Election 2004 | Day 25 | Roundup and Religious Rantings

The problem with The Chaser Decides is that it goes by so fast. They started wrapping up, and I thought to myself "what the hell? It's only been going 5 minutes." The clock disagreed with me. Have to wait till next week now.

Howard is doing the vote-buying thing with regards to stadiums, this time down in Melbourne.

Today was quite slow. News Ltd's election page is basically the same as it was 24 hours ago. Aside from Ando opening his mouth, nothing really interesting has happened.

Idiotfactor Ten Billion
Although I think Alexander Downer made a stupid comment. That's what he's all about though, isn't he?

SOUTH Australian AFL teams had a better chance of winning premierships under a coalition government, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday.

Enough said.

An old lady told Latham to bring back the biff... and yeah, that's pretty much it.

Attack Of The Killer Howard
Here's how the rest of the world sees Howard's pre-emptive stance:

• Howard's anti-terror teams rejected (New Zealand)
• Malaysian FM urges Howard to exercise caution on pre-emptive strikes (China)
• Campaign rhetoric heats up in Australia (China)
• Alex Downer plays down 'hairy-chested' comments (Taiwan)
• Aussie pre-emptive strike plan just an election ploy? (Singapore)
• Australia Won't Conduct Anti-Terrorism Strikes on Asian Allies (USA)
• Howard terror plan gets brush-off (Britain)
• Howard unveils anti-terror plan (Taiwan)
• Australia says Asian anti-terror allies not targets of pre-emptive strikes (all of Asia)
• Security row fires Australian poll (USA)
• Howard vows to base anti-terror teams in Asian nations (Taiwan)
• Malaysia warns Australia over pre-emptive strike threat (Asia)

Freaky Minor Parties
I'm poking through the list of candidates for my electorate. Aside from the usual Labor/Liberal/Greens/Democrats, there's four other parties and one indie. How come each of these four other parties seems completely insane? Why is it only complete nutcases seem to want to register new parties? Do the Big Four parties satisfy everyone's needs for normalcy? I have:

The No GST Party. Its founders are former One Nationers David Oldfield (who used to work for Tony Abbott), and David Etteridge. I can't find any information on them on the net, but seriously, a party that has a policy as the name of it can't be mentally stable.

"What's your policy on immigration?"
"Well, we won't charge them GST."
"Tasmanian old-growth logging?"
"So long as it doesn't involve GST."

And so on.

The Family First Party. There's been a lot written about these people in the news and on the net lately (Crikey, Daily Flute, policies lists). Basically because they're TOTALLY FUCKING INSANE RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. They also have links to known musical terrorist, al-Guy-Sebastian. Religion and politics mix about as well as kerosene and orange juice. Religious parties should be completely banned outright.

Citizens Electoral Council. Go browse their website. It sounds like the crazed rantings of a uni student protester, mixed with the crazed rantings of someone who lives in a bomb shelter. Take this paragraph picked at random:

If mankind is to survive the death of globalisation, it must take inspiration from the greatest periods of renaissance in the past, to establish a new worldwide renaissance. This new renaissance will accompany and inspire the establishment of a new, just world order, a New Bretton Woods international monetary system. Lawfully, the most enlightened cultural periods of past Western civilisation each reflected a renaissance upsurge within the three great religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is from those renaissance highpoints in each religion, that one finds the profound ecumenical basis so urgently needed to avoid the present drive toward a "Clash of Civilisations". The basis of such true ecumenicism among the "children of Abraham", is their shared belief that all mankind, man and woman alike, are created in the living image of God, by virtue of the unique, cognitive qualities of the individual human being, creative capabilities which no animal possesses. If God is the Creator of all, then only mankind, which alone among living creatures possesses its own divine spark of creativity, is in God's image. To the extent that all human beings, of whatever colour, religion or cultural origin, view themselves - and therefore each other - in that way, then we will have established the basis for solving the present, existential crisis in which mankind finds itself.

OH. MY. GOD.

And lastly, the Christian Democratic Party. Wow, alarm bells are going off already. Here's their policies. While probably the least insane of the bunch, religion is flowing strongly and their preferences are going to Family First. Plus Fred Nile's eyebrows look suspiciously like Howard's, but bleached. Check out the blurb down the side of the main page from Robert Moyes, particularly this crazy attack on the Greens:

They decry the Christian faith, they advocate stopping all funding to non-government schools, they would force schools and churches to employ homosexuals, they would legalize euthanasia, abortions, same sex marriages, ecstasy, speed and heroin, reduce the water held in dams, ban new jails, attack the RSL, allow pornography, unrestricted brothels and so on. In most of these matters the Australian Democrats join with the Greens. Senators from both parties include homosexuals living in sexual relationships.

So sick of this hypocritical bullshit. They want multicultural laws that "unite and not divide," meaning they're nice and tolerant of whatever race/gender/whatever you are, but if you're homosexual (being that people have a choice in the mattery, like how they can choose what race, culture and gender they want to be) you will go to hell and burn for eternity!

And so concludes my badly written writeup on whacked out religious parties, finishing with an attack on the CDC that I feel wasn't harsh enough, but I'm too tired to go researching more stuff.

Politics should be based on what is happening today. Not off a 2000 year old book. Says me anyway.