A picture tells a thousand words (via Apathetic Sarah) |
- 1. News and Politics Stuff
- 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff
- 3. The Yartz
- 4. T.S.S
- 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad
We’re running a day late again. My fault, but we’ll still publish again late tomorrow (Friday). This edition compiled by Legal Eagle, Gilmae, James Farrell, Amanda Rose and Peter Black, and edited minimally by Ken Parish.
The next couple of weeks will be problematic, with several usual team members flat out with final exam marking. However, we’ve had several generous volunteers from Monday’s appeal for help, and I’m currently working out how we can continue to churn out a “jury-rigged” Missing Link through the crucial last fortnight of the federal election campaign. I’m pretty certain we can manage it.
BTW I should draw attention of any recently arrived readers to the fact that you can subscribe to Missing Link and receive an email version of it as soon as it’s published. There’s not much point in it if you already use a feed reader, but if you don’t then you may find it a useful way to get quick notification of excellent blogosphere writing on a wide range of topics.
And good luck in today’s exam to any of my constitutional law students who may be reading this instead of (or after) finalising their revision!
1. News and Politics Stuff
Federal Politics
Guido at Rank and Vile thinks Alexander Downer’s comments about “show offs” speaking in other languages show a parochial attitude.
Marcellous shows scepticism about Joe Hockey’s “promise to resign”.
John Quiggin makes the case for Labor, prefaced with the observation that
Much though I dislike a lot of the (com)promises Rudd has made, I hope Labor does not do the same. Democratic processes are more important then getting the best policy outcome in the short term.
However, MK is unimpressed by the risk of Ruddonomics.
Andrew Bartlett praises the late Peter Andren, and makes a general point about integrity in politics:
The fact that he retained his seat and his margin in that election is an indication of how much his electorate respected his integrity, even though many of them would have disagreed with his view on refugees, which was the dominant issue of that campaign.
At Polliegraph, Ben Eltham shows identifies the inadequacies of the major parties’ health reform policies. At the same site. Mark Bahnisch complains that despite the proliferation of new ideas about investment and growth, ‘much of Labors investment approach… is uncreative and lacks the serious reformism and policy flair of Keating’. More upbeatly, he sees signs that MSM commentators are slowly being educated by bloggers from a range of disciplines.
Andrew Landeryou reminds us that going negative is the key to winning elections. Andrew also blogs about how Peter Garrett’s gaffe treaded on the rawest nerve.
John Ray blogs about “forgotten history: the disasters of Australia’s previous Labor government”, but begins with this observation:
The Leftists seem likely to win the forthcoming election. Would they if people remembered?
IF 38 per cent of people polled this week by The Daily Telegraph thought the Kyoto Protocol was the treaty which ended WWII, who do they think Bob Hawke 1 is when they see the Silver Bodgie sashaying through the local RSL in his white slip-ons? An Antipodean Colonel Sanders? Mick Dundee’s older brother? Or a Gold Coast real estate baron?
Jeremy Sear shares his reaction to the Coalition’s promise to set up new emergency medical centres.
People, if you vote for an incumbent party because of its election-year bribes, thereby effectively ignoring what it’s done for the previous three years, then can’t you see what’s going to happen in the next three years?
Kim advocates an end to party-determined preferences in the Senate: ‘How difficult could it be to have the parties and other candidates listed above the line and allow voters to determine preferences?’
Andrew Elder runs through a number of reasons the LDP are doomed to irrelevancy by their principles – if we allow that nutjob candidates not being filtered out by a paternalist central committee is sticking to their principles.
And KG counts the ways he loathes the left.
International
Your New Reality speculates on the symbiotic relationship of Bush and Bin Laden. For his part, Ken Lovell is frightened by the breadth of Americans’ support for an attack on Iran, and thinks it’s time to start distrusting the nation, and not just their government.
People change. Nations change. And we need in our own national interest to recognise the USA for what it is, not through a nostalgic sentimental haze coloured by the endless diet of Americana being fed to us via the media.
MK supports Andrew Bolt’s claim that “Iraq has been won”.
2. Life and Other Serious Stuff
Another teacher decides to quit and join the private sector. When are we going to recognise and appreciate teachers?
Harry Potter is an anti-Thatcherite lefty. Or so it is theorised. Certainly the Dursleys do have a tang of the “Essex” stereotype.
John Quiggin notes that, courtesy of the strong dollar, we are all of a sudden richer than the Americans.
John Surname links to Prodos’s tough interview with Danny Nalliah about his dealings with publicans, sinners and the League of Rights.
tigtog quotes Melissa McEwan, with the last word on rape jokes (why no link, though?).
Apathetic Sarah is prepared to use the ‘racist’ label when it’s called for.
Mark Bahnisch promises a review of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. In the interests of readers who do not foresee that they will find time read its 880 pages themselves, ML will hold him to it.
tigtog wants to know who’s participating in Movember.
dr. faustus wishes Australia would close its credibility gap on international death penalties.
3. The Yartz
When he was inducted into the ARIA hall of fame, Nick Cave also inducted the Bad Seeds and the Birthday Party, despite instructions not to do so. Top work, Nick!
The Top 25 songs of the year at Decomposing Trees.
The architecture of parking lots.
The Firesign Theater at After Grog Blog.
A blog for the TV SF geeks: Fanfic
4. T.S.S
(troppo sports stadium)
We’ll cover sport in Friday’s edition.
5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad
Ken Lovell is being persecuted by Noisy Mynahs.
John Surname persecutes the sad and the creepy.
- former Labor Party Prime Minister[↩]
On “resigned” teachers:
In 2002 I resigned from the Victorian Education Department on my 55th after joining them in 1974. I was on leave, having shifted to Katherine in 1999. Four weeks ago I retired as a teacher from the NT department on my 60th. 34 years. I’m still waiting for a letter of acknowledgment/thanks from either system.
The extended quote attributed to John Ray (“If 38 per cent of people polled …”) is actually from Piers Akerman. John provides a link at the post’s end. It’s not particularly clear he’s quoting Piers, however, so ML’s small error is understandable.
For your information
I have just linked this site
To my own weblogs blight
The links I put into my weblog are not by name but
So here is a poem I wrote which links to Club Troppo
the club to be in
so they sing
of tropical insanity’s weirdness begin
while I advise in real life
the case be merely
lack of disguise
since the tropics be heavier in plenty
by environmental integrity
(sort of my way of interpreting the name club troppo)
How amusing though, and how re-enforcing it must be for Piers. One inclusion into that which is deemed the best writing of the Australian blogosphere for the last few days is an act of outright plagarism of the blogger’s bogeyman, the MSM.
Well, assuming Piers isn’t John Ray – I’ve never seen both of them in the same room, have you? – or that Piers didn’t lend permission for the re-print.
Good to see the ideologically crippled being given a decent airing. Pity it’s only from the one blog though.
Club Troppo
Niall, it’s lovely to have you commenting on ML, but could you aim at being translucent even if you can’t be clear? A few weeks back there was the comment about ML being ‘usurped’, now this one.
Andrew Elder seems to think we’d be better off with no Libertarian party at all, since obviously things are getting more libertarian every year currently, right?
By the way, the only “nutjob” candidates Andrew mentions are myself and Lisa Milat – who is presumably a nutjob because she’s married to Ivan Milat’s brother?
This despite the fact that Labor ran a nutjob as their preferred PM in the last election, and it didn’t seem to hurt their long-term prospects. Need I mention Wilson Tuckey or Ross Lightfoot? The Birdman can’t possibly be crazier than those two.
Oh come on. Bird is quite a bit crazier than Latham, though he may well not be much worse than Tuckey or Lightfoot. Anyway, I don’t think you’re a nutjob Sam. However I wouldn’t take too much comfort from that if I were you, because my own grip on reality may well be pretty dubious.
Lisa Milat is married into bogan-ville and therefore exempt from the usual feminist critique of not identifying a woman by her marital links that is usually invoked gleefully by metrosexual ex-Lib pony riding, cucumber sandwich scoffing toffs like Elder, Yobs.
“ex-Lib pony riding, cucumber sandwich scoffing toffs like Elder”
Do you think we should sign him up for Troppo then, Jason?
Are we seriously reaching the day when the beatification of P Keating will take place? Have we got no sense at all?
Beatification huh? Just because you swallowed a fucking dictionary when you were about 15 doesn’t give you the right to pour a bucket of shit over Paul Keating.
Exactly right, Yobbo. He’ll be lucky to get a job cleaning shithouses if you win Stirling. What a 24-carat pissant. What a carcass with a tie and coat on.
Oh I don’t think Lisa Milat is a nutjob. But in terms of influencing the direction taken by parliament, either by getting elected or by forcing whoever does get elected to drift towards the LDPs position, she, Bird and yourself are nuttier than a bagful of mechano. Elder’s wrong about the gun thing, but he’s as right as rain about the three mentioned candidates.
That would be because I originally forgot to add the links, and fixed that over at the Feminism 101 blog, and then didn’t fix the crosspost at Hoyden about Town. Oops!
Fixed now.
James, I’m sure I don’t need to take you by the hand