 |
|
|
|
| More!? More!? |
|
 |
| .. just don't provoke them! | |
Sometimes people get themselves into arguments which are unwinnable. Like when
someone says to you: 'you always have to have the last word, don't you'. Any protest to the contrary
proves their point, and while silence demonstrates just the opposite - that it
is really the speaker who has to have the last word, this invariably gets lost
in the background noise, and the situation is unwinnable. Likewise 'you are an incredibly argumentative person - the fact that
you are still arguing with me proves that', has the same effect. On the other hand 'I don't want to argue about this anymore' is easier
to counter - 'well, don't then'. Sometimes however the solution is quite easy. And involves no response at
all. It's pretty easy to make a fool of someone who says 'you are such a
violent person that you are about to hit me'. You just have to smile, and
say nothing, or simply say 'no I'm not'. So you would think that the followers of the Religion of Peace would have
responded in a similar manner when the Pope quoted some long dead Pope about
Muslims being violent. Sadly, this wasn't to be. Some Muslims were so outraged by the suggestion that
they were violent, that they went out and committed acts of violence. Including
the murder of an Italian nun. And the argument has reached shores of Australia. Now Cardinal Pell has
come out defending his man in the Vatican, by pointing out the obvious - that
subsequent events kind of justified the original statement. So now the Mufti,
Sheik Hilaly has challenged Pell to a debate. Hilaly can't even
speak English! No problem says apologist Keysar Trad. He can be given written questions in
advance and prepare answers. Huh? Isn't a debate where you .. like .. engage
with each other? Hilaly just wants to increase his status by sharing a stage with someone
more important than he is, and to get an opportunity to preach. It's all about
exposure. More rational Muslims, like Muslim Community Reference Group chair, Ameer
Ali, have taken a different tack. Ali is calling for 'and end to the war of
words'. He would like to quietly bury the debate and move onto helping himself
to the 31 million dollar slush fund Little Johnny is setting up to raise
awareness of Islam in Australia. This has got to be a good thing. There are many of us who seek to raise
awareness of Islam in Australia. You might say that we are on a Crusade for the Truth.
|
|
 |
| Oh no, not again | |
Some readers may be laboring under the misapprehension that yours truly is
insensitive to the threat posed by global warming, so it seems appropriate to
disabuse them of it. As someone with aging parents who own a valuable holiday property some 4 feet
above sea level, I can assure everyone that I am very concerned about the
possible effects of rising sea levels. So concerned in fact, that I felt the need to spend the weekend monitoring the
situation first hand, from the private jetty in the back yard. I did take time out though to catch the news, and was distressed to learn that
Tuvalu is already under water! Carefully edited shots on the leftist media show
waves crashing over the .. um .. well .. over the beach, and depict children
happily splashing in the water! The horror, the horror! The news cast assumed, not only that the earth was warming, but that the oceans
had already risen! Tuvalu was being swamped! They must have gotten their facts from the Earth Policy
Institute, who reports that
As sea level has
risen, Tuvalu has experienced lowland flooding.
Huh? Sea level rise in ocean monitoring centers in the first world have not
even been objectively measurable, but Tuvalu is already under water? Clearly some more experiments in the bath-tub are required. The fact is that the Tuvaluans have blasted away much of their coral reefs to
dynamite fish (a practice banned in most parts of the world), and have
excavated sand for building materials. This has greatly reduced the natural
protection from storms. And a rapidly increasing population has put further strains on the production
of food. Unlike the credibility of the Left, it seems that Tuvalu is
not sinking at all. Of this doesn't mean that it won't, just that it hasn't yet. This is clearly a
situation which requires careful study. I for one intend to spend more time
studying it. It can be monitored closely from the family coastal property. Maybe I could get a government grant?
|
|
 |
| Those who can't do teach | |
Anyone who attends a university where they train teachers will tell you
that the trainee teachers are the only group dumber than the PE
students. Except the trainee teachers themselves of course, who will bristle at
the suggestion. Of course they also bristle at the suggestion that they regard
themselves as the intellectual
elite. Apparently someone who has a government charter to tell other people
what to think doesn't qualify as the intellectual elite. Go figure. But some other university intellectual elites have produced a study which
shows that
teachers are actually a pretty dumb lot. In particular, it reports that
the academic achievement of women entering teaching has declined substantially.
You mean all those feminists who became teachers through
affirmative action aren't really that smart? Who'd have thought? The study actually confirms what the rest of us have known all along. The
feminisation of the school curriculum alienated a generation of boys from the
education system, and did nothing for the girls beyond giving them a sense of
entitlement to affirmative action. Allowing the teachers unions to run the
education system has simply resulted in a slow deterioration of teaching
standards. And driving male teachers out of the profession through affirmative
action and subtle innuendos about men being pedophiles has been a disaster. But it's not like the teacher's unions don't have a solution to the
problem. They are demanding that teachers be paid more money. The argument is
that better, and smarter teachers will be attracted to the profession if it
pays more money. Can you imagine any organization other than a union demanding more money
because they are doing such a poor job? ** Of course the teachers unions have always fought the concept of
performance-based, or merit-based pay. Across the board pay rises have always
been the demand in the we-are-all-equal culture of the socialist-rooted elites. They have even resisted Little Johnny's demands for standardized report
cards. There have been many squishy arguments against this, usually based
around the notion that all children are different, and their needs can only
really be assessed and met by Trained Professionals (ie increasingly dumb
women teachers). The real reason they are resisting the standardized report cards is because it
will create accountability. Teachers are terrified of actually having to admit
that they have only managed to get Junior's reading level up to the bottom 20
percentile because then their teaching performance (or lack of it) would be
obvious, and parents would be able to compare schools and might (horror of
horrors) actually demand a choice in how their children are educated. Next,
parents might actually demand an education voucher system. Oh the horror, the horror. It's ironic, that in the state education factories, in which the teacher's
unions have tried so hard to create uniformity, their argument against
standardized report cards is based on individuality. It's also ironic that the favored slogan of the teacher's union is
State education: it's our future. Now that's horrifying.
** Actually yes, I can: the government. It does this all the time.
|
|
 |
| Nothing worth buying | |
The Howard Government has stood out from the opposition over the last ten
years for several reasons. One is that they have overseen a decade of almost
unprecedented economic growth, the other is that they have always managed to
look like they had a plan. It may not have been a sexy plan, it may not have been a popular plan. But
as the Australian population slowly became rich (or at least richer), it
was comforting to think that the man who was controlling their lives (and also
taking half their income) was
planning something to do with it. But the problem with skilled persuaders is
that they often get their way. In the previous decade, The Left got their way with everything from feminism to family law. Those things
have been demonstrable failures, which made life easier for Little Johnny's
election strategists. But now Johnny has a problem. Having implemented his tax
reform agenda in the guise of the GST, his citizen disarmament agenda, and his
Voluntary Unionism agenda, and much of his privatization agenda, he just looks
a bit aimless. He tried a mandatory offshore processing solution for asylum seekers, but that
didn't get up, so he has to find a new political goal. Remember that governments have to look
like they are doing something. Like a corrupt socialist government that is
always 'moving towards communism', or still
'implementing the revolution', governments have to have new set of laws or spending initiatives to
implement, otherwise they are just not doing their job. Obviously. But the political climate won't let Little Johnny tidy up the privatization
agenda. He managed to pull a swifty over the Snowy Hydro scheme and embarrass a
pair of cash-strapped and profligate Labor Premiers, but that was just a stroke
of good luck. Howard is now faced with a serious problem: what to do with 51%
of Telstra. The share price of Telstra has been in steady decline pretty much since the
last share float. The Mums and Dads who bought Telstra shares have halved their
money in just a few short years. And they are angry. Someone must have told
them that a bloated government monopoly with 50 year
customer-be-damned culture of non-service could compete with aggressive private
companies in an age of rapid technological change. Who
would have told them that? Oh, that's right: it was the government. No wonder
they are angry. Little Johnny has several options Sell. He can sell his remaining shares in Telstra. Unfortunately to
do this he has to value them. If he values them above the current market rate
(around $3.40), no-one will buy them, and if he values them at the market rate
or below, then every brainless nong who bought T2 at $7.40 will feel ripped
off. How can Johnny value something at $7.40, and then, just a few years later,
value it at less than half that? They must be victims. Hold. Little Johnny can keep his remaining 51% until ... um .. what?
The share price is unlikely to climb in the near future, and the uncertainty
which is holding Telstra back (and probably deflating the share price) will
remain. Warehouse. He can put the shares into Peter (Smirky) Costello's much
touted 'future fund' for a rainy way - like paying superannuation for public
servants (apparently the government forgot to put money aside for this because
they thought someone else would volunteer to pay). The problem with this option
is management - who would appoint the Telstra board in this case? Who would
assess Sol Trujillo's next request for a pay rise? The board of academics appointed to run
the future fund? Little Johnny faces a severe backlash with any of these options. But there
is another option - one which has been floated (so to speak) on this forum
before: giving it away to Australian citizens. This model didn't work
well when the government still had $30 billion dollars of ALP debt to pay off, but high
taxes and restrained spending have paid that money off already. So there really is no reason now why the government can't just give an
equal number of shares to every Australian man, woman and child. The leftists who wanted to keep
it in the hands of 'the people' couldn't possibly object to this (apparently
those people are the majority aren't they?), and those few misguided souls who
think that the bloated, arrogant and inefficient juggernaut is best sold off
before it goes completely broke, can sell. Why would anyone object to true
democracy? Unless they didn't actually believe in it of course. We may be approaching a highly unusual political situation - in which the
interests of the people, and the interests of the ruling party are coincident.
Johnny can answer the call by giving around $1300 in shares to every
Australian. This won't avoid the wrath of the hard left - but nothing he does
could do this. It will avoid the wrath of the Mums and Dads who will feel that
they have been exploited by Johnny's free market pretensions by giving them
more shares. And it would be quite nice to get around $1300.00 in shares for doing
nothing (unless you count being exploited by Telstra for several decades as
payment). And this shareholder would be divesting immediately. In fact Telstra's
phone lines may run hot with people ringing their stockbrokers and shouting
'SELL! SELL! SELL!'. Better hurry. If they wait too much longer, they may not
even be able to give it away.
|
|
 |
| .. one great conspiracy for man-kind | |
Conspiracy theorists and Libertarians may seem like dissimilar groups, but they
do have something in common - a deep distrust of government, and government
agencies. Like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for example. That NASA faked all the moon landings is a truth accepted by conspiracy
theorists since the legendary Coke can was seen rolling past Neal Armstrong
shortly after the 'one small step for man ..' cliche rolled off his
lips. Many of us were a little young to remember the Coke can rolling across the screen
- or maybe too poor to afford the 106cm plasma TV required actually make the
Coke can recognizable. But the conspiracy theorists insist that it's there. Or at
least that the images are to blurry to prove that the Coke can is not
there, which is (in their view) the same thing. The key to a good conspiracy theory is that
can't be disproven. And recent events may play right into that domain. NASA has lost the original
moon-landing tapes. Apparently they have been lost amongst the blurry images
from the Hubble space telescope, and the reruns of My Favorite Martian. These
guys don't just blow up space shuttles and crash space craft onto the surface
of Mars - they also lose the evidence. So the tin-foil brigade can pat themselves on the back and go back to insisting
that John F Kennedy and Elvis are alive and well and living in Adolf Hitler's
Argentinian mansion. Everyone needs a hobby.
|
|
 |
| Bewildered passengers searched for answers as gloves come off | |
Police in the UK claim to
have foiled a terrorist plot to blow up more airplanes - this time with liquid
explosives - and have that the perpetrators are (you know what's coming don't
you?) Islamicists. Who'd have thought? Objecting to the close links between
the UK and the US, they
presumably thought they would attempt to symbolically cut those links by
downing a dozen airplanes en-route between the two countries. What is the thing that Islamicists have with airplanes? Generally, little boys
like trains, little girls like dolls, grown men like cars and grown women like
diamonds (especially when they are attached to a ring). But Islamicists seem to
be fixated on airplanes - or more precisely in destroying them. Boys like trains because they would like to build them. Men like cars because
they like to drive them. Girls like dolls because they would like, one day, to
have babies. Women like diamonds because they are symbolically attached to a
man's future income. But why do Islamicists hate airplanes so much? Presumably it's because they symbolize their own impotence, ignorance and
failure. For all of the historical shaping which claims that the Muslim world
laid the foundations for all mathematics and science, the reality is that
the Muslim world is a demonstrable failure - politically, economically, and
militarily. The modern airliner is something that no Muslim country has ever managed
to build. Indonesia some
years ago tried to set up an aeronautical industry - a venture which absorbed
massive government subsidies before failing dismally. Some may blame the fact
that it was being run by the dictator's son, who pocketed much of the money,
but that really just underscores the main point - that they can't get it
together. Despite the immense natural wealth that some Islamic
countries have, they remain economic and technological backwaters. The airplane symbolizes potency, strength, globalization, and technical mastery.
Something which Allah (in his wisdom) has chosen to bestow only on the dominant
West. Why has Allah
(in his wisdom) favored the Kaffirs over the loyal Islamic
brethren? Not that logic ever stopped religious fanaticism. Clearly
when you are in a weaker position that your opponents, and your only real
strength comes from screaming about being the victim, you should come out
and slaughter as many of your opponents as possible in an attempted mass murder. Obviously. But even trials and tribulations bring some good things. Politicians are not known
for their propensity to tell the truth, but George Dubya has finally come out
and said that the US is "at war with
Islamic fascists". Exactly why he felt the need to add "ic fascists" to
his statement is a bit of a mystery, but it's also the nature of the politician
to embellish. At least he has has clarified what the 'War on Terror'
actually means. Some of us thought he was about to ban horror movies or
something. Dubya's war concept now seems a little less liquid, as frightened commuters
throw away their water, their foams and their gels, and take only
essential hand luggage on the planes in clear plastic bags. And airport
drug-stores on both sides of the Atlantic are rubbing their hands at the
prospect of new arrivals queuing to replace everything from spermicides,
lubricants and hair restorer. And our own little Johnny weighed into the discussion with
"I guess the sobering thing about the July attacks of last year in London and
the arrests of those people in Canada and the arrests of those people in Sydney
and Melbourne at the end of last year, sobering thing about all of those things
is you were dealing with people who in the main had been born in the countries
where they were arrested."
If past experience is anything to go by, most of these people will be
second generation immigrants from Muslim
countries. Could there be a stronger indication of the idiocy of multiculturalism than
the failure of immigrants to integrate even in successive generations?
|
|
 |
| Liquid Gold | |
Toowoomba Mayor Di Thorley has found herself in the poo with some of the locals
following her suggestion that the town's drinking water shortage can be solved
by recycling. A grand idea, and one that every greenie would wet his pants
about - unless they were one of the ones who actually had to do it. Recycling
in this case is not just keeping a token compost bin in the backyard and
letting a pair of chooks pick through it, so you can pretend you are saving the
planet. This issue will flush out the hardened greenies from the weekend
worriers. They are talking about recycling sewage. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and where most of us would just see a
dirty old sewage water, Mayor Thorley sees liquid gold. Such
entrepreneurialism in private enterprise would be admirable, but politicians
(especially women politicians) are supposed to spend their time kissing
babies and wringing their hands while proclaiming 'what about
the little children? and quietly raising taxes. Of course anyone who has thought it through knows that this is a storm in a
toilet bowl. No-one is making any more water. Every drop of H2O has
been recycled already from .. well somewhere. We might like to believe that
God's filtration system is better than the lazy council worker's down the road,
but in principle it's the same thing. Adelaidians have always lamented that by
the time water gets to Adelaide (via the Murray) it has already been drunk
three times. Toowoombahians might about to get a taste of the same thing. And no-one will be actually forced to drink the stuff. People would drink (on
average) less that two litres of water a day, and water in this quantity could
easily be imported and purchased at the local super market. Of course with a competitive private water market this would not be an issue.
While giving each householder a choice of 'recycled or not' would be a bit of a
challenge, smaller communities could make their own choice. Some would prefer
to pay a premium for non-recycled water, and others would choose the cheaper
variety. In fact poorer people could even make money by selling their rights to
higher quality water to rich people. Everyone could be better off. But no -
the socialist state dictates that everyone has to have the same water at the
same standard. People's choices are taken away 'to make us equal'. At least every yokel will know what graffiti to write on the the toilet wall of
the local restaurant: Flush hard. It has to make it all the way to the kitchen.
|
|
 |
| Too hard basket | |
They say that war is an extension of politics by more honest means. Honest,
perhaps, but apparently not more rational. The Middle East is not well
known for its balanced or rational politics. It is, however,
known for playing the chain-blame-game. In a
conflict going back over two thousand years, both sides can always point to
some atrocity committed by members of the opposing collective, and claim the
moral high ground. Or at
least assure themselves that their god will reward in the afterlife
for killing the worshipers of the false god of their opponents. It stands to reason that if you blow up enough innocent babies and children,
that your god will reward you. Obviously. Sometimes though, one has wonder why pragmatics doesn't override passion. In
particular, one has to wonder about the mindset of a population who would vote
for a government who would support a terrorist organization who launched
rockets and missiles towards an aggressive and more powerful neighbor. Did it
ever occur to these people that their aggressive neighbor might - you know -
like - retaliate at some point? Admittedly Lebanon has had its share of setbacks. Being occupied by both Syria
and Israel for several decades may not have helped them, but since both
occupiers left, things have hardly gotten better. Apart from exporting rape
gangs to Sydney the country hasn't really made much of an impression on the
world stage. Apologists point to model Lebanese descendants in Australia, such as
Victorian Premier Steve Bracks and Aussie Home Loans founder John Symond. It's
not clear why a politician and a loan
shark would be regarded as model citizens, but they are clearly less
undesirable than the likes of Keysar Trad, who seems to spend his time making
up ever more far fetched stories about Sheikh Hilaly's adventures in Iraq. And that's not even mentioning the unemployment
rates of Lebanese Australians. Lebanon really resembles the busted-arsed-countries in the Pacific
which Australia is trying not to re-colonize. Fortunately Australia is too far
away to be called on to 'take responsibility', and so it falls to Syria and
Israel to control the rabble. So far the Israelis have contributed some rockets
and missiles of their own, and stretches of Lebanon close to Hezbollah
strongholds have been bombed back to the stone age in just a few days. Perhaps
they didn't really have much to do. It's hard not to sympathize with babies with limbs blown off, and it's
important to recognize that this affects the lives of individuals - some of
them innocent individuals. But it's also hard to sympathize with a population
collective who has provided succor to a terrorist organization. It's also a little disturbing to see crowds of women with bags over their
heads demanding that the Australian Government evacuate them to Australia
because the ALP gave them
citizenship in more politically
correct times, when Islam was still regarded as a quaint, but harmless culturally
relativistic lifestyle choice. Even when the strife is on the other side of the world, Australia is expected
to be a garbage dump for the world's problems.
|
|
 |
| They're at it again | |
One of the pleasures of being a member of the latte class is spending endless
hours sipping the warm, non-mind-altering (albeit fattening), comforting, decaf
liquid while making ever-more grandiose predictions about the political world. In one such recent encounter, my fellow latte drinker was outraged about the
recent aggressive show-of-weakness by wayward nation North Korea
in firing a number of missiles towards Japan and the US. One particularly large
rocket, apparently aimed at an area of sea close to Hawaii, failed after
launch, but it still upset the Americans. There's something about having people
shoot bullets close to your extremities which annoys most people. And
apparently many governments as well. This is, of course, another attempt to blackmail the rest of the world into
giving them more aid. The failures of centralized planning are nowhere more
apparent than in North Korea, where many people are said to be starving. My fellow latte drinker was outraged at the morality of a group of people who
thought it was acceptable to threaten other people with violence for material
gain - 'just because they haven't taken proper steps to feed themselves!'. The moralists in 'compassionate' successful Western countries might like to
reconsider that point of view carefully. In principle, North Korea's actions
are no different to the mob who demand welfare because of their 'needs'. The mob appointed policeman who arrests you for refusing to pay taxes to
subsidize people with less wealth than you, is no different in principle to the
North Korean soldier. They are motivated by the same seemingly unshakable
belief - that they are entitled to your wealth simply because they have less. The latte set of The Left often argues that war is an expression of a deep
sickness running right through society. In this case they are right.
|
|
 |
| Deal? What deal? | |
My father once said that his definition of an intelligent man was one who
could hate someone without them even knowing. That doesn't really apply
to politicians - but the converse probably does: The definition of a really
stupid politicians is one who thinks that there is someone, somewhere who likes
him. Politicians are so unlikable, it's hard to imagine even a marriage partner
liking a politician - or even their kids. Their dog might like them, but that
doesn't really qualify. And political marriages are not that different to other kind - an inseparable
couple who clearly despise each other and yet dutifully give their most
practiced smiles and then say the worst thing about each other which they think
they can get away with. No-one really knew why Peter (Smirky) Costello and Little Johnny had been doing
that for the last 12 years. There were, of course, rumors - but there are
always rumors in politics, and no-one pays them any attention unless they
involve politicians having sex with each other. And no-one really believes that
Little Johnny has sex. His kids must have been a series of indiscretions on the
part of Janette or something. But it seems that 12 years ago Smirky and Little Johnny had a conversation in
which Johnny indicated his intention to hand over the keys to The Lodge to
Smirky after two electoral terms - a conversation which guaranteed Smirky's
support and loyalty - for two terms. Lesser men might have considered this a deal. So a younger, less experienced, but still ambitious Smirky looked forward to
moving into The Lodge (well, Kirribilli house anyway) after two terms of
managing the nation's tax booty. But he didn't count on something that few
would have predicted - that Little Johnny would do such a good job, and enjoy
so much popular and political support he no longer needed Smirky's support. All
Johnny had to do was put on his 'Honest John' look and say 'Deal? What
deal?'. Smirky had that sharp pain in his back which only politicians can
really experience. And the wound has been festering ever since. Like the story of the mermaid who
had to smile even though she was walking on knives, Smirky had to smile while
suffering the slings and arrows of a thousand humiliations from a handicapped,
short bald man with the charisma of a defective bathplug. That must be why he has such a hard time putting a sincere smile on his face. After the deal was made public, Australia quickly split into two camps:
- Those who screamed 'John Howard Forever' - a worthy sentimement, but
Johnny is not actually getting any younger.
- Those who screamed for John Howard to resign immediately - presumably so
that the Governor General can appoint Bob Brown as interim Prime Minister.
But no-one was actually calling for the appointment of Smirky. And after a
gentle dressing down (and a polite but firm 'no') by Little Johnny, he went
quietly back to his desk. A more confident man would just calculate the difference in relative ages of
him and the incumbent, and let nature take its course. But Smirky knows that
all politicians have shelf lives. A truth-overboard mishap, or a
life-wasn't-meant-to-be-easy slip can break a politician. And unlike the ALP,
there are other strong contenders for the position. Like Malcolm Turnbull for
example. Maybe the best economic minds at Treasury could help Smirky calculate the
most efficient way to expend or conserve political capital? It would take his
mind off raising taxes anyway.
|
|
|
>> Please Sir, I want some more
|
|
| Feedback/Forum |
|
- ANON -- Anonymous Coward 2011-12-02
|
|
