 |
|
|
|
| Most Recent Postings |
|
 |
| Happy with the outcome | |
Some of us are born petty and bitter. Others of us have pettiness and bitterness
thrust upon them. Such is the calling of federal politics to members of the'
Green party who couldn't contain themselves on election night, which saw LDP
candidate David Leyonhjelm picking up the fourth federal senate seat in New South
Wales. According to the Greens, people voted for the Liberal Democratic Party on the
NSW senate paper only because they thought they were voting for the Liberal
Party. Which is kind of odd because the numbers show quite clearly that the LDP didn't
push any Liberals out of the senate in NSW. They pushed out the Greens (who came
seventh, and hence missed out on their musical chair). Exactly many preference
flows were the Greens expecting from Liberal voters? Presumably the Greens feel that the name 'Liberal Democratic Party' is
misleading - the LDP merely being proponents of classic Liberalism and
Democracy and all that. Or maybe they thought that the words 'liberty' and
'democracy' were invented by the Liberals and the Democrats. Since the bitterness of election night the Greens seem to have gone back to
brooding sullenly over their organic lentils. Perhaps they realize that if
they were to push too hard for truthfulness in party naming, they might come
under a little scrutiny themselves. Socialists pretending to represent the
environment calling themselves 'Greens'. That's kind of funny - in a truly
offensive kind of a way. Others have of course have winged that the LDP only won a senate vote quota
because they got poll position in the lottery which determines who gets the
donkey vote. Apparently these detractors think that Australians (or is it just New South
Welsh(wo)men?) are too stupid to realise that voting is not a game of pin the
tail on the donkey. And still others still have dismissed the LDP as right wing gun nuts who will
be Tony Abbott's puppets. Maybe these donkeys just got sick of the government's
hand shoved up their butts? Well, you can't please all the people all the time. If Punch Drunk Tony is
expecting the LDP to be meek little bunnies, he may find the tail wagging the
donkey.
|
|
 |
| New Clothing Restrictions | |
Sydney has long had a reputation as the prostitute and drive-by shooting
capital of our proud nation, and the reputation has been reinforced over the
last few weeks with a drive-by shooting spree in a bit of bikie-on-bikie
action. What a tragedy. But before joining the sheeple in chanting tired old humanist cliches like
"all humans are equal" and "all human life is sacred" and "all discrimination
is wrong" lets just step back and classify killings according to binary logic
and one appropriate discriminator:
- Criminal bikies killing other criminal bikies.
- Criminal bikies killing innocent bystanders.
- Innocent bystanders killing criminal bikies.
- Innocent bystanders killing other innocent bystanders.
Common sense says that we can eliminate 4), and we like to leave 3) to the
Charles Bronsons of the world, so that really leaves criminal bikies killing 1)
other bikies, and 2) innocent bystanders. Given that criminal bikies are regarded as bad people (hey, they go around
shooting people - that's pretty bad right?), what exactly is the problem with them being shot? If a rabid dog attacks and kills another rabid dog, is it really
so bad? It doesn't completely solve the problem, but it reduces it by one. So that brings to the only problem: bikies killing innocent bystanders. So
when is the last time that happened? Well, correct me if I'm wrong Dear Reader,
but I seem recall that was at the father's day massacre in 28 years ago - in
1984, in which a 14 year old girl got caught in the cross-fire in a shoot out
which also killed six bikies. This resulted in 63 murder convictions shared
among 25 bikies. A tragedy to be sure, but a rational cost benefit analysis suggests
that encouraging rather than discouraging bikies to shoot
each other has to be considered as an alternative to the current zero-tolerance-policy.
If we could avoid the crossfire killings, then this would be a win-win for both
common sense and for public safety. Unfortunately, a few stray bullets seem to be ending up in the wrong places
lately. - People having their houses shot up because their house used to belong to a bikie. Nasty.
- Getting bullets come through your picture window - bullets which were intended for the flat below you. That's just incompetence.
But these problems can be solved. Police could publish lists of where the
bikies currently live. They could have a web-site, updated daily.
In fact, people could check the web-site (or older cached copies of it) before
buying or renting a home. An as for the bad shots, if the police had an informal arrangement to slow
down their response time to bikie-on-bikie action, then they would have more
time to aim better. A quiet word with the bikies that shooting involving stray
bullets would be investigated with greater zeal might also make them aim a
little more carefully. But no, the police have to continue to protect the worst elements of
society with the same zeal as the innocent bystanders, so innocent bystanders
continue to be placed at risk. And the government has reacted to the 'crisis' in a predictable way - passing
laws to ban 'bikie colors' in some suburbs (like Kings Cross). What a lovely
precedent for aspiring statists! Dictating what people can wear is a favorite
activity of socialist governments. Just look at the suits that Mao inflicted on
his women. Banning 'the kinds of "colors" that bad people wear' is pretty good
start. I just hope that when the government issues uniforms for us all that they
choose someting flattering. Red is not my color. Not even in straight jackets.
|
|
 |
| Transparency in government | |
On a slow news day, media outlets are abuzz with the news that Speaker Peter
Slipper has gotten the boot after allegations of sexual misconduct. While every self respecting convict descendant (yes that's most of us, dear
fellow Australians) hates politicians, and loves to see these asses hoist by
their own petards (regardless of integrity of any accusations made against
them) lets just spend a few moments being anally retentive, and try to get to
the .. err .. bottom of the claims against him. Apparently Peter Slipper is accused of inviting a junior employee to stay at
his Canberra house, and then requesting that he shower with the door open. And
there is apparently a video of him climbing through junior staffer's windows,
spooning him in his in his undies, and urinating out the window. What the ...? Sounds like pretty much par for the course at any gay party house.
So the guy is accused of what exactly? Being a poofter? Since when did that
become a crime again? And as for it being sexual harassment, inviting someone to have sex is not
sexual harassment. The feminists tried desperately in the eighties to redefine
sexual harassment to include any male who ever asked a girl out on a date, but
that got old really quickly, as beauty challenged women everywhere had visions
of never getting asked out every again, and the feminists alienated themselves
from the mainstream female population (not to mention alienating themselves
from common sense). Even Bill 'I-did-not-have-sexual-relations-with-that-woman' Clinton didn't
actually harass Paula Jones by merely dropping his trousers and asking if she
wanted sex. His behavior was inappropriate and oafish, but when she declined,
he didn't persist, he just pulled up his trousers (and eventually moved onto
Monica Lewinsky). That's not sexual harassment, just an invitation for sex. Peter Slippery is also accused of
using his office to foster sexual relations with young male staff members.
Could it be that men use their positions of wealth, authority and power to attract
sexual partners? Somebody alert the media! Well, someone obviously did, and the
media went to town with it. And went to the cities, and the airwaves and the
internet and .. Guys, calm down. Gay politicians, and politicians having affairs with their
staffers is nothing new. Don't get so precious about it, dears. It's not really
news and getting hysterical about is just a bit silly. Actually it's just .. well .. a bit gay.
|
|
 |
| Housing Bubble - Boom or Bust? | |
Quick Quiz: Consider an investment: You have a 50% chance of doubling your money, and a 50%
chance of halving it. Quick now: do you take the investment? The correct answer, clearly, is yes. If you take out a large number of
investments like this you would (on average) increase your capital by 25% each
time. So, let's apply this to buying real estate. You don't really know if house
prices are going to go up or down. Doom-sayers talk about a 'correction' of 50%,
while every real-estate agent seems to insist that you will double your money
'in only a few short years'. So what do you do? Clearly, you buy now! You borrow the most money you can to
buy the most expensive house you can. Not only did the strategy work well for
your parents, but the logic above is inescapable. Follow the crowd, and you
can't go wrong. Or can you? Well, the logic makes a bubble which eventually collapses. The probability
of a fall (versus a rise) gets greater and greater, and then property becomes a
loss investment. So what does this mean? Property won't fall until an overwhelming majority
believe that it will fall. When will that be? Who knows. In the meantime people will continue to make money. After all, even fools
can be right by chance, like one of the most foolish economists in history
proclaimed:
"Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent".
|
|
 |
| Latest PLAthing | |
China's PLA has oft been criticized as being little more than a mountain of
corrupt flesh. Over-manned, but under-skilled and under-armed. A million
collective tonnes of cannon fodder to stand between a billion sullen
malcontents and their self corrupt serving government. Overwhelming numbers have worked well for the Chinese leadership since building
The Great Wall. The government of the day ordered that human flesh be turned into
stone and mortar, and it was. A dead body for every meter of wall is a bargain as
long as bodies are plentiful and therefore cheap. When it comes to puting a
low price on a human life, the Chinese are surpassed only by Muslim terrorists. Losing 94 percent of the army in the Long March might have spelled the mother
of all defeats for Mao and his band of psychopathic commies, but he still had
enough manpower to seize control of Middle Kingdom. Mao understood that The Mob
rules. The Mob will always defeat the individual, however powerful, however
righteous. It wasn't just the voices of the many which drowned out the few.
The sheer mass of numbers assures victory for The Mob. The PLA successfully followed that model for half a century, so it might
surprise some of us that it has now changed tack. They have copied the American
model of spoilt military generals demanding newer and more exciting toys from
the technology sector. In this case they have demanded (and apparently
received) a shiny new stealth fighter. The Chinese J-20 made an 18 minute
maiden flight in Chengdu on January-11. Whether this is truly a great leap forward remains to be seen but it does
indicate a small revolution in culture. The Chinese are moving away from their
flesh based strategy, in pursuit of technological one. Why? Because a mountain
of flesh does not make for very effective forward deployment. A stealth fighter
does. China is about to move from a self-absorbed childhood into a narcissistic but
extroverted adolescence. Eventually the best we can hope for is a reserved, if
spiteful, adulthood. The times are going to be very interesting.
|
|
 |
| Redneck fashion | |
Feminists love to scream 'victim' of course, and now they are exploiting the
genitalia of Australia's new PM to score political points. It seems that our new Prime
Minister Julia Power-Woman Gillard has made a few
fashion faux pas. Like mistakenly wearing a cheap hotel bed-spread, thinking it
was a coat. Apparently this makes her a victim because 'society' judges women by the
way they look, not by the way do they do their jobs. Of course the feminists
don't say that 'society' in this case is basically other women (since most men
think that a fashionable women is one who is still wearing lacy lingerie in
their internet download). But somehow that still makes women victims of a male
dominated patriarchal society waging an undeclared war against WIMMIN!. Confused?
Well, it gets worse .. Now there are calls for fashion-model Julia to be given a special clothing
allowance ($70,000 a year of tax-payers money has been suggested) because she
is a woman. Of course a powerful and confident women couldn't possibly just do what men
do - wear a dark colored business suit with a few changes of shirts and splash
of color from a cravat or something. No no, the first woman to break the
ultimate glass ceiling, the woman who runs the country has no choice but to
conform to society's stereotypes. In other words, Dear Reader, women should be paid more than men for doing the
same job. And here we were thinking that feminists just wanted equal pay for
equal work! Of course some equal pays are more equal than others.
|
|
 |
| Reelection chances refloated | |
Every proponent of free markets likes to watch an auction. An auction
cuts through the socialist rhetoric about needs, social justice, and
humanitarianism. The rubbish about 'the rights of the stakeholders' counts for
nothing. The auctioneer doesn't care how much you want something. Saying
'but I really, really want it' doesn't cut much at an auction. The
auctioneer will just sell to the highest bidder. If you want it more than the
other guy, you'll bid more for it. And of course politicians big against each other for votes. Usually they get
elected by promising to spend more money than their opponent, but there
are bids on other things too. US politicians are well known for having execution
auctions ('vote for me because I'll execute more convicts than my opponent'),
but in Australia we are more civilized, and politicians normally confine their
auctioneering to wasting greater and greater sums of hard-earned for taxpayers
money. Well, normally. Astonishingly, yesterday saw a policy auction between Australian
politicians which didn't simply involve spending more money. This auction was
about asylum seekers. The Labour and Liberal parties were having a 'we'll
deport more asylum seekers than you will' day. Julia Australia-needs-a-woman's-compassion Gillard
threw down the gauntlet by proclaiming that people should not be labelled
'rednecks' simply for expressing concern over the ever increasing number of
boaties. Then Tony he-man Abbott started the bidding by saying
that he would immediately send anyone back who deliberately destroyed their
documentation (asylum seekers are well known for throwing their documentation
overboard just before being picked up by Australian Authorities - it makes it
harder for Australian Authorities to disprove fabricated claims, and helps to
protect their employees - the so called 'people smugglers', who supply
transport, logistics, GPS units and the satellite phones they use to ring the
Australian navy, demanding to be 'rescued'). So Julia look-at-what-I'm-wearing Gillard promised
to set up an offshore processing center in East Timor. Uninvited boaties would
be sent to the center to have their claims processed, and many (like nearly
everyone from Sri Lanka) would never even step foot on Australian soil. Of course Julia's solution was nothing like
Johnny we-will-decide-who-comes-here-and-the-manner-in-which-they-do-so
Howard's 'Pacific Solution'. No no.
Little Johnny's solution was to have forlorn and destitute asylum seekers in
Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Julia's solution is to have forlorn and destitute
asylum seekers in East Timor. See the difference? Umm .. anyway .. This is actually a master stroke by the fashion challenged PM. Because they
couldn't possibly reuse infrastructure set by the previous government in Nauru
or Papua (that would be inhumane), negotiating with the East Timorese, choosing
a site, and setting up the much-more-humane infrastructure in East Timor, will
all take time. That is, Dear Reader, it can't possibly happen until after the
next election. In other words, Julia can call the election, and survive the election
campaign without actually doing anything - just making more promises. Nice work if you can get it. There will be a few awkward moments after the election of course (having to
explain why the promised policy changes are now suddenly totally
inappropriate), but that is what politicians do. And everything in politics is
about winning the next election - focussing on later elections is pointless if
the next election is lost, particularly with the half-life of the average
political leader resembling a Chernobyl meltdown. So Julia has found a solution to take her through an election win. Not a
Pacific Solution, not even really a Timor Sea solution. Just a temporary
solution. Until the next Labour back flip. Julia is seeking asylum in the rhetoric of a tough border protection
policy.
|
|
 |
| Why fuss over this? | |
For the proletariat, Ayres Rock is the place to go to have your babies eaten
by wild dogs, but the big red rock means considerably more than that to us
intellectual elites. Uluru (ie Ayres Rock), is an important symbol of traditional Aboriginal
culture, and many of us remember being forced to sit in school watching grainy
anthropological films of overweight topless Aboriginal women performing their
not-so-secret women's business - dancing around at their corroborees, before
being forced to write essays on the sanctity of multiculturalism. This is a traumatic image which for most of us, thankfully, fades from memory
over time. But not so for 25 year old French exotic dancer Alizee Sery, who
apparently was to taken by these anthropologist gems that she felt the need to
make a tribute to the traditional owners of Ayres Rock, by doing as the local
Aboriginal women traditionally did - going topless and dancing.
Fortunately for
the sake of posterity, she had the presence of mind to bring her own amateur
anthropologist to film the event, and then (in the interests of sharing) put
the film up on youtube. At this point, one could comment merely on the artistic nature of the film. It
is foreign film made in Australia, which captures the harsh and rugged beauty
of the Australian landscape, and yet contrasts it skillfully with the soft
curves of the female form. But that would miss the significant cultural
contribution of the film itself. It would be hard to imagine the Aboriginal population objecting to anyone doing
what they had done themselves for the last 40,000 years or so, but the local
Elders seem to have gotten upset once Alizee's film went viral. Local Elders
have been so fired up over Alizee's film that they have even demanded her
deportation. Why on earth would they do such a thing?
Maybe they are trying to create a monopoly on topless films?
Or maybe they just don't like French?
|
|
 |
| Coming soon to a politician near you | |
In this day and age we are expected to be tolerant of those who are
'different'. 'Different', of course means lots of things, but some of us old timers,
'different' generally meant homosexual. Like in the footy for instance - where gay footballers have recently been
advised to stay in the closet. Whether closet means 'water closet' or 'locker
room' in this instance isn't clear, but basically it's between them, their
friends, families, and their locker-room shower-mates. It's none of our
business, and most of us like it that that way. There is, of course, a principle here. The price we pay for keeping people out
of our bedrooms is that we stay out of other people's. And in the case of gay
footy players, most of us are happy to oblige. But does the same standard apply to politicians? Well, in an ideal world it
would. If a senior state-ALP minister were to, say, frequent gay sex clubs (to
pick a completely random example), would it be anyone's business apart from his
friends, family, gay sex partners, anyone with a video camera, any of his
constituents, those who came under his power as a state politician, and everyone
disgusted with the fact that state ministers continually set themselves up as
the high priests of personal and sexual morality? Well, probably not, but that's an awful lot of us. Maybe when NSW Transport Minister and closet homo David Campbell campaigned on
platform of 'family values' he should have let us know whether he regarded
anonymous gay sex partners as 'family'. Maybe calling him self 'Camp Bell'
should have rung a .. well .. camp warning bell with the voters, but such
things are not generally regarded as reliable indicators. Unlike video evidence. In a more rational world, government would limit itself to stopping murder,
rape, assault and theft. But politicians with power are like drug addicts.
They need more and more control over people's lives. What do you say to someone who dictates what people can watch on the TV, what
they can access on internet, what they can eat or drink, and who they can
marry, and then blames the media for 'unfair media attention of their private
lives'? Only three words: ha ha ha. Just because the State displays a keen interest in your personal life, does not
mean the state is your friend.
|
|
 |
| A nose for political opportunity | |
We all like to explore our feminine sides occasionally .. getting
pampered when we are sick, watching the occasional chick flick, employing
that Asian lady with the big boots and the whip .. But most of us have no interest in exploring our feminist side. Surely
only the most retarded spineless gender apologist would want to to explore total
self-loathing. Which brings us to Tony (Sluggo) Abattoir. It all started with Sluggo playing to the conservatives, and insisting that a
Sluggo-led government wouldn't raise any taxes, or to introduce new ones. Good
move Sluggo, and self respecting rednecks raised a glass to you. Or at least a
cold can. But then he let his teenage daughters talk him around, and convince him to
force the taxpayer to finance their reproductive ambitions. Suddenly he was in
favor of paying middle class women up to $75,000.00 to pop out a baby - paid
for by a great big new tax on big business. Then he got cornered by Kerry O'Brien on everyone's ABC and admitted that the
two were 'not entirely consistent', and said that he was 'not always entirely
accurate' in the heat of verbal combat, that his words couldn't be taken as
'gospel truth' unless they were in writing. What was Sluggo thinking? Maybe telling a lie is okay if you say it
quickly enough? ABC journalists do present themselves as the high priests of of
democratic thought. Maybe Sluggo thought he was back in confessional or
something? Sluggo is perhaps the first politician honest enough to admit lying. Thanks for
your honesty, Tony, but it's a bit hard to sing your praises for this. It's a
bit like the partner who loves you enough to admit to having an affair. 'thanks
for your honesty you deceiving b...'. But enough about the ex- .. Normally it's easy to tell when a politician is lying - his lips move. But Tony
(Sluggo) Abattoir has proven to be the exception to the rule. A
politician telling you that he is a liar, is clearly telling the truth. Sluggo is, of course, not the first politician to break promises. Bob Hawke had
his 'no child in poverty' mandate, Paul Keating had his 'L.A.W. law' tax cuts,
Howard had his 'core promises', Kev's ETS commitments are now on hold
indefinitely, and of course there was George Bush Senior's classic: 'Read my lips. No
new taxes'. But broken promises are not the same as lies. Sluggo, admitting you are lying
doesn't make you seem more trustworthy. And that's the gospel truth.
|
|
|
>> Please Sir, I want some more
|
|
| Feedback/Forum |
|
- ANON -- Anonymous Coward 2011-12-02
|
|
