Chloe Maxmin flipped a Trump district in her run for a Maine Senate seat. In her new book, she offers Democrats a recipe for replicating that success.
Conclusion: Dutton Dressed as Lamb I hope that this article has shone some light on the sheer crap that is the media’s attempt to rehabilitate The Dark Lord. As I said in the opening paragraph, his record in government is too recent and too well documented for this to work, but I thought I would add my voice to the chorus of detractors. No matter how much the media tries to create and run with this new Dutton, the people know who he really is. His recent (and central) role in a government so thoroughly rejected in the polls should be too much to overcome, but with our press, one can never be sure.
Source: Dutton Dressed as Lamb: Dissecting The Image – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The prime minister has indicated the car park and sports rorts affairs could be investigated by the national anti-corruption commission his government has promised to establish.
Source: Federal anti-corruption body to have scope to investigate ‘what they see fit’, Anthony Albanese says
Peter Dutton has finally become the leader of something. It is a disorganised rabble, but I am sure he is thrilled. Opposition Leader, and he is already talking about swooping in and fixing “Labor’s inevitable mess” in 2025. This is truly delusional, and uncoupled from reality.
Source: Is Dutton Labor’s ‘secret weapon’? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
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.”
This week’s National Accounts show the economy growing solidly. But the growth is mainly benefiting businesses, especially mining businesses, while workers’ wages fall further behind. The
Source: The economy is growing but workers are not getting the benefits – ABC News
Morrison took Trump’s highway to the election WA told him to piss off and Qld didn’t cry welcome. The current leader of the now Opposition a Banana Bender lost 50% of the small margin he had. Heads will roll in the back office.
The Election delivered a severe blow to the project of consolidating far-Right politics through electoral processes. The Liberal Party is hopelessly split due to the ruling class divisions over climate change. It has effectively lost its base in the upper middle classes of the cities. The far-Right minor party vote largely did not eventuate.
Australia ranks equal 36th in the world out of the 78 country list of Liberal Democracies. Why is it we always slide down when the LNP is in government? The worst and obvious being this recent decade?
The Australian LNP modeled itself on making Australia more American and they still do. Read American politics and you will see the LNP adopting American Republican policies in a kneejerk reaction because they actually have no homegrown ones of their own and currently have an interim Leader that may not even make it to the next election. Who is sitting in waiting one wonders.
By Toby James, University of East Anglia; and Holly Ann Garnett, Royal Military College of Canada | – Defending democracy has suddenly become one of the central challenges of our age. The land war in Ukraine is widely considered a front line between autocratic rule and democratic freedom. The United States continues to absorb the meaning of the riot that took place on January 6 2021 in an attempt to overthrow the result of the previous year’s election. Elsewhere, concerns have been raised that the pandemic could have provided cover for governments to postpone elections. Elections are an essential part
Source: Elections: a Global Ranking rates US Weakest among Liberal Democracies
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
Goebbels and a would-be Hitler Importing the American Republican New Dream of the total Re-eduction of Australia.
Now, let me be quite clear here: I’m not being overly sensitive to Peter Dutton’s recent comments because I’ve spent a large part of my professional life in schools. Ok, I’m a teacher and, according to our new leader, I’m an extremist… Wait, that’s right. Peter Dutton isn’t our new leader. The Liberals didn’t win…
As Pleasant Pete said: “…If it was limited to just environmental issues or just to climate change, it would be bad enough… extremism is some of the teachers and the language they use, the approach that they take, it’s across a broad range of public policy areas and I think the national curriculum, the values argument is going to be one of the big debates over this parliament and I think you will see a big difference between the policies we take to the next election compared to what Labor will. Labor is completely and utterly dominated by the union movement as you know and the teachers’ union is one of the strongest voices in the ALP and not in a good way!”
That’s the actual quote so if it seems to be a little disjointed that may be because he had to stop and remember that he’s a nice man now that he doesn’t have any of those nasty portfolios that demand you drag families out of their beds in the middle of the night or tell rape victims that they can’t have an abortion because we will decide who comes into this country and the circumstances, etc.
But it was his comments on history that demonstrated exactly how much he’s changed. He said that he didn’t want teachers “teaching a different view of history”. Teachers should stick to the actual facts of what happened.
Now, this is a perfectly reasonable demand for a leader to make. After all, that’s the idea that Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin and various other strong leaders had. There are certain facts and you stick to them and if you seem to think that there aren’t we can educate you at the re-education camp.
Yes, not teaching a different view of history begs the question: “Different view from who or what?”
Source: Peter Dutton On Education And Re-education… – » The Australian Independent Media Network
An Australian environment minister carries this responsibility in a way that environment ministers from other countries don’t: Australia as the long-isolated island ark, has flora and fauna like nothing else on the globe.
So when political commentators say that Tanya Plibersek has been “demoted” to the role of Australian environment minister, I wonder what higher responsibility a government minister in 2022 could possibly carry.
The history of Labor has always been to clean up the self-crowned “better managers” mess.They have always been there to give the nation a “progressive shove”, and get going again. When we are on the road to progress, and moving forward the LNP step up the chorus calling it a mess and echoing “we are the better managers”. If the 24/7 news cycle actually printed the news along with a little critical precise of our historical facts the LNP might just feel they need to pitch in and actually help this country instead of themselves and their minority of friends. I remember feeling the dark shadow of fear that pass over us when Abbott came to Government. Simply compare Fraser Abbott and Howard with Whitlam, Hawke, Keating,Rudd and Gillard.
No sooner back in office and the ALP is hit with a crisis. The gas shortages plaguing the east coast have all the makings of a giant clusterfrig from the parties of government.
Labor, while holding power only a third of the time in Australia’s history, seems doomed to get the call from the electorate just as trouble is brewing.
Jim Scullin’s team took office in October 1929, the month the Wall Street crash unleashed the Great Depression. John Curtin took over in 1941 as Japan was preparing to widen the war in the Pacific. Gough Whitlam’s ambitious program was derailed when the quadrupling of oil prices in 1973 unleashed rampant inflation and unemployment in the Western world.
Bob Hawke had better luck, coming to power in 1983 as a long drought broke. But Kevin Rudd was hit with the global financial crisis in 2008.
We can only wish Team Albo better luck in the long term.
Source: Cold welcome: another chapter in Labor’s hard luck story – Michael West
Good morning, early birds. The Albanese government is considering reserving gas for the east coast in a bid to stabilise energy prices, and NDIS Minister Bill Shorten says he will crack down people misusing the NDIS. It’s the news you need to know, with Emma Elsworthy.
Source: Crikey Worm: Classical gas
He couldn’t tell the truth before he was elected how could he be expected to tell it before this recent election? Energy prices were going up despite the Ukraine not because of it.
On 30 April, less than a month before the election I penned this piece, about the foreshadowed spike in energy prices, about to hit Australian consumers: Coalition promises higher electricity costs! I wrote it because it was quite clear that the Coalition were not going to come clean before the election and it was a known major factor that was going to hit Australian businesses and consumers as winter came on.
Capitalist society can only ever legalize cannabis in a way that benefits the already wealthy. Why not put the newly legal weed industry in the hands of the public and away from the profit motive?
Russian forces have advanced deep into the ruined eastern factory city of Sievierodonetsk, but Ukrainian troops are still holding out there as Russia’s assault on its neighbour entered its 100th day.
Source: Ukraine’s street-by-street battle to stop Russian push
Politicians of the Liberal kind have no real fundamental principles other than maintaining the economic interests of their donors. However, they do believe the 24/7 news cycle enables them to become chameleons change and like a laundromat have their histories erased but little else. There is no such thing as a fresh Dutton Taylor, Robert, Cash. There is no such thing as a Liberal Party whose interests are all Australia’s
Australians should be deeply concerned that Peter Dutton – the man who proudly marched out on the Apology to Indigenous Australians – stands unopposed within the Liberal Party as its alternative prime minister.
While his emergence as Opposition Leader has renewed scrutiny of his motivations back in 2008, this was just one of many troubling chapters in Dutton’s three-decade career that expose his serial failure to empathise with anyone he perceives as different.
This why Peter Dutton is a follower and not a leader. His ideas are simply imported and plagiarised from America’s Republicans. The current rebranding of the Liberal Party as the “Family and Small Business Party” is just one example. The Liberals were never a “Grassroots” movement they never represented the “community” as the Teals have. Yet they now have their eyes set on taking over outer suburban community organizations like schools, and councils and rebranding themselves as their American mentors are doing. Dutton has his eyes on education and what’s taught in schools Making out that Liberal interests are cultural not the interests of the big end of town. Dutton is just a follower with Murdoch is his marketing manager trying to make us ever more right-wing American
In the liberal suburbs of Fairfax County, Virginia, conservative parents like Carrie Lukas have come to local school board meetings to air their frustrations with the failures of the public school system during the Covid-19 pandemic. In late January, Lukas used her two minutes during public comment to criticize mask mandates and call for school privatization.
But when Lukas came to the microphone, she represented more than her family. As the president of a right-wing think tank called the Independent Women’s Forum, Lukas also advanced the interests of her billionaire donors: some of America’s wealthiest people who, for decades, have backed efforts to defund public schools, attack teachers unions, and undermine the scientific community.
Source: Inside the Republicans’ Rebranding as the “Parents Party”
Peter Dutton has entered his new role as Opposition Leader with a reputation as a hard-right conservative, devoid of compassion.
Even since this article from 2018 by managing editor Michelle Pini, the propaganda machine hasn’t stopped portraying him as a “good bloke”.
Source: FLASHBACK 2018: Peter Dutton — the would-be PM and overlord
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
Conclusion: Learn from History or Repeat It
The newly minted Prime Minister and his government seem to have learned the lesson from ten years ago. They are not willing to be beholden to the Greens because they know how that plays out. This is not to say that the Greens should be utterly shut out. Some of their policy ideas are positive (expanding Medicare to include mental health and dental care for one). But they should not be allowed to demand their policies be implemented when they received a tiny percentage of the vote. Who do they think they are, the Nationals? More seriously, the lesson of allowing small minority parties to have large influence over policy is not a lesson that Anthony Albanese has forgotten. Long may this strategic competence continue.
Suss Ley “heard and listened” then acted
Recovery plans designed to prevent the extinction of almost 180 threatened species and habitats, including the Tasmanian devil, were scrapped by the Coalition in one of Sussan Ley’s final acts as environment minister.
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
Reliance on Russian Oil will steeply decrease and be over by the next decade.
In the first quarter of this year, Volkswagen and Mercedes — German carmakers said that sales of their EVs spiked, and increased by 65% and 37% respectively. Tesla sales were up 80%. In fact, the rush to EVs now is no longer hampered by consumer hesitancy, but by supply chain problems caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The German government now backs the goal that all new car sales should be EVs by 2035.
On May 16, the gun company Daniel Defense tweeted an ad featuring a toddler holding an AR-style rifle—the same kind of gun that would be used to kill 21 people in Uvalde, Texas, days later. According to Todd C. Frankel, an enterprise reporter at the Washington Post, ads like these are as routine as the “thoughts and prayers” Daniel Defense and other gun companies offer up after every mass shooting. There is “a Groundhog Day quality to all this,” he says. “They just follow the same playbook and no variation.” On Thursday’s episode of What Next, I talked to Frankel about why gun manufacturers aren’t worried about bad publicity and how guns became identity politics. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Source: Daniel Defense Uvalde shooting: Gun manufacturers aren’t fazed by mass shootings.
Russian forces now occupy about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, as the battle clocked 100 days since the start of the invasion.
Source: Russia controls one-fifth of Ukraine territory as war grinds to 100 days
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.
The new government’s best-known leaders are Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong, two surnames drawn from the deep hinterland of multicultural Australia. Perhaps White Australia is finally on its way out.
Source: How the 2022 federal election may finally signal an end to ‘White Australia’
Dutton’s response still seems more a case of “victim-blaming” which has gone on for over 230 years. His claim might get onside if they clean up their act is simply that. In what world does The Age editorial see that as change? The Age clearly stands with the same colonist attitude that has always blamed indigenous Australians for their own historical demise and it not being in any way the effect or result of the racist colonial system forcefully implanted on them for over two centuries.
Dutton needs to be more Burney, Dodgson, and all of us Australians more Indigenous. That’s why a voice to parliament is a necessity and not just a promised gift or slight adjustment to our current system.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has indicated he may be open to supporting a referendum on a First Nations Voice to parliament, but he wants “the symbolic … to be accompanied by practical responses”. He wants a Voice to “reduce the incidence of child abuse within those communities” and to improve education, employment and “many other indicators”.
Source: Indigenous Voice to parliament: First Nations Voice will meet Peter Dutton’s demand
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
Josh Frydenberg’s mate on the opposite side of politics Ed Husic now has his chance to show what he can do for Australia
“Ed Husic has a long and distinguished track record in the Parliament working with the STEM sector and championing Australian science and technology,” said Science and Technology Australia Chief Executive Officer Misha Schubert. “We are delighted to see him given this crucial portfolio and look forward to continuing a productive relationship with him and his team on behalf of the 90,000 STEM professionals Science & Technology Australia represents.”
Was this an individual case justly heard or a case of systemic misogynism and domestic abuse against women in America? “Donald Trump Jr boasts Johnny Depp win is end to the ‘rabid feminist’ Me Too movement” but then We know Trump Jnr is an idiot like his father. However, Depp was found guilty in the UK in 2020 but not in America in 2022. What would have happened here?
A divorce settlement will follow the only winners seem to be the lawyers and individual change the system will remain intact and the publishers insured.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/amber-heard-johnny-depp-fans-memes-reddit-b2091455.html
The jurors spent a month and a half hearing arguments from lawyers for actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in a very public defamation case.
Source: Johnny Depp Wins Defamation Lawsuit Against Amber Heard | HuffPost Entertainment
The Fox News-fueled Justice Department probes then-President Donald Trump demanded as rebuttals to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation generated plenty of frothy Fox content. They also gave Republican partisans excuses to discount the obviously unethical and potentially illegal behavior of Trump and the crimes of his underlings. But efforts to turn the network’s conspiracy theories into federal cases have tended to diminish and fail under the scrutiny of prosecutors, judges, and juries.
Capitalism creates social disorder and relies on police and prisons to manage it. Until liberals recognize this link between criminal justice and the economy, their reform programs will be ineffectual — and racist policing and mass incarceration will persist.
Source: Capitalism Creates Chaos. The Carceral System Is a Bad Attempt to Contain It.
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 Labor Party’s victory offers a blueprint for diminishing the global influence of the Fox News founder.
Rupert Murdoch, who oversees a global media empire that includes Fox News, doesn’t like losing, but he just tasted defeat in Australia’s election. Despite years in which Murdoch’s media properties vociferously backed conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Labor leader Anthony Albanese won the May 21 contest. Australia saw a wave of climate-friendly, independent candidates and Greens politicians take power in a thorough rejection of the culture wars around trans rights and “religious freedom” unleashed by Morrison and his backers in the Murdoch media.
Source: In Australia Election, Rupert Murdoch Was a Surprise Loser
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
Announcing that it was time for the electorate to see his softer side, new Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says he will continue to relentlessly deride minority groups, but in a more cuddly way.
Source: Gentler, kinder Dutton to insult minority groups more affectionately from now on | The Shovel
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
olddogthoughts 
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