Last night, we learned several things from the first hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol:
Source: The Two Biggest Questions About Last Night’s Hearings on Trump’s Attempted Coup | The Smirking Chimp
They will mark a milestone in the battle between democracy and autocracy. Everyone should tune in and watch them
Those who claim that a president cannot be criminally liable for acts committed while in office apparently forget that Richard Nixon avoided prosecution only because he was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.
Those who argue that Trump should not be criminally liable because no president in American history has been criminally liable, overlook the fact that no president in history has staged an attempted coup to change the outcome of an election.
Without accountability for these acts, Trump’s criminality opens wide the door to future presidents and candidates disputing election outcomes and seeking to change them – along with ensuing public distrust, paranoia and divisiveness.
Have you heard the one about how the Liberal leopard changed his spots? He moved from the Government spot to a spot in the shadows to pounce on progress at a future date. (Michelle Pini)
THE MORE the Liberal and National parties talk of change, the more things stay the same.
Apart from the front men (for they are usually men) who are quite regularly replaced or recycled, this is true no matter which Coalition yardstick you care to examine: health, gender equality, education, climate change, Indigenous affairs, the economy, cost of living pressures or corruption.
While the regression in these areas certainly fluctuates in terms of severity, the fact that they remain largely unaddressed by the previous Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government is testament to the degree to which the Coalition entrenches inequity across most social parameters.
Source: 9 Coalition years equal 50 years regression, Dutton notwithstanding
“For all the billions and trillions that this body authorizes in the name of national security, we can’t even keep our kids safe from their schools being turned into a war zone.”
Source: WATCH: AOC Rips Lax Gun Laws, NRA ‘Blood Money’ During House Hearing
My thought for the day Labor will deliver a future where no one is held back, and no one is left behind (Anthony Albanese). ( John Lord )
The mainstream media in Australia is currently whitewashing fascist politics. It is not just sycophantic, or lazy, journalism. It is dangerous.
Without a strong news media, Australia faces a clouded future. Albanese’s government may be able to repair our Rule of Law protections adequately to protect us into the future from the international right’s authoritarian games. The radical right might lose their hold on the Liberal and National parties. We have seen in America, however, that this form of the right is prepared to play the long game. Journalists that help them whitewash their cruellest actions aid them in this plan.
Source: Dutton and Trump politics – » The Australian Independent Media Network
We in Australia have been following American Capitalism blindly for the past decade with the help of the LNP government
A new report finds that the gap between worker pay and CEO compensation continues to grow at some of the United States’ lowest-paying firms. At dozens of companies, the ratio exceeds one thousand to one.
Source: The CEO-to-Worker Pay Gap Is Climbing to Truly Obscene Levels
If only we had of voted Morrison in we’d have never known
“The economy was weaker in the March quarter than was forecast at election time.
“Growth at 0.8 per cent was…much weaker than what was expected for the corresponding period in the pre-election fiscal outlook”.
He added: “Consumption, dwelling investment, new business investment export and the nominal GDP were all weaker in the March quarter than was anticipated by our predecessors in the Budget and by the departments at PFO.”
“Although the national accounts are notoriously backward looking, if you think about what has happened in the economy since the end of March: inflation is higher, we have had an interest rate hike, petrol prices are up 12 per cent since the end of April, wholesale electricity prices are up 237 per cent since the end of March, and gas more than 300 per cent higher than the average of the last few years.”
Robust in parts, resilient in parts, but with rising inflation, chickens coming home to roost, and a perfect storm of energy rate spikes.
Who is it that can’t manage money?
Source: Who is it that can’t manage money? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
For years, he has been doling out money hand over fist, often to people with connections to the Liberal or National parties, for water rights or dubious dams.
There was the Politics in the Pub night in Shepparton where Joyce promised irrigators more water from the Murray-Darling.
“We have taken water, put it back into agriculture, so we could look after you and make sure we don’t have the greenies running the show.”
He dismissed a Four Corners program about water theft as “them trying to take more water off you, trying to create a calamity.”
Never mind about fish kills and dried up rivers and towns with no drinking water.
Then there was ‘Watergate’ where Barnaby paid $80 million to a company with connections to Angus Taylor for worthless overland water flows.
Urannah dam is a whole other can of worms with hundreds of millions being funnelled to a company run by people with links to the LNP for a project facing serious questions about its economic benefit.
Likewise the Dungowan dam proposed for Barnaby’s own electorate, where he said he has “no real interest” in seeing the business case because “we’re not asking for a return”.
In March, Joyce promised $5.4 billion to build the Hells Gate dam on the Burdekin River despite there being no business case and no assessment of the environmental impacts yet.
Barnaby’s baby, the Inland Rail, also deserves scrutiny.
Source: Barnaby sounds worried – » The Australian Independent Media Network
We have become a hateful place over the last decade – suspicious of each other, greedy, unprincipled, uncaring, focused only on what’s in it for me.
The election showed the country is ready for a reset. It will be up to all of us to be part of that. We can and must do better.
If the euphoria and back-patting over the federal election results are anything to go by, Australia is a vastly different country from the one Yassmin Abdel-Magied left five years ago.
A new cohort of confident, competent, successful and ethnically diverse parliamentarians are about to enter public life. They have been widely celebrated as a sign that the country is getting multiculturalism right.
Anyone unlucky enough to have the combination of confidence and ‘difference’ will be in for a rough ride
This election was simply about the arrogance and corruption of the Morrison Government and its backers. As long as Morrison,Dutton, Ley Taylor Cash, Tudge, Hawke,and Robert remain in the Liberal Party it will never be regarded as anything but, a bunch of arrogant and corrupt maggots who dislike each other.
It was the Morrison government’s arrogance that it thought it could simply dictate to the electorate what the Liberal and National parties’ sponsors wanted it to be, along with buying votes through unprecedented corruption and abuse of power.So don’t panic even if you’ve drunk the Kool-Aid about a Labor government being a threat to civilisation. In the end, the centre wins.
Source: Michael Pascoe: Time to chill about election – we’re regaining balance
Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis failed to identify any relevant law that might have been breached, either Australian or US. Liberty Victoria president Spencer Zifcak was “astonished” that a lawyer of presumed competence could have made such remarks. “There is no charge, there is no trial, there is no properly constituted court, and yet the Prime Minister deems it appropriate to say that Mr Assange has committed a criminal offence.”
Within less than a fortnight, the AFP, in concluding its investigation, informed Attorney-General Robert McClelland that “given the documents published to date are classified by the United States, the primary jurisdiction for any further investigation into the matter remains the United States.” After evaluating the material concerned, the federal police had failed to establish “the existence of any criminal offences where Australia would have jurisdiction.”
My thought for the day Would you rather play in a team of champions or a champion team? ( John Lord )
So, what comes out of all this rejection of Murdoch and his acolytes? There are still some good sports pages to read and pics galore, but I wouldn’t trust the politics.
In debating their tactics with colleagues and friends, I have noticed that the Sky (and Fox) viewership seems to be marked by a collective personality disorder whereby the viewer feels almost as though they’ve been let into a secret society. Arguably, this has been the election in which the bias of its tilted reporting has been exposed?
When the polls have been analysed to the nth degree, and all the data is done and dusted, one of the biggest stories of this election will be how Murdoch’s News Corp failed to have the desired influence on the result. From newspapers to television; it has become impotent. Maybe forever. I want to think so.
Source: One that the Murdoch media got horribly wrong – » The Australian Independent Media Network
New Liberal Leader Peter Dutton has a history of cruelty and corruption, despite the mainstream media telling us we should give him a chance, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
Source: Reactionary succession — Peter Dutton, Australia’s new Opposition Leader
Our major parties’ primary votes are in structural decline, not because they are simply hopeless, but because our politics has fragmented to the point there are no natural majorities in Australia anymore. We now have majorities of dissent – so we can remove a government via a coalition of discontent, but any new government becomes vulnerable to a new dissenting majority forming around it. Our tradition of compulsory preferential voting has camouflaged this, artificially preserving two-party dominance. If we had a more European-style proportional system, we’d have had European-style results for a decade now: moving from one minority government to another, each made up of a temporary coalition of rivals. This might be the moment that our political fracturing finally overpowered the masking tape of our electoral system.
Source: Election 2022 results: There are no natural majorities anymore. Albanese’s might be the last one
The press pack are acting as though the Coalition is temporarily exiled rather than categorically defeated, flooding the news cycle with the Dutton-led losing side and ignoring the Albanese Government, writes managing editor Michelle Pini.
Source: Albanese’s miracle win mangles media’s Dutton narrative
In his commentary on the recent Federal Election, BBC journalist Nick Bryant described former Prime Minister Scott Morrison as our first ‘post-truth’ leader. Given Morrison’s documented domestic and international mendacities, together with his exceptional talent for truth twisting, Bryant’s observation is definitely on the money.
However, what is absent from his analysis is the role of the media in enabling a post-truth climate that allows men such as Morrison, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former U.S. President Donald Trump to gain high political office in the anglosphere. None of these men or their equally compromised colleagues would have flourished had it not been for legacy media, whose journalists are apparently easily overawed by shiny, noisy, blingy things entirely devoid of substance and with a dubious talent for gishing the gallop.
Newly elected senator for the NT, Jacinta Price, told Sky’s Paul Murray that she is “feeling really strong” and ready to “get out there and fight” for Australians.
“Australia will soon realise that they’ve just elected our Joe Biden to run the country and they’re just going to have to learn the hard way. But I’m certainly going to be there to hold them to account and to help pick up the pieces once we have to.”
So much for constructive conciliation.
In fact, it’s hard to see how having Ms Price in parliament will be in any way constructive.
Source: Meet Sky After Dark’s Voice to Parliament – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Peter Dutton claims to have a softer side. 1) We know he’s a Lib activist and strategist 2) We’ve seen the level of his empathy on show in the treatment he handed down to Biloela family in particular their Australian-born children. Coupled with the cry from the town. His “empathy”, an alternative fact, compared with that of the ALP’s. 3) We saw Dutton’s power, and were certain of his ability to use it. He arrogantly allowed two opere’s, illegal overstay, to be extended for a favor to a mate. 4) Yes. he now claims he has a softer side unseen for over 20 years because he presented out of necessity as the role model of a Liberal Politician. 5) Compare him to Albo or any ALP for that matter and Peter Dutton stands alone and not needed by anyone. 6) Dickson sent him that message with a slide of 2.6%
My wish for you in these trying times is that you not become immobilized or numb or selectively empathic — that you continue to respond to the suffering of others with concern and activism. In my experience, taking action – even a small effort to alleviate the suffering of others — is one of the most important means of remaining fully human at a time when the world’s pain can otherwise be overwhelming.
The LNP still believes it can manipulate the Australian public
My thought for the day We all toy with the idea of changing the world but never consider changing ourselves. ( John Lord )
Source: The villain takes centre stage – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Labor has won a working parliamentary majority in a sullen, angry country. Perhaps more by pure luck than design, Australia has avoided a hung parliament. That’s the good news. But for this Labor government to do us proud, it will have to do something humble. Call the Greens into its fold. There is no alternative in the long term, writes Mark Sawyer.
Source: It’s time. Time for Labor and the Greens to say yes to love – Michael West
There is a prima facie case to charge former Labor Party MP, and current Ambassador to Ireland, Gary Gray with criminal offences for his role in the bugging of the East Timor (now Timor-Leste) government which started in 2004 and conspiring to have whistleblowers Witness K and Bernard Collaery falsely charged.
Scott Morrison appointed Gary Gray as Ambassador to Ireland in June 2020 to cover up the East Timor bugging scandal to protect Liberal Party cronies such as Alexander Downer and possibly former Prime Minister John Howard.
My thought for the day We all incur a cost for the upkeep of our health. Why then should we not be liable for the price of a healthy planet? ( John Lord )
Source: Where to now for a defeated and chaotic rabble – » The Australian Independent Media Network
With the defeat of Scott Morrison, Australia has dodged the abyss of Trumpism, writes Peter Henning.
Source: Australia rejects Trumpism in voting out Morrison Government
On Saturday, Australia rejected this march of the religious right to take over our parliament. They chose science over faith and compassion over coercion.
Source: The day Australia “woke” up – » The Australian Independent Media Network
We owe to one another our time and energies to improve our communities and our nation, and to protect and strengthen our democracy. There’s no guarantee that civic education will heal our wounds or make us more able to enact sensible measures the nation needs — such as reducing gun violence, as well as slowing and reversing climate change, and protecting the right to vote — but I can think of no better way to get to where we need to be.
Despite being underestimated by the previous regime and the Fourth Estate, Australians have swept away the side of politics devoid of empathy, “unfunded” or otherwise.
Source: Morrison carted out in clean sweep as Albo ushered in
If Peter Dutton is the best the Liberals can offer as an alternative Prime Minister, then they are destined to become irrelevant in modern day Australia.
Alex Antic’s “quiet Australians”, are ,it seems, the ultra Right-Wing and the current Liberal Party welcomes them with open arms to guarantee they fall off the political horizon. Frydenberg didn’t lose because he was a moderate he lost because it was clear that he wasn’t and didn’t challenge Morrison for caving into the Right of the Party.
Hardline Coalition MPs and columnists are pushing a narrative that goes like this: the Morrison government positioned itself as “Labor-lite” and lost as a result.
experimenting “with the poison of leftism”, according to South Australian Liberal Alex Antic – because it caved in on net-zero emissions, racked up budget deficits, abandoned “freedom” during the pandemic and shirked on fighting culture wars.
Source: Election 2022 results: A Liberal Party guided by right-wing commentators is in serious trouble
Australia’s Parliament is not the only institution to have been trashed by the Coalition and corrupt corporate interests over the last decade, as Alan Austin reports.
Source: Well done, Australia — now let’s fix the joint up properly
Will the News Corpse business model change? Not at all because the money and wealth that they feed off is not Democratically distributed. Harvey Norman still advertises with them and remembers Frydenberg gave him the money.
Australia has voted for a new government as Labor’s Anthony Albanese gained enough seats to form a minority government and stop Murdoch’s Liberal-National Party Coalition’s attempt at governing for a fourth consecutive term.
Source: Anthony Albanese defeats Rupert Murdoch to become 31st PM of Australia
While the bruised LNP will lick their wounds and rue their ignorance of the community movement that gathered pace under their noses, Australia’s major parties will have to consider a new phenomenon: the non-career parliamentarian, one who enters parliament, not for party allegiance and faction but for voter representation and change. For the Westminster model of government, this is indeed a stunning novelty.
Source: The Great Teal Tsunami: Arise Australia’s Independents – » The Australian Independent Media Network
My thought for the day Substantial and worthwhile change often comes with short-term controversy, but the pain is worth it for the long-term prosperity of all. ( John Lord )
Source: And so it came to pass – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Albanese will have a small majority. Smart leaders govern as if they wield a huge majority anyway. But Labor can’t be credible at its current level of support. Labor and the Greens need to stop being the best of frenemies. Anthony and Adam, it’s time to make it legal.
Source: It’s time. Time for Labor and the Greens to say yes to love – Michael West
It’s tempting to think the Coalition lost the election purely because of climate change, as I foreshadowed here in April, but there’s much more to it than that. Women rose up and voted as a group, mostly for the future of the planet, but also for integrity and the better treatment of women. And while Julia Gillard hardly figured in the campaign, her treatment 10 years ago at the hands of men in both major parties was the unexploded bomb that finally went off on Saturday.
Source: Alan Kohler: This was Julia Gillard’s election victory
But once we lose the primacy of need in something like housing, we lose the ability to see how my accumulated investments might be depriving you of something essential. We instead demand to be left to our investments. So, politics now cannot take a dollar off anyone, or even look vaguely like it will. It’s tempting to call this a “no losers” brand of politics, but of course, that’s not quite accurate. There are losers. It’s just that they’re the people who are already losing. We take nothing away from them except their prospects.
Source: Election 2022: Do we even want to solve housing affordability?”
Much has been made of the fact that Morrison has steered clear of the so-called moderates and the suggestion has been that he realises that he’s electoral poison in those places, but there is an alternative possibility: He actually believes in miracles and he doesn’t care about these electorates, believing that God will deliver the seats he needs with candidates like Katherine Deves. Actually after Scotty bulldozed that kid (“fault on both sides” according to Stuart Robert), did anyone ask her is she has a view on men playing sport against little children or is it only transgender people that she has a problem with?
Whatever worries Labor voters may have, they should rest assured after Morrison told us that he didn’t introduce the integrity commission legislation because Labor opposed it. On that basis, it seems that whoever wins the election that the only legislation brought before parliament will be things that Labor supports!
Source: Final Thoughts After The Long, Long Campaign… – » The Australian Independent Media Network
From a Liberal
Unlike in the US, every Australian vote counts and voting is compulsory and preferential. The day after the election, we don’t want to find ourselves having to march in the streets for climate change action, integrity and safety, respect and equity for women. And rather than having to “stick it out” with the same leadership for another three years, our nation needs to breathe a sigh of relief. With the knowledge and comfort that it’s time to repair, restore and build for the future. Time to put the bulldozer away.
Source: Julia Banks: We can’t take another three years of same old, same old
The Publicly owned broadcaster of our media News and Information service is the conservative’s enemy as far Morrison, the LNP, the IPA and Murdoch media are concerned. They are a coalition in Australia that simply view the ABC as the enemy of government rule. As far as they are concerned the ABC as News and Information service shouldn’t exist. Morrison’s and Abbott’s relationship with the ABC has been fractious and so for the past decade, their primary aim has been to extract revenue via an annual “efficiency review” which translates to always breaking the LNP promise of no cuts.
Scott Morrison has shown an aversion to appearing in ABC interviews, preferring to be represented by the right-wing mainstream media, writes Jeremy Epstein.
Source: ANALYSIS: Morrison’s love of Murdoch has left ABC in the dust
My thought for the day The real enemy of neoconservative politics in Australia is not Labor or democratic socialism. It is simply what Australians affectionally call – a fair go. ( John Lord )
Source: “If you want change, change the government” – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The verdict is that, for me, the current Coalition Government is the single worst government in living memory, possibly in our history of representative government.
From the top to the bottom they shred convention, they outsource our governing functions to multinationals, they have starved our elderly in Aged Care, they keep the unemployed poverty stricken, they are fanning the flames of conflict with China, they have destroyed our social fabric, and they run kangaroo courts. They have devalued our Australian identity by flouting international standards of behaviour, and by trying to be the Trumpian nightmare of the Pacific. There’s not a lot to like.
Scott Morrison does not deserve another term.
Source: Does Morrison deserve another term? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The election table is groaning under dead cats as the Liberals look for some traction on the dung heap they built and are rapidly sliding down. I don’t want to hear any more. Five more sleeps and we wake up to find out the result of what I think will be the most important election in my lifetime. A choice between profit or wages, between greed or saving the planet, between transparency or secrecy, between democracy or the cult of Morrison.
Source: “Labor haven’t released their costings” – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Democrats should make this an issue in the run-up to the 2022 midterms. While Republicans rail against the utterly fake danger to the United States of undocumented immigrants voting in American elections, Democrats should rail against the real danger to American democracy of foreign money affecting American elections through foreign investments in American corporations.
Source: How Russian Oligarchs, the Saudis, and China Are Swaying American Elections | The Smirking Chimp
In his pitch for re-election, Scott Morrison is hammering several talking points that the facts overwhelmingly refute, as Alan Austin reports.
Source: Scott Morrison has ten key election messages — nine are not true
Under threat from Independent candidates, so-called Liberal moderates have chosen a new and rather extraordinary campaign pitch – if we want action on climate change or protection of gay rights or gender equity, we need to send more moderate Liberal MPs to Canberra.
We tried that before and the Liberals themselves booted them out.
Malcolm Turnbull had his leadership rolled in 2009 over action on climate change and again in 2018 for the same reason. Moderate Julie Bishop’s long service as deputy leader meant nothing to the big swinging dicks who apparently hold sway in the party.
Kelly O’Dwyer, Craig Laundy, Jane Prentice, George Brandis, Arthur Sinodinis, Christopher Pyne, Sharman Stone, Judi Moylan, Sue Boyce, Judith Troeth, John Alexander, Scott Ryan and Tony Smith – all gone.
Here’s a tip for the so-called moderates – if you, like the rest of us, think your party is going in the wrong direction, change parties. Or go teal next time.
Source: The extraordinary plea from Liberal moderates – » The Australian Independent Media Network
My thought for the day You cannot possibly believe in democracy if at the same time you think your party is the only one that should ever win. ( John Lord )
Source: Counting down … – » The Australian Independent Media Network
If the LNP in Australia continue down the road of the Republican Party a Nope Nope Nope in opposition will they cease to exist?
America will still be America. But it is fast becoming two versions of itself. The open question is: how will the two be civil toward each other?
Source: The second American civil war is already happening | Robert Reich | The Guardian
The biggest poll of 16,000 has the ALP with a majority of 12 seats and an increased number of Independents
My thought for the day I find it impossible to imagine that the Australian people could be so gullible as to elect for a fourth term a government that has performed so miserably in the first three. Especially when it has amongst its members some of the most devious, suspicious and corrupt men and women, but they could.( John Lord )
Source: Let’s hope the polls are right this time – » The Australian Independent Media Network
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.