March 26, 2012 – 10:53 am
It’s understandable, but poor strategy. Electorates should vote out governments by interesting rather than huge margins. You don’t want them to take you for granted, and right away. You want them on edge, because they might get tossed the very next time. Queenslanders are now stuck with the LNP for ages. But maybe everyone is [...]
From WaPo: At his press conference this afternoon, President Obama was asked to respond to Mitt Romney’s number one applause line on Iran: If Obama is reelected, Iran will get a nuclear bomb. Obama replied that intelligence officials still believe that there’s a “window of opportunity where this can still be resolved diplomatically.” Obama said: [...]
If you are following US politics it’s been a bonanza season. Liberal-leaning watchers will have been perversely exhilirated and appalled by the candidates’ push into the wild extremities of the right. Centrist-conservative-leaners will have been merely appalled. But despite an escalating sequence of rightiness, I find that I can still be shocked — coming across [...]
Or, a wick-ed picture of a candle in the Sun. Putting my puns down, this is the image I came up with for the March cover of Australian Book Review. It goes with Joel Deane’s very timely review of (former journo and political thinker) David McKnight‘s new book Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Political Power. [...]
November 14, 2011 – 9:42 am
Dear Sophie, And the crowd jeered, “Buffoone! Buffoone!” But in truth, as with so many of these things, only some several dozen were involved, and the fickle eye of the media zeroed in and embiggened the pyschoemotional drama. Frightfully mediagenic. (Right: Earlier today, pre-resignation, outside the Chigi Palace, journos awaiting announcements; the mob yet to arrive.) [...]
November 11, 2011 – 11:11 am
For the last few days, crisscrossing the cobblestones of the Eternal City, looking at the locals scurrying past (guiltily?); the other tourists prowling for a meal; tour leaders flagging forward their weary charges, I’ve been wondering about the Fall of Rome, the Fall of Eurozone; the Fall of Contemporary capitalism. I’ve been wondering about art, [...]
November 9, 2011 – 10:47 am
Berlusconi after Monday’s humiliation in parliament A Roman newspaper dubbed Berlusconi “The Great Seducer” when his party, Forza Italia, won the election only three months after its formation. As his wife, Veronica Lario, put it at the time: “People voted for Silvio Berlusconi, they rewarded the life story of this man. It’s not a victory [...]
October 24, 2011 – 11:28 am
What an ugly, disgraceful overreaction by the mayor and the City of Melbourne to the Occupy Melbourne group. When I hurried up to the City Square on Friday around 4.25 to catch a tram for Carlton the emptied square was cyclone fenced with riot police standing behind the wire. Further up Swanston Walk everyone was [...]
It’s well past the point of the political cycle that, when certain politicians speak on radio, I reach over and turn it off. That mostly means Julia et Tony; on TV if I can see it’s a pollie I’m off surfing. How did I get so intolerant, my resistance so low? I’m cultivating a slow [...]
It was a panel of writers drawn from the Sydney Writers’ Festival but last night’s Q&A zeroed straight into porn, irresistibly drawn by the presence of Pornland author, Professor Gail Dines. The theme would not go away. Jewishness and Israel in the news skewed the conversation — as it happened, three of the panelists are [...]
