“Ignorant rubbish” is what Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews called Malcolm Turnbull’s initial comments on the SA electricity blackouts. “It’s the weather, stupid”, is more or less what Bill Shorten said, and he was right. The press has reported two ‘tornadoes’ in the north of SA which made pylons look like this:
The questions to be asked in this case are not about the reliance on renewables, rather on why fractures to the grid 200 km north of Adelaide took the whole state down. Continue reading Saturday salon 30/9→
“Swiftboating” entered the American language when the Bush campaign or its associates went out and told outrageous lies about John Kerry’s Vietnam service. It refers to “a harsh attack by a political opponent that is dishonest, personal, and unfair.” Hillary Clinton has been under an even worse attack, dating from well before she nearly fainted from pneumonia at a 9/11 memorial event.
There’s a new book called The Turnbull Gamble, co-authored by political commentator, journalist and academic Peter van Onselen and politics professor Wayne Errington, who ask whether it was all worth it. There are interviews on Lateline and Late Night Live with Andrew West.
They think his main achievements were first getting the job, and then winning the election by the narrowest of margins. He got the job because he wasn’t Tony Abbott – no-one had any enthusiasm for him personally. Continue reading Saturday salon 10/9→
Bachmann believes the September 11 attacks represented God’s judgment on America; President Obama and gay rights advocates are bringing about the End Times; homosexuality is “personal enslavement” and “part of Satan”; gay people want to change laws “so that adults will be able to freely prey on little children sexually”; and Obamacare death panels will literally kill people any day now.
Her foreign policy ideas are driven by her belief that the Last Days have arrived.
Four hundred years ago on April 1616, William Shakespeare, “widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist”, died apparently from partying too hard on his 52nd birthday. Arguably he is the world’s greatest writer. Continue reading Saturday salon 23/4→
Trump looks unstoppable. In South Carolina he scored 32.5% to Rubio’s 22.5 and Cruz’s 22.3. The rest were in single figures and Jeb Busch dropped out. Never has anyone spent so much to achieve so little in preselection politics as Jeb did.
In Nevada Trump aced them with 45.9% ahead of Rubio with 23.9 and Cruz with 21.4.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a commander of Ottoman forces at the Dardenelles during the first world war and later the founder of modern Turkey, has been quoted far and wide as saying in 1934:
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
On Wednesday, prior to COAG on Thursday, our political leaders held a summit or retreat to dicuss taxation and the future of the federation. By all accounts they enjoyed the talkfest – Jay Weatherall said it was “very positive” and that “in my sense and my operation in COAG over the last five years, this is probably the most constructive I have ever seen”.
Despite that there is no evidence they actually decided anything except lowering the threshold at which the GST applies to offshore online purchases. Continue reading Saturday salon 25/7→
Climate change, sustainability, plus sundry other stuff
