☮ is my Sopwith Camel

You may not have noticed...

2010-06-30T18:09:00.003+10:00

...but we have a woman PM. Interesting. But frankly, it doesn't interest me a whole lot. Namely, the way Gillard became PM. I never liked Rudd, but from the ALP's perspective, he was a savior. John Howard was seeming indestructible. He took on the ALP right in the 98 and 01 election against Beazley, and when Labor put on a comparative lefty, Latham, Howard didn't just win-he even took the holy grail of mandates, control of the Senate. The concept of Rudd becoming PM in the next few years would be as ludicrous as saying that Obama would be the next President back in 04. However, with some luck, Rudd pulled it off and put Labor back in power after 11 years in the wilderness.

However, all it took was a few bad opinion polls to turn the factional bosses against their savior, ditching him with an obvious lack of loyalty and replacing him with a fresh face. I understand Julia really didn't have a choice; it was going to happen anyway. My problem isn't with her; it's with the ALP culture of winning the next election at all costs. I doubt Labor would be terribly troubled by the concept of Abbott winning. He would be unlikely to last more than a term, and would probably scare so many centrist voters, it would be the 13 year golden age of Hawke/Keating all over again. It's clear the ALP doesn't mind the far-right too much; the right faction, after all, was willing to preference fundie Steve Fielding over what should be Labor's coalition friends, the Greens.

All in all, it's the ALP culture that I dislike the most. The Liberal Party may be comprised of the big business/industry's bitches and lunatic theocrats, but it's clear there's more flexibility toeing the party line and voting with your conscience. There's a good reason why the LPA factions get more news coverage than the ALP factions; LPA factions are allowed to freely express their thoughts. As we've seen with Garrett, there is no such freedom within Labor. It's toe the party line all the way.

I was quite pessimistic about the amount of 'change' a supposed member of the ALP's left faction would bring about as well. Gillard had continued Howard's policies of a two-tiered education system, wherein the children of the wealthy received a better education than the children of the poor. This pessimism was vindicated today, when Gillard confirmed that she would continue the ludicrous and discriminatory policies of preventing gays from marrying.

Once again, the Greens have proven to be the only party progressives should vote for.

Steve Fielding's descent into madness

2010-06-17T10:45:00.010+10:00

I think the stress of the upcoming federal election has finally broken Mr. 1.9%'s tenuous grip on reality. Faced with the undeniable facts that he will be booted out of an electorate he never deserved in the first place, Steve has been driven, as the Joker would say, stark slavering mad. That's the only reason I can come up with for his increasingly erratic press releases and speeches.

Firstly, his attack on the Greens' drug policies:

Family First Leader Senator Steve Fielding says the Greens are up to their old tricks with their plan to stick heroin injecting rooms on street corners across the country.

Senator Fielding’s comments come after it was revealed that the Greens will continue their soft stance on drugs ahead of this year federal election.

“As a community we should be getting tougher on drugs not softer,” Senator Fielding said.

Because the war on drugs has worked out so well for the US and Mexico. But here's the gold:

Senator Fielding said the policy of introducing heroin injecting rooms would only support the supply of illegal drugs and line the pockets of dealers. “Melbourne has already had one drug war too many, just imagine the increase in demand for these illegal narcotics if the Greens were able to get their way,” Senator Fielding said.

To quote Robot Chicken: Seriously dude, what the fuck. The whole point of decriminalisation is to negate a drug war and take the criminal element out of drug use, the freakin' opposite of what Steve claims will happen. Steve isn't just for supporting a failed drug policy, he simply doesn't have a clue of the issues he's talking about. Which, frankly, is unsurprising as Sarah Palin being a clueless liar (maybe they should bunk together sometime).

And having finished that sideshow, it's on to the main attraction:

Parental leave open to abortion rorts: Fielding

Only a true fundie could link a parental scheme to the dreaded surgical procedure. Long rant cut short, the Fluke is adamant that if the Bill is passed, welfare queens all over Australia will be getting pregnant just so that they can have an abortion at 20 weeks and collect the parental payment. Even Andrew 'Worm tongue' Bolt is saying "Dude...that's just low."

Steve has also written an opinion piece for the Punch. The entire piece reads like grade 6 material. Scattered with childish phrases like "mums who slog their guts out all day", the writing doesn't even achieve basic logical sense (even Piers 'Scattergun' Akerman can convey his messages). The notion is that the Bill will treat prisoners better than stay-at-home parents, which is bizarre as the point of the Bill is to treat them equally. The Fluke writes that these parents "don't receive a dime", a problem which the Bill Steve is lambasting is designed to rectify. Like I said, no logical sense.

Finally, to add insult to desperation, he writes " even prisoners and prostitutes are valued more highly than stay-at-home parents" which ignores the truly horrifying thought that sex workers may be entirely normal people with children themselves.

After this election, the Senate just won't be the same.

Kevin Rudd: stuck between a rock and a hard place

2010-06-13T16:58:00.002+10:00

Life isn't all to good for Kevin at the moment. Trying to implement his RSPT is proving more difficult than imagined, as the mining industry and its bitch, the Liberal Party, are doing their best as Rudd destroying the 'golden goose.' I can't imagine for the life of me why so many people are opposing the tax. I can understand why the mining magnates are furious, as they will probably be able to buy one less luxury yacht because of it. But asides from them, everybody stands to gain from the tax. However, smears are notoriously effective, and Rudd stands to lose several seats in WA because of the intense opposition there. Whether this will be enough to give us an Abbot Administration (**shudder**) is to be seen.

However, running parallel to this is a growing narrative about Rudd. He had been elected on a plank of action on climate change, and his collapse on the issue and deferment of it to 2013 has pushed many Kevin07ists to the Greens, which can now legitimately claim to be the only party that's willing to take action. This policy backflip-after Rudd had called it "the greatest moral challenge of our time"-created the appearance of a weak leader. A guy who wanted to make change, but was too spineless to push for it. If Rudd were to collapse on the RSPT, the narrative would be complete, and he would become almost as untrustworthy as Howard.

If Rudd were to junk the tax, the only possible way he could salvage his reputation would be to immediately claim to plan on implementing a new carbon tax in 2011, and state his to negotiate with the Greens on this issue. Doing so might reestablish his green cred, and signal a push to a more progressive Australia, which would reduce the primary Green vote. Unfortunately, Rudd is a firm right-winger, and the idea of negotiating with the Greens to him probably sounds worse than negotiating with Abbott (there's a reason why Labor dedicates so much time to hating them). Thus, Rudd is stuck: continue with his RSPT to the (very) bitter end, or dump it to push for the green vote. Neither is attractive.

Let's see if we can lower our international standing even further!

2010-06-08T13:27:00.003+10:00

That seems to be Israel's current thought process. After the colossal fuckup that was an attempt to flex her muscles, the bastion of Arabian democracy is now soiling her image on the domestic front.

ISRAELI MP Haneen Zoabi faces being stripped of her citizenship for joining last week's aid flotilla that ended in a bloody showdown with Israeli commandos.

The move to strip Ms Zoabi of her citizenship is being driven by Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who has accused the Palestinian Knesset member of participating in an act of treason.
...
''In recent days,'' Mr Yishai wrote, ''Israel's citizens have witnessed how an Israeli member of parliament, Haneen Zoabi, headed a group of terrorists who aimed to hurt Israel Defence Forces soldiers, under the protection of her parliamentary immunity.

''This is a premeditated act of treason and there is documented proof of this,'' he wrote.
...

Last night, Israeli MPs were set to begin debating a law that would allow an MP to be removed from parliament ''if he or she acts in support of an enemy nation or terrorist group engaged in armed struggle against Israel, participates in incitement to racism and rejects the existence of Israel as a democratic Jewish state''.

To recap: to oppose Israel's brutal, Punisher-esque, vigilante style attacks on activists is to warrant being stripped of citizenship and is SIDING WITH THE TERR'ISTS. With logic like that, why doesn't Ben just dissolve parliament for the national crime of holding terr'ist sympathisers? It's hardly that much more of a step to a dictatorship.

In which I agree with Andrew 'Broken clock' Bolt

2010-06-07T11:33:00.000+10:00

Yes, it does, on rare occasions, happen. It certainly doesn't excuse the filth he's written, but Andy does sometimes write worthy stuff.

Case in point:

Australian doctors are considering introducing a controversial form of genital mutilation carried out on baby girls.
The Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) says the practice of "ritual nicks" could meet the cultural needs of some women and potentially save some people from drastic surgery.

The practice is said to be common among some African, Asian and Middle Eastern communities but has been known to leave some young girls scarred for life when not carried out in proper clinical facilities.

Andrew writes:

Will police will instruct husbands on the “safe” beating of wives to avoid worse damage?

What’s at stake here is not just the abhorrent mutilation of girls, but an abhorrent presumption that these wicked things need to have their sexual appetites permanently and sugically controlled and drastically reduced. It’s that presumption that also suggests we will surrender our principles without actually convincing many to surrender their practices. I suspect the reality of the mutilation is desired more than the mere ritual.

His anti-multicultural rant notwithstanding, I agree entirely. If human rights and cultural views clash, there is no debate. Misogyny isn't acceptable in any way, shape or form, especially a form which has no use but to control a girl's sexuality. And to anybody who thinks there's a double standard between male circumcision and female genital mutilation, the difference is obvious: circumcision doesn't inhibit a boy's sexual pleasure. Genital mutilation does. The whole point is to prevent girls and women from enjoying sex.

Equally, I highly recommend this.

Hiatus 2: revenge of the work overload

2010-05-31T13:40:00.002+10:00

My last post was three weeks ago. That's OK, because it featured wonderful/tasty pictures of Daniel Craig. To recap: I've finished two presentations, and hand in an essay on flight strategies tomorrow. After that, I may be able to do some more regular posts.

T to the A to the P: 10th Anniversary Special!

2010-05-02T10:49:00.020+10:00

It's time to celebrate. This post marks the 10 post I've done on various dazzlingly attractive people. I won't bother linking to the previous folks, because a) I'm lazy and b) it's cool to see other sex-related posts. Anyway, I thought that for the special ed. I'd go back to where this topic started.

And for General "Kiss that whole chest from top to bottom. And then everywhere else" Bron:

But pathetic mud-slinging is all we have!

2010-04-26T15:18:00.003+10:00

Jebus. After the Greens-Liberal deal, the tireless ‘legalisedrugslegalisedrugslegalisedrugs’ tirade that gets rolled out every election, and the simple fact that there is no actual reason why lefties should keep voting Labor, those bloody hippies should’ve gotten the point; that we are going to keep smearing them with every ridiculous fictional attack until the end of time itself.

But no. Instead, that jackass Richard Di Natale is trying to get all parties to sign pledges not to smear each other! Did you hear him? “There’s been a trend, I think, over a number of years for increasingly deceptive and misleading conduct in election campaigns…it’s really quite easy of all political persuasions to lie, to deceive and to make false allegations.” Get stuffed, you communist.

Look Richie, haven’t you seen the headlines on the Spencer Street Soviet? The Myki fiasco? The cronyism, secrecy and corruption that’s continually leaking out? The millions wasted on the North-South pipeline and the comically expensive desal plant? The urban sprawl where we’ve done nothing to support public transport? Do you actually think most voters would still support Vic Labor after 10 years of increasing incompetence?

Of bloody course not. Especially when we are still pushing further to the right to take Liberal seats, and our own seats are at risk of being taken by you dope smokers. There’s no way we’re not going to hit you with everything we have and hope that the electorate is dumb enough to buy it (which is likely, given that they have been buying it for the past few elections in other states).

Or, as I put so well, “The November election will be decided on the issues…we will be campaigning honestly on the issues and keeping other parties accountable for their alternative election promises.” In other words, sending out leaflets claiming that voting Greens will result in the destruction of civilisation itself. Hey, these idiots bought those all other smears, why would they see through this one?

Why Feministing is teh awesome.

2010-04-09T17:03:00.002+10:00

Because sometimes, other people say what you think in ways better than you could ever imagine.

Slut. What a word. It simultaneously describes and dominates, classifies and corrodes its subject. Its most basic use is to describe someone who is sexually promiscuous, but it has come to entail so much more these days--worthlessness, dirtiness, even the very state of being a woman.

Who is it used by? It's used by men to justify their insecurity about the power they see in women's sexuality. It's used by women to establish their own superiority over other women. It's used by rich people to hold onto and exercise their privilege. It's used by poor people to grasp at having value in a society that often makes them feel invisible. In other words, it's used by people with an agenda. A self-serving agenda. You know, that thing they're accusing you of having by being such a slutty slut? In the real world, the "dirtiest", "easiest" thing anyone can do is degrade another person by feeding into the social and cultural oppression that already exists against them.

So their intentions aren't exactly "pure", but...are they right? Let me set the record straight, right here, right now, for good: People who call other people "sluts" are always, inherently, insufferably wrong. No matter the sexual history of the person they are addressing. Because people who buy into the concept of a slut- that someone who has more sex is worse than someone who has less sex- are fundamentally, logically, morally, spiritually erroneous. Having sex doesn't make you a bad person. Having sex doesn't make you a bad person. Having sex doesn't make you a bad person. (Yes, I'm going for a Good Will Hunting moment here!) Having sex doesn't make you anything other than a person who has sex. The end. I promise!

In reality, purity is a myth. You are not weaker, or stupider, or less important, for each time you choose to have sex with someone. That's not to say there aren't universal social truths about good and bad behavior that you should be accountable to- there are. But these "positives" and "negatives" don't correspond with numbers of sexual partners- that would be ridiculous and meaningless. They revolve around things like kindness, intelligence, compassion, and wellness. These things matter inside and outside the bedroom. Having sex does not define who you are or what you do in any arena other than your sex life! There is no simple dichotomy where more sex equals bad and less sex equals good. There is only you. Your state of mind, your experiences, your health and well being, your contribution to this world. It is a more complicated, more nuanced, more evolved system of valuing people. Which should tell you right there it is probably right.

But that voice. That voice inside and outside your head is saying "I know what you're saying is right, but deep down inside I don't believe you. Why would the whole world keep telling me I'm worth less because of my sexual history if it weren't even a little bit true?

That is a good question. Why do people call other people sluts? In my experience, I have found that it is because they are scared. They are scared that they won't be able to find a partner that they love who will love them back, and they would like to be able to have someone else to shoulder that terrifying responsibility. They are scared of their own sexual desires, and what those desires say about their true selves. They are scared of living a life based on a value system that will be proven by time to be false, cruel, and unjust, so they work even harder and more ferociously to justify and reinforce it, to prove to themselves that they, their parents, their grandparents, are on the right side of history (they are not). They are scared of women who are free, because it reminds them of the ways that they themselves are not. And of course, they are scared of their own mortality, and so they grasp at anything that could guarantee them immunity, moral superiority, or holy benevolence in the face of the ultimate terror- death.

This fear drives them to great extremes. Fear is powerful, and many people's lives are completely dominated by it. Women, in particular, are an easy target for people who are very scared, because there are already social checks in place to make women less threatening, less powerful, less scary. So they latch onto this, and contribute to it, and perpetuate it. They actively degrade women. They take satisfaction from putting them in their place, and from taking away their power. They remind them over and over that their bodies, their sexuality, their autonomy, their choices, and their power, are not their own. They exert control- over their own lives, and over the behavior of others, as well as they know how- by perpetuating fear and pain.

I have been called a slut many times in my life, along with many women, but never by someone who I suspected was genuinely interested in my well being, nor by anyone who was very brave, or who loved themselves very much.

Ok, you are saying, even if I am convinced of this myself, it still hurts to operate in a world in which not everyone is on the same page as this. Being viewed as a slut by others still hurts, and still has real negative ramifications for me in this world. How can one find comfort, truth, and transcendence in such an unjust system?

Love yourself, love others, find feminism. In that order!

Who's REALLY got those 'special rights'?

2010-03-29T10:44:00.009+11:00

A common argument against gay rights is that it amounts to 'special rights.' That is, if G-BITs have the same rights as their straight counterparts, they will in fact end up with more rights-hence 'special rights.' The argument goes roughly that gays already have equal rights-the right to marry a person of the opposite sex, the right to serve in the military, the right to a job, etc. And if anti-discrimination and same-sex marriage legislations are passed, this amounts to extra rights.

This argument is wrong for one reason, and entirely hypocritical for another reason. To begin with; the wrong argument. The conservative argument is wrong because it assumes that gays will somehow have more rights than straights. For example, a common line of attack is that anti-discrimination laws are 'special rights' because they protect gays from straight persecution, but not the other way round. This is, to put bluntly, bullshit. If a straight person were to be fired because of their sexual orientation (a borderline non-existent example, but bare with me), under current legislation they would simply have to suck it up. With proper anti-discrimination laws, however, this hypothetical straight person would not be allowed to be fired. Pro G-BIT laws don't give anybody 'special rights'-they enhance the rights of everybody. It's just that some people will benefit from anti-discrimination laws more than others.

The coup de grace, however, is the inherent hypocrisy of 'special rights.' Religious organisations claim that gays will be receiving 'special rights' when it is in fact those same religious organisations that possess rights that nobody else has.

From The Age:

ATTORNEY-GENERAL Rob Hulls will today announce a controversial compromise struck with the state's religious groups that will allow them to continue to discriminate against gays and lesbians, single mothers and people who hold different spiritual beliefs.

In a move that has delighted religious groups but angered gay activists and discrimination experts, Mr Hulls will protect the right of hundreds of church-run organisations - including schools, hospitals and welfare services - to refuse to employ or provide services to people who they believe may undermine their beliefs.

Quick translation: if you are religious, you are endowed with rights not granted to others. Nobody has the right to discriminate based on a person's personal beliefs-except for religious organisations. The same religious groups that rail against some people possessing 'special rights' (despite, as shown above, to be a lie) are the ones to seek special rights for themselves.

It is entirely correct to say that some people have more rights than others. True to form, those with special rights are those who have the most political power.

Lindsey Tanner throws a hissy fit because our political system isn't locked between two major parties like in the US

2010-03-25T17:24:00.005+11:00

Resident ALP whiner Tanner doesn't like the Greens. Last election, he ran a few Fieldingesque home movies attacking the Greens and this election, apparently stripped of his video playthings, has been forced to go for a more low-budget response: the opinion page.

Green voters typically either have or are getting a tertiary education. Support is concentrated among tertiary disciplines focused on more than making money. Their viewpoint is increasingly at odds with that of Labor voters who aren't tertiary educated. On issues like asylum seekers, forests and civil liberties, differences can be stark. The Greens seek to exploit them.

No, the Greens aren't 'exploiting' any factions. We're just representing environmentalism and human rights. By adopting Howard's policies, the ALP has abandoned its left faction. That more lefties and not just environmentalists are supporting the Greens is your doing, not ours.

Whatever Labor does, it is never good enough for the Greens. Even when we're repealing WorkChoices, apologising to indigenous Australians, or tackling climate change, they attack Labor for their own cynical purposes. If the Greens had voted with Labor, the Senate would have passed the climate change legislation.

No, that wouldn't have happened at all. You're conveniently forgetting Steve "Thank for the ALP Right is so cynical in its preferences" Fielding. The guy who your party got elected in 2004, and has adopted the Abbott policy of flat out denialism. Even if the Greens had supported your total sellout of a policy, which had been so watered down by working with Turnbull it was in every way worse than useless, the bill would've never gotten past Fielding. That you couldn't pass it is your doing, not ours.

We now have no legislation at all. The Greens' political posturing took precedence over action. Their policy would have no chance of passing the Senate, even if Labor supported it.

Of course not. We don't yet have the balance of power. This election will (hopefully) change that. And stop with this 'obstructionist' meme you're running. The Greens didn't support it because the bill would've locked in failure. Australia would have unable to reduce its emissions by any more than a pitiful amount. The Greens were right in opposing it, and were supported by the overwhelming majority of greens.

The Greens are not some benign group loosely allied with Labor. They're not a middle-ground party. They're not idealistic activists changing the world. They're just another political party, no less cynical or manipulative than the others.

No, we are less manipulative and cynical. That's seen every election. The ALP routinely lies about, and demonises the Greens in the constant hope that throwing every smear it has will keep its dwindling progressive supporters on board. The Greens advocate three simple things: public services, civil rights and liberties, and protecting the environment. Those three objectives are far less extreme than you'd like to think.

It might seem like a good idea to support those who yell the loudest, but it's unlikely to produce good outcomes. Labor is the only worthwhile option for achieving progressive change through parliamentary politics. It might be a bit piecemeal and gradual, but it beats the hell out of doing nothing.

No, the ALP doesn't represent "progressive change." It abandoned progressive values when it sought to out-Howard Howard. The ALP support the internet filter, the draconian anti-terror laws, an inhumane refugee policy, tax cuts over public services, the forestry industry over forests, keeping gays from expressing their love, and I would imagine a whole host of other anti-progressive policies. Because Labor is a 'big tent' party, as a progressive voter I have no idea if you will represent my left-libertarian views in parliament (actually, I do have an idea. It's a big fat 'no, you'll keep treating me as a chump while remaining a fundamentally rightwing party'). But when I vote for the Greens, I actually know what I'm voting for. I know that they will represent my views in parliament (not precisely, of course, but they're by far the closest to my beliefs).

If you're so afraid of the Greens taking your precious votes because people are beginning to realise that the Greens actually represent the mainstream left, then you can start by actively trying to represent the mainstream left yourself. You could start by lobbying the ALP to legalise same-sex marriage. Then, you could adopt Latham's Tasmanian forestry policies and support treated pine plantations rather than logging and wood-chipping native forests.

Above all else, if you want lefties to keep voting for you, than you have to actually represent them in parliament. Instead, you've just taken the easy route-pushing further to the right, whilst assuming lefties are too brain dead to recognise just how Liberal you've become. But this isn't America. Australia actually has a proper, representative democracy where minority views can be expressed. I know just how much you hate that.

Old rice and monkey nuts*, religion and atheism.

2010-03-18T13:08:00.008+11:00

The latest from Andrew "Manlier than Teddy" Bolt:

Another example of how atheists seem to be walking, ranting evidence of the need for Christianity’s civilising influence.

His evidence?
That's it. Catherine used a naughty word, which makes her "uncivilised." I don't see how Christianity is a necessarily 'civilising' influence: christianity has been a justification for countless atrocities-from the Inquisition, the KKK, the American Taliban, and just about every abortion bombing in the history of the US.

However, ol' Rusty isn't finished yet. For his next column:

...if the Christian God really is dead, then there’s not much to stop people here from being barbarians.

I’d have hoped that the Atheists Convention’s speakers would have reassured me not just by fine words but finer example that a godless society will nevertheless be a good one.

How about the obvious: that despite the US being one of the most outspokenly Christian countries (certainly in the Western world), on every parameter it fails in its Christian teachings? The US has an infant mortality rate worse than Cuba. It's the only developed country without universal health care. It's education is worse than most other developed countries.

Compare this with the Scandinavian countries, all of which are amongst the least religious countries of the world. Sweden and Norway are among the best in preventing infant mortality. They are ahead in literacy. They have among the best public services while in comparison, while the US's infrastructure is on the verge of collapse.

I'm not saying that there's an inverse causation between religion and the of a country (ie, that the more religious a country is, the more it fails on actually meeting its religious convictions in protecting its citizens). What I'm saying is that religion is irrelevant to morality in services. A country can be highly religious and deliver health-care that would shame the Scandinavia countries. It may be entirely atheistic and be reminiscent of Zimbabwe. Either way the concept that Christianity is somehow 'civilising' by itself is nothing short of crock.

To go even further, there is evidence of non-human moral behaviour; that the ideas of justice and ethics aren't exclusive to humanity. This, more than anything else, would put to rest the notion that atheists are inherently less moral than theists.

I have no idea what Bolt's religious convictions are. Given how he so intensely defends Christianity, I'm inclined to believe that he has some sort of spiritual belief. Perhaps he doesn't, I don't care. However, before he starts with the classic 'if we become atheists we won't have any skydaddy to tell us what's right and wrong so we'll all go back to the caves and smash each others' heads in with clubs and crowbars' meme, he may want to see how the smear holds up to reality.

*Hattip to the original Pure Poison.

Now that's embarrasing.

2010-03-11T09:30:00.005+11:00

Either that, or it shows just how much of a mercenary Rupert Murdoch really is. From the Australian:

Reminds me distinctly of the shenanigans between Rupert and Andrew "If Sarah Palin can get a gig at Fox News, why can't I?" Bolt.

Songs for a Sunday

2010-03-07T09:49:00.002+11:00

Because everybody else is doing it, because I'm lazy, and because there is almost no new blogging material. Therefore, I present: Michael Jackson: The Orchestra!

I couldn't put it any better myself

2010-02-25T13:14:00.003+11:00

So I won't. From Chris Middendorp and Kenneth Davidson:

Without taxation, life would be less liveable

It was that protean genius Albert Einstein who said that the hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax. We can only speculate that with the great man cogitating on whether or not God was playing dice with the universe, he was too preoccupied to see how the revenue collected by government actually made life here on earth bearable.

If you bother to reflect on the role that taxation plays in a democratic state, it's almost impossible not to conclude that it is what makes a civil society achievable. Not just by funding a police force, a fire brigade or a defence force. Not just by paying for roads, public transport, gardens and parks. Not just by building hospitals, libraries, schools and sewerage systems. But by funding practically everything that makes it possible for human beings to flourish.

All this raises the question: why is the paying of income tax so reviled? How is it that elections are often won or lost over such a beneficial concept? Taxation is a synonym for an unpleasant obligation.

Many on the political right would go even further and view taxation as virtual government theft of an individual's hard-earned cash. The truth about taxation is rarely stated. It is a privilege and nothing less than our opportunity to make a positive contribution to the wellbeing of our nation.

Nevertheless, the politician who does not comprehend the public's general antipathy towards taxation is doomed. In 1993, when Liberal opposition leader John Hewson was unable to explain his new tax ideas during a TV interview, he generated widespread fear and lost the "unlosable" election. In the US, when George Bush snr failed to deliver on his triumphant neo-liberal promise "read my lips, no new taxes", he condemned himself to being a one-term president.

In recent times, the Liberal leader, Tony Abbott, has achieved some traction by evoking the great taxation demon. In seeking to discredit Labor's climate change initiatives, Abbott endlessly repeated the childish mantra that the policies were nothing but a "great big new tax". He knows that pandering to our fear of taxes is a better strategy than actually engaging in a debate about policy content.

Our fear and loathing of taxation has generated a vigorous culture of tax evasion in Australia. Through trust rorts alone, it is estimated that our community is robbed of about $1 billion a year by companies and wealthy people who conceal their true taxable income.

I'm advised by senior academics who specialise in taxation that there have been few, if any, studies into the full extent of tax evasion in Australia. In an era when research is conducted into navel lint, this omission seems staggering.

It is telling that the Australian Taxation Office is spending more than $774 million over four years to help identify what it calls "gaps in compliance".

Its goal is to energetically prosecute those who would avoid their tax responsibilities, thereby raising an astonishing $6 billion. What unfathomable amount, you wonder, will still slip through the Tax Office's lavishly funded dragnet?

In the meantime, we can read almost daily in the media how there isn't enough revenue to fund vital community programs. Treasury figures estimate that in four decades Australia will require $40 billion more in revenue just to fund age pensions and maintain aged care services.

The recently completed and much awaited report into tax by Ken Henry will be giving Treasurer Wayne Swan a lot to think about and will hopefully generate fresh strategies to capture the significantly increased revenue we require.

You will often hear conservatives posit how Australia is a high-taxing nation, but the truth is we are among the lowest taxers of the OECD nations. There are countries such as Sweden, for instance, that understand that a full public purse equates to a higher quality of life.

While it is true that there are many possible debates about how a tax system should be structured in terms of efficiency and fairness, what isn't debatable is that tax evasion is stealing from the community.

Many of us are clearly infuriated by the thought that people we know might be shirking their fiscal responsibilities, and this is reflected in the year's 56,000 phone tip-offs to the tax evasion report line.

Contrast this with the National Security Hotline, where reports of suspicious behaviour and potential terrorism are made. Even during the paranoid days of 2005, following the second Bali bombing and the London attacks, it only managed to peak at about 30,000 calls.

When politicians promise tax cuts we should be suspicious, not euphoric. A promise like that should make us contemplate what the community will be going without. By not paying tax, we will all pay in the end.

Australia faces some significant hardships ahead. Depleted resources for childcare, aged care, mental health support, housing, schools and hospitals are not just boring statistics. These inadequacies will destroy lives.

It is clear that we need to improve the efficiency of our tax system if we are going to continue to cherish the proposition that Australia is the lucky country. We need to grow up and acknowledge that paying income tax is not a burden; it ought to be our proud contribution.

Private health? It's enough to make you sick

There is not much point in starving the health system of funding to minimise taxes if it shifts the burden from citizens as taxpayers by creating an even bigger burden for them as consumers.

The debate is seldom framed in this way because the recently released 2010 intergenerational report, the Rudd government's first, is set up to ask only about budgetary costs of health, not the total cost.

I suspect that it was deliberately set up this way by the Howard government, which initiated the process, to avoid questions that involve confronting powerful vested interests, especially the private health insurance industry.

This industry has administrative costs that impose an unnecessary 10 per cent tax on premiums because its overheads are higher than Medicare's overheads. It also enjoys a $3 billion subsidy - dwarfing that given to any other industry - yet its major purpose is to give its customers the chance to jump the queue for elective surgery while allowing providers to over-service and over-charge their patients.

A sensible report would take into account all the costs of medical services and whether they were delivered efficiently and fairly.

The provision of medical services is a classic area of market failure. Fear of ill health reinforces the tendency of those who can afford to over-insure to jump the elective surgery queue.

Private health insurance subsidies encourage specialists who are otherwise available to public hospitals to shift to the higher paying, less stressful, private system. They undermine the idea that access to health services should be based on need rather than income. (Even so, it is still true that if you are really sick or have a medical emergency, the probability is you will end up in a public hospital.)

Cost shifting from the budget to individuals and stampeding them into private insurance - whose prime motive is profit rather than bearing down on health costs - is a recipe for a US health system - indisputably the developed world's least efficient. This is why the US spends 17 per cent of its gross domestic product on health, while Canada and Australia spend 10 to 11 per cent and have better health outcomes in terms of longevity, infant mortality and morbidity than the US.

The bloated incomes of US providers have allowed the industry to capture enough Republicans, and a minority of Democrats, in the Congress who will lie and filibuster for as long as it takes to prevent any diminution of the health industry's ability to gouge its customers and lock some 40 million Americans out of access to reasonable healthcare. Australia's political health vandals haven't been nearly so successful.

Medicare remains popular, despite the best efforts of the Howard government to wreck it by providing a massive subsidy to private health insurance; imposing a tax surcharge on higher income groups who sensibly chose to self-insure by putting aside savings to meet the cost of private elective surgery; and by attempting to push as many people as possible into private insurance with a none-too-subtle threat to run down public hospitals.

The Coalition is frustrating the government in its attempts to claw back some of the $3 billion a year subsidy to private insurers. To add a farcical touch, shadow treasurer Joe Hockey said last week that, in government, he would sell Medibank Private.

Hello? Medibank Private is the biggest private health insurer because it is public. Hockey said it could be worth $3.5 to $4.5 billion, based on its revenue. This may be why the Coalition is obstructing means testing the $3 billion health insurance rebate - to maximise the sale price.

Don't laugh. The first thing the Kennett government did in Victoria was to boost electricity prices by 10 per cent to fatten up the sale price of the State Electricity Commission.

Meanwhile, the government is spinning the intergenerational report to show the burden that an ageing population will impose on future budgets, using it to justify a continued high level of immigration to offset the ageing population.

It won't achieve this, but continued high population growth based largely on immigration means that Australia's unconditional promise of a 5 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 translates into a 20 per cent cut in per capita terms.

This is an impossible dream, unless greenhouse gas reduction policies are put ''front and centre'' in election debates and the winner has a mandate to undertake real climate abatement policies.

Like its predecessor, the Rudd government is obsessed with the burden an ageing population will put on the budget.

It is a red herring. We will be richer and healthier in the future. Healthier people want to work longer. The bulk of spending on hospital costs occurs in the last two years of life, irrespective of whether average life expectancy is 80 or 84 and medical technology is likely to reduce health costs in the future.

Did you know there was more than one Fundies First Senator?

2010-02-15T12:53:00.011+11:00

I didn't-probably because ol' Steve spends his every waking moment thinking of news ways to gain attention/make a total arse of himself.

The FF doesn't just have coverage on the federal level; there are two senators in the South Australia and one on the NSW Legislative Council. The NSW guy is the most interesting, as he was in the Christian Theocratic Party before a hilarious fallout with Fred Nile, and then moving the the slightly-less-overtly-bigoted-yet-still-ironically-named Family First.

True to form, if anybody told him that there were gays in families, his head would explode.

“Most of the people promoting same sex adoption speak about the right of gay and lesbian couples to have a child to satisfy their own instinct for parenting. Our point is totally different. The concern of Family First is for the right of a child to have the role modelling and contributions that are given throughout a child’s life by a mother and a father.”

Reality notwithstanding, of course.

And then there's his painfully ironic press release titled 'The damaging consequences of bullying into adult life' despite his clear endorsement of homophobia. There's also the mandatory 'fertilised cells are people too!' posts, and the "EXTREME GREENS EXTREME GREENS EXTREME GREENS!!1!!"

In SA, the work experience kid has been assigned to graphic design and layout, while Pastor Evans is just as reality-immune as Moyes. The fundie roots are exposed in this funderful newsletter:

On Family First’s insistence, we no longer have ‘de facto’ marriages in South Australia – with all non marriage relationships being placed in a lower category called ‘domestic partnerships’. Further, the bill was worded in such a way as to place an obstacle in the path of gay adoptions and artificial insemination (which are heavily promoted by the Australian Greens and are the gay lobby’s stated next objective).

The Greens: more pro-family than FF, despite the former beginning as a single-issue environmental party and the latter beginning as a 'pro-family' party. And finally, there's a Palinesque dig at at Senator's Hanson-Young's age:

Tony Bates is a senior executive with Adelaide’s G.M. Holden operations. Tony's main competition in the fight to gain a South Australian Senate seat for FAMILY FIRST will be the Australian Democrats' "human shield" Ruth Russell, and SA Greens' 25-year old law student Sarah Hanson-Young.

And yet this 25 year old beat your sorry butt and and took the seat.

Well, thankfully, that's it. Steve is hellbound this year, stripping Fundies First of its most prominent Senator. This will significantly reduce the FF's national presence and hopefully bring them to where they belong; a minor, fringe party, of which most people would be embarrassed to admit their support for.

Just to show that this blog is still technically active.

2010-02-04T10:15:00.004+11:00

The Catholic Encyclopedia was opposed to women's suffrage. Basically, just par the course for the Vatican.

Tony Abbott for President (of Uganda)!

2010-01-25T20:02:00.007+11:00

Because he'd fit right in.
Tony Abbott urges women to save their virginity for marriage and reveals mixed feelings about contraception in a new interview.
I could easily do a massive speal on the sheer misogyny and ludicrousness of these beliefs-that a woman's morality is destroyed along with her hymen and that these standards are, as always, not applied to men-but thankfully, I've already made such speals. Even so, another, if shorter, rant is fun.

Tony, fuck you. Fuck you and your 1890s penile-supremest ideology. If you think you can win the women's vote with token gestures such as keeping the 2nd most incompetent woman minister (Kosky being the first) as shadow treasurer, whilst promoting such bollocks, then you give women even less credit than anyone thought. There's a bloody good reason why, as a society, we've moved on from these ideals-because, unlike you, we understand that a woman is more than a set of reproductive organs blessed by some magic Jewish zombie. If you couldn't keep it in your pants when you weren't married, then to expect others to do so is pretty much the shameless hypocrisy I'd expect from you and your medieval ilk.

As Health Minister, you proved incapable of governing without allowing your religious beliefs to interfere with your political decisions, which broke our separation of church and state. I have no doubt that if you were elected, you would further undermine this democratic pillar with abstinence-only indoctrination and erode women's access to reproductive rights. I cannot wait for this year's election; if you thought you've seen a Ruddslide before, the coming avalanche will truly decimate the Liberal Party. And like your God before you, you will bear the responsibility for it.

Topic cross-posted here, here and here.

The spectacular Massachusetts non-election.

2010-01-22T21:34:00.003+11:00

I call it that because, despite being a tremendous win for the Republican Party-winning in one of the Bluest states in the country, where one of the least conservative Congressmen comfortably won for almost 50 years, and which Conservapedia has an entry for-the politics of negotiation in Congress and future policy developments will not change one iota. The Republicans will continue to whine and bitch like the arrogant, born-to-rule hacks they are. And the Democrats will continue to cave into their demands, like the spineless hacks they are.

Obama and the Democrats had a full year of filibuster-proof Congress to pass healthcare reform. Instead, they proved that they are, as a party, gutless on any progressive issues. The healthcare plan by the end was even worse than the status quo, as it forced people into dodgy insurance plans. It was the type of reform one would expect from the GOP. That the Dems have now lost their 60 votes thus means nothing, as it was useless to begin with.

The whole situation makes me even more thankful we have a) preferential voting and b) proportional representation. This means that protest votes can be sent to genuine leftwing parties without aiding the major conservative ones, and that, in a true democracy, all (or at least most) political views get their rightful representation.

Hiatus time

2010-01-03T16:07:00.010+11:00

It's the time of the year, folks. Tomorrow, I will be spirited away to Fort Lorne, in which I will engage in long-distance fitness, intellectualisation (Thomas Paine, bitches!), cleaning and repairing my barely-functioning Vickers, learning stealth and diversionary tactics, and earning a well-earned brake from the front line.

Anyway, I'd like to show a few photos/paintings of my one and only.

And these...

...are the bastards I'm repairing. I'm still on my first guns, and this is how they repay me. Charlie's gone through 11 sets since his first Pup. If he wasn't winning us the war, I'd shoot down that bloody Haig.

This is what censorship looks like

2009-12-27T08:02:00.004+11:00

Because General Keyboard does it so perfectly, I'll pretty much copy it.

If you want to see Tienanmen Square, click here. If you want to see Tienanmen Square minus the Massacre, click here.

This is also great.

An introduction to Peanuts

2009-12-22T19:35:00.016+11:00

Ever since the GrodsSoldier died and the Dogfighter took its place, I've been meaning to show why I meant by 'Peanuts.' Peanuts was a central aspect of my youth. Having inherited many books from General Father and his peers, I progressed into a mildly fanatical die-hard fan, and I am still collecting today. Rather than try to explain what Peanuts is, I'll instead show what it is (when I find some of the flying ace, I'll put them up).

Good memories.

T to the A to the P: the Michelle edition.

2009-12-12T16:30:00.016+11:00

First, there was General Bron's Mr. Obama. For Admiral Phoenix, I have selected for her Mr. John 'The REAL Captain Jack' Barrowman.

If I ever find Anything Goes at the flea market, I'll be sure to buy it.

Conversations with a racist

2009-12-05T15:20:00.006+11:00

And in which I finally complete my internet persona: Private Tom D. Beagle.*

Thankfully, I have never met any explicitly racist people in person. I see them only in the media outlets, indulging themselves in hatred of the minority of the decade. Most (actually, all) racists are cowards, the type of people who will gleefully assault anybody when their back is turned, but will beg for mercy if the odds ever turn against them. This is by and large a fine thing, because of racists didn’t care for the consequences of their actions there would be a great many more assaults against people of colour and differing cultures.

However, one racist (and most likely neo-Nazi, judging by the anti-Semitism), for reasons entirely unbeknownst to me, decided to contact me over my facebook profile. I don’t know who Mr. ‘Save Your Race’ (his actual facebook name. How that got past the moderators is beyond me) is, and I don’t think I will ever meet him (to my eternal gratitude), but the conversation between us is quite revealing is his paranoia and unshakable belief in his conspiracy theories, and the general snark I direct towards those who I have nothing by total contempt for. All grammar and spelling mistakes are preserved. And yes, those nine words are how he started the conversation.

Mr. Race: your a dickhead. so are you a sheep or a lefty commie

Mr. Beagle: Judging by your name and your terrible grammar, I'd say you're a Klansman?

Mr. Race: Oh yes ... thats right. And judging by your pic you are a nob. Hay lefty we wont forget whom turned on our own culture.

Mr. Beagle: My culture is one of equality, love, acceptance and egalitarianism. Your culture, if your name is anything to by, is one of paranoia, violence, and raw hatred.

Mr. Race: Ok then you are a sheep. With a view that has been taught to you. The movies that lower our morals and the shit fatty food that poisons our race and make it harder for an increasing amount of women to fall pregnant. Do u at least except that the way the white culture is going it wont exist in 50 years depending on were you live in the globe. You talk down to someone you know nothing about, so i would have to assume your the ignorant one. Have not mention violence in anyway. Hatred whom do i hate. People that will over flow my own country with in ten years and leave the white population a minority that will make my family's life very dangerous to live in the area i was born in and grew up in. I’m afraid the day you work out you were wrong your so called friends from different races will show you that all though they benefit more then whites they wont actually practice it them selves. They will in turn however breed huge families and live in ghettos where white people are not safe to go. And leach of the welfare state my white culture has created. Egalitarianism = socialism.

Mr. Beagle: Did you learn all that from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Please tell me what movies lower our morals (let me guess: any film featuring a non-white). As for your 'fast-food outlets are in league with the communists, Jews and race-mixers' conspiracy-in most countries (certainly, in America and to a lesser extend Australia), those most affected by fast-food and obesity are African-American communities. I find in mildly ironic that you say I "talk down" to you, given that you began this conversation with "your [sic] a dickhead".

Regarding multiculturalism and violence; I suggest you go down to Dandenong. You'll see for yourself how "dangerous" it is to live there. I know paranoia is a hallmark of racism, but I think you've outdone even Hitler's standards. White people are majority in Australia. New Zealand, Canada, America, Britain and all of Western and Eastern Europe. Despite your delusional persecution fantasies, whitefolk are not in a danger of 'dying out' and, judging by our numbers, won't ever be. Your "Egalitarianism = socialism" is hilarious in its ludicrousness. The Tea Party protester have a greater understanding of socialism than you do. Go to a library, borrow a few books on socialism and Marxism, and come back when you have a clue. And on a final note, we have paragraphs, apostrophes and spell check for good reasons. Use them.

Mr. Race: I will make this easy for you to read then. The elders of Zion= Yes i would say it is probably true. Fast food = Rich people who like you have no national interest or even understand the principle of it. They are killing my people just to make money. Communist Jews = look into that. Do you understand how there connected? You’re a sheep that believes in Egalitarianism. Seriously i doubt you will believe that by the time your 50.

Then there is this= Regarding multiculturalism and violence; I suggest you go down to Dandenong. You'll see for yourself how "dangerous" it is to live there. ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? What does that mean. You except there are a problem???? Not sure how you see that and don’t get there is a problem. Please don’t waste your time saying its poverty.

Then there is this= I know paranoia is a hallmark of racism, but I think you've outdone even Hitler's standards. White people are majority in Australia. New Zealand, Canada, America, Britain and all of Western and Eastern Europe. Despite your delusional persecution fantasies, white folk are not in a danger of 'dying out' and, judging by our numbers, won't ever be.

That was true 50 years ago. No longer the case. Europe has huge problems with third world immigration. As does Canada and Britain. This comment alone shows how little you know. Its ok i can see you are young but the problem is we don’t have time for sheep like to work it out.

Arab families on average have 7 - 8 kids, Australian beauro of stats will back that as well as 67 percent of Arab man between 18- 65 are on welfare. We on the other hand have 1 2 or 3 at most you do the maths. Then we have white man whom run of with Asian females. That is a huge worry.

Whites have a low birth rate everywhere. It’s the same story worldwide. In Sydney there are suburbs where white were the majority only ten years ago that are now 90 percent ethnics.

And finally you mention my spelling even though you understood every thing i said. First point if im wrong just worry about correcting my way of thinking, the fact that you even attack my spelling and grammar makes you argument look weak.
Not to mention you made an error your self last time lol dickhead. And I left spaces so you had a chance to stop and let your brain catch up.

Mr. Beagle: Thank goodness you've discovered the 'enter' key. Now all you'll need to learn how to use apostrophes, and you'll be well on your way to passing grade 5 english. Zion? Proven forgery. The Bible is more historically accurate. Egalitarianism is a principle of human equality-no doubt you think equality is evil. I never said countries don't have immigration issues-certainly some do (France springs to mind). However, the concept that whitey is going to die out is total paranoia. If you start making claims about statistics, I wouldn't mind a few links (I assume you can copy and paste). As for your 'white boy/asian girl' paranoia, what business is it of yours as to who goes out with who?

Mr. Race: I think its safe to say you agree with me then. You are just too ignorant to realise how bad things are. Sydney will have no white people left there in 20 years time.
I don’t really care if the whole Zion story is true. As i have seen enough of the Zionist movement to know that the whole creating Israel part was true. And the bible is another Jewish movement like all the "ism movements" they created to control us goym or gentiles.

I have nothing against everyone been given a fair chance as long as it’s for my own culture. I don’t want other people from other countries being put first before Aussies. And that is happening all the time. Your whole Egalitarianism principle is a pipe dream. I don’t think you have any real life experience to understand that.

Don’t mention France the fact that you understand that, and i even have to argue with you makes you look stupid, not as stupid as the hat in your picture but close.

As for the links i will back up my facts ASAP. And last but not least. You will get to see for your self everything i have said is true. Asians have the ability to swamp this country and the fact that huge amounts of white man are breeding with another races with only sped that process up. But i think you already get what i mean. You just can’t get a white chick so you had to fuck a monkey instead. And i wont be correcting my spelling mistakes. Go fuck your self.

After that, I simply didn’t bother responding. Mr. Race was a raving lunatic, and to misquote Darp, “calling him batshit is an insult to bat guano fetishists everywhere; calling him fruitloops is an insult to anything fruity with a hole in the middle etc etc…” However, Mr. Race wasn’t done venting his spleen over me, and emailed me again, beginning with a reference to my profile picture:

Mr. Race: thank god you got rid pof the hat pic. Now grow a brain and save your culture. I dont want to have to repeat myself.

Mr. Beagle:I can image you wouldn't. Typing, when you only have bloody stumps from a life of knuckle-dragging, must be very difficult. I certainly haven't forgotten your cruel comments from our previous conversation. I must ask-what happened that turned you into such a monster? Did you white girlfriend dump you for a darkie? Mugged by a Lebo? Or was it good ol' neo-Nazi indoctrination from the cradle? Enlighten me.

Mr. Race:I am not a monster. Im doing your family a favour by standing up for our culture. You on the other hand are quite happy to keep your head in the sand. Lebo's gang up on aussies here all the time. We no longer own sydney your town will be next. One day you will see that your ideas are wrong. As for Hitler he went up against the bankers thats why he is known as the most eveil man to ever walk the face of this earth. Does nto matter that others have killed far more cause they dont have hollywood against them. I surpose you still beleive the globe is warming aswell. And i must say chack your spelling that last comment was bad even for you. And the picture of you and your sister is gross. Put the hat back on lefty.

Mr. Beagle: Stop referring to 'our' culture, as my culture is quite different to yours. Hitler may not have killed the most people, but as far as raw genocide goes, he is by far the worst. You don't try to exterminate an entire people in gas chambers and be seen as a hero for it. As for climate change, yes, I'd say it is happening. Pardon me for listening to those thousands of scientists who are presenting the evidence. Of course, given that you refer to black people as 'monkeys', you'd know all about ignoring science. Finally, that is a friend of mine, not a relative. I presume you thought we were siblings because it's quite obvious your parents were.

Mr. Race: You live here in australia as do i so we have the same culture.Raw genocide lol raw brainwashing more like it. Hitler had to lock the jews up as they are extremly sly and made germany lose the first world war so the allies would give them Israel. And thousands of scientists also agree that the globe stopped warming in 1998. Your tv wont teach you that so i geuse you will be wrong for a long time to come. In the 1970's we were going to freze to death in the 1990's we had a whole in the ozone now we have carbon taxing so we white people can pay third world shit wholes more money that they can waste with the badly corrupted countries. Listen to 2gb 873 am from sydney around the same time as now they can help your brainwashed ways. Seriously you just beleive every thing. You know santa's not real right.

Mr. Beagle: It's quite hilarious, you stating that I "just beleive [sic] every thing [sic]" whilst believing in ludicrous conspiracy theories. The first world war had bugger-all to do with Israel-that state was formed after the second world war. The ignorance, stupidity and hate, it burns.

Mr. Race: Ok look i get why you dont undrstand. But world war one and two were directly linked to The state of Israel. Did you think they just woke up one day and decided to invade Palistine. The jews were being sent there by hitler as well. The british controlled Palistine before the jews took over.

Now here is a lesson for you . 1n 1916 Germany was winning the war, the zionist jews offered the allies america if they gave them israel. Now how do you think they did that. Cause at the time american was very neutral. The media conned america and took her to war. And if you dont beleive it, research it and you will see that your brainwashed verion of history is far removed to what actually happen. I dont agree with the mass slaughter of any human beings but that does stopped you from thinking that just cause i dont agree with you.

Ok research this - its proven fact. Its not just from Nazie website. Your in the matrix now , take the plug out of your head and learn. This thing shows you realy have no idea about world history is these two words. Balfour Declaration ....

The ignorance, stupidity and hate, it burns. Funny fuck ,,,in other words baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa you fucking sheep

Mr. Beagle: Or maybe Germany lost the war because it was fighting on two fronts (East and West). What is it with you and Jews? Can't you use a different scapegoat,just for a change?

Mr. Race: Ok please just refer to last point did you look into the balfour declaration at all. The media is whom taught you that anyone who says anything about the Jews are nuts, when realistically they have been causing trouble for hundreds of years look into the Russian revolution. But also go back to the part about world war one you have to understand how easy it is for the Jews with their media control to control us. It is obvious if you look into it. I do say racist comment, it come out of frustration from people like you whom are completely brainwashed. Our education system is a joke, our children run muck. Our movies are immoral our politicianwork for big business. Our music has five year old girls acting like strippers after watching lady gaga and britney spear, The Jews and the lefties are behind most if not all of that. Once you have had your bubble burst there is no turning back. Unless of course you don’t care about your country or people. Then all is lost with YOU. Not all Jews are bad. Just the Zionist. I have two friends whom are Jews. One of them agrees about this more then i do the other one is like you.

Again, after this, I didn’t bother. As it is quite clear, I regularly read FightDemBack!, and so have a rough idea of what constitutes the average neo-Nazi’s mind. To remisquote Darp, Mr. Race is as “mad as a cut snake. As a meat axe. Bananas. He’s a broken packet of biscuits, as ugly as a box of blowflies, and he couldn’t organise a root in a brothel. Of course, with an ideology that handles like a dog on lino, it’s no wonder he’s got kangaroos loose in the top paddock. Or to put it another way: the lights are on but nobody’s home (the mystery bag that passes for his brain is empty) and consequently he feels like a pork chop in a synagogue. And despite this bloke not being the full quid / a snag short of a barbie / a couple of tinnies short of a slab, he still claims to be as proud as a rat with a gold tooth!”

Thankfully, Mr. Race has found a new target to irritate, as he no longer sends random emails. The exchange, although brief, was a fascinating insight to a person who is governed by his basest, most regressive instincts humankind is capable of, whose mind is trapped within an inescapable maze of conspiracies, who blames everything wrong in his life on minority groups, and who would probably murder every Jew and person of colour he could find if he weren't such a sniveling coward hiding behind a pathetic screen name.

Here's hoping Mr. Race goes the way of Derek Vinyard.

* Middle name may spontaneously change depending on my whimsical tastes. As of now I like 'Delano' but Wilson, Walter, Raphael, Leonardo, Charlie, Woodrow and William are also possible.

Tool of the Year 2009

2009-12-01T09:27:00.007+11:00

Earlier this year, Military HQ hosted an ‘Unaustralian of the Year.’ Not to be outdone, I instead hosted ‘Tool of the Year 2008’, for that special someone who wasn’t simply Unaustralian, but a hypocrite and asshole to boot. The winner was Fred ‘Boobies are Satan’s pillows’ Nile, who had the gal to ruthlessly demonise the Muslim-Australian community, and then turn around and claim to be representing Muslim interests. Like I said, a hypocrite and an asshole.

As 2009 comes to an end, I need to pick another TOTY. There were a number of contenders (Rudd, Minchin, Nile again, Tuckey, ) but only one person could fulfill that vomit-inducing combination of tooliness.

Namely, Fred Nile, again. And for very similar reasons he won last year. It may seem unfair that Nile win again, given that Kevin “Should I commit to human rights for refugees, or try and peel some votes off the ‘Howard racists’ voting bloc? Too late-found the dog whistle!” Rudd certainly came close. However, Nile wins again simply for outdoing himself this year.

Recently, a CDP operative was revealed to have made a string of abusive and derogatory remarks about Muslims in a few email exchanges. If they were about Jews, he wouldn’t have been so much criticized as booted out of the country. The CDP went into damage control, with Nile himself saying the party “disassociates itself completely" from the comments, ''which we totally reject. No one deserves to be subjected to such language and insult.'' However, one should look at some of Freddy’s ideas about domestic policies and Muslims: ban them from the military, and deport them.

So the TOTY medal must to go Fred ‘dy Kruger’ Nile, for critisising a CDP member for remarks that are, although cruder, still no less ostracizing than his own writings. Maybe Nile should apply the Wallace test to himself, and then actually asking “WWJD” before revelling in his hatred of the Other.

However, Nile also receives the runner-up prize for TOTY, for his views on women. Fred says he is "concerned about the sexual exploitation of women in our society." This 'concern' of course, is more about women having reproductive and sexual freedom than anything else. Nile states that the Greens "sexually objectify" women through their civil libertarian policies on sex, that that this is damaging to women. However, Nile has shown exactly what he thinks of women, regarding women serving in the military:

"Combat roles will also expose female soldiers to gunshot injuries, which could prevent them from being able to bear children."

Women: nothing they do or contribute towards society is more important than being a baby factory. This alone could win Nile TOTY 2010.

Hattip to Orville Strayan.

The personal and the political

2009-11-26T10:23:00.013+11:00

As the various posts under G-BIT can testify to, I am entire pro-gay rights. On marriage, anti-discrimination, child adoption, etc, I am on the side of equality and social justice. On the opposing trench of the culture war are the ‘mo foes: from secular rednecks who believe gays to be ‘sick’ to religulous folk who believe Leviticus 20:33 to be the entirety of the Bible.

Previously, I’ve seen this as a political issue; that of social justice and human rights prevailing over logical fallacies and moral self-righteousness. As gay issues don’t affect me directly, I’ve never seen them as a personal matter. However, this has now changed. One of my friends came out recently (alright, so it was actually months ago, but I’m lazy, OK?). Now, for me, the issue of gay rights suddenly has a face. What was once merely a political movement is now a fellow human being (from now on known as Miss A), who is still a second-class citizen because the cowardly government is too afraid to do what is right, for fear that it will lose the Christian Right vote. Even though passing pro-gay rights legislation (such as those mentioned previously) would in fact be popular and probably boost the ALP’s vote, the party’s ear is firmly tied to that of people and organisations who dedicate their lives to ruining those of others (hmmm, what does THAT remind me of?).

As the title suggests, what was once a political issue has now become very personal. There are people who believe Miss A isn’t worthy of the same basic human rights they take for granted; that she is fundamentally evil human being because of something as otherwise trivial as her sexual orientation. Understandably, I take this as personally as she does. For this reason, the brutality and hatred that lies within the anti-gay populace now seems much harsher and more pointed than it previously did. The good folks at the CDP, the ACL and the AFA want to force Miss A back into the closet so she fits into their myopic view of ‘family’. If she resists, this same folk have set up organisations to ‘cure’ her of her orientation. These ‘pro-family’ forces have the capacity to do tremendous damage to Miss A’s life if they have their ways in gay rights legislation, and, on a wider scale, Australian society’s views on gay rights.

And that’s where the ‘pro-family’ hypocrisy of these organisations comes to an absolute head; they are entirely anti-family. These organisations work to divide parents against their children by repeating countless lies about homosexuality-that it is evil, that it is changeable, that it is the product of emotional child abuse, and so on. This has broken up countless families as misguided parents have rejected their children. If Miss A ever wants to start a family of her own, these same ‘pro-family’ groups will fight tooth-and-nail to prevent her from getting married, undergoing IMF treatment or adopting children, under the mantra that depriving gays of their rights is best for children and society.

Ultimately, Miss A has done me a tremendous favour-not simply for being the fine person and friend she is, but-for me-giving only the strongest reason to remain committed to the rights of gays, bis, intersexes and transgenders. Thankfully, if past civil rights movements are anything to go by, time is is most certainly on our side.

The Liberal Party and the political wilderness

2009-11-26T10:23:00.011+11:00

I can't say I don't enjoy watching the Liberal party tear itself apart these days. The moderates-Turnbull, Hockey, Robb-desperately trying to keep the party together, whilst Mad Monks, Mavericks and Crazy Uncles are doing their best to keep the Coalition as unelectable as possible is better than most paid entertainment.

The one thing possibly better than this is the quiet knowledge is that this is the result of the Australian Reagan, John 'the Rodent' Howard. His desperate refusal to hand the reigns to Costello and his push to the far-right (economically speaking) with WorkChoices doomed the Liberal Party to defeat. His refusal to sort out the factional war between the small-l Liberals (such as the green Turnbull and humanitarian Georgio) and the hard-right Liberals (Abbott, Tuckey, all of the Nationals) meant that these factions would inevitably turn on each other in defeat, and will doom the party to many years in Opposition. That the Liberals' lord and saviour could become their Reaper is a truly scrumptious thought.

As far as I can tell, there are two predominant factors that led to that fateful defeat now two years ago; Australia's political apathy being broken by climate change and WorkChoices, and Labor's leader. Kim Beazley was to Labor as Brendon Nelson was to the Liberals; would make a solid frontbencher with a sizable portfolio, but fundamentally unelectable as leader. This helped Labor lose the 1998 and 2001 elections. Later, Labor went in the opposite direction with Latham, which scared the electorate so much Howard was handed the balance of power.

Australia apathy enabled Howard to survive despite the corruption that his government enabled; children overboard, Iraq, the dogged refusal to accept responsibility and the his indifference towards Indigenous Australians to name a few. In his last term, however, a 'perfect storm' began to build. WorkChoices wasn't selling; it was turning many voters off. Then, the issue of climate change finally hit with bushfires and the ongoing drought. All of a sudden, voters were shaken from their sleep and didn't like the government they saw; screwing over the workers and the environment to please big business and big coal. 'Good economic management' wasn't worth this.
Finally, Labor put forward Rudd, an electable, pleasant-looking leader, who rivalled Howard in political smarts; differing from the Liberals in climate, industrial relation and Indigenous policies, and the same everywhere else, thus maximising ALP chances. Labor was now electable. Howard tried to remake himself as more of a lefty by making 'aspirational' carbon-reducing goals and placing Indigenous Australians in the preamble of the constitution, but it (thankfully) wasn't enough. The only slim chance Howard had was to resign and allow the slighty-less-unlikeable Costello to run, but the Rodent enjoyed the power too much to give it up. After all, what if Costello was able to win? Howard would become the coward to jumped ship when it all became too difficult, with Costello becoming the new Reagan. And that simply wouldn't do. Instead, Howard took the party to the inevitable defeat. Quickly after, most of the brain-Howard, Costello, Downer-jumped the sinking ship

So now, the Liberals are in disarray, pulled at the seams by the warring factions. The only way for the party to pull itself together is (ironically) to tear off the rotten limbs-splitting from the Nationals, and purging the party itself of the hard-right. They'd be more at home in the DLP or One Nation anyway. The moderates, however, are unable and unwilling to do so. The Tuckeys and (Bronwyn) Bishops are called 'Howardites' for a clear reason; mindless loyalty to the dear leader. Turnbull, as much as he may want to modernise the party, knows that doing so would be seen as a betrayal of Howard's principles. This would reduce the party's support from the right, which is unfathomable, as Labor has already reduced Liberal (and next year, is set to take more) from the centre.

Hopefully, the Liberals' reformation won't happen for a long time. Labor, in Rudd's me-tooing push, now occupies most of the Liberal party's positions (tax cuts and marriage, anyone?) and is establishing itself, if anything, as the mainstream conservative party. With the Liberal party floundering, the Greens have a chance to fill left-wing party vacuum. Here's hoping they take it.

Super fun happy lucky Higgins by-election candidate summery!

2009-11-18T17:47:00.007+11:00

Yesterday, most of the Higgins candidates meet with a few community members, who answered various questions regarding climate change. Party-wise, there was the Sex Party, the Greens and One Nation, whilst several Independents spiced up the evening with their zaniness. Disappointingly, Kelly ‘Runner-up in the Bronwyn Bishop lookalike contest’ O’Dwyer, John ‘familyfamilyfamily’ Mulholland of the DLP and Isaac ‘fight tha power!’ Roberts of the Liberal Democrats weren’t there. In hindsight, that's probably a good thing, as Kelly and a certain anarchist Independent would've probably killed each other.

Fiona Patten, Australian Sex Party:
Excellent. Presented herself extremely well, stating that she was no expert and relied on the climatologists to tell her what was going on. Was very friendly and approachable (I even got to talk to her! **squeals like a six year old**). 9/10.

David Collyer, Australian Democrats:
Fine representative for the Dems. During one of his speeches, made a statement along the lines of “If the scientists are wrong, then we’ve merely pushed for green living earlier than we would have. If the scientists are right, then we only have on chance at this” which was brilliant. Only problem was that he quite often referred to Democrats’ green successes in the past (such as on the Franklin River), which came across as mildly wanky. 8/10.

Steve Raskovy, One Nation:
It took a while to get over the thought of a Hungarian refugee standing for One Nation, but he did a decent job on climate issues. Only problem was that he took a while to actually answer questions, which grew rather annoying. Delivered one of my favourite quotes for the night-“Water is the blood of the earth.” 7/10.

Joseph Toscano, Independent
Anarchist and self-proclaimed “radical”, was popular in his often snarky attitude (such as referring to Steve Murphy, a climate change sceptic as a “flat-earther”). Gave some excellent remarks, such as, regarding the coal industry’s free carbon credits, “People are compensated for doing the right thing. Coal companies are the only thing in the world which are compensated for doing the wrong thing!” Humourously, got on extremely well with ideologically-opposed One Nation's Steve. 8.5/10.

Steve Murphy, Independent:
To give Steve credit, he came to a climate change forum knowing that he would be extremely unpopular (if not lynched). Understandably, he was usually on the defence, but did a reasonable job at defending his policies, despite the constant jeering he suffered. 7.5/10.

Clive Hamilton, Australian Greens:
Ironically, out of all the candidates, I remember Clive's performance the least. However, I can’t remember anything terrible he said, and he cleared up the Holocaust comments from an article in Crikey, which I feel was important (given that the comments, wrongly interpreted, did sound very extreme). 8.2/10.

Peter Brohier, Independent:
There’s no way this guy isn’t a cover for the CEC. 2/10.

And that's a wrap. Chances are, I'll be voting 1. Greens, 2. Democrats, 3. Sex Party, 4. Joseph, 5. Liberal Dems, 6. Peter, 7. Liberals, 8. DLP, 9. One Nation and 10. Steve.

OK conservatives, I'll make a deal with you.

2009-11-16T10:06:00.003+11:00

The Left will stop 'worshipping' Obama when you lot relieve yourselves of your collective, undying hard on for Reagan.

Deal?

What's wrong with a little mob rule?

2009-11-10T09:30:00.007+11:00

Just when you thought raw Labor incompetence had pushed all swing voters (briefly) into the Liberal camp, the coalition still manages to fuck it up. This time, Ted and co have gone into popularist meltdown, directly appealing to mob mentality by allowing juries to determine sentences.

There isn't much for me to write on this subject, given that Captain Lefty has done all the work for me*. Even so, this isn't so much as shocking policy (which I'll get to) as it is what I call 'base populism.' That is, a political party will adopt a populist policy that appeals to a person's basest instincts; in this case, brutal vengeance. This is a clear sign that Vic Libs are as adrift now as they were ten years ago. Instead of designing a political platform to challenge Labor (paradoxically both easy and hard, given Labor's current incompetence, and that the political differences between the two parties are wafer-thin), Ballieu has gone for the easiest option of appealing to an angry mob.

And now for the policy itself: this is some serious FAIL. The types of Australians who make up juries (myself included) have very little idea of how sentences are determined. Certain parallels can be drawn to the Queensland Libnats and their idea of allowing volunteers to work with the mentally ill. That is, people who don't have the proper qualifications would be put in situations where you need proper qualifications in order to properly handle said situation.

Here, a 'race to the top' of ridiculously harsh sentences is inevitable. Judges are under pressure to increase sentences, lest they be branded as 'out of touch' and 'soft on crime' by the media barons that be. As Captain Lefty has pointed out, News Ltd readers have an exceptionally poor knowledge of what sentences actually constitute-as far as they are concerned, anything less than life imprisonment in an Indonesian jail is getting off scott free. And I'm willing to bet my ~~fictional~~ fighter plane that life imprisonment in the closest Australia has to an Indonesian jail is exactly what these uninformed juries would advocate for.

Jeez, Ballieu, I know that between John Hewson and Jeff Kennett, Liberals are terrific at losing unloseble elections (not that I'm complaining), but they've always done it by accident. There's no need to try to lose next years election; the factions will do that for you.

*Wordpress would be much less of a pain in the arse if clicking on a tag took you to a list of that blog's posts under that tag, not the entire-fucking-ty of wordpress itself.

“Give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.”

2009-10-31T09:38:00.010+11:00

I first read that quote in Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls, although it applies equally well for racist politicians trying to enter the mainstream debate. Enter Nick “...immigration...is destroying this and every other white nation in the world” Griffin, Grand High Wizard of the ~~KKK~~ British National Party.

Recently, Griffin appeared on Question Time, a BBC panel show featuring political figures from across the spectrum. During the show, he made various hilarious statements-most notably, that the Ku Klux Klan is "non-violent" and that he does “not have a conviction for Holocaust denial.”

That quote exposes the problem for the Fuhrer and his party; that they are fundamentally too extreme. The reason for the BNP’s increased vote is due to widespread disillusion at the major parties (Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Dems) and the extensive corruption that their MPs have shown. Hence, the increased support for the BNP is more of a protest vote than anything else. But when Nick goes on national television and gives openly sympathises with one of the most infamous white supremacist organisations in history, that create serious problems of allegiance for all BNP voters outside of the hatecore bonehead supporters.

Nick, in his Holocaust statement was clearly trying to have his cake and eat it too: not explicitly denying the Holocaust, but still sending a message to the Brownshirts watching at home that he’s still a died-in-the-wool anti-Semite. The BNP, when previously quizzed on its openly neo-Nazi views, stated that, its political ideals have shifted over time and that the Party is more moderate than before (see point vii). Statements such their leader, however, expose how superficial Nick’s shift to the centre is.

That's why I think giving the BNP this sort of publicity is needed, as it exposes the Party for what it is: a front for neo-Nazism. Gordon Brown stated “We’ve got a duty to expose the BNP for what are racist and sectarian politics.” I agree entirely; give Nick enough time on air, and the BNP’s support will implode harder than One Nation (although hopefully for different reasons).

Mr. 1.9%: the Senate's village idiot.

2009-10-16T15:44:00.016+11:00

Steve Fielding doesn't like Greens. I have an impressive collection of articles in which Mr. Morality launches childish attack after childish attack, each of which is unsatirable* in its petty partisanship and amateurism. The Bongmeister, however, has come to the conclusion that these past works are too subtle for his Christian base. Thus, Stevie has dropped all flimsy pretenses of professionalism and gone for the lowest, crudest and downright laughable smear he can imagine:

GREENS’ PLAN ECONOMICALLY LAUGHABLE, FOOLISH AND LUDICROUS

Says the fellow who's sole economic policy consists of cutting the petrol tax. I know Steve lives in the 14th Century, but that's no excuse for not using the caps lock hey.

The Greens would rather send Australia back to the Stone Age than use common sense in negotiating on an Emissions Trading Scheme, Family First Leader Senator Steve Fielding said today.

“I don’t know what planet the Greens are on, but by the look of their ‘Safe Climate Bill’ they look like they're lost in space,” Senator Fielding said.

I don't know what Steve was gunning for with those space puns-it's not like NASA is involved. Anyway, the rest of the piece is utterly juvenile-calling Bob and co. "hippies" and sloppy accusations of hypocrisy-by using planes, no less. I don't know how Greens Senators are supposed to travel in a less gas-emitting way, given that planes are a form of public transport. I presume Fielding also think Bob is a hypocrite because he emits carbon emissions by breathing.

But seriously, I can't understand what Steve expect to gain from schlock like this. Anyone even considering voting Green is sufficiently left-wing as to dismiss Fundies First as a group of fringe nutters, and vice-versa for FF voters. If anything, Steve is alienating what incomprehensibly tiny support base he has by acting like like such a jerk. Compare this release to what freshman/woman Senators Ludlam and Hanson-Young have produced. These political youngens have only been in Parliament since July 2008, yet they have displayed a political professionalism that completely outstripes Steve (and most major party backbenchers as well, to be honest). The Fluke is a child in a grownups' world: he stumbled into the Senate through luck and Labor's cynicism, was irrelevent from 04 to 07, and, now having been thrust into the balance-of-power limelight, has demonstrated that he hasn't a clue in parliamentary processes. Steve knows that he has barely a hope of re-election on primary votes-barely being the operative word-and has resorted to stunt after stunt in the vain hopes that he will increase the visability of his party enough to scrap in a re-election.

I, like all groupthing lefties, simply cannot wait for the 2010 election. Asides from an anti-Greens propaganda overdrive from all parties (which will be a joy to read, I can assure you all), Rudd has shown that he is a skilled and shrewd politician. The likelihood of Labor preferencing the Fundies in 2010 is infinitesimal, especially how much Steve has pissed Kevin off (Medicare levies, alcopops taxes and luxary car taxes, anybody?). Labor is a right-wing government, but Rudd knows that the Greens are a better deal than Steve, and that's where Labor's 2010 preferences will be heading. To humbly quote Field Marshall Editor: Steve: you and your Pentecostal mates are headed for the political dustbin of history and no stunt on Earth is going to save you. Perhaps when you fail to get re-elected in a couple of years you could work for Today Tonight.

Cross-posted at Officer Cadet Orville Strayan.

Various article goodies found here, here and here.

*That's a word, OK?

Selective outrage

2009-10-08T17:51:00.006+11:00

All of a sudden, Australia is now considered a racist country (I'd have thought it was more to do to with anti-immigration hysteria, cronulla, camdem etc, but apparently not). It's due to a skit on Hey Hey it's Saturday, featuring five people dressed in blackface (and one in whiteface) portraying the Jackson5. Blackface, for the uninformed, is historically a highly racist form of humour using black stereotypes to grab some cheap laughs from the audience. In this case, of course, the outrage is laughable. Of course they're going to paint their faces black! They're pretending to be black singers! What are they supposed to do-go onstage in afros and pasty white skin? How crap would that look? Sometimes, it feels like Oz is adopting all the worst traits from all the other Western countries-the hard-right racism of the US, yet also the uptight-PCness of Britain. Gawd, now that's embarrasing.

And you know what? For all the outrage and horror, everybody seems to have missed this:

What's wrong? Not outragable enough?

T to the A to the P: the second heterosexual edition

2009-09-30T13:44:00.020+10:00

Because hiatus is no reason for a good sex post.

Ladies seem to get a poor run on this blog. It’s rather ironic, given that I’m straight(ish), that there are (as of this post) two dolls to six dudes. But there is a surprisingly simple explanation for the lack of chicks; namely, that photos of the honeys tend to be rather dull. It’s just bikini shot after bikini shot after bikini shot. Not that I’m necessarily complaining, but I wouldn’t mind a touch of variety when viewing various sexy dames. Thus, when broads do get a mention on Dogfighter, I prefer to focus on more stereotypically ‘artistic’ shots of lassies (much to Colonel Jester’s chagrin, I’m sure). If you want photos of skirts in very little other than a skirt, Goggle Images will gladly satisfy your perverted desires. But anyway; this time, I’ll be showing on Jessica ‘Joy’ Alba. She is most well known for roles in Dark Angel, Sin City and the Fantastic Four. But who cares, ‘cause I just wikied her and she’s a freakin’ liberal!

Anti-nuclearism

2009-09-22T18:47:00.001+10:00

Recently, the ANSATO has issued a press release stating that Australia needs to develop nuclear plants if it want to cut its greenhouse emissions. Being the filthy hippy I am, I'm opposed to nuclear plants. However, I do try to base what I am for and against on as non-ideological grounds as possible-think realpolitik. Hence,

1. Building the bloody things. Plants are extremely expensive-ranging from $6 to $10 billion to produce. Not only that, but they're only getting dearer. Think of how much energy could be supplied if $6 billion was spent in renewable energy (and it would be much cheaper in the long term; see no. 3)?

2. The water use. You know those chimneys gushing with what looks like smoke? That's actually steam. Nuclear plants require millions of litres of water every day to use, far more than other sources of power. That would be fine if we had millions of litres of water to spare, but we don't. Australia is the second driest continent on the earth (next to Antarctica) and only getting drier. And I haven't heard from the pro-nuclear side just where this water will be coming from.

3. It's finite. Uranium, as with oil and coal, is a finite source. That means that it will eventually run out. I don't know when-it could be 20 years, 50 years, even 100. But it will, and when it does, we will look pretty bloody stupid with all these worthless nuclear plants around. Renewable energies are called 'renewable' for a good reason; they don't run out. (OK, the sun will eventually burn out, but that'll be about 5 billions years in the future, a touch more than the uranium)

4. The waste. There's a good reason why no country wants to handle this stuff: it's the equivalent of injecting tar directly into your lungs. The waste takes forever to break down and if it leaks, it will wreck havoc with everything it comes into contact with. As far as I know, the only way to completely get rid of the waste is to launch it into the sun-and that creates a slew of new problems (the expense of launching so many space shuttles, the danger of a leak, finding a pilot who'd willingly sit in a cockpit 10 feet from enough isotopes to mutate them into the hulk...).

Long story short, there are sufficiant problems with nuclear waste-from beginning to end-to render the whole building plants unfeasible. Next up-arguments for more solar!

Ongoing hiatus

2009-09-21T11:41:00.005+10:00

Yes, I know. Very, very few posts as of late. Hey, I'm a busy guy-I've just finished test-piloting some Sopwith Pups and Triplanes, and today have handed in an essay on psychological in-flight tactics. Now, I need to write a paper on survival skills in the event of crashlanding, and then simulate said survival skills in the wild. So (with the exception of the next post, which is a couple of weeks in the making) expect more Lazyboy moments and a TAP post or two for the time being.

Life's hard for a world war one flying ace.

2009-09-08T21:25:00.018+10:00

Especially at the moment. Myself, with a few others, are performing a thorough series of maintenance checks and flying maneuvers, which is all rather fun, but leaves very little time for blogging (have you every gotten up in the morning at 5 am, repeatedly? You don't). Soon after, there are the theoretical exams on our knowledge. So still little time. The bright side, of course, is that it's a perfect time for another LazyBoy moment. Tonight's edition comes courtesy of Buzzfeed, featuring billboards that don't belong together.

First, some toilet humour...

Religion gets quite a beating...

There's good ol' fashion irony...

And my favourite...

Actually, that might be intentional.

Why are they so afraid?

2009-08-27T10:38:00.000+10:00

Excellent Battle of Wellington last Saturday*. General Debbie commanded an air assault of rhyming chants and speeches discussing womens' reproductive rights. One speaker, (it may have been the General, or somebody else) raised a point that us lefties, liberals and progressives rarely consider-why do the anti-choicers fear womens' rights so much? These same 'pro-lifers' (with, I concede, a few rare exceptions) support the war in Iraq which has killed untold thousands of children, and the bombing of Gaza by Israel, killing hundred of Palestinian children. These same pro-lifers view supporting women as a lesser priority to saving those sacks of stem stems-it's pretty clear 'pro-lifers' are only pro-life in the sense of restricting womens' reproductive health, and pro-death in every other case (or maybe they just want more white, potentially-convertible-to-Jesus babies. Those Muslims in Iraq and Palestine are a lost cause). So back to General Debbie's question: why do various fundies and ultraconservatives hate control over the uterus?

Personally, I see it as fear; fear of women gaining control over their bodies, which represents men losing the power that has been slipping from them since the Suffragette movement. Conservatives of each era have lost the fight against each successive wave of feminism. This began when conservatives lost the fight against suffrage. Ever since then, sex equality has been increasing since and some people see this as a threat to their establishment.

However, this fails to explain anti-feminist women. This is where the powerful role of religion comes into play. However, despite my resonable knowledge of psychology and sociology, I am at a loss as to why anybody would volunterily deprive themselves of rights. In this manner, feminism is unique; no other group has opposed civil rights for themselves.

I'll try doing a 'going down the rabbit hole' of antifeminism in the future-although probably not for at least a month, as I have flight training** for the next month

*Apologies for a lack of posts regarding BOWs and a lack of general posts of late. My Sopwith Camel (prepare to hear a lot about Camels in the future) has been playing up lately, forcing me into some unenthusiastic study of the schematics.

**Nursing placement.

Wasn't this the reason why we went in there in the first place?

2009-08-19T15:00:00.002+10:00

I kinda thought that one of the reason why we headed to Afghanistan was because the ~~neo-Nazis~~ Taliban were there. If the coalition could set a half-decent Iranian-style theocracy (which is, realistically, the best chance we've got), then the plight of Afghan women would surely improve.

Not so.

AFGHANISTAN has quietly passed a law permitting Shiite men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation that President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.

The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to gain permission from their husbands to work.

There is nothing-nothing- can describe this legislation. What perhaps makes it even more horrific is that this was done in a cynical attempt to gain a few votes at the next election. Karzai, who is supposed to be our ally, has sold out any principles he once had in order to retain power. He's chasing the pure-evil vote, which is apparently rather strong in Afghanistan. Heck, wasn't the point of going to Afghanistan to help improve its human rights situation? If women are re-reduced to slaves, what was the point of all those lives lost, both soldiers and civilians? I get the feeling that by the time Karzai's rule ends, Afghan women will be wishing for the return of the Taliban.

Thankfully, the Secretary of State has shown to be at least vocally supportive of women's rights (whether that translates into action is entirely something else), and I've sent a half-decent email in support:

Dear Secretary Clinton,

I have learned recently that President Karzai has passed legislation effectively reducing women to slaves. These horrific laws will undo what progress has been made since the fall of the Taliban, and will undermine efforts to combat fundamentalists and extremists. I understand that you are taking a tough stand in regards to womens' rights internationally, and I strongly urge you to take action in defense of Afghan women.

Yours sincerely,

...

Cross-posted at Shakesville.

Change I really don't believe in, but I don't have much of a choice.

2009-08-17T15:01:00.003+10:00

Ever since teh end, I've faced a problem. '☮ is my religion/bayonet' featured the tales and battles of a private, lowest of the army ranks, "fighting the culture war for progressive politics and pacifism.' This war was/is also fought by the sarcastic Captain, the whip-weilding Admiral, the vocally liberal Sergeant, the lioness-inspired Midshipman, the wisecracking Major General, and many others. All of this was under the banner of the GrodsCorp Military Force.

Of course, GrodsCorp has ceased to exist, which makes my self-designated 'GrodsSoldier' somewhat redundant. Hence, I've started redesigning my persona. True to form, I've leached off the ideas of a stalwart of my childhood, Peanuts. In particular, everybody's favourite beagle, Snoopy. The atava is still set in world war one, which is my preferred war out of the two (less genocide and more inventive weaponry). I'd like to keep the Blackadder reference, which makes for a rather confusing persona of being both a pilot and a trench fighter. 'Pilot 'Baldrick' Tom', perhaps?

Hence, I'm reintroducing this blog as '☮ is my Sopwith Camel.' So what can one expect in the future? Not much, other than Peanuts comics to supplament Calvin, poor dogfighting metaphors in replace of my slightly less adventurous life, and a new url.

And to think, all of this could've been solved if a certain Field Marshal has kept Grods open.

Some religions are more rational than other.

2009-08-13T13:34:00.008+10:00

Incisive piece from Andrew "Spank me, Rupert!" Bolt, in which he reveals his views on some religions:

As I say, we’re on a retreat from reason:

THE Victorian Ombudsman has criticised a left-leaning inner-city council for spending $620,000 of ratepayers’ money on a self-styled “white witch” to assist with “change management”.

Port Phillip Council’s ad hoc but costly arrangement with pranic healing and astrology devotee Caroline Shahbaz was savaged in a report by the Ombudsman tabled in the Victorian parliament yesterday...It has also emerged that the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment has used Ms Shahbaz as a consultant, as have the Victorian Department of Planning, Parks Victoria, Melbourne Water and the Reserve Bank.

If you were wondering what kind of irrational, superstition-raddled brains left us with water supplies critically low, forests dangerously overloaded with fuel, housing land too scarce, and useless wind farms scarring the coastline to fight a warming that actually stopped a decade ago, now you know. It’s the kind of minds that took a witch for their guru.

Of course, could you imagine Rusty saying such things about Christianity? Or Judaism? Heck, even Islam?

Personally I see all religions, by and large, as irrational as each other*. Christianity involves magic Jewish zombies, Hinduism features a human/elephant/spider hybrid creature, and I don't know what paganism and witchery involve, but I doubt either is based on sound science. Religiously, I see no difference between a new-ager and a Baptist-so long as they don't try to force their beliefs on me, I've got no problem.

With Bolt, and I imagine other conservatives, is that Christianity is more 'logical' than other religions-the only possible explanations I that the monotheistic religions are older and more common than more recent ones. Which aren't so much reasons as they are fallacies, but I doubt that's the point.

And, true to form, he can't help but use this case as a way to bash environmentalists. What witchery has to do with controlled burning, water supplies and sustainable energy sources is beyond me-and probably beyond Bolt, given that he doesn't give any link to his hyperbole.

*When I say 'irrational' I'm referring to the belief systems. One can certainly be an entirely rational person and be religious.

10 years on, how much has changed?

2009-08-12T12:07:00.006+10:00

I'm mildly busy at the moment, so I suspect many posts in the future will be Lazyboy Moments. Continuing on from the recent Equal Love rally, here's a ten year old article from PFLAG Detroit.

The Holy War on Gays

by Robert Dreyfuss

This article appeared in the Rolling Stones Magazine March 18, 1999

The Christian Right is on a new mission: To drive homosexuality back into the closet. Inside the war rooms of evangelical intolerance.

On a stormy day in mid-January 1996, about twenty leaders of the Christian right wing met in the basement of a Baptist church in Memphis. Representing a such large organizations as the Rev. Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, the Mississippi-based American Family Association and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, the activists had come together to launch an anti-homosexual network, which they called the National Pro-Family forum. What drove them the most that day was their alarm over a growing friendliness in America to the idea of gay and lesbian marriages.

Brainstorming during the course of a nine-hour discussion, they hammered out a national strategy to combat American’s increasing tolerance of homosexuality. And since then, meeting three or four times a year, the expanding group has coordinated a powerful counter offensive to the gay-right movement.

A few weeks after its initial meeting, the National Pro-Family Forum’s first action splashed onto the national scene during the February Iowa presidential caucus. Christian-right activists invited Republican presidential candidates to appear at an event held in a church in Des Moines, Iowa, where in front of more than 200 reporters, each candidate signed a pledge declaring his opposition to gay marriage. “No one was paying attention to the issue of same-sex marriages up to that point” says Phil Burress, a Cincinnati activist who organized the Memphis meeting. “And then all of sudden – BAM! This was an issue that was being debated nationwide!”

And the center of that debate was the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which defines marriage in the federal law as the union of a man and a woman. The bill was sketched out a the Memphis gathering; it was refined in the weeks afterward by Robert Knight, director of cultural studies at the Family Research Council, with help from Christian legal scholars, including the National Legal Foundation in Virginia, founded by Robertson.

Designed as a response to the consideration of gay marriages by Hawaiian courts, DOMA was an effort to prevent the legal authority of such unions from spreading to the continental United States; it also precludes same-sex couples from receiving federal spousal benefits. The bill sailed through Congress, spearheaded by Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., ironically twice divorced, thrice married himself. And, with apparent reluctance, President Bill Clinton went along. “The president signed it in the middle of the night, in the wee hours”, says Knight. “And only after [then-White house spokesman Mike] McCurry called it a hate-driven bill.” Since 1996, twenty-eight states have passed parallel legislation, ensuring that they would not have to recognize gay marriages approved by any other state.

The 1996 candidate pledges in Iowa and the passage of DOMA were the opening shouts in a nationwide campaign, fueled by the Christian right, to roll back gains won by gay activists since the 1980’s. Marshaling a political and religious force 30 million strong, who fervently believe that the Bible demands thy they condemn homosexuality, the network of Christian-right groups is trying to slam the door on America’s uncomfortable but increasing acceptance of gays and lesbians. Its leaders predict society’s collapse if the gay-rights agenda were to succeed. Sincere, passionate and implacable sometimes seemingly obsessed, the anti-gay movement sees gay rights as a pink dagger aimed at the heart of American family life.

In January 1998, the Christian right provided a convincing demonstration of its ability to inspire its voters to the polls. A wicked ice storm had coated Maine in a frozen blanked that felled trees, snapped power lines and paralyzed roads across the state. It was a storm-of-the-century event, trapping thousands in their homes and closing businesses and schools. But on February 10^th, led by legions of motivated Christians, voters ignored the ice and tuned out for a election; they overturned Maine’s 1997 Human Rights Act by margin of four percent. That law, passed less than a year earlier, prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in jobs, housing, credit and public accommodations.

The vote was a stunning victory for the state chapters of the Christian Collation and the Christian Civic League, the two groups that had a petitioned for the referendum. Maine’s political establishment and gay-rights groups across the country were stunned. “The opposition did not realize the extent of our grass roots movement,” says Paul Volle, who heads the Christian Coalition of Maine.

Until last summer, however, the Christian rights anti-gay crusade operated largely out of view, bursting into the open windfall-scale political battles like Maine’s –and others in Colorado, Oregon, Ohio and elsewhere-flared up. Since the fall of 1997, when openly gay San Francisco philanthropist James Hormel was first nominated to be ambassador to Luxembourg, anti-gay forces have been protesting, warning darkly that he would be a spokesman for the “homosexual agenda”. Despite to their concerns, he was nominated.

Last July, things became very public when fifteen organizations belonging to the National Pro-Family Form launched the truth in love campaign, a $ 500, 000 advertising blitz in national newspapers proclaiming that homosexuals to ”can change”, featuring “ex- gays” who have “walked out of homosexuality into sexual celebrity or even marriage.”

A who’s who of anti gay groups sponsored the ad campaign—from the Christian Coalition, the AFA, the FRC and American for Truth About Homosexuality – as well as large media-savvy Christian churches like Coral Ridge Ministries, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The ads through withering fire from gay—rights activists, who called them hate-filled and homophobic, which the sponsors bitterly denied. And the media, drawn to conflict, gave wide exposure to the ads, from Newsweek (a cover story), to People, and ABC’s Nightline.

Then, at the height of the controversy last October, a gay college student named Matthew Shepherd was savagely battered in Wyoming and left to bleed to death, tied scarecrow like to a fence along a deserted roadside. Shepherds death shocked the country and gave to renewed calls for federal hate-crime legislation. Christian right activists, too, denounced Shepherds murder. But because they’d spread the gospel of anti-homosexuality, they were criticized on the premise that their declarations can foment violent gay bashing.

“Words have consequences,” says Wayne Besen, a spokesman before the Human Rights campaign, a gay rights group in Washington D C. “You can see it in any school yard in America.”

And all of a sudden, the National Battle over gay rights was once again front and center. Abortion and homosexuality are the top preoccupations for much of the Christian right. Indeed, the gay rights issue has become an important source of cash through direct mail appeals to carefully cultivated list of supporters. “It’s a very lucrative target for them,” says Deanna Derby, former director of education policy at People for the American Way, a civil rights group. “It brings in a lot of money.”

Not only that, but the message to the broader audience—honed in response to advances in gay rights—has become more sophisticated and, and a perverse way, politically correct. The meaning of the Truth in Love ads is couched in terms are Christian “love” for the homosexual sinner. Another strategy has proved very successful and electoral battles in Maine, Oregon, Colorado, and Ohio; ignoring evidence of hate crimes and discrimination against gays, the Christian right portrays efforts to secure equal rights for gays as a bid for “special rights” that give them privileges other Americans don’t have. “We haven’t found an defective way of countering that,” says Rebecca Isaacs, political director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

If the army of Christian soldiers in the homosexuality wars has a general it FRC’s Robert Knight. In 1996, as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times, Knight concluded a long, gradual process of thought and medication; at that point, he says, “I gave my life to Jesus Christ.” Though he spent three more years at the Times, Knight was a changed man, having descended to commit himself to Christianity. After stints at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the Heritage Foundation, Washington’s premiere conservative think tank, he moved to the F R C. “Just look at the human body!” Says Knight. “You can’t fool nature. The rectum was not made for sexual activity.” Then, impishly, he adds, “it is an exit ramp, not an entry ramp.” Boyish and almost baby-faced, Knight, 47, is urgently sincere. “I’ve let Jesus Christ come into my life,” he says. “When you meet God face to face, you understand how far short you have fallen of God’s standards.” He hands me a pamphlet, “The Bible and Homosexuality,” which cites the passages from Genesis, Leviticus, Judges, Samuel 1 and 2, Romans, Timothy 1 and Corinthians I in which conservative Christians believe homosexuality is condemned. By far the most famous is the story of Lot in Sodom (Genesis 19:1-29), where an unruly crowd of men demand that Lot hand over some men, or angels, “So that we may know them” (in FRC’s translation: “So that we can have sex with them”) At that point, God destroyed Sodom.

Those passages and numerous others are nothing less than God’s law for many Christians, though many others theologians dispute the exact meaning and relevance of each and every passage. Knight’s blue eyes are unblinking as he warns that America’s “man-based culture” could shudder and fall with the advent of a sexual revolution brought about by gays. “As man is reduced in stature, all hell will break loose,” he says. “We’ll see a breakdown in social organizations, with more drug use, more disease, more unwanted pregnancies. You’re mainstreaming dysfunction.”

As the war room for the Christian right’s anti-gay campaign, the Family Research Council is a formidable force. House in a luxurious modern building in downtown Washington, D.C., FRC (slogan: “Family, Faith and Freedom”) is a $14 million-a-year operation that lobbies Congress and state legislatures, and churns out a steady stream of books, pamphlets and monographs on homosexuality; pornography, school prayer and abortion. FRC’s monthly Washington Watch reaches more than 400,000 homes, and its radio broadcasts are heard daily on 400 stations across the country.

Previously, FRC was part of Focus on the Family, James Dobson’s sprawling empire based in Colorado Springs, nestled against the Rockies. Dobson, a child psychologist and the author of Dare to Discipline, a book advocating corporal punishment for children, founded Focus on the Family in 1977, working out of a tiny office in Arcadia, California. Since moving to Colorado, Focus has grown astonishingly, into a $109 million-a-year ministry employing 1,300 people, who produce a dozen different radio and television broadcasts, fourteen publications (including its flagship monthly magazine, Focus on the Family, with a circulation of 2.5 million) and a wide rage of films and videos. Though virtually unknown to the general population, Dobson is wildly popular among his millions of followers, who listen daily to the Focus on the Family broadcasts on more than 1,900 radio outlets.

In 1992, as the FRC shifted its emphasis to lobbying Congress, Focus spun off FRC as a freestanding operation, though they have retained close ties.

Like many of his allies, Bob Knight believes that gays die younger, take more drugs, take more risks and engage in a wide range of anti-social conduct. Treading on highly controversial ground, Knight warns that the “gay agenda” targets children. “They are luring kids into a homosexual behavior,” says Knight. In a 1993 speech, he said, “There is a strong undercurrent of pedophilia in the homosexual subculture.”

If Knight is the movement’s general, his lieutenant is Pete LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. Energetic and fast-talking, LaBarbera, 36, was a liberal and an activist with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in the early 1980’s. Spurred by anti-communism and support of President Reagan’s 1983 invasion of Grenada, LaBarbera gravitated toward the right while a student at the University of Michigan. His personal “Damascus road” moment came thirteen years ago, when he met a woman- “ a missionary” he says – who helped him develop a “personal relationship with God.” With his intensified religious fervor came a growing revulsion toward homosexuality. Since 1993, LaBarbera has put out The Lambda Report, which is devoted exclusively to news about the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender world as seen through Christian-activist eyes. Though its circulation is just 3,000, the publication is notorious for it exposes of what LaBarbera sees as the unseemly and often lurid activities associated with the “gay lifestyle”. He regularly goes under cover to gay-rights meetings, gay bars and other locales, then recounts in near pornographic detail episode of fellatio, masturbation and sadomasochistic sex that he claims to observe. (Warning: Contains graphic descriptions” reads the subhead for one recent Lambda Report “exclusive” on a Washington D.C., “dungeon dance.”)

The Christian Right succeeds by tapping into American’s deep ambivalence toward homosexuality. Polls show a kind of schizophrenia: People seem to strongly favor anti-discrimination measures and other civil rights protections for gays and lesbians, while at the same time they view homosexuality negatively- a sort of distasteful tolerance. A national survey conducted in the Washington Post found that fifty-seven percent of Americans questioned considered homosexuality unacceptable; when asked about gay sex, seventy-two percent called it unacceptable. Yet an overwhelming eight-seven percent believe that homosexuals should have equal rights in terms of job opportunities.

Americans’ growing tolerance frustrates the Christian right, but its leaders counter balance this trend with considerable political clout. In Congress, a substantial bloc of senators and congressmen owe their allegiance, if not their election, to the Christian Coalition and it allies. They have a powerful grass foots apparatus along with a widespread network of radio and television outlets that millions of Christians turn to for alternative sources for news and opinion.
Indeed, the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, was credited to the power of the Christian right, and many of the freshman elected to Congress that year reinforced a loosely organized “God squad” on issues like homosexuality, abortion and school prayer. One member of that class, former Rep. Randy Tate, R-Wash, lost his bid for reelection in 1996, and now heads the Christian Coalition.

Especially, for Bible Belt Republicans in Congress, the Christian right has a make-or-break power. In Republican primaries where turnout is relatively low, groups like the Christian Coalition and focus on the Family can mobilize militant, committed voters at the polls. This edge in the primaries gives the groups access to the highest levels of the Republican party in Washington, including senate Majority Leader Trent Lott; last year, Lott won their praise when he compared homosexuality to disorders like alcoholism and kleptomania. Many other highly visible politicians, including Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla; Sen. James Inhofe, F-Okla; Sen. Jesse Helms, R-NC; Rep. Bob Inglis, R-SC, and Rep Henry Hyde, R-Ill, have publicly disparaged gays.

Still, many on the Christian right are angry that the GOP doesn’t pay more attention to their issues. Last year, Dobson threatened a complete break with the GOP when he believed that the Christian right was getting short shrift from the national Republican leadership. He and other like minded activists met in May with Republican House leaders, who promised to attend to the social conservative agenda. In July, House Republicans introduced a proposal to deny federal housing money to communities that provide benefits for unmarried domestic partners, another proposal seeks to block President Clinton’s efforts to prevent job discrimination against gay and lesbian federal employees.

I’m living proof that truth can set you free: The headline of a full-page ad appears below a photograph of an attractive, dark-haired woman, smiling and with her left hand held up to prominently display a wedding band. The caption reads: “Anne Paulk-wife, mother, former lesbian”. Also pictured are members of Exodus International, a worldwide network of Christian ministries devoted to helping gays and lesbians “confront the truth of their sexual sin.” The Truth in Love advertising campaign originated in the ten-acre Fort Lauderdale campus of Coral Ridge Ministries, whose awe-inspiring 300 foot spire looms over Federal Highway. Coral Ridge is the home of the dynamic Rev. D. James Kennedy, who has been preaching in Florida since the 1950’s. While Kennedy’s congregation of more than 9,000 members often swells with worshipers from around the country, it is through The Coral Ridge Hour that Kennedy reaches as estimated 3.5 million people weekly on 1,200 radio and television stations and two cable networks. Kennedy, who is dignified, articulate and fatherly, openly advocates that America should be transformed into the “Christian Republic”. Janet Folger, a former anti-abortion activist from Ohio, is director of the Center for Reclaiming America, the ministry’s political arm. Like many of her fellow Christian activists, Folger projects an aggrieved, set-upon mentality, arguing that Bible-Believing Christians are the true victims of discrimination, not gays. The FRC’s The Other Side of Tolerance: Victims of Homosexual Activism says that “many men and women of faith.. have lost their jobs or been disciplined for standing against the homosexual agenda.” It is a constant refrain. “We have been picketed” says Folger. “They say our whole side is extreme, that we are religious-political extremists.” That feeling contributed to how upset and angry Folger became over denunciations of Trent Lott for his comparison of gays to alcoholics. She proposed to members of the National Pro-Family Forum that they conduct an outreach campaign through advertising. “We wanted to express a message of hope,” says Folger. “We wanted to tell homosexuals that you can change.”

Folger’s proposal, which was enthusiastically accepted by Coral Ridge and eventually, sponsored by more than a dozen groups, was not Coral Ridge’s first foray into the anti-gay movement. The ministry pours money into anti-gay-rights ballot measures and the National Legal Foundations. Coral Ridge’s media sophistication allowed it to easily assemble the ad campaign. Soon afterward, Anne Paulk found herself staring from newspaper pages across the country. Paulk and her formerly gay husband, John Paulk, have become spokespeople for the “ex-gay” movement. She says that by surrendering to God she managed to abandon her lesbian life for heterosexuality: “I was able to finally give all my relations to God and begin a the real road to healing.” John paulk, who had been a drag queen and gay prostitute, now chairs Exodus International. Founded in Anaheim, California, in 1976, Exodus today includes ninety-seven affiliated ministries. It receives 400 to 600 inquires a month from homosexuals and their families, say Bob Davies, the group’s North American director. A large stable of therapists and counselors, many of them affiliated with the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuals, often works with Exodus clients to help them shed their gay identity.

The ads generated considerable backlash. To most medical experts, including the American Psychiatric Association, therapists engaging in so-called “reparative therapy” aimed at changing the sexual orientation of gay patients borders on malpractice. On December 14^th, the APA warned, “The potential risk of “reparative Therapy” are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior… The American Psychiatric Association opposes any psychiatric treatment, such as “reparative” or “conversion “ therapy, which is based on the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or … that the patient should change his/her sexual orientation”. Indeed, since the early 1970s, virtually the entire medical profession has undergone a sea change in favor of accepting homosexuality. But that hardly deterred the anti-gay movement, which claims that the APA, along with the American Psychological Association and other societies, has surrendered to pressure and intimidation tactics by gay-rights activists. A television ad campaign promoting the ex-gay philosophy is in the works.

While the conservative Christians who champion reparative therapy say they are motivated by sympathy for trouble gays, that is not true of everyone in the crusade against homosexuality. Extremists advocate the death penalty for gays, based on a radical interpretation of the Bible. The most notorious Anti-gay activist is the Rev Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro, Baptist church in Kansas, whose Web-site address is godhatesfags.com. To a man, the mainstream Christian-right groups have denounced Phelps, and he in turn has denounced the religious right as a “lukewarm cowards.” Phelps’ followers actually picket funeral of gay people. “ We display large, colorful signs containing bible words and sentiments,” says Phelps, including “GOD HATES FAGS, FAGS HATE GOD, AIDS CURES FAGS, THANK GOD FOR AIDS, FAGS BURN IN HELL, etc”. He cites “statistics’ such as, “The average fag fellates 106 men, swallows fifty seminal discharges, has seventy-two penile penetrations of the anus and ingests feces of twenty three different men every year.”

One thing that Phelps has in common with the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition and ex gay ministries like Exodus is that they all refer to the work of Dr. Paul Cameron, founder of the Family Research Institute and ISIS, the institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality. Cameron, 59, a former psychologist based in Colorado Springs, issues a stream of data often used by anti-gay activists: that gays are far more likely than straights to molest children, that gays are more likely to commit crimes as mundane as tax evasion or shoplifting, and so on. “We’re kind of the wellspring of most of the statistics about the gay lifestyle.” Cameron says. Cameron, who in the 1980s called for quarantining gays to prevent the spread of AIDS, has been attacked not only by gay-rights groups but also by psychologists, psychiatrists and sociologists, who have engaged in decades long war with Cameron. Like many of his allies, Cameron believes that, if left unchecked, homosexuality will destroy America like God did Sodom. “Untrammeled homosexuality can take over and destroy a social system,” says Cameron. “If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one’s own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get- and that is what homosexuality seems to be-then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm.” So powerful is the allure of gays, Cameron believes, that if society approves that gay people, more and more heterosexuals will be inexorably drawn into homosexuality. “I’m convinced that lesbians are particularly good seducers,” says Cameron. “People in homosexuality are incredibly evangelical,” he adds, sounding evangelical himself. “It’s pure sexuality. It’s almost like pure heroin. It’s such a rush. They are committed in almost a religious way. And they’ll take enormous risks, do anything.” He says that for married men and women, gay sex would be irresistible. “Martial sex tends toward the boring end,” he points out. “Generally, it doesn’t deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does” So, Cameron believes, within a few generations homosexuality would be come the dominant form of sexual behavior.

Whether or not one agrees with Cameron’s views, his research has been used efficiently by the Christian right During the 1990s in the campaign to overturn advances by gays and lesbians, and, it can be argued, to darken the prospects for peaceful acceptance of homosexuality. Gay rights activist David Garrity says that the referendum in Maine has intensified anti homosexual feelings there. “We all noticed a huge increase in harassment—a great number of shouts from teenagers in cars while we were walking on the street,” he says. “I can think of five incidents like that myself.” Tracking violent incidents, either state wide or nationally, is difficult. But according to the FBI’s latest data, in 1997 therefore 1,102 recorded hate crimes linked to sexual orientation, mostly aimed at gay males. The National Coalition of Anti- Violence Programs gives a figure of 2,445. The coalition also tracked sharp increases of anti gay violence during ballot initiative debates in Colorado and Oregon.

Following the Maine vote, the Christian Coalition announced its intention to launch a campaign called Families 2000, seeking “repeal of legislation giving special rights based on sexual behavior” in other states and “defeat of state gay adoption laws.” As a result of the Maine initiative, the coalition noted, “we add 100,000 new names to our organization in Maine.” With its complementary strategies portraying sexual orientation as a simple choice and arguing that gays wants special rights, the anti gay movement is only growing stronger.

T to the A to the P: the young edition.

2009-08-08T08:35:00.014+10:00

(sorry for the delay. Hard as it may be to believe, I do have a life outside teh internets)

In the course of TAP, we've seen forty-something year olds, a ~~sex god~~ Doctor, his delightful companion, the President, and a fellow old enough to be my grandfather. Hence, I've picked someone a touch different this time around; he's only two years older than me.

Presenting-Shia LaBeouf (whose surname I keep reading as Beowulf)! He's most famous for his roles in Transformers and Disturbia, but if you want to see Mr. LaBeouf pre-fame, I suggest you go watch i, Robot. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

And my favourites (although the second pic only makes sense if you remember the scene):

On Australian same-sex marriage

2009-08-03T18:29:00.001+10:00

(yes, I know this post should have been on Saturday. It took a while)

On Saturday, I attended Melbourne's Equal Love rally, to show support for same-sex marriage. There were some great speakers, including Senator Hanson-Young and a spokesperson for the Radical Women. However, what bothered me was that several speakers mentioned that 60% of Australian's supported gay marriage, like that was a genuine reason. Personally, I don't care if the 4-5,000 who attended the rally are the only people in all of Australia who think that same-sex marriage should be legal. The political views of the majority should absolutely never impact on the rights of any minority group. We saw this happen in California, wherein the majority voted to remove prevent Californian gays from marrying. Go back 54 years, to 1954, in which the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. Any intelligent, intellectually honest person with a firm knowledge of black American civil rights knows that if racial integration were up to a popular vote, it would have taken decades for the population to forego their prejudices.

All arguments to discriminate against gays are farcical. Traditional? Preventing women from voting was one of the longest-standing traditions in Western democracy, and stood for centuries until the Suffragette movements. Not natural? Asides from being false, almost everything in our day-to-day lives in unnatural. Cars, harnessing electricity and modern medicine are all unnatural, yet we'd be insane to pass them up. We shouldn't redefine marriage? Marriage has been redefined countless times. Anti-Biblical? Asides from being unconstitutional, why should we follow that particular interpretation of the Bible? Why not a more lefty view? For the children? Firstly, marriage and children have nothing to do with each other. You can marry and not have children, and vice versa. Secondly, gays are fine parents. It will lead to polygamy? That's a red herring; every person who's used that argument has failed to state why polygamous marriage is so bad in the first place. They can't procreate? Neither can the elderly. And so on and so fourth.

However, despite all this, for this term, I don't think the ALP should change the marriage laws immediately. Namely, because as a part of his election campaign, Rudd stated that he wouldn't allow gays to marry. And if there's one thing I loathe, it's a political leader changing his position on an issue mid-term, before they can be voted on that issue. Hence, I would rather Rudd state that if reelected, he would change the marriage laws, rather than change them now, even at the cost of equality.

Personal principles; they can be a real pain at times.

End of an era

2009-08-02T10:47:00.005+10:00

GrodsCorp, bastion of groupthink and bizarre sexual fetishes (fleshlights and pegging, anyone?) is dead. The Editor, AKA Scott, has taken leave to India and has shut down every leftist's favourite blog. It's rather depressing to see a stalwart of the lefty blogging community suddenly vanish. It's like a relative who's killed in freak pegging accident-there's an empty space that could only be filled with tap, fleshlight jokes and Brigit and Bron's excellent posts on American politics and Australian racism. Whatever Ant, Brigit, Bron and Jason get up to in the future, it will never replace what was lost.

Thankfully, now in my blogroll I can address Scott by his assigned military identity: Field Marshal Theodore Editor.

Cross-posted here, here, here, here and here.

My equivalent of Homer Simpson's 'new bilboard day'.

2009-07-31T14:33:00.005+10:00

CDP press release day!

For those who don't follow the adventures of Fred and his fellow fundies on an obsessive-compulsive basis, the CDP is a little haphazard about giving online press releases. Namely, that the page is updates only a few times every year, so 50+ articles are put up in one go (my theory is that most CDPers are involved in some sex scandal like their American counterparts, so every time another volunteer is found out, Fred needs to find an train a new guy. And because computers allow such easy access to the naughty stuff, the CDP loses more tech workers than Atari on a bad day).

Most press releases are rather boring, however several are truly spectacular in their fundishness (that's a word now, OK?).

- Fred Nile can't understand the difference between group sex and rape.

- Fred thinks that all Muslim schools teach Wahhabism.

- All environmentalists are secret extremists who want humanity to die, starting with the innocent children. Oh, teh gay agenda is there as well.

- Gays shouldn't be allowed to adopt, because the collective texts written by bronze age sheep herders who thought the earth was flat and insects have four legs provide a stronger basis for modern society than current psychological and pediatric institutions.

That's all, folks.

Terrorism committed by...white people? IMPOSSIBLE!!1!

2009-07-30T14:56:00.005+10:00

I've discussed this before, but the topic has come up again.

From CNN: "Trial set for anti-abortion activist in Kansas doctor's death"

An "activist" you say? I guess you could call him an "activist" but there's a much more accurate word used to describe killing a civilian to intimidate one's political enemies.

Could you imagine anybody-anybody-calling Hamas 'activists critical of Israel' or calling the KKK 'states' rights activists' or the real IRA 'pro-Ireland activists'? Activism is activity to advocate a certain political goal ideology. Terrorism is violence against innocent civilians to advocate political goal: there is a bloody difference. Of course, if any news organisations were to use 'terrorist' to describe the murderer, the outrage from Republicans and right to life organisations would would be spectacular. The sort of "How dare you equate this man protecting the unborn to al-Qaeda" style of outrage...well, at least Sarah Palin isn't in the White House.

Shamelessly stolen from Shakesville.

A message to Craig 'Irony's my middle name' Catchlove

2009-07-29T10:25:00.007+10:00

To: Aldermen@astc.nt.gov.au

Title: Response to the proposed Public Places By-Laws

Dear Mr. Catchlove and the Alice Spring's Town Council,

I am deeply horrified by the proposed laws to fine people for begging. Beggars amongst the poorest and most vulnerable people in any community, consisting of those who are homeless, mentally ill or suffering from past histories of child abuse. Deliberately fining people who are unable to pay such fines is a despicable act of cruelty and is something I would expect to see in Burma or Zimbabwe, not Australia. I have been informed that there is time to rescind this law, and I urge you to do so.

If I could receive a receipt for this email from the Council, that would be greatly appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Richardson-Smith.

Hat tip to Captain Lefty.

Pure misogyny: the sequel

2009-07-26T13:35:00.003+10:00

A while back, I wrote a post regarding 'purity balls'. My main beef was the double standard; that sexual purity was/is only ever applied to girls, whilst boys were ignored. In hindsight, I now realise I missed something equally as problematic; that religious fundamentalists and hardline conservatives can't separate morality from sexuality (when I say 'sexuality' I'm referring to one's sexual self, not which sex they're attracted to. Sexual orientation is a component of sexual self, but the sexual self also encompasses views on sex, sexual drive, etc).

Check out 'sexual morality' and its sister page, 'sex-negativity'. It becomes very clear what the far-conservatives, religious and areligious, believe that any form of sexual expression outside of your married partner is inherently amoral, and this reflects on your person; that you are amoral as well. This is a concept so ridiculous I have a hard time trying to formulate a proper response, but this is a good example. Turtle is a prime example of sexual absolutism; s/he is unable to discern a hypothetical gay teacher's sexual orientation (viewed as sinful) from the teacher's moral beliefs. As far as Turtle is concerned, the teacher's immorality begins and ends with his sinful orientation-no other information, such as compassion or charity work, is required.

Similar, if more crude and insulting, views can be found by searching 'slut' or 'whore' in FSTDT. Once again, we peoples'-in this case womens'-morality totally defined by their sexual self.

This actually explains a great deal of fundie beliefs. Fundies believe that sexuality defines morality; therefore, someone who adheres to traditional sexuality (no premarital sex, no contraception et al) is moral, regardless of their other beliefs and actions. You can be pro-war, reject any compassion or kindness to the poverty stricken, you can lie, defame and hate those different from you, yet you are moral because of your sexuality. Equally, somebody who doesn't conform to such rigid sexual norms is amoral, no matter who they are. A sex worker may regularly fundrais to support anti-poverty measures, but they will still be considered completely devoid of morality by religious fundamentalists.

Shakesville gives an excellent statement regarding that 'sexuality as morality' philosophy, in this case in the context of purity balls:

This transaction immutably and inextricably links a girl's virginity with her character—to the exclusion, Hart worries, of all else. "[T]hese dads and daughters may be falling for the misperception … that some sort of righteousness is inherent in the status of virgin, or any outward appearance of propriety. But what if that same virginal girl has a heart full of bitterness, envy, lust, greed? Would her dad still be proud? Would she? Should they be?" Good questions all. Here's another: Is there not something deeply troubling about a parent who finds it quite impossible to be proud of his daughter, or a daughter who likewise finds it quite impossible to be proud of herself, if she has a heart full of love and kindness and generosity, and is also an unmarried non-virgin? How many girls, knowing their father's love and respect is contingent upon their "purity," will resist telling their fathers if they are molested, or raped?

To say that defining morality as sexuality is dangerous is a spectacular understatement. A low key example is this, where a city manager was fired because his wife is a porn actor. This also shows that people (such as the aforementioned Turtle) are unable to distinguish a person's private life from their public life. Mr. Janke was fired not because of ability to his job, but because the council was uncomfortable with his private life. I don't care if it was Ms. Janke who was the city manager; the idea that one's personal life is also their public life is ludicrous. Thankfully, the community is at worst, neutral, and a best, supportive of the Jankes.

This, I feel, doesn't only show the inherent danger of 'purity' but, on an unrelated note, provides an adequate explanation for the fundies' support for Bush; in return for their vote, he gave America abstinence-only indoctrination, disenfranchisement of gays, and attempted to roll back Roe v. Wade.

Other good stuff here, here and here.

Piers and Andrew. Pornstars in other lives.

2009-07-25T16:59:00.006+10:00

Piers 'Idiot's Andrew Bolt' Akerman is a well established idiot.

The Left, which has been pushing for this new global wealth redistribution scheme, must decide whether it really wants to punish nations like India, where 42.5 per cent of children under five are malnourished.

Fracken' genius (although it should be spelled 'teh Left').

But the true gold comes from Andrew 'Murdoch's bitch' Bolt. I wonder how Andy would feel if he knew his material has such strong support from leading white supremacist forum Stormfront?

Analogies so brilliant they may cause my pants to explode.

2009-07-23T10:16:00.006+10:00

Not that I'm a narcissist or anything.

Recently, Admiral Phoenix has commentated on two issues regarding womens' reproductive freedoms. The first is that American pharmacy workers must sell contraceptives, regardless of whether they personally oppose to selling such products due to religious beliefs.

The second issue regards the an Ohio Republican trying to prevent women from seeking abortion on the grounds of fathers' rights. Long story short: if the mother wants to terminate and the father doesn't, his beliefs override both her beliefs and her rights to privacy and autonomy.

Regarding the contraceptives, I wrote

If a cashier refused to scan meat products because they were a vegetarian, they'd be fired, then laughed from the building.

And concerning abortion, I wrote

How's this for an idea: all newborn boys undergo a vasectomy, and can only reverse it if they have the signed permission of his partner.

Could you imagine THAT getting through the legislature?

Yup, my pants just exploded.

Fundies: the source of everything good, holy and hilarious. Well, hilarious, anyway.

2009-07-22T09:54:00.004+10:00

A while back, the Chaser did a skit, satirising the objects Christians claim to see holy people in. In response, the Christian ~~Theo~~ 'Democratic' Party gave a press release condemning the skit*. Now, an American is claiming that he can see Mary in some bird crap on his wing mirror. Either this guy is a fundie of the highest (or lowest) order, or he is a brilliant Poe.

I actually think it's impossible to properly make fun of fundies. They do it so well already, nobody else can top it.

*In the press release, also note the brilliant segue from condemning the sketch to good ol' fashion Islamophobia. Piers Akerman would be proud.

Bigotry; it's OK if you've got an invisible skydaddy to back it up.

2009-07-20T10:11:00.003+10:00

Recently, religious groups have got into a bit of a tizzy over potential discrimination clauses which may be changed, preventing 'religion' from being an excuse to discriminate against people they don't like (wrapped up, as always, under the cover of 'religious freedom').

I've covered this topic before; if religious freedom and and human rights clash, than human rights trump religious freedom. Period. If you think it's your religious freedom to discriminate, than by extension you must agree that a white principal can prevent a non-white applicant from teaching because it goes against the principal's genuine beliefs. Of course, if it was a Muslim school disallowing Christians from teaching (equally as abhorrent), you would be up in arms in outrage.

(And does anybody think it's rather unjust that religious bigots are allowed to discriminate, but non-believing bigots are not?)

Captain Lefty, does a better job here.

I watched 'God on My Side' recently.

2009-07-16T15:32:00.002+10:00

Good lord, it was terrifying. The film pulls very few, if any, punches, delving deep inside the psychology of American Christian fundamentalism-one half of the Republican vote (other half being big business). The film shows in as impartial way as possible why it is so important to prevent fundies from returning to power-because they want theocracy.

GOMS establishes that the fundamentalists freely want to align the laws of America along their interpretation of Christian principles. With theocracy, the freedoms of religion perish. From the ten commandments outside government buildings, to teacher-lead prayer in schools, abortion and homosexuality illegalised,to abstinence-only indoctrination (I won't call it 'sex education' because 'abstinence-only sex education' is an oxymoron), the effects of American theocracy are terrifying.

American theocracy needs to be opposed because those policies above are the antithesis of a liberal democracy. What if a non-believing child doesn't wish to participate in school prayer? Who gets to decide what's morally 'right' in the bedroom, wherein all parties are consenting (indeed, such anti-Sodomy laws are highly reminiscent of anti-interracial laws)?

Fundies are unable to understand why separation doesn't protect only the state-it protects religion as well. Who gets to decide which interpretation of fundamentalist Christianity is correct? James Dobson? Joseph Ratzinger? Fred Phelps? All an America theocracy needs is a hardline-enough President, and Christian denominations with opposing beliefs will be illegalised. Democracy is a fundamental tenant of religious freedom. What is also seen is that fundamentalists view the past (pre-banning of prayer) as a golden age of morality. Fundamentalises would give David Irving a run for his money for historial revisionism; pre-1962, there was rampant racism, rape was legal, African-Americans couldn't vote, and McCarthyism had only just subsided.

What I find most unappealing about all fundamentalist religions (not merely Christianity), much more than the anti-science stances (creationism and stem cells, anyone?) is the total intolerance of any faiths other than their own, and the fundamentalist hatred this generates. These people believe that Earth enters the end times, they will enter heaven, and the rest of humanity will be left on a hellish earth. It doesn't matter how moral I am; that I support various human rights and anti-poverty organisations-I am a non-believer, and so I will spend all eternity in torture in the lake of fire, simply for being so.

Perhaps these so-called Christian folk could take a lesson or two from the Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

ATTACK OF THE DERANGED MUTANT KILLER MONSTER SNOW GOONS

2009-07-15T12:12:00.019+10:00

Title, once again, to Bill Watterson.

Either I have a very disturbed imagination, or I am easily influenced by people with equally disturbing imaginations. Either way, if/when I go to the mountains, I'll take an idea or fifteen from the Book of Calvin.

Lazyboy Moments: they're baaack! (And with a vengeance)

2009-07-13T10:25:00.003+10:00

It's depressing looking back at the history of what was such a promising blog subject. Private Tom's Lazyboy Moments was created to keep the posts up even when I was dry of political material. When I had nothing, when I was lazy, or when I found a particularly brilliant piece of writing, I would repost it here. The the term 'Lazyboy' comes from the first Moment, when I posted a link to a very fine music video by artist Lazyboy.

However, since the introduction of my TAP posts, Lazyboy moments are appearing only ever couple of months. Hence, I'd like to (at least try to) restart it by posting a ridiculously long column covering everybody's favourite winking, anti-science, wolf-hunting, grammatically incorrect and fundamentally incoherent former mayor, VP candidate and governor, Sarah Palin.

Despite her disastrous performance in the 2008 election, Sarah Palin is still the sexiest brand in Republican politics, with a lucrative book contract for her story. But what Alaska’s charismatic governor wants the public to know about herself doesn’t always jibe with reality. As John McCain’s top campaign officials talk more candidly than ever before about the meltdown of his vice-presidential pick, the author tracks the signs—political and personal—that Palin was big trouble, and checks the forecast for her future.

By Todd S. Purdum August 2009

The pattern is inescapable: she takes disagreements personally, and swiftly deals vengeance on enemies, real or perceived. Illustration by Risko.

The crowds begin streaming into the Evansville Auditorium and Convention Centre a couple of hours before the arrival of the “special guest speaker” at the Vanderburgh County Right to Life dinner on a soft Indiana spring evening—nearly 2,200 people in the banquet hall, 800 more in an adjacent auditorium watching the proceedings on a live video feed. The menu is thick slices of roast pork and red velvet cake, washed down with pitchers of iced tea, and when Sarah Palin finally enters, escorted by a phalanx of sheriff’s deputies and local police, she is mobbed. The organizers of the dinner, billed as “the largest pro-life banquet in the world,” have courted Palin for weeks with care packages of locally made chocolates, doughnuts, barbecue, and pastries, and she has requited by choosing Evansville, a conservative stronghold in southern Indiana, as the site of her first public speech outside Alaska in 2009. Like Richard M. Nixon, who chose the coalfield town of Hyden, Kentucky, for his first post-resignation public appearance, Palin has come to a place where she is guaranteed a hero’s reception. She is not only a staunch foe of abortion but also the mother of a boy, Trig, who was born with Down syndrome just a few months before John McCain chose Palin as his running mate. The souvenir program for this evening’s dinner is full of displays for local politicians and businesses, attesting to their pro-life bona fides. An ad for Hahn Realty Corporation reads, “If you need commercial real estate, call Joe Kiefer! Joe is pro-life and a proud supporter of the Vanderburgh County Right to Life.”

As Palin makes her way slowly across the crowded ballroom—dressed all in black; no red Naughty Monkey Double Dare pumps tonight—she is stopped every few inches by adoring fans. She passes the press pen, where at least eight television cameras and a passel of reporters and photographers are corralled, and spots a reporter for a local community newspaper getting ready to take a happy snap with his pocket camera. For a split second she stops, pauses, turns her head and shoulders just so, and smiles. She holds the pose until she’s sure the man has his shot and then moves on. A few minutes later, the evening’s nominal keynote speaker, the Republican Party’s national chairman, Michael Steele, who has been reduced to a footnote in the proceedings, introduces the special guest speaker as “the storm that is the honorable governor of the great state of Alaska, Sarah Palin!”

Just where that storm may be heading is one of the most intriguing issues in American politics today. Palin is at once the sexiest and the riskiest brand in the Republican Party. Her appeal to people in the party (and in the country) who share her convictions and resentments is profound. The fascination is viral, and global. Bill McAllister, until recently Palin’s statehouse spokesman, says that he has fielded (and declined) interview requests from France, England, Italy, Switzerland, Israel, Germany, Bulgaria, “and probably other countries I’ve forgotten about.” (Palin, keeping her distance from most domestic media as well, also declined to talk to V.F.). Whatever her political future, the emergence of Sarah Palin raises questions that will not soon go away. What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party—long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics—keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life’s injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?

In the aftermath of the November election, the conventional wisdom among Palin’s supporters in the Republican establishment was that she should go home, keep her head down, show that she could govern effectively, and quietly educate herself about foreign and domestic policy with the help of a cadre of experienced advisers. She has done none of this. Rather, she has pursued an erratic course that, for her, may actually represent the closest thing there is to True North. Her first trip to Washington since the election was to attend the dinner of the Alfalfa Club, an elite group of politicians and businesspeople whose sole function is an annual evening in honor of a plant that would “do anything for a drink.” Some of her handlers first said she had accepted—though she then went on to decline—an invitation to speak at the annual June fund-raiser for the congressional Republicans. She created a political-action committee—Sarahpac—with the help of John Coale, a prominent Democratic trial lawyer. But just months into its existence the pac’s chief fund-raiser, Becki Donatelli, a veteran of Republican campaigns, suddenly quit. One person familiar with the situation told me that Donatelli could not stand dealing with Palin’s political spokeswoman in Alaska, Meghan Stapleton, who has drawn withering fire from Palin friends and critics alike for being an ineffective adviser. Also with Coale’s help, Palin formed the grandiosely named Alaska Fund Trust, to defray a reported half million dollars in legal expenses arising from a slew of formal ethics complaints against her in her home state—prompting yet another formal complaint, that the fund itself constitutes an ethical breach. Onetime supporters have become harsh critics. Walter Hickel, 89, a former two-term governor and interior secretary, and the grand old man of Alaska politics, who was co-chair of Palin’s winning gubernatorial campaign, in 2006, now washes his hands of her. He told me simply, “I don’t give a damn what she does.”

Palin is unlike any other national figure in modern American life—neither Anna Nicole Smith nor Margaret Chase Smith but a phenomenon all her own. The clouds of tabloid conflict and controversy that swirl around her and her extended clan—the surprise pregnancies, the two-bit blood feuds, the tawdry in-laws and common-law kin caught selling drugs or poaching game—give her family a singular status in the rogues’ gallery of political relatives. By comparison, Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection. Palin’s life has sometimes played out like an unholy amalgam of Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure.

Another aspect of the Palin phenomenon bears examination, even if the mere act of raising it invites intimations of sexism: she is by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics, the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs. This pheromonal reality has been a blessing and a curse. It has captivated people who would never have given someone with Palin’s record a second glance if Palin had looked like Susan Boyle. And it has made others reluctant to give her a second chance because she looks like a beauty queen.

Soon Palin will take a crack at her own story: she has signed a book contract for an undisclosed but presumably substantial sum, and has chosen Lynn Vincent, a senior writer at the Christian-conservative World magazine, as co-author of the memoir, which is to be published next year not only by HarperCollins but also in a special edition by Zondervan, the Bible-publishing house, that may include supplemental material on faith. During the presidential campaign, Palin’s deep ignorance about most aspects of foreign and domestic policy provided her with a powerful political reason not to submit to interviews. The forthcoming book adds a powerful commercial reason.

Palin is a cipher by choice. When she chooses to reveal herself, what she reveals is not always the same thing as the truth. Her singular refusal to have in-depth conversations with the national media—even Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney, among the most saturnine political figures in modern American history, each submitted to countless detailed interviews over the years—has compounded the challenge of understanding who she really is. There has been Hollywood talk that Palin could star in a reality-TV show about running Alaska, but nothing has come of it yet. Recently, Palin did star in a week-long seriocomic feud with David Letterman over some of his borderline jokes. Meanwhile, she has begun sharing insights several times a day on Twitter, with chipper reports on her own doings and those of her husband, Todd, and the rest of what she calls the “first family.” “Look forward to today’s staff discussion re: my 3rd justice appt to highest court in 3 yrs. Supreme Court truly effects AK’s future,” reads one. And another: “Picking up my handsome little man to rtrn to Juneau, Trig got 1st haircut so my little hippie baby’s ready for AK sunshine on his shoulders.”

Little Shop of Horrors

The caricature of Sarah Palin that emerged in the presidential campaign, for good and ill, is now ineradicable. The swift journey from her knockout convention speech to Tina Fey’s dead-eyed incarnation of her as Dan Quayle with an updo played out in real time, no less for the bewildered McCain campaign than for the public at large. It is an ironclad axiom of politics that if a campaign looks troubled from the outside the inside reality is far worse, and the McCain-Palin fiasco was no exception. As in any sudden marriage of convenience in which neither partner really knows the other, there were bound to be bumps. Palin had been on the national Republican radar for barely a year, after a cruise ship of conservative columnists, including The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol, had stopped in Juneau in 2007 and had succumbed to her charms when she invited them to the governor’s house for a luncheon of halibut cheeks. McCain had spent only a couple of hours in Palin’s presence before choosing her, and she had pointedly failed to endorse him after he clinched the nomination in March. The difficulties began immediately, with the McCain team’s delivery of the bad news that the pregnancy of Palin’s daughter Bristol, which was already common knowledge in Alaska and had been revealed to the McCain team at the last minute, could not be kept secret until after the Republican convention.

By the time Election Day rolled around, the staff had been serially pummeled by unflattering press reports about the gaps in Palin’s knowledge, her stubborn resistance to direction, and the post-selection spending spree in which she ran up bills of $150,000 on clothes for herself and her family at high-end stores. The top McCain aides who had tried hard to work with Palin—Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist; Nicolle Wallace, the communications ace; and Tucker Eskew, her traveling counselor—were barely on speaking terms with her, and news organizations were reporting that anonymous McCain aides saw Palin as a “diva” and a “whack job.” Many of the details that led to such assessments have remained obscure. But in a recent series of conversations, a range of people from the McCain-Palin campaign, including members of the high command, agreed to elaborate on how a match they thought so right ended up going so wrong.

The consensus is that Palin’s rollout, and even her first television interview, with ABC’s Charles Gibson, conducted after an awkward two-week press blackout to allow for intensive cramming at her home in Wasilla, went more or less fine, though it had its embarrassing moments (“You can’t blink,” Palin said, when Gibson asked if she’d hesitated to accept McCain’s offer) and was much parodied. At least one savvy politician—Barack Obama—believed Palin would never have time to get up to speed. He told his aides that it had taken him four months to learn how to be a national candidate, and added, “I don’t care how talented she is, this is really a leap.” The paramount strategic goal in picking Palin was that the choice of a running mate had to ensure a successful convention and a competitive race right after; in that limited sense, the choice worked. But no serious vetting had been done before the selection (by either the McCain or the Obama team), and there was trouble in nailing down basic facts about Palin’s life. After she was picked, the campaign belatedly sent a dozen lawyers and researchers, led by a veteran Bush aide, Taylor Griffin, to Alaska, in a desperate race against the national reporters descending on the state. At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum on the North Slope of Alaska. Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn’t really count and need not be revealed. This sort of slipperiness—about both what the truth was and whether the truth even mattered—persisted on questions great and small. By late September, when the time came to coach Palin for her second major interview, this time with Katie Couric, there were severe tensions between Palin and the campaign.

By all accounts, Palin was either unwilling, or simply unable, to prepare. In the run-up to the Couric interview, Palin had become preoccupied with a far more parochial concern: answering a humdrum written questionnaire from her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman. McCain aides saw it as easy stuff, the usual boilerplate, the work of 20 minutes or so, but Palin worried intently. At the same time, she grew concerned that her approval ratings back home in Alaska were sagging as she embraced the role of McCain’s bad cop. To keep her happy, the chief McCain strategist, Steve Schmidt, agreed to conduct a onetime poll of 300 Alaska voters. It would prove to Palin, Schmidt thought, that everything was all right.

Then came the near-total meltdown of the financial system and McCain’s much-derided decision to briefly “suspend” his campaign. Under the circumstances, and with severely limited resources, Schmidt and the McCain-campaign chairman, Rick Davis, scrapped the Alaska poll and urgently set out to survey voters’ views of the economy (and of McCain’s response to it) in competitive states. Palin was furious. She was convinced that Schmidt had lied to her, a belief she conveyed to anyone who would listen.

The next big milestone for Palin was the debate with Joe Biden, on October 2. An early rehearsal effort in Philadelphia found 20 people sitting in a stifling room with hundreds of sample questions on note cards. Palin just stared down, disengaged, non-participatory. A disaster loomed, so Schmidt made the difficult decision to leave campaign headquarters, in Virginia, and fly to McCain’s vacation retreat in Sedona, Arizona, where it was thought that Palin might be able to relax and recharge, and accept the assistance of a voice coach and a television coach. For three full days—at the height of the campaign—Schmidt dropped virtually all other business to help Palin prepare.

He also enlisted some extra help. By this point, Palin’s relations with Nicolle Wallace—a veteran of the Bush White House and a former CBS News analyst who had tried to help Palin get ready for the Couric interview, and whom Palin blamed for the result—were so strained that campaign aides cast about for someone who could serve as a calming presence: Palin’s horse whisperer. They settled on Mark McKinnon, a smart, funny, soft-spoken former Democrat from Texas. McKinnon had long admired McCain, and had begun the Republican primary season helping him out—though warning that he would never work against Obama in the general election. But now McKinnon, whose role in helping prepare Palin has not been previously reported, and who declined to elaborate on it to V.F., changed his mind and quietly signed on. Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime aide, says that McKinnon was picked because “he’s got a lovely manner You sort of want a guy who’s very easygoing, gives good advice, and doesn’t add to the natural nervousness.”

Palin worked hard, and the results were adequate. Palin’s winking “Can I call you Joe?” performance against Biden was nothing like a disaster. In fact, it seems to have emboldened her enough that the next day she openly voiced disagreement with the McCain team’s decision to pull out of active competition in Michigan. When orders or advice from McCain headquarters began to conflict with her own impulses, aides told me, she simply did what she wanted to do. “The problem was she came down from Alaska with basically Todd as a sort of trusted bellwether adviser,” one McCain friend says. “She was given this staff of 20. It was probably too big a staff. To be real honest with you, I don’t think she could figure out who to trust.” All the while, Palin was coping not only with the crazed life of any national candidate on the road but also with the young children traveling with her. Some top aides worried about her mental state: was it possible that she was experiencing postpartum depression? (Palin’s youngest son was less than six months old.) Palin maintained only the barest level of civil discourse with Tucker Eskew, the veteran G.O.P. operative who had been made her chief minder. A third party had to shuttle between them to convey even the most rudimentary messages. “She started to hedge her bets,” the same McCain friend says. “Frequently, she would be concerned about how something would play in Alaska. What? You’re worried about your backside in Alaska when there are hundreds of millions of dollars being spent?” One longtime McCain friend and frequent companion on the trail was heard to refer to Palin as “Little Shop of Horrors.”

Election Night brought what McCain aides saw as the final indignity. Palin decided she would make her own speech at the ticket’s farewell to the faithful, at the Arizona Biltmore, in Phoenix. When aides went to load McCain’s concession speech into the teleprompter, they found a concession speech for Palin—written by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully, who had also been the principal drafter of her convention speech—already on the system. Schmidt and Salter told Palin that there was no tradition of Election Night speeches by running mates, and that she wouldn’t be giving one. Palin was insistent. “Are those John’s wishes?” she asked. They were, she was told. But Palin took the issue to McCain himself, raising it on the walk from his suite to the outdoor rally. Again the answer was no.

Polar Disorder

There is virtually nothing about Palin’s performance in the fall campaign that should have come as a surprise to John McCain. Had he really attempted to learn something about her before the fateful day of August 29, 2008, when he announced that she was his choice for running mate, he would easily have discerned all the traits that he belatedly came to know.

The narrative that the McCain campaign employed to explain Palin’s selection and to promote her qualifications—that she was a fresh-faced reformer who had taken on Alaska’s big oil companies and the corrupt Republican establishment, governing with bipartisan support—was never more than superficially true. In dozens of conversations during a recent visit to Alaska, it was easy to learn that there has always been a counter-narrative about Palin, and indeed it has become the dominant one. It is the story of a political novice with an intuitive feel for the temper of her times, a woman who saw her opportunities and coolly seized them. In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived. “Remember,” says Lyda Green, a former Republican state senator who once represented Palin’s home district, and who over the years went from being a supporter of Palin’s to a bitter foe, “her nickname in high school was ‘Barracuda.’ I was never called Barracuda. Were you? There’s a certain instinct there that you go for the jugular.”

The first thing McCain could have learned about Palin is what it means that she is from Alaska. More than 30 years ago, John McPhee wrote, “Alaska is a foreign country significantly populated with Americans. Its languages extend to English. Its nature is its own. Nothing seems so unexpected as the boxes marked ‘U.S. Mail.’” That description still fits. The state capital, Juneau, is 600 miles from the principal city, Anchorage, and is reachable only by air or sea. Alaskan politicians list the length of their residency in the state (if they were not born there) at the top of their biographies, and are careful to specify whether they like hunting, fishing, or both. There is little sense of government as an enduring institution: when the annual 90-day legislative session is over, the legislators pack up their offices, files, and computers, and take everything home. Alaska’s largest newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News, maintains no full-time bureau in Juneau to cover the statehouse. As in any resource-rich developing country with weak institutions and woeful oversight, corruption and official misconduct go easily unchecked. Scrutiny is not welcome, and Alaskans of every age and station, of every race and political stripe, unself-consciously refer to every other place on earth with a single word: Outside.

So, of all the puzzling things that Sarah Palin told the American public last fall, perhaps the most puzzling was this: “Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.”

Believe me, it is not.

But Sarah Palin herself is a microcosm of Alaska, or at least of the fastest-growing and politically crucial part of it, which stretches up the broad Matanuska-Susitna Valley, north of Anchorage, where she came of age and cut her political teeth in her now famous hometown, Wasilla. In the same way that Lyndon Johnson could only have come from Texas, or Bill Clinton from Arkansas, Palin and all that she is could only have come from Wasilla. It is a place of breathtaking scenery and virtually no zoning. The view along Wasilla’s main drag is of Chili’s, ihop, Home Depot, Target, and Arby’s, and yet the view from the Palins’ front yard, on Lake Lucille, recalls the Alpine splendor visible from Captain Von Trapp’s terrace in The Sound of Music. It is culturally conservative: the local newspaper recently published an article that asked, “Will the Antichrist be a Homosexual?” It is in this Alaska—where it is possible to be both a conservative Republican and a pothead, or a foursquare Democrat and a gun nut—that Sarah Palin learned everything she knows about politics, and about life. It was in this environment that her ambition first found an outlet in public office, and where she first tasted the 151-proof Everclear that is power.

The second thing McCain could have discovered about Palin is that no political principle or personal relationship is more sacred than her own ambition. To be sure, Palin is “conservative,” whatever that means, but she can be all over the lot in the articulation of her platform. In a June interview with Sean Hannity, she sounded like a New Dealer when she proudly proclaimed that “a share of our oil-resource revenue goes back to the people who own the resources—imagine that.” In the next breath, sounding like a “starve the beast” conservative, she said she hoped the price of oil, the principal variable of state revenue, would not rise too much. “The fewer dollars that the state of Alaska government has, the fewer dollars we spend, and that’s good for our families and the private sector.” Palin has always been a party of one. She gained the mayoralty of Wasilla in 1996 by turning against the incumbent, John Stein, who had been one of her mentors when she was on the city council, and injecting sharply partisan issues such as gun rights and abortion into what had previously been a low-key local contest. She fired the police chief, eased out the museum director and the city planner, and fired and then rehired the librarian (who had opposed book censorship). Palin was entitled to make the dismissals, and she variously justified them on the grounds of budget difficulties or the need for a team that she could be sure would support her efforts. But the Frontiersman accused Palin of confusing her election with a “coronation.”

Even in broad outline the story of how a small-town mayor became the youngest governor in Alaska history seems improbable. There was her long-shot campaign for lieutenant governor, in 2002, in which she came in second against a veteran state senator in a five-way race; her appointment as chair (and ethics supervisor) of the state’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which oversees drilling and production; and her resignation from that post, charging that a fellow commissioner, Randy Ruedrich, the chair of the Alaska Republican Party, was conducting political business on state time. In a climate where the sitting Republican governor, Frank Murkowski, had become the most unpopular figure in the state, and where the F.B.I. was swarming over Alaska, pursuing the corruption probe that later ensnared the state’s senior U.S. senator, Ted Stevens, Palin seemed like a breath of fresh air.

Yet Palin herself cut corners. Ruedrich, Palin’s target on the Conservation Commission, was forced to resign, but in 2006, as Palin was beginning her campaign for governor, a conservative columnist dug up e-mail messages showing that she too had conducted campaign business from her mayoral office. Confronted by the columnist, Palin acknowledged that she had erred. Then she turned around and issued a press release, demanding to know why the columnist was publishing smears.

Palin won the crucial support of Walter Hickel in her campaign for governor in part by supporting one of his longtime hobbyhorses, an “all-Alaska” natural-gas pipeline that would pump gas to the port of Valdez for export worldwide. As the campaign wore on, Palin backed away from that idea. “I helped her out, she got elected,” Hickel says now. “She never called me once in her life after that.”

Palin’s 2006 campaign for governor relied at first almost wholly on a ragtag band of true believers. “She had this little grassroots group that was going around the state on a wing and a prayer, talking up her platitudes,” says John Bitney, an old friend of Palin’s from junior-high band in Wasilla, where he played the trombone and she played the flute. Bitney at the time was a lobbyist and veteran legislative aide in Juneau, and he began passing political intelligence and advice to Palin. When Palin routed Murkowski in the Republican primary, she still had no real professional campaign staff. Bitney signed on, forming a triumvirate with Curtis Smith, a veteran Anchorage media consultant, and Kris Perry, another old friend of Palin’s from Wasilla, who functioned as her personal assistant and also held the title of campaign manager. Palin began preparing for a general-election campaign against Tony Knowles, the former two-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Halcro, a former Republican legislator who was running as an independent.

She apparently didn’t like preparing for debates back then either. “In the campaign for governor, they’re prepping her for debate,” Curtis Smith’s former business partner, Jim Lottsfeldt, told me recently in Anchorage, “and Curtis says, ‘The debate prep’s going horribly. Every time we try to help her with an answer, she just gets mad.’” (Smith himself says, “Unfortunately, I don’t recall having that exact conversation with Mr. Lottsfeldt, nor do I recall my experience, including debate prep, with Governor Palin in the light he portrayed.”) But Palin’s lack of knowledge turned out not to hurt her. Andrew Halcro later remembered that he and Palin once compared notes about their many encounters, and she said, “Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I’m amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, Does any of this really matter?”

Palin’s victory that November was one of the flukiest successes in modern American politics. Rebecca Braun, the publisher of the Alaska Budget Report, a respected nonpartisan newsletter, describes the result as something “far beyond anything you could explain in terms of intellect or training.” But Palin had promised three big things, and with the help of Bitney, who became her liaison with the legislature, and Mike Tibbles, her chief of staff, she achieved them. She increased oil taxes; she won the legislative framework for a gas pipeline, though not the one Hickel wanted; and she signed significant ethics reforms. In all three efforts she won strong cooperation from Democrats. “She had an easy go of it,” says Larry Persily, a former editorial-page editor of the Anchorage Daily News, who went to work in Palin’s Washington office but is now a critic of the governor’s. “The Democrats were in love with her. She slew the oil-company Gorgon, and came in on the magic carpet of oil-tax reform and ethics. The Democrats were intoxicated because she wasn’t Frank Murkowski.” Rising oil prices provided an added lift. Palin was able to increase the annual distribution from the state’s Permanent Fund to about $3,000 per resident, almost double the amount received the previous year. She could be a fiscal conservative and a big spender all at the same time.

But there were ominous signs—indications of an erratic nature. This is the third thing McCain could have discovered about Palin—a woman, after all, who kept a pregnancy secret for seven months, flew all the way home from Texas to Alaska with a near-full-term baby while leaking amniotic fluid, and then finally drove the 45 minutes from Anchorage to a hospital in Wasilla, all so that the child could be born in the 49th state. Palin was for the infamous Gravina Island “bridge to nowhere” before she was against it, and reversed herself only when such pork-barrel projects prompted a nationwide backlash. As governor, she hired several old high-school, hometown, or political friends with minimal qualifications for important state jobs. One friend, a former mid-level manager for Alaska Airlines, headed the department that reviewed candidates for state boards and commissions; another became director of the state Division of Agriculture, citing a childhood love of cows as one qualification. Palin communicated with legislators and her staff mainly by BlackBerry, sometimes using a personal e-mail account to avoid having to disclose documents under the state public-records laws. (The one time Meg Stapleton, who handles Palin’s personal and political public relations, ever answered multiple e-mails was when I wrote her and Palin’s gubernatorial office at the same time, and she replied: “Thank you for emailing. I will email you separately so as to remove us from the state account.”) Palin’s anti-politician stance had worked so well in her campaign that she carried it over into her dealings with actual politicians in Juneau, who didn’t take kindly to the practice. After one meeting between the governor and legislators in 2007, Lyda Green, then the president of the state senate, returned to her office to catch up on some paperwork. She caught Palin on the news. “And she comes on TV and says, ‘I want to once again confirm that neither I nor my staff ever holds closed-door meetings.’ Well, we had just been in a closed-door meeting for an hour and a half!” Representative Les Gara, an Anchorage Democrat who often worked with Palin, told me that he had at first thought that some of Green’s sharp criticism of Palin amounted to Republican infighting, or maybe just sour grapes that Wasilla had produced a new political figure whose star far outshone Green’s. But he came to realize, he said, that Green had a better handle on Palin than he did. “She didn’t work very hard. You would speak to her on particular issues, and it was like she didn’t know anything about them and she never seemed very engaged.” That said, “if your priorities happened to be her priorities, you could build a coalition.”

On the other hand, if your priorities happened to differ from hers, you could pay a terrible price. Only weeks after Palin praised John Bitney for doing so much to make her first legislative session a success, she summarily fired him—because, he says, he had had the bad luck to fall in love with the wife of one of the Palins’ best friends (a woman he has since married). At the time, Palin’s office cited what it called “personal” reasons for an “amicable” departure. But when The Wall Street Journal called Palin’s office during last fall’s presidential campaign to ask about the case, a spokeswoman for Palin said that Bitney had been “dismissed because of his poor job performance,” and refused to elaborate.

Not quite a year after Bitney’s departure, Mike Tibbles abruptly resigned as chief of staff, for reasons that neither he nor Palin has ever explained. Jim Lottsfeldt, a friend of Tibbles’s, says that the chief of staff was worn down “by the steady drumbeat of her not consulting with him.” She replaced Tibbles with Mike Nizich, a part-time taxidermist, who over 30 years had served seven governors of both parties, most of that time as director of the state Division of Administration—a man who made the trains run on time in the governor’s office but had nothing to do with policy issues. Palin’s effectiveness was never again the same. The brutal reality is that many people who have worked closely with Palin have found themselves disillusioned.

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly. When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”

Perhaps no episode of Palin’s governorship has drawn more attention than the one that came to be known as Troopergate. For more than a year of her tenure as governor, Palin and her husband and aides repeatedly and aggressively complained to Walt Monegan, the former Anchorage police chief whom Palin had named to head the state’s Department of Public Safety, about Mike Wooten, a state trooper who had been involved in a messy divorce from Palin’s sister Molly. Wooten was no angel. Before Palin ever took office, he had been disciplined after drinking beer in his patrol car, Tasering his stepson, illegally shooting a moose, and making threatening remarks about Palin’s father. But Wooten had already been disciplined, and Monegan believed that further action was unjustified if not impossible. The final straw may have been Monegan’s June 30, 2008, e-mail warning to Palin that an unnamed state legislator had complained that she’d been seen driving with her newborn son, and that the infant had not been strapped into an approved car seat. “I have never driven Trig anywhere without a new, approved car seat,” Palin fired back. “I want to know who said otherwise—pls. provide me that info now.” Twelve days later, Nizich fired Monegan on Palin’s orders. Forty-nine days after that, John McCain announced that Palin would join him on the ticket.

Arrows in the Back

In Alaska, there has never been a gubernatorial tradition of pardoning a turkey at Thanksgiving, but Palin decided to stage such a ceremony last November all the same, at the Triple D Farm & Hatchery, outside Wasilla. After granting the lucky bird its reprieve, she stopped to talk to a local television reporter about what she had learned in the campaign just concluded. “I don’t think it’s changed me at all,” she insisted, clutching a cup of coffee as her breath steamed into the frosty air. “You know, it’s pretty brutal, the time consumption there, and the energy that has to be spent in order to get out and about with the message on a national level, a great appreciation for other candidates who have gone through this, but also just a great appreciation for this great country. There are so many good Americans who are just desiring of their government to kind of get out of the way and allow them to grow and progress, and allow our businesses to grow and progress. So, great appreciation for those who share that value.”

As Palin spoke, a grisly scene unfolded behind her. A worker hefted one squirming white turkey after another into a metal funnel, slit its throat, and bled it out in full view of the camera. The clip was replayed tens of thousands of times on YouTube and seemed an all too apt metaphor for how Palin’s political fortunes had changed in the wake of her great national adventure, even if her personality had not. A career that thrived for years on extraordinarily good luck seems to have known nothing but trouble since November 4. In December, Bristol Palin gave birth to Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston, her son with her boyfriend, Levi Johnston, and for a time there was talk of a wedding. But by early spring the couple had split up, and their families fell to trading charges on talk shows and in the tabloids. After Levi told Tyra Banks that he had often spent the night in the Palin home, in the same room as Bristol, and assumed that the governor knew they were having sex, Palin, through her spokeswoman, released a blistering statement expressing disappointment “that Levi and his family, in a quest for fame, attention, and fortune, are engaging in flat-out lies, gross exaggeration, and even distortion of their relationship.” On the CBS Early Show, days later, Johnston seemed resigned. “They said I didn’t live there. I ‘stayed there,”’ he said. “I was like, O.K., well, whatever you want to call it. I had my stuff there.” Although Bristol initially told Greta Van Susteren that teen abstinence is “not realistic at all,” by springtime she had signed up as an ambassador for the Candie’s Foundation to promote abstinence as the way to avoid teen pregnancy.

Meantime, Levi’s mother, Sherry, agreed to plead guilty to a felony count of possessing OxyContin with intent to sell it, in exchange for the state’s agreement to drop five other drug-related charges against her. Her lawyer has conceded that she will draw an automatic jail sentence, but hopes to minimize the time she spends behind bars, because she suffers from chronic pain. In April, Todd Palin’s half-sister Diana was arrested on charges of twice breaking into a house in Wasilla to steal money from a bedroom cabinet, under circumstances that remain unexplained.

Because Palin had taken particular umbrage in the fall campaign at any effort to criticize her children or invade their privacy, her willingness to mix it up in public with an 18-year-old, who is after all the father of her only grandchild, struck many in Alaska as odd. So did Palin’s suggestion, at a time when declining oil prices have thrown the state budget into the red, that she did not want to accept about a third of the $930 million in federal stimulus money available to Alaska, because it would come with too many big-government strings attached. The move seemed calculated to burnish her national conservative credentials. In the face of bipartisan outcry, Palin’s aides insisted she had never meant to say she wouldn’t take the money, only that she wanted to review the matter carefully. That was news to former aide Larry Persily. After the first meeting on the stimulus money, Persily told me, “Everyone in the room left thinking she’d said no. Then her staff said, ‘She didn’t say no. She just didn’t say yes.”’ Palin wound up taking all but about 3 percent of the $900 million available to Alaska. The consensus even among the Republicans I spoke to was that she rejected the last $28 million—for energy assistance—mostly to save face.

The ever shifting sands of Palin’s sensibility were also on display after former senator Ted Stevens’s conviction on corruption charges was set aside, in April. Palin’s old nemesis, the Alaska Republican Party chair Randy Ruedrich, called on Stevens’s Democratic successor, Mark Begich, who had defeated Stevens just days after the original conviction last fall, to step down and allow a new election. Palin told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in an e-mail, “I absolutely agree.” Days later, at a news conference, Palin insisted she had never called on Begich to step down.

Perhaps nothing has caused a bigger stir than Palin’s nomination of Wayne Anthony Ross to be Alaska’s attorney general. Ross is a two-time gubernatorial candidate and a board member of the National Rifle Association. He had sown controversy over the years by referring to gays and lesbians as “degenerates” (he later sought to downplay the remark, saying his aversion to homosexuals was no different from his aversion to lima beans) and for staunchly opposing subsistence-hunting preferences for native Alaskans. A flamboyant divorce lawyer who drives a big red Hummer with the vanity license plate war, Ross is a good old boy of pithy expression and considerable charm. (“In Alaska,” Ross told me, “a liberal is someone who carries a .357 or smaller.”) The final vote against Ross—with the Republican leaders of both chambers joining to defeat him—came just as Palin was speaking in Evansville. It was the first time in Alaska history that a cabinet nominee was rejected. “If I wince a little, it’s from the arrows in my back,” Ross told me a few weeks later. “I think there were a number of people who were trying to show her who the boss was.”

A year ago, 80 percent of Alaskans viewed Palin very favorably or somewhat favorably; by this spring, just 55 percent had a positive opinion. All this has given rise to speculation in Alaska that Palin may not run for re-election next year. She does not have to declare her candidacy until June 2010. Most politicians of both parties in Alaska with whom I spoke assume she could win, though not as persuasively as she did in 2006, which would hardly help her standing in a 2012 presidential campaign. Though Palin’s spokeswoman has said she does not intend to challenge Senator Lisa Murkowski, the former governor’s daughter, who is also up for re-election next year, Palin has changed her mind without warning in the past, and becoming a senator would keep her in the national spotlight. Surveying the landscape of political and policy troubles in Alaska, Gregg Erickson, an independent economic consultant in Juneau, concludes, “Everything she’s doing seems to be saying that there’ll be a problem in the future owing to her inattention, but she won’t be here to deal with it.”

“Just Make It All Go Away”

As Palin has piled misstep on top of misstep, the senior members of McCain’s campaign team have undergone a painful odyssey of their own. In recent rounds of long conversations, most made it clear that they suffer a kind of survivor’s guilt: they can’t quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, caught in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be. They quietly ponder the nightmare they lived through. Do they ever ask, What were we thinking? “Oh, yeah, oh, yeah,” one longtime McCain friend told me with a rueful chuckle. “You nailed it.” Another key McCain aide summed up his attitude this way: “I guess it’s sort of shifted,” he said. “I always wanted to tell myself the best-case story about her.” Even now, he said, “I don’t want to get too negative.” Then he added, “I think, as I’ve evaluated it, I think some of my worst fears … the after-election events have confirmed that her more negative aspects may have been there … ” His voice trailed off. “I saw her as a raw talent. Raw, but a talent. I hoped she could become better.”

None of McCain’s still-loyal soldiers will say negative things about Palin on the record. Even thinking such thoughts privately is painful for them, because there is ultimately no way to read McCain’s selection of Palin as reflecting anything other than an appalling egotism, heedlessness, and lack of judgment in a man whose courage, tenacity, and character they have extravagantly admired—and as reflecting, too, an unsettling willingness on their own part to aid and abet him. They all know that if their candidate—a 72-year-old cancer survivor—had won the presidency, the vice-presidency would be in the hands of a woman who lacked the knowledge, the preparation, the aptitude, and the temperament for the job. To ask why none of them dared to just walk away is to ask why Colin Powell did not resign in protest over the Bush administration’s foreign policy, or why none of Bill Clinton’s disillusioned aides resigned after he lied to them about Monica Lewinsky. The question cannot comprehend the intense bonds that the blood sport of modern politics produces. To leave a campaign—especially a struggling, losing campaign—is akin to desertion in wartime, and even as they began to understand her limitations, plenty of McCain aides still saw Palin as the campaign’s best hope. Some still believe that, simply in terms of the electoral math, she helped at least as much as she hurt, and maybe helped more.

McCain has delivered his own postmortem on Palin with the patented brand of winking-and-nodding ironic detachment that he usually reserves for painful political questions, an approach that simultaneously seeks to confess his sin and presume absolution for it. In November, he told Jay Leno he was proud of Palin and did not blame her for his defeat, but by April, when Leno asked him about who was running the Republican Party, McCain declined to mention Palin: “We have, I’m happy to say, a lot of choices out there: Bobby Jindal, Tim Pawlenty, Huntsman, Romney, Charlie Crist—there’s a lot of governors out there who are young and dynamic.” McCain went on, “There’s a lot of good people out there, and I’ve left out somebody’s name and I’m going to hear about it.” When I ask Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime speechwriter and co-author, about that comment, he says simply, “McCain always talks unscripted,” and adds that he has heard “not one word of regret” about Palin ever pass McCain’s lips. McCain’s daughter Meghan, who has continued the blog she began on the campaign last year, has said that Palin is the one topic on which she will have no public comment.

Palin herself has alternately shied away from the spotlight and injected herself into public debate on questions dear to conservatives, as she did when she issued a statement defending the former Miss California, Carrie Prejean, for opposing gay marriage despite “the liberal onslaught of malicious attacks.” Palin’s speech in Evansville was her first major post-election foray into the national media, and she followed it up in June with a trip to New York State, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Alaska’s entry into the union, visiting Auburn, the hometown of William H. Seward, who bought the Alaska territory from Russia, and making appearances at events supporting families with autism and developmental disabilities. But the biggest headlines the trip produced were those about Palin’s feud with David Letterman, who joked that Palin had gone to Bloomingdale’s to update her “slutty flight-attendant look” and made a tasteless sexual jibe about one of the Palin daughters. Letterman eventually apologized, though Palin fanned the flames in ways that were not necessarily to her advantage.

In Evansville, though, Palin concentrated on the task at hand: an emphatic defense of the anti-abortion cause. But in doing so she made a startling confession about what she thought when she learned she was pregnant at 43 with her youngest child, Trig, who arrived in April 2008, as the world now knows, with Down syndrome. “I had found out that I was pregnant while out of state first,” Palin told the crowd. “While out of state, there just for a fleeting moment, I thought, Nobody knows me here. Nobody would ever know. I thought, Wow, it is easy to think maybe of trying to change the circumstances and no one would know—no one would ever know. Then when my amniocentesis results came back, showing what they called abnormalities—oh, dear God—I knew, I had instantly an understanding, for that fleeting moment, why someone would believe it could seem possible to change those circumstances, just make it all go away, get some normalcy back in life.” It is almost impossible not to be touched by the rawness of her confession, even if it is precisely this choice that Palin believes no other woman should ever have, not even in the case of rape or incest.

Sarah Palin is a star in Evansville and all the many Evansvilles of America, but there is a big part of the Republican Party—the Wall Street wing, the national-security wing—in which she cuts no ice. At the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference, Palin essentially came in tied for second with Governor Bobby Jindal, of Louisiana, and Representative Ron Paul, of Texas, with 13 percent support in a straw poll of potential 2012 presidential candidates; former governor Mitt Romney, of Massachusetts, got 20 percent. A more recent survey has Palin in a three-way tie with Romney and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. She could do well in the Iowa caucuses or South Carolina primary, but it is much harder to imagine her making headway in New Hampshire, where independent voters were turned off by her last fall. It is also difficult to see just how she would expand her appeal beyond the base that already loves her.

In Alaska, almost everyone I met wondered who was advising her in Washington—and in Washington, everyone wonders the same thing. There are one or two clues. On the eve of the Alfalfa dinner, in January, Palin was a guest in the home of Fred Malek, a veteran Republican fund-raiser and government official dating back to the days of the Nixon administration. Malek raised money for McCain’s campaign last year, and also agreed to play host to a fund-raising dinner for Republican governors in early May. (Palin was to have been an honored guest, but canceled owing to spring flooding in Alaska.) As noted, Palin has established a political-action committee with the legal advice of John Coale, who met Palin when his wife, Greta Van Susteren, the Fox News host, went to interview her during the campaign. Coale, a former Hillary Clinton supporter, told me he felt Palin had gotten a bum rap from liberals and conservatives alike, and he advised her that a pac was a logical and legal way to pay for out-of-state political travel. “We raised a good bit of money without even asking,” Coale says. “Just set up a Web site and, I think in the first month, $400,000 came in.” Coale says he still exchanges e-mails with Palin from time to time, but doesn’t consider himself a political adviser; he also says that Van Susteren has “put up a Chinese wall about all of this,” and has obtained her interviews with the Palins independently. Since the campaign ended, Van Susteren has interviewed Palin twice more, but she says she has never had a conversation with Palin off-camera, except for when Palin called to rescind her acceptance of Van Susteren’s invitation to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in May, because of the Alaska flooding. Todd Palin came solo as Van Susteren’s guest, and when a reporter for Politico sought to interview him at a pre-dinner brunch attended by hundreds of journalists, Van Susteren interposed herself, as in the manner of a staffer, to say it was a social event. Van Susteren told me she was just trying to exercise good manners.

Palin’s closest adviser remains her husband—the “first gentleman” or “first dude,” as she calls him. Testimony in the Troopergate investigation suggested that Todd was physically in the governor’s office for about 50 percent of the time, often sitting in on meetings or phone calls in which he had no obvious official function. By the end of last fall’s campaign, McCain’s friends had picked up word that Todd was calling around to Republicans in South Carolina, urging them to keep his wife in mind for 2012—the implication being that the Palins believed McCain was about to lose. This spring, he stood in for Palin at an event in Manhattan—at Alaska House in SoHo, the cultural antipode of Wasilla—promoting the Alaska commercial-fishing industry’s contributions to world food aid. In a brief prepared speech, he extolled Alaska salmon as “some of the world’s healthiest protein, rich in vitamins and minerals, and a source of omega-3 fats.”

“She doesn’t at all have anyone who’s willing to give it to her straight,” one person who occasionally advises Palin told me. Todd may be the one exception. “I saw nobody else like that, nobody who would sit her down and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute.’” He added, of the poor communications operation run by Stapleton, “I don’t know what part Sarah Palin plays in the lack of communications, but I don’t think she’s aware of how big a problem it is.”

And her national ambitions? “What it looks like to me she’s trying to do is try the same formula that got her the governorship,” John Bitney says. “You sort of start off with a conservative base. The right-wing base is obviously out on the far end of the spectrum, but it’s a very motivated base. They show up, they’re committed. It gets you that political beachhead. She did not get started with the blessing of the Republican Party. She started with a dedicated corps of sort of right-wing true believers who killed themselves for her, and got her going. And then she began to build on that, and after she crossed the primary hurdle, she moderated her message on some points.”

When I ask Bitney what he makes of the whole Palin phenomenon, he sighs. “What do I take away from this?” he asks. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just a lot of emotions and stuff. I find it’s frustrating dealing with Sarah, because it seems we’re always dealing with emotional crap and we never seem to be able to focus on the business at hand that needs to be done. I don’t know whether to blame her or pity her for all this emotional upheaval that we’re always going through with her. Now we all get to listen to Levi and Bristol. Check my feet for horseshoes if I have to sit there and listen to another talk show. I got involved in helping her become governor because we needed to change some policy directions. Teen abstinence is not why I waved signs for her.”

Palin herself often sounds tired and resentful these days, as if wondering whether she should have blinked and just said no to John McCain. In a rambling, 17-minute speech introducing Michael Reagan, the former president’s son and a conservative radio host at an event in Alaska in June—a speech that borrowed heavily, without clear attribution, from a four-year-old article by Newt Gingrich and the Republican strategist Craig Shirley—Palin seemed resigned to the fact that her reputation would never again be as fresh and glowing as it once was. She complained about “national figures and some in the press who, who want to put not just me, but anybody who dares speak up, it seems nowadays, right back down in their place.” She bemoaned her changing fortunes in Alaska. “I think things here that have so drastically changed these past months … Some want to forbid others from speaking up, and it’s been through lawsuits, been ethics-violation charges, media distortions And those are the folks who want to tell me, they want to tell you to sit down and shut up. We will not do so. I just can’t because I love my state, I love my country, and I need you, we need Michael Reagan to keep on fighting for our freedoms, for our country, and what we’re being fed today, it seems, is a steady diet of selected misrepresented news So I join you in speaking up and asking the questions and taking action, and here at home in my beloved Alaska, I just say, politically speaking, if I die, I die.”

Palin has disappointed many of those who once had the highest hopes for her. She has stumbled over innumerable details. But as she said to Andrew Halcro years ago, “Does any of this really matter?” Palin has shown herself to have remarkable gut instincts about raw politics, and she has seen openings where others did not. And she has the good fortune to have traction within a political party that is bereft of strong leadership, and whose rank and file often demands qualities other than knowledge, experience, and an understanding that facts are, as John Adams said, stubborn things. It is, at the moment, a party in which the loudest and most singular voices, not burdened by responsibility, wield disproportionate power. She may decide that she does not need office in order to have great influence—any more than Rush Limbaugh does.

On a rare fine day in Juneau, not long ago, Palin was seen sitting in the sunshine in the broad plaza near the state capitol, alone with her thoughts and some reading material for more than an hour and a half. Down the hillside below her, the big cruise liners that ply Alaska’s Inside Passage in the summer months were beginning to call in the port. Only two years have elapsed since William Kristol and his colleagues disembarked from one of them and hearkened to her siren call. Sarah Palin might well have been wondering whether her own ship is going out, or just coming in.

Todd S. Purdum is Vanity Fair’s national editor.

Other good stuff here, here, here and here.

T to the A to the P: the Sugar Daddy edition

2009-07-11T09:57:00.012+10:00

Title courtesy of the Jackson 5.

It was bound to happen-almost all of the taps so far are of guys in their 40s, so it was inevitable that I would push the age boundaries of guys old enough to be my grandfather. I do believe I have done so in the classiest fashion, picking one of the classiest fellows. Presenting Sir Ian 'Magneto' McKellen (who is, funnily enough, the first gay to be anointed as officially tappable).

And because Ian is one of the few people who can make an otherwise ridiculous costume look villainous.

Election of Rudd officially worth it: part 2.

2009-07-09T14:39:00.001+10:00

(yes, I know I'm in a rut of commenting late on issues. This time, I have an excuse; I was briefly posted to an outpost at Lorne)

Earlier this year, I commented that despite his constant me-twoisms during the 07 election, the Rudd Government was officially better than the Howard Government, as Rudd changed our foreign aid laws, allowing funds to go organisations which either terminated pregnancies or referred women to organisations that did.

Recently, Rudd has further improved Australia's human rights record by a) ending mandatory detention to the majority of refugees; only those who pose a threat to their community will remain in detention, and b) abolishing fees to refugees, which forced them to pay for their imprisonment.

(Most of) The Liberal Party, as always, has opposed the moves, stating that soften border protection cause an influx of refugees.

Petro Georgiou, the only Liberal with a functioning conscience, has written an opinion piece in the Age, showing how ludicrous the fee laws were:

The most obvious reason for repealing it is that it has totally failed to achieve its objective. Since the policy was initiated, only 4 per cent of the costs have been recovered. In the past four years, $139 million, or 81 per cent, of charges have been waived or written off, mainly by the coalition government, because it was impractical or uneconomical to recover the charges. This year it is estimated that it will cost $709,000 to collect $573,000. There is simply no rational basis to continue the charges. What these charges do achieve is making those subject to them more anxious and their lives more difficult. There is another fundamental reason for ending the detention charges — imposing these charges is part of the process of dehumanising people seeking refuge, part of the way they have been presented as being worse than the worst criminals. Do we charge drug dealers, serial pedophiles, sadistic murderers and multiple rapists the costs of their detention?

[my emphasis]

The government forced refugees to pay for their imprisonment dates back to 1992-in the 15+ years since, no legislation has ever been passed that forced criminals to pay for their detention. For over fifteen years, Australia treated the most vulnerable people on the earth more harshly than some of the most violent people on the earth. This, more than anything else, shows how corrosive fear is on a multi-nation's morality. Our fears of being swamped by ~~Vietnamese~~ ~~Asians in general~~ ~~Africans~~ led us to support truly amoral measures to deter refugees for our own security-yet these refugees still came regardless. It is amazing how powerful fear is in destroying one's morals.

But even if those harsher anti-refugee laws did work, we should still oppose them because of their inhumanity. They further wreck havoc with people whose lives have so nearly been destroyed by dictatorships, civil war or both. Refugees have a fundamental right to find a better place to live, and if that's Australia, then so be it. These laws reduced our human rights records to that of dictatorships. The mere fact that it took this long to be changes it utterly shameful.

That being said, it's good Australia is seeing the light.

Also see here, here, here and here.

Wow, a post under the topic of 'sex' that actually talks about something related to sex!...

2009-07-03T17:10:00.010+10:00

...instead of just featuring hot boys and girls!

And before I begin, I humbly apologise for another post that should have been written 2-3 weeks ago. This soldier had to be transferred to the Warragul barracks for further nursing training, and between getting up at 0600 hours and returning to base at 1830 hours, there was precious little blogging time. But enough of that.

A while ago, the police raided several houses and computers, allegedly featuring Victorian-produced porn. This, as it turns turns out, is illegal. My calm and rational response is "WTF??!!!" Just HOW is it that in the 21st century, it is illegal to to produce consensual porn? These are the sorts of laws I would expect in theocratic Iran, or theocratic Iran-lite US states such as Alabama.

OK, there are allegations that that one of the models was under 18 years, and yes, I entirely agree that such allegations should be pursued. However, that doesn't change the fact that producing porn in Victoria is illegal. What possible justification could there be for such a nannying, self-righteous, authoritarian, "C'mon, let's just tell everybody what they can and can't do even though nobody is being hurt and it's entirely consensual" law to exist? Actually, there are several justifications.

1. It's obscene and evil and shouldn't exist.
- I won't even bother.

2. For the children.
- This is more of a thin veil for reason 1. Ironically, conservatives, the ones who are usually railing for 'parents' rights' and accusing Lefties of being irresponsible parents, see no hypocrisy in asking the state to prevent their children from viewing porn. I say that it is the sole responsibility of the parents to prevent their children from viewing it, and nobody else.

3. It objectifies, exploits and degrades women.
- This is the most oft-cited reason against all porn-that it objectifies and exploits women. Fundamentally, I disagree, but I do admit it is a significantly more complex issue than reasons 1 and 2. First, 'objectification.' I agree that porn can, and does, objectify women*, however I see the objectification more on the part of those who view it. Somebody who watches a movie and sees nothing but sluts and whores hardly has a positive image of women in general to begin with.
- Secondly, exploitation. 'Exploitation' to me implies that full, informed consent has not been given-ie, the models are unable to forsee the consequences of their actions. I think that many, if not all, sex workers would be highly offended at the notion that they have the intelligence and emotional maturity of a six year old, unable to give proper consent. I also find it rather odd that only women are targeted here. Nobody see anything wrong in gay porn; those models aren't being exploited at all, apparently. To me, this echoes the double-standard outlined before; that men are more mature then women and don't need to worry about exploitation. There is also the argument that any form of sex work can lead to problems in the future of women being denied employment etc due to their work histories. I agree that this is a problem, but I feel this is a lingering hatred of womens' sexualities, which is hardly a reason to ban sex work.
- Finally, degrading. This is difficult, as most porn does degrade women (the number of times 'slut' appears in those sites probably outnumbers the number of dollars in Bill Gates' bank account). However, porn, and indeed all sex work, is not inherently degrading of women. Having scoped out Abby Winters (and several other sites, many courtesy of Sarah), it didn't appear degrading in the slightest.

And then, of course, there's the obvious counter; it should not be illegal to produce and sell adult material if no minors are involved and it is entirely consensual.

Funnily enough, the first two reasons were used to support anti-gay laws.

Topic cross-posted here and here.

*This post would be a heck of a lot easier if I watched more of it. Damn effective imagination.

Debating torture apologists: it's pretty frickin' simple.

2009-07-01T19:12:00.001+10:00

(Yes I know, this post is late. It happens)

Recently, in America, President Obama and former Vice-President Cheney had a debate on American national security. Obama defended the changes made to security, such as attempting to close Guantanamo Bay and banning the American use of torture. Cheney, in contrast, defended the Bush Administration's previous policies, saying that they were in the national interest of security.

The pro-Cheney arguments are as such: terrorists are coming to kill us, and the conventional methods of stopping them are insufficient. Thus, to protect our citizens, we must take harsher methods, such as wire-tapping to intercept such terrorists, enhanced interrogation to extract other information and places like Guantanamo to keep then from getting out and trying to kill us.

The above argument does seem quite convincing to the undecided, but it cracks easily. And what surprised me was during the debate was how Obama didn't tackle the obvious flaws in the Right's argument: that such anti-terrorism methods are inherently undemocratic in every possible way. That these methods are the anti-thesis of a liberal, free democracy.

This is my vebalised response to Cheney.

What would happen if we wiretapped not only suspected terrorists, but also suspected murderers and rapists and placed these suspected criminals in high-security jails without trial, and tortured them into submission? There is a very high chance that we would slash crime rates. The worst people would be locked up, streets would be safer, Western countries would be safer. But there is a very good reason why we don't enact such pro-law and order policies: they are the antithesis of what our civilisation stands for.

In a morally right society, if you are suspected of a crime, and there is sufficiant evidence to say that you have committed the crime, then you are taken to court. Only then and there, if you are guilty beyond all reasonable doubt to have performed the crime, then you are sentenced.

This process undoubtedly results in guilty people being let free due to too little evidence. These unconvicted will often go back out into the public and often reoffend. So why don't we legislate policies to lock them away, in the same manner as suspected terrorists?

Being suspected of a crime does not mean that either you will commit one, or will do so. EVERYBODY (including myself) is capable of committing crimes. Being short tempered does not make you domestic abuser, an occasionally risky driver is not preemptively guilty of manslaughter, and a Muslim who is outspoken in their criticism of the US's history of meddling in Arabian politics is not a supporter of Islamic terrorism, and should not be judged as one until there is evidence beyond all reasonable doubt that they are.

If we begin assuming that suspects are guilty simply for being suspects, then innocent people WILL be jailed in process. That is not the path to tyranny. That is tyranny.

Oh, and torture isn't just inhumane-it doesn't fucking work, either.

Topic cross-posted here, here, here, here and her e. And from TIME: here, here and here.

The irony! It burns!

2009-06-28T09:38:00.002+10:00

Why is it that religious conservatives (Liberals, Republicans, Fielding...) who continue to say that "the science is out on climate change"-defying the consensus of 2000+ scientists-never apply their skeptical and inquisitive nature to their own religious beliefs? As Field Marshal Editor so brilliantly put:

If only the AGW model was proposed in a collection of 2000-year-old texts of dubious authorship. That way there would be enough evidence.

A tribute to the King Of Pop.

2009-06-26T17:52:00.003+10:00

Michael Joseph Jackson, the King Of Pop, is dead, age 50. For anybody interested, I am quite a fan. Asides from almost all of his albums (except for a few from his childhood), I have his DVDs and videos, many vinyls, several cassettes, a few biographies and various memorabilia from his Bad and HIStory tours (which I haven't seen, unfortunately). Hence, I would like to present a music video tribute to the artist. However, as some prat has refused the videos to be embedded, I can only give you the links.

From Off the Wall: Don't stop til you get enough

From Thriller: Billie Jean

From Bad: Man in the Mirror

From Dangerous: Heal the World

From HIStory: They don't care about us

From Invincible: You rock my world

In particular, I suggest you watch Mirror, World and T.D.C.A.U. in their chronological order, as they are all humanitarian songs. However the contrast between in the latter two is spectacular.

RIP, Michael.