Missing Link – only 2 weeks to go (thank God)

• 1. News and Politics Stuff
• 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff
• 3. The Yartz
• 4. T.S.S
• 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad

This edition of Missing Link compiled by James Farrell, Gilmae, Peter Black, Amanda Rose and Ken Parish with editing by the latter.  What with the election campaign and all, it’s a heavily politicised product.  I don’t know about you, but I’m getting so worn down by all the nonsense that I almost don’t care who wins (although Rudd is an almost unbackable favourite at this stage – except according to Chris Sheil, who can’t bring himself to believe it yet in case he jinxes his beloved ALP).  This cartoon via “Slim Pickens” will give you the flavour of the week in politics:

1. News and Politics Stuff

Whatever else it might be, dr. faustus believes Rudd’s razor gang policy will cost the ALP a chance at control of the Senate.  The good dr. also doesn’t think much of the current bipartisan tenderness towards “working families“:

Two thirds of working families don’t actually have a mortgage, and only eight percent have a mortgage over $200,000, so they’re probably only minimally affected by the recent interest rate rise. In general, the report concludes, they aren’t actually doing it all that hard. They’re just whingers who like handouts.

Graham Young on John Howard:

Now, I know this isn’t his fault, but when a woman is knocked to the ground in front of you and you just walk away, perhaps you owe someone an apology. In this campaign this could be the defining moment that Mark Latham’s “muscle-up” was in the last one.

“Slim Pickens” on the Howardian non-apology on interest rates and other increasingy strange aspects of Coalition campaign rhetoric:

Unfortunately the economic narrative is no more convincing. We cant control inflation, but we do take credit for our booming economy, and we can control inflation better than Labor. Work Choices has resulted in workers earning more while it has also lowered wages. You need to earn less under Howard so that you will be able to pay your mortgage. Meanwhile the RBA and Labor are speaking somewhat more coherently about capacity constraints in the economy resulting from systemic neglect of education, health, transport. Bit of a no brainer really.

Mark Bahnisch makes the same point but with superadded erudite academic analogies, and also has a stab at crystal ball-gazing the last fortnight of the campaign.

John Quiggin thinks Latham is wrong with regard to global warming: electing Rudd will make a difference by leaving Bush in the cold.

Tim Blair identifies climate change hypocrisy.

Andrew Bartlett has been trying to draw some hope from Antony Green’s Wondrous Senate Calculator.

Could tigtog be right that a piece of inept subbing in the Tele is ‘an attempt to make 1 have to deny that hes gay for the rest of the campaign, just to smear him in the eyes of the public.’?

Tim Dunlop thinks there is a difference between saying sorry and apologising, and wonders why Labor would waste effort over the issue.

Mark Bahnisch thinks that the PM should have taken a leaf fom Peter Beattie’s book of apologies; and that Rudd could capitalise if he was bold enough. Unsilenced at Talk it Out makes a similar point.

Bridget from GrodsCorp hops into ACA for its story on the Camden protests.

‘Take that uniform off now, Mr President!’, Ken Lovell insists.

MK looks at health in NSW and argues that the NSW Government is bumbling from one crisis to another.

Andrew Elder pays out on the libertarian LDP, especially blogospherical colleague Sam “Yobbo” Ward.  Jason Soon promptly labelled AE in a Troppo comment as an “ex-Lib pony riding, cucumber sandwich scoffing toff” ((an epithet he also attached to us Troppodilians not so long ago – wonder what Jason has against horses, or cucumber for that matter? ~ KP))

Peter Martin reckons Treasury is going to inform an incoming Rudd Labor government that it will have to ditch the promised tax cuts or face a drastically overheated economy and years of successive interest rate rises.

2. Life and Other Serious Stuff

Barista swims a sea of cynicism (not to mention conspiracy theorism); amongst other unedifying matters, Bush wants the US Army stuck in Iraq for the benefits of his mates. Didn’t there used to be a slogan denouncing this?

Fred Argy considers the need for a swirling vortex of low unemployment, higher inflation and higher interest rates.

Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh seperatly defend their joint paper on the effects of the Baby Bonus from Mal Brough’s messenger blaming.

JR maintains that ‘stolen generation’ is just a “myth concocted by Leftists”.

Pavlov’s Cat is preparing a phrasebook for rodents and other politicians.

Apathetic Sarah has an entertaining update on her wedding arrangements.

Sam Ward is not amused by Harry Clarke’s suggestion that smokers should have to register themselves with a government agency in order to be able to buy cigarettes:

Harry just made the leap from eccentric crank to bat-shit-crazy loon.

Patrick Garson has found a website that may tempt him into serious breadmaking.

Happily ignoring inconvenient obstacles like TPA anti-monopoly provisions, Harry Clarke fearlessly predicts the eventual success of BHP-Billiton’s takeover bid for Rio Tinto.  ((Sadly, experience suggests he’s probably right.  I wonder why no-one ever talks about beefing up Australia’s seemingly toothless laws in this regard ~ KP))

Andrew Leigh weighs the scientific evidence in favour of hiking up water prices rather than imposing regulatory restrictions on use.

3. The Yartz

Subliminal advertising at the ARIAS?

Kerouac’s On The Road.

The Dillinger Escape Plan’s new album.

4. T.S.S

(troppo sports stadium)

Murali’s “bowling” action

A wrapup of the first day of the first test – sadly sans trigonomtery – at After Grog Blog.

The Corridor promulgates knowledge of the existence of a new ABC Grandstand blog discussing the game they play in heaven during the summer seasons.

Sam “Yobbo” Ward inaugurates the standard bout of Murali-bashing that heralds the start of the cricket season in Oz:

Its plainly obvious that you cheat and everyone knows it. However, the ICC has decided that its ok to cheat if you are playing for a side that would otherwise be uncompetitive on the world stage.

So with that settled, why bother even pretending to bowl? Just take a chair and bash Ricky Ponting over the head with it, like they do in professional wrestling.

5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad

Mark “Ozconservative” Richardson is very angry about whiteness studies, an area of pseudo-academia I must confess I’d never heard of but which does sound very silly indeed. 

Meanwhile, Andrew Norton doesn’t think much of the Oxford Companion to Australian Politics. ((At $100 a copy, this Linker isn’t likely to be assessing his opinion any time soon ~ KP))

Gilmae discovers that he’s prematurely morphed into a grumpy old man, even though his teenage daughter told her boyfriend he wasn’t a bad bloke. ((or so the young punk says, sucking up to her dad with shameless testosterone-driven self-interest ~ KP)) 

Irfan Yusuf displays the second sign of insanity (after hair on the palm): imagining that there’s some point in questioning the logic or rationality of a Janet Albrechtsen column.

1. Rudd[↩]