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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill
Politics
Australian
![]() The California State Constitution protects gay marriage! See today’s ML “law” section … |
Gary Sauer-Thompson discusses sex slavery in Australia and the case of Wei Tang whose appeal against a conviction for slavery is currently before the High Court.
Petering time predicts blood on the Liberal party brand if they use their Senate majority to block changes to the baby bonus. tigtog pities them. Niall Cook thinks Brendan Nelson’s response to the Budget was better than could be expected, despite the ABC rolling out some politically embarrassing footage. John Quiggin debunks Nelson’s stance on alcopops tax and opines:
After the fiasco over alcopops, theres only one reason Brendan Nelson can survive as Opposition leader. All the potential alternative leaders, with the apparent exception of Julie Bishop, have made just as big fools of themselves as Nelson has.
Since the Budget reactions are still coming in; Andrew Norton believes it was disappointing. Temujin agrees.
Jeremy decries the hand-out mentality of some Australians.
dr. faustus thinks alcopops are drunk by the upper middle class who won’t mind paying more ((I thought the primary user was the Pretty Young Thing working entry-level jobs in an office and the high school girl.~gilmae)) but is interested in the idea of reducing alcohol content in favour of flavour in wines.
International
Darryl Mason describes how a natural disaster became a PR triumph for China. He also reveals Dubya’s own personal sacrifice in the Iraq war.
Eric Martin examines Republican Presidential cadidate John McCain’s well-considered policies for victory in Iraq.
Turcopolier doubts the wisdom of US Defense Secretary Gates in advocating that the American military should regard irregular insurgencies as its key future threat:
The metaphor of generational development in warfare is essentially flawed. This image was created in the last decade or two to provide existing military leadership with a psychological crutch that enabled them to say that they had not been so woefully ignorant of history as to not know that irregular warfare had always been a major factor in conflict.
Economics
Stephen Kirchner is unimpressed with Labor’s new-found enthusiasm for the Costello-orinated concept of Future Funds:
The real wealth being built in the Future Fund is no such thing. It comes entirely at the expense of the current wealth-generating capabilities of the private sector.
Law
Peter Faris QC fulminates about the introduction of Koori County Courts in Victoria in his trademark RWDB style.((But he has a valid point just the same IMO ~ KP))
Dale applauds a California Supreme Court decision that struck down legislation prohibiting gay marriage as unconstitutional, while Eugene Volokh summarises the Court’s reasoning and worries about slippery legislative slopes.
Orin Kerr reports that Lori Drew, the woman who provoked a 16 year old girl neighbour to suicide by masquerading as a boyfriend on Faecebook and then dumping here, has been indicted under computer fraud legislation. Orin argues that, while Drew’s actions were despicable, the prosecution is legally misconceived.
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Issues analysis
Are we treating The Family as a technology? Mark Richardson thinks we are and that we should stop it. Or rather that we should stop messing with a technology he believes we perfected millenia ago.
Norman Geras argues against another philosopher who argues that philosophers are all useless in any practical sense.
Lawrence Solum recommends some legal and philosophical reading on the Internet for procrastinating academics looking to postpone marking exam papers.((I’m looking to postpone essay marking so I might check out a few of them ~ KP))
Arts
![]() A realist bust of an ageing Julius Caesar sculpted while he was still alive and just found in the Rhone. Maria Farrell:
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Nicholas Pickard ponders whether the Belvoir Street production of My Name is Rachel Corrie will find itself caught in the crossfire of the “culture wars”, scheduling a play focused on the life of a young girl killed by an Israeli Defense Force bulldozer in Gaza. The post includes a link to a review by celebrated Jewish-American novelist Cynthia Ozick.
Pickard also puts the federal budget’s arts funding under the microscope.
Dmitry Golynko-Volkson surveys the contemporary Russian literary scene.
Tim Sterne brow-beats Daniel Green’s posts about the banality of middle-brow literature.
Online free access recent articles from The Monthly now include a sequel to David Marr’s biography titled “Patrick White: The Final Chapter” . Recommended.
Sport
“Captain” Watson reviews the Vic versus Dreamteam aussie rules stunt game and continues his mid-season review of AFL team prospects.
Shaun Cronin provides his usual weekend NRL round preview.
Snark, strangeness and charm
Ken Lovell is disaffected with the ABC.
Jeremy Sear is unimpressed with John Heard’s op-ed in The Hun.
Kim at LP thinks Ken Parish is an elitist Big Brother hater, while Helen “skepticlawyer” Dale gleefully joins the ranks of elitist Big Brother haters:
Big Brother is crap for Bogans. It exists because modern capitalism has given bogans more money than they ever had before (likewise chavs in the UK), and they are now able to express their market preferences. Good for them, I have no quibble. There is no requirement that anyone else needs to take an interest. Scholars and intellectuals in the Roman world ignored the gladiatorial shows, unless they were genuine fans in the objective sense …
For Julie Andrews the hills are alive with the sound of hating the Internet.
Any blokes who were contemplating asking Laura to run up some clothes for them might be well advised to think again.
Don’s Life (Times) had already debunked Caesar statue theory as wishful thinking.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2008/05/the-face-of-jul.html
A comment of mine seems to have been eaten.
Quiggin: “…the government has made the case that these drinks encourage excessive drinking among young people, particularly young women.”
Reality:
Which is exactly what Nelson suggested last night.
Quiggin: “Having put the richest man in Parliament in as Shadow Treasurer they now intend to fight the government on the issue of a tax on luxury cars.”
Having put the richest ever prime minister in The Lodge, Labor now intends to throw thousands of people out of work and bundle hundreds of thousands into a second-rate hospital system.
As Tony Wright notes Doctor Brendan blew his credibility on this issue ten years ago:
Hardly the best position from which to launch into a rant about the government using the problem of binge drinking as an excuse for a cynical tax-hike.
Hard to see anyone turning to alcopops when suffering from “social disengagement”.
If anything quite the opposite – alcopops seem to be consumed largely because its what everyone else does in a social group.
At any rate, the tax is pretty easily supportable – if we must tax anything, let’s tax things that are known to cause externalities.
What the Liberals could be doing productively is pointing out that raising taxes on things like alcopops and luxury cars should be done in tandem with abolishing taxes like stamp duty that are highly inefficient. Now that we Labor governments in every state, it would seem a good time to coordinate such a change. And of course once some sort of emissions trading scheme is introduced there should be much further scope for reducing inefficient and damaging taxes, including some the lower income tax brackets.
How disingenuous of Joe Hockey to even attempt to draw a comparison between a Bacadi mixer and a midgit bottle of a premier blended sparkling wine. As the Yellowglen website clearly states:
The only real comparison being the number of standard drinks per bottle. The Yellowglen Pink Piccolo is 200ml and the Bacardi 350ml. Break down the relative alcohol by volume – wine 11% and mixer 5%. In standard drinks terms, the wine – 1.73 standard drinks. The mixer – 1.38. 35% of a standard drink’s difference. Less than 60ml of the ‘Pink’ more.
It’s patently clear that Conservatism is still desperate for anything to score off.
geese CL don’t think the good proffessor thought about that.. Of cousrse taking up the fight against higher taxes in the age when the govt is swimming in money, like no govt in the history of mankind ever has, is the lesser evil to putting thousands of struggling people out of work.
Unbeleivable, that the govt can sit on a $20B surplus and stashes away $40 B plus of our hard earned money with absolutely no idea of what to spend it on and get no condemnation. No general outrage from the public and media except from some semi naked pensioners(has that even happened b4?, anyway who cares about them right?). Why the extra taxes when your sitting on a motza already after allocating an even bigger motza to spend on anything you like but you still have no idea of what you need let alone want to to spend the money on?