With the US bailout sitting in pieces on the floor of the House, now they’re talking about the US Fed taking an equity stake in leading banks. free market capitalism? Last week’s idea already. Lets nationalise the banks. Help. Australia. Got to have the Australian angle, how else could we digest this moment? “We are [...]
Monthly Archives: September 2008
McCain and that campaign halt
September 26, 2008 – 10:39 am
All of human experience can of course be reduced to a tidy Venn diagram. (You should see Bill Heffernan’s.)
A piece of brilliance from Indexed explains the pending McCain debate no-show.
Steve Fielding and the illusion of democracy
September 25, 2008 – 8:43 am
Just run this past me again …. what exactly was Steve Fielding’s primary vote? Who precisely does he represent when he walks into the Senate to do the bidding of the private health insurers? Apart from God of course. That’s it, just under 2% of Victorians. Well done Stephen Conroy, one of the best deals [...]
Turnbull puts life into Dennis Shanahan
September 22, 2008 – 10:21 am
The Australian and its splendidly tonsorial political editor Dennis Shanahan are almost back to the sort of peak form that made the combination a byword for polling-based fantasy through the long months of mid 2007. Todays’ P1 banner “Turnbull puts life into the Libs” is a cracker, based on polling that shows an 8% pump [...]
Markets, panic, idiocy and Galbraith
September 18, 2008 – 2:54 pm
A wonderful thing in Ken Silverstein’s Washington Babylon at Harpers. He quotes John Kenneth Galbraith in his 1954 book The Great Crash:
In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings. Like most humans, most of the time, they did some very foolish things. On the whole, [...]
Just another day in the politics of politics
September 17, 2008 – 1:55 pm
Good lord what can they mean? It’s been one of those weeks in which the politics of politics resolutely becomes the story. But here, with this little effort, The Australian has gone to the head of the class. What they mean, of course, is that Malcolm Turnbull has reclaimed the natural ascendency that conservatives have when it [...]
Nelson’s departure: teargate
September 16, 2008 – 9:38 pm
It’s close enough to an axiom of journalism: read or watch reports on something with which you are vaguely familiar and you’ll realise what error-laden, generalised, distorted, liberally twisted rubbish is peddled in the name of news. Well, most times. I watched the Nelson presser this afternoon, go to woe, and yes there was one [...]
… and then there’s the book launch thingy
September 16, 2008 – 11:34 am
Peter Costello, the man that events forgot, will be talking to who exactly at the National Press Club today? He looks, rather more than usually, yesterday’s man in the light of today’s decisive Liberal events. Expect a lunch audience of three cadets and someone diligent from AAP. Yet again, he didn’t have the stones.
Brendan gets warm and wet
September 15, 2008 – 9:00 pm
Amazing how you warm to these people in their death throes. Apparently Nelson spoke brilliantly this evening. Full of passion. Feelings at full unimpeded flow. Who knew! This is a gutsy move. His best move. A crap hand played with bold decisiveness. For once. Once Costello declared it looked like Turnbull’s for the picking. But [...]
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