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Last time I was in the US, a bunch of unexpected people asked me why I didn't post more about politics any more. I guess fundamentally it's because it depresses me too much. Let's start local and move outwards.
NSW politics is a sick joke. The ALP are a pack of corrupt assholes - the right wing faction regard the premiership as their personal plaything, and bedamned with anyone or anything that gets in their way. We had the ridiculous recent attempt by not-at-all-lamented ex-Premier Iemma and ex-Treasurer Costa (the latter one of the hugest douchesacks seen in Australian politics this decade) to ram through a power privatisation bill so that they'd get a pile of cash to buy the next election. The only people in favour of this were the investment banks who'd make a killing from it, and the Australian. Even the dullards that make up the NSW ALP parliamentary party hated it. It went down to well-deserved defeat, setting up the usual response of a party that needs to reassess their entire direction - campaigns of vicious media leaking to undermine each other. Eventually the wildlife in the playpen that is the state party turned on each other and gave the leadership to some hopeless unknown, so he can lead them to glorious, crushing defeat at the next election.
And on the other side, oh christ. The NSW Liberals are the scariest pack of nuts seen outside a Halloween pack of "Scary Horrible Cashews For Children". Far right, extreme socialretardsconservatives, and with all the political skills that the gods gave to ducks. Remember the fake Muslim leaflets that killed Howard's chances in the last week of the last Federal election? I'm positive that there's people inside the NSW Liberal Party who still think that's worth another shot next time, so long as they try harder at not getting caught.
It's hard to say which of the two major parties in NSW is more despicable. And depressingly, one of them will win the next election.
Federally, we have Kevin0708, who, while being better than Honest John (but fuck, I've got a bruise on my big toe that's better than him) seem determined to do nothing at all, ever, without at least 3 inquiries, complete with token public input that under no circumstances will ever be noted. (Note to self: I need to pull out the Yes Minister DVDs again some time.)
The Federal Libs are at least giving me vague amusement with their leadership shenanigans. And my god, you have no idea how hard it is to hold both the word "leadership" and a mental image of Brendan Nelson in your head at the same time. There's not one person in the federal party that is worth a damn - as far as the leadership challenge goes, the best you can say about it is that it was a fantastic effort by Nelson to fuck up the release party for Costello's book. I wonder if he left him an SMS saying "Try to get media now, you backstabbing fuck".
Let's move to the big one, the US. This is turning into a monstrous clusterfuck of an election. McCain, not content with selecting someone so depressingly unqualified that conservative writer Andrew Sullivan has started referring to the choice as "farcical", has now decided the key to winning is to lie, and lie huge. Last week's spectacular was to take a vote on age-appropriate sex education for children (focussing particularly on how to avoid sexual abuse) and turn it into an ad saying "The scary black man wants to teach sex ed to kindergartners!", complete with a photo of a leering Obama. Even the complacent US media has noticed that, well, the Republicans are lying a lot (and if you've ever followed US politics, you know how resistant the media is there to actually ever making a judgement call on anything). The response from the Republicans has been pretty much "bite me, we're going to keep doing it". And so far, the Democrats response, as is traditional for the Dems, is to act like a pack of tiny children and whine a lot.
And in the meantime, Afghanistan is going to hell (footnote: Afghanistan - a word not mentioned once in all the speeches at the Republican convention), Bush has decided that the winning solution for Iraq is to make it the next guy's problem, and now Wall Street is finding that in fact piles of paper with crayon writing saying "I OWEZ YOU MONIES FOR HOUSES, FOR REALS" are in fact not worth all that much. Unfortunately, they have in fact told the world that these piles of paper (dubbed by Atrios and others as "Big Shitpile") are in fact worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Does it matter? Well, the initial victims will be coke dealers, people who sell Porsches and high-price hookers, but unfortunately the geniuses behind this stand a good chance of fucking up the real economy in a huge way for everyone else, too.
So you'd think the election debate would be about the very real, very bad place the US is in today. You might think that, if you were a cocker spaniel who'd been struck on the head as a puppy. Instead, we get the spectacle of the Republicans attempting to assert that when Obama used the common phrase "lipstick on a pig", he was making a sexist statement. This from the party who thinks the height of subtle political satire are a set of Hillary Clinton nutcrackers.
So yeah, there's some politics for you.
In other news, should I bother trying to read Infinite Jest? I've heard mixed reports, from "awful" to "really good, but one hell of a slog". Or is there other DFW I should start with instead?
NSW politics is a sick joke. The ALP are a pack of corrupt assholes - the right wing faction regard the premiership as their personal plaything, and bedamned with anyone or anything that gets in their way. We had the ridiculous recent attempt by not-at-all-lamented ex-Premier Iemma and ex-Treasurer Costa (the latter one of the hugest douchesacks seen in Australian politics this decade) to ram through a power privatisation bill so that they'd get a pile of cash to buy the next election. The only people in favour of this were the investment banks who'd make a killing from it, and the Australian. Even the dullards that make up the NSW ALP parliamentary party hated it. It went down to well-deserved defeat, setting up the usual response of a party that needs to reassess their entire direction - campaigns of vicious media leaking to undermine each other. Eventually the wildlife in the playpen that is the state party turned on each other and gave the leadership to some hopeless unknown, so he can lead them to glorious, crushing defeat at the next election.
And on the other side, oh christ. The NSW Liberals are the scariest pack of nuts seen outside a Halloween pack of "Scary Horrible Cashews For Children". Far right, extreme social
It's hard to say which of the two major parties in NSW is more despicable. And depressingly, one of them will win the next election.
Federally, we have Kevin
The Federal Libs are at least giving me vague amusement with their leadership shenanigans. And my god, you have no idea how hard it is to hold both the word "leadership" and a mental image of Brendan Nelson in your head at the same time. There's not one person in the federal party that is worth a damn - as far as the leadership challenge goes, the best you can say about it is that it was a fantastic effort by Nelson to fuck up the release party for Costello's book. I wonder if he left him an SMS saying "Try to get media now, you backstabbing fuck".
Let's move to the big one, the US. This is turning into a monstrous clusterfuck of an election. McCain, not content with selecting someone so depressingly unqualified that conservative writer Andrew Sullivan has started referring to the choice as "farcical", has now decided the key to winning is to lie, and lie huge. Last week's spectacular was to take a vote on age-appropriate sex education for children (focussing particularly on how to avoid sexual abuse) and turn it into an ad saying "The scary black man wants to teach sex ed to kindergartners!", complete with a photo of a leering Obama. Even the complacent US media has noticed that, well, the Republicans are lying a lot (and if you've ever followed US politics, you know how resistant the media is there to actually ever making a judgement call on anything). The response from the Republicans has been pretty much "bite me, we're going to keep doing it". And so far, the Democrats response, as is traditional for the Dems, is to act like a pack of tiny children and whine a lot.
And in the meantime, Afghanistan is going to hell (footnote: Afghanistan - a word not mentioned once in all the speeches at the Republican convention), Bush has decided that the winning solution for Iraq is to make it the next guy's problem, and now Wall Street is finding that in fact piles of paper with crayon writing saying "I OWEZ YOU MONIES FOR HOUSES, FOR REALS" are in fact not worth all that much. Unfortunately, they have in fact told the world that these piles of paper (dubbed by Atrios and others as "Big Shitpile") are in fact worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Does it matter? Well, the initial victims will be coke dealers, people who sell Porsches and high-price hookers, but unfortunately the geniuses behind this stand a good chance of fucking up the real economy in a huge way for everyone else, too.
So you'd think the election debate would be about the very real, very bad place the US is in today. You might think that, if you were a cocker spaniel who'd been struck on the head as a puppy. Instead, we get the spectacle of the Republicans attempting to assert that when Obama used the common phrase "lipstick on a pig", he was making a sexist statement. This from the party who thinks the height of subtle political satire are a set of Hillary Clinton nutcrackers.
So yeah, there's some politics for you.
In other news, should I bother trying to read Infinite Jest? I've heard mixed reports, from "awful" to "really good, but one hell of a slog". Or is there other DFW I should start with instead?
