An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
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Frist.
Sceond.
Waiting for the Christmas cake to cool so I can drizzle brandy onto it, wrap it up and put it away.
Third.
You know you are getting up way too early during the week when you consider waking up at 5.30 am on a Saturday morning as ‘a good lie in’.
US unemployment hits 10.2%
RBA Governor says we are going to be entering into a new boom based off strong population growth, coal, iron ore and other mining.
And finally: “ALEX, the well-spoken leader of a boatload of asylum-seekers held in Indonesia on their way to Australia, is a known people-smuggler previously deported from Canada”
Dirty scumbag, Kevin Rudd is right that people smugglers are the scum of the Earth.
Also: “SEA levels on Australia’s eastern seaboard are rising at less than a third of the rate that the NSW government is predicting”
Now that is a laugh.
Post from Mother Jones re Fort Hood shootings:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/11/fort-hood-letter
The author’s comment “the media accounts are understandably pretty off right now” is true both as regards the straight reportage of what was happening – much of what was reported was incorrect and now the response to the shootings:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/143782/right-bloggers_react_to_fort_hood_exactly_as_expected/
WARNING: do not read the rw blogs on an empty stomach.
Ho ho. Apparently the US is now the most admired country due to Obama’s rise to fame. The Wingnuts will put a stop to that – check out the latest little broadside in the headline on the World Net Daily (and no, it’s not satire, the reporter is a well-known conservative hack):
http://www.wnd.com/
More on American RWDBs.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/11/06/i/
Gosh, according to this story jihadists have infiltrated every branch of the US military.
But wait … these Islamofascists have been in the armed forces since … since BEFORE Barack Hussein Obama became POTUS!
OMG, that means that terrorists infiltrated DURING the presidency of George W. Bush.
The Imbecile, Cheney and the rest of those high-up terrorism enablers must be waterboarded until they ‘fess up to their treason.
There is no freedom without truth.
Someone get a rag and fill that bucket.
Well as for wingnuts…. Glenn Beck is a TV & radio companion of Rush Limbaugh, broadcasting the Glenn Beck program on Fox, managing to crawl up to #2 on cable TV ratings a couple of weeks ago. Rushed to hospital and off air for a few nights, Jon Stewart was moved to do a spoof. Nor is Stewart exaggerating Beck’s nuttiness.
http://www.indecisionforever.com/2009/11/06/jon-stewarts-pitch-perfect-glenn-beck-impression/
But before you get too depressed, his numbers from the last survey were 3 074 000 viewers – 0.9% of the US population. Not quite the silent majority Beck & his ilk claim to represent.
Glen Beck said Obama was a racist.
While the trick cyclist is being vaunted as “acting alone”, note that three grassy knolls have been taken in for questioning.
At least this time school textbooks are not implicated. Look out for alleged links to the “Fair Play for Saddam” movement.
What does RWDB actually mean? I’ve always just assumed it meant Right Wing Douchebag (is that one word?) but I’ve never been sure…
I was not surprised to find no mention in The Australian on Saturday of Friday’s Morgan poll that contradicted the Newspoll figures published on Tuesday.
Yet, if the Morgan poll had backed up the Newspoll figures, I suspect there might have been more than a passing mention in The Australian.
While it is understandable, even if not excusable , for The Australian not mentioning a rival poll that contradicts its own pollster, the same understanding cannot be extended to the ABC News.
The extensive coverage on the ABC of the Newspoll on Tuesday is justified because a major drop in support for the Federal Government is news. (However, balanced reports would have noted that Newspoll was contradicted by the Essential Report poll figures published the previous day and covering almost the same period.)
It is also news when the Morgan poll (again covering the same period as Newspoll) contradicts Newspoll.
ABC News management needs to explain why within the space of five days extensive coverage was given to a poll that was bad for the Federal Government and none at all to two polls that were good for the Federal Government,
I’m convinced, I want the
Should we be concerned about what passes for information in the US and how does this reflect on their political process, bearing in mind they sit on the biggest arsenal of weapons in the world?
Not to worry. America has a free and independant media with rigorous checks and balances and open dbate with no agendas. Not like in dictatorships where the media in lockstep with whatever caper the current jaunta is trying to get up.
I think LP’s who get in first on a thread deserve something special
David-H is so right!Perhaps a easy way to Rense.com,or AlexJones’s PrisonPlanet.com My God!He is a Texan.
GW: Death Beast
David_H: So cute!
Thanks David_H. A gem!
whoa…Christmas cake baking! I’m impressed.
I’ve spent today sulking about how summer has come early….summer never used to depress me, but the last couple of years have been a struggle. Outdoors work kinda sucks in any temperature above 35C.
On a happier note I saw a mysterious little bird in the euc. in my front yard…I have no idea what it was, but it had a pretty song. I also weeded the veggie patch and will plant some tomatoes etc.
I also spent a bit of time online looking into some freeware called CyberTracker, if anyone has any experience with this, I’d be interested to hear about it.
Queensland Privatisation Debate and more…
Readers might be interested in an article we have posted today at ‘Left Focus’ – on Queensland privatisation. It was passed on to us by the QLD ETU.
see: http://leftfocus.blogspot.com/
Readers are also invited to join our Facebook groups: the ‘Left Focus’ mailing list/support group – and the ‘Movement for a Democratic Mixed Economy’ group. Pls visit our Facebook pages to see what we stand for – and what we’re trying to achieve:
see:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=58243419565#/group.php?gid=58243419565
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=58243419565#/group.php?gid=152326549326
sincerely,
Tristan Ewins
Furious Balancing – yes, even office work and commuting in that kind of heat is really wearing. Living in Sydney to where I fled from the dry, glaring heat of Perth in the early 90′s, had become really challenging by 2005, and particularly during summer in my last working years it was nightmarish.
Of course if you live in the west you can be in the garden at five, even if you do have to go to work three hours later! Now when summer heat is coming on I am beginning to really appreciate our poll here on daylight saving. I get an early cool of the evening walk after a late afternoon swim followed by the 7.30 Report and then dinner in the dark with an appetite. Only drawback is that I’m really nodding off before Lateline, but watching it selectively next day is fine. Having to stay indoors through the heat of the day in a recently insulated house (thanks to the GFC!) is no hardship.
Thought it was Ding Bat. Ah, well.
OK I admit it … I haven’t paid serious attention to music since about 1979 and my 16 year old was keen for me to pay attention to some FM radio station he listens to.
I began listening with as open a mind as one can when a couple of ID-driven dingbats are chortling into the microphone for no reason in particular but soon enough something passing for music appeared.
Some chap began by asserting that he was in the house. It seemed clear at first that this was especially salient information for he kept repeating it, well beyond the time I’d taken it in and processed it. Yet as I listened further, it seemed to me that this data in fact played almost no part in the subsequent narrative arc of the piece. No further persons in the house were specified nor was there, as far as I can tell, any activity going on in the house that was worthy of note. Indeed, it seemed that at the end of the track, he was still in the house.
Another came on and the singer here kept declaring that some non specific female had “got him dancing”. Impressive one supposed, if this was for him unusual activity, though he failed to develop the point. A further song began by reciting the business days of the week. Gosh …
Reflecting on this — and I don’t wish to jump to premature conclusions, I began to wonder whether the music was in fact directed at people who, developmentally had yet to achieve what Piaget would see as “transformational reasoning” and were thus still in the concrete stage. Perhaps their cognition really was that basic, though perhaps one might speculate that they were especially interested in people who did nothing much in houses, danced when prompted by females and knew the days of the week.
In any event, I gather on the basis of this rather small sample, that contemporary music is really nothing to be missed, unless one is obsessed with banality.
The boy asked me what I thought, and I explained that he should ask me to listen when something with more than one basic concept was adduced. I didn’t want to sound like a fuddy duddy by demanding three.
Murdoch is bitching about his content being poached by online aggregators?
Make sure he remains behind his paywall with his wingnut acolytes by telling Google that you don’t consider Fox or News LTD credible news outlets.
http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/static.py?page=suggestions.cs
Paul Burns @ 22 I thought the same thing
And here is one for the Army bozos who say that women are not equipped for the stress of combat. Suck on this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/us/07police.html?hp
Spent the afternoon cooking sausage rolls and an orange and almond cake for afternoon tea tomorrow – we in the West like our Sunday stodge. A major distraction, whilst cooking, was the shenanigans of Ernie who has found a home on the interior of my kitchen window.
Why do visitors persist in alerting me to Ernie and his splendid abode? Do they think I’m myopic? Perhaps they’re alluding to my “shabby” housekeeping skills?
Ernie is a magnificent creature and has managed to snare umpteen dozen tiny moths, a beetle, other spiders, scores of mosquitoes and a few unknown alien bities which I wasn’t aware of.
I swear Ernie has trebled in weight since he/she first arrived. Once he/she has devoured the prey, he/she dumps the carcasses on the window sill. I swear he expects me to remove them – which I do. And I do believe he has his eye on me too. We’re definitely communicating. Huh? I suspect his Latin name is Badumna insignis – an outdoor spider but he can stay in my home as long as he likes.
A state of war now exists between Murdoch and the hive mind. There is uncharitable speculation on Poll Bludger that the recent Newspoll was not just an outlier but an out and out lie. Quite a few blogeurs are suggesting after the Roy Morgan poll came out yesterday – 61:39 – that Newspoll was doing the boss’s bidding. I would be somewhat surprised that an allegedly fair dinkum poll organisation that brings a good quid to NWN would risk its reputation on the boss’s whimsy. Still, amazingly, after the headlines that greeted its own poll in The Liberal Cryer there is silence re Roy. I am somewhat puzzled and confused. Time for a G&T and a Cohiba to mull this over. Maybe the old boy has lost it?
you mean his lying isn’t as good as it once was?
A poll that is suddenly bad for the left will always be a godsend to the right-wing media, even if it is obviously an outlier. When you own the pollster it will always look untidy and create doubts because it just looks too good.
But the fact is that outliers do come regularly enough an no pollster is going to destroy it’s reputation playing funny buggers. AND if you think about it anybody wanting to play funny buggers to fit a narrative wouldn’t create something that looked like an outrageous outlier.
It was an outlier simple. How much of an outlier who knows. The two Morgans and ER including the ER questions on border protection issues strongly suggest there has been no movement in the polls at all thus the Newspoll is most likely a total outlier.
This being the case and going on the trend and other recent Newspolls the next Newspoll should return to 58/42 within MOE.
If however the Newspoll is picking up a very recent trend but its sampling exaggerated it then the next Newspoll might show 56/57. However nothing supports the massive swing shown by the outlier and we shouldn’t expect another 52/48….but another outlier is of course possible, if unlikely.
Half an hour on the News Poll. 15 secs on the two polls refuting the results. Cassidy is a disgrace.
I don’t know why the powers-that-be just don’t sell the ABC to Murdoch. After all it would make absolutely no difference to the news content.
Then again, though I hesitate to suggest it, K.rudd could put a very large broom through the ABC Board and News and Current Affairs.
And if they keep on carrying on the way they do, what’s the bet he won’t?
In fact, if the ABC just scrapped Insiders and screened some ancient obsolete movie that wasn’t a repeat that early, our Sundays would all be the better for it.
I don’t know if those ye olde movies are all THAT obsolete, Burnsie. Frank Capra’s 1948 State of the Union with Spencer Tracy as John Della Bosca and Katherine Hepburn as Belinda Neal seem to me as current as yesterday.
In its current form their ABC has no point and should be sold to the highest bidder, and perhaps the government could use the money to start a genuinely independent media outlet, which the ABC is decidedly not.
There is an obvious synergy with News Ltd at the moment, so I’m sure Rupert would come up with the cash.
Patricia, I agree, not having daylight saving would help. I should be grateful that Adelaide isn’t humid, I suppose, it’s just a shock to have the hot weather hit so early and with a vengeance. I guess I’ll acclimatise eventually.
I mostly work on the Southern Fleurieu, which, if there isn’t a northerly blowing can often be 10C cooler, but it looks like we will be in a northerly airstream all this week..grah!
Also, kids in NSW facing a $1000 fine or 6 months in jail for being in possession of a spray can..!..I predict a rise in ‘paste-up’ street art. I might even do some myself! Also, probably less desirable, is that it will probably lead to an increase in paint-bombing, ie: filling balloons with paint and throwing them randomly at public and private property. What are they gonna do, ban kids from having balloons?
Fran, what were you listening to in 1979? Music was just getting interesting in the late 70′s, why anyone would switch off is beyond me. I do think the ‘noughts’ have been the least satisfying decade of my life so far for music though.
Must they have David Marr on Insiders? He has a deft jocular bitch “brush it away” ploy – used to deflect Piers’ question as to whether he had actually read any of the ETS reports and papers put out by the Copenhagen summit – but unfortunately while it serves Marr, who managed to avoid admitting that he is spouting off about things he hasn’t read p on – it detracts badly from Insiders. He attempts to hijack any conversation into a sort of casual drinks gossip standard (e.g. his faux adolescent naivete about the low-emissions lightbulbs in his house). Barry Cassidy does nothing to rein him in and keep the discussion on topic.
I think the best time for music is now! There are some incredibly talented people around at the moment and technology is facilitating their ability to reach an audience. The old gatekeepers have lost their power and influence and music is all the better for it.
The only problem is that it is impossible to listen to everything worthwhile.
Adrian, I agree with you about the gatekeepers, but I don’t seem to have time lately to filter out all the shite in order to get to the good stuff.
What are you listening to?
Well FB, a quick list of what I’ve bought lately (no wonder I’ve got no money!)in no particular order:
-Elvis Perkins in Dearland
-Sharon Robinson
-The Mountain Goats
-The Felice Brothers
-Leonard Cohen (of course!)
-Sun Kil Moon
-The Roches
-The Decembrists
-Buddy and Julie Miller
-The Low Anthem
-Mark Olsen and Garry Louris
-Dar Williams
-Richard Thompson(his first record)
Might not be to your taste, but most of the above are great IMHO.
Fran Barlow – in the great tradition of parental grumps – don’t hold back.
Todays kids music
Not like in our day with meaning full lyrics like:
I am the walrus, is there a bustle in your hedgerow, hey you get offa my cloud, fa fa fa faffafa fa sad song, papa oohmoaw moaw, da do ron ron ron, bang a gong get it on, a whop bopa loomma a bop bamboom,
I run IT at a call centre in Sydney, and I’ve loaded music on to the phone system for operators to listen to. A bit of 2WS, FBI, some New York jazz (WBGO), some Triple M and – because I can be sadistic – David Oldfield’s midnight show on 2GB.
It’s been up for about 6 months now but I’ve finally got an OH&S complaint: “Is there any chance of changing the talkback radio station 2GB to ABC’s 702? Not only is there less advertisement but the topics aren’t just limited to immigration and the failures of Kevin Rudd. Thanks!”
I suppose it’d be much healthier and safer…
Adam Tucker@38 – Thank goodness for David Marr I say. About the only person capable of confronting the pernicious rumours that “Piss” Akerman constantly tries to peddle. The question to be addressed was not, as you have put it, whether David Marr had “actually read any of the ETS reports and papers out of the Copenhagen summit” but what was quite apparently another attempt by Piss and his fellow travellers to push the line about a so-called “secret” Copenhagen Treaty which in their twisted logic will wrest power from every Government in the world and vest “it” in some secretive and wilful body which bodes ill toward all of us blind fools who can’t see what Piers Akerman and his ilk want to push on behalf of the coal and oil magnates.
(Pardon all the inverted commas but I find it almost involuntary right now).
Adrian, I nearly said, “If someone mentions the Decemberists, I’ll scream”.
At least you didn’t say Wilco!
I haven’t heard Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Dar Williams, or Sharon Robinson and I’ve steered clear of The Mountain Goats for a while, having perhaps over-played him slightly a few years ago. I really like Sun Kil Moon and was lucky enough to see Richard Thompson on the last tour.
My most played albums for this decade have been from Elf Power, Sigur Ros, M ward, Iron and Wine, Nick Cave, Sonic Youth [murray st, not rather ripped] & Deerhunter.
I’ve been on a bit of an 80′s nostalgia kick lately though, I have to admit…it means I’m officially an old person, I think.
Come and see the real thing, come and see the real thing, come and see – I am the real thing!
Sure mediatracker@44 – one may agree with him, but it still isn’t much use to Marr’s side of politics if he avoids the topic. He allowed Ackerman a win there by default IMO.
Gee FB, I forgot to mention The Watson Twins, Kris Delmhorst, Great Lake Swimmers, Eliza Gilkyson, and Joe Henry, although I wouldn’t bother with his latest.
I know what you mean about The Decembrists, but I just love that Crane Wife song.
Never heard any of The Mountain Goats except for the latest, but I get the same reaction to Nick Cave as you do to The Decemberists!
I know you’re not alone in your reaction to Nick Cave, Adrian, but I think he’s great. I’ll look into the others you mention…of that list I only know Great Lake Swimmers and Joe Henry. I forgot Tallest Man on Earth and Frightened Rabbit.
In other news: this is highly amusing:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/08/2736345.htm
Flower @28, would you be prepared to lease Ernie over the summer to deal with the billions of vast blowies which are inhabiting my kitchen window? No arachnid has encamped in the crannies of my window; the food supply would be monotonous, but extremely plentiful and I would be more than happy to remove the husks.
I do have a spider inhabiting the light over my table which hurls the remains of its meals onto the table for me to remove. So far, it has had the decency not to chuck the corpses onto diners’ plates.
US Congress votes 225-220 to send Healthcare Bill to Senate. This is potentially a huge win for poor Americans. Lots of argy-bargy and two rounds of voting remain, one in The Senate, the other in a joint sitting of both Houses before the paper hits the West Wing desk for BHO’s mark.
Obama (Pelosi and Reid too) deserves much credit for shepherding the Bill this far. If he can persuade Lieberman and the blue dog Senate Dems to cast aside their objections and let American History take its course, perhaps even the stonemasons of South Dakota will begin to get twitchy.
Than again, Sir Henry….
maybe Roy Morgan on 61:39 is a bit of an outlier in the opposite direction?
Music: I have fallen in love with Kitty, Daisy, and Lewis. It sucks me in that they’re siblings and so very cute, and the oldest one, Daisy, is only 21, but mostly it’s the sound.
video here
So much blah! Here, here is the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcywnNixrQw
FX Holden@43 said:
It’s easy enough to pick out nonsensical lyirics from past musical ages. Just yesterday the instore music at JB Hi Fi was reduxing some of Bowie’s material …
Fran, apparently Bowie used to produce his lyrics from cut-ups, a la William Burroughs. (Now you know why Naked Lunch is … umm … challenging.)
Fran #25,
it sounds like since Elvis “left the building” you have no idea who’s “in da house”. Well who else would be in da house but da homies? As you can gather, music today is very domesticated. It sets many good examples for today’s youth:
Couldn’t sit down, big gun kept stickin’ my pelvis
Shit, it was either that or be living with Elvis
I have eschewed fire-arms and have turned over the new leaf of non-violence
I’m your worst nightmare squared,
that’s times two for those who aren’t mathematically aware
Not knowing mathematics is an incredibly frightening prospect for confronting life
From now on, I’m a use self control
instead of birth control
cause 315 dollars ain’t worth your soul
I voted for Obama and universal health care, but also recognise the responsibility begins with me
There is a wealth of wisdom hidden beneath those apparently banal and repetitive lyrics
Harsh but fair, Roger.
I put it down to the industrial-strength drugs young people take these days.
DI(nr),
don’t get me wrong – some of those lyrics are pretty clever – just not the ones Fran was listing to
Harsh, industrial-strength. Hmmm, sounds like some of the music I listen to.
More evidence as if any were needed that one should never, ever, make enemies with corporate IT.
My sons enjoy rap and hip-hop, Roger, but I don’t particularly. (Although some of the hybrid stuff produced by Rage Against the Machine and Faith No More, among others, is pretty good.)
That said, the stuff I grew up with (Stones, Kinks, Who, Animals, etc) is 90% crap as well.
“squared” is not “times two”
I hope this helps.
Rather than disrupt the Rupert thread,the pasta shells weren’t totally destroyed. (@ 13 on the Rupert thread.) I need a bigger pot, might buy one on Thursday.
Garrett rejects Traveston Dam!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/11/2739725.htm?section=justin
Roger Jones @ 59
I’m your worst nightmare squared,
that’s times two for those who aren’t mathematically aware
A worst nightmare squared is the worst nightmare multiplied by itself not times 2.
A fail for these lyrics in the maths department.