UPDATE: When I write "more" I just mean maybe I'll put up a post about defamation law in Oz. But, as you'll see from my recent blogging history, which is infrequent at best, I wouldn't hold your breath. So maybe not.
:: WB 5:16 am [link+] ::
Lordy that's infuriating. 'Nothing to say'? Gi Fa.
What he means is, if you're not prepared to acknowledge as a starting point that manmade greenhouse emissions, specially carbon, have to be taxed to stop weather he's not prepared to listen to you.
To say, as I believe, that 'climate change' as a political policy, based on greenhouse gas emissions and particularly man-made carbon emissions, is full of shit is most definitely not not having something to say. It very definitely is saying something. It's saying 'stop lying, stop buying crap IPCC modelling bollocks about how the world works, stop and think before you tax the crap out of us for just doing what we're doing and costing us our jobs, stop barrelling ahead into a tax that won't achieve anything to make the environment better, start crediting the anxious citizenry with some sense. Stop pointing to the fucking polar bears and crying. Acknowledge Gore is an imbecile and Stern is no better. Start making changes to water use rules and architecture and farming proesses, start tax relief for businesses that reuse their waste or sell it on for use elsewhere, start encouraging postivity and betterness instead of focussing on lies about man's perfidy and focussing always on chicken little negativity'.
What he means is if you're not prepared to acknowledge as a starting point that govt health care is required right now then he's not prepared to listen to you.
I got nothing to say about American health care. You want it you buy you don't want it, you don't buy it, you take a chance. You get covered anyways and maybe stuck with a bill. O. Mi. Go. Whatever.
Both men are lawyers.
Both men are conducting contract negotiations, cos that's what these two issues are all about. Politicians pitching legislation to an anxious citizenry, represented by the politicians in over and their respective oppositions, yeah?
But they're not doing a great job. They're deeply invested in winning their side of the argument but they're rushing to get 'agreement' on the threshold issue of introducing a carbon tax/introducing mandatory health care, right now and that's okellydokelly cos that's their view but any contract negotiator recognises this and the appropriate response at the first contract negotiation meeting is, 'Wait just a minute, Mr Look So Good! Why are we here?'.
There's nothing like taking a negotiation right back to bare bones first principles to really shake up the other side - the unspoken "I don't need this deal as much as you do, buddy" is very very effective tactic. Puts the other side on the back foot from the word go cos they understand that they won't get their deal at all if they don't give up stuff.
That's why there's so much shirtiness in Barack's attitude. And so much in PM Rudd's too and Turnbull's. They haven't actually won the threshold argument yet cos they haven't thought it through.
But they need to be on the back foot. Cos they're talking about tax. New tax for something that hasn't been taxed before. This is kinda like the GST, a whole new tax in Oz, but Howard, a lawyer, understood basic negotiation. He won that threshold argument by saying a) we need to collect revenue cos surpluses mean better spending, b) we need to collect revenue from the black market/cash economy cos right now they're not contributing to revenue and a GST on every transaction will do this, c) we can't just add a new tax without taking off some stupid other stuff cos that would be painful for the economy, not a benefit at all and people will get the shits, so d) all GST revenue goes to the states for spending (which were Labour govts as it happens) so they can get rid of their silly sundry taxes (not that they got rid of stamp duty, the swine) and every transaction will be neutral - some times you pay GST some times you get a credit.
Why do we need a carbon tax again? Poley bears? Cos the IPCC says so? Falling at the first hurdle.
Why do Yanks need compulsory govt health care again? Because Obama says so? So he's falling at the first hurdle too. [See a and b above re GST. Silly Obama can't get to c and d though. He's just not that good a lawyer.]
She made the whole thing up for fun cos she's a camera happy bogan from the Northern Beaches and she didn't mean anything by it, not even the 'wog' thing. Clare reckons that it just isn't the bad word it used to be - 'wog' - and it can't be a bad word if you're proud of your background. She's proud to be a bogan. I'm proud to wog. Okay then. No racism here - just a media hungry girlie who wasted police time, media time and my time. Whatever. And a wog did get shot - question is, was the shooter a wog too?
If anything's gonna get this wog out of self-imposed semi-kinda-retirement, it's matters of wogdom. And sure nuff, there's wogness in the news of late. All care of a nice teen (with a wog name, good girlie) who witnessed a horrible shooting in Kings Cross. Perpetrated by a wog. Upon. Another. Wog.
She's asked the basic question: 'Wha'ppen?"
And in reply she goes: "There was these two wogs fighting ....fat wog (shooter) ... skinny wog (shot) ..." and she does accents quoting the shooter and the shot fellow.
She had the decency to observe the shooter and the shot fellow and to bother to identify them publicly. Community minded, is what it was. She had the decency to identify correctly and properly that they would not be found amongst the skippy population of the Cross that night/early morning. I guess she could have said "there were these two non-skippies fighting" but quite frankly, that's hardly gonna help in finding the shooter now, is it? Mebbe she coulda said "there were these two guys fighting' but, in the Cross, what on earth would be the point? It's the Cross fer pity's sake. There's always some guys fighting.
Now, a lotta nice folks, many of them skips, are outraged on behalf of wogs that this teen dared use the word 'wog' in her descriptions of a shooting in Kings Cross perpetrated by a wog. They go "she's racist". Whoa, kemosabe, they were wogs. Since when is it 'racist' just to notice that? What, are we all living in some skippy whitebread Star Trek "why can't we be friends?" wonderland where everybody sounds and acts all the same? If we are, youse can shove it. I like the difference. Wogs. And skips.
They go "wog is a bad word, just as bad as 'n*gg*r' ". Zif. To think that, you gotta have no clue just how bad black people had it in the States and elsewhere under slavery and segregation. Wogs got called 'wog' a lot by skips, overlooked for jobs, excluded from clubs, but hello, none of us got lynched. And we all made the wine anyway so, soon as we start that up, sure nuff, along come the skips for a taste Everybody gets along.
If it was me done the witnessing, I'da said exactly what she said (my accent woulda bin better, but, natch). In fact I witnessed the culmination of a car chase, car driven at serious speed through (I shit you not - through) the trees in the median strip of a busy road, into footpath, driver takes a sec then gets out and starts running. I stopped to help the coppers out and when asked to describe the driver I go 'wog'. The copper goes "Leb wog or, like Greek wog?" I go "Leb. The hair". Raaacist, right? Gi. Fa. Accurate. Helpful.
It's not racist to notice persons of a race doing something. It's just noticing them doing things - that's all it is. Bothering to notice someone's difference and how they do things acknowledges their identity and their behaviour. Crediting them as human beings who do things, people with memory, culture, background, habits, recipes, songs etc etc is a good thing to acknowledge your fellow man. Noticing. Good behaviour and the bad. For better or worse. Mostly it's for better. Ignoring who someone is is surely worse.
Martin Luther King Junior. A big fat black Yank philanderer - I'm just noticing - who hit upon a universal truth and expressed it exceptionally beautifully- judge people by the content of their character, not their [race]. Bravo Martin.
Judge.
He never said nothing about stopping noticing race, but.
Real racism is in the judging. In judging certain wogs to be of one stripe and a lousy and unchangeable stripe at that - all greedy, all shifty, all chauvanistic, all self-pitying, all bad tempered, all the time, all living in stuccoed columned monumental villas of appalling gilt-edged baroque horribleness, and never crediting they could ever be civil and behave well. And real racism includes the do-gooders who judge certain wogs to be weak and in need of assistance against epiphets like 'wog'.
It's not racism to notice some wog's behaviour. It's the right thing to do. To notice everyone's behaviour. It's fair.
I could go on and on about this, natch, but nevermind. Here's a test peeps. Be careful now. You laff at this? You might be raaacist!
(God, I posted this in 2002 - man, I bin blogging a long time! Anyhoo I digress. Got it in an email from a skippy friend, comedian. His business is noticing. I've never found the true author - if I do I'll credit him or her, cos this really is genius.)
:: WB 4:46 am [link+] ::
My family's all alright, thank Christ, but they're worried for pals. For all those who aren't alright or are lost, and their families and friends and colleagues, prayers and condoglienze. And for all the ambulance folks and fire folks and the police and carabinieri and the dogs and the charity people, you are angels.
God, it's early April and already we've had the horrible fires in Victoria and this. God?
To quote former President George H.W Bush, "I bin getting around, doing the thing". Watched Obama win the US Presidential Election and I am okeedoke with that. The man doesn't wake up every day thinking "How can I ruin the country?". I don't care for his politics, but then hey. I don't expect he cares much for mine. No biggie. PM Rudd of Oz doesn't wake up every day thinking "How can I ruin the country?" either, so, well, yeah well yeah. Haven't felt moved to blog much cos I am a happy commenter elsewhere and jeez, folks have been doing great work covering everything all over. I may get back into it cos of all that's going worldwise of late. But tonight. Well, this has been on my mind.
Sure, Clapton was good. But Junior Brown is God!
:: WB 6:22 am [link+] ::
Shame on you, Theo Spark.
:: WB 3:25 am [link+] ::
:: Monday, 8 September 2008 ::
Madness in the POTUS 08 Campaign
Just want to capture two pieces that show nutty liberal think.
1. This piece by an actor, Richard Schiff, which he might just as well have titled "I Married a Racist" since that what he thinks of his wife cos she won't vote Obama. Seriously. Have a read and see what he's published on the internet about his own wife. Incredible. If she stays with him it will have to be out of pity.
2. And this piece ...I think it's meant to be funny and sarcastic. It's just shit. By some guy writing for a San Francisco paper. Nuff said. And i'm from Oz - even I know SF is a closed liberal shop. Nice and foggy. But politically idiotic.
:: WB 4:31 am [link+] ::
My name's Kevin and I am wordy, but not very bright. I think markets fail. I think they have to be regulated. I think Oz's past and present prosperity has to be hit hard because I want to differentiate my government from the Howard year. I am not interested in more prosperity. I am interested in big picture hoo-hah cos I want to be head of the UN one day
Seriously, I was gonna fisk this but it's such impenetrable gobbledygook that there's no point.
This speech is The Hollowmen all over. We have an empty vessel leader in Oz who is all about government and not about letting the governed get on with things.
About a week ago I drove home from work, in bumper-to-bumper traffic, lights on, raininess and coldness misery outside, and all clutch in, clutch out, clutch in, clutch out, absolutely crawling. And I was zoning out a bit, listening to something classical, maybe Schubert, a lovely attempt by the radio station to lift spirits in miserable weather. The car in front of me for what felt like forever was a silver saloon of some sort. I am genetically predisposed to being excellent at picking out car makes and models, cos of my Italian petrolheady heritage. So this thing was silver and biggish and widish and non-descript. Probably a Lexus.
And from round the driver's side of the car there came a-crawling the biggest, hugest huntsman spider and he creeped and crawled his way along around the boot.
I was mesmerised.
He didn't seem to mind the teeming rain.
It was mesmerising. Swear to God he was looking straight at me, with his eight eyes....(oh my, I'm giving myself the willies just typing this). If he'd wanted to he coulda jumped onto the bonnet of my beloved car and I woulda had a heartattack there and then.
Suspended in terror (I am not happy in the company of spideys and the wipers were going full blast so it was kinda hypnotic, and I don't think I blinked once) I watched as he crawled his way along the boot edge and then...and then, with one last squoodge (know what I mean? when they kinda press themselves into an almost pouncing position, all hanging back gathering up the grunt?) staring straight at me, he crawled IN TO THE BOOT!
I did not flick my lights. I did not toot my horn.
Should I have?
This is keeping me up nights. I think my omission was terrible.
:: WB 4:39 am [link+] ::
I know one personaly. Not just a fan, not just a student of the man, but a full blown professor of Dylan. It's all a very Jane-Goodall-and-the-apes kinda scene watching and listening to him wax lyrical about his no. 1 hero. The sitting up a bit higher in the chair, the moving of the hands, the pulling up utterly tedious facts like which bootleg comes from which gig.
I'm a fan, natch. What's not to like? But hey. Some folks has the Dylan-love pretty bad. Poor man prlly can't order a simple espresso without some Dyman junky analysing it to mean the man thinks the world is just too darned sluggish and needs a shot.
Lacrime.
It's meant to look like this.