Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Give me a fucking break. I see no honest conservatives anywhere. I see people who want limited govt unless and until that limitation allows other people to act in ways that offend those "conservatives" At least I'm fukcing honest. I'll tell you where I'm coming from. These fucking "conservatives" are always hiding their agenda and the reason is simple - they are the party of less liberty. They deep down want to control people. Their core belief is that we're better off if certain moral notions they like are enforced on everyone else. Call yourself what you are, will you? You're nothing more than the moralizing mirror image of the liberals who think we should all be hyper-regulated like children because we don't know what's good for us.

Was your neck of the sticks a farm with lots of hay? Its like one fucking straw man after another. I'm on record here saying state's rights, legalize-it-or-shoot-everybody-but-don't-fucking-reach-into-my-wallet-for-it, and spread the pain to Sebby's suburban crowd while we are at it.

Sebby says, "I'm a lover of liberty, a lifelong pro-Choice Catholic, and I'm sick of people like you saying drugs should be illegal but abortion should be state's rights". Who you talking about here Sebby? Because where I'm from, you are talking about the suburban crowd. Yeah, fuck all the minorities in the ghetto, but don't you dare throw a felony on my kid for buying the shit. Look around you man, your people are the problem. You can erect all the straw boogey-men you want, but at the end of the day its your compromises that were necessary to get to this perpetual cycle of social failure.

Call me what you will, but I don't see no pink elephants in the mirror when I'm brushing my teeth. You are an impossibly convoluted caricature of a libertarian.

[sgtclub]

Anyone care to speculate why the significance of Howard's landslide hasn't made louder news? Anyone care to speculate whether it would have been louder news if he lost?

[Hank Chinaski]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,135033,00.html

Ms. Heinz-Kerry's value to the ticket can be seen by the choice of appearances. They have her in Texas. There could be no clearer statement that she scares the guys running the campaign.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Anyone care to speculate why the significance of Howard's landslide hasn't made louder news? Anyone care to speculate whether it would have been louder news if he lost?

How about:

The American main stream media is, at heart, relentlessly conservative, but, at the same time, polite, and so they don't wish to crow about this rather impressive ratification of Bush's ideas by one of our more important allies?

(What do I win?)

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by bilmore
How about:

The American main stream media is, at heart, relentlessly conservative, but, at the same time, polite, and so they don't wish to crow about this rather impressive ratification of Bush's ideas by one of our more important allies?

(What do I win?)

Ding ding ding ding - You win, a year's subscription to . . . (drum roll) NYT!

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Anyone care to speculate why the significance of Howard's landslide hasn't made louder news?

Because no one in the US has ever cared about Aussie elections.

Anyone care to speculate whether it would have been louder news if he lost?

Only to speculate upon the extent it changes the coalition of the willing.

Aussies are pretty much just Texans with funny accents and wanderlust, though, so I wasn't really expecting much of a change.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Aussies are pretty much just Texans with funny accents and wanderlust, though, so I wasn't really expecting much of a change.

it pains me to disagree with you R, but the Spain switch was big news, why wouldn't Australia rejecting the same change be news?

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by bilmore
How about:

The American main stream media is, at heart, relentlessly conservative, but, at the same time, polite, and so they don't wish to crow about this rather impressive ratification of Bush's ideas by one of our more important allies?

(What do I win?)

How about the mainstream American media thinks that stories about election results in Australia won't help them sell advertising as much as printing another article about Britney and Kevin? Election results in Germany (which, depending upon who you believe, either meant that the Germans were happy or unhappy with the "anti-American" national government) got no attention here, and I doubt that the Spanish elections results would have, absent the terror bombings.

And is it all that much of a suprise that Howard's party won? I could swear that the Economist ran an article a few weeks ago about the fact that he was leading by a pretty good margin, and that his opponent was regared as an inexperienced lightweight.

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
it pains me to disagree with you R, but the Spain switch was big news, why wouldn't Australia rejecting the same change be news?

Because there was a terror attack, and the switch was attributed by many as a reaction to that attack.

Would there have been more news made -- absent the attack -- had the Spanish government stayed in office? Maybe. But not much, I don't think. Perhaps the same amount of attention on either side (opinion journals mostly -- maybe the Nation versus the National Review). I just don't think that most newspapers think that their readers care about it. A story on page A-8.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Not Bob

And is it all that much of a suprise that Howard's party won? I could swear that the Economist ran an article a few weeks ago about the fact that he was leading by a pretty good margin, and that his opponent was regared as an inexperienced lightweight.

2 sorta.

I saw something on the news that Australia's unemployment rate is at 2.8%, which is supposedly extraordinarily low on a historical basis for them. The nation supposedly also feels like things are good and getting better.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Not Bob
How about the mainstream American media thinks that stories about election results in Australia won't help them sell advertising as much as printing another article about Britney and Kevin? Election results in Germany (which, depending upon who you believe, either meant that the Germans were happy or unhappy with the "anti-American" national government) got no attention here, and I doubt that the Spanish elections results would have, absent the terror bombings.

Yes, yours was as spot-on as mine.

But mine was knowing satire.

There are tons of pro-Kerry submissions in the news that surely don't meet this "National Enquirer" test of public utility you are offering. It's a valid theory until you examine how they treat both sides.

And is it all that much of a suprise that Howard's party won? I could swear that the Economist ran an article a few weeks ago about the fact that he was leading by a pretty good margin, and that his opponent was regared as an inexperienced lightweight.

It was my impression that Howard was looking dead for several weeks prior.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
it pains me to disagree with you R, but the Spain switch was big news, why wouldn't Australia rejecting the same change be news?

Was there a train bombing in Sydney that I missed?

I'd imagine that the reason relates to a combination of (1) the absence of an attack overshadowing the election, (2) the (slightly) increased difference in time, and (3) the continuation of the status quo is never as big of a story as change, and (4) some newsrooms didn't see the upside in trumpeting this as a validation of Bush's policies, so they left that task to News Corp.

That said, bilmore's answer is more succinct and snappier, kinda like GWB's answer on abortion. So, let's go with that.

ETA: Correction. Bilmore's was "knowing satire." Of course, forgive me.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
it pains me to disagree with you R, but the Spain switch was big news, why wouldn't Australia rejecting the same change be news?

Because, as far as I know, there wasn't an al Qaida linked attack on Austrailia a few days before the election. I guess you could go back to the bombing in Bali two years ago that killed a lot of Aussie tourists and part of the Australian national rugby team, but that was from a few news cycles ago. Orderly elections in Australia are not as big of a news item as the post-bombing elections in Spain were.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Gattigap
That said, bilmore's answer is more succint and snappier, kinda like GWB's answer on abortion. So, let's go with that.

When my son loses a football game, he always manages to find something about the refs to complain about. He doesn't lose very gracefully.

(Italy's voters chose a Kerry-clone. NYT front page. Germany's voters reject the Kerry-clone. Very small blurb. Chirac's bribery stories. Not so much. Ink problem in Afghanistan. Big news. )

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Was your neck of the sticks a farm with lots of hay? Its like one fucking straw man after another. I'm on record here saying state's rights, legalize-it-or-shoot-everybody-but-don't-fucking-reach-into-my-wallet-for-it, and spread the pain to Sebby's suburban crowd while we are at it.

Sebby says, "I'm a lover of liberty, a lifelong pro-Choice Catholic, and I'm sick of people like you saying drugs should be illegal but abortion should be state's rights". Who you talking about here Sebby? Because where I'm from, you are talking about the suburban crowd. Yeah, fuck all the minorities in the ghetto, but don't you dare throw a felony on my kid for buying the shit. Look around you man, your people are the problem. You can erect all the straw boogey-men you want, but at the end of the day its your compromises that were necessary to get to this perpetual cycle of social failure.

Call me what you will, but I don't see no pink elephants in the mirror when I'm brushing my teeth. You are an impossibly convoluted caricature of a libertarian.

Why must you continually try to frame every debate as some sort of suburb vs. urban poor conflict. You've responed to my challenge that most conservatives are phonies hiding an agenda by shooting the messenger. Here's a tip - your technique of reframing/warping the issue so that you can make every debate one about class and race, is transparent. A mongoloid could spot that you're trying to goad everyone into debates where you can take strong moral positions about inequality which make the opponent look like an ogre. You remind me of that line in Holidays in Cambodia where Biafra properly describes upper middle class white self-loathing:

"Play ethnicky jazz to parade your snazz on your five grand stereo, bragging that you know how the niggesr feel cold and the Sun's got so much soul..."

Stop trying to call me a classist/racist/anti-urbanist. My post had no hint of any of that. At least when I crash and burn, I admit it, instead of trying to morph the subject fifty times. Admit it, man - you're a conservative - you want people to adhere to certain morals, but you just can't stomach saying it because that forces you to give up all intellectual credibility in the argument.

And get rid of your hard on for for arguments about the ghetto. Its sounds contrived from an obviously whitebread Catholic kid from the better side of the tracks.