The Gaming Den

Word on the street is there is a new political posting is allowed with a tag regime in town. So let's experiment with that and see if it works and people like it and such.

Are the international posters aware that Australia is in a hilarious political limbo after a federal election made of stupid that has left us with what may well end up as a hung parliament.

There have been some pro-Gilard sounds from the independent members that could see us with a returned labor government. Which would be great since the alternative is a guy widely know by followers of Australian politics as "The Mad Monk", and more widely known by the rest for his tendency to wear little more than Speedo's in public and offend anything remotely female on a daily basis.

Anyway if it does swing to Gilard it looks like it will be due to several points.

1) Abbot got caught out lying about his budget estimates... by an opposition budget review policy instituted by his own party when they were last in power, by the treasurer who was "supposed" to get Abbot's job as leader of the party.

2) Abbot tried to buy off one of the independents. The Independent says "My hospital needs these additional resources!" Abbot apparently slapped him in the face with a wad of bills and jauntily screamed "ONE BILLION DOLLARS AHAHAHAHAHAH" Labour apparently went through proper formal channels and budgeted the fraction of that value that the requested resources would require.

3) The Internet hates Abbot because he wants to shut down Labor's very popular broad band infrastructure project. (But let's be fair Abbot would probably hate the Internet too, if he knew what it was). Anyway. The rural electorates the independents hold have this... thing... about communications infrastructure ever since Abbot's party completely screwed them on telecommunications with the sale of telstra so...

Basically while the coverage at least up until the election was all "oh yawn what a boring content free election" that was really rather deceptive compared to the absolute riot that was and now IS going on.

And it will be all fun and games until someone loses an eye. And I assure you if whimsical chance miraculously gives the government to "The Mad Monk" someone IS likely to lose an eye. (edit: if for no other reason than Tony Abbot has the level of personal responsibility that never really got beyond "likely to be caught running with scissors")

Of course that would among other things require Tony Abbot to go at least another 24 hours straight without offending half the Australian population and embarrassing his party with some new ridiculous gaffe. And history tells us he finds it very hard to get past about 12 hour mark.

For what it's worth, I voted Australian Sex Party, then Greens, and then went to the bottom and worked up on a "Who do I really hate?" policy (Fascist Family First, then the other Crazy Racist/Christian parties, then Liberal, then Labour. Labour are shit, they're just not AS bad as Liberal).

So I can say I tried. A certain housemate who is no longer on the electoral roll elected to not put himself back on and just never votes, so whatever happens, he can't complain.

Something I really wanted to share but didn't, while the ban was up: The Mad Monk's Time Warp

If Mad Monk does somehow take over, I'm totally advancing my "get EU citizenship and run off to Europe*" plan. And trying to provoke Putin into invading Australia and bringing it under Sovjet rule.

*Nice Europe, not Smelly Europe.

I already have EU citizenship. Well, citizenship and a passport for a recent member nation. One of the real crack pot hick ones.

Since I'm secretly a half breed filthy foreigner boat person type.

Riot away Cronulla you can't stop me, I'M HERE ALREADY AHAHAHAHAHAH!

It makes mire sense to primary vote a political party you think can do somethung useful as each primary vite gices them a couple if dollars of funding. I voted greens one for that reason

The Mad Monk's Time Warp

Okay, I'm jealous. The heated US Senate race here in PA is not producing anything half as amusing as that, despite it being between a guy who is just as Big Jump to the Right and a guy who Waffles about his mounting lasers on dolphins

Its' funny you should mention Cronulla, as I live right next to it. And as a "disaffected youth" I can tell you exactly what most young people have been thinking for this election:

Fuck, there goes the weekend.

The major policy differences between the two parties are "where do the boat people go" and "the internet". The two parties have completely failed to even look different to each other. Most of the youth I know, and I'm nowhere near alone in this, either donkey voted, "voted informally"(wrote dicks, wrote "slayer" in as a candidate, etc etc) or had no say because they were in completely safe seats(my case). The Sex party are nice, but they failed to get any seats, although they did have the best ad of the campaign(http://youtu.be/tdEVVW_ahnE).

The parliament being hung is a great response to the election campaign - nobody won, and everybody lost(except Bob Katter).

My dad is English, so I could easily get citizenship there, but they're about as bad as us, having still not recovered from Maggie Thatcher and all that. Still, that's a gateway to Sweden etc.

Also, there was a great televised debate: Australian Sex Party (leader, IIRC?) vs one of the Family First members. In this instance, when I say member I mean it in the euphemistic sense of "penis". Because they're all dicks there. Anyway, the ASP did their research beforehand and gave pretty good answers to a lot of questions, except for the odd joke... which everyone except the FF person knew to be a joke.

The FF person basically used "Their party is all about sex!" the whole time. And almost said "We support child molestation in the church". Almost. Though to be fair it was a slip of the tongue, I doubt they almost revealed any true intentions there.

Vnonymous wrote: Fuck, there goes the weekend.

I missed a day of Manifest (Australia's biggest anime convention) for it. If I was smart I would have absentee-voted beforehand and been able to attend all weekend. Ah well, at least I got to meet Little Kuriboh.

The major policy differences between the two parties are "where do the boat people go" and "the internet". The two parties have completely failed to even look different to each other.

Hence the hung parliament, really. They're just two cheeks on the same arse.

"voted informally"(wrote dicks, wrote "slayer" in as a candidate, etc etc)

I really wish there was a way they could record all the informal votes. I want to know just how many people elected to draw a penis on the ballot paper.

Worse though? In Sweden, voting is not compulsory... yet Donald Duck (Kalle Anka) gets around 100 votes each year. Jesus gets 5, meaning he's about as popular as Robin Hood. See, they have blank slips of paper where you write the name of the one party/candidate you really support more than anyone else and well... yeah. 90% of people turn up to vote, and so people take time out of their day to go and do informal votes. By choice. http://www.val.se/val/val2006/slutlig_o ... skrivet/R/
(Scroll down for where they have the informals listed. Note the anal attention to spaces, capitalisation etc.) Check out some of the winners there.

Koumei wrote:I got to meet Little Kuriboh.

I hate you.

Compulsory voting is great - mostly because it ensures that people who might others not get to vote do

Red_Rob wrote:

Koumei wrote:I got to meet Little Kuriboh.

I hate you.

Jealous?

Koumei wrote:Jealous?

What, of your unreasonable ability to knock up Tome classes in 10 minutes that are cooler than anything Wizards made in 8 years of 3.5, of your legions of adoring fans, or the fact you hob-nob with people who's work I adore?

Why on earth would I be jealous?

More importantly, labor got up.

Hooray, the lesser of two evils is in. Let's see whether they manage to improve things or just keep going worse.

I'd just like to mention that a hung parliament is not as big a deal as everyone makes out. Canada's parliament has been run by a succession of minority government for several years now and as its currently the Conservatives in power it has kept them from instituting many of their crazier policies that they would have gotten through had they won a majority.

I'm thinking the current situation is probably the best (save Greens actually winning). We had two weeks of UTTER CHAOS AND DISORDER as a result of no government (note: nobody noticed), and now we have Labour in, but kept in check by the independents they needed to suck off.

Except that when you say "kept in check" well... Labor isn't precisely the party of excess. That title goes firmly and easily to the Liberals.

I mean the Labor party are basically the "mildly responsible but inclined to back down in terror if they see a shadow of an imaginary mouse" party.

Perhaps the independents might instead give them some spine, but I doubt it. And a bigger factor in that is whether the labor party takes a hatchet to the right wing "hollow men" retards which seriously very nearly lost an election to Tony Fucking Abbot (so many people call him that that 'Fucking' is now his legal middle name).

A number of political commentators from inside and outside the party, right all the way out to Malcom Goddamn Fraser (also his legal name by popular appointment) are taking the time out of their day to point out that absolutely every policy and campaign failure the labor party suffered EVERY bad choice they made EVERY dip in the polls was absolutely and directly attributable to interventions in Labor party policy and campaign tactics by the hard right "power players" largely from NSW (a state where the current state level labor party is arguably a total and utter joke).

These men stepped in with such brilliant strategies as a poorly managed Gillard take over. Seriously, polling indicated it was a good idea, but that was because people had optimistic ideas about her influence on policy, the "hollow men" immediately had her back down on every labor policy that people liked, and then had her distance herself from all the actual successes of the Rudd government.

Why? Because these idiots were running scared from one of the least competent manifestations of the federal liberal party in Australian history! Tony abbot says that the Rudd government was a failure? Economically irresponsible? When that very government had an actually incredibly good record in response to the financial crisis that the LIBERAL government left them with? Sensible politics tells you to rub Abbots face in his own economic ignorance. Hollow man cowardice tells you to run scared from your own success and destroy not just the party but also the reputation of the parties most eminent successor to leadership in the process.

One of Gillard's FIRST public statements regarding policy was to turn labor more toward a retrograde and intolerant boat people policy in an attempt to win the One Nation racist idiot vote from the Liberals. In a carefully crafted public statement, almost certainly written word for word as a 'dog whistle' to racist hill billy Queensland voters quaking in their boots in terror at the prospect that they might fill 0.0001% more of their unfilled fruit picking jobs with oppressed migrants.

She said how people should not be considered red necks for caring about the issue. What the fuck vote did that win? What Racist Queenslander moron wants a stuffy pompous "uppity city bitch", herself a god damn "boat person" if you want to be technical about it, to tell them that? And in that way?

Which racist idiot voter is going to go "oh well I like her, I won't go with the party with the long history of spouting off on this and other stupid bullshit and which is now promising to oppress refuges far more than she is!" Not very bloody many I can tell you. That is conservative heartland there and Labor is never going to fucking win that vote from the conservatives. It's just stupid to try and alienates all the OTHER voters in the process.

Anyway. The big deal now is the Greens. The independents should see to it that rural areas aren't neglected, and it already looks like the greens are already seeing to it that the independent hicks don't get to arm wrestle the weak willed labor party into letting them clear fell, wood chip and then shit all over the entire continent.

(Bob Katter apparently sided AGAINST labor, even after promising he would go with the other independents if they went Labor, even after praising Rudd as the only guy to actually provide any infrastructure and responsible government in years, even after being "deeply concerned" about Abbot's anti internet stance and incompetent budgeting. Why? Because Gillard inexplicable had enough spine to tell him that NO she wouldn't let him personally eradicate the endangered Australian Lung Fish and it's habitat. Something I can only attribute to the influence of the Greens).

So really the big deal is. Can the Greens push their agenda on social and environmental issues, or will all they be able to do is moderate policy and prevent back pedaling like they did with Katter vs Lung Fish? Will their influence see some sort of actual genuine Carbon management policy? Etc...

This election was a result of focus group polling. Both parties threw away their principles and just ran with what focus groups and polls told them to do.

Labor's in(as if there was any doubt, no matter how bad they were they still weren't Tony fucking Abbot), but the big loser has been the Australian public.

The much worse situation is NSW Labour, which is a cancerous blight on society that would look quite at home in the Congo.

PhoneLobster wrote: A number of political commentators from inside and outside the party, right all the way out to Malcom Goddamn Fraser (also his legal name by popular appointment) are taking the time out of their day to point out that absolutely every policy and campaign failure the labor party suffered EVERY bad choice they made EVERY dip in the polls was absolutely and directly attributable to interventions in Labor party policy and campaign tactics by the hard right "power players" largely from NSW (a state where the current state level labor party is arguably a total and utter joke).

Wait, so are you telling me that NSW has been fucking it up for the rest of Australia? Colour me unsurprised.

Hey, we've been fucking it up for ourselves far worse and for much longer. The state government has no opposition party at all, so they can do pretty much whatever they want and still get elected, because everyone knows that as bad as state labour is, state liberals are worse.

Koumei wrote:Wait, so are you telling me that NSW has been fucking it up for the rest of Australia? Colour me unsurprised.

Actually specifically four or five faceless men you may well have never even heard of and even I can't name without some fairly extensive Googling. Most of whom I am led to believe are based in NSW (though I recall some mention of one or two of them operating out of Victoria? maybe they were just visiting, the bastards get about a lot)

I mean sure the NSW labor party in general is also an embarrassment. But it was a handful of dumb ass hollow men specifically who strong armed the federal branch into acting like that as well.

What's going on with NSW labor is what the natural result of letting those 4-5 guys and their lackey's run your party for a couple of decades will do. No policy direction, no competency, open defiance of the party rank and file, constant scandals and entrenched corruption. The hollow men get you nominated, do your PR and tell you it's cool to be a dick and the chump voters will just elect you because it is your RIGHT as a third generation labor right faction member that they should do so no matter what you do.

The saddest thing is that this is ultimately the result of the extended isolation between NSW labor and the party in the rest of the country, an isolation that BEGAN on very different terms, if you ever dig up my old "Sydney Harbor Bridge Has A Left Leaning Bias" thread.

NSW la bor is dead at the next election. Once they are crushed dor being tools the infection of the national party will be excised

I think you are rather optimistic.

The tools of infection, as utterly politically incompetent as they are, think they are personally the bees knees and they hold a lot of power within the party (not you know, grass roots supporters or anything, just a great deal of power gained by gaming the system at various levels like pre-selection and branch stacking).

And while the hollow men are indeed a bunch of incompetent dicks rotting the party they in turn are still largely just a symptom of other problems such as the vulnerability of the party to branch stacking and unregulated contributions from developers.

IExcept nsw labor is staring a twenty percent swing down the barrel which will gut the party and also their fundraising capability. Other partis of thde party with more money will have more power

It went as well as could be hoped. Labour in but forced to keep the Greens on side if they want any bills to pass. Hopefully the Greens don't go soft on me. They'll have to risk being seen as the guys who caused a deadlocked government if they want to make Labour do anything intelligent.

smh.com.au/federal-election/insiders-tip-bracks-as-labors-mr-fixit-20100911-15628.html

Case in point