Wednesday’s Missing Link over the fold.
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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
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A Committee in the Coalition-dominated Senate gives an old Coalition policy a right shoeing. Peter Martin reports on their daring the Rudd Government to cop the stick of fixing the problem.
Andrew Elder argues that the Coalition won’t be coming up with a meaningful emissions policy any time soon and that one of those reasons is they don’t really like Malcolm Turnball very much.
Jeremy Sear is unimpressed by Victorian transport Minister Kosky’s apparent plans to give Connex and even better sweetheart deal on rail stewardship.
William “Poll Bludger” Bowe highlights the latest Newspoll showing the O’Barrell-led NSW State Opposition in front of the Iemma government. Maybe the voters are starting to realise just how useless and corrupt NSW Labor has become.
International
Henry Farrell examines proposals to sock tourists to the US with a charge to promote US tourism, suggesting it might well be self-defeating.
Norman Geras on the notion of negotiating with Mugabe:
The politics of the situation may dictate a need for negotiation, but morally and legally there should be no negotiation between an opposition party which has won an election and the regime that is attempting to negate the result of it by violence. The agencies of international law are in hock to political exigencies, where a greater separation of the two is needed.
In less rational realms, Brendan O’Neill blames the West for all Zimbabwe’s problems, while Tim Blair blames the lefties who were (on Planet Blair anyway) far too nice to Mugabe until recently.
At openDemocracy, Marco Brazzoduro looks at increasing victimisation of the Romany (aka gypsies) by Italy’s new right wing government.
Law
Should a prosecutor throw a case to avoid sending men he thinks are innocent to jail? asks David Luban.
Hilzoy examines disturbing indications of politicisation of appointments to the US Department of Justice.((You’d think that this sort of unprincipled activism would be anathema to real conservatives with their supposed love of tradition and propriety, but the same sort of roguery was rife in the Nixon administration as well. I wonder why. ~ KP))
Andrew Grossman looks at an example of divorce law American style.
Mirko Bagaric argues that problems in the Victorian legal system are all A-G Rob Hulls’ fault not the (alleged) $14,000 a day barristers. And a good place to start would be abolishing the rules of evidence (presumably including those deprecating evidence obtained by torture).
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Issues analysis
In the olden days you could send kids via mail |
Harry Clarke leaks the news that carbon leakage effects have leaked away. Meanwhile, an intemperate remark by a scientist regarding climate change disinformation has raised Ralph Buttigieg’s ire.
Bek and Apathetic Sarah both focus on children and sexualisation/sexuality.
Gay activist Peter Tatchell argues there’s no such thing as the gay gene.
Alexander Downer makes a bid for Adelaide immortality by promoting it as a University City (and claiming credit for Carnegie Mellon).
Robert Merkel doesn’t thnk Greenpeace’s claim of more jobs from renewable energy technologies is their best argument.
Arts
Darlene Taylor recommends and synopsises (is that a word?) the movie My Brother is an Only Child.
A Euro-jaunting Alison Croggon reviews a London production of Milton’s Comus double-billed with a modern “reply” by an Australian playwright. All a tad pointless for Missing Link’s audience, but an interesting review just the same.
Tim Sterne rises to the challenge of writing an obit for George Carlin without mentioning either his name or a swear word.
Lynda Hawryluk reviews the TV Corby bogan-fest, and Ben Peek has a few words to say on the subject too.
Tony the Teacher provides a link to music blog The Rising Storm, which I (KP) recommend too for those with semi-codger era tastes in rock (like me and Tony, it seems).
Kerryn “Pavlov’s Cat” Goldsworthy reviews Helen Garner’s new novel The Spare Room.
If you’re thinking of auditioning for Baz Luhrmann’s next extravaganza, you could do worse than consulting Ming-Zhu’s new business The Screen Test Studio.
Sport
Brian Micklethwait blogs at length on Geoff Boycott, the second most boring man ever to play cricket (after Bill Lawry).
Snark, strangeness and charm
Tom Violence offers sage advice for aspiring rock stars.
 TroppoSphere, in case Missing Link email subscribers haven’t noticed, is now available as a convenient gateway to a world of news and expert opinion and analysis for those with feed reader phobia. It contains feeds to most of the blogs and other sources whose best/selected content we most regularly feature in Missing Link, as well as general news feeds and those from selected online magazines like openDemocracy, Reason, Slate, Spiked, New Matilda, Australian Opinion Online and Online Opinion. |
Ken,
Quite clearly the people of NSW must be in the same league as US voters of whom over 70% thought Hussein resposible for 11/9.
We have one of the most incompetent Governments in this State’s history.
This was quite apparent before the Election.
This poll stills means, on some assumptions , a minority ALP Government.
How could any rational person possibly vote ALP in the last election or in any poll in the meantime!
“How could any rational person possibly vote ALP in the last election or in any poll in the meantime.”
Because they don’t like religious fundamentalists (NSW Liberal Right) in power.
For the record, I’m strongly against the Iemma Government and did not vote for them at the last election. The problem seems to be that both parties appear unelectable.
Might have had more to do with Sartor, Tripodi, Costa and Iemma maintaining a steady level of repugnancy during the campaign but Debnam – particularly with his silly remarks about Debus – riding a rocket up the repugnancy ratings; his dramatic rise was a bit of an electoral turnoff. Sure, he was still far less awful than any of the ALP quartet but we’d had time to become inured to them.
I did because the then alternative under Peter ‘Speedo’ Debnam, the right wing liberal who apparently opposes privatisation, was worse.
Jase that is rationalisation at its worse.
how could they be worse?
They wouldn’t have the sleaze factor nor the problem of being in too long.
They mightn’t have been a whole lot better but it is absurd in the extreme to say they would have been worse.
When a party wins power again all power goes to the leader the factions fade away.
Factions are only ‘strong ‘ in opposition when a lot of the time they turn on themselves.
have you forgotten about all the law and order auctioneering, Homer?
Actually while I am no fan of Lemma, I quite like Costa, a true Labor Right free marketeer. I think he would make a good Premier, if only he had the support.
if there’s no gay gene, why do some human beings affect homosexuality?
Sometimes known as Dad Rock (Tony and I or me and Tones but not me and Tony?)
AAAAAgh! I’m surrounded by grammar pedants (Jen’s wading through yet another essay on systemic functional grammar for her Masters – I fink I’ll talk ungrammatical just on principal – not to mention misspelling – language guerilla warfare – mind you quite a few of my students are unwitting language guerillas).
> how could they be worse?
Despite how horrid the ALP currently is in NSW, it appears many voters are still able to come up with ways to answer your question.
The fact that the NSW Liberal Party is entirely in the grip of religious fundamentalists might have something to do with that.
I don’t care what the pendants say (say, put a tune to that!). “Me and” is my personal campaign against “and I”, which is poncy.
“Me and is my personal campaign against and I, which is poncy.”
Hmm, sounds like you and I could be of like minds here. I am interested in your theories and would like to log on onto your wiki.