lev.lafayette's blog

On the night of the 2018 US mid-term elections there were many saying that the expected Democrat 'blue wave' over the Republicans did not eventuate. Nicholas Kristof at New York Times offered the advice "Don’t listen to Democrats who portray these midterms as an important triumph".

When Malcolm Turnbull was dumped as Liberal Party leader and thus as Prime Minister, he took the opportunity to exact his revenge by resigning his seat.

As we know the billionaire inspired blood-letting by the terminally suicidal Liberal Party of Australia surprisingly produced Scott Morrison as Prime Minister. Usually after such an event there is a "honeymoon" period, according to most psephology.

Following last week's thoroughly unceremonious dumping of the more centrist Liberal Party prime minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, a popular meme has made a re-appearance. The meme states "In 1672, a mob of angry Dutch killed and ate their prime minister. Options.

I once knew a person on Facebook who was reasonably intelligent, a network engineer by profession, but alas has been infected by that strange political expression of methodological individualism. In other words, they were a Libertarian, of the capital 'L', good ol' U.S.A variety. Now I have some sympathy for such people, especially when what they are talking about in terms of civil rights and liberties, self-governance, and so forth.

It is curious how many of the US libertarians hold up Ron Paul as some sort of positive example. If you need any further evidence of the danger and damage that this crackpot could cause, one only needs to review his policies and voting record.

On June 17, The Guardian reported that senior members of the Liberal Party were in "damage control" after the Liberal Party's peak council votes to privitise the ABC. They have, of course, already slashed funding to the public broadcaster and have made no secret of their continuing opposition to the independent public broadcaster which provides of news and information across remote corners of the country.

Sometime ago I encountered a Swedish propertarian, who was horrified at the level of his country's national debt, and citing the number exclaimed:

Haha this is swedens national debt. But you are probably a "an"com that doesn't understand economics XD

Well I might only have a modicum of knowledge of economics, but I know the difference between gross public debt and net public debt. Here's how the rest of the conversation went.

On May 9 the NTEU called a short strike as part of renegotiations on an enterprise bargaining agreement with the University of Melbourne. The union wants to ensure that everyone is covered by one agreement, that everyone receives the same rate of superannuation, and that academic freedom is part of the agreement.

As I sometimes do, I engaged in some correspondence on a matter of politics and war recently. Specifically it involved an individual who was promoting the idea that the United States has "admitted" that it has no evidence that the Syrian government used Sarin against civilians in 2013 and 2017 [1]. I pointed out that this was a misrepresentation, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Mattis, that this was in reference to the most recent claim, as the U.S.