Dear Prime Minister Re: National Broadband Network Dear Prime Minister: How did you know: http://www.revk.uk/2017/12/its-official-adsl-works-over-wet-string.html. You're a visionary.

The Hollow Arguments Against Full Equality Now that the public has voiced their support for marriage equality in Australia, it’s time for the politicians to do their jobs and fix the inequality they previously legislated in the Marriage Act, led by that recalcitrant bigot, John Howard, and with the full knowledge that other bigots among the LNP have been marginalised, most especially Howard’s protégé, Tony Abbott, whose electorate returned one of the largest margins in favor of equality. But arguments are still being put forward in an attempt to reduce any bill’s effect on achieving equality, empty, disingenuous arguments, such as the need to “recognise the religious freedom of commercial service suppliers.” Rot. Commercial service suppliers are free to practice their religion in Australia. They are not, however, free to pretend that their commercial services are the practice of their religion. If you are baking cakes for a living, bake them, sell them, and then go to whatever church you favor and pray to whatever god you worship howsoever you please on whatever topic you choose. You can even pray for the cake to turn to ashes in the mouths of the same-sex couples who bought it to share with their friends and families. “[A] guarantee to the rights of expression [and] association” is similarly vacuous. Exclusions regarding “threatening or harassing speech” notwithstanding, allowing same-sex couples to marry does not preclude anyone from speech in opposition to the practice or preventing them from excluding LGBTIQ persons from their social circles. You don’t have to talk to the gay couple or have them in your home just because society lets them marry. Go ahead, ignore them. They’ll more likely be grateful not to have to listen to you or associate with you than not. There is, indeed, a “right to be a bigot,” it’s just that it’s the social equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your face. You do more harm to yourself than anyone else. But don’t think that if you make your behavior public you can’t be called out for it. Employment decision exclusions are just discriminatory. Period. You do not get to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation. The days when you could legally discriminate on the basis of marital status are long past, and that’s where they should stay. That’s it. Church officials don’t have to marry anyone, gay or straight, but if they want to pretend there’s something different because their invisible sky friend tells them so, they can take their medieval trappings and fade into history.

Redux I wanted to go watch Blade Runner 2049 when it was still in production, and then when it came out I was ambivalent, but I finally broke down and went. It's very good. Long, maybe, but it takes its time and does the story justice. It's a police procedural, really, and police work takes a slow, plodding pace, with punctuations of misdirection and revelation, until the mystery is solved. The sequel also learned a lot from the original's post-production problems: no voice-over, mainly, the thing that bothered everyone until the final director's cut got released on DVD. Anyway, I'm going to have to watch this one again. I think I like it better than the original, although you have to have the first one for context. Maybe that's its particular flaw.

Omnibus Obamacare repeal down again, but don’t be fooled. The Senate Republicans will keep trying, because if they can’t undo everything Obama ever did, their donors will reckon them as failures and give the money to someone else. Until then, the House will continue to prioritize legislating against women’s health, because they’re already proven what losers they are, notably in regard to over 200 failed votes to repeal the ACA. Trump’s bankrupt golf course in Puerto Rico leads him to revenge himself on the island by pretending it’s so remote as to make even the US Navy helpless, plus of course he would: Puerto Ricans aren’t white enough are they even part of America? Build a wall! Watch for a Ten Commandments monument on the Washington Mall, now that we have one more crazed religious zealot in the Senate. Seriously, how does this man keep going? Fuelled on hate like Trump, but couldn’t even get Comrade Oompa-Loompa’s endorsement. Just because you don’t like what someone says, Jeff, doesn’t mean it isn’t legitimate or anything less than the same free speech you’d be applauding if you agreed with it. And if you really want to stand up for freedom of speech, you might want to try facing up to it, instead of hiding in your own echo chamber. Animal cruelty isn’t art. You want to comment on animal cruelty, o.k., or whatever your statement is intended to be, but being cruel yourself just makes you a monster, not an artist. If no prosecutions arise from the actions of Equifax executives in the lead-up to the revelation they’d been massively hacked, the system isn’t working. Yes, Comrade President, your fight with the NFL is over race alone. Australians will bet on anything. We are a gambling-crazy nation. Meanwhile, there is no valid argument against allowing same-sex couples to marry. Freedom of speech? No, shut up. I mean, no, you can say what you want, but you cannot deny someone the same rights you have because you don’t have the same sexual preference. Family and children? What about older couples, infertile couples, couples who choose not to have children, or to adopt? Would you legislate against them marrying? Then you can’t legislate against same-sex couples marrying. “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”? That’s not an argument; it’s a slogan. Tradition? Tradition used to involve marrying children. We’re not doing that anymore. Tradition changes. But their sex is yucky? All sex is yucky. Grow up. Enough. Whew.\

2020 Foresight It is a serious mistake to underestimate either the likelihood that Trump will run or his chances for re-election, as we learned to our cost in the last election. Making fun of him or his supporters is entertaining, but it will not get a more reasonable person in the White House or a different political distribution in the House or Senate. Opposition to Trump must assume he will complete his term of office and that he will run for re-election. Opposition to the Republicans must assume that Republican governors and legislatures around the country will do whatever they can to suppress voting and shape electoral districts to their advantage. If we want to take back the White House and Congress, we have to start locally and build. We have to take back municipalities, and the states. We have to have not just viable candidates, but compelling candidates.

The American Oligarchy I’ve just finished an article about Putin’s oligarchs, and I’ve got to say the correlation to Trump is patently obvious. Reading this article explained why Trump wanted to be President and his admiration of Putin. Sure, he’s a cheeto-faced fascist, as corrupt as the day is long, but being President gives him everything he needs to enrich himself in ways he’s never been able to use before. Whereas in the past Trump’s various businesses were subject to lawsuits and bankruptcy and profitable on the basis of stiffing his contractors and reneging on debts, now he makes money hand over fist, profiting from everyone who wants to do business with the US. Putin’s oligarchs operate outside of government, it’s true, but profit from it, and if Putin isn’t salting away his dictator’s portion of the proceeds, it would only be with the expectation of the payoff when he has to step aside. Trump is his own oligarch, along with many of his Cabinet of conmen, and the Republicans in Congress are more than happy to have it that way. They and their friends benefit, too, if less directly. Even if the current lawsuit against Trump based on the emoluments clause is successful, he is likely to continue his self-enrichment, but more in line with the Putin oligarchic model. Unless at some point even the Republicans have to acknowledge his corruption, based on some final act so egregious it cannot be ignored – like shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue – he will serve his full term, possibly – even probably – be re-elected, and drag the US into an unethical morass it may not be able to recover from, all to benefit himself and the monstrous children he’s engendered.

Covfefe Stroke.

Trumpian The Guardian had a piece wondering if Australia had already been through its Trumpian political phase, but the answer is no: It’s only just begun. Immigrants, whether they pass the stringent requirements to enter the country as residents at all, or as refugees (especially), cannot be expected to have university-level English. That may not be a requirement for the jobs they take up even for native-born Australians. But now, in order to vote, we expect them to be able to compose an essay suitable for academic credit? This is just the usual Liberal hate and fear of brown people. They would end all immigration from everywhere but white Britain if they could, and probably those whinging Poms, too, except that “real” Australians aren’t having enough babies. The rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation didn’t coincide with Tony Abbott becoming Prime Minister. He hated them. Mostly, he hated them because they took votes from the Liberal-National coalition, reducing their power to impose their race-hate on the country. No, One Nation rose because Abbott’s star fell, replaced by the smiling face of Malcolm Turnbull. But Turnbull kept the far-right on the front bench, like Peter Dutton, whose brainchild the new citizenship test is sold as. Don’t be fooled. Turnbull and the LNP today aren’t centre-right. They’re virulent extremists and always have been. Turnbull’s pleasant façade of reasonableness is the cover they give to controlling the population through hate and fear, causing internal divisions among us, the better to eliminate the middle class and create the new feudalism they believe is their right. They mean to rule, not govern, and to do that there must be Lords and Serfs. They know which group they belong to, and which group the rest of us are in. We’re the only ones fooling ourselves, continuing to vote against our own best interests, as the US did electing Trump and keeping the Republicans in power. Our “Trump moment” isn’t past, it’s prologue.

You Won’t Believe This One Simple Trick to What Happens Next Fairfax is shedding jobs, and moving to rely for content on “contributors”, which sounds like paying freelancers to do the work reporters and editors used to do. This is a shame, as the content of the Sydney Morning Herald is pretty much all click-bait at this point, and badly edited to boot. Online content is fairly rife with poor grammar and typos, but the Herald and its sister publications aren’t any different in print. Having shed editorial staff multiple times over the last couple of years, it’s only getting worse. It’s inevitable that media will move more and more to being fully digital, and that the content will, at least partially in consequence, rely less on the printed word and more on audio-visual presentation. The arrival of radio and television promised this long ago, but the platforms have finally arrived to make it happen. We can watch MSNBC or CNN or Fox on our phones and tablets, laptops and desktops, and many people do, but we can also access breaking news and news-related content via these services, too, which makes operations like Fairfax or the New York Times. etc., in many ways uniquely positioned as distinct providers. The loss of print media won’t be felt by the younger generations, but the degradation of content should be. That’s not a small reason to support the week-long strike, even if it won’t actually change anything that hasn’t been underway for a long time now. I’d cancel my subscription, but the only option is Murdoch’s Australian, and that son of a bitch doesn’t need my money any more than I would ever want to count towards that rag’s circulation. (I won’t even take a free copy of its sibling, the Telegraph, when it’s offered, so it can’t be counted.) It was once a better publication, but the Murdoch model means it’s all alt-right hate all the time for the last ten years and more. The ABC is useful, so long as the LNP don’t amputate its funding to the point of no return, but there’s no print option. So long, SMH; you’ve given up.

Emoluments Trump has been here before (and failed) and may try again, through Joo Kim Tiah, a Malaysia developer, with two hotels in Australia already – neither of which is planned to be branded with the Cheeto-faced fascist’s name in the immediate future. But if Mr Tiah wants to “know the sentiment of the Australian people or their mood”, I’d say there are no small number of them who would gleefully welcome the Pumpkin Fuhrer having a larger orange profile here, and many more who would take the opportunity to protest, boycott, and otherwise ensure it became an opportunity to deride and denigrate the Swamp Thing currently occupying the White House. In regard to whether pressuring foreign leaders to open their countries to Trump businesses constitutes corruption or not, yes, it very well may be, as it amounts to Trump being enriched and open then to influence by those same foreign governments, whether they hire prostitutes to urinate on him or not. And now that I know Trump and his fellow swamp-dweller Rex Tillerson are involved in BHP Billiton, I’m out, and hope others follow. Their pledges “to divest” aren’t worth the noxious fumes expelled from their lungs to make the statement.

End of Days? The Anti-Christ is in the White House, and Westminster Kennel Club is including cats in its annual dog show.

More Elliott Richardson's Congratulations Sally Yates, Acting Attorney General of the United States, for standing against Donald Trump's white supremacy, anti-establishment clause executive order.

Death and Disability Of course Monster-in-Chief-elect Donald Trump wants a review of vaccination, he doesn’t believe in vaccines. But there’s more to it: who will go unvaccinated? Children of the rich who can afford to keep their children away from those of the dirty poor as well as the increased cost of health care if they do fall ill, and the children of the poor and ill-informed sufficiently frightened away from vaccination as a result of the lies people like Trump peddle – and these latter are the ones most likely to end up most adversely affected, disabled or dead. Never forget: Donald Trump and the Republicans think being poor, sick, or elderly is a moral failing, deserving only the wrath of God, never any compassion from fellow humans. Vaccinations, especially anything paid for or subsidised by the government, is not something poor people should have, and Trump and his GOP majority flunkies will do everything they can to legitimise taking it away.