Meanwhile, the man himself is running out of places to hide. The US no longer offers such a congenial political climate for John Howard, although there’s still Fox News for him to appear on.

It’s interesting how times change. The “big government conservative” is now gettin’ some lovin’ from the Catallaxy crew:

Also, former PM Howard weighs into the financial crisis debate and takes the side of the Austrian libertarian interepretation. [sic]

That would be the claim that the subprime mess, and therefore presumably the global financial crisis, is all the fault of those poor people who wanted to own homes. How this squares with Howard’s own role in promoting aspirationalism and the housing bubble is anyone’s guess. But then truth-telling, and indeed consistency, were never his strong suits. It’s a rather horrendous thing to contemplate as to what sort of approach he’d have taken if he’d been re-elected and the current economic conniptions were occurring on his watch.

Elsewhere: Guy Beres, Public Opinion.

Ps: Media tart Peter Costello is also on, in close proximity to David Marr. Perhaps sales of teh book are disappointing? Can he revive them by starting another round of leadership rumours?

Image courtesy of Funkadelic at deviantart. Click through and click on full view for a higher res version.

Regular LP readers might recall that I’ve been emphasising for some time now research evidence which suggests that the “apathetic youth” narrative is nonsense. Just because no one’s marching in the street, doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening. Further evidence for that case comes from a literature review prepared for the Whitlam Institute by Philippa Colin – Young People Imagining a New Democracy [link to pdf]. Colin finds that engagement is migrating online, and that it’s much more likely to be issues or cause based than the “citizen oriented repertoires” of involvement in political parties. The review also suggests significant disengagement with the formal practices of citizenship coincides with idealism and engagement around issues and networks.

This report was discussed in the most stereotypical possible way on last week’s Q&A (where most of the panel wanted to diss blogging and those intertubes). Doing it justice might force us to answer the question of what’s wrong with our democracy, rather than squeeze it into the most tedious and condescending media frame of what’s wrong with teh yoof… In many ways, one could argue that disengagement from an unresponsive and elitist “democracy” is an eminently rational choice. That might be something the professionally cynical pundits and pollies might wish to ponder.

In a profile on the shadow treasurer to air on the ABC’s Four Corners tonight, Mr Turnbull is identified as the insider who passed on secret notes indicating Mr Packer would publicly stick to the law but would privately exercise editorial control over Fairfax.

Timely because it comes slap bang in the middle of the run up to Peter The Ditherers biography launch and important questions about Liberal Party leadership issues and tensions arising from that event.

Fun prime time viewing for the whole family. Bring the popcorn and consider this an open thread if you’re watching tonight.

[VanderMeer, along with regular guest bloggers, writes regularly at Ecstatic Days.]