:35 am
Who moved the first mover..[?

If the First Mover was moved then it would be incorrect to call it the First Mover, no?

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 11:41 am
Eastwood’s tactic was a masterstroke.

If he’d given a telepromptered, scripted speech it wouldn’t have registered.

Now, tens – probably hundreds – of thousands of Americans are rushing to YouTube to hear the coolest man in American culture give them permission to dump Obama. “When a man doesn’t do the job, you’ve got to let him go.”

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 11:44 am
“Oh God.”

Pretty sure J. Biden has some kind of dementia, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he has to step down in the near future. It can’t go on.

candy

1 Sep 12 at 11:47 am
There might be a reason the Democrat convention line-up is so woeful:

Not buying the Hillary crap.

I have thought for a while that if the election is close, Obama would play the Hillary for VP card (I am not the only one who thought that). Now that she will supposedly be out of the country, I figure that is proof that she will be the mystery speaker and will accept the nomination for VP. If the rules allow this, then it is Obama’s only chance. the press would talk about nothing else for the remainder of this election cycle.

The press will crow:

1. What a brilliant move.
2. He put his country first
3. Smart enough to remove the mistake of Biden
4. Dream Team etc.

If they do not do this it can only be for two reasons.

1. Hillary said take a hike
2. Obama is a true Narcissist that can not share the spotlight or admit he has failed to the point he needed her.

We will find out soon.

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/149808/

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 11:53 am
Pretty sure J. Biden has some kind of dementia, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he has to step down in the near future. It can’t go on.

A heartbeat away.

Ivan Denisovich

1 Sep 12 at 11:53 am
Embarrassment:

Confirmed: Line-up of speakers at Democratic convention is simply terrible.

And of course there’s Fauxcahontas, the great liberal hope of the future, who’s already 63 and has run a sufficiently dismal campaign that she’s trailing Scott Brown in the bluest of blue states.

OMG, they’ve actually got that loon talking at the convention. What’s she gunna talk about… her grandpappy had high cheek bones?

JC

1 Sep 12 at 11:57 am
Eastwood’s tactic was a masterstroke.

100% correct, CL. Slick, scripted Hollywood is all Americans get 24/7 (Have you ever seen an American on the TV news who wasn’t poised and totally unself-conscious?). Because Eastwood was shambolic, it was a magnet for the Twitterati who thought they were seeing a Hollywood-type wreck on the interstate. I don’t think it was that planned; he was making it up as he went along. But his message shook the ground.

Tom

1 Sep 12 at 11:58 am
All this outrage about Eastwood. One would be forgiven to think he was running for office.
His opening remarks about the Hollywood liberal lefties really stung, and that’s why they’ve gone into overdrive. It is noteworthy that these are the only Eastwood remarks that the left has not commented on.

Keith

1 Sep 12 at 11:59 am
CL

There’s no freaking way Hillary is going to Veep to the Kenyan. If she does I’ll eat crow.

JC

1 Sep 12 at 11:59 am
Um, CL, you’re repeating stupidity just to annoy me, aren’t you? It’s all a grand plan like Clint’s supposedly was, isn’t it?

steve from brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 11:59 am
But his message shook the ground.

More idiocy and ridiculous wingnut hyperbole.

steve from brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 12:01 pm
All this outrage about Eastwood.

has the lefties very upset. Hit a sore point. Gotunder their thin skins. Highlighted a failed President. Good. The strategy worked.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 12:03 pm
If the First Mover was moved then it would be incorrect to call it the First Mover, no?

Gab, yes, the First Mover, otherwise called Unmoved Mover, must avoid the problem of infinite regress.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 12:05 pm
Stepford:

You’ve never been out of Qld. In fact you’ve never spent any time much out of the kitchen and laundry and you’re now an expert of US politics? You’re able to ascertain just how Eastwood helped or hurt the campaign?

Get the fuck outta here. Shoo.

JC

1 Sep 12 at 12:05 pm
has the lefties very upset. Hit a sore point. Gotunder their thin skins. Highlighted a failed President. Good. The strategy worked.

The best part is they can’t stop talking about it. Even sfb.

Keith

1 Sep 12 at 12:06 pm
His opening remarks about the Hollywood liberal lefties really stung,…

Well, yes, how else to explain this constant whinging about Eastwood. Keep talking, lefties.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 12:06 pm
whoever the Democrat lineup is they won’t have a most beloved movie star who can do the “go ahead make my day” moment. There was a lot of goodwill and warmth there, don’t know if that means anything politically but it was pretty special.

candy

1 Sep 12 at 12:09 pm
You are mis-interpretting the source of “lefty” concern here. Lefties do not see it as having hurt the Left at all. Not one friggin’ bit.

But they are concerned that praising the Eastwood contribution as something brilliant confirms that a large slab of the Right has gone batshit crazy and its judgement on virtually anything with a political aspect is in its arse.

It confirms what an appalling state the Right is in.

steve from brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 12:19 pm
While I’m not sure I agree with Christopher Pearson’s call on an early election he has nailed the problems The Goose is going to have with the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Even Treasury which has given us the Hans Christian Andersen Carbon Tax modelling of combined global action won’t be able to paper over the collapse in revenue and Gillard’s channelling of her inner Gough.

And sure enough, up pops the Legover Man with another Labor meme, the $70bn black hole.

H B Bear

1 Sep 12 at 12:22 pm
Less than $5 Billion to go before the Australia Card is maxed out at $250 Billion.

Total Commonwealth Government Securities
on Issue – $245,326m consisting of:
Treasury Bonds – $213,788m
Treasury Indexed Bonds – $16,519m
Treasury Notes – $15,000m
Other Securities – $19m
As at 31 August 2012

Winston Smith

1 Sep 12 at 12:22 pm
I love the way all the numpties apologising for the Guevara-Gillard government keep telling us the fruitloop left is actually the centre of politics because they’ve managed to seize temporary political power. It’s going to be fun taunting the new political underclass when we’re finally liberated from this passing tyranny next year.

Tom

1 Sep 12 at 12:22 pm
Forget about the debt

heh. Obama’s campaign platform.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 12:27 pm
Less than $5 Billion to go before the Australia Card is maxed out at $250 Billion.

Like all good leftard wastrels the latest raft of spending measures serves only to justify raising our debt ceiling to $300 billion

Splatacrobat

1 Sep 12 at 12:27 pm
But they are concerned that praising the Eastwood contribution as something brilliant confirms that a large slab of the Right has gone batshit crazy and its judgement on virtually anything with a political aspect is in its arse.

Look dickhead, Eastwood’s remarks weren’t policy driven or some data points explaining why there are 23 million Americans without jobs. It was basically about the comments of one old guy and how he felt about things.. the country, the president and stuff like that.

In that sense it succeeded in hitting a home run.

As for the appalling state of the Right…

Fuckhead, let me remind you..

Biden

Pocahontas Warren’s false claim

The Kenyan

The drunk, Botox Pelosi

The crook, harry Reid

That’s the modern face of the American Left.

JC

1 Sep 12 at 12:28 pm
But they are concerned that praising the Eastwood contribution as something brilliant…

No. They are not ‘concerned’ at all about what this means for the Right. But, as you say, the performance was brilliant. It wasn’t either a political manifesto, nor a philosophical treatise; it was a wonderful warm-up for Rubio, and the keynote, Romney. Suck it up, lefties, or as Mickie Moore just advised, “Get used to saying, President Romney.”

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 12:30 pm
If the worst they can say about the RNC is Eastwood, Eastwood, Eastwood, then they are really saying they have no substantive argument with Romney/Ryan. Leftyfail.

Keith

1 Sep 12 at 12:33 pm
Splat, the Government has to go to Parliament to raise the borrowing limit.
This will focus the electorate on the magnitude of the problem.
One hopes…

Winston Smith

1 Sep 12 at 12:34 pm
Truly: this is embarrassing

Otherwise one might assume that the RNC, with a collective wisdom less than some schmuck from suburban Brisbane, had the marquee speaker guaranteed to attract the curious viewer play Walt Kowalski for laughs.

lotocoti

1 Sep 12 at 12:34 pm
lol it was a stand-up comedy routine that has the lefties obsessing about it days later. It really really hurt them and they know they cannot touch Eastwood in any way. They can’t hurt him politically, socially, financially; they can’t shut him down. This is what gets to them. That and Eastwood obviously resonated with many many Americans from all walks of life. The more the Left goes on about Eastwood, the better. In fact, rather than talking about Obama, their dear leader, lefties are far more interested in talking about Eastwood…can’t really blame them.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 12:38 pm
I haven’t watched Romney’s address, d-b, but even from the Right wing punditry, I would say the reaction was more “good solid performance, got the job done” rather than your “brilliant, I wet my pants with joy” reaction.

steve from brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 12:40 pm
I haven’t watched Romney’s address, d-b, but

Lol

You’re a fucking idiot, Stepford. No kidding.

JC

1 Sep 12 at 12:45 pm
I haven’t watched Romney’s address, d-b,…

LOL. This is really beyond parody. But, sorry to say, I’m not surprised.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 12:46 pm
Snap

JC

1 Sep 12 at 12:46 pm
OMG, they’ve actually got that loon talking at the convention. What’s she gunna talk about… her grandpappy had high cheek bones?

Fauxcahontas will do her ranty “you didn’t build that speech”. (at 0:56)

Keith

1 Sep 12 at 12:47 pm
By the way, has the troll army put out an advisory memo for new recruits that it’s best to sound stoned out of your head when visiting the Cat?

Tom

1 Sep 12 at 12:49 pm
I haven’t watched Romney’s address, d-b,…

LOL. This is really beyond parody. But, sorry to say, I’m not surprised.

Probably hasn’t even listened to Eastwood’s.

Keith

1 Sep 12 at 12:53 pm
Peggy Noonan

Clint Eastwood was funny, endearing—”Oprah was crying”—and carries his own kind of cultural authority. “It’s time for somebody else to come along and solve the problem.” He was free-form, interesting—you didn’t quite know what was going to come next—strange and, in the end, kind of exhilarating. Talk about icons. The crowd yelling, “Make my day,” was one of the great convention moments, ever.

Noonan also hits on something I’ve been thinking about during this election.

If Romney wins it could be showing that people are changing their view on Presidents. Substance may be making a come back.

JC

1 Sep 12 at 12:58 pm
Oh my God, Noonan said that?

This is like the standard by which all political punditry may in future be judged.

Rush Limbaugh thoroughly endorsed it too. But his views (as with “Fluke slut”) go down well here.

steve from brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 1:02 pm
lol SFB thinks it Eastwood for President.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 1:03 pm
“Beyond parody” – a regular wingnut phrase.

I reported accurately my assessment of the reaction to Romney’s speech.

You respond – oh hilarious, you can’t summarise the reaction because you haven’t watched it.

Yes I can.

steve from brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 1:05 pm
Cool,
On Bolt tomorrow Lomborg and Mathias Cormann.
Should be good.

jumpnmcar

1 Sep 12 at 1:07 pm
wingnut

An archaic Leftist phrase.

I reported accurately my assessment of the reaction to Romney’s speech.

You respond – oh hilarious, you can’t summarise the reaction because you haven’t watched it.

No, it’s just your habit of opining on X by referring to reviews of X but never your own review of X. It’s as if you have to gather the range of views before you can draw your own view of X, which is sad.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 1:13 pm
SfB, DON’T CKICK HERE, you will have no idea why it’s funny.

jumpnmcar

1 Sep 12 at 1:16 pm
I think alot of people didn’t get Eastwood because the way he conveyed his thoughts was real old school humour. I honestly believe he caught everyone by surprise (GOP Convention/Campaign organisers included) It wasn’t planned but Eastwood knew what he was doing.

Clint Eastwood’s political theatrics no surprise
By Ann Hornaday (movie critic)

RTWT but I like the bit at the end…

“When Obama won I thought, Well that’s cool,” Eastwood said. “[He’s got the] multi-racial thing, that’s nice, that’s refreshing. I’m married to a multi-racial woman that’s got the same demographic and I thought, That’s nice. I mean, that’ll be nice for the country and maybe it’ll settle down a lot of racial issues. Instead, it kind of went the other way.”

Eastwood never specified what he meant by “the other way.” But as he continued, he was apparently referring to the episode in 2009 when Henry Louis Gates was arrested by a Cambridge, Mass., police officer, and the ensuing outcry resulted in Obama inviting the two men to the White House for a beer.

“That whole thing with the police officer was just a bad way to jump into it,” Eastwood said. “When you say to somebody, ‘I don’t have the facts, but’ never say ‘but.’ Say, ‘I don’t have the facts,’ stop, period, end of sentence. End of sequence, go to lunch. You know … the real prejudices come out because [people] go on too long.”

So true.

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 1:17 pm
No cryllic keys pls jump.

blogstrop

1 Sep 12 at 1:18 pm
Yes Minister Shorten!

XD

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 1:21 pm
No cryllic keys pls jump.

Beg yours?

jumpnmcar

1 Sep 12 at 1:22 pm
Here Sfb, this is how clever lefties do humour:

New Poll: Romney trails Empty Chair

[...]the largest post-convention bounce for an inanimate object since the nomination of Michael Dukakis, in 1988.

Very funny!

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 1:27 pm
Fembro removes the sailor’s penis from his mouth just long enough to make an asinine comment.

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 1:33 pm
Anyway, off to watch my first game of Rugby Union.( GF, one of my sons playing )
I’ll try to understand it.

jumpnmcar

1 Sep 12 at 1:33 pm
Because Eastwood was shambolic, it was a magnet for the Twitterati who thought they were seeing a Hollywood-type wreck on the interstate. I don’t think it was that planned; he was making it up as he went along. But his message shook the ground.

True, Tom.

Look, this was pretty revolutionary. Clint Eastwood is the first cultural icon to come out and say the Kenyan has no clothes. Not merely that, he ridiculed him. We have never seen this before – not in a movie, not on a talk show. He broke the spell.

I hope – dearly hope – the Democrats deploy Obama’s pretty boyfriend George Clooney to give a ritzy, scripted Hollywood rebuttal next week.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 1:36 pm
…nominal Australians, always right wing, are prone to fellating US presidential candidates.

Foreplay I guess:

http://indymedia.org.au/files/julia-gillard-672825633.jpg

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 1:40 pm
Swan: ‘Newman was right.’

Commonwealth public servants could face axe as Treasurer Wayne Swan looks to cost savings.

Yesterday Mr Newman said he was not surprised at the Federal Government’s job cuts revelation.

“Federal Labor has raised spending to unsustainable levels just like Anna Bligh,” the Premier said.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 1:44 pm
Eastwood blowback?

Theocratic wacko Democrats remove all mention of their two hour Islamic prayer session.

But it’s still on.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 1:48 pm
Hi Alan.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 1:50 pm
Sorry, jump, just a pathetic attempt at humour based on your CKICK.

blogstrop

1 Sep 12 at 1:51 pm
Expect The Goose to start doing a pretty good impression of a headless chook as the fiscal reality slowly dawns on this dimwit.

H B Bear

1 Sep 12 at 1:53 pm
Foreplay I guess:

Try again, dumbo.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 1:56 pm
It doesn’t make sense to me, promising 4 billion dental scheme and 16 billion per year disability scheme, compensation for carbon tax

and yet cutting jobs.

candy

1 Sep 12 at 1:57 pm
Al

What toilet bowl did you jump out of?

Jc

1 Sep 12 at 2:15 pm
Don’t be mean to Tillman, JC

Jamesk

1 Sep 12 at 2:19 pm
Weird that nominal Australians, always right wing, are prone to fellating US presidential candidates.

You’re projecting again, Phil. So Bill is a tranny fantasy and you like dress up like Monica. Whatever floats your boat.

John Mc

1 Sep 12 at 2:32 pm
poor Al is a bit behind the eight ball……the story about Abbott’s sister was reported ages ago….

MDMConnell

1 Sep 12 at 2:41 pm
Don’t you mean Sayne Wanderson?

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 2:47 pm
gab:

I don’t really see his contributions as cartoons, I see them as his statements.

As do I.

I also agree with CL’s comment – Grigory just posts links. If you don’t like his style, don’t click the link.

I happen to like his style quite a lot. He’s got teeth in that style IMHO, and I like his work, but that’s just my personal call.

You’ve spent far more time complaining about it, Fleeced, than Grigory posts here.

Meanwhile, there’s greenfilth and leftard totalitarian scum and vermin to fight: and Grigory’s on ‘our side’.

So let’s get on with it.

Mk50 of Brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 2:47 pm
Since everyone else is having their say on Potemkin, I will too.
There are two completely separate issues.

1. is this spam or a valid way of contributing to the Cat community;
2. how good are the cartoons.

As for 1. It’s certainly true that he’s harmlessly posting links as his contribution, but that’s all he does. Posting links to promote your own site, while not engaging in the discussion in any other way, is technically spam.

I’m not particularly impressed by the cartoons, although I give some leeway to journeyman who are still developing their craft.

There has been improvement in that the early cartoons didn’t even have punchlines or wit; while you can argue about the merits of the wit, (I would say, still not great) at least it’s now present.

While there was an interesting philosophical point behind the God cartoon (namely, no metaphysical choice is costless), I suspect this was inadvertant. The Putin cartoon was objectively clever in a sense, but subjectively I didn’t find it funny.

dd

1 Sep 12 at 3:00 pm
Posting links to promote your own site, while not engaging in the discussion in any other way, is technically spam.

Fair point.

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 3:08 pm
There’s something endearingly pathetic about the dumb cannon fodder of the Guevara-Gillard government lining up here to catch the eye of their future ruling class.

Tom

1 Sep 12 at 3:10 pm
For the life of me, I can’t understand why we are having another discussion about Grigory.

is this spam or a valid way of contributing to the Cat community;
2. how good are the cartoons.

Either way, it doesn’t matter. We, for instance, don’t ask if A or B’s comments are valid ways of contributing to the Cat. Neither do we ask if A or B’s comments are good. These have never been hurdles needed to be cleared in order to comment here.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 3:19 pm
DD.What a sleasy wanker you are. How good of you to almost approve of an emerging talent. Does this mean in truth that you don’t really like him because he isn’t of your belief.

I don’t almost approve of emerging talent. I do approve; and I really buy into the idea that practice and effort produce talent. In fact in my non-Cat life I’ve known plenty of people starting out as journeymen in an artistic endeavour and I don’t go hard on them; I see shred-tearing as the policy of those who believe in innate talent and their job is to weed out those who don’t have it. But since others are coming in and openly endorsing PV I figured I’d have my say, which is to say, I have mixed feelings but overall don’t agree.

There’s no doubt a market for PV but it isn’t me, and will never be, no matter how good he gets. There’s just not enough overlap with Grigory’s worldview, and it goes beyond God or not-God. It’s the sentimental mindset that I don’t buy.

dd

1 Sep 12 at 3:23 pm
For the life of me, I can’t understand why we are having another discussion about Grigory.

This is my first.

dd

1 Sep 12 at 3:23 pm
Did Graylands Hospital open it doors and usher the inmates out into the street? We have some industrial grade trolling and stupidity on the Cat today.

tbh

1 Sep 12 at 3:27 pm
I had a boyfriend when I was 14 called Alan, who wanted to marry me the minute I turned 16. I had a bad dream about that one night, thinking of what my life would be like if that happened. He was 22 and was so boring and pretentious and predictable with an underlying sleaze. I knew I’d be turned off men (and families) for life if I didn’t leave home and run a long way away for a very long time. This was the only way to get away from him actually coz my mad parents (when they weren’t in treatment) thought he was great, a real catch because he would spent hours approving my dad’s seriously delusional narcissistic dreamings (till dad started to take up a knife) and my mum’s spirit spooking fantasies. What was in it for him, I kept thinking, until I realised the answer was – me. Hoped he’d disappeared forever …

Hi Alan. You’re still around somewhere then?

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

1 Sep 12 at 3:37 pm
“Did Graylands Hospital open it doors and usher the inmates out into the street? We have some industrial grade trolling and stupidity on the Cat today.”

it’s sweet the way they want to be noticed by JC, always they long for his attention!

candy

1 Sep 12 at 3:37 pm
They’re nothing
but gangsters and crooks.
That’s not what Tao’s about.

Crooks and unionists and green-slime lawyers.
For once, you’ve hit the mark.

Cold-Hands

1 Sep 12 at 3:41 pm
Thank heavens for small mercies. Shitfer is openly identifying as a leftist. No more of his faux conservative camo.

Infidel Tiger

1 Sep 12 at 3:50 pm
No, I am not a Leftist. I am temporarily supporting them until the Right comes back to me.

steve from brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 3:56 pm
I’ve just been to buy a present for one of my new girlfriends down here, turning 30, and a group of us are giving her dinner in a restaurant and then on to the Lipstick Lounge (ha ha, as if, we are all married and due home).

Told Da Ape last Wednesday not to book us up as I was going out tonight.

Wid who? What’s his name? he asked in only slightly mock panic.

It is good to keep them on their toes. Tao, maybe, Febro?

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

1 Sep 12 at 3:56 pm
This just gets funnier. I’m laughing out loud.

Tom

1 Sep 12 at 3:58 pm
Lizzie, I was thinking while off the blog, today, that I should not annoy you any more, because you were the only one willing to talk about vagina tightening.

I was thinking about this while thinking about how primitive Hinduism would worship phallic shaped rocks, but Indians are now squeamish talking about sex.

It’s an odd place.

steve from brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 3:59 pm
No, I am not a Leftist.

hahahahahahahahahaha!

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 3:59 pm
Gab, I think there’s something further left than left, that’s attractive to the fruitcakery, particularly the climate loonies like ShitFer. Anarcho-syndicalism perhaps?

Tom

1 Sep 12 at 4:08 pm
industrial grade…

Compared to those titans of progressive thought at DU and Dailykos, the only thing remotely novel about our new friends is their ability to post whilst engaging in autoerotic asphyxia.

lotocoti

1 Sep 12 at 4:11 pm
They’re just nuts, Tom. Mean ill-humored envy-ridden totalitarian nutsjobs.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 4:11 pm
It is clear in recent weeks that we are seeing a clearing of the decks in anticipation of a kevni ruff challenge.

Complex situation, it seems.

What’s been interesting is the lack of chatter from the presstitutes.

This means they’re locked in behind lardarse dullard, but that’s hardly surprising.

Evidence:

Their ignoring/poo pooing of the slapper and drongo shenanigans, which as far as I’m concerned are convincing enough for her to be doing a lengthy stretch

The breathless ‘reporting’ of the latest extreme squanderthons, including the dental shit and the ‘mysterious, convenient’ reduction in the air tax, which will finally kill any imaginary goose surplus.

I’m sweating on latest update on Monday from The Mole™.

He’ll be able to confirm if a challenge is indeed on.

Oh and BTW, Fauxfacts will collapse next week.

Will lardarse dullard announce a bailout?

Rabz

1 Sep 12 at 4:14 pm
Will lardarse dullard announce a bailout?

Well why not? It’s about time they formalised their partnership with Fairfax.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 4:16 pm
SfB, just get your mind out of the gutter and fuck off you deviant.
You lie as well, I was willing to talk to you about you using the vaginal tightening cream to re-sleeve your nether regions so that you didn’t need to use your butt plugs anymore.
How’s the working with children check going you sick twisted fuck?

Huckleberry Chunkwot

1 Sep 12 at 4:19 pm
No, I am not a Leftist.

Ahahahahahahahaha.

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 4:19 pm
Hey, Rabz: minus six degrees this morning??? Where do you live? Thredbo?

Tom

1 Sep 12 at 4:20 pm
“Did Graylands Hospital open it doors and usher the inmates out into the street?”

Sadly, given the impoverished and poorly organised state of our psychiatric hospital system and the over-optimistic prognostics of some psychiatrists, this sort of thing is happening all the time In Real Life.

Opening the doors to a Bedlam is indeed a great metaphor for trollings, but our current lot are more smarmy and pedestrian than outright crazy. The latter sort at least have flair and shock value (Coz after bottle number three?). The current lot could probably in a general sense be termed best as ‘nutjobs’. Our esteemed Prime Minister claims to know a lot about those but I doubt it. She doesn’t know much about anything. We need a lattter-day Linnaeus to start up a Troll Classificatory System for us, so we know what we are dealing with. Could have simple codes attached for the information of all.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

1 Sep 12 at 4:21 pm
It’s about time they formalised their partnership with Fairfax.

At taxpayers’ expense, of course.

So even if you refuse to pay for their refuse, you’ll do so regardless…

Rabz

1 Sep 12 at 4:23 pm
Jim Treacher:

President heads to storm-ravaged Louisiana (followed closely by Obama).

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 4:23 pm
At taxpayers’ expense, of course.

So even if you refuse to pay for their refuse, you’ll do so regardless…

AKA: Shocial justice.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 4:25 pm
Aminat Kurbanova graduated from Dagestan State University’s drama school in Makhachkala and went on to work in the city’s Russian-language Gorky Theater. Then she converted to Islam and blew herself up.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 4:27 pm
Isn’t anyone else getting sick of this chunkwart idiot?

steve from brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 4:30 pm
No, it’s just you, ShitFer, you attention whore.

Tom

1 Sep 12 at 4:33 pm
From CL’s Jim Treacher link:

How could Romney do that to him? If there’s one thing Obama hates, it’s not campaigning. And being mocked. Okay, two things. Obama hates not campaigning and being mocked. Oh, and free enterprise. Three things…

LOL

JamesK

1 Sep 12 at 4:44 pm
Stevie, you know that I merely pointed out from a public health point of view (once the topic was up) how stupid the whole enterprise of such ‘tightening’ was. It’s girl talk Stevie (Kegel exercises, ladies), and you shouldn’t try to join in.

mmm. Why do you then?

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

1 Sep 12 at 4:45 pm
Isn’t anyone else getting sick of this chunkwart idiot?

Who gave you that opinion creep?
We all know that you are incapable of forming your own.

Huckleberry Chunkwot

1 Sep 12 at 4:46 pm
Whatever, Lizzie.

Atlantic article on the Romney tax plan (as far as it can be understood) ends on this note:

The upshot is this: Romney’s tax plan does not work under remotely plausible growth projections. It either increases middle class taxes or increases the deficit. If Romney is serious about doing neither, then he has to be unserious about his growth projections. The rich have to get almost impossibly rich to make up for the lost revenue in Romney’s tax plan. Realistically, their incomes would need to be 7.7 to 11.3 percent higher than TPC predicts — that is, we should not ignore the corporate income tax cuts. To put that in perspective, that’s between $377 and $548 billion additional dollars flowing to the top 5 percent of households.

steve from brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 4:55 pm
Isn’t anyone else getting sick of this chunkwart idiot?

Who gave you that opinion Steve? Everyone knows that you are incapable of forming your own.

Huckleberry Chunkwot

1 Sep 12 at 4:56 pm
Enlighten us Steve, what is your opinion of the Atlantic article?

Huckleberry Chunkwot

1 Sep 12 at 4:57 pm
A troll taxonomy – great idea Lizzie. You could probably get a grant for it.

Keith

1 Sep 12 at 5:00 pm
Where do you live? Thredbo?

Tommy,

The Nation’s Crapital…

Rabz

1 Sep 12 at 5:00 pm
Be careful, Elizabeth. He’s one of those …

Tom

1 Sep 12 at 5:02 pm
Gosh! “some kind of deviated prevert”

That’s very strange, isn’t it love?

Oh, boom tish, Lizzie. Go and wash your hair.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

1 Sep 12 at 5:09 pm
I’ll repost Lizzie’s theme song for those who haven’t seen it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCB-9wMylhU

coz

1 Sep 12 at 5:13 pm
Let us all take a moment to give thanks to our wonderful mothers for the nourishment and love they provided us with.

Infidel Tiger

1 Sep 12 at 5:16 pm
It’s comedy central at the Cat today.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 5:19 pm
You are an evil man IT. It’s probably a bit early to poke the bear with a stick though, surely she couldn’t be through the first bottle yet?

Huckleberry Chunkwot

1 Sep 12 at 5:20 pm
oh you mean me? I thought you were some kind of Oedipus type.

nah I haven’t got any, well only spirits and I’m not much of a spirits drinker, do you think I should have one?

coz

1 Sep 12 at 5:28 pm
“A Prime Minister blackmailing the Press in order to have a damaging story spiked is simply not acceptable in this country.”

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 5:35 pm
oh you mean *ME*? *I* thought you were some kind of Oedipus type.

nah *I* haven’t got any, well only spirits and *I’m* not much of a spirits drinker, do you think* I* should have one?

Well done, five mentions of yourself after calling someone else an attention whore.
( slow clap )

jumpnmcar

1 Sep 12 at 5:36 pm
Just for you, cozima.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 5:40 pm
ya, I got it on CD gab.

Oedipal or some Catholic thing, you how they are about muthas.

coz

1 Sep 12 at 5:43 pm
Is Lizzie a mutha?

coz

1 Sep 12 at 5:49 pm
Further to the data offered by Boy on a Bike:

In the 2006 Census, 73% of indigenous Australians identified as Christians, and 1% with an Australian Aboriginal Traditional Religion.

Unfortunately the Census bureau does not provide figures on the share of Canberra school teachers who follow an Australian Aboriginal Traditional Religion. I am not sure that any do really. However if they really care that much about Aboriginal feelings, why don’t they get off their arses and go and teach Aboriginal kids in the NT or elsewhere in the outback? Of course if they did, they would never get away with lecturing the parents about not having crosses to remember the dead and pray for their salvation.

David Brewer

1 Sep 12 at 5:50 pm
To be nestled in the bosom of ones mother is second only to motorboating Christina Hendricks.

Infidel Tiger

1 Sep 12 at 5:59 pm
I liked the idea he expressed above – that atheists believe a Flying Spaghetti Nothing Monster miracled everything into existence.

That’s dishonest. You know full well that the flying spaghetti monster is an analogy. Atheists say that if you believe in any god imagined by man (such as your own cultural construct) you might as well believe in a bowl of spaghetti orbiting the stratosphere.

They have NO IDEA.

At least the good ones don’t make shit up instead, my pastafarian friend.

Abu Chowdah

1 Sep 12 at 6:02 pm
Muslim children at the school are able to wear headscarfs, but that is not seen as problematic.

If they are at a public school they are not Muslims. A true Muslim would not allow their daughters to be educated at all, nor their sons to be educated from any text other than the Koran. They are more likely to be people who like to think of themselves as Muslims.
Such people are usually reasonable at not as difficult about the Christian symbology as are true Muslims. It will be the nasty vindictive small-minded bureaucrats loving the opportunity to have a rule to oppress innocents.

WhaleHunt Fun

1 Sep 12 at 6:03 pm
Gab, love your posts generally but you must admit you and a few others lobbied to get that mediocrity on the blogroll and higher gives when it happened.

He/she isn’t funny and sometimes is so lunar right it reflects poorly on tge Cat.

Abu Chowdah

1 Sep 12 at 6:04 pm
I wasn’t sure if it was having a dig at Lizzie cos, aren’t her parents psychos too? It was a little too generalised a slur, IT.

…and Gab, she attacked me some posts back, I have advised not to dish out if she can’t take it.

coz

1 Sep 12 at 6:04 pm
High fived. Dammit

Abu Chowdah

1 Sep 12 at 6:06 pm
ya, i uh, ya.

coz

1 Sep 12 at 6:11 pm
IT, coz.
Funniest tat for tit I’ve seen in a while.

Rudiau

1 Sep 12 at 6:13 pm
Alan when you’ve finished jerking off to that Myer catalogue your bedpan needs emptying.

Infidel Tiger

1 Sep 12 at 6:16 pm
Whatever, Lizzie.

Atlantic article on the Romney tax plan (as far as it can be understood) ends on this note:

The upshot is this: Romney’s tax plan does not work under remotely plausible growth projections. It either increases middle class taxes or increases the deficit.

so increasing the deficit is bad if Romney does it, but no problem for Obama/Swan/Gillard/Rudd?

SfB is an integral part of the kenyans cheer squad

will

1 Sep 12 at 6:17 pm
Sfb -
Are you Germaine Greer? You sure do sound like her sometimes … vaginiavaginiavagina!

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 6:20 pm
Any way my spell checker says the correct way to spell Fascist is right wing wanker.

fascists are national socialists, as distinguished from international socialists.

now piss off

will

1 Sep 12 at 6:21 pm
spell Fascist is right wing wanker.

If the F is upper case then the R should be upper case and maybe the W and W so Right Wing Wanker ?

That is the problem with spellchecker, it does not pay attention to case.

WhaleHunt Fun

1 Sep 12 at 6:31 pm
That is one cute doggie IT although I personally prefer Boston Terriers.

Poor Old Rafe

1 Sep 12 at 6:36 pm
I just use italic if I’m quoting, Alan, it’s simpler. I forget how to do the quotes, and I think it’s easy to stuff up.

coz

1 Sep 12 at 6:37 pm
About the same number were killed in gang violence in Sydney this week than we lost in Afghanistan.

It is the quality, not the quantity that causes the concern for one but not the other. There is a seemingly endless supply of ethnic gun violence but it is confined to killing people who are at most, not missed. It is doubtless that each and every ganger banged would have gone on to continue criminal violence or even join Labor.
That is not true for most soldiers.

WhaleHunt Fun

1 Sep 12 at 6:41 pm
Alan, I think JC’s probably reporting to his parole officer if that’s who you’re looking for.

coz

1 Sep 12 at 6:47 pm
That’s dishonest. You know full well that the flying spaghetti monster is an analogy. Atheists say that if you believe in any god imagined by man (such as your own cultural construct) you might as well believe in a bowl of spaghetti orbiting the stratosphere.

Except that the god of philosophical theism is no more a cultural construct than the theory of relativity. If anything here is dishonest, it is the analogy of village atheists.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 6:54 pm
copy the original text (control+c)
click the b-quote button,
paste in the text (sometimes control+v)
click the /b-quote button

At least that works in windows on a pc with internet explorer.

WhaleHunt Fun

1 Sep 12 at 6:54 pm
Troops at Fort Bliss really enthused by Obama speech … oh wait

When the Commander-in-Chief has lost the respect of the Armed Forces, it time to go!

Nanuestalker

1 Sep 12 at 6:56 pm
It is the quality, not the quantity that causes the concern for one but not the other.

Yeah, bad analogy by me.

There’s a pic of one of the diggers on the front page of The West today. Makes you bloody mad losing good men to a pointless charade.

Infidel Tiger

1 Sep 12 at 7:00 pm
Looks like the troll HTML self-help group is off to a slow start. Just wait for the short bus to come along.

H B Bear

1 Sep 12 at 7:02 pm
Except that the god of philosophical theism is no more a cultural construct than the theory of relativity. If anything here is dishonest, it is the analogy of village atheists.

Are not all philosophical theories in some way partlycultural constructs? Relativity predicts the behaviour of rocks at high speed. Objects with no culture and with culture are acting the same. But I would have thought that philosophy and culture were interwoven, whereas Physics and culture are not much. Are you saying that philosophical theories are independent of culture? Cultures that place no value at all upon women would presumably have a different philosophy to those that do?

WhaleHunt Fun

1 Sep 12 at 7:03 pm
Some idiot:

Greenfilth and leftard totalitarium scum ,vermin and the Troll Army

Sorry, you don’t rate high enough to qualify as a troll, most vermin would sneer at you, scum would spurn you as too inferior to bother with too. As most totalitarians are either useful idiots or mindless followers, you may aspire to that status, though.

Mk50 of Brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 7:06 pm
Stupid comment I made. The Greek culture was utterly different to the west today but the philosophy they debveloped seems very applicable so, you are definitely right, philosophy is indeed separate to culture.

Whalehunt Fun

1 Sep 12 at 7:10 pm
internet explorer. Lol

H B Bear

1 Sep 12 at 7:15 pm
Robert Wargas:

Behold The Self-Hating White Person. “Since progressivism is largely a status game, in which people compete for social prestige by repeating a set of approved phrases and opinions to other status-seeking mandarins, it’s not surprising that some will go to sado-masochistic lengths to remain part of the alpha group. By now, the increasingly creepy tendency of using the word ‘white’ as a glib insult has become well established in left-wing commentary.”

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/149821/

C.L.

1 Sep 12 at 7:15 pm
Moving on to issues of substance, Bolt has an interesting post on the seismic shift in Aboriginal politics:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/no_comment28/

The ALP can no longer take the indigenous population for granted. This is very significant in electoral terms in places like the NT, WA and Qld.

What with their union heroes being photographed with Mick Gatto … how much lower can they go?

johanna

1 Sep 12 at 7:17 pm
Relativity predicts the behaviour of rocks at high speed.

Yes, and philosophical theism makes certain predictions given our experience, for instance, and the laws of thought.

whereas Physics and culture are not much.

Except that the sciences emerge within a particular tradition, and not in any others.

Are you saying that philosophical theories are independent of culture?

Their truth is.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 7:19 pm
What with their union heroes being photographed with Mick Gatto … how much lower can they go?

When you are prepared to throw a leg over Gillard or Roxon there is nowhere left.

H B Bear

1 Sep 12 at 7:27 pm
“the problem of infinite regress”

Two things. Firstly, why is it a problem? Secondly, how is positing a First Mover not a simple fudge? You are trying to use rules of logic derived from this universe to ‘prove’ the existence of something “categorically different to the universe”.

“the god of philosophical theism is no more a cultural construct than the theory of relativity”

As Whalehunt Fan has pointed out, this is completely false, but I can extend the critique. For instance, why monotheism rather than polytheism? There’s nothing in your ‘logic’ that necessitates just one unmoved mover. And we don’t have to stop there – pantheism and panentheism are equally valid in your framework, and undoubtedly more exotic alternatives.

And thanks to Abu for the obvious takedown of CL’s inanity, saves me the trouble.

Jarrah

1 Sep 12 at 7:38 pm
Life is slow when the groove is on…

Rabz

1 Sep 12 at 7:44 pm
When you are prepared to throw a leg over Gillard or Roxon there is nowhere left.

- H B Bear.

The Bear wins the internet for today.

Pedro the Ignorant

1 Sep 12 at 7:47 pm
Isn’t it funny how you shine…

Rabz

1 Sep 12 at 7:57 pm
Good win to the Swannies at Lathlain today, SDFC. Not a bad game, but spoiled by some mystifying umpiring decisions, including a disallowed goal to the Demons. Umps got a serve from both sets of supporters.

Oh well, there is always next year.

Pedro the Ignorant

1 Sep 12 at 8:25 pm
I’ve just come home from the office, sitting with a glass of wine and have to be boorrrrring and say I just loved old Clint Eastwood and his talk to the empty suit, he knew what he was doing. Oh and for those vagina exercises, its like class, you either have it or you dont. Have a lovely evening.

delfino

1 Sep 12 at 8:25 pm
I only saw the final score. Close one. Pretty critical game with second spot on the line. Perth’s always a danger game for us.

You guys need some consistency.

sdfc

1 Sep 12 at 8:28 pm
Two things. Firstly, why is it a problem?

Because it undermines the principle of causality.

Secondly, how is positing a First Mover not a simple fudge? You are trying to use rules of logic derived from this universe to ‘prove’ the existence of something “categorically different to the universe”.

No, what is used is something from our experience, the principle of causality, and the rules of logic to tease out its implications. That is exactly what cosmologists do. It’s not a fudge because the conclusion follows inexorably from both of the above. Either the conclusion errs in some way, or the principle of causality/ rules of logic err, or the is no error at all. Which ever is to be the answer requires an argument rather than blaster.

As Whalehunt Fan has pointed out, this is completely false, but I can extend the critique. For instance, why monotheism rather than polytheism? There’s nothing in your ‘logic’ that necessitates just one unmoved mover.

There is and this argument has been attended to by Aquinas, for instance, who spends about three hundred pages explicating the divine attributes philosophically, in Summa contra Gentiles. For the shorter answer on this specific question, try Summa Theologiae I. 11. 3 (First Part. Question 11. Article 3.) And, of course, Aristotle was drawn by the logic of his argument to deny polytheism and announce himself a monotheist. So this simple-minded view about philosophy and culture will not to do.

dover_beach

1 Sep 12 at 8:32 pm
“Let us all take a moment to give thanks to our wonderful mothers for the nourishment and love they provided us with.”

most mums do, IT. Hope your mum’s ok in good health and all, don’t mean to interfere or anythin, but what you say is very true.

candy

1 Sep 12 at 8:47 pm
“You’re a fuckhead.”

Agreed. A misogynistic grub.

Abu Chowdah

1 Sep 12 at 8:50 pm
“Because it undermines the principle of causality.”

So? Besides, in the effort to avoid a seeming impossibility, you are suggesting another impossibility but saying this one is fine because… actually I’m not sure why.

“what is used is something from our experience”

Exactly, something from and of this universe (I’m ignoring the challenges to “our experience” made by quantum physics). And now you’re trying to use that experience to suggest the existence of something utterly incompatible with that experience.

Jarrah

1 Sep 12 at 8:50 pm
My mum is travelling really well Candy. She takes a dim view on most of the things I love, but the Lord gives her strength to soldier on. Thanks so much for your kind words.

Infidel Tiger

1 Sep 12 at 8:50 pm
Oh dear things are a bit heated in here
The first comments I saw were Abus.

That Candy is a sweetie though!

Alice

1 Sep 12 at 8:55 pm
Not for the first time, there goes the neighbourhood. Someone who offers to poke Tom’s eye with a screwdriver and then suggests a gang bang with Lizzie challenges the authorities to ban him just because he’s a smart arse? I don’t think they work on weekends, but they sure give people enough leeway to show themselves in increasingly grotesque detail.
The Cat must be doing something right though, to drive leftists that far around the twist.

blogstrop

1 Sep 12 at 9:02 pm
Except that the god of philosophical theism is no more a cultural construct than the theory of relativity.

No one actually believes merely in philosophical theism though, certainly not Christians. In fact, many to most don’t believe in it at all. Most Protestants believe in a God with whom they have a personal relationship that can and does act outside natural laws, not something that is merely the cause of natural laws.

AJ

1 Sep 12 at 9:08 pm
What is the story here?
QE 3 foreshadowed by the Bernanke speech in the US – so I should be getting ready for a continuing strength of the $A .
But with Chinese economic growth slowing – really seems to be being reported as an inventory run down and credit tightening – but Australia’s main export commodity prices are declining as a result?
Which weakening is more significant? We have moved into a world of competing declines?

murph the surf.

1 Sep 12 at 9:15 pm
Blogstrop:

The Cat must be doing something right though, to drive leftists that far around the twist.

Well yes, but with such inferior, low quality leftists it is rather easy. They are already barking made, so getting them to start baying at the moon is fairly simple.

Mk50 of Brisbane

1 Sep 12 at 9:19 pm
Well yes, but with such inferior, low quality leftists it is rather easy. They are already barking made, so getting them to start baying at the moon is fairly simple.

You have hit the nail on the head Mk. No wonder the leftist lunatics are so active of late, September 1st is a full moon. I’m sure after Alan, Sfb, Febro have finished licking their balls and sniffing each other collective rear ends, they will be back for a few more howls .

Splatacrobat

1 Sep 12 at 9:41 pm
Can we stop getting libertarians coming on here and lauding americans as lovers of liberty?

America is the home of everything that is wrong in modern bourgeoise life. They have more censors and left wing pudndae than anywhere.

Political correctness, environmentalism and all manner of left-wing shite has come from the US.

Mark Steyn captures the whole thingg well in two wonderful articles that show that the US government is far more socialistic than the Europeans.

Street sign statism

Rococo Liberal

1 Sep 12 at 10:22 pm
No RL, the most fascist society on earth is your beloved Britain.

We made a huge mistake joining their side in WW2 in retrospect and an even bigger one in allowing immigration from that half flushed toilet.

Infidel Tiger

1 Sep 12 at 10:29 pm
What’s next in the evolutionary process?

Realising that your socio-political worldview is wrong.

dd

1 Sep 12 at 10:42 pm
Fat chance Daddy

Tal

1 Sep 12 at 10:44 pm
Well, he asked.
I could have also pointed out that if he really did have a “hatred of the neuveaux intelligencia” he should be hating on social planning, paternalism, anti-Americanism, and greenism. Because they’re the values of the intelligentsia. Not catallaxy.

dd

1 Sep 12 at 10:47 pm
What’s next in the evolutionary process?

For you? Mating with someone who doesn’t celebrate father’s day with the same father.

Infidel Tiger

1 Sep 12 at 10:50 pm
Army announces deaths of…
It was on the Army fb page.

kae

1 Sep 12 at 10:54 pm
neuveaux intelligencia

hahahahaha!

apart from it being illiterate, the borrowing from different languages is hilarious. Must be another FB reject.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 11:03 pm
Allan has outlasted his welcome.

Sinclair Davidson

1 Sep 12 at 11:13 pm
Nicely done, DoomLord.

kae

1 Sep 12 at 11:20 pm
Would someone put that wretched animal outside, she’s been spraying around here again? Stinks the place out. I guess she knew I was going out and seized the opportunity to regress in her litter training again. Sad really. She could be quite a good Cat if she tried harder and concentrated on improving her musical tastes and her continence.

As for Alan, told you he was sleazy as. Quod erat demonstrandum. What a no hoper with a cesspit where his brain should be. Please ignore him for me.

Had a great night out with da girls. Everyone looking hot, all of us are dancers so we’re taut and terrific where it counts (for those wondering, given the disgusting tenre of the above trolling); lots of fun and heaps of noise.

Wish I could turn thirty again. But Da Hairy Ape says I am still doing very fine. Bless him, if he saw some of the above Alan would definitely be stepping outside for some education in good manners and given some quick and early assistance with undoubtedly painful reconstructive dentistry.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

1 Sep 12 at 11:28 pm
Is it a cat or a lion?

coz

1 Sep 12 at 11:40 pm
“China’s push into solar energy was supposed to be a proud example of how the country was advancing into hi-tech manufacturing. But now the whole sector is on the brink of bankruptcy.”

How surprising.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 11:44 pm
Weird home remedies from 100 years ago.

For asthma: “inhale chloroform.” Assuming chloroform isn’t readily available, other options include smoking saltpeter, the smoke of burning coffee, or cigarettes containing thornapple.

Gab

1 Sep 12 at 11:49 pm
So?

It’s amazing that people are prepared to jettison a presupposition of science in order to pretend that the argument of motion has no legs.

Besides, in the effort to avoid a seeming impossibility, you are suggesting another impossibility but saying this one is fine because… actually I’m not sure why.

No, I’m not. If you actually read the argument and the commentary surrounding it you would find that it does not suggest an “impossibility” precisely because the Unmoved Mover has to be categorically unlikely other causes/effects, namely Pure Actuality, in the chain of causation given the principle of causality and the laws of thought. But, no, for some reason you prefer to remain ignorant of these reasons rather than read the literature.

Exactly, something from and of this universe (I’m ignoring the challenges to “our experience” made by quantum physics). And now you’re trying to use that experience to suggest the existence of something utterly incompatible with that experience.

No, given that it neither contradicts the principle of causality, at least in its derivation as, whatever is moved is moved by another, nor the laws of thought, it is entirely compatible with our experience. What is incompatible with our experience is the claim that the universe can arise out of nothing.

No one actually believes merely in philosophical theism though, certainly not Christians. In fact, many to most don’t believe in it at all. Most Protestants believe in a God with whom they have a personal relationship that can and does act outside natural laws, not something that is merely the cause of natural laws.

Is this a concession to philosophical theism? But on your main point, sorry, no. Philosophical theism is entirely compatible with both the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant religious traditions.

dover_beach

2 Sep 12 at 12:31 am
Potemkin’s Village

Mirror, mirror… here

Grigory Potemkin

2 Sep 12 at 12:38 am
That’s dishonest. You know full well that the flying spaghetti monster is an analogy. Atheists say that if you believe in any god imagined by man (such as your own cultural construct) you might as well believe in a bowl of spaghetti orbiting the stratosphere.

It’s not dishonest because I have no knowledge or interest in the hackneyed phraseologies of atheists, origins of same etc. Atheists have no evidence that God hasn’t been revealed to man, both in history and in the lived present. Similarly, they have no evidence to support their ‘scientific’ Flying Spaghetti Nothing Monster – who miracled nothing into dinosaurs and mountain ranges.

We learned in the twentieth century not to take atheists seriously – especially as regards slogans and ‘analogies.’ They had a century to try to best theism as an undergirding and actuating principle of life ad morality. The result was the worst mass murder – and the most egregious irrationalities – in human history.

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 12:56 am
Looming embarrassment for Obama:

US Debt Expected to Top $16 Trillion During DNC Convention.

The worst fiscal bum in history.

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 12:57 am
“It’s amazing that people are prepared to jettison a presupposition of science in order to pretend that the argument of motion has no legs.”

You shift between scientific and metaphysical principles with gay abandon, and without appreciating that you are doing so. I’ve already said as much twice before in this thread alone, but you don’t seem to realise what you are doing. It also offends me to have you bring science into a discussion about gods, but I guess that’s by the by.

To be fair, rather than “so?”, my question should have been “how so?”. Infinity, as a concept, does not violate causality, it extends it forever. That goes against our human experience, but there’s no way to tell if that isn’t the way things are.

CL had a stupid parody of atheism, that nothing leads to something. Ironically this is, in fact, what a god theory does – simply replace ‘nothing’ with ‘god’. It’s a non-answer, and non-scientific.

“it does not suggest an “impossibility” precisely because the Unmoved Mover has to be categorically unlikely other causes/effects”

So cause/effect is this unbreakable law of the universe, therefore there has to be an entity that surpasses them? Don’t you realise how ridiculous this sounds?

“What is incompatible with our experience is the claim that the universe can arise out of nothing.”

Why privilege our experience? Seriously, why should limited mammalian brains perceiving the universe at a macro level and only capable of directly experiencing classical physics be the yardstick of reality?

Jarrah

2 Sep 12 at 1:03 am
“The worst fiscal bum in history.”

The actual components of the US debt.

Now who’s the fiscal bum?

Jarrah

2 Sep 12 at 1:06 am
“Atheists have no evidence that God hasn’t been revealed to man, both in history and in the lived present.”

LOL

We also have no evidence that you aren’t the 12th Imam, or that Graeme Bird is a Martian sent to warn us of the coming brutal and pulverising ice age.

Nice logic, fella.

Jarrah

2 Sep 12 at 1:11 am
dd, it looks like Potemkim is having a not-so-subtle dig at you.

Jarrah

2 Sep 12 at 1:12 am
We Christians built the greatest civilisation in the planet’s history.

Meanwhile…

National Atheist Party Cancels Convention Due To Lack Of Funding.

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 1:15 am
Jarrah -

Seriously, you link CBPP (a leftwing thinktank) graph to make a point. This is the same organisation that said Obama’s “Economic Stimulus” Recovery Act 2009 worked. I’m the first person to say that I know probably the least about economics on this blog but I call “bullshit” on your implied assertion that its Bush’s tax cuts that caused the public debt to spiral out of control in the US. For starters the graph’s projections are based on current policies.

Let me put it this way Jarrah, you’re so fucking stupid you make me look economically literate.
(in case you don’t know anyone on this blog will tell you how shameful that should be for you)

Nanuestalker

2 Sep 12 at 2:10 am
LOL.

There really is nothing funnier than watching the same people who used to criticise Bush from the conservative right on debts and deficits – insincerely – suddenly become silent on the world-historical wreckage caused by Obama.

Next week, smack bang in the middle of the DNC convention, he will become the $16 trillion president. No graphs concocted by left-wing ‘think tanks’ can de-pong this malodorous carcass hanging around Obama’s neck.

Simply the worst economics president and biggest fiscal deadbeat in US history.

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 3:08 am
#lolbolt

Note how unsubtly The Age wove this in with Julia Gillard’s red herring about Larry Pickering and the Labor’s fraudulent attack on Tony Abbott’s alleged sexism.

The few undergraduates left at the paper are turning it into a university student paper in their frantic efforts to tear Abbott down.

CORRECTION: The copy was written by AAP. Apologies to The Age.

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

LaRouchite

2 Sep 12 at 3:14 am
Climate change deniers ‘are either extreme free marketeers or conspiracy theorists’

The study, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, also found that those who reject the scientific consensus on the human contribution to climate change are more likely to to reject other scientific findings such as the linkage between tobacco and lung cancer or between HIV and Aids.

The paper, titled “NASA faked the moon landing – Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science”, was based on a survey of more than 1000 visitors to blogs dedicated to discussion of climate change.

“We find that endorsement of a laissez-faire conception of free-market economics predicts rejection of climate science,” the paper says. “We additionally show that endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the CIA killed Martin Luther King or that NASA faked the moon landing) predicts rejection of climate science as well as the rejection of other scientific findings.”

The paper says that a staunch belief in free markets was an overwhelmingly strong factor in the rejection of climate science and was a stronger factor than conspiratorial thinking.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9503044/Climate-change-deniers-are-either-extreme-free-marketeers-or-conspiracy-theorists.html

LaRouchite

2 Sep 12 at 3:20 am
#lolbolt

CORRECTION: The copy was written by AAP. Apologies to The Age.

#lolPPboyz

A Crikey writer mistakenly criticises News.com.au for a piece that turns out to be from AAP. Alerted to the error, he subsequently posts … 426 words of desperate evasion and subject dodging, followed by 74 words, then 175 words, an additional 174 words, another 32 words, and a further 102 words, all without once using the word “correction”.

Say, whatever happened to the PP Boyz anyway? You used to take great delight in linking to their “PWN”-ings of Bolt over his TV show ratings.

What’s that?

Their own rating were so in the toilet that they lost their blog and were all given the boot?

Oh, bless.

Never mind.

sdog

2 Sep 12 at 3:24 am
Stefan Lewandrowsy is the author. Hehehehehehe

Sinclair Davidson

2 Sep 12 at 4:16 am
Just looked at the paper – it does not name and blogs. The study suffers from selection bias at the very least.

Sinclair Davidson

2 Sep 12 at 4:38 am
It’s not dishonest because I have no knowledge or interest in the hackneyed phraseologies of atheists, origins of same etc. Atheists have no evidence that God hasn’t been revealed to man, both in history and in the lived present. Similarly, they have no evidence to support their ‘scientific’ Flying Spaghetti Nothing Monster – who miracled nothing into dinosaurs and mountain ranges.

You’re still being duplicitous. This is a straw man. The atheist who used that analogy was pointing out the nonsensical nature of your beliefs, founded as they are on no rational evidence. You might as well believe in the flying spaghetti monster because it’s just as irrational as your own myths. But atheists don’t believe in it, and to say they do is very naughty of you. You may fool the unschooled, and perhaps that is all you aspire to in this regard.

I enjoy the way you smash leftist morons with apposite links and concrete facts, so this is your Achilles heel, where your usual m.o. is jettisoned for weak bait and switches, and pompous House of Lords style rulings.

I hate having to do this.

Abu Chowdah

2 Sep 12 at 4:45 am
Having sacked the editor (Paul Ramadge) who sacked Catherine Deveny in 2010, the unfunny leftwing troll has been given back her Fairfax megaphone, presumably to celebrate the company’s impending collapse.

Tom

2 Sep 12 at 7:29 am
Tim Blair posts this:

“Stand-out line from the Republican National Convention, delivered by ex-Democrat New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez:

“My dad made sure I could take care of myself. I carried a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum.””

I’ve always wondered about the portability of politicians between opposing political parties – so easy to be Democrat one day, and GOP another.

This suggests the two parties in the US are superficially different but fundamentally identical.

This is a problem, no ?

Louis Hissink

2 Sep 12 at 7:45 am
With regards to the stephandrowsy paper, Jo Nova has being doing a roll-call of ‘skeptical’ sites to see who participated. So for nobody has been found. It would seem that the respondents to the survey are all those who are decidedly not skeptical of agw religion.

In other words, they asked members of the agw religion to fantasise about how bizarre the infidels are, and the results were rather predictable.

How such trash made it into an actual newspaper I will never know.

brc

2 Sep 12 at 8:07 am
Even though they supported it, the Libs were right to warn that Gillard’s latest “solution” to illegal immigration wasn’t a solution at all without temporary protection visas, etc. The boats keep coming, illegals keep dying, Manus and Nauru are almost full before they open. Scott Morrison: “When it comes to implementing strong border protection policies, Julia Gillard’s heart is just not in it and the people smugglers know it.” More important for her to be seen to be doing something, so Albanese and Clare are being sent to Jakarta for “talks” on “co-operation”.

Tom

2 Sep 12 at 8:19 am
Fairfax infidel Jessica Irvine has opened her account at News Limited’s Daily Telegraph with a hard-hitting exposé:

SOCKS, jocks and hideous ties. When it comes to choosing a gift for Father’s Day, economists have some simple advice: think carefully.

Tom

2 Sep 12 at 8:25 am
This suggests the two parties in the US are superficially different but fundamentally identical.

This is a problem, no ?

No. This is a myth.

The reason some politicians are portable across the political divide is that, first, those politicians are usually centrist, or seen as more pragmatic than ideological (and thus apolitical in a sense). Second, not all politics is ideological nor is it all concerned with big-picture policy. A popular local identity might be trusted to run the local government well as mayor regardless of which party they join.

This doesn’t mean that the parties are identical; they’re certainly not. In the US Obamacare alone is a substantial difference.

One reason that this myth might have arisen is that both parties, historically, have been pro-US in foreign policy; an obvious and inescapable similarity but in many parts of the world “pro-US” translates to “right wing.”

dd

2 Sep 12 at 8:42 am
This suggests the two parties in the US are superficially different but fundamentally identical.

Not exactly.

One big difference I do notice between politicians in Australia and in the States though is that politicians in the States very much represent the people they report to – their constituents. Whereas politicians in Australia seem to report to – and represent – The Party(TM).

That means that the Democrats and the GOP are much more “big tent” than Labor & Libs are in Oz. The Party(TM) can decide on whatever platform they want, but only in Australia do politicians seem to feel that following The Party(TM) line is more important than representing the feelings, beliefs and wishes of their particular constituency.

It’s an everyday occurrence for American politicians to express opinions against or even vote against The Party(TM) platform (what is known in Australia as “crossing the floor” and is a pretty Big F**king Deal, especially in the ALP). For instance, there was much made (especially in Australia & Europe) of the fact that for the third time running, the “official” Republican committee line was that they were against all abortion under any circumstances, yet a large number of Republicans (even the Presidential nominee) are happy to go on the record as stating that they aren’t on board with that.

Likewise with gun control, in the South we have a lot of Dems who are pro-rights. In Florida, Senate Democrats voted unanimously in favor of the much-maligned “Stand Your Ground” laws. In fact of the 15 states which have similar laws, more than half of them had Democrat Governors when the laws were enacted. Or, the fact that five Democrats in the House voted to repeal Obamacare. They know it’s their constituents who they’ll face at election time, not The Party(TM), so they know whose opinions they have to give more weight to.

Witness how seriously US politicians take Town Hall meetings. A Dem who fronted a townhall in a deeply conservative state promising to ban guns, stop capital punishment and allow abortion-on-demand up to the moment of birth would be as likely to get run out of town on a rail as a Republican who fronted a townhall in a deeply liberal state promising liberal gun laws & stand your ground legislation; tight restrictions on abortions and Texas levels of executions.

So it’s not so much that the two parties are “fundamentally identical,” but that the Party matters less than the electorate.

This is a problem, no ?

Why would it be? Would you rather have your local member represent his Party’s wishes, or your community’s?

anyway, sorry for the length. Keep in mind this is my opinion only – ask 10 Americans and you may well end up with 12 different opinions

sdog

2 Sep 12 at 8:44 am
(Sorry, DD – didn’t see your comment)

sdog

2 Sep 12 at 8:47 am
No worries, sdog, you added a lot more detail than I did. It was quite an interesting comment.

dd

2 Sep 12 at 9:00 am
So politics in the US is more individualistic than in Australia where political tribalism is paramount, a them and us mentality inherited from our English roots.

Louis Hissink

2 Sep 12 at 9:01 am
Louis, we really only got a them and us mentality after the ALP emerged in the early 20th century. Before that, politics was a lot more fluid and the parties were less rigid entities than they are now.

Quentin George

2 Sep 12 at 9:19 am
Just turned Insiders off. Hearing the feral whining of The Greenfilth Tubbsy Milne was just too much. If anyone deserves to be left in the Trans-Antartics dressed in their jocks it’s that evil killer.

Mk50 of Brisbane

2 Sep 12 at 9:22 am
Tubby Milne on Insiders is being given carte blanche to defend the Guevara-Gillard government’s out-of-control spending, the boat people disaster and tying the Australian economy to the European Titanic. I believe she is describing an alternate universe.

Tom

2 Sep 12 at 9:22 am
Snap!

Mk50 of Brisbane

2 Sep 12 at 9:23 am
On boat people, Tubbsy says: “Deterrence doesn’t work”. Fuck. Me. Dead. How the fuck did this irresponsible hippie ever cheat her way into power? Never again.

Tom

2 Sep 12 at 9:25 am
Atheists have no evidence that God hasn’t been revealed to man, both in history and in the lived present

If you can’t see the logical flaw in that statement then I’m not surprised you don’t “get” atheism.

Quentin George

2 Sep 12 at 9:26 am
Louis, I’m not up on history enough to be able to say why each system evolved the way it did. I can talk about how they’re different, from my own experience, but will leave theories as to the why to the smarter kids.

sdog

2 Sep 12 at 9:36 am
Tom, turn off the teev, luv, it’s not doing your health any good watching that viperous harridan.

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 9:36 am
Barrie has a truly horrid jacket on.

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 9:40 am
dd, it looks like Potemkim is having a not-so-subtle dig at you.

Jarrah, if it was aimed at me I didn’t get it.

___________________

The insiders interview was a total free kick for Milne. Also Dennis Atkins quoted approvingly (and it passed without comment) some blowhard declaration from the “Williams foundation,” (apparently made up of retired military officers) criticising the Western model of ‘predominantly white, predominantly Christian armies’ invading other countries that they don’t like and oppressing them. Isn’t that a simplistic and ridiculous caricature? Is that a helpful way of analysing either Afghanistan or Iraq?

dd

2 Sep 12 at 9:41 am
Is that a helpful way of analysing either Afghanistan or Iraq?

Well, no, but it does give a free kick at the terrible Christians, [so in vogue to do that these days] so there’s that.

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 9:44 am
Just about time for the Bolt Report. Lomborg is a star!

The treatment that his book on the state of the environment (improving) got from the mainstream science media a few years ago was an early sign of the extent of the corruption of science.

Rafe

2 Sep 12 at 9:53 am
The farcical Lewandowsky paper about how CAGW sceptics are loony conspiracy theorists has been forensically dissected on Bishop Hill, over a few posts. Jo Nova, Lucia, Anthony Watts and other well known bloggers have commented there or on their own sites, saying that they had no part in this ‘survey’. The questionnaire, the ‘analysis’ method and the comments of participants have been pulverised.

Apparently, part of the cunning plan was to post the questionnaire on rabid warmist catastrophe sites like DeSmogblog, Peter Gleick’s best buddies.

Lewandowsky is a charlatan. This crap would get an F at a first year TAFE course on how to conduct a survey. That he is on a comfy taxpayer funded sinecure is galling, to put it mildly.

Latest link from Bishop Hill here

johanna

2 Sep 12 at 9:59 am
The Lewandowsky paper is rather silly. There is enough substantial evidence to show that skeptics are wrong, no need to prove they’re crazy.

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 10:10 am
The Bunyip is a long-time Lewandowsky fan.

sdog

2 Sep 12 at 10:12 am
There is enough substantial evidence to show that skeptics are wrong

Please provide a summary with references, or links back to where you might have previously done this.

Biota

2 Sep 12 at 10:13 am
Bush: $5 trillion in 8 years
Obama: $4 trillion in less than 4 years.

Says it all really.

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 10:26 am
Please provide a summary with references, or links back to where you might have previously done this.

The Internet.

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 10:30 am
Thanks, sdog, for that handy compendium of Lewandowsky Lavatoria. Here’s hoping the Bunyip emerges from his cave sometime soon.

johanna

2 Sep 12 at 10:37 am
oops..

Bush: $5 trillion in 8 years
Obama: ~~$4 trillion~~ $6 trillion in less than 4 years.

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 10:54 am
The Internet

I didn’t think so!

Biota

2 Sep 12 at 11:08 am
One for CL and d-b: Cardinal Martini dies aged 85, known to be critical of Church approach to contraception, divorce, and child sex scandals.

All of those things for which, when I raise them, makes me “not a Catholic”. (Or in d-b’s case, the arguments against the Church’s teaching on contraception are seemingly deemed completely unconvincing. Funny how a Cardinal, and heaps of priests, beg to differ.)

steve from brisbane

2 Sep 12 at 11:39 am
The Lewandowsky paper is rather silly. There is enough substantial evidence to show that skeptics are wrong, no need to prove they’re crazy.

AGW as a politcal issued outside the realms of wee little Australia is dead and has been dead since 2009 – even inside Australia it’s been dead since 2009 except for an anomolous political moment requiring shills like you to pretend you still care about it to support your sham government.

It’s the provincial little Australian left who with total lack of self awareness keep giving it oxygen when it doesn’t even make page 20 of global news anymore. And it only keeps getting oxygen because of the current government and the wealth redistributing – nothing to do with “Climate Change” – “Carbon Tax”. Implemented on the back of multiple betrayals and because of a one in one hundred year series of events.

If Gillard had simply not have implemented the “Carbon Tax” as she solemnly swore to do, we would not be hearing about “Climate Change” anymore except from the religious nuts like SfB (she’s also proably not be leading the ALP to annihilation shortly but that’s another matter).

It’s only the Australian left who are genuinely “crazy”, cynically suspending reality and still talking about AGW as though anybody outside of this continent gives even the slightest shit about it anymore let alone has any interest in actually doing something about it.

twostix

2 Sep 12 at 11:41 am
And for those interested in Jon Stewart’s take on the convention, you can watch 5 minutes of it via LGF. Pretty amusing.

steve from brisbane

2 Sep 12 at 11:50 am
twostix, you are deluded and insular and live in an echo chamber, but don’t know it.

steve from brisbane

2 Sep 12 at 11:52 am
via LGF.

Lol

Posted Stepford the conservative Catholic.

You’re really a piece of shit, Stepford.

JC

2 Sep 12 at 11:53 am
JC obviously believes you can catch cooties by visiting a blog to watch a video.

steve from brisbane

2 Sep 12 at 11:56 am
Bush: $5 trillion in 8 years
Obama: $4 trillion $6 trillion in less than 4 years.

I haven’t looked upthread. Is there some fucking moron actually suggesting the debt accumulation is even comparable between Bush and the Kenyan? Say it ain’t so.

JC

2 Sep 12 at 11:57 am
It is hard to tell whether rubbish like Lewandowsky’s ‘survey’ is a sign of delusion or desperation. Either way, it’s not a good look.

PS – how much longer are we going to have to type in our details for each post? Is this a glitch or a feature?

johanna

2 Sep 12 at 11:58 am
Stepford,

The LGF blogger is a whacko job. Trust you to read the loon.

JC

2 Sep 12 at 11:58 am
Say it ain’t so.

in a word, jarrah.

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 12:02 pm
S>F>B, you are deluded and insular and live in an echo chamber, but don’t know it.

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 12:03 pm
Sadly, Colbert’s “interview with Clint Eastwood’s chair” isn’t so hot, given that it was the greatest comedy gift since Herman Cain.

steve from brisbane

2 Sep 12 at 12:03 pm
Gab, it’s certainly not an echo chamber for me here. I have egg shell cartons lining my own blog, so I get no echo there either.

steve from brisbane

2 Sep 12 at 12:04 pm
SFB, still has no opinions of his own. News at 11.

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 12:04 pm
Steve, why aren’t you with your kids celebrating Father’s Day?

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 12:05 pm
Guess who?

People that I know say that the US Republicans are extreme and mad and not to be compared with our own conservatives, the LNP coalition. I would urge caution in adopting that line, our version(s) are equally capable of deranged nuttiness.

It’s unfortunate that the melting of the actic ice is being viewed only as another opportunity to both push the boundaries and create more sporting heroes. When interviewed multiple circumnavigator sailor/adventurer/philosopher Henk de Velde thought that climate change and sea rise wasn’t happening – I guess that from his perspective seas only rise when your boat sinks.

Yep, it’s Wodge. Lol. Forgive him, as he only finished 9th grade.

Look at him go … as a leftie. At one time this dickhead was Jennifer Marohasy’s biggest fan.

JC

2 Sep 12 at 12:06 pm
Ol’ Leatherface would have gone to work today with a mongrel – Tubbsy Milne and La Tingle.

Mrs Leatherface better watch out tonight.

H B Bear

2 Sep 12 at 12:07 pm
Andrew Klavan: The Bin Laden Effect: How Nancy Pelosi and Stephen Colbert Learned to Love Seal Team Six

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avg1RQIil2k

LOL.

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 12:13 pm
I watched the end bit of Ol’ Leatherface’s shitty show. He sounds like he may even be Stepford’s sock puppet as used Colbert’s segment on Eastwood to make fun of the GOP.

I’m betting that’s the only thing fuckface reported on about the GOP convention.

Why to go Bawie. Keep earning those taxpayer dollars the hard way.

Any leftwing idiot thinking the world is “overpopped”. You only have to look at Ol’ Leatherface’s show to begin a culling.

JC

2 Sep 12 at 12:13 pm
Ol’ Leatherface would have gone to work today with a mongrel – Tubbsy Milne and La Tingle.

Really? He had Tubbsie on? Did she talk about the new technologies?

JC

2 Sep 12 at 12:15 pm
CL
Do you know if Botox Pelosi is talking at their Convention. Between her and Joe Bungle it ought to be a screamer of a meet.

JC

2 Sep 12 at 12:17 pm
Sadly, Colbert’s “interview with Clint Eastwood’s chair” isn’t so hot, given that it was the greatest comedy gift since Herman Cain.

As usual liar even when not lying is still wrong.

Along with Ryan’s I think Eastwood’s was the most effective speech of the conference.

Even if not Churchillian in speechifying terms.

It was political genius on both Romney’s and
Eastwood’s part.

He’s a great actor and director over 50 years, directing 8 films in the last 5 years.

He came out with his hair ruffled and spoke to a chair ffs.

Mark Steyn

JamesK

2 Sep 12 at 12:21 pm
They could cut Insiders down to 30 minutes as they spend most of their time agreeing with each other. Take out the toons, selective leftists views of file footage and the ~~indepth~~ out of depth interviews with more left wing views than a book reading of Das Kapital and you are left with this .

Actually 10 minutes would be more than enough and used as a fill in before the test pattern.

Splatacrobat

2 Sep 12 at 12:22 pm
Dennis Atkins reminds me of an old brown cardigan left in the corner of the room after a party. Pretty annoying. But every time you remember its there, you can be bothered getting up to throw it out.

H B Bear

2 Sep 12 at 12:22 pm
Pelosi seems to be drunk most of the time.

I hope she’s speaking at the convention.

*Hick*

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 12:24 pm
Botox Pelosi

If Nancy just used botox her face would be around her ankles JC.

She’s had extensive plastic surgery to her face including at one full face lift (probably more) which is now overly tight.

JamesK

2 Sep 12 at 12:24 pm
This great actor nailed the Democrats long before Eastwood.

Splatacrobat

2 Sep 12 at 12:28 pm
Nicely spotted Tom (@8.25am). Good to see Jessica hasn’t abandoned her oeuvre like she did her employer.

Once again a big thanks to the Newscorp HR department for this inspired piece of poaching.

H B Bear

2 Sep 12 at 12:30 pm
Jarrah:
You shift between scientific and metaphysical principles with gay abandon, and without appreciating that you are doing so. I’ve already said as much twice before in this thread alone, but you don’t seem to realise what you are doing.

No, no. No switching back and forth here. The principle of causality is a metaphysical principle which is also a presupposition of science. In fact, it’s hard to think what distinction you think you are drawing here.

To be fair, rather than “so?”, my question should have been “how so?”. Infinity, as a concept, does not violate causality, it extends it forever. That goes against our human experience, but there’s no way to tell if that isn’t the way things are.

Well, yes, that is why Aquinas (and Aristotle too) never put this argument forward as an explanation of the beginning of the universe (an accidentally order series) but as an explanation of what must sustain the universe here and now (an essentially ordered series) The former is not confounded by an infinite series but the latter is because the series here is dependent for its power on the first member whereas in the other they are not. But, again, you might have learned this if only you had done some reading.

CL had a stupid parody of atheism, that nothing leads to something. Ironically this is, in fact, what a god theory does – simply replace ‘nothing’ with ‘god’. It’s a non-answer, and non-scientific.

No, it was a brilliant parody. Cut to the bone. And no, a ‘god theory’ is not a non-answer, it is derived from experience and the laws of thought. Yes, it is non-scientific, but so is the principle of causation, and since neither purported to be scientific, the point is otiose.

So cause/effect is this unbreakable law of the universe, therefore there has to be an entity that surpasses them? Don’t you realise how ridiculous this sounds?

It would only be ridiculous if I were a pantheist, but since I’ve argued that the Unmoved mover must be distinct from this universe, the law remains unbroken.

Why privilege our experience? Seriously, why should limited mammalian brains perceiving the universe at a macro level and only capable of directly experiencing classical physics be the yardstick of reality?

You’ve just undermined the capacity of science to illicit truths through the use of our senses. Well done. Scratch a materialist and you uncover a post-modern theorist. BTW, I haven’t privileged our experience, I have just concluded they are trust-worthy when disciplined by reason.

Abu:
You’re still being duplicitous. This is a straw man.

The flying spag monster is indeed a ‘straw man’.

The atheist who used that analogy was pointing out the nonsensical nature of your beliefs, founded as they are on no rational evidence. You might as well believe in the flying spaghetti monster because it’s just as irrational as your own myths. But atheists don’t believe in it, and to say they do is very naughty of you. You may fool the unschooled, and perhaps that is all you aspire to in this regard.

No, all the atheist was doing was signalling to all and sundry his ignorance of the matter to the schooled and receiving high-fives from the unschooled. We do have rational evidence for the existence of God; it involves, as argued above, the principle of causality and the laws of thought. Rational principles leading to rational conclusions. What atheists believe is that something can be derived from nothing. But, of course, we see that they have to define nothing as something, like a quantum energy field, or some such, and such duplicitousness has been lampooned even in the NYT.

Apologies for the length of this reply.

dover_beach

2 Sep 12 at 12:49 pm
“you link CBPP (a leftwing thinktank) graph to make a point.”

A graph made with CBO numbers.

It’s quite amazing that every time simple facts are mentioned, the old ad hominem gets dragged out that it matters who’s mentioning the facts. Regular as clockwork.

“I call “bullshit” on your implied assertion that its Bush’s tax cuts that caused the public debt to spiral out of control in the US”

To be clear, it’s a cause, not the cause. But why do you call bullshit? Do you have any actual reason for suspecting the plain numbers? And what else did you think would happen with tax cuts without spending cuts?

“Jarrah, if it was aimed at me I didn’t get it.”

My apologies, it was Fleeced it was aimed at.

Jarrah

2 Sep 12 at 1:05 pm
Lightbulb moment for a befuddled old man.

Just what you need for the 21st century – self-selecting, economic migrants abandoning various 12th century religious basket cases.

H B Bear

2 Sep 12 at 1:05 pm
And what else did you think would happen with tax cuts without spending cuts?

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/08/30/wapos-ezra-klein-pulls-out-tired-bush-tax-cuts-cost-us-trillions-graph

Ivan Denisovich

2 Sep 12 at 1:18 pm
For model enthusiasts.

A remarkable engineering rendition of a working airport:

Even has sound effects and take-offs and landings!

Outstanding!

JamesK

2 Sep 12 at 1:21 pm
To summarise, dover, you believe that because cause/effect accords with our intuition, there must be a first cause that itself transcends and is independent of cause/effect. A feat of mental gymnastics, but hardly ‘rational evidence’.

And you’re even managing to misunderstand the FSM parody – it lampoons belief in a particular kind of god, or a particular religion. All religions have an equal claim to be right, because they all explicitly eschew evidence in favour of faith. To believe in a particular religion is to forego rational thought. Which is fine when it’s about emotional attachment and cultural context. The problem is when believers start forcefully insisting that theirs is the one true path (backed with ‘evidence’) and other religions are ‘wrong’. Religious wars are nasty. Muslim extremists are waging one right now, but thankfully their numbers are low.

Jarrah

2 Sep 12 at 1:32 pm
One for CL and d-b: Cardinal Martini dies aged 85, known to be critical of Church approach to contraception, divorce, and child sex scandals.

All of those things for which, when I raise them, makes me “not a Catholic”. (Or in d-b’s case, the arguments against the Church’s teaching on contraception are seemingly deemed completely unconvincing. Funny how a Cardinal, and heaps of priests, beg to differ.)

I was at St Francis for the service this morning (yes, yes I know), and the priest was rather shaken about Martini’s death. But not stirred.

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 1:40 pm
Funny how a Cardinal, and heaps of priests, beg to differ…

You mean, like Cardinal Pell and ‘climate change’?

Cardinal Martini never called for Humanae vitae to be overturned as our resident pro-abortion ‘Catholic’, Steve, would have you believe.

Nor did Martini ever support killing children – as Steve’s beloved Obama and Gillard do.

Funny, huh?

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 1:51 pm
I was at St Francis for the service this morning (yes, yes I know),

What?

Did you also confess all of your lies and bullshit you post at the Cat?

JC

2 Sep 12 at 2:00 pm
and the priest was rather shaken about Martini’s death. But not stirred.

WTF does that mean Monst?

JC

2 Sep 12 at 2:01 pm
To be clear, it’s a cause, not the cause. But why do you call bullshit? Do you have any actual reason for suspecting the plain numbers? And what else did you think would happen with tax cuts without spending cuts?

It’s a lie, Jarrah.

It’s a “have you stopped beating your wife yet” moment. The numbers are BS. It assumes spending is strictly endogenous and revenues are strictly exogenous.

…and no monty, AGW scepticism isn’t silly. Believing in AGW is silly, given the idea that the atmosphere can lock in more energy due to CO2 than it emits has been falsified recently.

.

2 Sep 12 at 2:01 pm
It’s about the 5000th time somebody has made the obvious James Bond joke re Cardinal Martini, JC.

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 2:02 pm
RASMUSSEN: ROMNEY 47% OBAMA 44%…

GALLUP: ROMNEY 47% OBAMA 46%…

Pundits keep saying how the GOP convention was more important than the Demolitionist. I’m not so sure. The Demolitionist one could really go off the rails and cause some serious damage.

Their list of speakers are seriously high risk of turning it into a defacto lunatic asylum.

JC

2 Sep 12 at 2:12 pm
The Dem convention has started with an Islamic prayer session where all the women are forced to stand behind the men.

Then they built a sand Obama that fell over.

So it’s going well.

LOL.

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 2:14 pm
old … Dotty … rambling incoherently … senile … embarrasses … dopier …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBHPvfAt5ow

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 2:16 pm
It’s not a good look for the American left to attack Clint. The dude is well liked and a cultural icon. Bad move…. oh I mean good move.. keep doing it.

JC

2 Sep 12 at 2:20 pm
WTF does that mean Monst?

It’s a joke, Joyce. Think about it.

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 2:26 pm
Actually, it was interesting what the priest said. Something along the lines of:

“We remember Cardinal Martini, who visited St Francis about 16 years ago, while we were undergoing renovations. We have a cherished photo of him in a white hat, standing in front of our church which was covered in scaffolding. An image for our times.”

Not sure what that was supposed to mean. A new church under construction from the ruins of the Pell hierarchy? Cryptic.

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 2:29 pm
Question for CL: If life begins at conception, how do you explain Chimeras?

Yobbo

2 Sep 12 at 2:36 pm
Chimera – that’s a hybrid car, right?

blogstrop

2 Sep 12 at 2:40 pm
noun
1 ( Chimera) (in Greek mythology) a fire-breathing female monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail.

Present leaders of the ALP and Greens?

jumpnmcar

2 Sep 12 at 2:44 pm
how do you explain Chimeras?

That seems more than averagely irrelevant:

Chimera: In medicine, a person composed of two genetically distinct types of cells. Human chimeras were first discovered with the advent of blood typing when it was found that some people had more than one blood type. Most of them proved to be “blood chimeras” — non-identical twins who shared a blood supply in the uterus. Those who were not twins are thought to have blood cells from a twin that died early in gestation. Twin embryos often share a blood supply in the placenta, allowing blood stem cells to pass from one and settle in the bone marrow of the other. About 8% of non-identical twin pairs are chimeras.

link

Cato the Elder

2 Sep 12 at 3:08 pm
Michael Smith speaking in Sydney

val majkus

2 Sep 12 at 3:19 pm
I’ve kept up with the AWU scandal pretty well but there are things in Michael’s talk I did not know

val majkus

2 Sep 12 at 3:20 pm
Question for Yobbo: If life begins at conception, why would you need to explain Chimeras?

Second question for Yobbo: Why in Yobbo-land™ is God spelt lower case and a chimera spelt upper case?

JamesK

2 Sep 12 at 3:35 pm
Yobbo

Are you attempting to explain the genetic composition of the ALP front bench?

JC

2 Sep 12 at 3:40 pm
Happy Fathers Day to all the dads at The Cat

Tal

2 Sep 12 at 3:47 pm
It’s a joke, Joyce. Think about it.

Monst, if it’s a joke, it’s the first time you’ve exhibited any attempt at humor. It doesn’t work for you.

JC

2 Sep 12 at 3:48 pm
The Amazon basin is an important sink of carbon dioxide, but it is also a substantial source of atmospheric methane, which has 23X the short term impact of CO2 on global warming.

Tropical wetlands, including those in the Amazon, are one of the largest sources of biogenic methane

There’s only one solution: Nuke the Amazon.

sdog

2 Sep 12 at 3:55 pm
I prefer my western gods in the original…

http://images.hollywood.com/site/thor-odin-loki.jpg

Combine Dave

2 Sep 12 at 3:56 pm
Greg Hunt did very well on ” meet the press ”
Solid as a rock.
One to watch I recon.

jumpnmcar

2 Sep 12 at 4:20 pm
For electric blues fans, here is Alan ‘Blind Owl’ Wilson’s immortal intro to the Canned Heat album, ‘Livin the Blues’. Still sends prickles up the spine, decades later.

click <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4uqySChPPc

johanna

2 Sep 12 at 4:30 pm
Seem to be some problems with links.

johanna

2 Sep 12 at 4:31 pm
And no, a ‘god theory’ is not a non-answer, it is derived from experience and the laws of thought. Yes, it is non-scientific, but so is the principle of causation, and since neither purported to be scientific, the point is otiose.

Winning! Cool story, bro.

Abu Chowdah

2 Sep 12 at 4:35 pm
YouTube links are all short, Johanna, so you may as well post them withour HTML. This has the added advantage of letting readers know you’re posting to a clip. (Which they’re then more likely to watch).

Here’s your link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4uqySChPPc

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 4:38 pm
And no, a ‘god theory’

How do we test the theory?
Seems to me we can wait till we die, but I would rather like to test it now.

WhaleHunt Fun

2 Sep 12 at 4:40 pm
Fail!
I googled the question and got no good answer.
First time in a long time it has let me down

WhaleHunt Fun

2 Sep 12 at 4:44 pm
My only suggestion …. that I be given govt funding to live a life of utterly depraved sin until I die whereafter I will attempt to let you know …. but wait, there are a bunch of warmist tenured academics already … I am too late again

WhaleHunt Fun

2 Sep 12 at 4:47 pm
Jump

I also like him. I think he’s decent value and and smart as a whip. However Hunt doesn’t seem to be that liked in the party and is considered a bit of the wet.

JC

2 Sep 12 at 4:52 pm
hunt believes in catastrophic yuman induced climate change.

He’s a f*cking socialist dropkick.

Enough said.

Rabz

2 Sep 12 at 4:59 pm
However Hunt doesn’t seem to be that liked in the party and is considered a bit of the wet.

Wet? He wears scuba gear to work.

Infidel Tiger

2 Sep 12 at 5:05 pm
hunt believes in catastrophic yuman induced climate change.

Hahaha, no way, he’s just being a polly.( what they do, not what they say)

in the party and is considered a bit of the wet.

JC, he’s an apprentice, they’re all a bit wet early on, give him time.
He’s in arguably the toughest portfolio ATM and can’t remember him being bested by any lefty journalists yet.
I see a bright future for him in the next government.

jumpnmcar

2 Sep 12 at 5:16 pm
I prefer Bender’s take on life after death.

Combine David

2 Sep 12 at 5:25 pm
Cardinal Martini?

A great man who will be missed. His ‘liberal’ views were routinely expanded vastly beyond what he said by left wing secularists.

Funny that they never mention his wish that the Church rekindle a “burning fire in the heart” of men and women today.

And here’s what his name reminds me of!

Mk50 of Brisbane

2 Sep 12 at 5:29 pm
However did you lot cope without the Cat this arvo?

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 11:16 pm
Sioux City gives a warm welcome to Obama.

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 11:16 pm
Re the Martini mention at St Francis, apparently that sort of rabble rousing is common there because it’s run by a bunch of independent Brothers who aren’t part of the main Catholic hierarchy. So yes, the priest was making a point about Pell.

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 11:19 pm
Wow back online and monty’s already at it. However did you cope without us, monster?

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 11:22 pm
I was working, Gab.

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 11:29 pm
sure. you need to go back to church, monts and confess! otherwise your nose is going to get longer.

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 11:32 pm
I can scarcely think of a clerical group less likely to be into “rabble rousing” than the priests of the Blessed Sacrament Congregation.

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 11:35 pm
I do actually work on Sundays during footy season, Gab. But I did also attend church this morning, a rare event. No confession though. That would take too long!

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 11:36 pm
I can scarcely think of a clerical group less likely to be into “rabble rousing” than the priests of the Blessed Sacrament Congregation.

I am told that they regularly editorialise in their homilies from the pulpit on sensitive Church topics like gay marriage and female ordination, and run the anti-Pell line.

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 11:38 pm
assuming the church didn’t collapse when you showed up (what? you make lame jokes all the time), what did you learn from the sermon, monts? Anything?

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 11:38 pm
assuming the church didn’t collapse when you showed up (what? you make lame jokes all the time), what did you learn from the sermon, monts? Anything?

The sermon was about a passage from Mark, I think, where Jesus rebuked his disciples for siding with the nascent hierarchy on the subject of washing your hands before meals, as he preached that purity came from within, not from ritual. Which was fun. I guess that with the Roman improvements in hygiene, Jesus judged that he could afford to ditch the old Jewish customs to suit the gentiles, and not lose half his flock to disease. Or he was Jesus Christ Our Lord and His Word Is God’s Word, etc etc etc. The priest left both interpretations open in his oration. Interesting stuff really.

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 11:44 pm
I am told that they regularly editorialise in their homilies from the pulpit on sensitive Church topics like gay marriage and female ordination, and run the anti-Pell line.

Uh-huh.

By “anti-Pell line,” you mean they preach against the infallible Magisterium of the Catholic Church?

I’m calling bullshit.

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 11:48 pm
Uh-huh.

By “anti-Pell line,” you mean they preach against the infallible Magisterium of the Catholic Church?

I’m calling bullshit.

LOL. Yes they do.

Catholicism is a broad… church, CL.

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 11:50 pm
Ah, okay, that’s Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.

Bit more to it than just washing hands, monts.

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 11:51 pm
Ah, okay, that’s Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.

Bit more to it than just washing hands, monts.

Yep, those numbers look familiar from the sheet.

m0nty

2 Sep 12 at 11:52 pm
UN Adds Sudan’s Genocidal Islamist Warlord To Its Human Rights Council…

and yet Bowen worries about stupid agreements and “what would they think of us if we didn’t stick to outdated agreements”. instead of what’s best for this country.

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 11:57 pm
The sermon was about a passage from Mark, I think, where Jesus rebuked his disciples for siding with the nascent hierarchy on the subject of washing your hands before meals…

The reading was from Mark 7. Jesus wasn’t rebuking the “nascent hierarchy,” you dishonest buffoon. The Pharisees had criticised both Jesus and his followers (that is, the Apostles – nascent hierarchs – and disciples) who were all eating with ‘defiled’ hands.

And I’m not sure liberals like the way that chapter ends:

He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come — sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”

Not a lot of support there for the Mardi Gras.

C.L.

2 Sep 12 at 11:59 pm
Tolle should tell Bowen to STFU.

DEPORTATIONS of failed asylum-seekers have dried up as new arrivals flood the system in record numbers, causing a backlog the opposition warns will take a decade to clear.

Despite calls by foreign governments, including Sri Lanka, to return bogus refugees as a deterrent, fewer than 2 per cent of the 21,000 asylum-seekers who have arrived since 2008 have been deported. Head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Australia Richard Towle said yesterday that there must be “meaningful consequences” for asylum-seekers whose refugee claims failed, arguing returns were essential to the integrity of any asylum system.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/asylum-system-flooded-but-deportations-slow-to-a-trickle/story-fn9hm1gu-1226438979135

Gab

2 Sep 12 at 11:59 pm
oops. Towle not Tolle.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 12:00 am
LOL. Yes they do.

Really?

A minute ago you said “I am told…”

Now you know. Despite your attendance being “rare.”

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 12:03 am
And I’m not sure liberals like the way that chapter ends:

Have you lot had a discussion about whether Jesus was a liberal? That seems like it would be fun, but you would have done it before.

m0nty

3 Sep 12 at 12:07 am
Really?

A minute ago you said “I am told…”

Now you know. Despite your attendance being “rare.”

I have a source on the inside.

m0nty

3 Sep 12 at 12:08 am
Australia’s self-selecting economic migrants treat the Gillard government with about as much credibility as it deserves.

Unfortunately.

H B Bear

3 Sep 12 at 12:09 am
Have you lot had a discussion about whether Jesus was a liberal?

He was above and beyond politics. Any conference assigning a political party is merely the human need to label and is therefore an imperfect. JC needs no such label, imo.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 12:12 am
Cowboy raid goes pear-shaped…

AUSTRALIA’S reputation in Afghanistan was under fire last night after President Hamid Karzai lashed out at Australian troops for killing a 70-year-old man and his son in a “unilateral” night raid in pursuit of the rogue Afghan soldier who killed three Diggers last week.

The security situation in parts of Oruzgan province was threatening to deteriorate as damaging details of the raid emerged, including that a Pashtun woman – whose husband was suspected of helping the Afghan gunman escape – was among 12 villagers hooded and detained by Australian soldiers and that one of the men shot was the village imam.

Winning hearts and minds by terrorising women and children.

Good show.

Charlie Sheen phoned. Said we were “winning.”

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 12:15 am
He was above and beyond politics. Any conference assigning a political party is merely the human need to label and is therefore an imperfect. JC needs no such label, imo.

I’ll try to remember that spiel next time one of you brings up Hitler.

m0nty

3 Sep 12 at 12:28 am
I’ll try to remember that spiel next time one of you brings up Hitler.

that doesn’t even make sense. None whatsoever.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 12:29 am
Jesus was the ultimate good embodied in one, Hitler was the ultimate evil. Both of them are above and beyond politics, IMO.

m0nty

3 Sep 12 at 12:31 am
Nope. Still no sense.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 12:33 am
Hitler above politics? WTF?

Lazlo

3 Sep 12 at 12:40 am
The antinomy of Jesus isn’t Hitler – unless you’re saying there was no such thing as evil prior to the 1930s. If you’re talking about modern times, communism killed far more people than Hitler. Which is an inconvenient truth for Western lefties who, traditionally, have a lot of time for communism.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 12:40 am
You’re a religious philosopher now Monst?

JC

3 Sep 12 at 12:45 am
OK Hitler was personally responsible for the slaughtering of 25 million Russians and 6 million Jews.

Which bit of that do you not understand Monty?

Lazlo

3 Sep 12 at 12:46 am
Mitt and Ann on fire in Jacksonville:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB2Wr4ydOwY

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 1:03 am
Julius

Shoo off. You’re not smart enough to be here. Go.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 1:03 am
The antinomy of Jesus isn’t Hitler

Who if not Hitler, embodied in one man, to modern eyes?

m0nty

3 Sep 12 at 1:06 am
Jesus was the ultimate good embodied in one, Hitler was the ultimate evil. Both of them are above and beyond politics, IMO.

Why do ya have to be such a dick m0nty?

Your ignorance proudly displayed is stark and not just silly.

The Son is consubstantial – one aspect of the One – the Word made flesh through Spirit. The Holy Trinity.

There is no opposite of totality.

Duality occurs from and within totality.

God/Jesus isn’t ‘good’ as good vs bad or love vs hate.

God is uncaused joy, love etc as in of its very nature but not as in our dualistic relativist terms.

God is ineffable.

Words (including ‘God’) merely attempt to weakly point the way.

It’s why Jesus taught using parables.

JamesK

3 Sep 12 at 1:08 am
Yeah alright JamesK, you’re a believer and I’m not. We’re obviously not on the same page. Or even the same book.

m0nty

3 Sep 12 at 1:13 am
Which is an inconvenient truth for Western lefties who, traditionally, have a lot of time for communism.

W-yne S-nderson, Phil and m0nty love Communism and genuinely wish the Communists had stuck around to “finish the job”, just as neo-Nazis wish that Hitler was able to “finish the job”.

Fisky

3 Sep 12 at 1:15 am
Don’t know about Gillard, “Julius”, but we know you do.

Fisky

3 Sep 12 at 1:22 am
Yeah alright JamesK, you’re a believer and I’m not. We’re obviously not on the same page. Or even the same book.

Again why do ya have to be such a dick m0nty?

I’m not religious.

It’s just first grade Christian theology.

JamesK

3 Sep 12 at 1:31 am
No, that’s called a “non sequitur”. Try again, genocidal troll.

Fisky

3 Sep 12 at 1:31 am
I’m not religious.

It’s just first grade Christian theology.

If you’re not religious, then why do you use a theologian’s argument?

To atheists, Jesus was a really, really, really nice bloke.

m0nty

3 Sep 12 at 1:36 am
The antinomy of Jesus isn’t Hitler

Who if not Hitler, embodied in one man, to modern eyes?

Eddie Maguire?

—————————————————-

Who? I took for my confirmation name Michael the Archangel, Prince of the Heavenly Host – so I know of one ever-present wannabe.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 1:38 am
If you throw words like ‘genocidal’ around, they lose all meaning.

But you are a supporter of genocidal organizations and I think that is enough to label you as genocidal by association.

Fisky

3 Sep 12 at 1:39 am
Who? I took for my confirmation name Michael the Archangel, Prince of the Heavenly Host – so I know of one ever-present wannabe.

If you’re referring to Satan, he was never embodied in a man like Jesus was for the other side. Or, at least, if you’re looking for the most likely candidate for the embodiment of Satan, Hitler would be your kiddie.

m0nty

3 Sep 12 at 1:42 am
A troll can not be genocidal by definition, so yes you misuse terms in a quite abusive manner that leads one to doubt any of your opinions.

Nope, wrong again. “Troll” does not preclude genocide.

Fisky

3 Sep 12 at 1:43 am
Monty, your theology of Hitler as the personification par excellence of evil in human history is bizarre. Mao killed more people (as has Planned Parenthood) and Vlad the Impaler would have if he had gunpowder and Zyklon B.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 1:53 am
CL, you regularly ascribe a ridiculous death toll to Gillard, so your judgement is suspect.

m0nty

3 Sep 12 at 1:58 am
New York Times admits: Obama is pussy-whipped creampuff who follows the orders of Valerie Jarret.

“…is she some sort of mother or sister figure..?”

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 1:59 am
Also I took Michael as my confirmation name too. Catholic high five!

m0nty

3 Sep 12 at 2:00 am
Rudd and Gillard are directly responsible for about 750 deaths at sea.

That’s not ridiculous – it’s acknowledged in the Houston report.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 2:02 am
To atheists, Jesus was a really, really, really nice bloke

No problem with that but why eggsactly?

It’s just woeful to declare Jesus the antithesis of Hitler.

You don’t have to believe that Jesus is or isn’t divine for that to be either intentionally offensive to believers or just ignorant.

His disciples didn’t say Jesus was really really good.

In the temple and unprovoked Jesus up-ended the money-changers tables who were just plying their trade as they always had.

Jesus also said: “before Abraham came into being, I am” (John 8:58).

Either Jesus is willfully blasphemous or he spoke from something greater than mere flesh and blood.

So Jesus was/is mad, bad or God.

JamesK

3 Sep 12 at 2:07 am
It doesn’t preclude it…

Oh really? You said earlier:

A troll can not be genocidal by definition

You are contradicting yourself from comment to comment, troll.

Fisky

3 Sep 12 at 2:13 am
In any event, Gillard is clearly not a leftist if a part of the definition of leftist is that they have plenty of time for communism.

Maybe it;s because you are a fuckwit leftist as well Julius.

Peter Costello said on Gillard:

After Gillard taunted him in the parliament last week about his publisher’s motto, “books with spine”, he responded: “If she bought a copy, I might sign it for her. She could take it back to that flat where she lives with the spartan furniture, put it up on the bookshelf with her current library, the collected works of Marx and Engels. She could file it alphabetically, by author, ‘Cos’. It will come after ‘Com’, for The Communist Manifesto, and before ‘D’, for Das Kapital. Or she could it put by her bedside where she’s reading a book on how to create unemployment in an economy which is undergoing a mining boom.”

JamesK

3 Sep 12 at 2:13 am
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows Mitt Romney attracting support from 48% of voters nationwide, while President Obama earns 44% of the vote. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

Just prior to this past week’s Republican National Convention, Romney trailed the president by two. Today’s four-point advantage confirms that the GOP hopeful has received the expected convention bounce

JamesK

3 Sep 12 at 2:25 am
Not a bad bounce, but not brilliant. So long as he can keep Obama averaging around 45 he should be fine.

Fisky

3 Sep 12 at 2:37 am
Mmm. Very interesting.

There’s a rumour about the Obamas‘ plans for next year.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 3:15 am
A $%#@ing good ad from Romney

Alex Pundit

3 Sep 12 at 3:23 am
Thanks for the tip and for fixing my link C.L. (way above).

johanna

3 Sep 12 at 4:51 am
“One of the men shot was the village imam”
In another real life story from Ghanland I read recently, a stakeout along a road that was being IED infested led to the apprehension of a local villager who was also the imam. Submission’s enforcers. Taliban is another term for scholar, and there’s only one subject for scholastic pursuit.

Blogstrop

3 Sep 12 at 6:23 am
Roxon’s response to the illegal immigration crisis? Stop prosecuting first-time people smugglers:

AN Abbott government would revive mandatory five-year sentences for asylum-boat crews, defying expert advice that the laws target the wrong people, condemn children to poverty and have no deterrent effect.

The Coalition’s position, confirmed yesterday by spokesman Scott Morrison, coincides with new figures showing juries have acquitted more than half of the alleged people-smugglers brought to trial this year, compared with a 100 per cent conviction rate attained two years ago.

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon last week reversed her party’s long-held support for mandatory sentencing, directing the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to stop pursuing about 130 first-time offenders.

Federal Labor: the open-door government.

Tom

3 Sep 12 at 6:46 am
Troy Bramston in The Australian thinks Gillard is Back, baby, back!
But a new book from Mckew throws more shit at the fan base.

Blogstrop

3 Sep 12 at 6:47 am
Cop that!
https://twitter.com/PeterGleick/status/241606199706013697
https://twitter.com/lucialiljegren/status/241603594212737025

Biota

3 Sep 12 at 6:58 am
Sarah Bath, a charming greenslimer.

Rudiau

3 Sep 12 at 7:04 am
FMD. Anyone can get a job as a journalist at The Australian – bias no obstacle. Troy Bramston:

The undeniable improvement in the government’s standing has coincided with an awful few weeks for the Opposition Leader, marked by shrill and misleading statements, an incessant and utterly predictable negativity and the dawning realisation that his scare campaign on the carbon tax has not reflected reality.

Thanks, Strop.

Tom

3 Sep 12 at 7:14 am
Scene set for the defeat of Australia’s cigarette plain-packaging law at the WTO … though you wouldn’t know it if you read the Fairfax version.

Tom

3 Sep 12 at 7:49 am
The government of economic amateurs scrambles to find cash to replace the taxpayer dollars it has already pissed against the wall:

The federal government plans to bolster its sagging budget bottom line by a near tripling of the auction of carbon emissions permits in 2013-14.

Draft changes released over the weekend, and designed to legislate for last week’s scrapping of the carbon floor price, reveal that the government will increase the number of carbon permits available for auction from 15 million to up to 40 million.

Tom

3 Sep 12 at 7:58 am
Troy Bramston in The Australian thinks Gillard is Back, baby, back!
But a new book from Mckew throws more shit at the fan base.

The gaffe machine will ensure Troy’s hopes are dashed, not matter how many Yeti’s he claims to be able to see.
________________________

McKew is the gift that keeps on giving. She actually believed the hype that was thrown her way. LOL

I do hope Labor does get a few more of the Stenographers into parliament – it is amusing to see the expert critics get torn apart when they get off the side-lines and actually join the fray.

Token

3 Sep 12 at 8:14 am
@tom : remove the floor price, increase the supply of permits. But remember everyone, this is a ‘free market solution’.

Government manipulation of markets always has adverse outcomes, always. Government manipulation of a government created synthetic market with centrally planned demand and supply settings can only fail, there is no other possible outcome.

brc

3 Sep 12 at 8:18 am
FMD. Anyone can get a job as a journalist at The Australian – bias no obstacle. Troy Bramston:

Notice how The Oz now has followed the ABC & Fauxfacts and allowed ex-Labor staffers to shape the agenda?

I believe the Stenographers should be worried as it is the next part of the process of the professional media being sidelined.

The days of the Gatekeepers is coming to an end.

Token

3 Sep 12 at 8:19 am
Mattias Corman in the Oz today:

Indeed, the government’s decision to link its carbon tax with the EU’s trading scheme this week underlines just how comprehensively the Europeans have out-manoeuvred, out-negotiated and out-thought the Gillard government at the expense of our national interest.

Take the treatment of the coal sector, Australia’s second largest export.

Under the new linking arrangement, we will have the perverse situation where Australian coal producers will be paying the European carbon price equivalent while European coal producers will not.

Only a party as incompetent as Labor would link the tax system to the spivs and shonks that are the Eurocrats.

Do you think that an ETS will be worth much in the future?

Token

3 Sep 12 at 8:26 am
Government manipulation of markets always has adverse outcomes, always.

I love the way the left’s illiterati insist that a “carbon price” is not a tax.

Tom

3 Sep 12 at 8:30 am
Government manipulation of markets always has adverse outcomes, always. Government manipulation of a government created synthetic market with centrally planned demand and supply settings can only fail, there is no other possible outcome.

You do wonder what goes on in the heads of the Super-Brains in Canberra which links the revenue base for the Australian government to southern European nations (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, etc).

Did they note any economic events of late when the sovereign nations of southern Europe broke all the promises and cooked statistics to gain short term economic benefits?

FFS.

Token

3 Sep 12 at 8:31 am
Fauxfacts Deathwatch:

Dear Lord, please bring this inexcusable, ongoing farce to a long overdue end.

Enough, FFS.

Rabz

3 Sep 12 at 8:45 am
Notice how The Oz now has followed the ALPBC & Fauxfacts and allowed ex-laybore staffers to shape the agenda?

Yes, and I’m extremely unhappy about it.

I will be reviewing my Ozdraylian subscription as a result of the employment of mavis bramston and that utter idiot, jessica bloody irvine.

Pathetic – unreadable, patronising leftist pillocks were the reason I banned fauxfacts, FFS.

Enough.

Rabz

3 Sep 12 at 8:49 am
…said if the boats were not stopped we could end up facing 180,000 boatpeople a year. This is neither alarmist nor hysterical. It is what all the professionals involved in the field understand.

As the illegal boat route to our north gets more and more established, it will attract more and more illegal arrivals.

There is no logical end to that increase…

OMG, what an aweful dog-whistle, the Stenographers are going to be apoplectic with the overt racism, the ABC is going to turn their greensliming to 11 as another of their mass delusions get challenged by…

Bob Carr.

It is amazing that after 10 years of Labor & the Greens of silencing truth-tellers and doing everything they can to get an industry in place controlled by organised criminals that finally someone in that party can tell the truth.

Token

3 Sep 12 at 8:53 am
You do wonder what goes on in the heads of the Super-Brains in Canberra which links the revenue base for the Australian government to southern European nations (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, etc).

When you buy a big lie like catastrophic anthropogenic global warming it becomes necessary to adher to all the belief systems that sustain it – such as carbon permit ‘trading’. The belief is that such trading exists in and of itself, separate from any other ‘worldly’ or ‘secondary’ issue of economics, markets or even national sovereignty. All the characteristics of a cargo cult, in other words; a form of ritual producing desired ends.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

3 Sep 12 at 8:56 am
Never fear the Andrew Leigh memorial permanently recurring bailout to the rescue.
I can just see those Fauxfacts journos telling each other war stories about how they stood up to Gina, and how brave they were….while standing in the dole queue.

Keith

3 Sep 12 at 9:01 am
As the illegal boat route to our north gets more and more established, it will attract more and more illegal arrivals.

Now watch the jelly-backed Press Council nail Sheridan’s balls to the wall for misnaming those poor suffering asylum seekers…

Cold-Hands

3 Sep 12 at 9:03 am
I can just see those Fauxfacts journos telling each other war stories about how they stood up to Gina, and how brave they were….while standing in the dole queue.

‘Yeah, the company went bust, but at least we didn’t let those rich people have a say’.

Somehow I think it’s fitting that the Labor Government and Fairfax seems to be on the same death-spiral trajectory. Forever joined at the hip on ‘climate change’.

I wonder if ‘Earth Hour’ will die a silent death if Fairfax goes. One can only pray to Gaia that this is so.

brc

3 Sep 12 at 9:05 am
Funny thing in that article about increasing the quota of carbon permits :

“Liable entities are likely to be preferencing international permits because of the normal commercial settlement terms available.”

In other words, despite having a whole department of Climate Change created, and numerous business advisory groups reporting to government, and contracts let in 2008 (and continuing) for the provision of an Australian carbon trading platform, these idiots couldn’t even work out a basic issue like settlement?

Proof positive that the whole thing is a gigantic rort from start to finish (and Abbot better damn well finish it).

Keith

3 Sep 12 at 9:11 am
Jessica Irvine is a featherbrain. Could it be that part of the Oz’s Cunning Plan is to discredit leftist ‘economists’ by publishing Irvine’s witterings?

OK, it’s a long shot. I cannot understand why Irvine has been recruited for this prestigious job when there are thousands of experienced journalists, not to mention currently employed economists, out there. Very strange.

johanna

3 Sep 12 at 9:12 am
I can just see those Fauxfacts journos telling each other war stories about how they stood up to Gina, and how brave they were….while standing in the dole queue.

How many of the otherwise unemployable drongos will successfully make the perilous journey to the ALPBC to seek asylum and an ongoing taxpayer funded sinecure?

Rabz

3 Sep 12 at 9:14 am
Now watch the jelly-backed Press Council nail Sheridan’s balls to the wall for misnaming those poor suffering asylum seekers…

But will Leigh Sales apologise to Abbott. She was keen to tell him that he couldn’t say “illegal” in that interview last week.

Keith

3 Sep 12 at 9:14 am
I cannot understand why Irvine has been recruited for this prestigious job

You and me both…

Rabz

3 Sep 12 at 9:16 am
Johanna, I think it’s probably an attempt to attract the fluffy female and beta male demographic over from Fairfax. Celebrity economics for dummies who want to stay dummies.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

3 Sep 12 at 9:18 am
Today in Islam…

Last week I mentioned that 14 year-old Christian girl with Down syndrome is presently languishing in jail in Pakistan for burning the Koran.

Latest:

A Pakistani imam has been remanded in custody, accused of planting burnt pages of the Koran in the bag of a Christian girl being held for blasphemy.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 9:22 am
“By putting these pages in the ashes he also committed desecration of the Holy Koran and he is being charged with blasphemy,” he said.

Yep, that’s what he did wrong. Framing the Christian girl was probably no big deal.

Dangph

3 Sep 12 at 9:35 am
So Gillard has a lot of time for communistm?
….
So Gillard is not of the left, then.

Julia Gillard was one of the two initial paid employees of the financial and ideological successor to the Communist Party of Australia : The Social Forum. Which she became a committee member of and stayed until ~35 years of age when the Forum was merged into the Fabian Society of which she is also a longstanding and proud member.

The Socialist Forum’s purpose was to “convince” the Labor party to embrace “hard left” policy and to secure positions for ex-CPA members in the Unions and ALP. She herself wrote a strategic paper on how best to achieve this.

But no, when she was busy as a bee organising all of that she clearly had a B.A. Santamaria level of hatred toward communists.

twostix

3 Sep 12 at 9:51 am
Re Irvine.

Uncle Rupert knows that the internet tends to be winner-takes-all. There is only going to be space for one ‘internet broadsheet’ in Australia. By giving the fruitcake left someone to read on the Australian, he can torpedo any Fairfax attempt below the waterline.

In the meantime, those of us who can actually think and reason will have the opportunity to see what emotional blatherings the left are going on with, without having to venture into enemy territory. This will be most helpful when the current mob of corrupt socialists are removed from power and restored to the whinging benches.

brc

3 Sep 12 at 9:55 am
Gillard goes straight to the pages of Socialism 101 and announces a utopia for some time after she and it will be long forgotten. In the spirit of the Silver Bodgie’s “By 1990 no child will be living in poverty” and Keating’s “L-A-W” tax cuts, she has legislated Australia’s educational goals for 2025, naturally world class.

That goodness for all those world class covered outdoor leaning areas under the Building the Education Revolution. By 2025 no Australian child will be sitting in the rain.

Breathless reporting by your ALPBC.

H B Bear

3 Sep 12 at 10:02 am
Article in Menzies House. Pros and cons of compulsory against voluntary voting.
I am leaning towards voluntary voting going on the arguments here.

Voluntary voting will reverse our slide towards totalitarianism.
When the parties exist at different poles, the ruling class is divided. They are in conflict and this conflict places more power in the hands of the people.

The political parties should be in competition, not a duopoly. Not centralized.

Every day that goes by our government competes with the opposition to legislate. It’s a race to see who can legislate the most. And if the Liberals win it will be more of the same. Both parties crave power, even though they have different methods of achieving it.

Australia’s slide towards totalitarianism

Rudiau

3 Sep 12 at 10:13 am
Has anyone had the stomach to watch Geert Wilders movie Fitna.
Not linking, not game.

Rudiau

3 Sep 12 at 10:23 am
Check out the blades these guys are running on. This technology rocks.

Token

3 Sep 12 at 10:30 am
Ha ha.
Breakup imminent. Lachie Murdoch and others now sniffing around Fairfax radio assets.

Keith

3 Sep 12 at 10:32 am
those of us who can actually think and reason will have the opportunity to see what emotional blatherings the left are going on with, without having to venture into enemy territory.

No, No and No.

Irvine is an appallingly bad writer and an unrepentant economic ignoramus. She regularly positively espouses the principles of marxist redistribution in her braindead drivellings.

As I noted several weeks ago when initially expressing my extreme displeasure at her ‘move’, News is doing little more than rewarding ongoing, total failure.

Fauxafcts is about to collapse for a very good reason. No one wants to pay good money to read the insane rantings of braindead leftist numpties. The aforementioned numpties have directly facilitated this collapse and must be taught a lesson in basic economics. If you try and sell something people won’t buy, you will go broke.

Adapt or die. As with all those responsible for Fauxfact’s collapse, Irvine deserves a lengthy period of unemployment during which she could reconsider the error of her ways.

Rabz

3 Sep 12 at 10:37 am
Gillard: Campbell Newman was right, is my role-model etc.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard orders razor gang to keep slicing.

JULIA Gillard has ordered an open-ended search for savings to close a widening gap in the federal budget as Labor struggles to fund new promises costing tens of billions of dollars.

The spending review has turned its sights on major outlays, including welfare programs, out of concern that short-term measures such as a freeze on grants will be insufficient to balance the budget.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 11:06 am
you have to be joking.

http://www.dailylife.com.au/life-and-love/parenting-and-families/this-is-what-good-parenting-looks-like-20120903-258zh.html

I’m usually against Father of the Year Awards. While the recipients are no doubt great fathers, the idea of making fatherhood a competitive pursuit with its own award is about as meaningful as beauty pageant awards.

But there are exceptions to every rule. My vote for Father of the Year — no, scratch that — Father of the Decade, goes to German father Nils Pickert.

Advertisement

Pickert made headlines around the world last week when pictures of him wearing a red skirt while out walking with his 5 year old son, who was similarly attired in a red dress, circulated on the internet.

Like many small boys, Pickert’s son prefers wearing dresses, and was being bullied at school. Rather than just give his son a pep talk about being true to himself and not listening to what anyone else says — or worse, buying him some footy shorts and ordering that he ‘man up’ — Pickert led by example, donning a red number in the street with his son in a very public demonstration that it’s not only okay to be yourself, but it ought to be encouraged.

jtfsoon

3 Sep 12 at 11:07 am
That’s fucking child abuse. Pickert ought to be publicly flogged for doing that. It also gives “people” like stepford ideas on how to mistreat his kids.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 11:11 am
Thirty years from now Chancellor Pickert will announce the invasion of Poland.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 11:15 am
Article in Menzies House. Pros and cons of compulsory against voluntary voting.
I am leaning towards voluntary voting going on the arguments here.

Unfortunately the arguments are made without basis – more hypothesis than argument.

The hypothesis put forward is that polarised political parties are less likely to be totalitarian in nature.

Looking around the world, it doesn’t appear to hold up. The obvious case comparing the US to here doesn’t show that to be true.

Voluntary voting just makes things more extreme. If you look at it from the perspective of parasitism, it would seem to me that the more extreme form allows a greater degree of parasitism, with both parties developing more dependant relationships with their parasites. With a more centrist form, the parasites get to change hosts, and as such the relationship with the political parties is less developed.

Every now and then you have to call in the exterminators. If you want a facility for keeping government towards the freedom end, look for something that regularly kills off the parasitic infestations afflicting the left / right spectrum.

Driftforge

3 Sep 12 at 11:26 am
Oh I don’t know, I reckon Nils is engaging in some reverse psychology. When your dad does it, it’s no longer cool.

m0nty

3 Sep 12 at 11:26 am
Like many small boys, Pickert’s son prefers wearing dresses

WTF? This is a blatantly dishonest statement.

What is it with f*cking leftist scumbags and child abuse?

Rabz

3 Sep 12 at 11:28 am
Oh I don’t know, I reckon Nils is engaging in some reverse psychology. When your dad does it, it’s no longer cool.

STFU, what would you know about parenting, Monst? You need to cross the hurdle of having had sex first.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 11:30 am
Like many small boys

Many?? No.

I wish these craven narrative pushers would fuckup and report reality instead of just making shit up.

In any case “many” (in the actual proper usage of the term) small boys want and like to eat dirt, eat cat food, be mean to animals and ride their bikes in the middle of the road. Normal decent civilised parents tell these boys to cut it out, we don’t join them on the ground eating dirt in public, parading around with the kid with dirt covered faces to satisfy our own bizarre political beliefs.

What an awful sickness infects a tiny portion of western society at the moment.

twostix

3 Sep 12 at 11:30 am
When your dad does it, it’s no longer cool.

Yeah, but not if you are five years old.

The dad is more likely doing it for his own reasons, to show how progressive he is. He’s status seeking.

Dangph

3 Sep 12 at 11:33 am
Sounds more like dad is a cross-dresser and giving his son style tips.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 11:34 am
Oh I don’t know, I reckon Nils is engaging in some reverse psychology. When your dad does it, it’s no longer cool.

The kid is five monty. Five year old boys adore their fathers and worship them with a cult like fever (kind of like you do with the ALP) and like every five year old boy he copies and does everything his father does.

Kids do weird things, it’s the fathers duty to say no, not to encourage it and make a public spectacle of it for his own attention seeking political gain.

twostix

3 Sep 12 at 11:37 am
Pickert’s son prefers wearing dresses

His dad should kindly tell him that’s not what little boys do and help him put his pants on just like daddy. Then they should go and have a wrestle together after kicking a ball around in the garden.

He will grow up OK then.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

3 Sep 12 at 11:39 am
I am just amazed at the number of Fairfax readers commenting on the article who go along with the writer – 100%.

And those who link it to ‘homophobia’. This has nothing to do with ‘homophobia’ not to encourage one’s son to wear a dress until he is at least earning his own living – it is about teaching one’s offspring that life is tough, and there are ground rules you have to follow if you are to get along with your fellow man.

jtfsoon

3 Sep 12 at 11:43 am
Five year old boys adore their fathers and worship them with a cult like fever (kind of like you do with the ALP)

lol

JC

3 Sep 12 at 11:44 am
“I reckon Nils is engaging in some reverse psychology.”

It’s exceptionally bad parenting.

candy

3 Sep 12 at 11:45 am
Like many small boys, Pickert’s son prefers wearing dresses, and was being bullied at school. Rather than just give his son a pep talk about being true to himself and not listening to what anyone else says — or worse, buying him some footy shorts and ordering that he ‘man up’ — Pickert led by example,

So how does this stop the bullying? This solution makes as much sense as legislating against bullying.

I agree with JC, this is child abuse.

The other boys will now pick on both the boy and hit his self esteem as his father is a girly-man. You can imagine how cruel they will be.

Token

3 Sep 12 at 11:46 am
The comments section of that article is depressing.

These people condone subjecting children to ridicule to show how “committed” they themselves as adults are to some utterly bizarre political show: that males should “be able” wear dresses (dovetailing somehow into showing how “tolerant” they are of gays WTF).

Now lets see how many of these commenter’s dress up like women in public.

twostix

3 Sep 12 at 11:47 am
If the father were cleverer, he would get the kid on Minecraft and let him use a female skin.

Speaking of which, I was encouraging my son yesterday to make a “Jesus mod” for Minecraft, then he could build a mount and deliver a sermon from it. Friends could use Roman skins and chase him around.

He was amused.

Turns out a Jesus skin was already available and some “God power” mods available too.

steve from brisbane

3 Sep 12 at 11:48 am
Pickert is lucky he’s not raising the kid in NYC. My wife recalls how she and her friends who had kids would receive a public scolding in the street by elderly American women if they felt they were doing something wrong to their kids.

They would have hand bagged Pickert.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 11:48 am
“Like many small boys, Pickert’s son prefers wearing dresses”

that’s the most riciulous thing I’ve read all year i think.

candy

3 Sep 12 at 11:49 am
Sounds more like dad is a cross-dresser

‘Sactly. Except that this pervert’s reaction to the discovery of his own depravity is to attempt to destroy his son’s life as well.

Tom

3 Sep 12 at 11:49 am
stepford…

Just to clarify.. just to make sure we aren’t on the wrong track you basically seen nothing really wrong with what the father did…. right?

JC

3 Sep 12 at 11:50 am
And those who link it to ‘homophobia’. This has nothing to do with ‘homophobia’ not to encourage one’s son to wear a dress until he is at least earning his own living – it is about teaching one’s offspring that life is tough, and there are ground rules you have to follow if you are to get along with your fellow man.

Isn’t it the height of homophobia and blatant stereotyping to presume that male homosexuality is somehow intrinsically linked to wearing dresses?

Something tells me these people get their “knowledge” of homosexuality from the TV – which explains a great deal actually.

twostix

3 Sep 12 at 11:54 am
I do not agree with the father’s actions, JC.

The only thing I would say though is that it is, possibly, less harmful in the long run than having a freak out about the son’s interests. I still wouldn’t say it is a good idea, though.

steve from brisbane

3 Sep 12 at 11:59 am
Gillard: Campbell Newman was right, is my role-model etc.

As Tim Blair put it: Hello… Newman

Lazlo

3 Sep 12 at 12:00 pm
I do not agree with the father’s actions, JC,

but

JC

3 Sep 12 at 12:01 pm
The mother letting her little boy go about in a dress must be some kind of weirdo too. wonder what the grandparents make of it all.

candy

3 Sep 12 at 12:01 pm
I bet that aren’t living together anymore Candy.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 12:03 pm
pomo parenting: I’m the kid’s friend, not his parent.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 12:03 pm
Daily Life is a proudly female biased website with content tailored to women.

Well this doesn’t make things any easier for us internet misogynist nut jobs. Now where did I put my skirt?

H B Bear

3 Sep 12 at 12:06 pm
Okay, maybe I’m been a little harsh and insensitive. But shouldn’t they at least match one legged competitors and the legless in separate races…. perhaps refining it to below and above the knees.

FFS.

http://video.theaustralian.com.au/2275328995/Pistorius-upset-in-200m-T44-Paralympics-final

JC

3 Sep 12 at 12:13 pm
Tonight’s Panel on Q & ALPBC:

tony berk – Monster for Environment and Sustainability
Tara Moss – Author, former model and twatter trollette
Angry Anderson – Barking mad drug addict, Rock singer and conservative political activist
Fiona Nash – The National’s Senator
Nitin Sawhney – British Indian muzakian and composer

Is this an attempt at balance? Three lefties and two so called conservatives?

Needless to say I won’t be watching. Those toenails aren’t going to cut themselves…

Rabz

3 Sep 12 at 12:17 pm
Another union involved in rorting member’s union dues.

ONE of Australia’s largest unions is embroiled in a fresh finances scandal, with its president accused of spending thousands of dollars on allegedly “inappropriate” items.

In another challenge to the union movement, Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) national president Dan Dwyer is accused of spending tens of thousands of dollars “without explanation”.

Senior officials in his own union also accuse him of “engaging in self-indulgence” and want Fair Work Australia to investigate, in shades of the Health Services Union scandal that has dogged the Gillard government.

Documents obtained by The Daily Telegraph reveal the CEPU’s communications division – which represents Australia Post, Telstra and NBN workers – faces a damaging internal rift with Mr Dwyer, who is accused of “alleged inappropriate expenditure” since he was elected as the divisional secretary last year.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 12:22 pm
What an awful sickness infects a tiny portion of western society at the moment.

Anti-heteronormativity?

A massive problem for society (ongoing) is lack of suitable fathers for young boys. An entire generation of testosterone wielding little tyrants raised entirely by childcare staff, grandmothers and time-poor guilty mothers.

Where the father is there, he is usually a gelded metrosexual who sees no problem with wearing dresses for fear of gender-typing his child, or he’s an aggro loser who switches between downing RTD rums, watching football, and screaming at his kids.

You might think I’m being melodramatic, but the prison population is overweight with men who had no father, or an abusive one. And the mental health clinics are full of young men who don’t know what they are supposed to be, and taking drugs to cover that up.

Bring back proper fathering (and mentoring of young men in trades, professions and sports), bring back a stable society.

brc

3 Sep 12 at 12:26 pm
Oh I don’t know, I reckon Nils is engaging in some reverse psychology. When your dad does it, it’s no longer cool.

And the asexual Left (forgive the tautology) are doing a similar reverse psychology in Europe, m0nty.

Radical Muslims will leave before they take control of European government in 25 years despite living off the taxpayer.

The Muslims will fear for their children first.

Brilliant!

Jamesk

3 Sep 12 at 12:28 pm
You might think I’m being melodramatic,

When you seem to be arguing that there are only two extremes of household fathering going on in society, why would anyone say that?

steve from brisbane

3 Sep 12 at 12:35 pm
News Ltd password:

Please ensure password is 8-20 characters, including at least one letter and one digit or special character

It’s a newspaper subscription, not a bank account. Let me use a simple password, you clowns. What’s a russian hacker going to do with my Oz subscription? Post some malicious comments under my name? Read Henry Ergas without paying? Oooh, I’m *so* scared.

brc

3 Sep 12 at 12:38 pm
To summarise, dover, you believe that because cause/effect accords with our intuition, there must be a first cause that itself transcends and is independent of cause/effect. A feat of mental gymnastics, but hardly ‘rational evidence’.

Jarrah, you have as yet not uncovered a rational objection to the argument. The argument begins with rational principles and it ended in a conclusion that is consistent with those principles. I’m not entirely sure what your problem is apart from your embarrassing ignorance of the general argument. Can I ask, do you still not understand what is meant by First Cause here?

And you’re even managing to misunderstand the FSM parody – it lampoons belief in a particular kind of god, or a particular religion. All religions have an equal claim to be right, because they all explicitly eschew evidence in favour of faith. To believe in a particular religion is to forego rational thought. Which is fine when it’s about emotional attachment and cultural context. The problem is when believers start forcefully insisting that theirs is the one true path (backed with ‘evidence’) and other religions are ‘wrong’. Religious wars are nasty. Muslim extremists are waging one right now, but thankfully their numbers are low.

What a load of tosh which begins with my apparent misunderstanding of the parody, continues through a supposed equal right to belief because all religions eschew reason and evidence for faith (you must never have heard of natural theology) and ends, where else, but in the “nastiness” of religious wars. Dear, oh dear. Your argument is unintended Dawkins-style parody. Well, it gave me a few laughs. Thanks.

dover_beach

3 Sep 12 at 12:48 pm
Yep, brc, they really need to get over themselves.

As for security, a 20 character password with digits etc is inevitably going to be written down or saved on the computer by most people.

johanna

3 Sep 12 at 12:57 pm
Winning! Cool story, bro.

Indeed, Abu. For the last two and a half thousand years.

How do we test the theory?

It’s a question of logic, WhaleHunt Fun. The only way to test such a thing is to follow the argument. If it’s good enough for maths its good enough for metaphysics.

dover_beach

3 Sep 12 at 12:59 pm
Government now clamouring to wrap itself in the twin flags of health and education, to “crusade” for better futures for children, to achieve things for “our nation”. Good luck with that.

blogstrop

3 Sep 12 at 1:00 pm
“It’s a moral wrong to deny anyone a great education”.

Instead of throwing money around and trying to look good, get back to basics and tell kids that if they don’t do the work they’re going to fail. That doesn’t cost any extra, but your mates in the media can’t do much with it to make you look caring and nation building.

blogstrop

3 Sep 12 at 1:03 pm
Julia has a passion for education. It’s part of her feminine, nurturing role as a woman.

Misogynist nut jobs.

H B Bear

3 Sep 12 at 1:05 pm
Article in Menzies House. Pros and cons of compulsory against voluntary voting.
I am leaning towards voluntary voting going on the arguments here.

Voluntary voting is the right way to go. We’re the only country that forces our citizens to vote.

First and foremost, if you have to do it, it’s not a right.

Secondly, every election we herd hundreds of thousands of people in to vote who have no interest in politics or the political process, and who don’t really want to be there. That can’t be good for the quality of political discourse and it must have a detrimental effect on campaigns, because these people’s vote must be courted.

dd

3 Sep 12 at 1:09 pm
Labor loves compulsory voting because it ensures its natural moron constituency is forced to the polling booths.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 1:14 pm
“It’s a moral wrong to deny anyone a great education”.

Are they saying that pre-gonksi report we were denied a “great education”? That the last 16 year NSW state Labor government was immoral?

How does this work?

twostix

3 Sep 12 at 1:15 pm
@blogstrop I read a comment on the australian article. It went something like ‘we need to get the Federal government to do this because there are 8 states and catholic, private + public school systems and this is bad’.

I presume the person that wrote this is of some level of intelligence, yet somehow they see the problem of falling school results and spiralling school costs is to hand over control of the schools to an office located in Canberra?

I’ve got a radical plan. How about letting local communities decide how they want their kids to be educated? Radical, I know.

What is it about people that they think a Federal government can fix anything, let alone everything. Why stop at schools? Why not have a Federally mandated house designed in Canberra? Why not have a Federally mandated diet, controlled by the Minister for Healthy Eating.

The schools are run by the states. The states will live or die based on the education outcomes they provide. A little intra-state competition is a good thing.

I say we should go for the American model and bring school funding and administration down to the council level. If the school is run badly, I want to drive around to the office of the guy responsible, and suggest he fixes things up. No scapegoating, no blame shifting.

brc

3 Sep 12 at 1:15 pm
Government now clamouring to wrap itself in the twin flags of health and education, to “crusade” for better futures for children, to achieve things for “our nation”. Good luck with that.

This isn’t going to end well.

Rudd ran to the twin pillars of unionism and envy in his final days when he had blown the surplus on killer pink batts and million dollar tuckshops…

…it didn’t help, the polls crashed anyway….

Token

3 Sep 12 at 1:17 pm
Voluntary voting is the right way to go. We’re the only country that forces our citizens to vote.

I understand the sentiment, but optional voting hasn’t stopped the UK from turning into a society that is a left-wing toilet.

I would be happy with optional preferencial voting like NSW & QLD. It is the best way to avoid the diabolical choice of Greenslime or Lie-bore.

Token

3 Sep 12 at 1:21 pm
I agree on education problems though. Imagine people carelessly mixing up trust funds (funds held in trust for others) with slush funds (funds stashed away for the private benefit of those rorting systems).

This is a clear fault of the education system and must be reformed away.

brc

3 Sep 12 at 1:22 pm
dd,
There is a further article at Menzies House in support of voluntary voting by Jason Kent.

Socialist bias in every Australian election

It seems compulsory voting favours the left.

Rudiau

3 Sep 12 at 1:22 pm
I would be happy with optional preferencial voting like NSW & QLD. It is the best way to avoid the diabolical choice of Greenslime or Lie-bore.

+1

With recall elections.

brc

3 Sep 12 at 1:22 pm
Atheists tearing each other apart:

American atheism heading for a schism.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 1:26 pm
+1

With recall elections.

+1

Rudiau

3 Sep 12 at 1:26 pm
Really interesting article by David King in Saturday’s Oz about a US Charter School in black very disadvantaged area teaching five year olds motivation, concentration and application – using various carrots and little sticks, via:

SLANT – Sit Up, Listen, Ask and Answer Questions, Nod your head, Track the speaker. “It’s a skill set drummed into the kids from day one and they’ll carry it through their years at the school.”

“On Fridays, for those with enough points, there’s a fun Friday party, with pizza, ice cream or a movie. Those who don’t make it go to the ‘not yet rom’, which is one step up from the ‘no fun room’. The school makes sure that the fun room is loud and happy and the other kids can hear it. I’ts proven a highly effective motivator”.

They expect all the children to go to College.

Hope though they do keep a kindly eye on the kids in the ‘no fun room’ as it is where I might have ended up in my more stroppy years.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

3 Sep 12 at 1:27 pm
Useful article by Janet Daley in the Telegraph:

We should tune in to the Romney and Ryan show
The myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished

What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust.

JamesK

3 Sep 12 at 1:27 pm
Heaven help us.

Gillard announces ‘crusade’ on education

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard says the federal government will talk to the states about its proposed new schools funding goal of $6.5 billion a year.

at least she didn’t refer to it as a “scheme” or “revolution”, too many past failures associated with those words. I guess that’s our money well spent on focus groups.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 1:28 pm
CL I cannot open your link.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 1:29 pm
@CL

Link on schism doesn’t work

JamesK

3 Sep 12 at 1:29 pm
Hope though they do keep a kindly eye on the kids in the ‘no fun room’ …

Yes.

I feel sorry for the ones who don’t make the fun room.

Amazing to relate. but our Federal Treasurer probably would never have graduated from the ‘not yet room.’

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 1:32 pm
We’re the only country that forces our citizens to vote.

That’s not correct dd, see here. It’s not actually complusory to “vote” in Australia, just to turn up and get your name ticked off. In other words you can choose not to vote. But many people don’t understand that, so the “I don’t really care” vote can be problematic. On the other hand a low turnout strengthens the hand of lobby groups, such as the NRA in the USA, which I think is equally unhealthy.
Agre with Token, optional preferential is certainly an improvement.

SteveC

3 Sep 12 at 1:33 pm
Schism link.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 1:34 pm
Gillard: people smuggling now legal.

Charges against alleged people smuggler dropped.

A 20-year-old Indonesian man has broken down in tears after people smuggling charges against him were thrown out of the Victorian County Court.

And prosecutors are set to abandon more cases.

Jeki Payara was 18-years-old when he was arrested on a boat carrying asylum seekers, north of Australia.

He was held without charge for more than six months and has spent much of the last two years in maximum-security prison awaiting trial in Melbourne.

Today, commonwealth prosecutors dropped all charges against him.

Legal Aid lawyer Sarah Westwood says her client was a street kid in Jakarta when he was approached by people smugglers.

She says he had no idea what he was getting into.

“Jeki is very emotional. He broke down in court when his discontinuance was announced in court,” she said.

She says he is overjoyed to be going home.

“His parents come from a very remote part of Indonesia, they have no idea where he is.”

Mr Payara has been taken to the Maribyrnong Detention Centre ahead of his return to Indonesia.

Charges against at least two more Indonesian men accused of people smuggling are expected to be dismissed later this week.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 1:37 pm
PZ Myers and Carrier are first class assholes so I’m not in the least surprised by this third-wave. Looks like it will be even stupider and more shrill than the second-wave. Quite amazing.

dover_beach

3 Sep 12 at 1:48 pm
And so it begins

Group says it found 30,000 dead North Carolinians registered to vote

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/02/3497857/group-says-it-found-30000-dead.html#storylink=cpy

JC

3 Sep 12 at 1:49 pm
“Yes, it does. Atheism+ is our movement. We will not consider you a part of it, we will not work with you, we will not befriend you. We will heretofore denounce you as the irrational or immoral scum you are (if such you are). If you reject these values, then you are no longer one of us. And we will now say so, publicly and repeatedly. You are hereby disowned.”

LOL.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 1:50 pm
On the other hand a low turnout strengthens the hand of lobby groups, such as the NRA in the USA, which I think is equally u

nhealthy.

OMG people voting their interests. Who would have believed such a thing could be allowed to occur.

And that of course only happens on the right. Bribing single females with fee rubbers.. well that’s not the same thing.

You dork, SteveC.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 1:52 pm
I look forward to the dropping of charges against drug mules, under the defence of ‘they’re poor and didn’t know what they are getting into’.

I assume this will extend to immediate amnesty and return of all Australians rotting in asian prisons for drug smuggling.

No? Well, fancy that.

When this kid gets back to his village and tells everyone how he made some cash, got arrested but was then let go and flown home, they’ll all be down the docks with fake boat licences.

brc

3 Sep 12 at 1:52 pm
By “heretofore” Carrier meant henceforth, of course.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 1:52 pm
lol they’re backward in looking forward.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 1:54 pm
“Yes, it does. Atheism+ is our movement. We will not consider you a part of it, we will not work with you, we will not befriend you. We will heretofore denounce you as the irrational or immoral scum you are (if such you are). If you reject these values, then you are no longer one of us. And we will now say so, publicly and repeatedly. You are hereby disowned.”

It appears that these people have simply replaced one religion with another.

Who ever saw that coming.

twostix

3 Sep 12 at 1:57 pm
In comments on CLs’ link.

A+ was born when Freethought blogger Jen McCreight (the mind behind Boobquake) made a passionate call for a “third wave” of atheism, one that extends atheist activism into progressive politics and calls for a part of the movement to be one where women can exist free from the harassment that has plagued women publicly involved in the atheist movement.

Do atheists harass women. How does an atheist harass a women.

Atheist: I put you on a pedestal I thought of you as a God. But now I don’t believe in God

Female Atheist: (sob) Does that mean we are finished?

Atheist: No I can’t finish with someone who doesn’t exist.

Female atheist: (sniffle) but you used to love me

Atheist: Who said that?

Female atheist: But I’m no God I’m just your average everyday female atheist

Atheist: Thank goodness for that. Should we go for a drink?

Rudiau

3 Sep 12 at 2:13 pm
Do atheists harass women. How does an atheist harass a women.

Internet Atheist “Activists” are 9 times out of 10 useless anti-social Hentai watching WOW playing IT nerd facists.

One only need spend five minutes on any IT forum to see how that works out for females.

Fortunately as a group they have the political acumen of a bedside table.

twostix

3 Sep 12 at 2:21 pm
This is what the Labor policies that has lead to the wave of refugees is doing to the legal structures of our neighbours:

AN Indonesian soldier was allegedly paid about $80,000 for his part in sending six asylum-seeker boats to Australia, including one that sank off Java in December, costing as many as 200 lives.
But the money paid to Sergeant Ilmun Abdul Said is just a fraction of that made by the people-smuggler behind the ill-fated venture, who is believed to have pocketed more than $2 million.

Sergeant Said is facing court in Madiun, in East Java, for his role in organising a boat which sank on December 17 last year en route to Christmas Island with about 250 asylum-seekers on board. Just 49 people survived the disaster.

Prosecutors allege Sgt Said was paid almost $A80,000 – a massive sum by Indonesian standards – over a number of months to help facilitate the passage of six asylum-seeker boats to Christmas Island.

He has so far refused to reveal the identity of the people-smuggling kingpin who Indonesian authorities believe has made millions profiting from asylum seekers desperate to go to Australia.

Unfortunately for the soldier he is not facing the wrist slap and pat on the back he would get from an Australian court.

Token

3 Sep 12 at 2:30 pm
“Jarrah, you have as yet not uncovered a rational objection to the argument.”

I’m sorry, what argument? That infinity can’t possibly exist, so there must be a creator who has the characteristics of infinity that you are trying to avoid? That’s not an argument, it’s a conclusion in search of a rationalisation.

“my apparent misunderstanding of the parody”

At least you can admit that much.

“natural theology”

Which is not a religion. Why do you insist on piling ignorance on top of your irrationality?

Jarrah

3 Sep 12 at 2:31 pm
…..one that extends atheist activism into progressive politics and calls for a part of the movement to be one where women can exist free from the harassment that has plagued women publicly involved in the atheist movement.

Yea. like women have ever set up a movement that men were falling over themselves to join.

It’s really that simple, men create all sorts of clubs and associations then women join and fuck things up. If they’re not asked or allowed to join then call discrimination.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 2:43 pm
Michelle Malkin has put together a handbook for those who want to know which words the race-baiting lefties in the US will claim is wwaaaccccisssstttt.

* Angry
* Chicago
* Constitution
* Experienced
* Food Stamp President
* Golf
* Holding Down the Fort
* Kitchen Cabinet
* Obamacare
* Priviledged
* Professor
* You People

As it is early as this campaign has 2 months to go, there is plenty of time to make 1/4 to 1/2 the words you use in everyday language verbotten.

NOTE: Remember, it is ok to slay in a bad southern accent, “Put y’all back in chains”, if you are a child, your mother calls you special or Joe Biden.

Token

3 Sep 12 at 2:44 pm
In the Independent:

How leaping into bed harms relationships

Those who abstain during their courtship or build up a gradual sexual relationship, rather than leaping into bed on the first date, are more likely to have happier and longer relationships.

The researchers who carried out the study, the first of its kind, say that early sexual satisfaction may stunt the development of other key ingredients of healthy relationships, such as commitment, caring, understanding and shared values.

I expect Yobbo to want to give a critique…

steve from brisbane

3 Sep 12 at 2:46 pm
Yea. like women have ever set up a movement that men were falling over themselves to join.

Do you mean men, or males in general including the hen-pecked beta males?

Token

3 Sep 12 at 2:46 pm
Do you mean men, or males in general including the hen-pecked beta males?

No, of course not.. I include hen pecked beta males as women.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 2:48 pm
Those who abstain during their courtship or build up a gradual sexual relationship, rather than leaping into bed on the first date, are more likely to have happier and longer relationships.

I’d agree with this.

Getting everything you want at once is always a let down. Tracking the fox is often more fun than blasting it full of lead.

Infidel Tiger

3 Sep 12 at 3:14 pm
If a woman goes to bed with you on your first date you pretty much know she’s not somebody you want to marry anyway.

Then there’s Sonny’s door test.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 3:19 pm
Tracking the fox is often more fun than blasting it full of lead.

You could have chosen a better metaphor than one that ends in death, couldn’t you?

steve from brisbane

3 Sep 12 at 3:20 pm
You could have chosen a better metaphor than one that ends in death, couldn’t you?

Not in the case of foxes in Australia – the only good fox is a dead fox SfB. My old man and I are loving the $10 fox bounty in Victoria. Good pocket money, and better for the environment than a useless tax on carbon dioxide.

Old Fridgie

3 Sep 12 at 3:26 pm
Um, the environmental desirability of ridding Australia of foxes is hardly the point…

steve from brisbane

3 Sep 12 at 3:31 pm
Hilarious education “crusade” announced today by the woman whose bona fides on high standards were famously not acknowledged by Slater & Gordon.

All put off to 2020.

Like everything she has ever done, this too will become a disaster.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 3:44 pm
The crusade comes after the revolution, right?

H B Bear

3 Sep 12 at 3:51 pm
The Essential Media poll is 55:45 today.

Something about increased worry about prices going up due to carbon tax.

candy

3 Sep 12 at 3:52 pm
sorry Mr Moderator, spelt my name wrong again

candy

3 Sep 12 at 3:54 pm
“The crusade comes after the revolution, right?”

What was that revolution, anyway? The free laptops schemozzle?

Jarrah

3 Sep 12 at 3:54 pm
I’m sorry, what argument? That infinity can’t possibly exist, so there must be a creator who has the characteristics of infinity that you are trying to avoid? That’s not an argument, it’s a conclusion in search of a rationalisation.

Ah, I see that Jarrah continues to misunderstand the argument. Given his past replies this was to be expected.

Which is not a religion.

Natural theology has been a part of the Christian religion, for instance, since the fourth century, at least.

Why do you insist on piling ignorance on top of your irrationality?

A fine description of your performance this weekend.

dover_beach

3 Sep 12 at 3:57 pm
There’s kids who left school now and never got their computer and pensioners never got their set-top box yet, not they needed them anyway, but still they were promised.

candy

3 Sep 12 at 3:57 pm
There’s kids who left school now and never got their computer and pensioners never got their set-top box yet

that all matters not. What matters is they sound good. Deatils, follow-up and keeping promises not Labor’s forte.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 4:01 pm
Details.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 4:01 pm
“Jarrah continues to misunderstand the argument”

No, you just don’t like it being put so plainly.

“Natural theology has been a part of the Christian religion, for instance, since the fourth century, at least.”

And part of Islam, but your statement just proves my point.

Jarrah

3 Sep 12 at 4:04 pm
Don’t tell Roxon:

High levels of alcohol consumption and increases in heavy episodic drinking (binge drinking) are a growing public concern, due to their association with increased risk of personal and societal harm. Alcohol consumption has been shown to be sensitive to factors such as price and availability. The aim of this study was to explore the influence of glass shape on the rate of consumption of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.

…

Glass shape appears to influence the rate of drinking of alcoholic beverages. This may represent a modifiable target for public health interventions.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0043007

Jarrah

3 Sep 12 at 4:06 pm
Steve, if you think death was the result of that metaphor then I obviously haven’t been smutty enough.

Infidel Tiger

3 Sep 12 at 4:08 pm
No, you just don’t like it being put so plainly.

Actually, Jarrah, I do like you plainly stating your ignorance of the argument but it is curious that you would prefer to argue that there are no fundamental forces rather than admit the conclusion of the argument (note that this charitably implies that it is finally dawning on you what could be meant by First Cause).

And part of Islam, but your statement just proves my point.

No, all that proves is that rationality is common to both.

dover_beach

3 Sep 12 at 4:20 pm
Well, IT, I must admit that baking profiteroles being more exciting than piping in the custard wouldn’t have worked…

steve from brisbane

3 Sep 12 at 4:27 pm
Nice save SoB.

Not

Dan

3 Sep 12 at 4:32 pm
Give it a rest smutty SFB. You’re not witty, you’re not funny, just smutty.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 4:32 pm
“Actually, Jarrah, I do like you plainly stating your ignorance of the argument”

It really riles you that my distillations cut to the core of your irrationality, don’t you? It negates your obfuscation so neatly, all you’re left with is inanely repeating that I “don’t get it”, a transparent surrender.

“No, all that proves is that rationality is common to both.”

What do you mean, “no”? It quite clearly proves my point, that natural theology isn’t a particular religion, and so isn’t subject to the FSM parody (you know, the one you amusingly misunderstood).

Jarrah

3 Sep 12 at 4:41 pm
From Jarrah’s link

In particular, there has been an increase in branded drinking glasses in the United Kingdom in recent years, many of which include shape as a differentiating feature. These glasses include chalice glasses, curved beer flutes, tankard and novel curved beer glasses

Obviously the authors do not know why we have Pilsener glasses, Lager glasses, Stout glasses. There are even differences between a Shiraz vessel and Cabernet vessel, a Burgundy and Chardonnay.

This is really getting ridiculous.

Dan

3 Sep 12 at 4:42 pm
Big government communist media shock: Four Corners tonight disses the incompetence of the federal aviation regulatory regime … before normal programming resumes.

Tom

3 Sep 12 at 4:46 pm
Further to Jarrah’s point:

Finally, even if the Cosmological Argument is sound or cogent, the difficult task remains to show that the necessary being to which the cosmological argument concludes is the God of religion, and if so, of what religion. Rowe suggests that the cosmological argument has two parts, one to establish the existence of a first cause or necessary being, the other that this necessary being is God (1975, 6). It is not clear, however, that the second contention is an essential part of the cosmological argument. Although Aquinas was quick to make the identification between God and the first mover or first cause, such identification goes beyond the causal reasoning that informs the argument. Instead, to give any religious substance to the concept of a necessary being requires lengthy discussion of the supreme beings found in the diverse religions and careful correlation of the properties of a necessary being with those of a religious being, to discern compatibilities and incompatibilities (Attfield). Defenders of the cosmological argument point to the subsequent relevance of such a task; critics find themselves freed from such endeavors.

steve from brisbane

3 Sep 12 at 4:49 pm
Glass shape appears to influence the rate of drinking of alcoholic beverages.

Oh my God. Are they going to ban buckets?

Infidel Tiger

3 Sep 12 at 4:52 pm
Why are you inserting your unwanted nose into Dover and Jarrah discussion, Mr “Catholic” SFB?

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 4:53 pm
“Oh my God. Are they going to ban buckets?”

Bloomberg has already had a go.

Jarrah

3 Sep 12 at 4:55 pm
Do I need your permission to comment now, Gab?

Last time I looked, it wasn’t essential to be convinced of Aquinas’ arguments in order to be a theist, and a Catholic one at that.

steve from brisbane

3 Sep 12 at 4:57 pm
Oh my God. Are they going to ban buckets?

What’s that?

JC

3 Sep 12 at 4:58 pm
You’re such a fake, SFB.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 4:58 pm
Obviously the authors do not know why we have Pilsener glasses, Lager glasses, Stout glasses. There are even differences between a Shiraz vessel and Cabernet vessel, a Burgundy and Chardonnay.

This is really getting ridiculous.

These progressives are getting so puritanical, almost Victorian, in their approach to nannying society.

Token

3 Sep 12 at 4:58 pm
Do I need your permission to comment now, Gab?

Yes. The moderator said so earlier up the thread.

( even lie to get rid of him)

JC

3 Sep 12 at 5:01 pm
Um, the environmental desirability of ridding Australia of foxes is hardly the point…

As relevant as you raising the whole oogah boogah death issue in the first place!

Old Fridgie

3 Sep 12 at 5:02 pm
Soon I’ll be drinking my margaritas from a teacup in a speakeasy

Tal

3 Sep 12 at 5:06 pm
I’m sorry Jarrah, but the study is biased in that a Lager beer tastes different served in a different vessel other than that which is recommended for such a brew. Such that a larger glass should have, over all, a straight profile. To serve this beverage in a curved glass will alter the taste and carbonation of the brew resulting, in this instance, of a quicker drinking time.

So you see, the Benedictine monks and Brewersthrough out time specifically designing their glasses according to their brews so that it resulted in a longer drinking time. After all, it’s all about savouring the taste.

Dan

3 Sep 12 at 5:08 pm
These progressives are getting so puritanical, almost Victorian, in their approach to nannying society.

It’s more like the 1200′s when the rulers deemed it necessary to tax sunlight. We all travel through Europe now and remark how quaint the homes in villages are that have no windows, but let’s be honest, it’s effing ridiculous.

Dan

3 Sep 12 at 5:13 pm
“a Lager beer tastes different served in a different vessel other than that which is recommended for such a brew. ”

But how big a difference can there be, really? This strikes me (along with the “differences between a Shiraz vessel and Cabernet vessel”) as basically wankery. The presumably tiny difference made to the taste is going to be swamped by natural variance, especially in wine.

Jarrah

3 Sep 12 at 5:14 pm
Newman says ‘no’ means ‘no’ to Gillard.

PREMIER Campbell Newman won’t commit Queensland to “stepping up to the plate” to help pay for the federal government’s new schools funding model.

In announcing the federal government’s response to the Gonski review of school funding, the prime minister on Monday warned there would be no blank cheques for the model.

Newman for PM.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 5:16 pm
While wine consumption out of differing glasses does include wankery, in the case of carbonated drinks the difference can be immense. If the ‘wrong’ glass results in increased de-carbonation, then you will drink that beverage faster. If the wrong glass results in the beer going stale faster, you will drink less.

Brewers developed the vessels so that you savour the drink longer and therefore delay the time it takes you to get sloshed. The argument being put forward by the anti bing drinking society is that you should drink more slowly. It was worked out many hundreds of years ago.

Dan

3 Sep 12 at 5:25 pm
My other argument is this, if you surround yourself with people who aren’t prepared to give you a hard time because your drinking, gambling or whatever is getting out of hand, then you deserve your fate.

Dan

3 Sep 12 at 5:31 pm
Soon I’ll be drinking my margaritas from a teacup in a speakeasy

Sounds like put together a great idea for a theme night Tal…

Token

3 Sep 12 at 5:43 pm
Doubles as both a bed and a UFC fight cage.

I guess it would be great if you’re into body slamming the wife or girlfriend.

Not my taste, but I can see others liking it.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 5:49 pm
It really riles you that my distillations cut to the core of your irrationality, don’t you? It negates your obfuscation so neatly, all you’re left with is inanely repeating that I “don’t get it”, a transparent surrender.

What distillations? From memory, you mistook Aquinas’s argument as an argument against the eternity of the universe only to have me tell you that Aristotle and Aquinas never used this argument to that purpose, and specifically said that no such argument could be made. You have also argued against the principle of causality by saying that our intuitions may be misleading, and now you seem to be arguing that there need not be a first member in an essential ordered causal series even though every member in such a series is entirely dependent on the first member for their causal power. So, lets be clear, this is an attempt to undermine Aquinas’s First Way by undermining the principle of causality. You have to admit, the argument must be pretty good if you have to go the length of questioning that premise and not the execution of argument itself. In the midst of this you thought the principle of causality was a scientific principle as opposed to a metaphysical, among other things. And now you’re declaring that I’ve “surrendered”. Interesting.

What do you mean, “no”? It quite clearly proves my point, that natural theology isn’t a particular religion, and so isn’t subject to the FSM parody (you know, the one you amusingly misunderstood).

Whoever said that it was a particular religion? It is a part of the Christian religion. And what a crock, the parody is aimed at the idea of God in general. To pretend that it is only aimed at the Christian God, or the Islamic God, and so on, but not at God in general, is pure horseshit.

Further to Jarrah’s point:

That cannot be further to Jarrah’s point, because he argues that the movement from one to the other can only be irrational. If fact, he has described the Cosmological Argument itself as irrational. Now, I don’t deny that the latter connection is difficult but it need not be contrary to reason.

dover_beach

3 Sep 12 at 6:03 pm
“a Lager beer tastes different served in a different vessel other than that which is recommended for such a brew. ”

But how big a difference can there be, really?

Enough of a difference for one to enjoy it.

There is much more to enjoying a drink than just the taste.

Enjoyment of a drink comes down to an overall experience – place, ambience, mood, drink, glass and even chair.

An cold beer served on ice while sitting on a sailboat motoring back into harbour is perfect straight from the bottle.

Gulping a fine German lager, served in a chunky stein, sitting on a wooden bench seat in a large hall with a pork knuckle and a roaring fire.

Enjoying a strong Belgian beer as a pre-dinner drink in a sunlit cafe on an open square – perfect in the goblet shaped glasses specific for the task.

Then we get onto wine. Champagne flutes are just perfect to sip champagne from. A meaty shiraz needs to the right type of glass to concentrate the nose.

Cocktails? Sipping a martini in a New York bar is great fun, and must be done in a proper martini glass. Leave out the martini glass and you might as well drink vodka straight from an old vegemite jar.

Holding a nice glass is like holding any nice thing- pleasurable. Adding a nice drink to a nice glass makes the entire thing more pleasurable.

To pretend that the type of glass makes no difference is the sign of a drinking philistine with no regard to the art of the properly enjoyed quaff.

brc

3 Sep 12 at 6:18 pm
Atheist intellectual giant Richard Dawkins, weighs into US Presidential campaign via twitter.

Makes important, nuanced point about Mitt’s underpants.

Eddystone

3 Sep 12 at 6:20 pm
I see that my earlier link did not work. Here is it, for anyone interested:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/

I will also extract this bit, being consistent with what d-b is saying re eternal universe:

Since the argument proceeds independent of temporal considerations, the argument does not propose a first cause in time, but rather a first or primary sustaining cause of the universe. As Aquinas noted, the philosophical arguments for God’s existence are compatible with the eternity of the universe (On the Eternity of the World).

steve from brisbane

3 Sep 12 at 6:21 pm
Nope, not interested

Dan

3 Sep 12 at 6:53 pm
“To pretend that the type of glass makes no difference is the sign of a drinking philistine with no regard to the art of the properly enjoyed quaff.”

Just reading all those scenarios makes me feel like trying them all immediately. you have a way with words, brc! and chairs do make a difference too, funny enuf to a pleasurable scene.

candy

3 Sep 12 at 6:53 pm
Atheist intellectual giant Richard Dawkins, weighs into US Presidential campaign via twitter.

Makes important, nuanced point about Mitt’s underpants

Nothing to do with atheism. Dawkins is a leftwing dishonest sack of shit. Always has been.

He criticizes Mitt’s Mormonism yet remains silent about the Kenyan’s membership to “Rev”. Wright’s “Evangelical” church for 20 years before the Kenyan threw Wright under the bus for political expediency.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 7:03 pm
Interesting contradiction at Intrade. Though with the Prez election it is still Obama at 58, the Senate (R52.5/D23.7/Neither23.0) & House (89.3/9.1/.3) elections are heavily skewed to the Republicans.

The House is especially interesting as in election years the House normally swings to the President. Considering the Dems hold the Senate that is a good swing to win that too.

That can’t be only due to ‘local issues’. Let’s see how that sits after the Dem convention.

Token

3 Sep 12 at 7:22 pm
Gillard on 730. Hanging on by the very filth collected under her discoloured talons.

Pickles

3 Sep 12 at 7:46 pm
Fuck he’s good. At his best Gingrich is the most formidable debater in the US political scene. No one even comes close.

He takes a crack at the Tom Freidman and destroys the prick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUU9E3K0SYs&feature=player_embedded

JC

3 Sep 12 at 7:47 pm
Token

There’s $6 million on each .. Romney and the Kenyan. It’s very thin. I would also suggest that someone like Soros could be holding the market.

When it’s $100 million bet we can start talking.

In 04 the betting market was manipulated by a hedge fund guy for a time.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 7:50 pm
To be fair, Friedman never debates.

He always loses.

Unless it’s on an ‘our’ ABC-type discussion show in the US.

He’s good because all you need do is clarify his position.

Here Gingrich has him saying he supports American gas development but then he all but says : “global warming: were all gonna die, we’re all gonna die”

He’s a clown.

There is no respectable leftist intellect columnist at the NYT.

Friedman is the best they’ve got.

it’s a joke.

JamesK

3 Sep 12 at 7:59 pm
Thanks for that, JC. We need to have Coalition MPs doing this more often on the ABC and elsewhere. Gingrich ripped them a new hole. Good to hear that Akin is ahead in Missouri.

dover_beach

3 Sep 12 at 8:08 pm
“What distillations?”

I’ve got a new one for you, the most pithy yet: infinity bad, therefore Yahweh.

“Whoever said that it was a particular religion?”

I said the FSM parody applies to belief in a particular religion, because no religion has any greater claim to correctness than any other, because none rely on evidence, only faith. You countered with natural theology, which isn’t a religion, and therefore bringing it into the conversation about FSM was a non sequitur.

“And what a crock, the parody is aimed at the idea of God in general.”

Ha! You still don’t get it. Maybe a distillation will help: if god, why the Christian god, and not the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

“You have to admit, the argument must be pretty good if you have to go the length of questioning that premise and not the execution of argument itself.”

You don’t even understand my critique. I have explicitly questioned the execution, but had ancillary arguments against the premise.

Jarrah

3 Sep 12 at 8:13 pm
Rabz, what’s the mole saying about the early election scenario? Gillard is now attempting to buy an election with funding promises. Is she clearing the decks for a November poll? The Faceless Men may want to roll the dice to avoid a 2013 election. Next year looks bleak for any incumbent government facing voters, let alone a big-spending socialist rabble who are totally out of their depth.

Tom

3 Sep 12 at 8:26 pm
Oh my sweet Fancy Moses.

Steve is now an expert on the Angelic Doctor – whose work he dismisses.

LOL.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 8:29 pm
@candy – I can describe them well because they’re all from personal experience!

Alcohol, properly used, is one of the true joys of this little planet. Enlightening and edifying, challenging and rewarding, true friendships form much faster over a shared drink. Problems can be solved, resolutions made, relationships kick started. These things are too important to risk drinking out of substandard glassware.

brc

3 Sep 12 at 8:34 pm
Thanks for that, JC. We need to have Coalition MPs doing this more often on the ABC and elsewhere.

Gillard does what Newt does, listen to her. Since the debates late last year the slapper regularly tells the interviewer she doesn’t agree with the premise of a question which is posed to her.

Abbott and the Coalition should stop accepting questions as posed and re-position like Newt.

Token

3 Sep 12 at 8:37 pm
Pickles. Did anyone pull her on? I missed it.

StevieLiar QC. Have you done the washing up? Has anyone commented on your blog in the last year? Ironed your red dress to embarass the children tomorrow?

Tiny Dancer

3 Sep 12 at 8:43 pm
Goodness! CL… is that you with the fancy dancing elephant? Hmmm…cute but a little disconcerting.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 8:49 pm
Here’s one for the “disparate impact” crowd:

23.4% of babies conceived in this country are aborted annually. 41% of those abortions are performed on African-American women even though they only account for 13.1% of the population. 63% are performed on women at or under the poverty level.

Any time now, I’m sure you’ll hear Democrats complaining about racial bias in abortion. Yup.

Fisky

3 Sep 12 at 8:49 pm
Has anyone commented on your blog in the last year?

It’s a cracker, isn’t it, Tiny? ShitFer has to come here to find an actual audience and escape the lonely, pointless blip-blop of the thoughts he recites to himself, day after day.

Tom

3 Sep 12 at 8:49 pm
He took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Sad, really.

blogstrop

3 Sep 12 at 8:54 pm
I was just wondering if I still knew the password to my gravatar, Gab, and was conducting an experiment on driving it. The dancing elephant is in reserve for special celebratory occasions.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 9:10 pm
Ban the bucket?
For drinking, or for smoking?

Winston Smith

3 Sep 12 at 9:15 pm
Then we can expect your Babar to make an appearance at the next federal election, CL

I’m kinda fond of your large grey elephant gravatar.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 9:15 pm
what’s the mole saying about the early election scenario?

I’ll let people know when I’ve extracted an update.

Rabz

3 Sep 12 at 9:19 pm
Liz and Warnie, pretty in purple!

Poor Old Rafe

3 Sep 12 at 9:21 pm
The Child Brides nephew is in hospital on life support after being run over two weeks after his 21st.
Would appreciate if those who have faith to say a prayer for a good kid.

Winston Smith

3 Sep 12 at 9:24 pm
Good to see a mention of Babar, one of my favorite characters.

Elephants in general.

Poor Old Rafe

3 Sep 12 at 9:27 pm
That’s dreadful, Winston. Am sorry to hear that, and yes, will say prayers for his recovery.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 9:28 pm
Sorry to hear that Winston!

Poor Old Rafe

3 Sep 12 at 9:28 pm
I’ve got a new one for you, the most pithy yet: infinity bad, therefore Yahweh.

I see you’ve given up.

Ha! You still don’t get it. Maybe a distillation will help: if god, why the Christian god, and not the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Because the Christian God is consistent with the properties of God as understood by natural theology, whereas the FSM is not. Quite simple, really. The FSM parody rightly lampoons the god of the gaps, but that is not the God of the philosophers.

You don’t even understand my critique. I have explicitly questioned the execution, but had ancillary arguments against the premise.

Where precisely have I not understood it? I’ve kindly shown you where you err. But please don’t return to the fudge of infinity.

dover_beach

3 Sep 12 at 9:34 pm
A great sadness for your family, Winston. Thinking of you and hoping that good things happen for your wife’s nephew. If a wish can be a prayer then I am praying.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

3 Sep 12 at 9:35 pm
i’ve said a prayer Winston, it’s worst nightmare, must be terrible for family right now.

candy

3 Sep 12 at 9:35 pm
“Would appreciate if those who have faith to say a prayer for a good kid”

That’s easy mate, I’ll weigh in for that.

(I keep out of the earnest debates here about evil Catholicism however I have an abiding affection for my faith and, as a mighty leader of men Father Jack taught me, I love the Mass)

Mick Gold Coast QLD

3 Sep 12 at 9:37 pm
Sorry to hear your news Winston

Tal

3 Sep 12 at 9:37 pm
“Would appreciate if those who have faith to say a prayer for a good kid”

May he be restored to you in this time; in Jesus name. Amen

Driftforge

3 Sep 12 at 10:14 pm
Will do, Winston.

C.L.

3 Sep 12 at 10:28 pm
I’ll light a candle too, Winston.

dover_beach

3 Sep 12 at 10:44 pm
Newspoll back out to 55-45?

MDMConnell

3 Sep 12 at 10:50 pm
Confirmed by ghostwhovotes

LNP 46, ALP 32, Grn 8(!), TPP 55-45

Paradoxically, Gillard gets a slight improvement in personal ratings….

MDMConnell

3 Sep 12 at 10:52 pm
Will keep your family in my positive thoughts Winston, all the very best.

hzh

3 Sep 12 at 10:52 pm
Yep

Great news too… Best news I’ve seen for while now on the political front.

According to the latest Newspoll survey, conducted

The Coalition’s primary vote is up one point to 46 per cent, while support for the Greens has fallen to a three-year low of 8 per cent.

Support for the Green scum keeps trending down.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 10:53 pm
Newspoll:

L-NP 55 (+2) ALP 45 (-2).

Primary: L-NP 46 (+1) ALP 33 (-2) GRN 8 (-3)

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 10:54 pm
Stepford

You around or is this another one of your strategic retreats?

JC

3 Sep 12 at 10:56 pm
good poll, but why are some down on Mr Abbott now, here and over at A.Bolt, I don’t get that.

candy

3 Sep 12 at 10:57 pm
Gillard on a crusade?

Goodie, maybe she can fall on her sword.

kae

3 Sep 12 at 10:58 pm
Coupla reasons candy. Our criticisms of him are coming from the right. He’s behaving like a statist and we’re trying to smack it out of him.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 11:02 pm
Thinking of you and the child bride, Winston.

kae

3 Sep 12 at 11:02 pm
Stepford, where are you? Get over here at once.

You too, Hammy. You predicted Gillard would be ahead in this Newspoll. Get over here and explain why you adore Pol Pot.

Fisky

3 Sep 12 at 11:05 pm
Wonder who told Ms Gillard to use the word “crusade”.
it doesn’t sound right. It’s like she’s saying all our teachers and all our kids are dumb and need to be saved from something.

candy

3 Sep 12 at 11:08 pm
POLICE say 53 Sri Lankan asylum seekers are refusing to leave their ship after it ran out of fuel and was towed to a port in western Indonesia.

Police Captain Abdurachman Suryanegara said on Monday the Sri Lankans asked for fuel so they could continue their voyage to Australia to seek asylum.

The ship was towed on Sunday to Mentawai island off Sumatra after reports the Sri Lankans were offering gold and jewellery to obtain food, water and fuel.

Another group of 43 Sri Lankans is also being held in Mentawai after being rescued last week, nine days after their boat’s engine broke down.

Australian officials have noted a big spike in asylum seekers attempting the hazardous sea journey to the country before a tougher immigration policy takes effect.

Tougher immigration policy won’t be taking effect until after the federal election.

Gab

3 Sep 12 at 11:10 pm
You too, Hammy. You predicted Gillard would be ahead in this Newspoll. Get over here and explain why you adore Pol Pot.

Lol

Oh Yea I remember that prediction. Kero, you have a lot to answer for.

What an idiot.

Forget Stepford, Fisk. He’s done the ironing.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 11:12 pm
What this news poll tells us is that it was always 55/45 and ALP primary is about 30-33%. Not the complete wipeout many of us would like, but definitely a severe loss for the slush fund party.

On the available evidence it would appear that an election is being planned. Money-throwing never-never policies don’t really work for longer term vote buying.

brc

3 Sep 12 at 11:19 pm
Speaking of which, the Democrats will be meeting in Charlotte this week to unify the country by dividing it according to race, gender, age, education, sexual preference, socio-economic class, region, union membership, dietary habits, gun ownership, religious affiliation, climatological affiliation, and general level of covetousness.

JC

3 Sep 12 at 11:20 pm
Looks like Steve and mOnty will be having another crap night’s sleep.

Infidel Tiger

3 Sep 12 at 11:21 pm
The Greens are finished without that lovable old homo at the wheel.

H B Bear

3 Sep 12 at 11:23 pm
Did anyone see that dickhead enviwoment minister on Q&A? He used the show to announce new regulations on super trawlers.

Get this: this smug asshole smirked as he itemised what fishermen will now have to do.

1. If they accidentally catch a dolphin (ONE dolphin) or a seal, they have to cease operations immediately and only resume again 50 nautical miles away.

2. Federal government monitors will be on all such vessels 24 hours a day.

3. CAMERAS on FISHING NETS are now compulsory to ensure they don’t lie about catching a holy dolphin.

4. Footage from the nets – along with detailed daily reports – must be submitted to Canberra.

5. The catch will be limited.

When asked how these trawlers could survive under such regulations, he said that wasn’t his problem. All spoken like a taxeating fuckwit who has never employed anyone in his life and couldn’t care less about those who do.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 12:05 am
Well they’ve killed off the cattle industry so it’s only natural they’ll do the same to fishing. They’re half-way there with mining and coal.

I hear imported fish is riddled with antibiotics and toxic chemicals..,mmm tasty.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 12:10 am
I said super trawlers.

I should have kept that singular:

ENVIRONMENT Minister Tony Burke has announced tough new conditions on a super-trawler docked in Australian waters.

The controversial super-trawler Margiris will be required to have an observer on board and to record its activities via an underwater camera under the new measures the minister announced on Monday night on ABC television’s Q&A program.

The operators of the vessel must ensure that listed threatened species, migratory species, cetaceans and marine species are not killed or injured as a result of trawling operations, Mr Burke said.

“The big vessel will have to fish within the rules so that the impact it has on the environment is no more than if it was fishing on a small vessel,” he said.

Mr Burke said while he didn’t have the power to stop the super-trawler under environmental laws, he was able to impose restrictions on its activities based on the impact it could have on listed species such as seals and dolphins…

Under the measures, if dolphins are killed by its nets, the trawler will have to stop fishing and travel 50 nautical miles before it restarts fishing activities.

The same applies if three or more seals die.

The vessel will also not be able to fish in sea lion hunting grounds.

The conditions are being imposed for an initial two-week period to give the company that owns the super-trawler an opportunity to comment on the conditions.

The minister says he will use his powers to amend accreditation of the trawler’s fishery so that the company would be prosecuted if it doesn’t adhere to the new conditions.

Note also that Gillard Labor now uses an ABC programme to announce policy.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 12:16 am
I notice the unAustralian Greens are advertising for the next election:

The next federal election could be less than 12 [sic] months away.

What do you want to leave for future generations?

Followed by two pictures. One of a green field, blue sky and nothing else, no civilisation; the second a picture of steam pouring out of power plant chimneys.

So, even they think the election could be not far off.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 12:25 am
Tweet of the day (via Instapundit):

That’s odd. Today’s DNC message is that we are better off than 4yrs ago and it’s Bush’s fault.

https://twitter.com/freddoso/status/242609428329820160

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 12:31 am
I said super trawlers.

I should have kept that singular:

No matter, it changes nothing and will prevent any other super-trawlers from operating in the future. Plus these morons in government have hit the industry with the marine park zoning enlargement, so it won’t be long before we can kiss that industry good-bye as well.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 12:33 am
He’s in our prayers, Winston

Grigory Potemkin

4 Sep 12 at 12:37 am
Potemkin’s Village

What if Joolya died… here

Grigory Potemkin

4 Sep 12 at 12:49 am
Tony Blair, December 7, 1995:

“We are mounting a crusade for standards and I want parents and teachers to feel a part of it.”

Bill Clinton, State of the Union address, February 4, 1997:

MY No 1 priority over the next four years is to ensure that all Americans have the best education in the world … I have a plan … a national crusade for education standards.

Gillard, yesterday:

A national crusade, a chance for change, education transforming the life of every child.

Cut&Paste, where there’s more on what Gillard says is “the most important” issue/thing/policy…

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 12:51 am
My Prayers for your family, Winston.

Cold-Hands

4 Sep 12 at 12:56 am
Australians prefer Gillard over Abbott as PM when everything should favour Abbott.

It’s called the power of incumbency and means jackshit. The only metric that counts is the 2PP. Both Keating and Howard won handsomely despite being a long way behind on the “Preferred Prime Minister” poll.

Cold-Hands

4 Sep 12 at 12:56 am
I forgot “Do Not feed the Troll”. Sorry.

Cold-Hands

4 Sep 12 at 1:32 am
It really riles you that my distillations cut to the core of your irrationality, don’t you? It negates your obfuscation so neatly, all you’re left with is inanely repeating that I “don’t get it”, a transparent surrender.

What distillations? From memory, you mistook Aquinas’s argument as an argument against the eternity of the universe only to have me tell you that Aristotle and Aquinas never used this argument to that purpose, and specifically said that no such argument could be made. You have also argued against the principle of causality by saying that our intuitions may be misleading, and now you seem to be arguing that there need not be a first member in an essential ordered causal series even though every member in such a series is entirely dependent on the first member for their causal power. So, lets be clear, this is an attempt to undermine Aquinas’s First Way by undermining the principle of causality. You have to admit, the argument must be pretty good if you have to go the length of questioning that premise and not the execution of argument itself. In the midst of this you thought the principle of causality was a scientific principle as opposed to a metaphysical, among other things. And now you’re declaring that I’ve “surrendered”. Interesting.

What do you mean, “no”? It quite clearly proves my point, that natural theology isn’t a particular religion, and so isn’t subject to the FSM parody (you know, the one you amusingly misunderstood).

Whoever said that it was a particular religion? It is a part of the Christian religion. And what a crock, the parody is aimed at the idea of God in general. To pretend that it is only aimed at the Christian God, or the Islamic God, and so on, but not at God in general, is pure horseshit.

Further to Jarrah’s point:

That cannot be further to Jarrah’s point, because he argues that the movement from one to the other can only be irrational. If fact, he has described the Cosmological Argument itself as irrational. Now, I don’t deny that the latter connection is difficult but it need not be contrary to reason.

This is all very interesting, but it doesn’t change that CL was lying when he asserted that atheists believe in a flying spaghetti monster or similar apparition. Rather, the concept was a construct to point out the absurdity of believing in anything fantastical without any evidence.

HTH

Abu Chowdah

4 Sep 12 at 2:57 am
Newspoll’s two most interesting suggestions are that the Green vote has collapsed to 8% and the protest vote (“others”) has ballooned to 13% from around 6.5% at the last election – both excellent news for the Coalition. A Green vote under 8% would mean the filth would struggle to get a single senate quota in the states, wiping out the extra senators they have in WA, SA and Tas, who are up for re-election next year, including Hanson-Young. Most of the protest vote would go straight to the Opposition, meaning the current Coalition 2PP is quite a bit understated. An anti-government swing of around 15% – an annihilation – is still on the cards. But remember margin of error is +/-3%, which accounts for most of the recent Labor false dawn.

Tom

4 Sep 12 at 3:38 am
On the subject of elections, Nanny Gillard’s bribes are wearing off:

Department stores in July suffered their worst month of trading since before the global financial crisis as the stimulus from $2 billion in carbon tax compensation and the government’s Schoolkids Bonuses, paid in May and June, wore off.

Australian Bureau of Statistics sources suggested the 10 per cent fall in department store sales in the month was concentrated among discount stores, pointing to a loss of confidence among people on
lower incomes.

Tom

4 Sep 12 at 4:38 am
You wonder why the number of people identifying as Aboriginal has jumped?:

The 2012 indigenous expenditure report showed that on average, state, territory and federal governments spent $44,128 per head for indigenous Australians, compared with $19,589 for non-indigenous Australians.

The report, which was released by the Productivity Commission on Tuesday, acknowledged there was a “disparity between outcomes for indigenous and other Australians”.

Tom

4 Sep 12 at 4:45 am
Stern and Garnaut’s voodoo climate economics flawed!
Gosh, who’d have thought that could happen?

blogstrop

4 Sep 12 at 7:09 am
This is all very interesting, but it doesn’t change that CL was lying when he asserted that atheists believe in a flying spaghetti monster or similar apparition.

CL’s point surely was that atheists have speculative beliefs about the origins of life and the universe. No cosmology is either completely cost-free or completely based on empiricism.

dd

4 Sep 12 at 7:16 am
Or to put it another way, CL was turning it around and making fun of atheists using their own instrument of mockery.

dd

4 Sep 12 at 7:18 am
CL was lying

LOL.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 7:50 am
Winston, I hope and pray for the best for your wife’s nephew. Stay strong!

Gillard – I am today promising $6 billion, to be paid in the future, by someone else. She is a joke of a PM.

pete m

4 Sep 12 at 7:51 am
Yes, exactly, dd. It, as I said yesterday, cut to the bone. And we found last night that some atheists believe, to employ an image by the Thomist, Sertillanges, that although a paint brush with a very long handle cannot move itself, it can if it has an infinitely long handle.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 7:55 am
Winston, So sorry to hear. Thoughts with you and your family.

Woolfe

4 Sep 12 at 8:04 am
I’ll stay on the sidelines for this one, dover. Just wanted to make that observation.

dd

4 Sep 12 at 8:09 am
I see that Essential primary vote for Labor was up one to 34% this week; Newspoll dropped from 35% to 33%. Within error, true primary for Labor could be 34 – 35%. A much better look than the lows of under 30%.

The 8% for Greens in Newspoll is more puzzling: the first under 10% that I can remember for ages. I have no idea what that would be about.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 8:21 am
Michael Smith in Brisbane tomorrow.
Brisbane:
Time: 6:30pm for 7:00pm start
Date: Wednesday, 5 September
Place: Queensland Irish Club
Address: 175 Elizabeth Street Brisbane
Cost: $20

Rudiau

4 Sep 12 at 8:26 am
SfB,

I have no idea

@8.21 on the 4th of September, SfB finally confirms what most of us knew already.

Huckleberry Chunkwot

4 Sep 12 at 8:37 am
And what a crock, the parody is aimed at the idea of God in general. To pretend that it is only aimed at the Christian God, or the Islamic God, and so on, but not at God in general, is pure horseshit.

In its origins the FSM parody was specifically aimed at the teaching of creation science as part of the high school biology curriculum. The author is on record as saying:

I don’t have any problem with religion, but it is not science

The whole thing started with a quite funny letter to the Kansas School Board and went viral from there. You don’t have to be atheist to be a Pastafarian!

Cato the Elder

4 Sep 12 at 8:44 am
In fact, the original Pastafarian letter is a general spray against psuedo-science. Note the shocking (!) correlation between global warming and the regrettable decline of piracy!

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

(same link)

Cato the Elder

4 Sep 12 at 8:47 am
Interesting stuff on declining solar activity for those who are interested in that side of the climate debate.

Poor Old Rafe

4 Sep 12 at 8:50 am
The 8% for Greens in Newspoll is more puzzling: the first under 10% that I can remember for ages. I have no idea what that would be about.

That seems to be the trend. I would hope the reason for it is that more of the public are beginning to understand that the Greens are dangerous, destructive fuckwits who should be living on a subsistence turnip farm somewhere and nowhere near the levers of power.

Dangph

4 Sep 12 at 8:50 am
stevieliar, please don’t be hard on yourself. The answer is in your 6000 blog posts. Somewhere amongst that unread rubbish.

Put on that red does, grab the kero and head over to Hammygars for a final meltdown. But do the ironing first.

Yu must be in some pain dickhead

Tiny dancer

4 Sep 12 at 8:56 am
Rafe has supplied the answer. Greens voters are being sacrificed to the sun god – to no avail.

Keith

4 Sep 12 at 8:56 am
It would also help if d-b would clarify in what sense he thinks the Aquinas proofs of God really are “proofs”. Given that the faults and problems with the Aquinas arguments have been outlined for a few centuries now, it is odd to be reading d-b as if he thinks they are incapable of rejection.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 8:58 am
Cato, yes, I understand that. That is why I later mention that it rightly mocks the ‘god of the gaps’. But, you must admit, its current usage goes far beyond that rather narrow target nowadays as it is typically employed as an omnibus instrument of mockery against religion in toto.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 9:01 am
I see that Stepford is playing Comical Ali again, search high & low for that Yeti while at the same time trying to deflect attention for the 2PP where the Coalition moved out to 55/45 again.

People are p*ssed having to pay higher energy bills due to a tax that does not effect the temperature of the planet in any way.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 9:02 am
The Greens vote must be at the bottom of the error range. If anything could be drawn, you’d say that the Green vote is leaking to the ‘undecided’. In other words – protest vote that isn’t necessarily going to the Greens any more.

However, with a falling greens vote in all the last state/territory elections, there can be no doubt that the high water mark for the Greens was the 2010 federal election.

I will certainly open a fine beverage for every Greens senator that becomse jobless. Seeing as they like increasing the unemployment rate so much, it is a good thing for them to taste their own medicine.

brc

4 Sep 12 at 9:06 am
A change to Sarah Hanson-Young would see their poll increase perhaps? looks like Ms Milne is just not sympathetic enough in her approach, the younger woman will appeal to the younger voters.
And she’s quite pretty too, looks good, doesn’t hurt the image.

candy

4 Sep 12 at 9:07 am
On the subject of elections, Nanny Gillard’s bribes are wearing off:

The government’s sugar hit didn’t give much of a bounce in the polls.

The Romney campaign has smartly put out the Reagan question – Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?

The Coalition would be mad not to ask the same question after 5 years of Labor.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 9:11 am
Ms milne is just not sympathetic enough in her approach, the younger woman will appeal to the younger voters.
And she’s quite pretty too, looks good, doesn’t hurt the image.

Now, that’s what I call in depth political analysis…

Given that these anti-scientific, anti-progress and anti-human idiots’ policies are so fucked, superficiality is about all they have left.

Personally, I consider hyphen-dung to be utterly repulsive.

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 9:12 am
trying to deflect attention for the 2PP where the Coalition moved out to 55/45 again.

I note this strategy involves taking the current result as the bottom end, and adding 3% for error, and declaring that 35% is the right number. When equally I can do the same, and come out with 30% as the right number – which is reflected across other polls.

Doesn’t really matter. You can’t win elections in Australia with 30, 33 or 35% of the vote. The current situation where Labor won less seats than the Coalition was achieved with a Labor primary vote of 38%. So unless that primary vote improves to at least 38%, they have zero chance of winning an election.

brc

4 Sep 12 at 9:13 am
And she’s quite pretty too, looks good, doesn’t hurt the image.

Wow, you have some impressive beer goggles on Candy!

Token

4 Sep 12 at 9:13 am
The Coalition would be mad not to ask the same question after 5 years of laybore

Tokes,

Incredibly, laybore campaigned on that very issue under that loathsome vegetable ruff – that if idiots voted for laybore, they’d be better off.

Hindsight renders the entire presumption just so utterly ridiculous.

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 9:16 am
sfb, I clarified this at the beginning. These proofs are metaphysical proofs. They begin with an obvious, empirical, starting point, here, Whatever is moved, is moved by another, to which we apply the laws of thought, to arrive at a necessary conclusion. Does this mean the conclusion is beyond criticism, no. And the faults and problems you refer to have been meet with effective reasoned responses over the course of those same centuries.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 9:16 am
Toke, I posted last week that we had just received our 1st power bill under the carbon tax regime. Due to the fact that compared to same time last year, our bill had risen by something like 10% but our consumption had reduced by 8%, I reckoned that Gillard was having a dead cat bounce in the polls.
Once people wake up to the fact that they are paying substantially more, while using less, the memories of those tax cuts will be long gone and Gillard and the greenslime will be consigned to an ever decreasing 2pp vote no matter what SfB, m0nty and the rest of the Get Up crowdwould have us believe.

Huckleberry Chunkwot

4 Sep 12 at 9:17 am
Incredibly, laybore campaigned on that very issue under that loathsome vegetable ruff – that if idiots voted for laybore, they’d be better off.

Rabz, it is not hard to list the failed thought bubbles like grocery watch, fuel watch and then put some bar graphs pointing out how much costs have risen.

The template is on display in the US. Romney will win the election if his campaign ignores the distractions and focuses on the economy. The same is true for the conservatives here.
_______________________

Huck, everyone is receiving such bills and wondering why they wasted all the time and energy cutting back on consumption.

When you consider small businesses didn’t get any compensation (i.e. read the tradies & shop owners), the result is that people are bitching loud about costs.

At the moment you only hear about it on Ray Hadley and similar programs. If the solar panels/pink batts/BER are anything to go by, that indicates this is building momentum and will be BIG in a few weeks time.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 9:27 am
“Now, that’s what I call in depth political analysis…”
“Wow, you have some impressive beer goggles on Candy!”

just a hunch, it would be interesting to know what Green supporters think on that, what makes them tick. Are they disappointed in Ms Milne or not.

candy

4 Sep 12 at 9:30 am
Anti-Obama ads ideally star Obummer in his own words.

The latest is pretty effective

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 9:36 am
I agree Candy that Milne suffers as she is not a natural communicator like Brown, and that Hanson-Young is much better than Milne.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 9:37 am
Are they disappointed in Ms Milne or not.

I love Milne.

Only Lee Rhiannon could possibly be better.

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 9:38 am
it would be interesting to know what greenslime supporters think on that, what makes them tick.

No, it wouldn’t.

They’re utterly insane morons and their opinions are irrelevant.

You’d get more sense out of your cat.

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 9:48 am
Regarding a few comments above on the Margiris. I would have expected on this blog an objection to the trawler not on environmental grounds but on the grounds it is part of a EU taxpayer subsidised fishing fleet. Why are we allowing a foreign taxpayer subsidised boat to compete with our own commercial fishing fleet?

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 9:49 am
Didn’t that empty chair gag by Eastwood get into the sewer pits that are the minds of the Lefties!

THE HATERS ON THE PUBLIC PAYROLL: “A thuggish, violent reaction to Clint Eastwood’s quietly funny appearance at the RNC. And this is the head of a ‘public employee’ union. There’s a choice this election, alright. Which side are you on? If you’re on the side that fantasizes about knocking an 82 year old man off a stage for laughing at your leader, you might want to examine your soul.” If, you know, you still have one

The Demoncrats really should be relabled the Party of Hate.

[H/t Instapundit]

Token

4 Sep 12 at 9:50 am
I thought it was leased to an Australian fishing company.

blogstrop

4 Sep 12 at 9:51 am
The long running debate above about the proof of the existence of god reminds me of Douglas Adams’ excellent treatise on the subject:

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful [as a babel fish] could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the NON-existence of God.
The argument goes like this:

`I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’

`But,’ says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’

`Oh dear,’ says God, `I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.

`Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, “Well, That about Wraps It Up for God.”
Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 9:58 am
Yes, we know about that.

blogstrop

4 Sep 12 at 10:00 am
They’re utterly insane morons and their opinions are irrelevant.

You’d get more sense out of your cat.

This is why their state and national conferences don’t allow media access. The outright fruit-battery on display would surely result in calls for the doors to be locked and the venue declared an insane institution.

Keith

4 Sep 12 at 10:01 am
The long running debate above about the proof of the existence of god reminds me…

…of a tidbit from that SBS Apollo doco:
An atheist being a dick about her religion sued NASA because the Apollo 8 crew quoted Genesis.

lotocoti

4 Sep 12 at 10:12 am
LOL, that is a great passage SteveC.

I always liked the way DA avoided getting preachy at such tims by throwing in a lovely twist like happened in this story:

`Oh dear,’ says God, `I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.

`Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

It was like that with the little story of whale who became self-aware and many other times in the books.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 10:16 am
Understood and agreed d_b.

BTW and FWIW, I’m enjoying your rapier accuracy in this debate. It’s a simple point (which the original FSM letter addresses well):

Religion is not science: but then again, science is not religion

(Church of the AGW take note!)

Oh; and since I haven’t said it lately

Factio Virides delenda est!

Cato the Elder

4 Sep 12 at 10:20 am
The outright fruit-battery on display would surely result in calls for the doors to be locked and the venue declared an insane institution.

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 10:20 am
.of a tidbit from that SBS Apollo doco:
An atheist being a dick about her religion sued NASA because the Apollo 8 crew quoted Genesis.

lol that’s right, she tried to sue them on the basis of separation of church and state…or something.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 10:22 am
‘outright fruit-battery’ is a really neat expression

candy

4 Sep 12 at 10:25 am
Australia has been returning the favour to Britain which gaves us the likes of Doug Cameron. Exporting Greens to the UK

http://www.smh.com.au/world/australian-exjournalist-to-lead-greens-in-uk-20120904-25b54.html

An Australian-born former journalist has been elected leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, promising to fight the British government’s “economically illiterate cuts”.

Natalie Bennett, 46, won the ballot of more than 3000 party members, defeating her closest rival, Peter Cranie, the party announced on its website.

Bennett won by 1757 votes to 1204 in the final round after two other candidates were eliminated.

The vacancy arose after Caroline Lucas, the party’s first and only member of the British parliament, stepped aside in May.
Advertisement

Bennett said in her acceptance speech the party’s policies were “the only viable way forward for British people, for the world”.

She said the economy needed to be “relocalised”, urging a revival of manufacturing in Britain and support for farmers providing food, while the financial services industry had to be reined in to stop it “running riot” towards another economic crash.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/australian-exjournalist-to-lead-greens-in-uk-20120904-25b54.html#ixzz25SNNROmS

jtfsoon

4 Sep 12 at 10:34 am
Bennett said in her acceptance speech the party’s policies were “the only viable way forward for British people, for the world”.

~~Magna Carta~~ Greenism.

Infidel Tiger

4 Sep 12 at 10:42 am
Bennett said in her acceptance speech the party’s policies were “the only viable way forward for British people, for the world”.

They really do sound like they are founding the GruenReich.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 10:45 am
Ahahahahahahaha.

Biden: ‘If It Weren’t So Hot I’d Go Into Detail’ On How America’s Better Off.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 10:46 am
Wow. You wouldn’t have picked mountainous Green Mile star Michael Clarke Duncan as a candidate for an early death.

Green Mile star Michael Clarke Duncan dies.

He was 54.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 10:49 am
I don’t want to make light of a man’s death but this isn’t exactly a good advertisment for veganism

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/green-mile-actor-michael-clarke-duncan-dead-at-54-20120904-25b6l.html

The muscular Duncan, a former bodyguard who turned to acting in his 30s, “suffered a myocardial infarction on July 13 and never fully recovered,” the statement said. “Manigault is grateful for all of your prayers and asks for privacy at this time. Celebrations of his life, both private and public, will be announced at a later date.”
Advertisement

In the spring of 2012, Clarke had appeared in a video for PETA, the animal rights organisation, in which he spoke of how much better he felt since becoming a vegetarian three years earlier.

“I cleared out my refrigerator, about $5000 worth of meat,” he said. “I’m a lot healthier than I was when I was eating meat.”

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/green-mile-actor-michael-clarke-duncan-dead-at-54-20120904-25b6l.html#ixzz25SRed9Q6

jtfsoon

4 Sep 12 at 10:51 am
Todays quote in my desktop calendar seems apt for AGW consensus builders:

If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. Anatole France.

—

It is easy to prove if there is a God – just die and you’ll find out who is right.

—

The media has been completely vacant on the aboriginals winning for CLP and what this might mean in other States. Big surprise there.

—

Also, is there any basis to attach the ABC for commercial ties to The Yartz, most of which are for profit enterprises but get a huge boost from ABC? Anything in the Act / Regs or charter?

pete m

4 Sep 12 at 10:51 am
Wow. You wouldn’t have picked mountainous Green Mile star Michael Clarke Duncan as a candidate for an early death.

Black male. Likely steroid user. Ticking time bomb.

Infidel Tiger

4 Sep 12 at 10:52 am
OK, People – an update from The Mole™.

Polling – a dead cat bounce, already beginning to turn back from laybore.

“Team ruff” is sitting back and waiting for the polls to deteriorate further.

If the polls don’t deteriorate quickly enough, “they can be made to”.

However, time is running out for a challenge this year.

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 10:53 am
In the spring of 2012, Clarke had appeared in a video for PETA, the animal rights organisation, in which he spoke of how much better he felt since becoming a vegetarian three years earlier.

Aha. Another death for greenism.

Poor fool should’ve stuck to meat and fat.

Infidel Tiger

4 Sep 12 at 10:53 am
Obama on Obama

http://isteve.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/obama-in-manic-phase-of-his-cycle.html

As Election Day approaches, President Obama is sharing a few important things about himself. He has mentioned more than once in recent weeks that he cooks “a really mean chili.” He has impressive musical pitch, he told an Iowa audience. He is “a surprisingly good pool player,” he informed an interviewer — not to mention (though he does) a doodler of unusual skill.

All in all, he joked at a recent New York fund-raiser with several famous basketball players in attendance, “it is very rare that I come to an event where I’m like the fifth or sixth most interesting person.” …

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

jtfsoon

4 Sep 12 at 10:54 am
However, time is running out for a challenge this year.

Any word about an election this year, Rabz,? Or is that just mere speculation?

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 10:55 am
Report: Democrats bus in blacks to fill convention stadium.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 10:55 am
Radio National ran a BBC report on how diverse the DNC was compared to the RNC which felt like a meeting of “Angry old white men”.

Fuck me the public executions are going to be fun.

Infidel Tiger

4 Sep 12 at 10:58 am
Rabz, did you tell The Mole Steve from Brisbane’s expert anaylsis on the situation and how it is getting better for Gillard?

The little discussion our “expert” gave earlier in the thread is so compelling after all, it must give the troops hope.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 10:59 am
Via Instapundit…

Steve from Brisbane uploads to YouTube!

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

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 10:59 am
The long running debate above about the proof of the existence of god reminds me

Except, Steve C, that a proof cannot be derived from a probability. None of Aquinas’s Five Ways is an argument from the improbability of X, Y. As Cato has noticed, science is about the probability of X given Y; metaphysics is about the necessity of X given Y (in this sense, metaphysics is very much like mathematics).

Religion is not science: but then again, science is not religion

Indeed, Cato, but science is not without its own metaphysical principles. I’ve seen some atheist scientists argue against some of the laws of thought, like the principle of non-contradiction and the principle of the excluded middle, in order to avoid conclusions they find uncongenial to their philosophy of materialism.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 11:02 am
CL your link to busing in Obama “supporters” doesn’t work. Get your act together, please.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 11:02 am
Dems bus in blacks to fill convention stadium.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 11:05 am
People Duncan’s size rarely see old age. The bigger you are, the shorter you live, in general.

Yobbo

4 Sep 12 at 11:09 am
“I cleared out my refrigerator, about $5000 worth of meat,” he said. “I’m a lot healthier than I was when I was eating meat.”

Wow. Must have been a commercial fridge. Sad to hear he died.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 11:10 am
An election this year has to be a possibility.

To roll out grand policies like the Set of Perfect Teeth in Every Pot ™ and Endless Pots of Gold For Schools ™ this far out from an election would be the mark of a totally incompetent party.

Oh. Wait.

Never mind, carry on.

brc

4 Sep 12 at 11:12 am
People Duncan’s size rarely see old age. The bigger you are, the shorter you live, in general.

Is this the same for those on the other end of the scale?

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 11:12 am
““Team ruff” is sitting back and waiting for the polls to deteriorate further.”

Rabz does that mean it’s only between Ms Gillard and K. Rudd then?

candy

4 Sep 12 at 11:13 am
Today Is “National Empty Chair Day” …Pictures, Pictures, Pictures!

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 11:20 am
By the way, for a blog full of men with a keen interest and admiration for politicians who are fit and climb mountains and other macho junk like that, it’s amusing that Paul Ryan’s clear claim (now retracted) that he ran a marathon in under 3 hours has been ignored.

As Krugman wrote, this does not sound plausibly like a trick of the memory:

In a statement issued by a spokesman, Mr. Ryan tried to laugh the whole thing off as a simple error. But serious runners find that implausible: the difference between sub-three and over-four is the difference between extraordinary and perfectly ordinary, and it’s not something a runner could get wrong, unless he’s a fabulist who imagines his own reality. And does suggesting that Mr. Ryan is delusional rather than dishonest actually make the situation any better?

Now, no doubt, someone will point out Hilary’s account of landing under fire as a matter of a fabulist on the Democrat side.

But still – the fair haired boy of the Republicans (so to speak) looks like he can’t be trusted to be truthful either.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 11:21 am
Anyone who thinks that dullard would possibly go to the polls a day earlier than necessary is bonkers.

She knows she can’t win. So basically it’s lardarse up, snout in trough until she’s literally forcibly removed from it.

ruff is regarded as the only likely alternative for the sole reason of lobodomy pardee damage limitation, as we have discussed here before. Also, his ego demands it.

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 11:21 am
Actually I’d have thought Team Ruff would be waiting for the polls to CLOSE.

Rudd is the ultimate downhill skier: when Labor was in deep shit in the Crean/Latham era, he didn’t want to know about becoming leader. He waited until Beazley had pulled Labor into a strong position, THEN shafted him and coasted to victory.

There are guys who do the hard slog through years of unpopularity, but Rudd sure as hell ain’t one of them.

MDMConnell

4 Sep 12 at 11:23 am
To roll out grand policies like the Set of Perfect Teeth in Every Pot ™ and Endless Pots of Gold For Schools ™ this far out from an election would be the mark of a totally incompetent party.

There will be no election until next September and that these sorts of “announcements” and expansions will be made from then until now. It’s the Fabian way.

100 billion dollar deficit’s for the next government, a 50% increase in the size of the federal government and the successful Blair / Brown UKisation of Australia.

At least she hasn’t opened the borders to let 7 million third world immigrants in yet…oh.

twostix

4 Sep 12 at 11:25 am
time is running out for a challenge this year.

Thanks, Rabz. That means nothing has changed since August 2010. They’re still sitting in the road scratching their ovaries as the road train Middle Australia bears down at speed. 2013 will be too late to roll one way or the other to avoid 16-20 tyre marks. Her lying bitchiousness is going to go down spending other people’s money ’til she drops. Question: what month next year will the troll budget run out?

Tom

4 Sep 12 at 11:25 am
Is this the same for those on the other end of the scale?

My grandmother was 4 feet 10 inches tall and lived to a 100. On my data point of one, yes.

brc

4 Sep 12 at 11:26 am
We know the government are incompetent, so they shouldn’t go to the polls soon.

But because they are incompetent, maybe they will try an earlier election?

I would think they want to announce and have an election long before the next budget is announced. But that’s just me thinking they would care that their ‘not an option’ surplus evaporated before their eyes.

It just gets depressing thinking about how much more damage they will do between now and then. All these multi billion dollar never-never policies. Designed solely so that, when removed, they can point at Tony Abbott and go ‘he’s so mean’.

It wouldn’t matter so much if the media rightfully pulled them up and said ‘these policies have no basis in reality’.

One can hope. It’s what keeps us going. That, and venting on Open Forums.

brc

4 Sep 12 at 11:30 am
There will be no election until next September and that these sorts of “announcements” and expansions will be made from then until now. It’s the Fabian way.

Carr is in the cabinet so we are seeing NSW Labor tactics dominate now.

You can expect these announcements will be re-announced multiple times at tactical times in the next year so Lie-Bore can control the talking points.

This will happen when the Gaffe-machine & Goose produce one of their endless series of clangers. People die on boats lured by Labor Policy, People riot in detention centres, the latest Pink Batts money wasting scheme goes tits-up, etc

Each time the Stenographers will cheer loudly and turn attention to the “bold reform” no matter how many times it is re-cycle, the key is they will never be costed or enacted.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 11:31 am
a 50% increase in the size of the federal government

Get with the program, Twostix! 2006-07: $219 billion. 2012-13: $376 billion. That’s up 72% already before the coming blowouts are counted.

Tom

4 Sep 12 at 11:31 am
By the way, for a blog full of men with a keen interest and admiration for politicians who are fit and climb mountains and other macho junk like that, it’s amusing that Paul Ryan’s clear claim (now retracted) that he ran a marathon in under 3 hours has been ignored.

He ran the damned thing when he was 20.

jtfsoon

4 Sep 12 at 11:33 am
“ruff is regarded as the only likely alternative for the sole reason of lobodomy pardee damage limitation”

Maybe S. Smith would fill the bill? i know he’s not the best performer in his portfolio but he looks okay and superficality and image are fairly relevant these days to start with.
He looks fresh compared to the rest of the bozos and wears a suit very nicely.

candy

4 Sep 12 at 11:34 am
it’s lardarse up, snout in trough

LOL

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 11:35 am
Thanks, Rabz. That means nothing has changed since August 2010. They’re still sitting in the road scratching their ovaries as the road train Middle Australia bears down at speed. 2013 will be too late to roll one way or the other to avoid 16-20 tyre marks.

Look for the mid year economic review to be delayed / not occur as when it is revealed the Stenographers will not be able to hide –

There will never be a surplus under a government Gillard leads

BTW: To paraphrase the feral pekanese who posts here – that is one big sh*t sandwich the Lie-Bore/Alliance has given Australia.

Get with the program, Twostix! 2006-07: $219 billion. 2012-13: $376 billion. That’s up 72% already before the coming blowouts are counted.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 11:36 am
BTW steve, it’s revealing that you think keeping fit through some regular exercise is ‘macho junk’

jtfsoon

4 Sep 12 at 11:40 am
Come on, Jason: he’s a fitness nut (with some good reason, given early deaths in his family,) and although I far from familiar with the fitness nut frame of mind, I find it very, very hard to believe that they can accidentally shave off an hour in a marathon time in their memory when the time claimed is well known to be a remarkable milestone for an amateur marathon runner. At a WSJ blog:

On the magazine’s web site, some commenters took umbrage at Mr. Ryan’s debunked claim, noting that marathoners take their PRs (personal records) seriously and aren’t likely to confuse a finishing time by more than an hour.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 11:41 am
some commenters took umbrage at Mr. Ryan’s debunked claim, noting that marathoners take their PRs (personal records) seriously and aren’t likely to confuse a finishing time by more than an hour.

Well there ya go. That’s surely enough to put voters off and change their vote to Obama. Especially given his stellar record in office.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 11:44 am
National Empty Chair Day photo album, part II
By Michelle Malkin • September 3, 2012 03:21 PM

Just landed in Charlotte NC and was met with a massively overflowing email box of Empty Chair Day photos from around the country! A Politico reporter asked me why I was covering the phenomenon and why so many on the Right felt compelled today to deliver a message in support of both the event and Clint Eastwood’s AWOL Obama skit. Here’s what I said:

It’s fun. It’s funny. It’s a social media phenomenon (see here for full round-up of blog and MSM coverage and Legal Insurrection’s comprehensive coverage here).

#EmptyChairDay is a way for conservatives to stand their political ground on their own front lawns — without the mainstream media gatekeepers whitewashing and obstructing their voices out of the campaign debate like they did during the RNC.

Clint Eastwood resonated with voters outside the snotty, derisive NY-DC-Hollywood axis. He braved derision and ridicule for standing on the convention stage. Activists on the right wanted to demonstrate that their appreciation. As always, humor is the best medicine.

Without further ado, here’s round two of the National Empty Chair Day social media photo album. There are hundreds and hundreds, so I can’t reprint all of them. But this is a great, raucous representative sample. Enjoy and thanks to all who participated! Remember in November.

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 11:45 am
fit through some regular exercise is ‘macho junk’

John Howard’s exercise regime was acceptable and not “macho”. But my rule of thumb nonetheless applies: politicians who spend more than (say) 45 minutes a day are wasting time and lose marks in my scoreboard.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 11:46 am
I see liar is excited by Paul Ryan’s recollection of his marathon time from 22 years ago on a telephone radio interview whilst on a campaign bus.

A whole hour, liar.

Imagine.

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 11:48 am
politicians who spend more than (say) 45 minutes a day are wasting time and lose marks in my scoreboard

As opposed to fucking morons like emerson spending six hours a day on twatter…

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 11:49 am
It’s good to see that some people’s chagrin at Eastwood’s mocking of Obama via an empty chair is rebounding on them with interest.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 11:50 am
Snap.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 11:52 am
Snap.

Already beat the pair of you by a good 30 minutes. Amateurs.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 11:55 am
d-b, it’s the Right wingnut world living in an echo chamber. That’s all it is.

In fact, the Right wingnut world is so stupid at the moment that it has built up the criticism of the “empty chair” in a momumental straw man of their creation which they are now burning – in their imagination – and claiming it as some triumph.

All very stupid…

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 11:58 am
Obama meets Clint Eastwood

Dead Soul

4 Sep 12 at 12:00 pm
Well, if Paul Ryan did knowingly exaggerate his marathon triumph it’s a human failing to make yourself sound better, a spur of the moment comment perhaps. He’s still very fit and a very personable man.

Like Steve from Bris notes it’s a bit like Hilary Clinton saying she landed under fire or something to sound very brave, although that was a bit outrageous somehow.

candy

4 Sep 12 at 12:00 pm
Accidental mistake, or deliberate exaggeration (lie?), you decide:

Here’s the transcript of what Ryan said to Hewitt:

H. H.: Are you still running?
P. R.: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or [less].
H. H.: But you did run marathons at some point?
P. R.: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
H. H.: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
P. R.: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
H. H.: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…
P. R.: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.

What’s striking about the exchange is how he responds to Hewitt’s “Holy smokes.” A four-hour marathon, for a twenty-year-old, is not something that elicits a “holy smokes.” It’s entirely average; in fact, for the race that Ryan ran, it was below average. In the marathon in question, he finished in nineteen hundred and ninetieth place, out of just thirty-two hundred and seventy-seven male runners. (A 2:55 would have had him at a hundred and thirtieth.) But Hewitt’s reaction didn’t set off any alarm. Instead, Ryan could tell that he had just impressed his host, and he reinforced it, saying “I was fast when I was younger, yeah.”

From the New Yorker

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 12:00 pm
All very stupid…

…and waaaaacist.

Don’t forget da waaaaacism.

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 12:02 pm
try “monumental straw man”.

Do I need to elaborate?: yes, the routine got ridiculed on Jon Stewart and Colbert (and probably other shows) on last Friday night. Sites like Huffington Post and others had their fun with it on the night and the following day, and as far as I can see have not been obsessed about it since.

But the Right has been obsessing about what a triumph it was and how the (imaginary) ongoing obsession with it by the Democrats was hurting them.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 12:05 pm
Right wingnut world is so stupid at the moment that it has built up the criticism of the “empty chair” in a momumental straw man of their creation which they are now burning – in their imagination – and claiming it as some triumph.

lol you lefties will never get it. We’re making fun of how lame you lefties are at taking the Empty Chair so seriously and how lame your attempts are at ridiculing Eastwood and his performance. Your lot, SFB, has obviously been mortally wounded.

All very stupid…

Yes, you lot are.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 12:06 pm
In fact, the Right wingnut world is so stupid at the moment that it has built up the criticism of the “empty chair” in a momumental straw man of their creation which they are now burning – in their imagination – and claiming it as some triumph.

No, what was very stupid was attacking Eastwood’s mockery. What was very stupid was running reports on every news channel here and abroad of that night’s convention speeches as if Eastwood’s tongue-in-cheek speech was of monumental significance. Well, it was in the sense that he alone among the other speakers was brave enough to mention that the emperor had no clothes.

Speaking of echo chambers, you should never mention them, since you invariably only echo the reports of those various organs. Which is very stupid.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 12:08 pm
Gab, I know I get more comprehension from talking to a duck, but if you watch the Jon Stewart treatment you would understand that people are not “wounded” when they are laughing uproariously at what they find lame, embarrassing and stupid.

Quack?

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 12:11 pm
Quack?

You look like a duck, SFB, and sound like a duck, we already know this.

Hilarious. Of all the speeches at the RNC, the lame ducks on the Left obsess over a comedy skit mockery of a President that’s a fiscal SCOAMF.

Yep. That’ll sway voters lol

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 12:14 pm
Paul Krugman is now writing about Paul Ryan’s running record?

LOL.

Actually, Steve – you and that bearded beta, Krugman, don’t know what you’re taliing about. Amateur runners – which is to say, runners who mostly run alone (with an occasional turn in an organised event) – are hopeless when it comes to times. And they don’t bother about “PBs.”

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 12:16 pm
Accidental mistake, or deliberate exaggeration (lie?), you decide

Wow, the President’s own publisher printed on Obama’s autobiography he was born overseas.

What is the reaction? Crickets.

How about the president’s mentor who was mentioned 22 times in Dreams of my Father being one of the US’s leading communist and founding editor of the Communist Chicago Star Tribune which condemned the Marshall Plan & Truman Doctrine. Still Nothing.

Contrast the screaming howler monkey response when Paul Ryan is asked about a run 20 years before.

Fact is, it is up to you to prove he did not run that or live with the fact he did.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 12:20 pm
It’s CL versus those who wrote into Runner’s World.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 12:21 pm
Ah, it’s dumbass troll hour.

Tom

4 Sep 12 at 12:23 pm
Fact is, it is up to you to prove he did not run that or live with the fact he did.

He’s already retracted the claim, dimwit. I have already said so, and the links I linked to said so.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 12:23 pm
In fact, the Right wingnut world is so stupid at the moment

Obama responded to the joke, thereby validating it. Try again SoB.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 12:24 pm
I know, Token, I know.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 12:24 pm
More evidence that leftism is a mental illness…

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell:

“We know exactly what [Republican Mitch McConnell is] trying to do there,” he said. “He’s trying to ally Tiger Woods, and surely the lifestyle of Tiger Woods, with Barack Obama. … These people reach for every single possible racial double entendre they can find in every one of these speeches.”

Bernard Goldberg:

So if you say Barack Obama spends too much time on the golf course and not enough time trying to fix the nation’s problems, that’s the Republican not-so-subtle way of reminding everyone that a) Barack Obama is black – like Tiger Woods – and b) that he has the same “lifestyle” which almost certainly means that the president – like Tiger Woods – fools around with women who aren’t his wife.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 12:25 pm
Wry comment at Runner’s World after the Ryan story:

Thank goodness he knows how to round numbers. That should come in handy when dealing with economic issues, unemployment numbers and more…

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 12:29 pm
Stiglitz as well as Krugman think Ryan’s budgetary proposals are incompetent

Well Stiglitz and Krugman are Nobel laureate leftists who genuflect at the church of what they imagine is Keynes.

Like all goof leftists.

So they would of course disagree with Ryan (and Jack Kemp in Reagan’s administration).

I wonder whether perennial fuckwit Julius could provide evidence that Stiglitz and Krugman have said that Ryan is “incompetent”.

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 12:30 pm
Amateurs don’t subscribe to or read ‘Runner’s World,’ Steve.

This is pretty funny. Lefties are going nuts about not being able to get any dirt on Romney and Ryan.

Steve thinks JogGate will spell the end of RoRy 2012.

LOL.

——————————————

Hey, I know. Let’s talk about Obama’s cocaine addiction!

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 12:31 pm
Gillard’s looming problem (or rather The Gooses) is the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Even the dedicated story tellers at Treasury ain’t going to be able to concoct a surplus for 2012-12 out of this train wreck.

Even the love media aren’t going to be able to paper over those giant fiscal cracks. Our Fran will try though.

H B Bear

4 Sep 12 at 12:31 pm
More fun. Mocking Biden’s “If it weren’t so hot I’d go into detail …” competition.

“If it weren’t so hot, I’d go into detail about how they’re gonna put y’all back in chains.”

“If it weren’t so hot, I’d go into detail about what ‘more flexibility after the elections’ means when translated into Russian.”

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 12:32 pm
Did Forbes follow up on its call two weeks ago for Joe Biden to be examined by a psychiatrist?

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 12:34 pm
Hey, I know. Let’s talk about Obama’s cocaine addiction!

Hey, let’s talk about his smoking cigarettes. That’s a big no-no in dumbass Lefty world. Roxon would be on him like a fly on … for that!

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 12:35 pm
“those giant fiscal cracks.”

Ms Gillard’s spending spree talk is making people bit uneasy about where all this is heading in the future and how it can be paid for.

I think like CL said other day it’s all to do with crushing the AbbottAbbottAbbott.

candy

4 Sep 12 at 12:36 pm
“that bearded beta, Krugman,”

The guy has an MIT PhD, advised President Reagan, has published armloads of books, is the 18th most cited economist in the world, won the John Bates Clark Medal and the friggin’ Nobel Prize in Economics. What exactly does he have to do to stop being a ‘beta’? Whatever the hell that means, anyway.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 12:37 pm
“If it weren’t so hot, I’d go into detail about how you didn’t build that.”

My personal favourite, but then I did submit it.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 12:38 pm
Obama responded to the joke, thereby validating it. Try again SoB.

Validating it? I found the response clever, witty and pointed. (The Obama back to the viewer, disdainful and just getting on with work.)

Again, a complete misinterpretation of how “Lefties” have viewed the matter.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 12:39 pm
We know exactly what [Republican Mitch McConnell is] trying to do there,” he said. “He’s trying to ally Tiger Woods, and surely the lifestyle of Tiger Woods, with Barack Obama

Does anyone really believe this? No, of course, they don’t. It’s really another way they’ve imagined they can call Republicans racists. Conversely, it may indicate that Democrats are the only people with the requisite equipment to hear these ‘dog-whistles’.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 12:40 pm
“Whatever is moved, is moved by another, to which we apply the laws of thought, to arrive at a necessary conclusion.”

The necessary conclusion, according to you, being that everything is moved by another, except one thing called god. Which means not everything is moved by another after all, negating your own premise.

That you keep insisting this is logical defies belief.

“the Christian God is consistent with the properties of God as understood by natural theology”

How so?

“whereas the FSM is not.”

Why not?

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 12:42 pm
“He’s trying to ally Tiger Woods, and surely the lifestyle of Tiger Woods, with Barack Obama

Meanwhile, back at the Romney camp, they’re all talk about unimportant matters like the economy, jobs and stuff.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 12:42 pm
All the Liberals have to do is run Gillard’s promises back-to-back with the 15 seconds that will wipe Labor off the map, “There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”.

Only the rusted-on 1/3 believe them any more.

H B Bear

4 Sep 12 at 12:43 pm
Has the movie Palerider been banned yet?

Infidel Tiger

4 Sep 12 at 12:47 pm
Lol steve has apparently just discovered Colbert and Stewart – two 2004 era washed up has beens who he thinks are the height of “cool”.

Next he’ll be posting links to Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore’s “latest” diatribe about the imminent busHitler coup and the ascendent conservative fourth reich and Code Pink’s latest antics.

He’s hip is our 60 year old Steve.

twostix

4 Sep 12 at 12:48 pm
He’s already retracted the claim, dimwit. I have already said so, and the links I linked to said so.

Who says he ran the time in an official marathon? You can bet the records are as easy to locate as Obama’s academic transacripts.

Along those lines, seeing events that happened a long time ago are so important, how many members of the same media scrum are asking Obama about Frank Marshall Davis.

Kengor notes that although both Ronald Reagan and Hillary Clinton’s role models were indeed of great import to each of them, their names were rarely mentioned in each of their biographies. Ironically, however, Obama mentioned “Frank” by name no less than 22 times in his memoir, “Dreams From My Father.”

It would be great to find out how a boy from Hawaii got a giant in the world of communism in the US to be his mentor.

Imagine an American man so devout in his Communist beliefs, that during the Cold War the FBI placed him on its security index – meaning that if an armed conflict were to have erupted between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, Federal authorities would have looked to him as a prime suspect for treason.

…but let’s focus on a time from a run 20 years ago. Yes?

Token

4 Sep 12 at 12:54 pm
Stiglitz as well as Krugman think Ryan’s budgetary proposals are incompetent.

Lol Here’s stigliz copping a hiding from a hedge fund manager and being shown on global Television what a complete dunce he is and is almost brought to tears.

Joe, Greece can’t borrow in the market at Germany’s rate you incomparable moron.

Hendry rips him another arsehole.

“that bearded beta, Krugman,”

lol

“Honey, have you re-written my column?”

JC

4 Sep 12 at 12:56 pm
Does anyone really believe this? No, of course, they don’t. It’s really another way they’ve imagined they can call Republicans racists.

Michelle Malkin compiled the complete list of code words the lily-white MSNBC presenters came up with (or as says, the line up so white you need sun-glassses on or you’ll get sun glare).

Token

4 Sep 12 at 12:58 pm
The Obama back to the viewer…

Ah yes, brilliant response. Turn your backs on the voters.

Thanks, Obama!

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 12:59 pm
Stiglitz advised the Greek government in 2010?

That worked out well then.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 1:02 pm
Stiglitz advised the Greek government in 2010?

That worked out well then.
—————————–

Sorry, Moderator, wrong email address on previous.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 1:03 pm
Who says he ran the time in an official marathon? You can bet the records are as easy to locate as Obama’s academic transacripts.

For God’s sake: what part of “he has retracted the claim” do you not understand? Go read previous links and stop being so stupid that you’re trying to find excuses that even Ryan is not attempting…

As for Stiglitz, I trust that JC would enjoy his ripping into Romney for avoiding far too much tax.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 1:08 pm
The necessary conclusion, according to you, being that everything is moved by another, except one thing called god. Which means not everything is moved by another after all, negating your own premise.

No, not everything, only whatever is moved (changed). Do you see your mistake? The premise is not that everything is changed, but only that whatever is changed is changed by another. This is entirely consistent with the conclusion of an Unmoved Mover (or Unchanged Changer). You cannot have an essentially-order causal series that reaches down to infinity. There must be a first, that which is fundamental, which transmits casual powers to all other members of such a chain here and now and sustains the universe in existence. Without a First Cause, every member of such a chain, even if it is infinitely long, is a long series of zeros.

How so?

Read a book. I’ve pointed you to some already.

Why not?

Because the FSM is not a necessary being.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 1:09 pm
. . . but science is not without its own metaphysical principles.

Agreed. I’m a Popperian myself.

I’ve seen some atheist scientists argue against some of the laws of thought, like the principle of non-contradiction and the principle of the excluded middle, in order to avoid conclusions they find uncongenial to their philosophy of materialism.

My experience is the same. Some scientists want to take a whole bunch of stuff on faith while pretending that they don’t. They tend to get very uncomfortable if you dig into their unstated assumptions. As DD commented above, there is no decision in this area that is cost free. Atheism is itself a leap of faith.

Cato the Elder

4 Sep 12 at 1:11 pm
He’s so fucking dishonest Gab. That greedy lefty prick (Stigliz) was going on TV in 2010 touting how Greece wasn’t a problem and all that was needed was “shocial solidarity”.. ie Germany to cough up.

Guess what, Germany did cough up and the Grecians are still fucked.

He was basically being paid by the Greek government at the time to propagandize on greece’s behalf.

If there was a prison for lying dishonest economists the Stig would be a lifer.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 1:11 pm
steve has apparently just discovered Colbert and Stewart

Is this thread having a competition for stupidity at the moment?

I’ve posted videos from Colbert for years at my blog, before Comedy Central stopped them being available in other countries. I used to watch him on Foxtell pretty regularly. I haven’t mentioned him much here before because it is hard to view his show now that I cut Foxtel for being (mostly) a waste of money.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 1:11 pm
Stepford

I see the only place the Stig is able to get a gig these days is the Guordian. Lol. The guordian about politics.

I read several paras… summary, the Stig is a lying piece of shit. In any event he hasn’t been himself since Hugh Hendry ripped him that second arsehole.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 1:15 pm
Stiglitz also advised Obama. That too worked out stupendously. Any government advised by StiggyBoy ?

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 1:23 pm
Any other government advised..?

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 1:24 pm
When dinosaurs attack…

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 1:36 pm
’ve posted videos from Colbert for years at my blog, before Comedy Central stopped them being available in other countries. I used to watch him on Foxtell pretty regularly. I haven’t mentioned him much here before because it is hard to view his show now that I cut Foxtel for being (mostly) a waste of money.

Steve!

Nobody reads your blog and my story is heaps better.

Sorry.

twostix

4 Sep 12 at 1:36 pm
I notice the ferocity of ad hominem attacks is not matched by argumentative fury

Fuck you’re a complete dickhead, Junius. I sent you to a vid where Stigliz suggests that with Euro overnight interest rates at 1% the Greeks had little problem as the levels were so low.

But the Greeks weren’t able to borrow at 1%. They were being forced by the market to borrow at 7% at the time, which a few months later became 175%.

Junius, you seriously need to fuck off as you aren’t capable of keeping up. Go away.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 1:41 pm
Nobody reads your blog and my story is heaps better.

I think one person does.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 1:42 pm
I notice the ferocity of ad hominem attacks is not matched by argumentative fury.

We don’t need to “argue” with such stupidity. It’s you on the dying left who need us to engage you and your failed figure heads so that you can feel like you’re still relevant.

We can just ignore you and laugh at you as you all fade into obscurity after your flash in the pan 3 year “reign”.

twostix

4 Sep 12 at 1:44 pm
Julius, I shouldn’t respond (it seems like people are mostly ignoring you) but I have taken pity on your earnest and hardworking attempts to troll.

The Australian Government’s budgetary situation has been hostage to the financial meltdown brought about by free market deregulation of the finance sector.

The “budgetary situation”, as you so coyly call it, is purely the result of spending too much money. It has nothing to do with the finance sector. Until you grasp such basics you’ll continue to flail in the wilderness of incomprehension.

dd

4 Sep 12 at 1:49 pm
Um, the Ryan Marathon Truthers might like to be reminded that Obama invented a fictitious girlfriend and used to claim he was born in Kenya.

Fisky

4 Sep 12 at 1:50 pm
Stay classy, dumbocrats!

I can’t speak for the delegates or the foreign dignitaries, but many of the journalists I have spoken with here are appalled at the accommodations in Charlotte to which they were assigned by the DNC.

The Crack Hotels of the DNC.

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 1:51 pm
Roxon says “Trust me” on data storage of the public’s phone and internet use for up to two years.

I’d trust a snakeoil salesman with a “Liar” sign on his forehead before I’s trust anything that sprouts forth from that totalitarian cow.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 1:54 pm
Um, the Ryan Marathon Truthers might like to be reminded that Obama invented a fictitious girlfriend and used to claim he was born in Kenya.

Yep… The Kenyan was the very first birther.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 1:55 pm
Steve seems really manic and angry.

He had high hopes for JoggerGate.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 1:55 pm
Looks like Gina Fever has gone global, the LA Times has gone all sneery over this quote:

“If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain…”

“Do something to make more money yourself — spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working.”

It seems Lefties across the world seem to get filled with hate and bile when confronted by a rich and successful woman.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 1:56 pm
data storage of the public’s phone and internet use for up to two years

Are the gliberals going to kill this ridiculous ‘idea’?

They’d bloody well better…

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 1:57 pm
The truth hurts them Token.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 1:57 pm
Shorten on the ALPBC announcing crusade against asbestos.

It’s a Hamish McSporran announce-a-thon for the next 12 months. Just as well Bob Carr is on board. He’s a past master.

H B Bear

4 Sep 12 at 1:59 pm
Gillard really gets down to brass tacks and minute financial details on funding her Education Krushade:

Julia Gillard says Australia’s strong economy will fund schools reforms.

Oh well, then. Shit. Go for it.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 1:59 pm
the Ryan Marathon Truthers might like to be reminded that obongo invented a fictitious girlfriend and used to claim he was born in Kenya

Hey man, don’t fugget “da choom gang”…

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 2:00 pm
You thought you’d seen it all. Nope.

Demolition party Senate candidate campaigns against the Kenyan and the Demolition Party.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 2:03 pm
Apparently Gillard is now calling on the Big Miners to get behind her daft schools crusade. The very same ones she and her government monkeys have been vilifying in the press. She has no shame, no self-awareness but plenty of guile.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 2:03 pm
PM asks miners to lobby states on schools

Pthetic. Hope they all tell her to go get knotted.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 2:06 pm
“No, not everything, only whatever is moved (changed).”

Well, isn’t that convenient. And you deny special pleading!

“This is entirely consistent with the conclusion of an Unmoved Mover (or Unchanged Changer).”

No, it’s not. Something that acts (ie to impart movement to something), changes from not acting to acting.

“You cannot have an essentially-order causal series that reaches down to infinity.”

Plenty of philosophers disagree, but I still hold any first cause that is invoked in order to avoid the problem of infinite regress simply ducks the issue. It’s quite obviously a subset of the god-of-the-gaps ‘answer’.

“Read a book.”

What was it you said? Oh, right – I see you’ve given up.

A shame, because I would really like to see you reconcile an interventionist god with merely being a first cause. Not to mention the contradictions inherent in omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, etc.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 2:12 pm
“Pathetic. Hope they all tell her to go get knotted.”

That’s a funny way to govern, asking one group to help another, to help her out.

candy

4 Sep 12 at 2:15 pm
A shame, because I would really like to see you reconcile an interventionist god with merely being a first cause. Not to mention the contradictions inherent in omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, etc.

Jarrah has – as ever – an answer to everything and a response to nothing.

At least he’s consistent in his moronic sophistry.

And what I wonder are “the contradictions inherent” in ‘omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence’ used by prophets as a pointer to God that Jarrah decided wasn’t worthy of mention?

P’haps Jarrah’s latest delusion extends to thinking he’s outside the totality of all that ever was, is and ever will or could be?

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 2:29 pm
Yes, very strange, Candy. It’s a completely transparent tactic because Gillard knows full well the miners will either say nothing or disagree with her, in which case Gillard and Swan will jump up and down, point the finger and tell us “See, these miners get rich from our land but won’t help the children of our nation. They’re greedy and stomping on our children’s future”. Like I said, she’s pathetic.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 2:30 pm
now calling on the Big Miners to get behind her daft skools krusade

FFS, have these loathsome turnips ever had a sensible f*cking idea in their entire pathetic, pointless lives?

This reminds me of the time ruff worked himself up into a lather over how he was going to revolutionise the health system by stealing all the states’ GST and employing about a gazillion new bureaucrats.

FFS, these stonkeringly stupid twats give me the f*cking proverbials…

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 2:31 pm
Link to Abbott talking to Ray Hadley today.

From 5 min on you’ll hear how Abbott got the long list of businesses who have contacted Hadley about how there costs are increasing due to this pointless job destroying tax that does not change the temperature of the planet.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 2:33 pm
Democrats turn to huge ‘star’ to counter Clint Eastwood.

*drum roll*

It’s James Taylor.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 2:35 pm
Is this thread having a competition for stupidity at the moment?

You have been awarded the Grand Champion in perpetuity.

Infidel Tiger

4 Sep 12 at 2:40 pm
Wow – so Paul Ryan mis-stated his marathon personal best time.

Congrats, Steve, here is your long-awaited ‘smoking gun’ moment, which will derail the Republican ticket.

His birth certificate, college grades and thesis are all on record….but he exaggerated his marathon PB!!!

James in Melbourne

4 Sep 12 at 2:42 pm
Does the dog eater believe himself to be some sort of god? An interview from 2004:

Falsani: Do you believe in sin?

Obama: Yes.

Falsani: What is sin?

Obama: Being out of alignment with my values.

http://www.conservativecommune.com/2012/09/sunday-reads-and-thoughts/

Infidel Tiger

4 Sep 12 at 2:42 pm
“Like I said, she’s pathetic.”

she’s a manipulator, Gab

candy

4 Sep 12 at 2:43 pm
Credit for snaring Earth, Wind and Fire. Great band. But James Taylor?

The Republicans had the Godfather of Soul

jtfsoon

4 Sep 12 at 2:43 pm
The Democrats should be scared: the Republicans have the Chuck Norris promising 1000 years of darkness if Obama wins.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 2:47 pm
Given around 25% of Americans are evangelicals, Norris highlighting Obama is a dirty rotten socialist is not a bad thing.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 2:50 pm
At least 4 members of the Expendables team (Sly, Bruce, Chuck and Arnie) are openly Republicans. That should be endorsement enough.

jtfsoon

4 Sep 12 at 2:50 pm
Or Biden telling blacks.. “y’all be in chains”

Norris is an actor.. Biden is the Veep.

Fuck off stepford, you clown.

Go get the Lying Slapper’s latest talking points and post at your blog which no one reads.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 2:51 pm
Paul Ryan: Rape Is Just Another ‘Method Of Conception’

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 2:54 pm
CL’s point surely was that atheists have speculative beliefs about the origins of life and the universe. No cosmology is either completely cost-free or completely based on empiricism.

Which is a good point you are making, and perhaps what CL intended if I am going to be generous. The difference between an atheist cosmologist and a theist is that the former at least tries to make suppositions based on science. The latter does no such thing. For CL to dismiss that as belief in an absurd concept that was a rhetorical device to ridicule the inanity of blind theism is a bait and switch and a great irony.

Abu Chowdah

4 Sep 12 at 2:54 pm
(Sly, Bruce, Chuck and Arnie)

All well, well past their use by dates. Good image for the Republicans.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 2:57 pm
My grandmother was 4 feet 10 inches tall and lived to a 100. On my data point of one, yes.

I can’t research this right now, but common sense would suggest that everything else being equal, someone who is twice the size of someone else would have twice the chance of getter cancer because they have twice as many cells.

Dangph

4 Sep 12 at 2:59 pm
All well, well past their use by dates. Good image for the Republicans.

Stick with those hep cats James Taylor and Earth, Wind and Fire, daddio.

Infidel Tiger

4 Sep 12 at 3:00 pm
What a welcome development. Reuben sandwiches propping up everywhere.

Infidel Tiger

4 Sep 12 at 3:02 pm
SteveC

Paul Ryan: Rape Is Just Another ‘Method Of Conception’

Have you been having conversations again, with Kimberly your plastic sex doll?

JC

4 Sep 12 at 3:02 pm
The miners should demand and receive an apology from Rudd, Gillard and Swan, and any other liar’s party operative AND their green coalition partners, in the press, in Parliament, and anywhere else they made their “greed” smears.
Then they should tell them to get stuffed, and pull a few more projects, which they will be doing in the next few months anyway.

Keith

4 Sep 12 at 3:03 pm
Earth, Wind & Fire’s Maurice White is a very hip and cool 72.

—————————————————-

Abu, stop being a galoot.

The timeline was this:

- Grigory posted a cartoon mocking atheists because, after all, they – along with scientists – have NO FUCKING IDEA – how nothing became dinosaurs, mountains and tuna fish.

- I noted as much.

- A snippy Jarrah the undergraduate retorted that atheists may well be clueless on this but, unlike theists, don’t claim to know exactly how nothing became dinosaurs, mountains and tuna fish.

STOP: Here is the foundational lie. Theists, generally, do not claim to know exactly how this happened at all. It is hubristic cockhead physicists and cockamamie cosmologists of a Dawkins bent who like to say that they know – or are on the verge of knowing.

- Jarrah then mentioned some obscure new theory explaining it all, posited by unnamed experts, which he implied was an answer – or an answer-in-waiting.

- I then mocked this as the atheist’s Flying Nothing (to Everything) Spaghetti Monster.

- You then claimed I was “lying” (?) because the original Flying Spaghetti Monster is supposedly a strictly defined dogma of atheist polemics and must only be used to convey an analogy about believing in an inexplicable God being equal to believing in anything.

- Which is EXACTLY how I used it, mockingly, regarding Jarrah’s named theorem and the various other half-baked codswallopia periodically promoted by those who mendaciously claim to have obviated God, scientifically. They haven’t.

Atheists are ~~becoming~~ a crazy cult and it’s funny to watch.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 3:14 pm
“Have you been having conversations again, with Kimberly your plastic sex doll?”

You’re a real hoot JC, SteveC hasn’t got a chance against you, i’m starting to feel sad for him, he does seem like a nice bloke.

candy

4 Sep 12 at 3:16 pm
In 2009, African Americans were 30% more likely to die from heart disease, as compared to non-Hispanic white men.
African American women are 1.6 times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to have high blood pressure.

Dan

4 Sep 12 at 3:17 pm
Maureen Dowd, the NYT’s resident 70 yo teen uncatholic schoolgirl:

Cruel Conservatives Throw a Masquerade Ball

The Koch brothers are the evil twins behind it all apparently.

Also the GOP are “hypocrites” and Maureen is weally weally angwy.

Vicious and unhinged actually.

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 3:28 pm
The New Yorker is certainly spending a lot of time on Ryan’s marathon time. (Ringing up people who rang the same race, and all remember their times with much greater accuracy than plus or minus 1 hour.)

Catallaxy excuse making fail.

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 3:32 pm
California Demolitionist Party Chair Compares Ryan to Goebbels

That was Goebbels, a big lie, they said they don’t care about facts. They’re going to lie so, I mean, that’s not pejorative to them, they probably wear it as a compliment,” he continued.

KCBS then asked Burton whether Democrats were ever guilty of embellishing or taking things out of context.

“Embellishing and lying are two different things,” Burton responded.

“What Paul Ryan said was a bold-faced lie to all the American people and he doesn’t care that it was a lie because it doesn’t matter because it sounds good,” Burton declared.

Short version: Ryan lies, knows he’s lying, repeats the lies and doesn’t care just like his hero Goebbels or somesuch.

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 3:35 pm
LOL “The New Yorker”.

E. B. White and James Thurber must be turning over in their graves at the rancid journalism currently being practiced at the once-mighty New Yorker. Take a look at this from Ryan Lizza:

Tim Russert told me that, according to his sources, Bill Clinton, in an effort to secure an endorsement for Hillary from Ted Kennedy, said to Kennedy, “A few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags.”

Whoa. I have no brief for Bill Clinton, whom I consider a liar and a coward (although certainly a better president than Barack Obama), but the levels of hearsay involved in this accusation, redolent of racism, boggle the mind.

Keep digging, SFB, you loser.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 3:38 pm
Well, isn’t that convenient. And you deny special pleading!

No, you’re just miffed that you failed to point out a contradiction.

No, it’s not. Something that acts (ie to impart movement to something), changes from not acting to acting.

No, the opposite. The conclusion drawn from Scholastic realism is that the First Cause must in fact be Pure Actuality/ Act. The state you’re referring to is that state of all other members of an essentially order causal series. Things in the world, according to this view, are a combination of act and potency, but these things can only be moved (changed) from potency to act, by something, at bottom, that is Pure Actuality (not a combination of act and potency since the movement of such a member in such a series would itself require explanation given the original premise). And in being Pure Act it is not changed.

Plenty of philosophers disagree, but I still hold any first cause that is invoked in order to avoid the problem of infinite regress simply ducks the issue. It’s quite obviously a subset of the god-of-the-gaps ‘answer’.

Yes, and plenty of philosophers agreed with Hume on causation but very few of them step-off the top of tall buildings entertaining the thought of the “loose and separate” relationship between the event of stepping off that building and the event of striking the concrete pavement seconds later. But, by all means, hold your position all you like.

What was it you said? Oh, right – I see you’ve given up.

No, I haven’t given up. But I cannot spend endless hours rehearsing other arguments that are easily found in many libraries in books I’ve pointed out to you; in fact, I linked to them. I mean, I don’t expect anyone to have to hold my hand through every argument I’m curious about, and if they point to the relevant work, that really ought to be end of it. But, no, here on the internet, unless an opponent remains online answering every possible query, they have “given up”.

A shame, because I would really like to see you reconcile an interventionist god with merely being a first cause.

Again, this really shows that you have no idea of what is being argued. A First Cause is not a temporal cause in the distant past, it is a sustaining cause here and now. Anyway, you could begin with Aquinas and then in the voluminous literature that has been created in his wake. Don’t wait on me. I’m busy with the literature myself.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 3:39 pm
WSJ Editorial: The Charlotte Democrats
Hope and change have given way to a grim determination.

The Democrats gathering in Charlotte this week are united behind President Obama but more than a little nervous about their November prospects. The thrill of 2008 is gone, replaced by an almost grim determination. The party of hope and change has become the party of grind-it-out, slug-it-out, and hope to win as less awful than Mitt Romney……………

The main theme is to preserve the government that Democrats have expanded. Democrats made a generational bet in 2009-2010 that the country was ready to be yanked sharply to the left, and they know that nearly all of their grand ambitions will be undone if Mr. Obama loses.

Yet the liberals who dominate the party believe that if Mr. Obama wins, however narrowly, their gamble will have been a great success. They may have lost the House in 2010, and perhaps they’ll lose the Senate this year, but those can be won back.

Meanwhile, ObamaCare won’t be repealed, its subsidies will start to flow in 2014, and then another huge chunk of the private economy and voting public will be dependent on the government for decades to come. Nancy Pelosi will take her bows as an icon of the entitlement state.

Thus the frowning resolve to grind out a victory by whatever means possible. It’s hardly an optimistic vision and it’s far from commanding the oceans, but if Democrats win, what you’ve seen is what you’ll get.

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 3:39 pm
“And what I wonder are “the contradictions inherent” in ‘omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence’ used by prophets as a pointer to God that Jarrah decided wasn’t worthy of mention?”

Dover, a learned fellow, will know exactly what they are, and no doubt will have some logical sleight of hand to explain them away.

It’s no surprise that you have no idea.

“Theists, generally, do not claim to know exactly how this happened at all.”

You CANNOT be serious. Have you not read Genesis?

“Jarrah then mentioned some obscure new theory explaining it all, posited by unnamed experts, which he implied was an answer – or an answer-in-waiting.”

I mentioned it as a potential answer to how our universe came to be, as an example of how science doesn’t settle on one idea if a better one is possible. This is the opposite to how religion works.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 3:41 pm
The New Yorker is certainly spending a lot of time on Ryan’s marathon time. (Ringing up people who rang the same race, and all remember their times with much greater accuracy than plus or minus 1 hour.)

Catallaxy excuse making fail.

Oh lol so let me get this straight.

The PM of Australia setting up a criminal mafia like racket for her boyfriend and then lying about it after being fired, then having two journalists fired by intimidating at least one media company? “non story”.

The VP candidate mistaking some fucking time he got in a marathon? Big Story.

You’re such a wanker.

twostix

4 Sep 12 at 3:46 pm
Dover, a learned fellow, will know exactly what they are, and no doubt will have some logical sleight of hand to explain them away.

Sorry, but there are no infinitely long paint brushes in my shed.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 3:48 pm
“Paul Ryan: Rape Is Just Another ‘Method Of Conception’”

SteveC, that’s a very misleading title. Ryan didn’t say “just”, as if rape were nothing but a way to get pregnant. He said how the conception happens doesn’t matter when it comes to his views on abortion. It’s a position based on principle, rather than what’s politically palatable, unusual for someone who’s been a politician that long. Contrast that with “multiple choice” Romney.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 3:49 pm
You CANNOT be serious. Have you not read Genesis?

Nice try – but no cigar. CAPS OR NO.

You’re saying the world’s theists all subscribe literally to Genesis?

You know, rather than a small minority of evangelicals?

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 3:53 pm
“No, you’re just miffed that you failed to point out a contradiction.”

No, it’s just further proof that natural theologians will say anything in the search for intellectual justification of their socially ingrained local creation myth.

“the First Cause must in fact be Pure Actuality/ Act”

See what I mean? In order to explain the nature of what we see, there must be this thing we can’t see that does not share that nature, which just happens to be what their parents told them to believe in. Happy coincidence!

“But I cannot spend endless hours rehearsing other arguments that are easily found in many libraries in books I’ve pointed out to you”

Sure you can. That’s what you do with regard to all the other topics debated here, and I what I do too. You can suggest I go away and read something, and I can do the same, but then there wouldn’t be a point in being here.

“But, no, here on the internet, unless an opponent remains online answering every possible query, they have “given up”.”

That’s the method you used on me, I merely turned it back on you to show up your hypocrisy. I’m happy to keep speculating about polkas on pinheads.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 4:11 pm
“You’re saying the world’s theists all subscribe literally to Genesis?”

No. I’m saying theists necessarily believe in a creator. Genesis was just the obvious example to use, but there are hundreds to choose from. Including the Flying Spaghetti Monster. All of them claim to explain how the universe came to be, so you’re dead wrong as usual.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 4:15 pm
Here in Perth 400 to 500 are being laid off from an engineering JV as BHP cancel the port upgrade at Port Hedland.

harrys on the boat

4 Sep 12 at 4:15 pm
LOL “The New Yorker”.

E. B. White and James Thurber must be turning over in their graves at the rancid journalism currently being practiced at the once-mighty New Yorker. Take a look at this from Ryan Lizza:

Tim Russert told me that, according to his sources, Bill Clinton, in an effort to secure an endorsement for Hillary from Ted Kennedy, said to Kennedy, “A few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags.”

Whoa. I have no brief for Bill Clinton, whom I consider a liar and a coward (although certainly a better president than Barack Obama), but the levels of hearsay involved in this accusation, redolent of racism, boggle the mind.

You know , I reckon there’s a good chance Clinton said that. He’s never really liked the Kenyan and it’s also personal because of his wife.

However I also don’t think Clinton said that because of the Kenyan’s skin color. I think he said it to suggest the moron had next to no resume to be president.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 4:21 pm
An oldie but goodie. Obama is the definition of vanity

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/american-narcissus_516686.html?page=1

jtfsoon

4 Sep 12 at 4:27 pm
he New Yorker is certainly spending a lot of time on Ryan’s marathon time. (Ringing up people who rang the same race, and all remember their times with much greater accuracy than plus or minus 1 hour.)

Catallaxy excuse making fail.

The worst interpretation on this is that Ryan invented marathon times (therefore everyone must vote for Obama and secure the final and irreversible victory for teh Left!!!).

Obama invented an ex-girlfriend and for 17 years claimed to have been born in Kenya, to a Kenyan finance minister.

Which is more fantastic? You decide!

Fisky

4 Sep 12 at 4:29 pm
Some excerpts from the article

In 2008, one of his Harvard Law classmates, the entertainment lawyer Jackie Fuchs, explained what Obama was like during his school days: “One of our classmates once famously noted that you could judge just how pretentious someone’s remarks in class were by how high they ranked on the ‘Obamanometer,’ a term that lasted far longer than our time at law school. Obama didn’t just share in class—he pontificated. He knew better than everyone else in the room, including the teachers. ”

…

In 1990, Obama was wrapping up his second year at Harvard Law when the New York Times ran a profile of him on the occasion of his becoming the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. A book agent in New York named Jane Dystel read the story and called up the young man, asking if he’d be interested in writing a book. Like any 29-year-old, he wasn’t about to turn down money. He promptly accepted a deal with Simon & Schuster’s Poseidon imprint—reportedly in the low six-figures—to write a book about race relations.

Obama missed his deadline. No matter. His agent quickly secured him another contract, this time with Times Books. And a $40,000 advance. Not bad for an unknown author who had already blown one deal, writing about a noncommercial subject ..

In case you’re keeping score at home, there was some confusion as to what book young Obama was writing. His publisher thought he was writing about race relations. His employer thought he was writing about voting rights law. But Obama seems to have never seriously considered either subject. Instead, he decided that his subject would be himself. The 32-year-old was writing a memoir.

Simon & Schuster, which had taken a chance on an unproven young writer, got burned for a few thousand bucks. And Jane Dystel, who’d plucked him out of the pages of the New York Times and got him the deal to write the book that sped his political rise? As soon as Obama was ready to negotiate the contract for his second book—the big-money payday—he dumped her and replaced her with super-agent Robert Barnett. …

Obama’s vanity is even more jarring when paraded in the foreign arena. In April, Poland suffered a national tragedy when its president, first lady, and a good portion of the government were killed in a plane crash. Obama decided not to go to the funeral. He played golf instead. Though maybe it’s best that he didn’t make the trip. When he journeyed to Great Britain to meet with the queen he gave her an amazing gift: an iPod loaded with recordings of his speeches and pictures from his inauguration.

On November 9, 2009, Europe celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was kind of a big deal. They may not mention the Cold War in schools much these days, but it pitted the Western liberal order against a totalitarian ideology in a global struggle. In this the United States was the guarantor of liberty and peace for the West; had we faltered, no corner of the world would have been safe from Soviet domination.

President Obama has a somewhat different reading. He explains: “The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.” Pretty magnanimous of the Soviets to let the long twilight struggle end peacefully like that, especially after all we did to provoke them.

jtfsoon

4 Sep 12 at 4:33 pm
You know , I reckon there’s a good chance Clinton said that.

The book “Game Change’ is the source of several delicacies:

The book recounts the conversation Bill Clinton had with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy when he was trying to convince the liberal lion of the Senate to endorse his wife for president.

“A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee,” Clinton told Kennedy, according to the book — a comment that angered Kennedy, who later endorsed Obama.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was said in the book that ‘Obama doesn’t have a “Negro dialect” unless he wants one’.

Reid later apologised to Obama for those remarks

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 4:35 pm
I agree. I don’t think Clinton’s comment had anything to do with race. It was just the fact that he rightly regarded Obama as an upstart with no accomplishment to his name.

Personally I think anyone who writes his memoirs before the age of 50 is a tosser.

jtfsoon

4 Sep 12 at 4:38 pm
Tim Ball :
2012 Arctic Ice Melt Claims Distorted And Inaccurate. It’s the Wind Stupid

Ice conditions are changing; they always have and always will. Much warmer conditions occurred often in the recent past, but current changes are more due to changing wind patterns than temperature. Claims otherwise are political climate science trying to defend failed political climate science.

Keith

4 Sep 12 at 4:42 pm
… he rightly regarded obongo as an upstart with no accomplishment to his name.

A jumped up frigging bellboy, in other words, which he is.

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 4:43 pm
You just gotta laugh…

David Remnick delivers a number of insights about Obama in his book The Bridge. For instance, Valerie Jarrett—think of her as the president’s Karen Hughes—tells Remnick that Obama is often bored with the world around him. “I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually,” Jarrett says. “So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that they had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy.” Jarrett concludes, “He’s been bored to death his whole life.”

With one or two possible exceptions, that is. Remnick reports that “Jarrett was quite sure that one of the few things that truly engaged him fully before going to the White House was writing Dreams from My Father.” So the only job Barack Obama ever had that didn’t bore him was writing about Barack Obama. But wait, there’s more.

David Axelrod—he’s Obama’s Karl Rove—told Remnick that “Barack hated being a senator.” Remnick went on:

Washington was a grander stage than Springfield, but the frustrations of being a rookie in a minority party were familiar. Obama could barely conceal his frustration with the torpid pace of the Senate. His aides could sense his frustration and so could his colleagues. “He was so bored being a senator,” one Senate aide said.

Obama’s friend and law firm colleague Judd Miner agreed. “The reality,” Miner told Remnick, “was that during his first two years in the U.S. Senate, I think, he was struggling; it wasn’t nearly as stimulating as he expected.” But even during his long, desolate exile as a senator, Obama was able to find a task that satisfied him. Here’s Remnick again: “The one project that did engage Obama fully was work on The Audacity of Hope. He procrastinated for a long time and then, facing his deadline, wrote nearly a chapter a week.” Your tax dollars at work.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 4:44 pm
A jumped up frigging bellboy

Arrrggghhh – or busboy in the American context…

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 4:45 pm
Labor Brings Its Frustrations To Charlotte

“Charlotte wouldn’t have been our choice as a city.” Lee Saunders beats the hell out of a chair.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The newly-elected president of the giant public workers’ union AFSCME, Lee Saunders, took a page out of Clint Eastwood’s book at an Ohio delegation Labor Day breakfast on Monday, speaking to an empty chair that he pretended was occupied by Eastwood. At first it was just a lark.

“He’s been sitting here listening to all the speakers before me, he’s been listening to me, I want you to give Clint Eastwood a round of applause,” Saunders said. “I brought him with me to learn some things, OK? To teach him, to educate him.” The audience murmured and laughed.

Saunders asked the chair questions, then joked, “He doesn’t have anything to say.”

“Mitt Romney doesn’t have anything to say,” Saunders continued. “Paul Ryan doesn’t have anything to say.”

Suddenly, the tone changed: Saunders, finishing his speech, began to kick the chair, threw it, and yelled “Dirty Harry, make my day! We’re gonna kick ass in November!”

The crowd was cheering, and the humor had gained a palpable edge.

“We wanted to respond to the nonsense that he did last week,” Saunders said later. “We’re here to have fun but we’re here to work, too, so we thought we were sending a message.”

Saunders isn’t the only frustrated labor leader at the Democratic National Convention this year.

LOL

Imagine the leftist civil unrest/dummy spit on Nov 7

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 4:48 pm
Saunders isn’t the only frustrated laybore leader at the Dumbocratic National Convention this year.

Sounds like he needs to visit those hookers and drug dealers, quick smart.

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 4:59 pm
If chucking a wobbly at a chair is his idea of having fun, the poor guy needs to get out more….

MDMConnell

4 Sep 12 at 5:09 pm
We’re here to have fun but we’re here to work, too, so we thought we were sending a message

Yes, that a calm speech turned into a violent display of derangement

Brilliant

Dan

4 Sep 12 at 5:11 pm
Greens to Australia: You are too dumb.

Greens boat policy misunderstood: Christine Milne

“It may well be that people have misunderstood I think a lot about the asylum-seeker debate,” Senator Milne said.

Milne does not say she is concerned by deaths at sea, rather by something that means more to her flint-heart:

GREENS Leader Christine Milne says she’s disappointed in the party’s three-point slump in the latest Newspoll, declaring voters may have “misunderstood” the party’s asylum-seeker policies.

In the article she rabbits on about how the Greens policy is really, really right and once again takes the tone that only they really care.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 5:15 pm
Maybe people finally took the three word advice about the Greens; Read their website

Dan

4 Sep 12 at 5:23 pm
Greens boat policy misunderstood: Christine Milne

“It may well be that people have misunderstood I think a lot about the asylum-seeker debate,” Senator Milne said.

The last Newspoll must have spooked the shit out of Tubbsie, I reckon.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 5:27 pm
In the article she rabbits on about how the Greens policy is really, really right and once again takes the tone that only they really care.

Look, the old loon, Mad Dog Bob could get away with irrational bullshit because he was able to verbalize bullshit really well and make the most absurd claim sound plausible. But that sctick only until last year when he began to falter when challenged.

Not her though. Whenever she’s challenged she sticks her head at an angle and appears really angry. Tubbsie can’t take the heat.

I bet there’s serious tension within that party at the moment as they watch the polls.

Mad Dog seemed to have gotten out at the right time.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 5:32 pm
Whenever she’s challenged she sticks her head at an angle and appears really angry. Tubbsie can’t take the heat.

Dealing with da eebil hate meeja will do that to you…

Rabz

4 Sep 12 at 5:38 pm
I bet there’s serious tension within that party at the moment…

Has SHY been shopping online?

lotocoti

4 Sep 12 at 5:41 pm
lotocoti

If the poll heads to 5% there will be a bloodbath in that lunatic asylum they call a political party. Just watch. It will be fabulous to watch.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 5:45 pm
Look, the old loon, Mad Dog Bob could get away with irrational bullshit because he was able to verbalize bullshit really well and make the most absurd claim sound plausible. But that sctick only until last year when he began to falter when challenged.

Not her though. Whenever she’s challenged she sticks her head at an angle and appears really angry.

http://www.vexnews.com/2012/07/greens-grub-for-loot-extremist-greens-political-party-hits-up-donors-saying-we-are-under-attack/

Ivan Denisovich

4 Sep 12 at 5:47 pm
Everyone knows there are faceless men,string pullers and behind the scenes folk behind the two major parties, but who are the ones behind the Greens?
There must be a group of non-elected, long term power brokers in there.
What are there names?

jumpnmcar

4 Sep 12 at 5:50 pm
their names

jumpnmcar

4 Sep 12 at 5:51 pm
like i said earlier they could replace Ms Milne with the pretty one (SHY). that would really get up Ms Gillard’s nose, some nice looking chick getting all the attention. now that would be fun.

candy

4 Sep 12 at 5:51 pm
Candy,SHY has crazy eyes

Tal

4 Sep 12 at 5:54 pm
Oscar Pistorius angry at shock Paralympics 200m loss.

Accuses winner Oliveira of running on blades too long.

That’s a bit ironic, eh what?

Eddystone

4 Sep 12 at 5:55 pm
Yes, candy. It did wonders for the Democrats having Natasha as leader.

Can we stop hearing about your Political Unified Theory of Spunkiness now?

steve from brisbane

4 Sep 12 at 5:55 pm
This process of vetting Obama continues:

Mark Livine interviews Paul Kangor about his book about Obama’s mentor called The Communist.

Full interview can be found her. As Levine works through the discussion he finds the way the families of Obama, Jarrett & Axelrod are all linked a history that is similar to MadDog Rhiannon.

PS: This is not about Obama being a communist, but it does explain the circles he kept through his life and how he got his ideology.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 5:56 pm
That’s quite a good article by mr Landeryou, Ivan. Thanks for posting.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 5:56 pm
Cheers, Gab. Here’s another that has an amusing take on the tensions in the party that JC alluded to earlier:

http://www.vexnews.com/2012/08/rhiannon-retirement-hopes-greenssparty-ritual-could-be-opportunity-to-house-ex-soviet-senator-in-museum/

Ivan Denisovich

4 Sep 12 at 6:03 pm
No doubt about it – Jon Stewart has a lethal wit. His take on Clint Eastwood’s schtick is somewhat different from the standard rants we’ve seen from the left. (Scroll down for video):

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jon-stewart-basks-in-the-glory-of-clint-eastwoods-awesome-speech-while-tearing-apart-romneys/

Viva

4 Sep 12 at 6:07 pm
Candy,SHY has crazy eyes

‘sactly.

She is young, but you need real special beer goggles to miss those eyes.

Token

4 Sep 12 at 6:09 pm
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein.

Where did i hear that before

Rudiau

4 Sep 12 at 6:20 pm
Candy,SHY has crazy eyes

Bunny Boiler

Splatacrobat

4 Sep 12 at 6:24 pm
Great Audi ad.

Tubsy police at work.

Rudiau

4 Sep 12 at 6:28 pm
Vote green – go blackshirt

Rob Johnston has produced a very interesting essay on the true soulmates of Green Politics in Britain
-Forbid the purchase of corner shops by migrants
-Stop people from inner cities moving to the countryside to protect traditional lifestyles
-Grant British citizenship only to children born here
-Boycott food grown by black farmers and subsidise crops grown by whites
-Restrict tourism and immigration from outside Europe
-Prohibit embryo research
-Stop lorry movements on the Lord’s Day
-Require State approval for national sports teams to compete overseas
-Disconnect Britain from the European electricity grid
-Establish a “new order” between nations to resolve the world economic crisis

Sounds familiar.

boy on a bike

4 Sep 12 at 6:32 pm
Xenophone calls Cubbie Station a Strategic Asset.

Dan

4 Sep 12 at 6:35 pm
like i said earlier they could replace Ms Milne with the pretty one (SHY). that would really get up Ms Gillard’s nose, some nice looking chick getting all the attention. now that would be fun.

Seriously any one (male or female) with green slime political beliefs, regardless of physical appearance is FUGLY to the bone.

Old Fridgie

4 Sep 12 at 6:40 pm
So the US is approaching $16 trillion in debt.
Ron Paul gets a bipartisan bill passed to audit the FED, which Bernanke and Greenspan vehemently opposed, discovers

$16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010,he Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments.

at 0%. WTF.

Rudiau

4 Sep 12 at 6:49 pm
at 0%. WTF

Rudiau

4 Sep 12 at 6:51 pm
Candy
SHY is not attractive in any way, shape or form

Obio

4 Sep 12 at 7:11 pm
Can we stop hearing about your Political Unified Theory of Spunkiness…

Candy might be on to something.
Flicking through a voting intention analysis, Labor started shedding 25 to 34 yo males to the greens from mid 2008.
And who’s wild, staring eyes began appearing regularly on the box from July 2008?

lotocoti

4 Sep 12 at 7:11 pm
Flicking through a voting intention analysis,

Nerd.

btw, I just get a message that the file is broken and cannot be repaired.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 7:16 pm
For once in a long time here’s an academic paper worth reading. It could literally change the world.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/03/michael-woodford-may-have-written-the-years-most-important-academic-paper-heres-why/

It could set the Fed on the course to target Nominal GDP.

Forget about the idiot who wrote about it at the Washington Post. Just get to the paper.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 7:21 pm
Link is not working, JC

Rudiau

4 Sep 12 at 7:25 pm
1000th

jumpnmcar

4 Sep 12 at 7:25 pm
stink you Rudiau.

jumpnmcar

4 Sep 12 at 7:26 pm
the file is broken

As they say in the business: it’s leaving here fine.

lotocoti

4 Sep 12 at 7:27 pm
stink you Rudiau

hehehe

Rudiau

4 Sep 12 at 7:28 pm
I think it is Rudiau. I just linked to it.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 7:29 pm
Sorry forgot the proxy was on.

Rudiau

4 Sep 12 at 7:33 pm
Mark Scott taking the piss.

We are a comprehensive broadcaster

lotocoti

4 Sep 12 at 7:43 pm
The Greens could have Kate Upton doing star jumps while handing out How-to-Vote cards and I still wouldn’t vote Green.

H B Bear

4 Sep 12 at 7:44 pm
Hockey just went quite well with Leigh Sales. He’s improved a lot. She actually looked slightly strained at being unable to get the better of him.

If he continues on this path he’ll be in good form for the election.

John Mc

4 Sep 12 at 7:50 pm
Look John Mc

Hockey went well because he’s well prepared and doesn’t sound defensive like Abbott.

A lot of righties were blaming Sales for Abbott’s poor performance last time but the truth is that abbott handled the interview very badly.

He’s defensive, he finds it hard to string a couple of sentences together without umming and doesn’t seem well prepared.

Look, maybe I’m old fashioned but part of the job of a future PM is to be able to handle tough interviews and do so well. If he can’t do it, he ought to get off the podium.

It’s surprising he can’t because he handles himself well in parliament.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 7:56 pm
Sales and the team give Beyond Blue a plug. Depression is more readily avoided by not watching Leigh Sales’ propagandist program.

blogstrop

4 Sep 12 at 7:56 pm
In my theory of Political Unified Theory of Spunkiness I wouldn’t suggest Adam Bandt as alternative leader of the Greens, however, too smooth and lawyer-like by half.

candy

4 Sep 12 at 8:00 pm
I was worried Hockey was always going to be incompetent but the party was going to keep putting him forward because he’s a big cuddly teddy bear.

I think Abbott underestimates himself in debates. He is smarter than he gives himself credit for. He backs of on technology issues or technical economic issues but in actual fact he’s more than capable of carrying his own.

John Mc

4 Sep 12 at 8:01 pm
Tony Abbott has had the Coalition at 56 2PP for over a year and a half now, and still people are trying to tell him what to do better – not mentioning any names but it’s a common theme.

candy

4 Sep 12 at 8:04 pm
Here’s a great speech by Margaret Thatcher from 1968.

What’s wrong with politics?

I believe that the great mistake of the last few years has been for the government to provide or to legislate for almost everything…

But the way to get personal involvement and participation is not for people to take part in more and more government decisions but to make the government reduce the area of decision over which it presides and consequently leave the private citizen to ‘participate’, if that be the fashionable word, by making more of his own decisions. What we need now is a far greater degree of personal responsibility and decision, far more independence from the government, and a comparative reduction in the role of government…

To return to the personal theme, if we accept the need for increasing responsibility for self and family it means that we must stop approaching things in an atmosphere of restriction. There is nothing wrong in people wanting larger incomes. It would seem a worthy objective for men and women to wish to raise the standard of living for their families and to give them greater opportunities than they themselves had. I wish more people would do it.

We should then have fewer saying ‘the state must do it.’ What is wrong is that people should want more without giving anything in return. The condition precedent to high wages and high salaries is hard work. This is a quite different and much more stimulating approach than one of keeping down incomes.

RTWT

Eddystone

4 Sep 12 at 8:06 pm
He’s fucking awful at interviews Candy. That’s a big part of his job. he needs to get better… far better. And yes it is important.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 8:07 pm
He’s fucking awful at interviews

He needs to stop referring to “this Prime Minister” or “Julia Gillard” and just say “this government” or even better, “the government”. He needs to depersonalise Gillard in his interviews, imho.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 8:18 pm
He needs to stop referring to “this Prime Minister” or “Julia Gillard” and just say “this government” or even better, “the government”. He needs to depersonalise Gillard in his interviews, imho.

Eggs act lee

Nanuestalker

4 Sep 12 at 8:23 pm
i ludificarier de meipso, again.
That FED audit is over twelve months old.

What Ron Paul passed this year was a bill calling for a more in depth audit. The first audit dealt only with emergency credit programs.

Ah well that site is crossed off for news gathering.

Rudiau

4 Sep 12 at 8:28 pm
For CL

jtfsoon

4 Sep 12 at 8:31 pm
FIVE months to the day after Premier Campbell Newman axed the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, the state’s writing community presented their own literature prizes.

Sydney author Frank Moorhouse won the Fiction Book Award for his novel Cold Light, the final instalment in a trilogy which took him more than 20 years to write.

This is the noblest prize this year,” Moorhouse said. “It has some cache because it’s a citizen’s prize, not the Premier’s prize.”

Great to see they can stand on their own two feet without the public teat but funny they still fuck up awarding a Qld prize to Authors living in other states.

The Non-Fiction Book Award went to Sydney film-maker and author Robin De Crespigny, Victorian George Megalogenis also gets a prize.

Splatacrobat

4 Sep 12 at 8:35 pm
For CL

Rudiau

4 Sep 12 at 8:37 pm
On Tony Abbott and interviews – I’ve always had teh feeling he is holding himself back and being ultra cautious. Some of his earlier stuff as Health Minister is much more free-flowing, I guess because there wasn’t as much on the line. But the mikes caught him saying ‘that’s bullshit’ to nanny Roxon and since those days they’ve been all over him like a rash trying to catch him out.

If he becomes PM I would expect him to relax a lot more in interviews, if he can make the mental transition to understanding he is in the big chair and so must then control the interview in the way that Howard was superb at. Even Gillard has got better at it over time – the giggling schoolgirl act has mostly gone (not surprising).

Like everything about Tony Abbott- even his worst points are miles better than the corrupt useless knuckleheads currently in government. But we have to take a lot of faith that they will actually form a competent government, trash the stupidity and push ahead, Newman style – if they don’t we are in deep, deep trouble.

A good hint will be that if Abbott wins government and people start calling him ‘arrogant’ then we’re at least getting somewhere.

brc

4 Sep 12 at 8:37 pm
Jason – Shorten has apparently thrown a leg over her in his early days too. In a strange way that gave me renewed respect for the man, because if he stomach that he’s got more mettle than I give him credit for.

John Mc

4 Sep 12 at 8:38 pm
I know it’s wrong to comment as us silly men are want to do, but gee those are full curves on Rudiau’s post.

John Mc

4 Sep 12 at 8:39 pm
That’s fake isn’t it? You’ve ruined my fantasy you bastard.

John Mc

4 Sep 12 at 8:40 pm
Report: Anti-semite Obama will make Netanyahu “pay” after his re-election:

Israeli security officials on Saturday tried to downplay the Pentagon’s decision to significantly scale back its participation in a joint military exercise with Israel next month, but some government officials said the decision came as a response to the growing tensions between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office and the Obama administration.

“This is the Obama administration’s response to the dinner party Netanyahu held in (Mitt) Romney’s honor,” a senior member of the political-security cabinet told Ynet, while another official said the Pentagon’s decision “isn’t boosting deterrence and is not making the Iranians sweat…

“The US elections are in two months, and there is no doubt that President Barack Obama, if he is reelected, will make Netanyahu pay for his behavior,” said the security cabinet member. “It will not pass quietly.”

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 8:44 pm
That’s fake isn’t it? You’ve ruined my fantasy you bastard.

What did expect from CLs’ favorite pinup Jessica I.

Rudiau

4 Sep 12 at 8:45 pm
No, it’s just further proof that natural theologians will say anything in the search for intellectual justification of their socially ingrained local creation myth.

But, of course, they have not just said anything; this argument has been sustained for two and a half thousand years, and it was first enunciated by someone in a culture where it was not socially ingrained at all, quite the opposite, and it was not presented as a creation myth.

See what I mean? In order to explain the nature of what we see, there must be this thing we can’t see that does not share that nature, which just happens to be what their parents told them to believe in.

Actually, no, see above. Look, it’s not my fault that that premise and the laws of thought arrive at that conclusion.

Sure you can. That’s what you do with regard to all the other topics debated here, and I what I do too. You can suggest I go away and read something, and I can do the same, but then there wouldn’t be a point in being here.

Actually, no, I can’t, and no, I don’t. There is probably only one thread I contribute significantly to at any one time, and even there it usually is entirely focused on the one issue. BTW, I didn’t tell you to go away so far as this argument was concerned, but insofar as all these other purported contradictions were concerned.

That’s the method you used on me,

No, if you haven’t yet noticed my responses have been inordinately long on the central matter we’ve been discussing. I only suggested you read a book, if my memory serves, once it became obvious you needed to carefully and closely go through the current argument because it was obvious that my repeated instruction wasn’t working.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 8:49 pm
Jason – Shorten has apparently thrown a leg over her in his early days too. In a strange way that gave me renewed respect for the man, because if he stomach that he’s got more mettle than I give him credit for.

Dude.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 8:52 pm
Via at 6.07 – hilarious, thanks for the link

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 8:55 pm
Look, maybe I’m old fashioned but part of the job of a future PM is to be able to handle tough interviews and do so well. If he can’t do it, he ought to get off the podium.

So Sales mauled Abbott in that interview. I saw it. I agree with you JC but keep in mind that this may have been a one off. Abbott is a busy man, perhaps it was at the end of a long day. However, you are correct in that Abbott umms and ahhs too much and it makes him look weak. With his political experience he should do much better.

Actually, no, I can’t, and no, I don’t.

Yes you do. Waste of time these arguments. Nothing is decidable so people shoot in the dark hoping to convince the naive. Be honest, we just don’t know. That’s all you need to know. If anyone can’t live with that uncertainty, if they feel a craving to know some final absolute truth, they have my pity for they have never experienced joyous nihilism.

Dead Soul

4 Sep 12 at 8:58 pm
What did expect from CLs’ favorite pinup Jessica I.

Who is Jessica I?

—————————————————–

Jarrah, thanks for the backdown on your ludicrous Genesis howler. No humility, of course, but I’ll throw you a self-esteem bone by not making anything of it.

We return to the foundational subject. To wit, atheists and scientists have NO IDEA how nothing became dinosaurs, mountains and tuna. They seem to believe – or are open to the idea – that a Flying Spagetthi Nothing Monster miracled it all into existence.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 9:02 pm
Who is Jessica I?

Don’t recognise her? Jessica.

Rudiau

4 Sep 12 at 9:06 pm
Tony Abbott is fine with interviews and “this government” is direct. half the population disapprove of this government.

they’re 56 2PP for a year and a half and you guys are negative and nil supportive. perhaps deep down some of you prefer the rich banker in a world ofhis own M. Turnbull because he does a smooth interview.

candy

4 Sep 12 at 9:08 pm
febro, it’s good you’re back again. By how big of a margin do you think Gillard will win the election?

John Mc

4 Sep 12 at 9:11 pm
perhaps deep down some of you prefer the rich banker in a world ofhis own M. Turnbull

That’s just downright mean, Candy. Dirty pool even. It’s a mortal wounding you’ve given us. Only the lefties want Turnbull as leader.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 9:12 pm
Hey candy, it’s like Campbell Newman. It’s when you get the bastards to win that the real work starts, keeping them on track. You only need to look at Ballieu or Fatty O’Barrell to know you need a big stick to keep them on the program.

John Mc

4 Sep 12 at 9:12 pm
Had a Rueben today for the first time.

I rued the experience. It was rooted.

boy on a bike

4 Sep 12 at 9:19 pm
And i’m sick to death of the atheists here arguing God doesn’t exist but desperately hoping He does, just in case.

I hope Winston’s nephew is pulling through, let us know Winston when you can, people care.

candy

4 Sep 12 at 9:19 pm
Is anyone going to this tomorrow night?

http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2012/09/michael-smith-in-brisbane-melbourne.html

John Mc

4 Sep 12 at 9:22 pm
febro, I’m scared Campbell is going to come out as a Clover Moore inspired tranny look-alike. It’s just a fear I have. What made you turn to taping it back?

John Mc

4 Sep 12 at 9:25 pm
Did anyone pickup on the Green story here?

“We are the ones calling for codification of lives at sea and often there is a lag between what happens in parliament and community’s understanding of it. But we will continue to prosecute the right thing for refugees.”

laterite

4 Sep 12 at 9:28 pm
Definitely, you’re perspective is very insightful febro. Have you been through ‘the change’ yet?

John Mc

4 Sep 12 at 9:31 pm
You only need to look at Ballieu or Fatty O’Barrell to know you need a big stick to keep them on the program.

Or Sarkozy or Schwarzenegger. Such disappointments. All politicians should be viewed with suspicion.

Dangph

4 Sep 12 at 9:35 pm
Waste of time these arguments. Nothing is decidable so people shoot in the dark hoping to convince the naive. Be honest, we just don’t know. That’s all you need to know. If anyone can’t live with that uncertainty, if they feel a craving to know some final absolute truth, they have my pity for they have never experienced joyous nihilism.

Of course, we cannot definitively know, but that is true, not merely of, metaphysical arguments but of empirical arguments, otherwise you would not talk of probabilities. Metaphysicians are honest about this. Aquinas was honest about this. He clearly understood the limits of metaphysical arguments, but he also understood the limits of scientific arguments. The point of my raising this in reply to Jarrah’s response to CL was to show that metaphysical arguments are rational arguments, they are merely rational arguments of a different sort to cosmological arguments in physics.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 9:38 pm
“Jarrah, thanks for the backdown”

What backdown? You made the preposterous suggestion that theists don’t claim to have an explanation for the universe, when dover_beach has been in here for days arguing the opposite. I smacked you down with the obvious example from your own religion.

“They seem to believe – or are open to the idea – that a Flying Spagetthi Nothing Monster miracled it all into existence.”

No, they don’t, they’re just laughing at you for believing your god miracled it all into existence. They have no respect for the credulous.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 9:53 pm
This idea that Fat Joe went well with Leigh Sales and does interviews better than Abbott is bollox.

Fat Joe is a squish and like Turnbull is an ABC-preferred Liberal®.

That is until they are leaders of an opposition that looks as if it might win.

Sales’ interview wasn’t just hostile; it was a disgrace.

That she was “a cow” was an understatement.

Moreover the replays of Abbott saying ‘no’- supposedly in reply to her question as to whether he read the report from BHP were edited to buggery.

He wasn’t saying ‘no’ to that that question.

And the point he was making that all the evidence pointed to the carbon tax and the mining tax as a cause of less mining investment was borne out the next day in the Fairfax rags.

Sales was the disgrace in that interview not Abbott.

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 10:07 pm
James

All interviews with the ABC left are hostile to liberals. Sales was really quite hostile to fatjoe, but he did handle her quite well.

Look how Gingrich handles belligerent leftist cows and bulls, or in their case steers.

It’s not hard and is just part of the job.

Sales was the disgrace in that interview not Abbott.

Of course she was/is. That goes without saying. However Abbott doesn’t handle interviews well. He shouldn’t just survive. He needs to be able to mentally defeat them like Newt does.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 10:13 pm
Are the Liberty quotes updating?

Sinclair Davidson

4 Sep 12 at 10:18 pm
This might be the longest sustained debate I’ve seen here!
We return to the foundational subject. To wit, atheists and scientists have NO IDEA how nothing became dinosaurs, mountains and tuna.
Sort of correct. Scientists have no well accepted theories as how nothing became matter – i.e. what pre-dates the “big-bang”. However, the creation of galaxies, stars, planets and thus mountains is well explained by the big-bang theory. The creation of the first “living” thing is also not well understood, though a lot of research exists on the formation of the first self replicating RNA and DNA.

But “I don’t know, so God must have done it” has never seemed to me a good theory either, and a very poor reason to justify belief in God.

They seem to believe – or are open to the idea – that a Flying Spagetthi Nothing Monster miracled it all into existence.

No, atheists do NOT and ARE NOT open to the idea of the flying spaghetti monster. It’s a joke dumbass.

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 10:25 pm
No, Sinclair. It’s stuck on

“Those politicians, professors and union bosses who curse big business are fighting for a lower standard of living.” — Ludwig von Mise

which is not a bad one to be stuck on these days

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 10:26 pm
I saw both interviews in real-time JC.

Todays was easy for Sloppy.

Here’s Gerard Henderson 2 Fridays ago:

▪ Leigh Sales Truth-Syrup : But Only For Non-Journalists

MWD was just so impressed with Leigh Sales’ aggressive interview with Opposition leader Tony Abbott on Wednesday. [Why do leading Liberals and Nationals accept invitations to appear on 7.30? I wonder – Ed]

Ms Sales accused the Liberal Party leader of being “pretty loose with the truth” and “once again being a little loose with the facts”. There were similar refrains including a leading question to Mr Abbott which was as follows: “Are you absolutely scrupulous about making sure what you say in public is accurate?”

Just after Leigh Sales made this public commitment to truth the following exchange took place:

Tony Abbott : But look, this isn’t the main game for us. The main game for us are the cost of living pressures that this government has inflicted on the Australian public. It’s not really –

Leigh Sales : Well sure, but a string of your – I’m sorry to interrupt, but a string of your frontbench have come out on this Slater & Gordon issue so I’m just wondering what are the questions that you want answered?

Certainly Leigh Sales did not look sorry when she interrupted the Liberal Party leader. An “absolutely scrupulous” 7.30 presenter would have used such words as : “I need to interrupt” or “I want to interrupt” or “My producer requires that I interrupt”.

MWD has contacted Ms Sales about this issue – so far, alas, without response. Some journalists believe that only journalists should ask questions. Stay tuned.

Here’s Henderson last Friday:

▪ A Sales/Rinehart Double Standard

One-time John Howard staffer Grahame Morris [It was a long time ago – Ed] was in the news again for bad language this week.

You see, Young Grahame (born 1951) is an old-fashioned kind of guy. He is of Murrumbidgee Irrigation stock, was schooled at Yanco Agriculture High School and learnt his journalism at the Wagga Daily Advertiser. And he sometimes uses old-style Aussie language which is now very much verboten.

Recently on Sky News, Mr Morris suggested that Julia Gillard should be “kicked to death” by the human rights lobby for some or other transgression of civil liberties. He was not being literal – but nevertheless received a very real bollocking. A kick in the arse, in Yanco/Wagga terminology circa of half a century ago.

Then on Monday – on Mornings With Linda Mottram, no less – Grahame Morris was asked to comment on Leigh Sales’ recent interview with Tony Abbott. See MWD Issue 151. He commented: “Well, Leigh can be a real cow sometimes when she’s doing her interviews”. This caused umbrage. Even umbrage squared.

As MWD recalls, such terms as “kicked to death” and “old cow” are old Australian English. They are best junked today. Even so, Ms Sales seemed to go somewhat over the top when she tweeted: “I’d rather be a cow than a dinosaur.” Brilliant. For the record, Nancy would rather be a hammer than a nail, a dog than a cat and so on.

In time, Grahame Morris felt the need to apologise on 702 – which Ms Sales graciously accepted, an acceptance which was widely reported in the media.

But what about double standards? At the Mid Winter Ball of recent memory at Parliament House, Canberra (see MWD Issues 144 and 145), part-time comedian and part-time RN Drive presenter Julian Morrow described Gina Rinehart as “the elephant not in the room”. This was clearly a reference to Ms Rinehart’s body shape.

For the record, most of the assembled media types laughed. LOLed in fact. Which suggests that it is not at all okay to link (even though not literally) the oh-so-progressive Leigh Sales with a cow. But it’s quite okay to link the miner Gina Rinehart with an elephant (in a quite literal sense). Can you bear it?

The disgrace is that the media all came out criticising Abbott for that atrocious interview and not Sales.

Ordinary people in the ‘burbs had quite a different impression.

The people in the burbs not the mouth-foaming sandal wearers in North Fitroy know decency and they saw it in Abbott who was a-m-a-z-i-n-g-l-y restrained in the face of disgusting behaviour from Leigh Sales.

Not even Red Kez would have got away with what Sales got away with.

People would be better served seeing the interview in toto with fresh eyes rather than accepting the ABC multiple rehashs of its version of it.

If Abbott had served up what Gingrich does in retaliation- Sales’ hoped-for reaction from Abbott – the Left would have proof of Abbott’s misogyny and they would have brutalised him with it from now to the next election.

Get real.

The ABC isn’t a game for Abbott.

It’s war.

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 10:34 pm
But “I don’t know, so God must have done it” has never seemed to me a good theory either, and a very poor reason to justify belief in God.

True, that is why Aquinas, for instance, and his successors, never used such an argument.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 10:34 pm
Sort of correct. Scientists have no well accepted theories as how nothing became matter – i.e. what pre-dates the “big-bang”. However, the creation of galaxies, stars, planets and thus mountains is well explained by the big-bang theory. The creation of the first “living” thing is also not well understood, though a lot of research exists on the formation of the first self replicating RNA and DNA.

How the FUCK are quantum fluctuations and the origin of life anything alike, and what excludes religious people (mostly Catholic here) from believing in them?

.

4 Sep 12 at 10:35 pm
Scientists have no well accepted theories as how nothing became matter – i.e. what pre-dates the “big-bang”. However, the creation of galaxies, stars, planets and thus mountains is well explained by the big-bang theory.

Those aren’t theories, dumb arse, they are 10 billion to one crap shoots posing as theories. And crap being the operative word. We have well accepted theory of what happened after the big bang as there is some observational evidence or sort of evidence that goes with it. Anyone peddling shit that went before it at this stage is laughable. We simply don’t know.

The creation of the first “living” thing is also not well understood, though a lot of research exists on the formation of the first self replicating RNA and DNA.

That’s the easy bit, dumb arse. Trust you to pick the easy bit and try to make it sound hard. It’s sorta like the bullshit you pulled about Ryan, you moron.

Kimberly’s calling. Now go.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 10:37 pm
How the FUCK are quantum fluctuations and the origin of life anything alike, and what excludes religious people (mostly Catholic here) from believing in them?

That got you upset, Dot. You ought to see the dishonesty he tried to pull about Ryan earlier upthread. he deserved the guillotine for that alone despite calls for the Fisk Doctrine to shut him up.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 10:39 pm
not a bad one to be stuck on these days

And yet how they all do rain down curses from the lofty heights of their perfect wisdom. O brave new world that has such leaders in it.

Lower standard of living? Coming up soon enough. Asia is on the move. Tell our anti-business leaders this: we either join in or fall by the wayside. In the worst case scenario, we are in the way.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

4 Sep 12 at 10:40 pm
Ms Sales accused the Liberal Party leader of being “pretty loose with the truth” and “once again being a little loose with the facts”.

‘Sactly, he should have got up and left the interview. He should have said that the ABC is a hostile place for liberals and he would not be coming back.

I’m not doubting the cow was belligerent to abbott.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 10:43 pm
This might be the longest sustained debate I’ve seen here!

You’re obviously new around here.

Edmund Campion’s role in Fractional Reserve Banking and his beloved Operation Keelhaul have lapped the Meaning of Life twice.

Infidel Tiger

4 Sep 12 at 10:47 pm
and if he’d done any or all of that, JC, you can imagine the rabid dogs go after Abbott the next day. “See, he’s a misogynist!!”, “What a coward!!” etc.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 10:48 pm
The dogs are going to be squealing anyway Gab. Best to land a punch and perhaps even turn the debate around about the ABC’s leftism.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 10:50 pm
Those aren’t theories, dumb arse, they are 10 billion to one crap shoots posing as theories. And crap being the operative word. We have well accepted theory of what happened after the big bang as there is some observational evidence or sort of evidence that goes with it. Anyone peddling shit that went before it at this stage is laughable. We simply don’t know.
That’s exactly what I saids, wgy are you parapharsing me?

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 10:51 pm
Ok, I’ll try and make it simpler:
We return to the foundational subject. To wit, atheists and scientists have NO IDEA how nothing became dinosaurs, mountains and tuna.
Nor do theists.

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 10:53 pm
What backdown? You made the preposterous suggestion that theists don’t claim to have an explanation for the universe…

No Jarrah, I pointed out that hardly any theists subscribe to the cosmology of Genesis. Indeed, when using the word ‘theists,’ we’re very often intending to decouple belief in God from traditional denominational and confessional texts.

Shamefully casual mendacity from you.

————————————————-

Oh, OK Rudi – I’ve now seen you link. Lovely!

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 10:53 pm
Lower standard of living? Coming up soon enough. Asia is on the move. Tell our anti-business leaders this: we either join in or fall by the wayside. In the worst case scenario, we are in the way.

One great thing about Hockey was that he raised this several months ago in a major speech in London.

An article in yesterdays Telegraph(UK) I referenced yesterday is terribly important also.

It’s not just about America but all western cultural democracies.

The sub-heading says it all:

The myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 10:53 pm
If someone is going to the markets this week would they please get a couple of intelligent trolls for the site? Ta.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 10:55 pm
“Scientists have no well accepted theories as how nothing became matter – i.e. what pre-dates the “big-bang”.”

The phase change theory, and several others, hold that time was created in the Big Bang, and therefore it’s as meaningless to ask what came ‘before’ the Big Bang as it is to ask what’s north of the North Pole.

That kind of unintuitive possibility is what Aquinas and his successors couldn’t accept.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 10:56 pm
As far as bad interviews go, Gillard’s humiliation before the slush-wary principals of Slater & Gordon is hard to beat. She has never lived it down.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 10:59 pm
hahaha! Pickering.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 11:02 pm
That’s exactly what I saids, wgy are you parapharsing me?

Oh Okay… I thought you made a spellcheck error like above meaning to say…

Scientists have now well accepted theories as how nothing became matter

JC

4 Sep 12 at 11:03 pm
Not to mention the contradictions inherent in omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, etc.

On the resolution of these purported ‘contradictions’, see Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s God: His Existence and His Nature.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 11:03 pm
“No Jarrah, I pointed out that hardly any theists subscribe to the cosmology of Genesis.”

Only on your second run through. You first said:

they – along with scientists – have NO FUCKING IDEA – how nothing became dinosaurs, mountains and tuna fish.
…
Theists, generally, do not claim to know exactly how this happened at all.

Denying you made this statement is shamefully casual mendacity from you. Normally your mendacity is more professional.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 11:04 pm
The phase change theory, and several others…

Aha! So there are many Flying Atheist Spaghetti Monsters.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 11:05 pm
For those who didn’t bother to watch the Ryan “method of conception video: transcript

Interviewer: Abortion now… something we’re talking about and I think our viewers want to know exactly where you stand, specifically, you’re pro-life, Catholic…

Ryan: Oh yeah, yeah.

Interviewer: But specifically where you stand when it comes to rape, and when it comes to the issue of, should it be legal for a woman to be able to get an abortion if she’s…

Ryan: Yeah, well, so, I’m very proud of my pro-life record, and I’ve always adopted the idea, the position that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.

He was specifically asked about rape, and referred to it in his answer as “a method of conception”. A pretty dumb and offensive way to answer the question in my opinion.

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 11:05 pm
I saw both interviews in real-time JC.

The problem for Abbott and Co is precisely that many people rely on the ABC for these interviews. The other stuff, early Sunday mornings, doesn’t have the same hitting power as the 7.30 slot. So the coalition faces an uphill media battle. They need to take the fight to the media but that’s a huge ask. The media is powerful and with the ABC having a lion’s share of political media it gives the Left a break in the media game.

Abbott does well in parliament possibly because he has a trait similiar to mine – I think better on my feet with some anger in my head, but in interviews expressing anger is a nogo so Abbott is stymied by the demands of modern media presentation.

It is probably a moot point because Abbott is going to win and then he can truly be his own man, not the man the media demands of him.

—–

BTW Jarrah, if interested, you might want to follow up on the latest attempt to develop a better QM. Difficult, nascent, interesting. Cf. Topos Theory , Chris Isham. That’s what I like about science, it is always prepared to find a better way of understanding. It will never be a complete way of understanding but that’s irrelevant. If it works, well and good. When it stops working, build a better theory.

Dead Soul

4 Sep 12 at 11:08 pm
Can you lend it to me, dover?

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 11:11 pm
He was specifically asked about rape, and referred to it in his answer as “a method of conception”.

So a woman can’t conceive through rape?

JC

4 Sep 12 at 11:13 pm
“Aha! So there are many Flying Atheist Spaghetti Monsters.”

Yes – Yahweh, Allah, the Rainbow Serpent, Ometecuhtli/Omecihuatl, etc etc. All equally stupid.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 11:14 pm
And we don’t choose you to be here either and yet you are Junius… so like in abortion fuck off and stay away.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 11:16 pm
“He was specifically asked about rape, and referred to it in his answer as “a method of conception”.”

Did you read my response (@3:49) to your earlier attempt to bring it into the thread? Conception is what matters to him, so whether it happens by rape or not is irrelevant.

I don’t know why you’re bothering to attack Ryan on this angle, when there are actual substantive issues that will give you ample opportunity.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 11:18 pm
JC would make a good stand-in for Ryan when Ryan is asked questions about rape and abortion.

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 11:18 pm
You’ve been caught being dishonest, Jarrah.

Your original mendacity was to imply that I had given readers to understand that theists do claim to know the mechanics of how nothing became dinosaurs, mountains and tuna. The overwhelming majority do not.

You then segued illogically from theism to Genesis – catastrophically for you because that book’s very lack of literal influence amongst the world’s ‘theists’ underlines my point, not yours.

Your third lie is to say that I denied writing this:

they – along with scientists – have NO FUCKING IDEA – how nothing became dinosaurs, mountains and tuna fish.
…
Theists, generally, do not claim to know exactly how this happened at all.

I didn’t and don’t.

Your fourth dishonesty is the ellipsis above. Here is the un-Jarrahed sequence in my timeline of a debate (directed to Abu, by the way):

Grigory posted a cartoon mocking atheists because, after all, they – along with scientists – have NO FUCKING IDEA – how nothing became dinosaurs, mountains and tuna fish.

- I noted as much.

- A snippy Jarrah the undergraduate retorted that atheists may well be clueless on this but, unlike theists, don’t claim to know exactly how nothing became dinosaurs, mountains and tuna fish.

STOP: Here is the foundational lie. Theists, generally, do not claim to know exactly how this happened at all. It is hubristic cockhead physicists and cockamamie cosmologists of a Dawkins bent who like to say that they know – or are on the verge of knowing.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 11:19 pm
and you and Junious would make excellent bookends.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 11:19 pm
That kind of unintuitive possibility is what Aquinas and his successors couldn’t accept.

If I were uncharitable I would call this a lie. Actually, in this instance, I will be uncharitable and say that it is a lie. If you can quote to me a passage which indicates what you asserted above I will retract this, but in the interim, the accusation holds. I’m confident you won’t find such a passage because the claim that time begins with the universe is consistent with a First Cause, one of whose attributes includes timelessness.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 11:20 pm
JC would make a good stand-in for Ryan when Ryan is asked questions about rape and abortion

Stop trying to reframe SteveC. It appears that you have the same view of Akin over this issue. Trust you to fall into that hole, you moron.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 11:20 pm
That kind of unintuitive possibility is what Aquinas and his successors couldn’t accept.

Jarrah never tires of spewing meaningless and puerilely lightweight sophistry in lieu of thoughtful argument.

The space-time continuum only became an idea in the early stages of the twentieth century.

So Aquinas would never have been familiar with it nor any subsequent Thomists until the middle part of the twentieth century.

It’s actually irrelevant to dover’s argument but Jarrah is too dense and stupid to appreciate it.

What preceded the Big Bang or what was the cause of the Big Bang are perfectly valid questions

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 11:21 pm
Yes Jarrah I did. I agree the “just” word was an unfair representation. It was a cut and paste – the word “just” is how a lot of media heard his answer. The subject of abortion and specifically Obama’s stand has been a frequent topic here, so I think it is quite relevant to this blog.
Regarding other Ryan issues, searching “Ryan pants on fire” is illuminating.

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 11:23 pm
Regarding other Ryan issues, searching “Ryan pants on fire” is illuminating

LOL

SteveC is being a fucktard again.

That’s actually sad because he’s capable of better.

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 11:25 pm
That’s actually sad because he’s capable of better.

No he’s not.

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 11:26 pm
It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect.

JamesK, and isn’t that the truth now? Good article, thanks. Gives the current American political debate its proper place in the scheme of things.

You see it your way Julius and I’ll see it mine.
Rear-view mirror vision firmly fixed in your case.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

4 Sep 12 at 11:27 pm
The subject of abortion and specifically Obama’s stand has been a frequent topic here, so I think it is quite relevant to this blog.

Which is why you tried to dishonestly portray Ryan’s position… in order to get back at people here who have highlighted the fact the current president of the US supports suffocating aborted kids that are still breathing.

You fucking arsehole, SteveC. You vengeance ridden fucking arsehole.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 11:27 pm
That’s what I like about science, it is always prepared to find a better way of understanding. It will never be a complete way of understanding but that’s irrelevant. If it works, well and good. When it stops working, build a better theory.

The problem with this is the equivocation involved in “works”.

dover_beach

4 Sep 12 at 11:28 pm
Theists, generally, do not claim to know exactly how this [creation of matter and life] happened at all.
Ok so without the exactly, do theists actually claim that God created life and matter?

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 11:30 pm
He was specifically asked about rape, and referred to it in his answer as “a method of conception”.

Well, rape can be a method of conception, dumbo.

No, he was specifically asked about a conception resulting from rape. His questioner introduced the example.

But if you want to discuss these matters at length, bring it on. Obama voted three times to allow infants born alive to be thrown in hospital rubbish bins or left to die in sinks. One of his biggest backers is Planned Parenthood – an organisation founded by Margaret Sanger, a eugenics lunatic who famously held a workshop for members of the Ku Klux Klan. Planned Parenthood kills a massively disproportionate number of blacks, Native Americans and Latinos. This year Obama refused to back a bill outlawing abortions intended to target girls.

We can conclude from this that the Democrat Party’s longstanding links to extremist racial hygiene and hatred remain in tact.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 11:33 pm
Junius

Don’t you feel like the bloke sitting around the bar with a bunch of people… you say something, make a stupid comment, everyone goes quiet for a second.. a few people screw their faces up and then continue on talking and ignoring you. occasionally someone makes a rude comment your way causing you to squirm.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 11:33 pm
JamesK did you actually try searching Ryan pants on fire? You will find dozens of his untruths.

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 11:34 pm
Ok so without the exactly, do theists actually claim that God created life and matter?

Not just created it but of Him and in his image.

We live in a phenomenal universe.

A universe of appearance.

Reality encompasses and gives rise to the appearance and is what Kant termed noumenon.

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 11:36 pm
You should.

JC

4 Sep 12 at 11:39 pm
You will find dozens of his untruths.

I don’t know if you are really stupid ot just plain dumb and naive.

If you google Obama pants on fire, you’ll get over 3.3million pages. So what’s your point, you clogger of threads?

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 11:40 pm
Rape is not a method of conception because its not chosen.

Method does not infer consent.

Ivan Denisovich

4 Sep 12 at 11:42 pm
“Your original mendacity was to imply that I had given readers to understand that theists do claim to know the mechanics of how nothing became dinosaurs, mountains and tuna.”

You’re confused. You tried to say theists, who believe in a creator of the universe, don’t assert they have the answer to why the universe exists. It was such a blatant lie, I resorted to Caps Lock to convey my shock.

“You then segued illogically from theism to Genesis”

So now you’re saying Genesis isn’t the opening of a theistic holy book? LOL

“I didn’t and don’t.”

Yes, you did:

No Jarrah, I pointed out that hardly any theists subscribe to the cosmology of Genesis.

‘No’ is an English word used to convey denial. Or do you deny that?

“Your fourth dishonesty is the ellipsis above.”

The ellipsis was necessary to show what you meant by “this”. It didn’t change the meaning of your ridiculous statement, so it’s not dishonest. Calling it dishonest is, of course, dishonest.

The more you try to dig yourself out, CL…

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 11:42 pm
Well that seems pretty simple, theists believe that God (or Gods) exist and created matter and life, (though they don’t know how), and atheists believe that Gods do not exist and they don’t know how matter and life were created. Not a lot of difference really.

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 11:42 pm
Speaking of women and their dignity, here’s Obama with a dear friend:

Caption: “If I’d had a snorkel in the car, different story.”

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 11:44 pm
JamesK did you actually try searching Ryan pants on fire? You will find dozens of his untruths.

Rubbish.

And grow up SteveC.

You’re too intelligent for this sh1t

Believing that tripe reflects badly on you.

‘Fact checkers’ are merely the MSM’s attempt to regain their last vestige credibility to milk.

Stephen Hayes:

The mainstream media “fact checked” Paul Ryan’s speech with alacrity. At the Washington Post, for instance, four of the five most-read articles were, in effect, accusations that Ryan had lied. The New York Times published an article under the headline: “Ryan’s Speech Contained a Litany of Falsehoods.” The Associated Press accused Ryan of taking “factual shortcuts.” The Week magazine published not only “The media coverage of Paul Ryan’s speech: 15 Euphemisms for Lying,” but also “Why Paul Ryan thought he could get away with lying: 6 theories.”

Here’s the funny thing about most of these articles: They fail to cite a single fact that Ryan misstated or lie that he told. In most cases, the self-described fact-checks are little more than complaints that Ryan failed to provide context for his criticism of Barack Obama.

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 11:44 pm
“Actually, in this instance, I will be uncharitable and say that it is a lie.”

You’ve been making this argument all along. I simply accepted your explanation. Are you calling yourself a liar?

“Laws of thought”, “given our experience”, etc. These phrases show that Aquinas and his successors used their intuition about the world as premises.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 11:45 pm
A new open thread should open up at midnight.

Sinclair Davidson

4 Sep 12 at 11:45 pm
Especially for you Gab:
Pants On Fire! The False Truths Paul Ryan Told During The RNC (LIST)

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 11:46 pm
Okay, it’s established. You are just plain stupid, stevec.

Sincliar any chance we can keep stevec and junious off the new open thread?

Gab

4 Sep 12 at 11:48 pm
The False Truths Paul Ryan Told During The RNC (LIST)

Ffs this pathetic SteveC.

Even for you.

“False Truths”!!!!!!!!!!

Really?

You twat

JamesK

4 Sep 12 at 11:49 pm
God is creator of all things, except threads, which are created by Sinc

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 11:50 pm
Method implies a decision in this context.

Nope, but let’s have your rationale.

Ivan Denisovich

4 Sep 12 at 11:50 pm
“JamesK did you actually try searching Ryan pants on fire? You will find dozens of his untruths.”

He’s got nothing on Romney.

Jarrah

4 Sep 12 at 11:54 pm
It’s gotta be a worry when even Fox news thinks Ryans convention speech “was deceitful”

SteveC

4 Sep 12 at 11:55 pm
No, Jarrah.

Just apologise.

Or don’t. I don’t care. I don’t do threads of doom anymore.

I’ve explained how you were dishonest and it’s incontrovertible, there for all to see.

You are repeatedly inept and hopeless on these subjects because you don’t have the knowledge base firepower to make it happen.

Stop embarrassing yourself.

C.L.

4 Sep 12 at 11:56 pm
“I don’t care.”

Aahh, victory tastes so sweet.

“I don’t do threads of doom anymore.”

If you didn’t want to make this a procedural argument rather than a substantive one, it wouldn’t be. Wait, yes it would, but at least it would be more interesting. Peace.

Jarrah

5 Sep 12 at 12:04 am
Steve C

Sally kohn is a leftist employed by Fox. Yes that’s correct, Fox employs leftists which is more than what can be said about the rest of the mainstream vis a vis rightwingers.

I checked out the link and came to her first lie about her claims Ryan lied.

Fact: While Ryan tried to pin the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling.

Not true and stupidly so. Moodys downgraded the US because of it’s high debt level, the speed of the accumulation and the fact that the Kenyan refused to countenance any deficit reduction plans.

The fucking douchebag even ignored the committee he set up to lower the deficit!

JC

5 Sep 12 at 12:05 am
It’s gotta be a worry when even Fox news thinks Ryans convention speech “was deceitful”

SteveC you are thoroughly mendacious and dishonest here.

Apparently your self-respect and personal integrity take a distant second to your intelligence.

You leftist fucktard.

JamesK

5 Sep 12 at 12:05 am
JC – you think I was pissed off before? Some fuckwits have to learn you cannot buy intelligence by owning a book by Dawkins.

Well that seems pretty simple, theists believe that God (or Gods) exist and created matter and life, (though they don’t know how), and atheists believe that Gods do not exist and they don’t know how matter and life were created. Not a lot of difference really.

No, that’s dishonest bullshit, passively-aggressively militantly atheist crap that is insulting to civil and pleasant athiests and others (agnostics, theists and everyone else) who can control themselves in a civil discourse unlike you, to restrain their inner voice telling them to be arseholes.

Religious people do not necessarily ascribe any mysticism to what science doesn’t understand (yet). Explaining all theists (let’s be honest, specifically, Christians) dogmatic and personal theories of cosmology as “simple”. It is your mental capacity which is simple, pal.

I am a well educated person (better than you, Stevie). Some of my peers and family think I am a lot more intelligent than I am. I find this humbling. I have worked with people who are very accomplished and I will never be as smart as them – and you don’t hold a candle to them simply because you are culturally athiest or theist. Some of them are religious and some of them are not. They are not so stupid as you to judge intelligence on belief. You sound like a Taliban prick on that basis. You’d believe in Sharia law if it was in the ALP or Greens manifesto.

Assume all religious people are fundies? You’re an arsehole. You’d point out the same about anyone else if the assumption was made about Muslims, but since the left is trying to enforce some silly, non existent moral claim on Muslims, it doesn’t happen. Well it did and the left had a sensible dialogue and criticism of Islamofascism before the War in Afghanistan where it made the subject of critically acclaimed documentaries – but since 2001, the left has an “obligation” to deride all religions except Islam. The stupidity is multiplicative in that the leftist of today makes no effort to differentiate between Muslim moderates and extremists, but bemoans any conservative (also quite foolishly), failing to do so.

You’re an annoying, preening arsewipe who has a sense of moral superiority because rather than finding the weakness of a first mover argument disturbing, (as a normal, non misanthrope would), you take delight in the argument not existing.

Your whole basis is that the left once took up arms with the established churches. You are a puppet of previous cultural warriors who are a dead and buried. You are much less smart than you think you are. You are like a jumped up private girls school prefect who on meeting the Governor General, thinks she’s Princess Diana and Duchess Kate Middleton all rolled into one.

Wake up Princess, Kimberly is calling you.

.

5 Sep 12 at 12:07 am
Not true and stupidly so. Moodys downgraded the US because of it’s high debt level, the speed of the accumulation and the fact that the Kenyan refused to countenance any deficit reduction plans.

The fucking douchebag even ignored the committee he set up to lower the deficit!

I don’t know why you bother, JC. It’s not as if he actually read past the article headline.

Gab

5 Sep 12 at 12:08 am
Fears Rising, Spaniards Pull Out Their Cash and Get Out of Spain

It is, Julio Vildosola concedes, a very big bet.

After working six years as a senior executive for a multinational payroll-processing company in Barcelona, Spain, Mr. Vildosola is cutting his professional and financial ties with his troubled homeland. He has moved his family to a village near Cambridge, England, where he will take the reins at a small software company, and he has transferred his savings from Spanish banks to British banks.

“The macro situation in Spain is getting worse and worse,” Mr. Vildosola, 38, said last week just hours before boarding a plane to London with his wife and two small children. “There is just too much risk. Spain is going to be next after Greece, and I just don’t want to end up holding devalued pesetas.”

JamesK

5 Sep 12 at 12:15 am
Caption: “If I’d had a snorkel in the car, different story.”

Kennedy: How are you going to pay for Obama Care?
Obama: We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Kennedy: Bastard!, Are you taking the Piss?.

Splatacrobat

5 Sep 12 at 2:19 am

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