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In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on.
Robert Frost, American poet (1874-1963)

JOHN Howard has signalled the mother of all scare campaigns over Labor's ability to run the economy and keep interest rates low and another John, John Quiggin, analyses the Beatups! In the red corner a brash young upstart takes on the wily older campaigner, the man of steelx versus the rough diamond

Eye on Elections 2004: E(l)ection We Had To Have: Punters Hunger for Hung Parliament
Australia's most successful Olympic team ever will be welcomed home on Wednesday by Prime Minister John Howard and Labor leader Mark Latham.
AN international betting agency expects the federal election to pull in more money than both the Olympics, NRL and AFL grand finals combined.
Centrebet analyst Gerard Daffy predicts punters will pour more than $2 million into the October 9 election outcome - money into the clowns with the masks of mirth. Prime Minister John Howard's Coalition is the early $1.55 favourite, while Mark Latham's Labor is the $2.30 underdog ...
Mr Harry Evans, Clerk of the Parliament, said The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Neil Andrew's actions were most unusual. I don't know where the Speaker gets the power to stop the House of Representatives sitting.
Mr Andrew said he had consulted the Clerk of the House, Ian Harris, who advised that it did not sit...
• Running Porkies: No silver or bronze in fight for the Lodge; [The Whole World is Watching: First Spain and now Prime Minister John Howard will become the first of three allied leaders who launched the US-led invasion of Iraq to face voters ; Truth is multi-coloured and we may prefer the rose-tinted shades to black and white ... Values versus bribes: Margo Kingston ]
• · From Road To Surfdom to King versus Bull; [ALP's cynics fear a victory: Although no one will admit it, many in the State Government fear a federal Labor win might be worse than a loss
• · · Southerly Buster: Starting Gun
Why parliament gets 19 guns and the governor-general gets 21 is not immediately obvious
• · · · Orwell and Wizards of Oz practicing Election Speak: Tax or levy: Latham lost on difference
• · · · · ; Second Amerikan blogger, John Adams: The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger public liberty: Seriously Polling ; This the Only Issues You Need to Know about E(l)ections and the state of the shocking state of the Princes Highway
• · · · · · · Pendulum Professor: Malcolm Mackerras ; [ At this election, candidates or parties that win more than 4 per cent of the vote will earn $1.94 for each vote; Antony Green's E(l)ection Guide: Comic views on the nation's 150 electorates ]
(ELSEWHERE: How Long Can the Country Stay Scared? ; Abolish the Electoral College ... The best argument the staff at the NYTimes can come up with for dumping the electorial college )

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Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Majority of Citizens Face a Bridge with a Toll Too High to Pay
With their connection to civil society, I firmly believe that sociologists can assist this process of discerning new and imaginative ways that governments, corporations and international financial institutions can be held accountable for achieving the goals and fulfilling their human-rights obligations. The majority of citizens in our world face a bridge with a toll too high to pay. The wide discrepancies they face can seem insurmountable, and many no longer believe in global equity or global social justice, backed by concrete and consistent actions by all.
Fifty-five years ago, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, Eleanor Roosevelt reminded us that if human rights are to matter at all, they must matter "in small places close to home." That is the challenge for sociologists and for human-rights activists. If we fail, we have no excuse, because we are better equipped than ever.
• Former Irish President Mary Robinson on sociology and human rights [ Soros A Cry for Human Rights and the Law: A Review of Unpopular Cases for Lawyers ]
• · A bombshell is buried deep within a biography Parliamentary Inquiry into Grove Premier 'screwed' shopping centre [He's being a bad, bad boy: It makes little difference that as governor I am gay... Politicians shocked by announcement laud gov's McGreevey honesty ; Jim O'Rourke: Rare Honest Liberal Ross Cameron ]
• · · Why the Olympics are not interesting anymore: No Cold War enemies
• · · · The Transhumans are coming! And they're promoting mito flushes, sousveillance, cyberglogging, and genetic virtue
• · · · · See Also Calvin Trillin’s political doggerel is far more engaging than most journalism
• · · · · · · Ccryptome.org: Buried Secrets of Biowarfare

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We are all Olympians in the eyes of God: While My Favourite Paper tracks Exclusive Olympic Stories, Robert Scheer types at all hours at his Summer Olympics blog

OLYMPIC GAMES With the countdown entering its final phase high hopes enter our hearts: On Your Marks
Finally, someone else gets to host an Olympics and Sydney is relegated to the role of married older sibling watching with patronising amusement as a younger brother or sister prepares for the big day.
First thing first, Czech Out the official home for Athens 2004 Greece will make history once again, as it did in 1896 with the revival of the Games.
The graphics are eerily familiar and much of the information reflects all those issues we were so concerned about four years ago: tickets, transport, volunteers, etc. There is an impressive interactive schedule of every session of every sport. So if you simply have to see the Preliminary Duet Free Routine of the synchronised swimming, you'd better keep the morning of August 24 (Australian-time) free.
The other big "official" Olympics site belongs to the IOC, where you are left in no doubt that the international sporting fest is a Very Important Thing Indeed. This dry effort is short of anything resembling fun or excitement.
Here, for example, is the bizarre entry under a section entitled Passion: Over and above sporting exploits, Olympism is a source of multiple passions which unite the worlds of sport, art, culture and collections. Olympism is a state of mind and the Olympic Museum is its symbol. Glad we got that straight.
• ATHENS OLYMPICS ON LINE [A hit of escape, the suggestion of Olympic stamina, balanced with a surreal experience: If I could get every teenager to memorise it, the future world would not be peppered with bullies]
•· · Olympians barred from blogging? No blogging from Olympic village [ Making the case for Milo of Croton, winner of 6 consecutive Olympic wrestling titles before 500BC, to be named as greatest Olympic champion of all time]
•· · Great Aussie hopes for gold All that glitters is gold, they say. See who amongst the Australian team is most likely to reach glittering glory in Athens
•· · · PVRBlog: Tips and thoughts and comments; [ The idea doesn't have to be Olympic. It just has to change the world]
•· · · Will Athens win a gold for security? [ GREEK SECURITY TEAM FAILS TO NOTICE GIANT HORSE ; Security Czech and Slovak Style anti-chemical warfare specialists to help guard the Olympics: The country's specialised troops were the only ones to detect traces of nerve gas in the Saudi Arabian desert during the 1991 Gulf War]

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HE is a man who has lied and dissembled, and a man who has crawled. He knows the taste of boot-polish. He has suffered kicks in the tonneau of his pantaloons. He has taken orders from his superiors in knavery and he has wooed and flattered his inferiors in sense. His public life is an endless series of evasions and false pretenses. He is willing to embrace any issue, however idiotic, that will get him votes, and he is willing to sacrifice any principle, however sound, that will lose them for him. I do not describe the democratic politician at his inordinate worst; I describe him as he is encountered in the full sunshine of normalcy. He may be, on the one hand, a cross-roads idler striving to get into the State Legislature by grace of the local mortgage-sharks and evangelical clergy, or he may be, on the other, the President of the United States. It is almost an axiom that no man may make a career in politics in the Republic without stooping to such ignobility: it is as necessary as a loud voice.
H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: An End to Election-rigging in the State that Gave Gerrymander to the English language
We tell ourselves that we live in the world's greatest democracy, one whose government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. In fact we live in nothing of the sort, at least as far as our national legislature is concerned. Thanks to modern gerrymandering, most congressional districts have been turned into a Democratic or Republican monopolies -- constituencies meticulously mapped to lock in one-party supermajorities and guarantee election results long before voters go to the polls.
• The Gerrymandering scandal in American politics [ PDF version: Presidential Selection: Electoral Fallacies ]
• · That losing elitist feeling Are Most of Us Destined to Join Life's Losers? [Great Britain of Timothy Ash: Many think intellectuals begin at Calais. But we have them and need them in Britain; Lesser Amerika of Mark Schmitt: On Barbara Ehrenreich and Elites; Elitists repeat that France is in crisis: Even conferences on French national identity outnumber the striptease shows in Paris]
• · · Europe's youngest leader: Czech Prime Minister Stanislav Gross's government took office on 4 August 2004.
• · · · It was a winter's night in Iowa, round about midnight: John Kerry should have been wrapping up a town meeting, but he had decided to go into his I will answer every question mode
• · · · · EVEN as parliament workers moved into the new building at Holyrood last week, the message running round the world is how angry the Scots are about the escalating price, up from £40 to £431 million Almost 11 times the initial estimate; the Sydney Opera House cost only 10 times its original budget. Scottish Parliament: Was it worth it?
• · · · · · · Bear Pit Laboratory: Psychologists try to learn how to spot a liar

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Frightening : am I doomed to spend every single night thinking about something intelligent to say, to finally realize the vacuum in my head?
Remember the Moral of the Story
Cass Sunstein returns to the liberal's liberal, FDR, and recommends a new bill of rights to fight terror Time For A Global Bill Of Rights


Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Lawyers: Beware of the Blog!
Michael Jackson has one. Martha Stewart paid top dollar for hers. And the Justice Department got one as a gift in its antitrust trial against Oracle Corp.
Web sites dedicated to a specific trial are ushering in a new era of client service, said Denise M. Howell, a Web log booster and intellectual property litigator who is of counsel to the Los Angeles office of Reed Smith.
Not only is it critical to know who will try your case. It's important to consider who will 'blog' it.
The Web log that sparked Howell's enthusiasm is devoted to a civil case, the Department of Justice's antitrust action against Oracle in San Francisco.
• New York Lawyer It takes all types, literally [Not all political blogs need to be all blog things Walk the Line ]
• · The John Kerry campaign has been uncharacteristically steamy recently, even the Queer Eye guys are going, Get a room!: Hugs, kisses to the cheek, affectionate touching of the face, caressing of the back, grabbing of the arm, fingers to the neck, rubbing of the knees... [ N for Nader: R is for reverse. And D is for drive. America, we must get out of reverse and move into drive. The leadership team of John Kerry and John Edwards is the perfect vehicle to move us forward]
• · · Political blog watch: There were two groups of Media Dragons ...The in-blog and out-blog crowds [The world's first and only pari-mutuel blog Poolitics.com offers ideologues of all stripes and colors the ability to put their money where their mouth is by entering real-money predictive contests (Pools) ]
• · · · Political junkies seeking a steady morphine drip of facts, innuendo and rumour could ... click-and-dance from blog to blog until their eyeballs turned dry
• · · · · Ach, Kanada and its Shawinigen handshake: Living in interesting times: The Canadian election and its meaning
• · · · · · · Let's Rock the Boat: That is the kind of America that I will lead as president: an America where we are all in the same boat

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Terrorism's Harvest How al-Qaeda is tapping into the opium trade to finance its operations

Tracking Policies & Investigative Stories: Free Bitter Pill
Australian concession card holder David Nolan pays just $3.80 a month for the tablets that keep his cholesterol from reaching dangerous levels and the Australian taxpayer subsidises him to the tune of $60. American patient Paulette Beaudoin would pay at least twice as much for the same script…out of her own pocket.
It is this striking difference between the two systems that has raised suspicions about what the Free Trade Agreement will mean for our system of subsidised medicines.
Since signing the Free Trade Agreement in May, the Australian government has continually insisted that it will not affect the price of drugs, nor will it affect our much-valued Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
And yet, there are influential Americans who argue that Australia has been freeloading for too long and point darkly to the future:
…there's no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody has to pay for the research and development of these miracle drugs, says Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican who has visited Australia as one of the chief lobbyists.
Jonathan Holmes travels to the United States and discovers why a powerful and vociferous lobby group would like to wear down the Australian system…and why the ordinary American, struggling to meet the cost of much-needed drugs, looks at Australia with envy.
• The Rich Gang up on the Poor at Trade Talks... [via Four Corners ]
• · Out of Many, One: Out of This Long Political Darkness a Brighter Day Will Come [Media Watch: Politicians in the ABC archive]
• · · PDF Format: Capitalism with Chinese characteristics: the public, the private and the international [From The Globalist, on how Russia met the world]
• · · · All The Pretty Words Optimists or opponents, we need our politicians to deal with the real problems facing America [The French, Russian and now Marketing Antipodean Revolution in Politics]
• · · · · Everyone has a favorite investigative journalist: Stacy St. Clair writing for the Chicago's Daily Herald [Michael Schwalbe: New Tobacco Image Masks Deadly Business as Usual... ]
• · · · · · Lawrence Martin Patriot Game, Media Shame

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Attorney General John Ashcroft has put a plug in the whistle of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. Ms. Edmonds, a naturalized US citizen born in Turkey, is at the center of one of the most interesting government secrecy debates in... Office of Inspector General backs FBI whistle-blower

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: The Spectator has hit rock bottom
No individuality. No dissent. No private property. No choice. No freedom. And Matthew Parris, political columnist for the freaking Times, loved it. He concludes by admitting that communism failed - you're really going out on a limb there, Matthew - but falls back on the tired "it was great in theory but failed in practice" line.
This is what The Spectator has become. Now that they've published apologias for Saddam Hussein and the Soviet Union, I wonder what's next? North Korea? Fascist Italy? (It's not yet acceptable to praise Nazi Germany, but give it a few years...)
• Matthew Parris praises the hope and decency of Soviet communism ; [No cover-up - and victims' families outraged; Ach, the good old days, when for a pair of Levis and a pack of Marlboros you could buy anybody westernstandard.blogs.com/ ]
• · An extraordinary archive of some of the most important documentary evidence from the Revolution, including 338 texts, 245 images, and a number of maps and songs Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring The French Revolution
• · · It was the week the US Democratic Party held its quadrennial national convention in Boston Hope is on the way, culminating in the crowning of Senator John Kerry as their presidential candidate [ John Kerry is a good man, who knows how to steer a ship through troubled waters ]
• · · · A Chat With Middle East Expert Bernard Lewis: Europe Will Be Islamic By the End of the Century
• · · · · Mordechai Vanunu was the Israeli atomic spy: Atom Expert Warns of a Second Chernobyl in Israel
• · · · · · · van StrpkaSlovakia: The Past is Now: I cut an apple in two, yet it remains whole ; Ivan Klima - Czech Story: put my trust in God, that after the wrath of the storm has passed by, the storm that we have brought over our heads through our sins, control over your own affairs shall return to you, oh Czech people!