I've heard it attributed - perhaps apocryphally - to John Maynard Keynes the line that a legal training is a form of brain damage. I couldn't find it on google when I last looked, so I don't know if he said it. But is it true? Well I have a legal training - of sorts - and duri...
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We're only about 3 or 4 subscribers away from 50. If anyone wants to jump on board - this is your last change to email me on [my first name] AT gruen DOT com DOT au.
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In a recent post critical of a CIS article on New Zealand by Phil Rennie , Nicholas Gruen expressed "disappointment" that the author "cherry picked" to "make favoured points in line with the author's priors". Today there is an article by Professor James Allan in The Australian...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian David Tiley brings grossness into sharp focus with a post titled anyone seen Fido lately? Ken Lovell and Bridget Grea...
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"At a personal level, few people are as charismatic, capable and ruthless as this mixed-race political phenomenon." Read all about it .
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Thanks to Ross for permission to post what he calls his 'sermon to the Rudd Government' delivered as: NEW DIRECTIONS IN ECONOMY POLICY, a talk to the Economic Society evening seminar, Sydney, Tuesday February 26, 2008 It occurs to me that, as the journalist of the panel, the m...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Yes I know some people whinge about excessive coverage of the Apathetic Youths , but this image about the Rudd govern...
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( posted for Jessica by a proud and biased step-parent who thinks it shows a fine clarity of observation and expression for a 13 year old ) First I would paint a dark grey sky that looked like it was about to cry. Then there would be cracked and old red stairs that led up to a...
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I hope Nicholas keeps writing here at Troppo now that he's rightly famous and important . Then again, I don't necessarily envy someone who must respond with grace and patience if their advice, like that of Ross Garnaut, is relegated to "input" status when it's politically inco...
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I've been in touch with the US vendor of laptops Portableone from whom I purchased a Fujitsu laptop about four years ago. They're a good crew so if you want a laptop, buy it from them and you're likely to save money on the inflated prices here. They don't like the Toshiba's sc...
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I've always wondered. I don't much like his stuff, while acknowledging that the early work was interesting. And I guess you get marks for creating an icon - Ned Kelly. The Kelly series is very compelling. But, though I wouldn't rate my views on the subject as particularly wort...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Shaun Cronin regrets that there are as yet no grounds for sacking the NSW government : All Iemma is guilty of is gros...
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A week or so ago I was rung by the NSW Unions and asked to speak to the Unsworth Committee which is looking at the NSW's proposal to privatise retail and generating assets in the NSW industry. They wanted me to speak on the AAA rating. I said I wouldn't oppose the privatisatio...
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[caption id="attachment_30542" align="alignleft" width="654"] Firbank College from the air (You could probably tell that it was "from the air" - but this is Club Troppo boldly going where no stakeholders' expectations have every been.)[/caption] I spent the day - well the firs...
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Some loyal Troppodillians might recall a post of mine from the dim dark past celebrating my having downloaded a great track which was the Beatles singing 'Tie me kangaroo down, sport' with Rolf Harris, complete with specially written lyrics. "Don't ill treat me pet dingo, Ring...
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Odnyam Odsuren as the young Temudjin So Mongol has lost out to The Counterfeiters in the Oscars and I'm aggrieved. Mind you, Mongo l was the only nominee in the Best Foreign Film category that I'd seen or indeed knew the first thing about, so I'm slightly biased. But I loved i...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian John Quiggin wonders whether it's time to give the B team a turn in New South Wales, and Australian Politics believes...
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(posted on behalf of The Receptionist) Somehow it's always me who ends up doing the work around here. As Dr Troppo's receptionist I seem to have a never ending series of chores to perform. Clearing out beer bottles and pistachio nut shells from under his desk, washing cigarett...
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I was going to put this in the snark section of Missing Link but decided it deserved a post of its own. Tim Blair is currently stoushing with a trio of academic researchers into blogging and "citizen journalism". Jason Wilson , Axel Bruns and Barry Saunders apparently have an...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Harry Clarke admires the Garnaut interim report, and shows how the government's reaction to it conforms to a pattern...
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Well, that pun has been made before I just made it, but I was going over Crikeys I'd not had time to glance at this week and came across Christine Milne's take on Garnaut. As I read it at first I thought it was Glenn Milne and it rather took me aback. In any event, Milne's pie...
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Ross Gittins said some flattering things about me in his column this weekend - which was very nice of him. One thing the column talked about was the "pressure - particularly from business - for the states to adopt a uniform approach" to various things like "workers compensatio...
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This time last year the British media was buzzing with stories about the demise of marmalade . In January, The Grocer reported that sales of marmalade fell by 4.4% in the year to 4 November 2006 . Worse still, most marmalade consumers have their best toast munching years behin...
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I want to return, hopefully with whatever wider perspective a few weeks brings, to Paul Keating's inflammatory remarks about the late right wing pundit Paddy McGuinness. We should keep in mind for a start, as Peter "Mumble" Brent implicitly noted at the time, that McGuinness h...
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If you've not seen them yet. From Martin Feldstein .
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Below the fold is the text of a talk I gave to the NSW Branch of the Fabian Society in Sydney last Wednesday evening, on 'Economic Challenges Facing the New Labor Government'. Also speaking to the same topic were John Edwards, Chief Economist of HSBC Australia (and a former ec...
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Since I posted something on the equilibrium unemployment rate or NAIRU (the minimum unemployment rate consistent with low and stable inflation), it has become a really hot political topic in Canberra. I also participated in the subsequent debate on the topic in various blogs....
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian The main message of Garnaut's interim report , as John Quiggin sees it, is that: At this point, the risk of moving to...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Apathetic Sarah asks a difficult question: will Brisbane be stupid enough to re-elect Campbell Newman for a second te...
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Can anyone explain why inflation rates are conventionally reported on a 'year-ended' basis, despite the fact that we have quarterly price indices? The Reserve Bank Governer's press release of 5 February said that CPI inflation on a year ended basis picked up to 3 per cent in t...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian RWDB J.F Beck notes that new PM Kevin Rudd is insightful enough not to piss off Brian Burke, while pissed-off 'lefty'...
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I found my ten year old watching the end of a TV show about kids tonight. He was watching it because he was anxious that he wasn't doing his homework. Sound familiar? Anyway, the show was Brat Camp is a reality TV show that aired tonight. The blurb says that it's been on befor...
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I've just been asked by the Department of PM&C to nominate someone to go to the 202o Summit. Who should I nominate - and why? This post will be moderated strictly. Suggestions should be serious and I hope you'll provide good reasons. Of course there will be people who want to...
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Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Life, Philosophy, Environment, History, Education, Society, Religion, Economics and public policy, Science, Gender, Journalism, Health, Climate Change, Political theory, Law
This post accompanies, and is explained by the post immediately above it.
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Today's AFR column. These Thai workers made their views about electricity privatisation very clearly known. Mind you, that isn't of itself a great argument against it, just an apt photo - KP (from The Age ) Paul Keatings strength in government was his ability to make the case...
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Anyone who wants to participate in Troppo's bulk subscription to Crikey! should email me on nicholas at gruenxxx dot com dot au - and remove those 'x's. If you subscribed last year you should get an email from me. Depending on numbers the cost will be as follows. 3 5 Annual Su...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Andrew Bartlett was not surprised by the revelation that some of Howards ministers didnt know that WorkChoices might...
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Nice of you to join us Mr Stalin .
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I've never understood central bank's recent penchant for small changes in monetary policy - these days 0.25% per month. The idea is that the facts emerge slowly, economies respond to monetary policy slowly (with long and variable lags) so our changes should be slow too. But th...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian John Quiggin has a guest post by Bree Blakeman and Nanni Concu with a field assessment of the NT intervention, with p...
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"The Monkees are too hip for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ", writes Robert Forster . Is he right? Hired as actors for a TV series, Michael Nesmith , Peter Tork , Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones went on to feature in one of the most successful American pop bands of the 1960s. The...
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I'm having to do a lot more travel, so I want to buy an ultralight PC. I think I want to buy a Toshiba Portege R500. Here's a review . I'm also wondering what options I should choose. I understand it's available with a 120 Gig hard drive or a 64 K solid state memory if you pay...
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Photo by yellowrubberduck on Flickr Nicholas Gruen mentioned many moons ago an idea for a useful feature for Club Troppo. Apparently Crikey used to run an occasional roundup of interesting publications from thinktanks and other more academic sources, but subsequently discontin...
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To your right is an historic picture. A picture of the occasion on which Lincoln gave what he thought was his best speech. The Second Inaugural. There he is reading from his notes. In surfing around the subject when I posted my piece on Obama's rhetoric - Obama described Linco...
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Last week's Love Gods column was sadly blighted by the fact that our supplicant middle-aged lawyer was a distinctly unsympathetic character. This week it's different. Our plaintive female client is in a terrible pickle, albeit one involving a husbandly type presciently diagnos...
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Here's a nice decoding of those cadences in Obama's speeches. " In his speeches, Obama pretends to be a hero out of Joseph Campbell. He talks about being on a journey that is about more than just hope and change . If you want to walk together down his American road , he wants...
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Paul Krugman's latest column - below the fold. A Crisis of Faith By PAUL KRUGMAN A decade ago, during the last global financial crisis, the word on everyones lips was contagion. Troubles that began in a far-away country of which most people knew nothing (Thailand) eventually s...
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In a recent meeting with a person who is pretty senior in the automotive industry he was telling me that certain things close to his heart (which had something to do with the government subsidising his business!) would be 'good for jobs'. He's a bright sensible guy and, unlike...
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[caption id="attachment_30539" align="alignleft" width="317"] These types of tram-poles still exist at three Three Sites: Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda Peel Street, North Melbourne Victoria Parade, East Melbourne. [1. As explained on the Victorian Heritage Website "These three set...
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Are very often dodgy. Oddly only a few 'economic rationalists' have been willing to blow the whistle on them. Doing some research on our state governments' peculiar penchant for pecuniary populism - their focus on government net debt rather than government net worth, I came ac...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australia Apparently Peter Costello is retiring from Parliament . As if anyone cared. The case of the Archbishop and Sharia Law...
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Photo by Pierre Pouliquin on Flickr Demands for compensation for the " stolen generations " seem to be reliable generators of fear and loathing on the part of many Australians, particularly (but not only) those of a conservative persuasion. RWDB QC and blogger Peter Faris is a...
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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australia Right wing gay Christian blogger John Heard approves of the Rudd apology. Economist Harry Clarke doesn't, while Tim Bl...
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The Age asked me for 200 words on whether the Government should renege on the tax cuts. I said they shouldn't. They also asked Joshua Gans what he thought - though they don't seem to have asked him for a direct opinion on the tax cuts. I wasn't going to bother posting my piece...
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The reaction to Nelson's speech The most interesting and puzzling thing about the Apology Day events was undoubtedly Brendan Nelson's speech . Having agreed to support the motion after a process of uninspiring vacillation, he might have been expected either to say something sh...
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This piece was written for the AFR as a longish op ed. It hung around on account of it being hard to squeeze in as offshore financial systems melted down and as interest rates in Australia melted up. But I'm glad it's out. A month or so having passed between its having been wr...
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Only marginally related to the post, but a great image just the same - from turtblu on Flickr Readers with prodigious memories may recall a post I wrote a couple of years ago about the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt on the cognitive basis for human morality. Haidt has dev...
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Well, Gideon Haigh may be the embodiment of "self-loathing leftism", but at least he's been known to buckle on the pads - photo by Rae Allen on Flickr ...goes to Gideon Haigh. Last Sunday was the first episode of Outsiders on ABC and of course the first topic of discussion was...
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By abbietabbie on Flickr Yes, folks. It's been a longer wait than we'd intended, but Missing Link is back for 2008. And, just as Peter Cundall always says " That's your bloomin' lot " at the end of every episode of his gardening show, so too I'm not going to resist the temptat...
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Horta in happier times - from reesa lee at Flickr Poor East Timor. Its President Jose Ramos-Horta lies in a serious but stable condition in Royal Darwin Hospital just across the creek from where I'm writing this, having been operated on for 2 1/2 hours last night to remove 3 b...
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There now seems to be majority, if not overwhelming, support for the Apology along the ideological spectrum. But it's clear from comments by several parliamentarians , as well as the resurfacing of an infamous email letter that Hansonism is alive and well. It's no great surpri...
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Oh - D stands for Default (super) . The text of Ross's most recent column is over the fold. Postscript: Alan Jones' executive producer rang and asked if I'd go on his program. It will be at 7.22 am tomorrow morning I understand - for four minutes! Post-Postscrip: Not to mentio...
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In the light of Obama's latest wins , here's Gary Hart arguing for Obama in much the same terms I would . Hart was the 'Obama' candidate against Mondale in 1984 and the Democrats showed their now famous ability to pick a loser. Whether Obama will be much good or not is anyone'...
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I'm beginning to have serious reservations about whether we did the right thing in letting these Love Gods loose on Samantha Brett's unsuspecting lovelorn readers. Poor Shami , tender ego shrivelled and crushed underfoot! But did that stop our Love Gods? Oyster and bacon nibbl...
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Let me count the ways. The way already receiving attention is the narrowness of the base of the action of monetary policy. Lots of households don't get squeezed by monetary policy. A small number with interest income earn more. Lots of families pay more interest but a lot have...
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I delayed looking at this post for a month over the Christmas break because of bandwidth restrictions. But now I can recommend you play these two YouTube videos. Dani Rodrik's immediate point is that formal rule making and enforcement isn't necessarily a step up from informal...
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As Lateral Economics proposed in 2006 if you're looking for taxes to cut to maximise growth, you can't go past cutting company tax rates. Now the research has been updated by this NBER working paper . Simeon Djankov, Tim Ganser, Caralee McLiesh, Rita Ramalho, Andrei Shleifer N...
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Troppo regular Tony Harris published an op ed on Tuesday that set the cat amongst the pigeons. That's for reasons you'll appreciate when you read the piece. It was an interesting business. A software glitch saw the decimal points in Tony's description of the state of the CPI a...
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As members of the coalition opposition struggle with finding the right words in response to Mr. Rudds plan to say sorry, it is pleasing to see that every man and his dog is pitching in and offering their own form of words to help them out of this pickle. To add my support to t...
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Sweeney Tanner, demon budget barber ... Everybody is giving advice to the Rudd Government on how it can best increase its budget surplus. I doubt that really draconian measures are needed as the economy will be slowing down markedly within the next 18 months without any help f...
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Photo by Ohmann Alianne on Flickr Anyone familiar with the findings of political scientists like Philip Converse , about the spectacular combination of profound ignorance and political disinterest of most voters, will be unsurprised by this story on Yahoo! News: LONDON (AFP) -...
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From today's Fin. Tax cuts better off in super As you read this, bevies of bureaucrats are busily building an inflation strategy. Virtually all the medicine theyll prescribe will have a nasty taste. We dont like spending cuts and revenue increases. But one option could pull a...
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Probably too late to change their names by deed poll. From wesh on Flickr - nothing to do with this post, but it got your attention! Ever since I started blogging in 2002 I've tended to concentrate almost exclusively on reading and interacting with other Australian blogs. It i...
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Well, last week's inaugural edition of Ask Troppo's Love Gods seemed to go well. I certainly haven't heard from our supplicant reader Gen, so can only assume she was well satisfied with the advice our Love Gods gave her. Unfortunately, one of our putative Love Gods in Nabakov...
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Tony Harris and I were discussing the issue of why the NSW economy has performed so much worse than the Victorian economy. I'm not sure of the answer, though it seems to me that under both the ALP and the Libs Victoria has had better government - better leaders and a better bu...
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A further rise in cash interest rates will cause great pain to many low income families at a time of mounting mortgage stress but the Reserve Bank is only interested in economic arguments so here are three reasons why it should wait a few months. * credit market are still brit...
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Sullivan+Strumpf has a lot of groovy artists on its lists. Their website has some groovy pictures and objects they've run up. I've put them over the fold for those who are interested - and so that those who aren't don't chew up bandwidth.
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Coming out in March 2008 I've just finished reading American Fascists , in which the famous American war correspondent Chris Hedges presents a deeply unpleasant portrait of the Christian Right. Much of the story will be unsurprising to readers who've been paying attention to t...
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As you can see from the video above, there was no love lost between probable chess cheat Veselin Topalov and his nemisis in a recent world championship battle, Vladimir Kramnik. Anyway, though in previous comps Topalov looks like he's managed to pick up the odd surreptitious s...
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Contrarian columnist Michael Duffy has a great column in yesterday's SMH. I wonder when the tipping point will come and people will start to see at least some of the emperor through those new clothes of his. But I was aching for one more dot point, in the article, of at least...
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The Cato Institute strives to be the respectable face of American libertarianism. It's a difficult role to maintain in a movement with more than its fair share of eccentrics, extremists and conspiracy theorists. Earlier this month Dom Armentano , a Cato adjunct scholar, sugges...
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