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
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tigtog believes that a Federal Government scheme for national registration of medical professionals will help to weed out the Patels and Reeveses more quickly.
Harry Clark argues that the Rudd government is damaging Australia’s economy in bypassing the Productivity Commission and appointing Labor mates to report and recommend interventionist Button-style “industry policy”.
Peter Martin looks at Lindsay Tanner’s semantic game playing with Labor election promises on maintaining defence spending. Not quite a “non-core promise” replay but not far short.
Meanwhile, pseudonymous Liberal propagandist Kevin Rudd R Less proffers relentlessly negative takes on everything Ruddish including the 2020 Summit ((I wonder whether this is the same bloke who ran the Mark Latham sendup blog a few years ago – it’s certainly the same style of obvious if sometimes funny undergraduate humour ~ KP)), while Guy Beres compiles a Missing Link-style roundup of MSM and blogosphere reaction to Rudd’s 100 days in office promo.
International
Guy Beres applauds the self-promoting Bob Geldof’s caricature-busting sympathetic view of George Bush.
Alex Hutchinson peddles the (somewhat unlikely) proposition that Obama is the harbinger and representative of a New Generation of non-ideological non-aligned pragmatists.
Doug B wonders why the US doesn’t have compulsory voting, while Roger Migently highlights disturbing suggestions that the electronic voting system they actually do have is fairly dodgy to say the least.
Economics
Melburnian Joshua Gans sees Sydney’s road toll system as a case study on squandered scale economies.
Peter Martin reports that, due to high ‘wholesale rates’ the banks will probably increase variable home loan rates by more than the 0.25 percent cash rate increase expected today.
Andrew Norton explains how, under a Universities Australia scheme to securitise HECS/HELP liabilities, in net effect ‘the government would be lending to itself to finance universities, a very strange state of affairs.’
Issues analysis
Jeremy Sear doesn’t think much of State governments’ performance on disadvantaged housing.
Alex Tabarrok links and disputes research (not by Peter Roebuck) purporting to show that spanking kids causes sexual problems as adults.
Roger Migently explores what happens when a child disses the Bible in an American schoolroom.
Arts
Norman Geras doubts that an organised boycott of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice for its anti-semitism is a brilliant idea.
Amanda Rose loves Dolly Parton but hates Céline Dion at great length.
Who was Bach? asks Norman Geras, inexplicably ignoring doctoral research by my (KP) CDU colleague Martin Jarvis claiming that old Johann plagiarised a fair slab of his stuff from his missus!!
Sport
Mike Salter wonders whether Sydney FC’s purchase of John Aloisi for $1.4 million is a good idea.
Shaun Cronin previews the 2008 NRL season, keeping his fingers crossed for Parra and sharing my (KP) pessimism about Manly’s prospects for this year.
Snark, strangeness and charm
Cast-iron Helen would appreciate help with displaying images in WordPress.
Saint on an attempt to embarrass Benny Hinn on stage. ((My mental image is of a huckster chasing people in wheelchairs and on crutches to the tune of Yakety Sax.~gilmae))
Ben Peek hates Wollongong.
Kieran Healey argues that women pundits like Charlotte Allen (who happily admits to being stupid and a bad driver and sees these as female characteristics) are just an example of the wonders of a market economy.
Mark Bahnisch deploys years of experience to doubting research showing that blogging boosts your social life, while Peter Black looks at Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’ apparent dumping of his girlfriend on Wikipedia itself, and also contemplates the death of email.
Amanda Rose loves Dolly Parton but hates C
SStuffed if I know hw that happened (doing it in a hurry).
Please stop covering “Kevin Rudd R Less”. Not witty, not insightful. Banal and predictable PR hackwork from the Young Libs. Don’t deserve the traffic/’endorsement’.
I don’t intend to cover Rudd R Less frequently unless they fluke something that’s genuinely amusing (which “MarkL” occasionally did). However, Missing Link tries to adopt a reasonably politically neutral stance, and where we fail we at least make it clear that a statement of personal opinion by one of us is precisely that.
I certainly don’t apologise for drawing the attention of readers to the existence of the Rudd R Less site and won’t be censoring the coverage in future to suit the ideological taste of any particular subgroup of readers. No-one’s forcing you to read anything we abstract. We give you a brief description of each highlighted post so you can make up your own mind whether it’s the kind of thing you’d like to read. If you want ideologically skewed and tribal political coverage, there are plenty of other blogs you can read where that’s exactly what you’ll find.
I’m glad to know that the Kevin Rudd R Less site exists – now I know not to go there in the future. The satire certainly is banal and predictable, which is a pity – as Rudd’s shallow, congratulatory ‘100 days’ report and his ideas summit PR stunt really is begging for good political satire.
I remember when I first read Ruth’s glorious John Howard blog – now that was a fresh and genuinely amusing site. Could be in the next few years a similar Kevin Rudd satire will spring up somewhere in the blogosphere. Rudd R Less isn’t it.
It’s absolutely not a matter of their politics, it’s a matter of their quality. Be as eclectic as you wish, that’s what I want. I just don’t want juvenilia.
Perhaps the banal predictability is all part of the satire, or meta satire if you like….oh dear, I just committed the Thinking About It Too Much Fallacy.
I read the John Howard Blog, like, once.
Isn’t anyone who writes about their time with the President of the US inherently ‘self-promoting’? That struck me as a really weird choice of words.
If those characters are the future of the Liberals, that’s very heartening.
To find out why Hillary is a second hand station wagon and Barack is a brand new 4WD click the link. One has lots of baggage and one isn’t run in yet, but that’s not the full metaphor.
Cast-iron Helen would appreciate help with displaying images in WordPress.
Problem is fixed, thanks. I’m feeling pretty up myself. I won’t bore anyone into a stupor by explaining here what I did, but if any WordPress users find they are suddenly unable to display uploaded pictures where they could the day before, you are welcome to email me! In the meantime, I’ll be waving a Hahn and singing Queen’s execrable WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS (of WordPress…)
Wilful, this time, I could not agree with you more. Can’t we pulp the Young Liberals?
Bah ha ha ha!
Everyone:
The essential difference between the the Counter Summit blog I started http://countersummitaustralia2020.blogspot.com and the site you mentioned in Club Troppo at http://kevinruddrless.blogspot.com/2008/03/my-2008-smartarse-summit.htm is that while I have been very critical of how this brilliant concept has been fumbled, all that other blogger can do is knock and whinge. So he doesn’t like Kevin Rudd – big deal – what’s his own vision for policies to bring us a better future? That’s if he has any vision at all.