Guy Rundle

I love Guy Rundle, this from todays Crikey:

"In the wake of this crisis, blame is being sheeted home to the average person, who is apparently running up too much debt. Well, mercy, what a surprise, it's the people's fault. Let's face it, people only consent to this crappy society because of what they can rack up on debt. If you're going to spend forty years of fifty hours a week – your whole one life on Earth – in the same office, doing crap you don't want to do, damn right you want a frikkin flat screen TV at the end of it. And to eat out. And drink stupid overpriced cocktails in awful resorts."

Amen

I see it but..

I don't believe it.

House republicans have voted to virtually decimate Wall Street, against the wishes of the Bush whitehouse.

Wall street has been turned completely upside down and inside out by their (former) mates.

This can only be bad for McCain who also threw his weight behind the package (more like put his presidential head on the chopping bloke).

Not to mention terrible for all those people out there with home loans, business loans etc. Everywhere.

Troubling times indeed.

And for those who think it was the right thing to do, have a look at the markets reaction.

Utter chaos.

One on One

via

Lying Maverick vs. Passive Hope

“I was a little disappointed the media called it a tie but I think that means, when they call it a tie, that means we win,”

John McCain, after saturday morning's incredibly boring debate.

McCain seems to employ three strategies:
1. Lie or naively tell falsehoods
2. Back up premises with the robust rhetorical device that having met X or visited Y provides him with unequivocal evidence and experience to comprehend, take control of and overcome X or Y
3. smile like a pedo

Obama, on the other hand
1. refuses to go in for the kill

I dearly hope this strategy works.

Michael Turnbull????

hmmmmm.

Do the sub-editors at the Herald sun know something the rest of Australia doesn't?

The Freedom Paradox: Clive Hamilton

This book is basically a somewhat forlorn attempt to tie up all of Hamilton's political and ethical preferences into a grand philosophical statement based on the noumenon. Hamilton says he is constructing a 'post-secular ethics' but he ends up constructing a personal mysticism. Whatever offends Hamilton personally is an affront to the noumenon, and therefore bad. Whatever Hamilton views as positive, i.e. downshifting, is a triumph of the noumenon over the world of appearances.

I am also disinclined to Hamilton’s view that the existentialists are in some way responsible for consumer culture as he suggests in the book. The existentialists diagnosed the problem of meaningless and issued the challenge for people to create meaning in their own lives, largely through creative activity. It was not a philosophy that urged people to go forth and consume as Hamilton seemingly suggests.

If you have read Hamilton's other books you will probably understand where he is coming from on this one. It could have been titled 'all the usual hang-ups': Corporate paedophilia, consumer culture, growth fetishing, affluenza, downshifting, bestiality etc, etc. At the end of the day it wasn’t a bad read, but I don’t think his concept of the post-secular ethic will be wildly popular!

thought of the day

"If the price is right, people will sacrifice the emotional attachment"

Subir Gokarn, chief economist for Standard & Poor's in India.

Hidden costs of war

according to an ADB official, explaining the rationale for quite a decent loan to Georgia

"The month of August was not a very good month for [Georgian] tax collection,"

more here.

narrative?

moar funny pictures

Noises

la la la la la
la la boom crash drone bump bump
the noise my brain makes