Club Troppo

(via a commenter on Chris Sheil's blog) This admirably detailed post on an American blog called Simply Appalling highlights and analyses the finding of the blond-haired body of an apparently executed man in the Tigris river just days after the "Horror Brigade of the Islamic Se...

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Alan from Southerly Buster has an excellent post on the Indonesian Presidential runoff that has resulted in Bambang Yudhoyono winning a smashing victory over Megawati Sukarnoputri, in a fairly unequivocal flowering of real, non-corrupt democracy. Who knows whether he'll be any...

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Two separate pundits in this morning's SMH remind Labor supporters not to get too carried away by the current positive poll figures. Ross Gittins , back from hols, says: We turn to the untried opposition only after we're thoroughly fed up with the government. (And, more often...

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I bet John Howard is hoping political scientist John Wanna is correct in his surmise that the undecided voters aren't listening yet . Because if they were paying attention to the incoherent gibberish Howard and Downer are spouting about pre-emptive anti-terrorist strikes on ne...

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I see some goober from the Weagles has won the AFL midfielders' award (once known as the "Brownlow"). When do they announce the award for best player out of all the other positions on the field? What a pathetic joke the Brownlow has become. Mind you, I would have given it to J...

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Tim Dunlop posts about Iraq interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's impending visit to the US, where he'll address the United Nations and (effectively) campaign for the re-election of President Bush. Tim suggests that this is utterly inappropriate given that Allawi is only a shor...

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There's an interesting contrast between the way personal smear negative campaign tactics work in the US and their relative lack of success in Australia. As Scott Wickstein pointed out in a comment to my previous post, the Bush memo fiasco and Swift Boat Veterans nonsense are n...

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I've been meaning to comment about John Quiggin's recent short post on the US elections. John said: The crucial issue is to determine which candidate has the better record on Vietnam, and will therefore make the better president. As I understand it: Kerry fought in Vietnam, bu...

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Sometimes I just can't resist rising to the bait when Paul Watson posts one of his very frequent mad, paranoid anti-babyboomer rants. That's because he actually raises some important issues, even though they're usually well hidden among all the self-pitying whimpering. Paul's...

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Bryan Palmer , who maintains the excellent political science site Palmer's Oz Politics , has a post noting the bookmakers' latest odds on the federal election race. Bryan also analyses the recently-published marginal seat polling, and concludes that Labor is likely to fall aro...

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This story in The Australian about the latest NATSEM study on income inequality trends provides a reminder about why Labor necessarily faces an uphill battle to persuade Australians to abandon the Howard government in the midst of an unparalleled era of general prosperity. The...

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I've been watching Fox News today as they have been covering the impact of Hurricane Ivan on the Gulf Coast near Alabama. It is a terrifying storm with winds around 200 kph and driving rain. You can read about the details here But what got me is that there are Fox News reporte...

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Quite a few election blogs have sprung into existence recently. Here's a list of the ones of which I'm currently aware: Peter Brent's Mumble election site (ongoing psephology focus, in operation for some considerable time) William Bowe's The Poll Bludger Matt Liddy's Poll Vaul...

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Mark Latham is quite right to complain about the Howard government's breach of the caretaker convention in failing to consult the Opposition about its decision to deploy a hostage negotiation team to Iraq following (probably false) reports of the kidnapping of two unidentified...

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Sometimes Troppo comment boxes attract very strange visitors .

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One aspect of Labor's education policy where I emphatically agree with Graham Young is in the area of values. Labor's policy document says (page 11): A Federal Labor Government will provide $150 million over five years to teach Australian values and improve discipline in schoo...

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Graham Young over on Ambit Gambit has a post about Labor's education policy release that trots out the usual kneejerk conservative slur against Labor: Latham's policy is based on "envy". But unlike most such defences of existing privilege , Graham actually argues his case. Upd...

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What impression might the average disengaged swinging voter receive (if any) of electoral issues in the news today? Will anything penetrate? Labor has just announced a $2.4 billion education policy package , which will " pump an extra $2.4 billion into the government and non-g...

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The Currency Lad is one of the more entertaining right wing bloggers around the place, mostly eschewing moronic RWDB thuggery in favour of piercing leftie pretensions by more gentle and effective methods. His take on Mark Latham's silly " ease the squeeze " line is a neat exam...

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It's a privilege to listen to someone with a really powerful and awesomely quick mind. Such was neuroscientist Professor Susan Greenfield, who was just on Andrew Denton's Enough Rope . Read the transcript when it becomes available if you didn't catch the program. One of the ma...

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