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Archive for the ‘politics’ Category


A woman of calibre? Yeah, bite me, Tony

In feminism, oxygen thieves, politics on May 8, 2013 at 8:00 am

I do wonder just what the Leader of the Opposition means by ‘a woman of calibre’. To what, exactly, should I be aspiring?

Clearly, Mrs LOTO is the most obvious role model I should be emulating. Must be. TAbbott wouldn’t have married a woman who lacked calibre, would he?

Should I convert to Catholicism, I wonder? Perhaps join the Young Liberals?

Gosh, maybe I need to boost my educational credentials. Try for that Rhodes Scholarship?

Get my virginity surgically restored? Renounce my sexuality? Join a convent?

Shut my mouth? Cross my legs? Walk three paces behind?

Fuck you, Tony Abbott. Fuck you and the 18th century misogynistic foxhole you crawled out of.

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It’s not easy being green

In oxygen thieves, politics on April 29, 2013 at 8:05 am

It’s an indication of my total depression over Australian politics that I am contemplating voting Green in the coming Federal Election.

I’ve voted Labor for 30 years. I loved Gough when I was 7. I heckled a National Party state minister during a school visit when i was 15 and surrounded by teachers. I heckled Joh Bjelke-Petersen during a public meeting after the ’74 floods, aged 9.

And now I’m thinking about voting for a minority party with no chance of winning a majority but with every chance of being the only ones with genuine, ideals-driven policies.

I’m so depressed with and disappointed in Julia Gillard’s ALP. I’m an Emily’s List member and honestly, I want nothing more than for this all to be a convoluted plan backed by Gillard’s innate deal-making genius. But the longer this drags on the more it looks like one disaster after another.

Tony Abbott is going to be Prime Minister of Australia. If that isn’t an indication of how completely bereft our political landscape is right now, I don’t know what is.

God help us all. Here’s hoping the Greens are up to keeping his arrogance and ignorance in check.

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ALP: Not a shadow of the pimple on the arse of its former self

In history, politics, television on April 21, 2013 at 1:29 pm

I bought myself a copy of Labor in Power the other day and started it watching it this week.

For those of you who don’t remember, Labor in Power is a documentary series made about the Hawke/Keating governments. It was first telecast in 1993 so at 20 years old, it’s a remarkable record, not just of those years, but also of the personalities and talents that were around 20, 30, 40 years ago.

Apart from Hawke and Keating — both charismatic, smart, and in many ways, deeply principled politicians — it’s been a revelation to revisit some of the people who were doing the job of government in the Labor world back then.

Lionel Bowen, Susan Ryan, Gareth Evans, John Button, Graham Richardson, Kim Beazley … these people had substance and some intellectual weight. They knew how to campaign, they knew how to follow through on real reform, they knew how to get shit done without relying daily on bullshit focus groups and pollsters.

These people answered questions without finding the first opportunity to go back to the message of the week. They actually answered policy questions.

Imagine that.

When I look at today’s ALP, are there any I would keep in an Allstar ALP government? Yes.

Penny Wong, Julia Gillard, Tanya Plibersek and maybe, just maybe, Stephen Smith. He’s yet to really convince me. And Albo, maybe.

The rest, I’m sorry, but they don’t have the talent God gave a turnip.

Doomed. Utterly doomed.

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Australia’s mainstream media has lost the plot

In fail, media, politics on February 3, 2013 at 4:38 pm

As you know, I am an ex-tabloid journalist, 22 years playing the game. And it is a game, believe me. It’s a game of dollars and cents, readership v circulation, truth versus what’s sellable.

I’ve never been happier to be out of the business than since the announcement of the election date and the complete and utter bullshit that followed the retirement announcements of Nicole Roxon and Chris Evans.

I have never seen such utter shit talked as the press gallery and major newspapers have churned out since. ‘Chaos’, ‘shambles’, ‘turmoil’. And that’s just what they think is happening to the ALP.

Any journalist who truly thinks the Prime Minister doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing or chooses to believe some chump backbencher with an agenda of their own should hand in their press card now.

The trouble is, i don’t think the journalists themselves are the problem. The editors are the problem, and the system that means they do as they’re told and not what they believe to be the truth.

I tried to have a conversation with an editor on Twitter today. I was objecting to their big political expose of the day … how Margie Abbott is the first lady in waiting. All i got back from the editor in question was some schoolboy giggling and a picture of his comics page as an indication of all the good things i’d missed.

Now, perhaps he thought that because we’re former colleagues and that we’ve shared a laugh or two, that maybe i was joking. Or perhaps he forgot that we weren’t just talking in a room by ourselves but were in fact out in a public forum.

Who knows?

I just want fair, balanced, accurate reporting of the issues. And that includes nailing Tony Abbott down with some substantive policy questions that he has to answer. It includes calling knobs like Abbott and Campbell Newman for using the Bundaberg floods as a call for ‘stable government’ … that includes calling out Chrissy Pyne for comparing the ‘chaos’ in the ALP with the downfall of Adolph Hitler.

Do some real reporting, for fuck’s sake.


I heart Nancy Pelosi

In fail, feminism, oxygen thieves, politics, video on November 16, 2012 at 9:38 pm

Watch as a totally clueless young male reporter gets schooled on the gentle art of gender politics.

Why doesn’t Mitch McConnell ever get asked that question?

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Your Daily Maddow

In funny, lesbian, media, politics, television, video on November 11, 2012 at 3:05 pm


I wish I was Nate Silver and other post-election reflections

In cartoons, history, media, politics on November 9, 2012 at 1:46 pm

Nate Silver, numbers man extraordinaire, is about to make a motza. If he hasn’t already. Predicting 50 out of 50 states is one better than he did in 2008 and a phenomenal job of accurate mathematics and unbiased fact-seeking.

I think the scariest thing in the lead-up to the US election for me was the incredible closeness the mainstream media kept predicting. I fell for it, I admit it. I let the MSM convince me that there actually were enough stupid, prejudiced, bigoted, outright crazy Americans voting for Mitt Romney to actually make the result doubtful.

I should have listened to Nate.

In the words of Rachel Maddow, Wednesday’s result was an out and out shellacking of Republican interests.

I’ve always said that opposition to President Obama was all about his skin colour. Clearly, the fact that a black man was sitting in the White House drove the far-right edges of American society absolutely bat-shit crazy. But they knew they couldn’t outright say that, so they came up with the Kenyan/Muslim/communist alternatives that they could at least say out loud on the radio.

One of the most irritating thing for me during the campaign was Mitt Romney’s total lack of respect for the President. He might as well have inserted the words ‘uppity nigger’ into every second sentence of his stump speech, because just his tone when talking about the highest office in the land made it clear that’s what he meant.

Everything about the hatred of President Obama on the right is about race. It’s that simple.

If it wasn’t then there’s no way any sane person could see Obamacare, for example, as anything but a compromise position that was biased more to Republican arguments than Democrat.

Socialised medicine, my arse.

I am very thankful that President Obama gets another term. Romney would have been the death of reproductive rights, gay rights, universal healthcare, an equitable taxation system, improved education, banking reform and economic recovery.

Unless, of course, Mr Romney was planning on taking one route to get himself elected and then swinging back to a moderate Republican position once he was President.

Didn’t work Mitt. You’re now a footnote at the bottom of history’s page. A bit like John McCain, only less cranky. And a lot richer.

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Maddow says it best as usual

In lesbian, media, politics, video on November 9, 2012 at 10:38 am

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Too much Maddow is never enough

In media, politics on October 22, 2012 at 9:09 pm

All this does is remind me that in the lead-up to the US election I have been chronically remiss is watching The Rachel Maddow Show. Seriously, if you are even vaguely interested in American politics, get on to iTunes right now and subscribe to her show. It’s free.

And, y’know, she’s hot.


And so the chaos of State-based same-sex marriage laws begins

In gay rights, politics on August 13, 2012 at 3:09 pm

It would have been good to avoid the chaos that is the same-sex marriage debate in the United States, don’t you think?

Over there, as here, the Federal Government doesn’t have the courage, or the will to back national legislation, and so the States have taken matters into their own hands, leading to a massive jigsaw puzzle of States that will allow it and others that won’t. A marriage is legal in one state, but means nothing in another. Not to mention the marriages that were celebrated in Canada, and may or may not be recognised in the US depending on which state you’re standing in.

We could have avoided that, with an ostensibly left-wing government in place and all the polls indicating the majority of Australians support same-sex marriage.

But noooooo.

The Federal Government says its policy is clear and that there are far more important things to be spending time and money on than the civil rights of a minority group.

That’s crap, of course. They’re actually just terrified of possible electoral consequences. Because, although they may say it’s a minor matter, far right-wing lobby groups with money don’t think it is and they will put their money where their bigotry lies.

In the US, of course, where the power of the lobby dollar and the far-right Christians is all supreme, the electoral consequences are dire for any politician silly enough to publicly back the Evil Gay Agenda.

Here, that influence is less significant but, if Queensland is any guide, it is growing.

Why else would an atheist, living-in-sin Prime Minister be so averse to helping out an oppressed minority?

Three cheers for Tasmania and South Australia for doing the right thing, even if their spineless Federal overlords don’t have the gonads for the fight. Let’s hope other states follow. It won’t here in Queensland, of course. Campbell Newman has already nailed his fascist, ACL-led bigotry to the mast.

So here we go. Into the morass of State-based marriage legislation. Awesome.

Thanks PM Gillard. You coward.

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