Funny Because They're True?

Avoiding work today I cruised the cartoon section of TruthDig...

These are some of my favourites...

Wake Up and Smell the Police State

Well Well Well....

Bet you thought that this stuff only happened in South America or Iran or the Eastern Bloc.

While we sit around smugly self-satisfied and ruminate on our avowed mission of bringing the Holy Grail (aka Western Democracy) to the miserable oppressed buggers of the world, we pay precious little attention to what is happening here...

It is time to wake up and smell the police state.

Bill Henson, certainly a confrontational artist has had his exhibition in Sydney suspended, 20 of his 41 photos seized and it looks like either he or someone else will be charged with publishing an indecent article. To contextualise, Henson takes photos of young pre or early pubescent children and they are nudes.

Which apparently means porn... kiddy porn.

Not that he hasn't been open about the subject matter; not that it isn't consensual and by that I mean he talks with and gets consent of his models' parents; not that his pictures don't sexualise children... nudity and sex are not the same thing.

Unless you are a conservative philistine or Kevin Rudd (which may be the same thing we have yet to see). In which case naked children are always sexual, always pornographic, always "revolting".

Here's me thinking that that attitude says more about their depravity than Henson's.


Just to note on the day this story broke your favourite newspaper and mine, the Daily Telegraph was running an online poll about this. Over 75% of Tele readers said that Henson's work was porn and if you thought differently you were warped (their phrasing not mine), which is all the proof I need dear reader to declare that Henson's pics MUST be art!

I now pronounce you....

Well aren't they full of surprises? The labor government has pulled another rabbit out of it's hat with a raft of reforms to redress the appalling, institutionalised discrimination faced by same sex couples (you know.... homosexuals) in Australia.

Huzzah! And about time too.

Frankly I am constantly amazed at the importance placed on ones sexual predilictions and wonder why who we all sleep with has such an impact on our lives...

Fortunately this will finally be redressed.... or will it?

In the SMH yesterday, I read this:
"Same-sex couples will continue to be denied marriage, adoption rights and IVF despite the government's decision to remove discrimination against gays in a range of commonwealth laws."

Right... So really what is being said here is, you can have all of the legal rights and responsibilities but we don't really think you all should be raising kids, having kids or getting married... those things are for straight people.

I am sorry but I don't get it. Am I stupid, why are two women or two men worse parents than on of each? Why should a woman be denied the chance to reproduce because she would rather come home to a woman than a man, and why for God's sake does the state feel it has any say in who can and cannot get married. Seriously if the Catholicc Church says that they will not conduct marriage services for same sex couples then whatever, but I cannot see any reason at all why a same sex couple can't be married in a civil ceremony...

How freaked out are we? Will the institution of marriage crumble crumble if two men can proudly and legitimately say they are married? Is that even a bad thing.

I totally support the changes to legislation that allow all people to be treated the same regardless of who they sleep with. But the real foundation of this discrimination will not be addressed until people are treated equally no matter who they go home to at night.

McCarthies Under the Bed....

I am outraged. No joking this time...

The latest Liberal Party stunt is to get students at Uni and at high school to narc on their propagandising "lefty" teachers in an effort to blow the lid on the vast left wing conspiracy that is the education system. The source for this news is that purveyor of propaganda par excellence, the Daily Telegraph.

Apparently the libs will use this information to hold a Senate enquiry to the biased teaching going on in Australian schools and unis. I wonder if we could have an enquiry about the rabid rightwing propaganda of media outlets like the Daily Telegraph too?

The first thing that we should note is that clearly there are not enough grown up Liberals to undertake this very important work so the last remnants of 'talent' the party has will be undertaking this campaign of repression.

Nice work Young Libs... it is so pleasing to see you are taking your responsibility of keeping campuses everywhere safe for the white and advantaged seriously.

So really we are looking to create some McCarthyist campaign in the very places where the last vestiges of free thought and enquiry may still exist.

Awesome.

What the Libs are actually saying is that we are all too stupid to think about and question what we learn. Loving that vote of confidence.

If there are so many proselytising lefties perhaps the Libs should have stopped defunding education in Australia so it was more attractive to the selfish and venal who make up their support base?

And if this is true, how come there are still so many bloody young libs left?

Seriously the vast left wing is not doing very well now is it?

Dr No (Mates)

So I said they'd keep on giving but even I could not anticipate this deliciousness....

Recently a poll result was released showing just how unpopular the Good Doctor actually is. Dr Nelson's approval ratings have plumbed new depths.

Now you could have been forgiven for assuming that after hitting the 9% mark in the preferred PM stakes there was nowhere esle to go. I mean there must be a critical mass of of die hard Liberal voters who would always prefer a Liberal Government led by anyone to Labor.

Apparently it's not 9%.

In fact the Good Dr's approval rating is at a meagre (and utterly embarrassing) 7%. This despite of the fact that around 37% of voters would prefer a Liberal Party Government (wackos!).

Ouch!

Not even the Lib grassroots can muster up any affection for Australia's (least) favourite turncoat.

So where does this leave us? Well sitting pretty, at least until Labor actually does something. Not that I want to detract from ratifying Kyoto or attempting to heritage list the Kokoda trail. Nor do want to cast any negative aspersions on the Apology to the Stolen generations which was in my opinion one of the best moments in Australian parliamentary history.

But it has to be said the Labor party hasn't spent any money and they didn;t make many promises in order to win the election.

Roll on the budget and we'll see what they are really made of (more of the same I'll bet). We'll also see what the most unpopular man in politics can make of himself... if anything at all.

Don't know about you, but I am not holding out high hopes.

They Just Keep on Giving

This blogger was truly concerned that a change in government might mean no more fun.... No more Liberal party antics to post about.

Well never fear, they just keep on giving!

ABC's 4 Corners had an episode that exposed the goings on in the Liberal party in the lead up to the 2007 election.... what fun!

Unfortunately I missed the show but I did catch this article in which Mr Joe Hockey announced that Cabinet did not fully grasp the implications of the changes to IR laws that WorkChoices heralded. Specifically that they didn't understand that "workers could be worse off under Work Choices".

Que?

You mean that the people who supposedly debated the policies, were responsible for tinkering with (read utterly destroying) Industrial Relations policies that seemed to be well, working just fine, that forced them on an unwilling and unsupportive public, didn't actually KNOW WHAT THEY WERE DOING?!!

Well that makes me for one feel so much better.... I mean what JH is saying is that they didn't really mean to screw us over. On the contrary they just weren't bright enough or didn't care enough to fully understand their own policies.

Whew, that's a relief.

But now, all of a sudden I am regretting the election result. You mean we chucked out a whole lot of well meaning ignoramuses, all because we want our rights at work protected... Goddammit, how short sighted of us!

The New Matilda also published an article about the problems within the Libs (yes indeedy there is a lot of good reading at the moment). Andrew Elder contends that their biggest problem is an inablity to create a post-Howard 'narrative' since the party was in effect Howard. Apparently JW destroyed dissent and opposition in his pursuit of absolute loyalty and now no one knows how to distance themselves from him or create a new set of guiding principals... or something.

Methinks they will have to find a better leader than the Good Doctor to do that.

As much as there is a part of me that rubs my hands and licks my lips in anticipation of a longterm Liberal meltdown, there is another that is more than a little worried by it.

We all know what happens when there is no strong opposition in a democratic system. If you don't, move to New South Wales.

In a recent poll the NSW Premier has only a 30% approval rating. Pollsters asked voters who they would prefer out of Iemma, Turnbull, Barry O'Farrell, Michael Costa and John Watkins to lead the state. Iemma still comes out on top (just) but interestingly his closest rival is Turnbull who is in the Federal parliament. Of the two who seem most likely to replace Iemma, O'Farrell, current state Liberal Party leader got a measly 17%. It comes as no surprise to me that NSW State Labor government thinks they can do what they like, you know like privatise our power despite the fact that over 60% of people in NSW don't want them to. There isn't anyone in politics to tell them they can't.

So while the sadist in me will continue to enjoy the thrashings of the Liberal Party, the political junkie will remain concerned. Then again.... perhaps accountability is overrated.

Primary School

The US Presidential Primaries are on...

Currently the race to secure the presidential nomination for either of the main American parties is wide open, despite what you might be reading. New Hampshire will vote this week and Iowa is done and dusted. Barack and Hillary duked it out in Iowa while John Edwards saw his somewhat limited aspiration to come second and stay in the race for 2008 (not that coming second in 2004 did him much good) come to fruition.

Perhaps the biggest casualty of Iowa is Hillary Rodham Clinton. She didn't come third by a lot, according to one set of results I saw she was wazs only about 0.5% behind John Edwards. That is hardly a trouncing by anyone's standards, but it seems to have put her on the back foot a little. At least in terms of support in the media. Barack however, is riding high on a wave of love and Oprah...

But as newsweek points out the really interesting battle is for the Republican nomination.

The Grand Old Party as the Republicans are known stateside (I had to look that reference up once because I had no idea what the hell GOP actually referred to) seem to be in disarray. Before Iowa no-one would've given Huckabee a snowball's chance in hell of winning anything and now he is the frontrunner *shiver*. It seems the choice is between an evangelical Baptist preacher with dubious views about issues like homsexuality, abortion, immigration and little knowledge of foreign policy and Romney the Mormon, with no really fixed views on anything at all.

I am not sure what is in the water in Iowa but it is certainly working in the Huckster's favour. For the record Guiliani managed to garner a massive 3% of the vote, Ron Paul did better than polling would have predicted and the top three were rounded out by Romney and Thompson. McCain came a close fourth. As yet all Republican contenders are continuing the fight, two of the Dems have fallen by the wayside although Kucinich the vegan is still in the running.

It seems that New Hampshire might shake things up for the GOP, certainly there seems to be an expectation that McCain will gain some momentum and that Romney et al. should be able to slow down the Huckster, nevertheless the power of Chuck Norris should never be underestimated.

It is not entirely clear what the implications are of the Iowa primaries, or indeed any of the early votes, in terms of predicting the actual outcome of the primary race. Certainly there is a new cast to the contentious issue of whether a black man could be elected president. It seems Iowan Dems think he is electable, more electable than a white woman (not unsurprising) and a rich, white, male lawyer (which is admittedly a little surprising). It is a message that is bound to resonate at least through to New Hampshire who will vote later this week and perhaps further into the primary race.

So sit back relax and enjoy the ride. But a word to the wise, one of these people will be running the country in 2008... Chuck Norris for President?!