Category Archives: Media

Is this the worst journalism you have ever read?

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It’s a good thing that The Age is still around so I don’t have to depend on the hysterics at The Oz for my news. Take this today by someone classified as the Associate Editor: Code red for Premier Daniel Andrews as coronavirus crisis reignites. He starts:

Daniel Andrews’s premiership has been smashed and his legacy imperilled. He has had a horrible month; in normal circumstances the Victorian Premier might already have walked.

But for complex social and psychological reasons the Andrews experiment is on life support rather than in the political mortuary. His community is still more interested in beating the virus than in revenge politics.

In his own obtuse way, he has put his finger on the problem: there is no opposition party or leader in Victoria. My favourite party trick at the moment is to ask people to name the Victorian Opposition Leader. Virtually no one can do it. But back to the article as The Oz does everything it can to beat up this dead horse for reasons unknown to me:

Just as the behaviour of the COVID-19 virus can be unpredictable, so is the state of mind of Victorians as they confront their gravest challenge since World War II. The latest record numbers have stunned an already stunned city, with deaths certain to rise [they certainly cannot fall].

“We are in the fight for our lives,” Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos says.

Today the community’s narrowed eyes are focused almost completely on suppressing the killer virus that is marching through the metropolitan area.

He finishes with this:

This once-in-a-lifetime event has entered a highly emotional phase. The economy was retrievable until the fresh outbreak but is now under even greater threat. We are staring at potentially large-scale loss of life. If this crisis deepens and the government is nailed by the judicial inquiry, how long could the Labor caucus justify retaining Andrews at the helm?

Of course Andrews is going to resign, in just the same cowardly way that John Cain left the mess he was responsible for to Joan Kirner. Some legacy! Andrews is the worst premier Victoria has ever had, and that is really really saying something.

Defund the ABC

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Modern Monetary Theory: How MMT is challenging the economic establishment

Illustration of a tree with money for leaves and lush flowers on the ground below where the money falls.

From the dumbest economic analysts in Australia, our very own ABC: Modern Monetary Theory: How MMT is challenging the economic establishment.

What if everything we thought we knew about public finance over the past 40 years has been wrong? A new economic theory has emerged that could rewrite our understanding of how governments create and spend money and what type of society we can afford to build.

And if it is correct, people may be furious. Because it could show that Australia’s political elite can afford to spend far more than they are on public health and education, social housing, scientific research and green energy schemes, while eliminating unemployment.

And yet they’re not — either from a misunderstanding of government finances or because they don’t want to. However, to embrace this radical economic theory you will have to forget what you’ve learned about budget deficits (that they’re bad) and government debt (that it burdens future generations).

Why? Because proponents of the theory say that far from being a problem, budget deficits are often a good thing — they can be the source of healthy economic growth.

More at the link and some previous discussion of MMT here.

Daniel Andrews is showing the way. He spends enormous amounts of money, but never finishes a project so that nothing is ever completed. Tunnels, train lines, you name it, he has left all kinds of useless projects halfway done, which even if completed would never earn as much in revenue as they cost to build. Just build it and they will come, they in this case being massive debt and deficits.

The ABC is filled with such deadheads. I never watch the thing myself but only found out about this from someone else who monitors the place. I don’t know how anyone can listen to such ignorance day after day, but I guess someone has to do it.

ABC delenda est which is Latin for Defund the ABC.

Two of the least surprising stories you might ever read

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CHAPEL ST STORES FALL VICTIM TO CORONAVIRUS CULL

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Plus this.
Protest organisers yet to be fined for Melbourne anti-racism rally

Defund the ABC

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And as an example of the typical lying that the ABC can be counted on, we have this: Trump tweets conspiracy theory about Buffalo protester police officers knocked to ground. Here’s the tweet:

And here’s the truth:

Martin Gugino is a 75-year-old professional agitator and Antifa provocateur who brags on his blog about the number of times he can get arrested and escape prosecution. Gugino’s Twitter Account is also filled with anti-cop sentiment [SEE HERE]. Last Thursday Gugino traveled from his home in Amherst, New York, to Buffalo to agitate a protest crowd.

During his effort Gugino was attempting to capture the radio communications signature of Buffalo police officers. CTH noted what he was attempting on Thursday night as soon as the now viral video was being used by media to sell a police brutality narrative. [Thread Here] Today, a more clear video has emerged that shows exactly what he was attempting.

In this slow motion video, you will see Gugino using a phone as a capture scanner. You might have heard the term “skimming”; it’s essentially the same. Watch him use his right hand to first scan the mic of officer one (top left of chest). Then Gugino moves his hand to the communications belt of the second officer. WATCH CLOSELY:

You can find the complete story here.

THIS IS OUR ABC NOT THEIRS: It’s been pointed out in the comments that the story quoted above on “the conspiracy theory” is from the American ABC. So this is the same story from our ABC: Trump tweets conspiracy theory about Buffalo protester police officers knocked to ground. Did you really think the ABC collective would miss an opportunity to spread falsehood that allowed them to push their agenda?

On the day of George Floyd’s funeral, President Donald Trump on Tuesday touted a conspiracy theory in a high-profile case of alleged police misconduct caught on video — involving an elderly protester pushed to the ground and seriously injured.

On Twitter Tuesday morning, Trump suggested that 75-year-old Martin Gugino, who remains hospitalized in serious condition after being shoved to the ground by two Buffalo, New York, police officers, may be an “ANTIFA provocateur” and that the whole incident could be part of a “set up.”

Gugino’s lawyer has since called the president’s accusations “dark, dangerous, and untrue.”

“No one from law enforcement has even suggested anything otherwise so we are at a loss to understand why the President of the United States would make such dark dangerous, and untrue accusations against him,” Kelly Zarcone said in a statement of the president’s accusation against her client, who she said has been released from the ICU but remains hospitalized.

Defund the ABC.

Molotov cocktails should neither be shaken nor stirred but thrown

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The interesting part is not that whoever did this screen shot had never heart of a molotov cocktail but that in trying to conjure up the correct term, headed towards an anti-semitic meme. To help our journalists who officially know nothing.

The name “Molotov cocktail” was coined by the Finns during the Winter War,[1] called in Finnish: polttopullo or Molotovin koktaili. The name was a pejorative reference to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who was one of the architects of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed in late August 1939. The pact with Nazi Germany, which established that Germany would not intervene in the war, was widely mocked by the Finns.

The name’s origin came from the propaganda Molotov produced during the Winter War, mainly his declaration on Soviet state radio that bombing missions over Finland were actually airborne humanitarian food deliveries for their starving neighbours.[2] As a result, the Finns sarcastically dubbed the Soviet cluster bombs “Molotov bread baskets” in reference to Molotov’s propaganda broadcasts.[3] When the hand-held bottle firebomb was developed to attack Soviet tanks, the Finns called it the “Molotov cocktail”, as “a drink to go with his food parcels”.[4]

Alternatives are petrol bomb or in the United States, gasoline bomb. The irony is lost, but at least there would be some precision in what is being referred to.

Classical economics and the unemployment rate in the United States

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As anyone who understands classical economic theory would understand – which might include around half a dozen people across the world today – “demand for commodities is not demand for labour”. That is John Stuart Mill’s Fourth Fundamental Proposition on Capital. The number of jobs in an economy is unrelated to the level of aggregate demand. This, I need hardly tell you, is in direct contradiction of the whole of modern macroeconomic theory. Which brings us to the latest jobs report in the United States. U.S. Economy Adds Record 2.5 Million Jobs in May, Unemployment Rate Falls to 13.3%.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported the U.S. economy added 2.5 million jobs, the largest gain ever recorded and the unemployment rate fell to 13.3 in May.

Well economic good news of such a colossal dimension cannot be allowed to stand on its own so this is what the media reported on instead: Fake News: Media Rush to Decry Trump Quote on George Floyd During Jobs Report Presser – Except He Didn’t Say It

President Trump held a press conference/signing ceremony today at the Rose Garden where he talked about the good news revealed by the BLS’s report before signing a bill that will “give recipients of government small business loans during the coronavirus more flexibility in how they spend the money.”

During the speech he gave before signing the bill, Trump also talked about a number of issues including racial equality in the context of the death of George Floyd last Monday, which happened after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes.

CBS News is one of the few news outlets that actually reported Trump’s comments accurately while providing some context:

But black unemployment rose slightly from 16.7% in April to 16.8% in May, in a month the president declared a “tribute to equality” as the nation protests racial discrimination and police brutality. Mr. Trump also seemed to declare success after a week of protests that swept the nation.

“Equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement, regardless of race, color, gender or creed, they have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement,” the president said. “They have to receive it. We all saw what happened last week. We can’t let that happen. Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.”

See for yourself.

Wouldn’t have mentioned it except this media lie was the first thing said to me by my wife this morning.

For added pleasure, you might also wish to read this as well: Paul Krugman Caught in Hilarious Self-Own After Furiously Spinning Conspiracy Theories About Good Jobs Report.