Further to Bridgit Gread’s excellent post demolishing the wingnuts’ desperate and infantile claim that the current financial crisis in the US is the Democrats’ fault, we have the Tardosphere’s most courageous defender of free speech, KG, indulging in some more shameless obfuscation:

The left — those wholly responsible for the subprime crisis — are complaining on every outlet that they “had a deal” that would have passed into law to allow the rescue of the financial industry but for the intercession of John McCain.
[...]

KG, who appears never to have hatched an original idea, is quoting here from fellow right-wing initialism GW of Wolf Howling, who helpfully illustrates his own execrable post with the following diagram:

Cute. But like so many wingtards, GW neglects to tell the whole story.

Here’s the second diagram from the educational Economix 4 Cockhedz series, which illustrates how free-market capitalists can socialise their losses when their avarice catches up with them (and the people they’ve exploited) and everything goes to shit:

See? Let no one say we’re not all about balance here at GrodsCorp.

UPDATE: The $US700 billion ($840 billion) “bailout” package has been approved. I hope you swallowed, free-market capitalism.

Read this.

Now lament his loss.

Today I did something unthinkable.

I plonked down a cool $25 and became a member of the Australian Democrats. That makes 3 of us in my (safe Liberal) electorate!

Heil Lyn Allison!

HEIL!

PS. The main reason I did it? Laura Chipp is a fox.

Update: This is so typical. The Editor leaves me alone for five minutes, and I go off and join the Democrats.

Jobs or trees?

What’s more important to you?

“Ludicrous question!” I hear you cry, “It’s over simplified, and I refuse to answer!”.

Suddenly there is a knock at the door. You rush to open it, in the hope it’s a visitor bearing gifts of cash. Instead you are dismayed to find two News Ltd. thugs clutching piano legs.
“Fuckin’ answer the question or I’ll fuckin’ break your knees” snarls one of them.

“Um….trees?” you say without thinking.

“Right, he’s a Greenie, let’s bash him”.

Or at least that’s what News Ltd’s VoteMatic is like. Here are other sample questions:

Answer that. Chasing Japanese whalers sounds crazy, right? Shame that’s what Peter Garrett said it’s what they’d use them for – even though it’s not true. But the answer is still there. How many Labor voters would seriously choose that?

Yeah, this thing is skewed towards the Liberals. Interestingly, they keep a tally of your answers and use aliases for the major parties – A, B, C, etc. Now, for me, party “D” was in the lead, which I took to be the Democrats. Not because Democrat starts with D, but because it was fourth. But then, mysteriously, at the conclusion of the test the Labor party had somehow jumped ahead and scored my vote, with the Dems coming in second.

Thanks to Jeremy for discovering this for me.

Here’s the thing. I will probably vote for the ALP my whole life. So anyone out there who is volunteering in a local ALP member’s office and is responsible for keeping a finger on the pulse of the blogging community, you don’t have to read past here. Your vote is safe with me.

Or I should say – your preference vote. I have taken to giving my primary vote for the Greens or Democrats in the last few elections and preferencing ALP as my version of a protest within the ranks.

Here are some of the things that piss me right off about the Federal ALP and which I do not expect to change:
1. The factions.
It is unbelievable but appears true that the ALP factions would rather lose election after election than sort their shit out.

2. The dominance of beery and outspoken older blokes.
Where are your bright and feisty women in party leadership positions? Hurray for Julia Gillard but surely there are others? If New Zealand has had a female PM for almost ten years than we must be about another ten years off, I guess.

3. The snail pace of realising that climate change might be used as a real vote winner
You could really hit those middle Australians for all their worth – get them in the fear joint, hit them with the risk to their future livelihood, the jobs of their children – whatever it takes, but use it.

4. Kevin Rudd.
He just makes my skin crawl. I can’t explain it, but I know I am not alone.

The absence of actual policy
Whilst my skin was crawling, I heard Rudd say something about providing ‘a real alternative government,’ not just shadowing Howard. I hope he does what he says. I have to say though, the moment he was quoted as being in the business of ‘nation-building’ my automatic nervous system switched off my attention gland.

It’s for the reasons above that I am not a member of the ALP and never will be. I have card carrying members for friends who I wish would run for seats but I know they value their quality of life too much for that (damn you for your lack of total self-sacrifice – and you know who you are).

The take home message from this is not new – these same things piss off thousands of my dissatisfied, left-leaning compatriots. I am not going to suggest anything for the ALP to change because the ALP refuses to change any of these things in any active way. Instead I will enjoy observing the ALP as it is inexorably forced to change, as the Greens grow into a real left wing threat and my and others’ currently empty primary vote starts to mean something more than protest.

The Public Transport Users Association has released a report card that grades Parties’ public transport promises ahead of Saturday’s election.

Democrats A-
Family First F
The Greens A
ALP D
Liberals C+
Nationals C
People Power C

However, if these A-E gradings are based on current Victorian school report criteria (also known as The Nelson Method) then the Libs and the Nats are doing just fine, the Dems and the Greens are ahead of the pack, and the ALP needs to try harder. There’s no ‘F’ grade possible in Victoria but joke Parties deserve joke grades.

If, as is more likely, the grades are based upon the traditional A-E system and you care about public transport then you know what to do on Saturday.