Ugh… when is your next election? When can we no longer hear about him again?
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Next november… Former presidente Lula is the favorite candidate of the Brazilians, according to the last polls.
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Bolsonaro will be on a special diet on weekends
Sounds like my kind of diet.
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Decided my question belonged here rather than the COVID thread.
In reference to the Australian federal government, why is Victoria always blamed for the clusterfucks?
@catsidhe @Immutable_Mike would you please explain?
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A conservative federal government lead by a wanna-be Trump, and Australia’s most progressive Premier. Premier Dan Andrews is loathed by the Murdoch press.
Add to that Victoria has had some harsh lockdowns while conservatives have opted for a “let it rip” approach. Which is why NSW is now out of control (top ten internationally for Covid growth rate) and the newly opened borders mean we’re all fucked.
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Because the Federal government is Coalition, NSW is Coalition, but Victoria is Labor, and is, in stark contrast, competent?
It’s all a rich tapestry of bastardry, but I’ll try to summarise. Which will need some background.
First: Labor (without a “u” thanks to a flirtation with language simplification in the early 20C) is center. They keep talking about how they’re the “sensible Left” party, and were founded on the back of a Shearer’s strike in the late 19C, for the cause of worker’s rights. But since Keating went all “Economic Rationalist” in the 90’s, they’ve basically been soft left socially (with a core of some very socially conservatives, usually religious) and a weird combination of progressive economic policies with some stuff that could just as easily have come from the other party.
The Coalition is, in fact, two parties in a symbiotic parasitic relationship: the Liberal Party, which was founded by the Institute of Public Affairs (economic hard right, socially libertarian), which was founded by a group of businessmen after WWII including Keith Murdoch, Rupert’s father. And the National Party, which is economically agrarian socialist (which is: tax the cities and send all the money to farmers), and socially whatever you’d expect from the worst stereotypes of xenophobic country folk (which is unfair, because most country folk aren’t as xenophobic or imbecilic as you’d expect from the modal National member, but they also need the money and like having a local member who knows what it’s like to drive four hours to the nearest shop.) The Liberal Party would never get the numbers up on its own, so it needs the Nationals seats to make majority, but the two parties want very different things. So long as the cash keeps flowing to the regions, the Nats let the Libs do whatever. In any case, the Nationals haven’t advocated for farmers for decades now, they’re the members for agribusiness megafarms and mining all the things, which the Libs are all behind.
There are two publically traded main media companies, and one government-owned. There’s Fairfax, which is centrist because that’s where the money is, there’s Newscorp under the Murdochs, which is sadopopulist because Murdoch made his billions by weaponising the angry and ill-informed. And there’s the ABC, which isn’t allowed to have a political position (but has gotten very good at getting actual information out anyway).
Newscorp media despises all Labor governments by editorial policy. It is basically the propaganda arm of the Coalition, and simultaneously proud of it and performatively outraged if it’s pointed out.
The current Federal government is run by Scott Morrison, who seems to have no personality beyond what is expedient to get him into power. He has been called “the Prime Minister of NSW”, or “of Sydney”, or even “of Western Sydney”, given his clear and obvious chauvinism for that region.
So anyway, now some relevant history: when Covid started being a thing, about a million years ago, there was a cruise ship called the Ruby Princess, which they thought might have some cases on it. The Feds not only let it dock in Sydney, they let everyone disembark and go home without even quarantine. Yes, of course there were cases on board. Yes, of course that’s where the first major outbreak came from. The Feds tried to blame people at the NSW dock for it all, but not the NSW government.
All the other states closed borders and didn’t let anyone from Sydney in until they fixed it. Which they did, eventually, complaining the whole time.
Since then, the Feds have been demanding that the borders be opened, that lockdowns be removed, that the economy was more important than some old people who were going to die anyway. The State Premiers (except for Berejiklian in NSW) said “fuck that”, and kept the borders closed anyway. Trouble is, NSW was really bad at containing it (because, as far as anyone could see, they didn’t really want to.) So it spread. And typically it spread into Victoria. And Dan Andrews, premier of Victoria, responded by saying “yes it sucks, yes it will make me unpopular, but lives are more important than my popularity, so we’re in lockdown. Again.”
Most of the deaths in the first waves in Victoria weren’t even something we could do much about: the Federal government controls most of the aged care homes, and when it got into there it went through them like a … well, like a highly contagious airborne disease. That’s where the deaths were. And then the Victorian government said “screw jurisdiction”, and moved in to do something about it, and through great effort contained it. That didn’t stop the Feds from pointing out all the deaths in Victoria, and saying that it must be because Victoria is incompetent. And the Murchoch press amplified that.
And every time NSW let Covid into Victoria again, and every time Victoria shutdown to contain it, the Feds claimed that the lockdowns were the problem and if the Victorian government wasn’t so incompetent then people wouldn’t be dying.
But it worked. Victoria had some big outbreaks, and locked down hard, and longer than anywhere else on earth, and we got rid of it again. And again. And again. A “double doughnut day” was where there were zero new cases, zero deaths. Which we managed to get to from various waves, repeatedly. And the one thing the Feds couldn’t stand was having their incompetence demonstrated so clearly.
So the Murdoch press kicked up the outrage. “Dictator Dan” was an actual headline. The neo-nazis joined with the antivaxxers and held violent marches and protests (full of “journalists” who were walking around giving FB streams and completely coincidentally looking the other way whenever they literally pissed on the war memorial or threw things (like full cans, or water bottles full of urine) at reporters and police.
And now the Feds have basically gotten what they wanted. They demanded that the states open up when vaccination targets were hit, and we’re now over 90% double dosed, despite the vaccine supply clusterfucks (who’s in charge of sourcing vaccines? Oh yeah, the Feds), and at the Fed’s demand, we’ve now gotten to the “let’er rip” stage. Only we still need to keep it contained, which requires testing. Ahahaha now there aren’t enough tests, either PCR or RAT. So the Feds unilaterally declared that they were redefining all the standards so that it’s almost impossible to qualify for getting tested, and that now you can only qualify as a Close Contact from being exposed at home, only the person exposing you almost certainly can’t get tested themselves, so you still won’t qualify for a test. This is what the Feds have been demanding since April 2020, only they’re saying that it’s Dan’s fault for not doing better, and they’re outright lying, gaslighting the nation that there are enough tests, and that it’s fine and normal that they let market forces deal with supplying tests rather than treating it as a public health emergency, and that the hospital systems aren’t creaking and groaning and if it is it’s the States’ fault anyway.
Dan Andrews proved that it could be contained, and that it was hard wasn’t an excuse, and the Coalition governments in Canberra and in Sydney hate that, and their propaganda arm ni the Murdoch media is taking up arms on that case, and for all sorts of reasons, Victoria is who they’ve picked as the blamemonkey.
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Thank you for laying all that out
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That is curiously similar to how the SNP Scottish government is treated by Westminster and the Tories (i.e. the party and pretty much the entire UK press) for daring to go for a cautious approach rather than the damn the torpedoes course of BJ and the Peers.
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I should probably add that Dan was working like a racehorse: all those months of lockdowns, he was coming out of meetings and going straight to the 11am press conference, where he would stand and give answers for hours, even from the Murdoch “journos” trying to justify their own lies, and he calmly (occasionally tersely, and he never put up with bullshit) explained in simple language what was happening, why it was happening, and what the consequences on current best knowledge would be if something else happened. Every day. Every day, including weekends, without a break, for months. When we reached a calm stretch, he dared go on holiday with his family to a rental place near the beach. And slipped on a wet step, and broke his back. So he passed everything off to his deputy Premier to recover. And when he recovered, he came straight back to work like he hadn’t been in a full spine brace for months.
The NSW Premier, by contrast, was Gladys Berejiklian, who declared in 2020 that they just weren’t going to have press conferences at all any more. And who was called to give evidence in the corruption trial of a man who turned out to have been her secret boyfriend, and that the corruption investigation body had recordings of him describing him doing corruption to her, and her straight out telling him not to tell her that. So when she resigned before she could be summonsed for her own part in all that, she was replaced by Dominic Perrottet, who has been doing his level best to be the Cool Dad premier as opposed to the Daggy Mum of Berejiklian, and whatever restrictions and controls she had actually implemented, he systematically tore down and proclaimed “freedom!”. Then almost demanded everyone go to Christmas lunches, then congregate on Sydney Harbour for the NYE fireworks. (Won’t someone please think of the economy!)
Smirko the Prime Minister (Scott Morrison’s the name on his door) has his own reputation: he’s on holiday. When the bushfires were on at the beginning of 2020 (remember those?), he was on holiday in Hawai’i. He left while those fires were underway. He did not announce that holiday: he sent an SMS to the opposition leader while he was on the plane, and was outed by people taking selfies with him on the beach while Mallacoota burned down. When he got back and was called on this, his response was “Well, I don’t hold a hose, mate.”
When he went to England on some diplomatic things, during the plague, he went on a geneological tour of Cornwall. While Australians trapped all over the world were trying desperately to be allowed to come back to the country but unable to get flights for any cost, let alone permission to enter the country. His words carry the micron-deep impression of caring, but his actions are all those of a sociopath whose only care for your wellbeing is that it not get in the way of his getting whatever he wants.
And then there’s the utter utter flaming clusterfuck which is what he did to Australian-French relations.
He’s a pure salesman, he has no other skills or interests (well, except possibly the Prosperity Gospel evangelical megachurch he goes to). He doesn’t have anything to add to any conversation; his only skill is in persuading you that he does. And it’s all lies.
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Cutting their internet? Someone should ask Hosni Mubarak how that strategy worked out for him…
Oh, wait, they can’t.
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Pelosi & Schumer: ‘Mr. President. we think Russia is going to stir up shit again on the one year anniversary of the idiotsurection on the hill. Things with them are getting worse over the years. Blackmail of the last guy sitting in that chair, right wing cable hosts parroting Moscow talking points, getting buffoons fired up enough to harass hospital staff & school board meetings, non stop 24/7 propaganda attacks based on the most ridiculous shit, paying terrorists to go after american soldiers, hypersonic missile bluffs, close flybys of US military vessels, taking Crimea, massing soldiers on the Ukrainian border, backing a dictator who screwed up european air travel, spy dolphins and forming a cyber alliance with China. We need to do something.’
Biden: Immediately looks at Kazakhstan’s energy market
Pelosi, Biden & Schumer:
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It would take a long time to throw 20,000 protesters out of 20,000 windows, or serve them 20,000 cups of polonium tea
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I’m sure this is something that folks like the Windors and brexiteers love but everyone else who is getting tired of their shit lately is going to loathe
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