News
The Government issued its mid-year budget forecast – the MYEFO – which, as predicted, was not quite as robust as had been previously expected. Thank you, Europe. Still, the Government continues on its madcap, potentially reckless drive to hit a surplus next year, by cutting a cheeky $11bn for expenditure. Teacher bonuses? Delayed. Baby bonus? Trimmed back (although not killed entirely, which baffles me slightly, as that has proven to be quite the useless money sink). The public service? Don't get comfortable. Although with the EU still seemingly on a crash course with destiny (and insolvency) every economic prediction made at the moment could be worth less than my comic collection, which I, also, at one point thought was going to make me rich.
Gay marriage may not be quite as dead in the water as predicted – the Left is currently in the process of convincing various unions to fall in and
now have a supposed 177 of the required 201 standing behind the measure. While it's still going to go down to the wire, and Gillard is apparently doing a lot of behind the scenes convincing herself – about which I hope she struggles to sleep at night – this is all going to make for the most interesting Labor Party conference in many years.
Michael Jackson's doctor has been sentenced to four years in prison, the maximum allowed, for his reckless prescription of the drug that killed the pop star, bringing to an end a particularly tawdry legal exercise in which noone really wanted to grapple with the question of why Michael was so ill and deranged in the first place. All in all, this is a handy reminder that crime doesn't pay and that Michael Jackson had a child whose name is "Blanket".
Herman Cain, the man with a hundred sexual harassment cases, can add another scandal to the pile:
an allegation that he had a thirteen year long affair while married. Now
this is going to take some political resurrection.
And just to show that if you're white you're criminally insane, while if you're brown you're a rational actor,
Anders Breivik looks like he'll avoid criminal culpability for the massacre on Utoya Island due to long-running paranoid schizophrenia. Which is all well and good, but have we been carrying out similar assessments of those we declare to be terrorists?
Things are getting increasingly fraught between Pakistan and the US in the wake of America's accidental killing of two dozen Pakistani soldiers,
with Pakistan now lodging a formal protest with the UN. Caught between a ferociously anti-American domestic backdrop and the harsh reality of US funding generosity (around $2bn in military aid a year), Pakistan has long walked a fine line in this relationship, but with increasing frustration over Predator drone strikes, the assassination of Osama bin Laden and now this, the balance may be decisively turning away from the West. Which is all well and good, but could spell the end of Pakistan's "control" of its northern reaches.
Voting continues in Egypt. Still no major disasters. All is well... Or as well as it can be.
Laurent Gbagbo, the former leader of the Ivory Coast, who had to be forcibly and violently removed from power earlier this year when he refused to accept the results of an election,
has just been transferred to the Hague to face the ICC on charges that he instigated a campaign of rape and murder in the civil war following the electoral dispute. He will join a distinguished and very, very short list of former heads of state that have been bought low by international justice.
Features
What the MYEFO budget forecast actually means, for the government and for us.
A quite excellent and remarkably fair and clear-eyed profile of Andrew Bolt from the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of weeks back. Makes the man feel human, which is quite the task, but feels like the mark of superb journalism.
Oddities/Curiosities
A Pakistani woman stands accused of attempting to cook her husband – after killing him – when he tried to get married again without consulting her. Hell hath no fury and such and such. Her neighbour dobbed her in, which just goes to show that, dead or alive, a husband is something not to be shared.
A ruthless cabal of Amish men led by the appropriately named Sam Mullet stands accused of
forcibly cutting off the beards and hair of fellow Amish men and women in Ohio. CSI: Amish County is on the case.
Video
Kudos Nandos. It's not every fast food chicken brand that could pull off an ad wherein Robert Mugabe daydreams about happier days frolicking with some of the world's worst – and now decidedly dead – despots.