ReadWrite-grogsgamut

The win by President Obama was a win for facts. For reality. For truth, if you will. Does this mean Obama only told the truth on the way back to the White House? Hell no. He’s a politician. But unlike Mitt Romney, his entire campaign wasn’t based on a foundation of lies. Actually – it was worse than that – Mitt’s was founded on an alternate reality.  He argued against a health care system that was based on one he had introduced as Governor of Massachusetts. He argued that he and his running mate Paul Ryan were fiscal conservatives all the while running with a tax policy that didn’t add up. He was for abortion, against it, for it, against it; he said he would create 12 million jobs in 4 years and based this assertion on reports that said he might create 7 million jobs over 10 years and an extra 3.6 million jobs over the next 8 years and 2 million jobs from “cracking down on China” which no one would suggest would occur. He lied about Obama and the auto bailout – probably the final lie really – the one that broke the back of the voters carrying 12 months plus of bullshit. He and the GOP lied and lied and lied.

In these lies Mitt was unfortunately assisted by the right-wing elements of the media in the USA – namely Fox News, talk-back hosts like Rush Limbaugh and blogs like the Drudge Report.

Everything Obama did was “a conspiracy”. I fully envision in the next few months “Hurricane Sandy Truthers’ coming out to show how Obama actually did things to ensure the Hurricane hit the east coast when it did, and that he probably did an under the table deal with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to get him to thank Obama for his efforts. You know it’s true.

Anytime Obama said anything that if twisted could be shown to be a “he clearly hates America” “gaffe” then we’d see it. From “You didn’t build that” (oh my God did the right wing think that would cost Obama the election) right up till last weekend when Obama quietened a crowd that was booing mention of Romney’s name by saying “no, no. Don’t boo. Vote. Vote. Voting is the best revenge.” 

And of course the right wingers and Mitt played ignorance on ever having heard a line like “Living well is the best revenge”, and thinking it was a play on that; instead Obama hated America:

 

But in the end Mitt was just telling those who were already firmly lodged in his fundament that what they were smelling was roses and honey. And it wasn’t.

We see this factless and reality lost politics here in Australia as well. Our debt will have us like Greece and Spain; the carbon price will kill the economy; Julia Gillard is just a gender card playing victim who was a corrupt lawyer; welfare is bad except when the Govt decides to take some away; climate change is a global conspiracy; we’re on the cusp of a wages breakout; the unions are back in charge; the mining tax will send mining off to Sierra Leone; the newspolls are rigged; the newspolls are the only polls that matter; gay marriage will destroy our society; low interest rates are bad; low interest rates are good; if we don’t have a surplus that means Labor never wants to pay off the debt.

Look there are more – and Labor throws out a few of them as well – mostly related to asylum seekers.

But this type of debate led by fools who use data when it suits and then promptly ignore it – or suggest it no longer really matters – helps no one. It leads to a debate where it boils down to “ideology”. Today in The Australian, Adam Creighton, apparently with a straight face, wrote:

CALLS for more "evidence-based policy" in Australia are routine. For former prime minister Kevin Rudd, under whose watch little reform occurred, it was "at the heart of being a reformist government".

But more "ideology-based policy" is what this country needs. Evidence is useless without underlying principles to guide what to do with it. Statistics are often crafted from poor data and reported tendentiously.

Yep, apparently we suffer from too much data. But don’t worry Creighton knows how to fix things:

How can we improve productivity in Australia? Shrink government and thereby expand the fraction of the labour force producing goods and services that people are willing to pay for.

Does he offer any proof that this is correct? Proof? What are you a hippie? If you don’t know that this is true then clearly your ideology is wrong and really it’s time for you to piss off and let the intelligent people run the country. Don’t worry about the fact that such an assertion is bollocks – it won’t do anything for productivity because if you expand the labour force producing goods, you only improve productivity if that increased labour force produces goods more efficiently than does the current market sector of the economy. Shrinking the government won’t do anything to improve the productivity of the mining sector.

He continues:

At the federal level, abolish patently absurd departments -- and their attendant expenditures -- such as "innovation", "climate change", "agriculture", and "families". At the state level, contract out the management and operation of hospitals and schools and deliver subsidies direct to the people consuming these services.

At the local level, sack diversity officers and community outreach programs in favour of fixing potholes and approving new developments.

How wonderful life is when you don’t need to support your assertions with evidence. You get to kill off everything in society you don’t like. I really should have adopted this strategy earlier.

Creighton ends with this doozy:

Not only does "evidence-based policy" thwart sensible reform with a barrage of data, the very process of producing statistics and "evidence" encourages governments to meddle with the economy. No one would pay to know Australia's gross domestic product or supposed aggregate productivity, for instance. Australia would be far freer and more prosperous if government produced fewer statistics.

Yep. There you go – finally the solution to our productivity. Less data! And why? Does he have evidence to support this? (You know for those deluded types who still think evidence maters). Why nope. He just asserts:

Australian businesses do not even measure their productivity in the way the Australian Bureau of Statistics does. They are more interested in profit, a far more reliable indicator of success.

To the extent any principle guides modern economic policy it is a crude utilitarianism that mandates fleecing the many to curry political favour with the few.

What a seriously fucked up vision of the world this bloke has (see I was using ideology there, not evidence). He asserts his ideology is right because it’s his ideology. So what does he do if he meets someone who disagrees with him? Well clearly evidence is not what we need, we just need whoever is strongest to prevail. Because that’s what happens when you trumpet ideology over evidence. If you want to see the germ of every totalitarian regime in history it starts with people asserting ideology over facts.

But it’s not surprising that Creighton would argue such things given back in April he wrote:

It doesn't matter which party is in power. As Winston Churchill said, democracy may be the best form of government among known alternatives, but it is probably not sustainable.

Democracies subsidise bad decisions. Voters, especially ones who pay no tax, care little for the preferences of future generations. The benefits of considered, sensible votes and the costs of careless ones mainly accrue to other people.

Yeah, that cursed democracy.

It is the view that flows underneath most of the right wing’s commentary post the Obama win. Take this nausea inducing excrement from RMIT lecturer of Economics Steve Kates on why Obama won:

The confluence of the mendicants, the envious, the abortion lobby, what I will call the cohort of damaged women, and the social sciences know-nothings has proven a formidable combination. They are a new constituency amalgamation that will affect the politics of the United States for the foreseeable future.

Damaged women? Yep, you see women are now all pretty slutty really – they conform to the Playboy view of the world, but unfortunately it has left them hurt:

But who has come out of this genuinely hurt by the changed attitude to women. Both men and women are worse for it, but if you ask me, it is women who have been psychologically damaged far more than the men. And I suspect Miss 29 has not avoided the deep and fearsome pains of commitment-free sexual relations either.

These are the attitudes that Obama was tapping into. Watching the Middle East burn and the American economy trashed by debt and deficits are irrelevant to such women whose anger is beyond all understanding, particularly for men of my and Romney’s generation.

I sure as shit wouldn’t want to have to make a list of things that are beyond Kates’s understanding.

He ends:

We are in dangerous times. Obama and Gillard are two of a kind. Empty of ability, proven failures at everything they have tried to achieve, but nevertheless able to command majorities in the legislative systems of our two nations. But the American election is the one that will matter most and whose outcome will resonate far into the future in ways that are incalculable. Re-electing Obama has endangered our way of life and may even make it unsustainable.

It’s almost impossible where to begin with such a paragraph. Perhaps it is best not to at all. It’s perhaps best just to quietly walk past and hope Kates doesn’t catch our gaze.

But Kates is not alone. Many of his Quadrant mates are on board the unhinged express. Try this on for size from Christopher Carr:

At this early stage, a few random thoughts will have to do. It seems that there are two Americas, which inhabit parallel universes. In addition to the obvious demographic divisions, there is an information division. Unless voters were tuned to the Fox News Network or followed conservative blogs, they would scarcely have heard of the scandal concerning the White House’s repeated denial of requests for backup during the terrorist attack at Benghazi. The mainstream media did a brilliant job covering for Obama.

Mitt Romney played Mr Nice Guy. President Obama played the demagogue.

Wait. Fox News? The same Fox News that used graphs repeatedly to mislead and outright lie? The same Fox News that frequently refers to “we” when talking about the Republican Party?

And if you still have any strength left, go read Peter Smith parrot every blog written on the National Review where he blames the loss on Obama being mean to Mitt and painting him as an evil capitalist (and ignoring that that was exactly what his fellow Republicans did during the Primaries).

There’s only so much delusion you can handle. And it helps no one – not even the other side – because what usually happens is when the contest of ideas becomes a contest of ideology then stupidity rises.

On this aspect Rachel Maddow of MSNBC conveys it all perfectly, and I have no more to add:

Today in a resounding win for maths, Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney.

Before we get to the politics, the win was a win for the pollsters, and for those who created models based on their aggregated data. The big winner has been The NY Times’ Nate Silver, but in reality pretty much all forecasters were predicting and Obama win.

For example on the Huffington Post here was the predicted map:

Of the 4 “tossup states”, Obama was ahead in Colorado and Virginia; Romney was ahead in North Carolina. Florida was split 48%-48% And here’s how it ended up:

Obama won Colorado and Virginia as expected and Mitt won North Carolina as expected. And in the end Obama won Florida just to get the cherry on top.

All Obama lost from 2008 was Indiana and North Carolina which voted Republican even when Clinton was running in 1992 and 1996, let alone when George W won in 2000 and 2004. So it wasn’t a case of Romney making inroads, but more just getting back what the GOP used to take for granted.

With still around 25% of California’s vote to count, Obama leads by over 2 million votes. He has 50.1% of the vote, and because he’s winning California by around 57% he’ll likely end up with around 50.2%ish to Romney’s 48.3%ish.

The final Real Clear Politics average of the polls had Obama up 48.8% to 48.1%, Nate Silver had Obama projected to win 50.8% of the vote to Mitt’s 48.3%. So RCP under-estimated Obama’s share, and Silver slightly over-estimated it. Mind you Silver’s projection was for Obama to only win 313 electoral college votes, so he wasn’t exactly over-egging Obama’s chances.

It was a big loss for right wing pundits who were right till the very end (even past the end in Karl Rove’s case) suggesting the vibe and feel on the ground was at great variance to what the polls were suggesting. The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan was a classic example. Yesterday she wrote:

Everyone’s guessing. I spent Sunday morning in Washington with journalists and political hands, one of whom said she feels it’s Obama, the rest of whom said they don’t know. I think it’s Romney. I think he’s stealing in “like a thief with good tools,” in Walker Percy’s old words. While everyone is looking at the polls and the storm, Romney’s slipping into the presidency. He’s quietly rising, and he’s been rising for a while.

Now I don’t mind someone sticking her neck out and making a prediction, but a bit of substantial evidence wouldn’t go astray (especially when the Mitt’s rising” bit went against what the polls were showing). Instead Noonan served up this:

Who knows what to make of the weighting of the polls and the assumptions as to who will vote? Who knows the depth and breadth of each party’s turnout efforts? Among the wisest words spoken this cycle were by John Dickerson of CBS News and Slate, who said, in a conversation the night before the last presidential debate, that he thought maybe the American people were quietly cooking something up, something we don’t know about.

I think they are and I think it’s this: a Romney win.

Let this be a good example of to stop listening to people who say the polls are wrong because people running the polls obviously can’t be bothered trying to do their job right. The right wing seemed to live under the assumption that the polls were all purposefully being stupid – as though these companies wanted to be wrong.

When the supporters of a political party start telling you all the polls are wrong and that the vibe is with their side, know that they are picking up straws and clutching them like mad.

Yes a poll can be “wrong” but when you start collating lots of them, for them to be wrong you need to start assuming a lot of things don’t gel with reality. It’s why in Australia you don’t need to worry about individual poll movement – but instead be smart and look at Possum’s Pollytrend.

You can talk all you like about “the vibe” and how great the feel is out there “on the ground”. But if, come a day before the next election, the ALP is still running at 48% on the pollytrend, they won’t win.

Let the trend be your friend (and also let it make you look like you know what you’re talking about).

In the USA, a couple electoral maps (via the NY Times)  show the problem for the GOP in winning the Presidency.

First the vote by county (red is Republican)

As you can see – lots of land mass is red. It looks like  America should be Republican

But now look at the margins of victory per county:

Where Obama won big was in the big cities; where Mitt won big was in places that didn’t matter because they were never in play – such as Utah.

In Colorado for example Obama won big in and around Denver and Boulder. In Florida he won the Miami-Dade Country with 62% of the vote – that county had around 829,000 voters, next door in Broward County he won with 67%. It has around 719,000 voters. Together those 2 counties account for nearly 20% of the entire state’s vote.

In Ohio it’s the same story:

Obama won big in Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo. Romney won in Cincinnati but not by enough to make up for those losses – and that county in Cincinnati that he won (Clermont County) had only 94,000 voters. In the Cleveland county that Obama won big (Cuyahoga County) there are 610,000 voters, and Obama won with 69% of the vote (or by 236,000 votes). 

It’s also worth noting that even if Mitt won both Ohio and Florida, he still would’ve lost the election. When you’re in that kind of a scenario, you can’t say the election was close.

To change this map, the GOP has to come up with someone who can win in the cities – which means maybe not running a campaign that (to paraphrase Obama in 2008) is concerned about scared people who cling to their guns and religion.

The worry for those who would like to see a sensible Republican Party is that the Tea Party movement is not real big on logic. I can see them blaming this result on the fact that Mitt was too moderate (as was John McCain in 2008 in their view), and that Chris Christie betrayed them by embracing Obama after the Hurricane, and that they really needed someone like Rick Santorum or Paul Ryan.

Now that might get them a big result in Kentucky, but sure as heck won’t win them back Pennsylvania or Ohio.

One small hope for sanity is that the Tea Party got pretty well slapped this time round. Todd Akin – he of the “legitimate rape comment” – lost his Senate race in Missouri gaining only 40% of the vote. This was a state that Romney won with 54%.

Similarly Richard Mourdock – he of the pregnancy from rape is “something God intended to happen” comment – lost his Senate race in Indiana with only 44.4% of the vote. Again this is a state Romney won with 54.3%.

Similarly the candidate for head nutter of the Congress, Michel Bachmann, won her seat with only 50.6% of the vote. Her district has actually been rezoned since the last election and was supposed to be more Republican. This was a woman who actually tried to run for President with Tea Party support, and she only sneaked in.

Unfortunately there will be those in the Republican Party who instead of facing reality will follow Donald Trump’s lead:

Including this woman (via @greenat16)

***

Four years ago Obama’s victory speech was damn impressive. It drew heavily on Martin Luther King Jr.

Tonight’s speech was in some ways more impressive. It seemed more his own. One less concerned with remarking on the history of the moment but rather looking ahead – in fact looking “forward” (who knew “moving forward” could be a winning slogan!).

The best part of the speech invoked the usual American exceptionalism that is in all such speeches but nicely – and touchingly – brought it together with his policy for health care:

I am hopeful tonight because I've seen the spirit at work in America. I've seen it in the family business whose owners would rather cut their own pay than lay off their neighbors, and in the workers who would rather cut back their hours than see a friend lose a job.

I've seen it in the soldiers who reenlist after losing a limb and in those SEALs who charged up the stairs into darkness and danger because they knew there was a buddy behind them watching their back.

I've seen it on the shores of New Jersey and New York, where leaders from every party and level of government have swept aside their differences to help a community rebuild from the wreckage of a terrible storm.

And I saw just the other day, in Mentor, Ohio, where a father told the story of his 8-year-old daughter, whose long battle with leukemia nearly cost their family everything had it not been for health care reform passing just a few months before the insurance company was about to stop paying for her care.

I had an opportunity to not just talk to the father, but meet this incredible daughter of his. And when he spoke to the crowd listening to that father's story, every parent in that room had tears in their eyes, because we knew that little girl could be our own.

And I know that every American wants her future to be just as bright. That's who we are. That's the country I'm so proud to lead as your president.

And with that, here we go – four more years:

My Drum piece which went up yesterday is a rather silly-season bit of hypothetical that wonders how the leaders of the US and Australia would have fared under the other’s system of Government.

I’m having a couple weeks off writing for The Drum, which is good because otherwise I’d be forced to write again about asylum seekers and I think I’d prefer to stab myself with a rusty fork than do that.

My post today on The Drum is about the nuttiness of the Republican Party. Rather annoying for me is that as soon as I sent it off I realised I had forgotten to include mention of Herman Cain’s speech in which he announced his campaign was being suspended. Cain said this:

"I believe these words came from the Pokémon movie…

"I’m not sure who the original author is, so don’t go write an article about the poem. But it says a lot about where I am - where I am with my wife and my family, and where we are as a nation.”

"Life can be a challenge, life can seem impossible, it's never easy when there is so much on the line. But you and I can make a difference.”

The “poem” was actually the song played during the credits of the movie Pokemon: The Movie 2000.

I think that is just about the most wonderfully crazy thing I have ever heard a politician say.

Also the piece had this line:

“but with the winner revealing him/herself somewhat in the way Obama, Clinton and Reagan did when they defeated an incumbent president.”

Obviously Obama did not beat an incumbent.

You can find links to my other Drum pieces here

There is a well know saying among those who participate in online discussions – Don’t feed the trolls. The trolls are those areshats who go on blogs and twitter etc and sprout bullsh*t just to get those who hold the opposite view to bite. They hate being ignored, and engaging with them never leads anywhere because logic and intelligent discussion is not their game, nor within their ability.

Obama today however decided to feed the trolls and released his “long form birth certificate” in an attempt to put to be claims he is not American born.

Now when trolls get rebuffed on one set of facts (such as the fact that Obama is actually an American born citizen) they just move to another line of idiocy. Thus did it happen today. Here were some of the comments on the Fox News website:

rebelwuf · So this proves that Obama had dual citizenship at birth, right? His dad was Kenyan, and in 1961 Kenya was still part of the British empire, and children born to male British citizens were automatically British citizens as well. Then he automatically became a Kenyan citizen in 1963, when Kenya became independent. So the (multi) dual citizenship issue should make him ineligible.

Errr. Yeah. I’ll have to try that next time I want to fly to England – Visa? What need I that, I am a British citizen don’t ya know!

deborah2 · Please people enlarge this thing & look at all the x's & numbers hand written on it. What's that all about? Do any of you have anything hand written on your birth cert?

Yes. It’s called a signature.

catwmn79 · A quote from a close associate: "it gets even better. someone just posted (and i just verified on my Adobe Illustrator) that whoever did the layers left graphics on the clipboard that they were cutting and pasting. this was not some automatic layering by software. this was a cut & paste edit."

Yep, he forged it, meaning the Hawaiian Government is also in on the scam...

Now this would all be rather funny, except the trolls are not just people on blogs (ahem) and Twitter, they are in the media.

This idiotic birther story has been around since 2008, but despite Obama releasing what is a perfectly legal birth extract, but the birthers (trolls that they be) moved the goal posts and said the “long form” was the only one that was real proof, and thus demanded he release it.

The media, for the most part ignored the story, because, well it was stupid. But when Troll in Chief, Donald Trump decided his ego wanted to run for President, he decided that the best way to pursue this aim was to go the birther line. Did the media dismiss him with contempt? Did they laugh at him? Hell no. They gave him oxygen – lots of it. So much oxygen in fact that CNN decided to run a segment disproving the whole birther story. The next day however, CNN journalist Ed Henry asked the White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, more questions about the birth certificate:

HENRY: Jay, my colleague, Gary Tuchman, just went to Hawaii and established again that there’s evidence suggesting that the President, in fact, was born in the United States. But as you know, Donald Trump persists, other critics, and last night Trump was on CNN saying that he’s been told the birth certificate is missing, that it’s either not there or has been taking out -- taken out somehow, and this is a problem for the President. When the White House hears this continued claim, what does it say?

Well I would have answered that it says that you, Ed Henry, are a complete tool. But then I probably wouldn’t get the job of White House Press Sec.

Today when releasing the certificate, Obama complained that the story was the main one during the week he released the US Budget. Fact checkers around the traps quickly did the maths and worked out it wasn’t. As ABC White House correspondent Jake Trapper says:

But the president was wrong.

According to Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, that week the dominant news story was without question the economy.

The ridiculous claims about the president’s birth certificate actually was the No. 4 story for the week – receiving about one tenth of the coverage devoted to stories about the economy.

Trapper however makes no comment on the fact that a “ridiculous claim” was the No.4 story in America.

I actually don’t care that some journalists are “holding Trump to account”, or that CNN refuted the story. Some things are so stupid they don’t deserve refuting. They don’t deserve being challenged. They deserve being ignored. If some right wing fool in this country for example started saying that Julia Gillard had a child as a teenager, would that deserve being rebuked in the media? Would that deserve her refuting it? Hell no. It would deserved being ignored – as did all the idiotic bullsh*t stories about Sarah Palin’s pregnancy of her child Trig.

Just because someone says something – even if that person is Donald Trump – doesn’t mean it deserves being treated seriously.

The problem is so much journalism (in the US mostly, but here as well) has become “we report, you decide” bulldust that the most ludicrous claim you could just about come up with this side of NASA faked the moon landing, has been treated as though it is a legitimate story. It is the line of journalism that says – oh well we don’t take sides, we just report what is said.

Well now, how about instead you use your brains and realise that this story is complete bullshit, the claims are bullshit, and that Trump is using you?

This morning when it was released Annabel Crabb on Twitter wrote:

Now that Obama has released birth certificate, the new speculation is on why he didn't do it earlier

I’m not sure if Crabb is reporting on the speculating, or if she is speculating herself, but for mine the speculation that really needs to be addressed is why he needed to reveal it at all? Why was the media at all interested in the words of a troll running for President? How do we know Trump is a troll? Well because like the trolls on the Fox News website he doesn’t actually care about facts or proof. When confronted with the proof of the birth certificate, he just moves on:

“The word is, according to what I’ve read, that he was a terrible student when he went to Occidental,” Trump said. “He then gets to Columbia; he then gets to Harvard. … How do you get into Harvard if you're not a good student? Now, maybe that’s right, or maybe it’s wrong. But I don’t know why he doesn’t release his records.”

Sigh. His grades? Give me strength. Obama was President of Harvard Law Review. That is about as hard a position to achieve as there is at Harvard, and they don’t give it out just for looks.

Any journalist who heard Trump say that should have laughed in his face, put away his or her notebook and said to their editor – the guy is a nut. Asking Trump questions – such as what about his previous claims that Obama’s birth certificate might reveal he was a Muslim – are pointless, they only feed the troll.

So why did Obama feed him? Surely he knew that the right-wing nutbags would claim the certificate was a forgery, or that because his Dad is a Kenyan means something blah blah. So why do it?

One theory, that I give some credence, is that the White House did this to keep the story going. Because the more time Trump gets oxygen the less time any “serious” Republican Presidential candidates get to build up a following. And worse (for the Republicans) the more likely those candidates will try to grab some of the airspace by putting forward an equally nutty theory. In effect Obama is using the media’s lust for idiocy to help his own cause.

Trump may play well on TV now, but I bet every night members of the Obama team kneel and pray that Trump will be the Republican Party nominee. Obama would win all 50 states if that were the case.

The second best case is that Trump destroys the Republican Party’s creditability by reducing their whole nomination process to a farce, or even better, he misses out as the candidate, and then runs as an independent. 

Whichever way, Trump in the race is good for Obama. And what better way to keep him in the race than keep the birther issue bubbling away? The proof makes Trump look like a fool, (that is, if you hold store in facts) but it gives him a sense of prominence (his ego is so big, that he takes it as a complement that he has been shown to be a fool).

The problem for all however (including, and especially for Obama) is that this strategy will only ensure that idiotic reporting of idiotic, ridiculous claims will continue, and intelligent advocacy of complex policy will be harder to pursue. That is unless you think the US media will ignore the trolls.

Yeah neither do I.

Obama, by feeding the trolls, has to now live with the consequences – both good, bad and idiotic.

Let Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert put it all in context:

 

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On a related issue – Malcolm Farnsworth today wrote a brilliant piece on The Drum on why he has given up on newspapers. He states my thoughts on the topic almost exactly:

On the whole, though, the Australian newspapers have lost me. They’re drab now. The quality is uneven. The journal of record days are gone. Even the practical reasons for buying a newspaper – finding a job, selling a car, buying a house, checking the TV guide, doing the crossword – have fallen away as the digital alternatives multiply. As sales numbers have fallen and advertising revenue has bled away, Fairfax broadsheets like The Age and the SMH have struggled to maintain a clear sense of identity. Every new re-design seems to produce bigger headings, more pictures, fewer words and more liftouts. By contrast, News Limited’s The Australian maintains a serious demeanour but is increasingly characterised by bizarre preoccupations that cast doubt on its news values.

*****

On a bit of house-keeping, tonight I remembered to check to see if any comments had been caught in the Spam filter. There were 22 stretching back a few weeks. I’m sorry to all those whose comments for whatever reason were caught up in the filter (I have no idea why some get caught - it’s not me – it is a “blogspot.com” thing). I’ll try to remember to check more regularly so that everyone’s comments get posted.

I don’t delete any comments unless they are potentially libellous, or really nasty abuse (a very rare occurrence).

Again apologies to all affected. 

A quick (and yeah lazy) post tonight.

I haven’t written too much about the Tucson massacre, but as ever when it comes to American politics, Jon Stewart pretty well says all you wished you had thought to say first.

The past week he has had three bits on his show that I think highlight why he is so respected (and why he is also so damn funny).

The first is the first episode after the shooting. He delivers a great line: “It would be really nice, if the ramblings of crazy people didn't in any way resemble how we actually talk to each other on TV. Let’s at least make troubled individuals easier to spot”.

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Last night he reviewed some of the political fallout, and how the shootings have changed the argument, but not for the better – especially on the issue of health care. The message he has to the Democrats about being suckered into the debate on the Republican’s terms is one the ALP here can do well to keep in mind. (He also has a good line about Ricky Gervais hosting the Golden Globes, and for those who don’t follow the NFL, the New York Jets beat the New England Patriots last weekend in the playoffs – Stewart is from New York.)

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And then tonight he turns to Sarah Palin. Stewart has been as loud as anyone in not suggesting Palin had anything to do with the shooting, but don’t for a moment think he’s going to start going easy on her. Fortunately for Stewart and his ability to be able to have enough material to work with each night, Palin always delivers:

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Petty Woman
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We probably don’t have the material in Australia that Stewart has to warrant our own Daily Show – for a start we don’t have Fox, MSNBC or CNN (not enough people watch Sky News to get the jokes) – but surely we could have at least a weekly (Friday night?) show in Australia that takes what is said in the media and by politicians and uses it for good.

So last night I was looking around the news’ sites when I saw on the front of news.com.au:

Bob Brown: 'Coal miners caused floods'

I was somewhat aghast that Brown would say such a thing and asked around to see if anyone could point me to his quote. It turned out he didn’t actually say “Coal miners caused floods”, but oh well I guess it no longer matters whether what is placed within direct quotes is actually a direct quote or not – I mean it does make life easier for journalists.

But that issue of good, honest journalism aside, what Brown actually said (and we have a media release to quote from, though he did also give a press conference) was this:

The full tax on excess profits by the coal mining industry, as recommended by Treasury, should be imposed with half set aside for future natural catastrophes in Australia, Greens Leader Bob Brown said in Hobart today.

"It is unfair that the cost is put on all taxpayers, not the culprits," Senator Brown said.

"Burning coal is a major cause of global warming. This industry, which is 75% owned outside Australia, should help pay the cost of the predicted more severe and more frequent floods, droughts and bushfires in coming decades. As well, 700,000 seaside properties in Australia face rising sea levels."

"A Goldman Sachs study found that the reduction in the mining super tax agreed by the current Labor government (the coalition opposes the mining tax) would cost Australians $35 billion in forgone revenue to 2019-20."

"Scientists agree that current floods come from record-high temperatures of Australian oceans this season."

"We also ask insurers to show some compassion to Queensland's flood victims, and to others who face loss as wild weather besets the country. Many people believe they have flood cover and, if not, the fine print should have been disclosed to them."

So in effect Brown is saying the burning of coal is a major cause of global warming (no dispute from me), global warming leads to more severe weather events like floods (I’m still with him), therefore coal mining companies should help foot the bill for the Queensland floods (err…ok you lost me).

A couple things. Firstly does Bob Brown have a completely tin political ear? Now is certainly not the time to be using the floods to push a political barrow. It was dumb when Tony Abbott used the floods last week to suggest the Government should scrap the NBN, and it is just as dumb for Brown to do so now.

When Abbott does it, it is dumb because, seriously, using the destruction of lives and homes to try to score points about an issue completely disparate from the event? How uncaring can you get.

When Brown does it, it is dumb because not only is it a big leap to suggest an individual event is caused by global warming, unlike Abbott’s comments, Brown’s will be used by talk back hosts, right wing bloggers and the national newspaper to display how out of touch and foolish he is, all of which makes it that much harder for the ALP to stand next to the Greens in any de facto partnership (though I grant you, the Greens probably don’t care about that).

I am quite comfortable saying that there is a strong likelihood that global warming will lead to an increase in severe weather events. But linking global warming to the current floods is a bit like saying that Sarah Palin caused the shooting in Tuscon.

I firmly believe the political rhetoric of the US right wing (and to be honest the right wing in this country as well) has become more greatly based on violence and advocacy of distrust of the government than in the past, and that such rhetoric can encourage individuals to take violent steps (either against property or person). But to say Palin or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck caused the Tuscon massacre? Sorry I can’t. All I can do is is agree with this excellent article by Frank Rich in the NY Times:

Obama said, correctly, on Wednesday that “a simple lack of civility” didn’t cause the Tucson tragedy. It didn’t cause these other incidents either. What did inform the earlier violence — including the vandalism at Giffords’s office — was an antigovernment radicalism as rabid on the right now as it was on the left in the late 1960s. That Loughner was likely insane, with no coherent ideological agenda, does not mean that a climate of antigovernment hysteria has no effect on him or other crazed loners out there. Nor does Loughner’s insanity mitigate the surge in unhinged political zealots acting out over the last two years. That’s why so many — on both the finger-pointing left and the hyper-defensive right — automatically assumed he must be another of them.

So too with climate change and the floods. Certainly the burning of coal contributes to global warming and if it does continue at the current rate the likelihood is pretty high that there will be more such events more often in the future. But there are also weather events that are just weather events. Climate change is about trends and long terms changes. Those who say the QLD floods are caused by climate change are as in danger of being shown to be foolish as those who point to a cold day in December and ask “where’s you’re global warming now?”

My other problem with Brown’s comments is that he is mixing up his taxes. If he is worried about climate change and the coal industry, then talk price on carbon. Talk a carbon tax, talk an emissions trading system. Talk clean energy. The Resources Super Profits Tax, or the Minerals Resources Rent Tax that it has become, has nothing to do with climate change. It is a tax to be placed on mining companies because there exists an economic rent within the industry. The minerals are finite and when gone, so too will the mining companies off to some other country to mine it for all it is worth. Whether or not those minerals contribute to climate change is irrelevant when it comes to taxing their excess returns.

Brown is suggesting the coal companies are to the QLD floods like James Hardie is to Mesothelioma. It would be lovely it were so easy, but it is not. We need a price on carbon (and other things) to help mitigate against the likelihood of more such events as the QLD floods occurring in the future, we don’t need to tax the mining companies to pay for every flood or bushfire in Australia. 

The other problem is that back in December Brown spent the proceeds on the RSPT:

"The recommendations of the advisory group, so heartily welcomed by the big miners and described as ‘common sense' by the government yesterday, reinforces the mining tax compromise which robs the Commonwealth of $10 billion to $20 billion a year that could go into a long-term sovereign wealth fund and pay for housing, schools, high-speed rail, dental care and free tertiary education."

The RSPT is starting to look a little magic puddingish.

The Australian of course was all over Brown’s comments.

This is no surprise given that we all know the stated editorial position of The Oz is that it wants to see the Greens destroyed at the ballot box. You would think Brown would be more aware of how his words (or in the case of news.com.au, what they decide to say are his words) will be used against him. Perhaps he and the Greens have decided not to care, as whatever they say will be turned against them by The Oz. Perhaps they don’t care because if the attacks are as pathetic as evidenced today, they don;t have much to worry about:

GREENS leader Bob Brown is facing mounting condemnation after calling on coal companies to foot the bill for the Queensland flood recovery.

Oh dear, that sounds bad. So who was delivering this “mounting condemnation” of Brown calling on mining companies to cough up? Well mining companies of course.

Wow, what a surprising bit of investigative journalism that is. I can’t wait for them to run the story with the headline: “Husband stunned to discover mother-in-law backs wife in argument”.

But wait, there’s more, it wasn’t just mining companies, Brown was also condemned by… wait for it… (yeah I know you’ll be shocked) the Liberal and National Party! Well that’s pretty definitive isn’t it. Time for Brown to back down in disgrace. The Oz quoted that great man of science Senator Eric Abetz who said:

“Senator Brown's comments expose the Greens and his leadership as shallow and cynical; willing to peddle political propaganda in the face of a natural disaster,”

Yep, you’re right Eric, I am sure your own leader would never do anything like that eh?

Fortunately for Abetz, The Oz didn’t also quote the rest of what he said in his press release:

“To imply climate change is responsible for flooding is to deny the World’s history from Noah and beyond.”

Yep. You read correctly, Noah. As in Noah, who was begat by Lamech, who was begat by Methuselah, who was begat by Enoch, who was begat by Jared, who was begat by  Mahalalel, who was begat by Kenan, who was begat by Enosh, who was begat by Seth, who was begat by Adam.

Yes, Noah.

I wonder that Abetz hasn’t criticised Anna Bligh for not having constructed prior to the floods a boat three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high..

Seriously, what can you say? That someone would introduce a Biblical story from Genesis into a scientific debate pretty much should exclude that person from contributing anything further on the issue. And I say that as a committed Christian. Here’s the passage in Genesis (Chapter 6) dealing with the flood:

¹¹Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. ¹² God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. ¹³ So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.

So we have a guy voting on climate change in the Senate who believes we don’t have to worry about the impacts of climate change because there was a flood back in the past brought on by God to punish the wicked.

Though perhaps I am being too harsh on him. Maybe when Abetz mentioned Noah he was thinking about the earth being full of violence because he had just listened to Neil Mitchell on 3AW give his reaction to Brown’s Comments:

“I would take Bob Brown and put him in cage with the looters and scam artists and put him in a river .. he's a dill."

Nice one Neil, stay classy.

On Tuesday I commented that Anna Bligh had done a great job in her press conference in response to the Toowoomba floods when she stood strong as a leader should. Since then she has continued to impress everyone with how she has continued to provide leadership through the horror. Her press conferences have been must watches for sources of information, advice and inspiration.

Those who have been watching her media appearances over the past days would have been noticing the red eyes and obvious signs of time gone without sleep and a determination to not give in to the emotion of the events. This morning while delivering some stirring words to her fellow Queenslanders her voice cracked and the pent up emotion slightly crept through. It was her use of the phrase “as we weep…” that I think did it – the mere mention of that emotional response brought out that which she had been denying.

But by God it was brilliant to see.

Inspiration doesn't need Shakespeare; mostly it needs honesty, emotion and plain words. Bligh gave it to us in spades.

There have been some suggestions that this will save Bligh from losing the next election. I think that is perhaps suggesting a bit too much. John Brumby was excellent and applauded for how he handled the 2009 bushfires. In 2010 he was gone. Jim Cairns was cheered for his role after Cyclone Tracy, but that didn’t stop him being dumped as Deputy PM within 12 months. Winston Churchill led Britain through the darkness of the blitz and WWII, and yet he lost he 1945 general election.

People will praise a leader, and will remember fondly the way he or she performed during a time of crisis, but elections are about the economy, jobs, health etc etc as always. The big difference with this disaster is the rebuilding will still be going on by the time of the next QLD election, and so voters may wish to stick with the one who was there when it was darkest. But as I say, that didn’t save Winston in 1945.

And of course such things are somewhat trivial really. Nothing Bligh is doing is being done for political gain – and that is part of what makes her work this week so great. Regardless of what happens at the next election Bligh will have a place in Australian history, and all those who remember the floods will remember her role.

The most common thing has been to compare her performance with that of Julia Gillard. I must admit the one press conference where they both appeared served to highlight how good Bligh was. But quite a good deal of the commentary is actually more as an opportunity for those who don’t like Gillard to bash her – you know – she’s too wooden, her wardrobe is poorly chosen etc etc.

The fact is expecting her to outshine or even equal Bligh in such a circumstance is like at a wedding the mother of the bride being expected to overshadow the bride. Bligh is giving us must need information – where is safe, who has died, what can people do, what can’t they do, what height will the river get to, when will it get there. The thing are vital to know – and also it is literally happening in her home town, so it must hurt her like all hell.

Gillard as PM is giving us bigger picture stuff – ie less essential, more dull. Other than details on the Army and Centrelink the federal government has nowhere near the on the ground role that the state government does.

During the Victorian bushfires Rudd was very strong, but for those who remember, his best work was done when out among the victims – talking with survivors, giving them hugs etc – I can’t recall him giving a press conference inside standing next to Brumby. And so today when Julia was finally shown with survivors and she then gave a press conference out in the open she found the right tone of compassion and strength – she showed her real self, rather than the stilted self she often gives in press conferences when relating tracts of information.

This is always going to be Bligh’s show (much like September 11 was Rudy Giuliani’s and not George Bush’s), and if Gillard’s advisors have any sense they’ll leave centre stage to Bligh and keep Julia out with the people.

As for what Abbott’s advisors should do…

The Leader of an Opposition in a crisis is a bit like a distant uncle at a wedding: he has no role to play of any worth, and for the most part all he has to do is avoid getting drunk and making a fool of himself. The Leader of the Opposition doesn't have charge of any organisation, he doesn't get the facts from the police before anyone else, he doesn’t in short have much to do, so the best he can do is keep out of the way and lend a hand if needed on the ground. The one thing he should never do in a crisis is seek to get any political mileage out of it.

But of course Abbott has never uttered a word in his public life that didn’t not have political intent. When Indonesian President Bambang Yudhoyono addressed Parliament last, Abbott decided to use the bipartisan moment to say in his introductory remarks:

We have worked to end people smuggling before. It worked when we worked together before. People smuggling has started again and we can stop it again, provided it is done cooperatively and with a clear understanding of our mutual interests and with the right policies in place here in Australia.

Yep, real statesmen like. He is the drunk uncle at the wedding who gets up and mentions that ex-boyfriend who everyone liked more than they do the groom.

Following on from his remarks last week that the cost of the Queensland floods was reason for cancelling the NBN, today he came back from holiday and stated that now was not a time for politics but that he was going to hold the Government to account. When asked about Bligh his praise was deafening in it’s faintness:

"I guess it's been Anna Bligh's finest hour but there are a lot of hours ahead"

He guesses? Really, how gracious of him.

On Sky News he remarked that the floods demonstrated why Governments needed to be “fiscally prudent”, and his biggest praise was for the National Party QLD Government of the 1970s for building the Wivenhoe Dam, much like he can only ever praise the economy by remarking that it is all the work of the Howard Government was (as though the 5% unemployment rate announced today had nothing to do with the policies of the Rudd-Gillard Govts) – it also fits in with his announcement of last week that the Liberal Party will investigate building more dams, so it was hardly an apolitical statement.

When the Sky journalist then remarked about how tragic the events were given that some streets were flooded and yet some nearby were untouched, Abbott quoted the Bible and said:

"The rain falls on the just and the unjust"

While the passage obviously refers to the fact that bad things happen to good people, in the context of the events it was a decidedly odd thing to say given it suggests there are some who deserved the rain.

Luckily for him most news programs that I have seen haven’t shown that line, and have instead focused on his “I think this is a time to rally around the people of Queensland in their hour of need”. Pity he didn’t leave it at that.

***
On a side issue, the Twitter account of Queensland Police @QPSmedia will be the absolute Gold standard for public disaster information in any future events – it provides valuable news, and more importantly it busts myth after myth that have been circulated. Great, great work by whoever was in charge.

***

Over in America we also saw amazing leadership. In response to the shooting in Arizona, on the weekend, President Obama delivered a speech at the Tuscon Memorial Service. The speech goes for 30 minutes. If you have time, I urge you to watch it and see the great oratory of a leader at work:

UPDATE:

On Twitter there has been a good little discussion on the precise meaning of the passage quoted by Abbott. It comes from Jesus’ sermon on the mount. Here’s the full context of the passage  Matthew 5:43-45 (NIV):

⁴³“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

There has been the view that it means we shouldn't take things personally, or that perhaps we are or mere mortals and are vulnerable. My reading that “bad things happen to good people” is perhaps slightly narrow – I more mean God is not punishing the wicked or the good – the rain falls because the rain falls – we shouldn’t be asking what we did wrong, because that’s not how it works.

I don’t really want to get into an exegesis on the passage. I do still think Abbott’s use was somewhat odd even with this reading – it almost is him saying Biblically “shit happens”, which doesn’t exactly give one much solace.

Perhaps I am being too harsh on him – after all it was an off the cuff remark. Certainly I took more issue with his desires to use the floods to get talk on to the budget and surplus/deficit and the NBN. It will be interesting to see the attack used when Question Time starts next month.

I’ve hit a bit of a dead spot in the blog – things are happening in my personal life that have got me thinking about things other than politics (nothing too serious, but geez selling a house is not exactly stress-free).

And also this time is actually a bit of a political dead-spot. Sure Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott are already on an election footing, and we are all just waiting for the date to be called – August 28 or September 5 looking like being the date – but really look at the news – it’s pretty dull on the politics front. And so we twiddle our thumbs, make sure the coffee pot is ready for the long days of the election (where every night will only end with Lateline), try to cope with the fact that Eden-Monaro will not be a bellwether seat (and most likely neither will be Lindsay) and wait… and wait….

Before she calls it, Julia will come out with some dopey “climate change” policy. It’ll probably be all motherhoody and do bugger all to reduce carbon emissions. If they wanted to do something that was focussed on people doing something “direct” to reduce our dependence on carbon they could bring in a national gross feed in tariff. NSW and the ACT have gross feed-in tariff and it makes switching to solar panels actually worthwhile. It should be national, and it has to be if we really want to get serious about the issue. Make it so Julia (I know, I know, it won’t happen… sigh).

And so to fill this political dead patch instead of doing a 7:30 Report and writing about Bob and Blanche, I’ll go to the archives of The Daily Show from May and Lewis Black doing the most hilarious slaughtering of Glenn Beck’s tendency to invoke the Nazis whenever he wants to criticise Obama.

Enjoy:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

And because this election is the first Federal election in which people born in the 1990s will be able to vote, here’s a clip from the early 1990s, of The Late Show’s brilliant “interview” of John Hewson:

No sooner had today’s unemployment figures come out showing that unemployment was steady at 5.1% than there was talk in the media of interest rates rising. This is because all media types are grumble bums who just can’t cope giving an ALP Government any credit at all… and well, also because it is logical to link the two. The market certainly has. Here’s the table of the money market’s likelihood of an interest rate rise:

Trading Day	No Change	Increase to 4.75%
29-Jun	93%	7%
30-Jun	98%	2%
1-Jul	100%	0%
2-Jul	100%	0%
5-Jul	100%	0%
6-Jul	100%	0%
7-Jul	100%	0%
8-Jul	80%	20%

Prior to today they weren’t factoring a rise at all (in fact they were considering the chance of a fall (due to overseas rumbles and general gut-feeling that the economy is still fragile). The thing about today’s figure is not that it was 5.1%, but that the ABS also adjusted last months figure down from 5.2% to 5.1% – meaning that the employment rate has been at this point for 2 months now – ie it’s looking pretty solid.

So why the rumpus about interest rates?

Well the standard old Year 10 economics gospel is that unemployment and inflation are inversely related (as one goes down, the other goes up), and as inflation goes up so too do interest rates (to try and stop inflation going up). It’s easy to see why – more people earning money means more things being spent meaning increased demand for things, meaning the price of those things goes up. Of course that only really works if you assume a stack of things such as capacity constraints and a pretty flexible wage system. (Economists love to assume things, it make life so much easier and better for graphs – that is unless you like doing regressions with a high number of independent variables… and no, I don’t like doing that.)

But let’s have a look at the inflation and unemployment rates over the last 10 years to see how the economists are going:

Hmmm.. yeah kinda. You can definitely see some sort of relationship in the last 2 years, but from 2002 to 2008 when unemployment went down due to the great economic work of Peter Costello and the introduction of Workchoices (that’s a joke for you late comers to the blog) inflation pretty much bumbled along around 2.5% to 3%.

I’ve also used the  underlying rate of inflation here rather than the more volatile CPI (and no I don’t know why it jumped up 3% in September 2000, and then went down in June 2001 – anyone know? UPDATE: Ghost Who Votes has pointed out it was the GST – of course! [dopey oversight that one!])

So there certainly isn’t much of a rough sense of a iron clad relationship that just because unemployment goes down inflation must go up.

A good thing to look at is the participation rate – that is the actual percentage of adults in the population who are working (as opposed to the percentage of those looking for work).

As you can see here from 2003 Workchoices did great things… oh wait that only came into effect in March 2006…

Oh well shame about that, but still you can see that the participation rate at the current level of 65.2% is pretty high – there is a bit of growth to be had, but we’d be going into record territory. But that can happen.

And just in case you think the Howard Government must have been some economic marvel, have a look at the participation level graph since 1978:

Check out that growth from 1984 to 1990 – Hawke and Keating took it from 60.5% to 64% – a complete changing of the economy (pity about the drop down to 62.5% in 1993, but PJK did get it back up to 64% in 1995 – and  a true shift had occurred – no longer would 61% be considered natural; similarly now anything under 64% would be considered pretty poor. 

Which bring us to the comparison of participation and unemployment over the last 10 years:

Now here we can see some sort of relationship – from 2002ish to 2007 the participation rate did trend up while unemployment trended down. But you can also see that unemployment has fallen in the last two years and so has the participation rate, so this graph certainly does suggest there is some spare capacity in the economy – which means the unemployment going down should not automatically mean prices go up.

But what about the link between employment an interest rates? Again lets have a look at the last 10 years:

Now firstly, yes interest rates are still pretty bloody low. But secondly, much like the relationship between unemployment an inflation there is kind of a relationship, but you wouldn’t want to call it serious – more a bit of a casual one-night-stand kind of thing. If we compare inflation and interest rates however, we see true love:

Aside from a bit of a parting in the 2003-04 (we’ll say “they were on a break” [a shout out to all you Gen X fans of Friends]), they’ve pretty well stayed together. And the answer is obvious, while the Reserve Bank does have to worry about unemployment, its main concern is inflation.

Now back in the seventies a thing came in vogue called the Misery Index. This was essentially an addition of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate – the reasoning being the higher that sum, the higher the amount of misery in the economy. Here’s the Misery Index for the last 10 years:

As you can see around 8% is a good average. What you can also see is that Howard was bloody lucky to win the 2001 election given the high Misery Index at the time (even accounting for the GST bump in inflation).

But how does the Misery Index run with Interest Rates?

Now, were I a nerdy economist I would run the regression and see for certain, but I think you can see there is definitely a stronger relationship to this than there was when just comparing interest rates with the unemployment rate. The reasoning is obvious – there is a definite relationship between interest rates and inflation and the Misery Index contains the inflation rate. But what it does demonstrate perhaps is that the media instead of looking at the unemployment rate and crying “Interest rates to go up!!!”, they should step back and have a look at the Misery Index. It is why next months inflation figures will be important. If inflation goes up the Misery Index will go above 8% (not that that really means anything in and of itself, but it would suggest the RBA will be more likely to increase the rates that if inflation did not go up and unemployment kept going down.).

Now for some fun. Lets Have a look at unemployment since 1978:

First off, yes that is the unemployment rate, not Stage 21 of the Tour de France. Secondly, yes 1993 was just the totally best time to graduate from university wasn’t it?…. Unlike a 30 year old quoted by Mathew Franklin in today’s Australian, I can truly remember how hard it was to get a job at the time.

[seriously check out this bit of great reportage:

Sheaneen Green, 30, said she had backed Mr Abbott since she was 18.
Ms Green said she had been angered by dumped prime minister Kevin Rudd's style, which she described as superficial and calculated to fool young voters. … “I remember the early 1990s and how hard it was to get a job,” she said.

Yeah it was tough in 1990 to get a job when you were 10 years old…. that’s quality journalism right there that just demands to be behind a pay wall…]

The lesson I learned from the early 90s is not that the ALP can’t manage the economy, but if you are looking like going into a recession bring the stimulus in early and bring it in hard. And if you are looking at that graph and wondering just what the hell Rudd and Co were going on about when they said it was the worst recession since WWII, have a gander at this next graph comparing the Australian and US unemployment rates since 1978…

In 2007 both countries had an unemployment rate around the same level of 4.2%. Ours is currently 5.1%, there's is 9.7%. Well done Kevin Rudd I’d say…

And finally some good news. Here’s the Misery Index since 1978

Check out that trend line!! If we assume that will continue by around 2025 we’ll have 0% unemployment and 0% inflation!

Or not.