Border protection

STOP THE GOATS!

 

Fact v. opinion: surely not even Tony Abbott can be that dumb

From The Age online this morning:

An IT consultant challenged Mr Abbott over bagging climate scientists and economists, asking: 'Who would you listen to out of the experts?'

'The public,' Mr Abbott said. 'In a democracy in the end the people are sovereign.'

Either he really does think science is a democracy – in which case, well, you know – or he is *gasp* LYING.

This story reminded me of something I heard on ABC radio yesterday: a baby journalist interviewing another baby journalist -- for this is what passes in these benighted days as news -- about the Prime Minister's Press Club speech. 'Ms Gillard said she thought journalists were getting facts confused with opinions,' said the young woman. 'Do you agree with that, Peter?'

Destroying our way of life

The [carbon] tax, after all, was not on people, but on 500 high-polluting companies. The compensation was to guard against costs those companies might pass on to their customers.

So, no big deal, I said to myself when the details were announced. Surely this’ll all blow over. And then, found myself more than a little surprised when a Herald-Sun commenter (one step above YouTube on the food-chain, I’ll admit) said “Somebody needs to assassinate Julia Gillard NOW before she totally destroys our way of life.”

Gee, and there was I thinking one of the cornerstones of our way of life was the luxury of living in a country where heads of state don't get assassinated.

Quotation is from the brilliant rant here at Heathen Scripture.

Speedos on fire

Whenever Julia Gillard takes a different position on something from the position on it that she took some time in the past, Tony Abbott and his goons immediately revive the 'Ju-Liar' meme.

But when Tony Abbott does a complete 180 degree turn, it's because 'everything was different then'.

And the reason for this is that, like, um. Because, erm.

Face it, Tony, you've made an utter dickhead of yourself, yet again, and have demonstrated, yet again, that you don't give a rat's arse about the long-term future and all you're interested in is being Prime Minister.

I notice he doesn't explain why 'It was before Copenhagen' (say what?) should explain why he used to be in favour of a carbon tax and now he thinks it's the devil's work. I get the feeling that what he means when he says 'everything was different then' is that a pro-carbon-tax position was one that opposed what Labor was doing at the time, and he's now still opposing what Labor's doing, so what's the problem, I mean what is the matter with you people? I think he genuinely believes that it his job not to have policies, not to have principles, not to have convictions, not to understand stuff and not to represent his Party, but simply to be loudly against whatever Labor is for.

And if I hear one more person say 'The Opposition's job is to oppose' then I will throw up. Of course it's not the Opposition's job to oppose. The Opposition's job is to provide checks and balances, to represent the people who voted for it, and to maintain itself as a viable alternative guvmint. Good luck with that.

One of the things I really love about Melbourne...

... is that when toxic fuckwittery and mindless, destructive, dangerous shite like American-style "beauty" pageants (ie competitions) for lipstuck, fake-tanned, bumping and grinding six-year-olds (have a look at the one in the second photo, I mean just look at her) threatens to take hold in the city, they read its horrible cultural signs correctly and resist it for all they're worth. I love Melbourne for its thoughtfulness and its substance when I see this kind of thing. For some reason it's a city that contains a high enough ratio of ordinary thoughtful people (to, well, the other kind) for an effective number to dig their heels in and protest the house down when the more demented aspects of western culture show their faces. And it's right across assorted demographics and suburbs, from Northcote or Prahran where you'd expect resistance to Balwyn or Vermont where you wouldn't, so much. Go, Melburnians. Run this diseased crap out of town on a well-designed rail.

Shoot me now

From today's Crikey:

'Iran's cover up. Baroness Ashton, the EU Foreign Minister, has been given a more modest neckline in Iranian newspaper coverage of the talks in Turkey over Iran's nuclear program. Who said that what women politicians wear does not matter?'

This can't be right, can it? Or can it?

From the ABC website's report on the bill being introduced in Parliament tonight by the Greens' Adam Bandt in support of same-sex marriage:

Philip Ruddock, who was attorney-general in 2004 when a law was passed to define marriage as being "between a man and a woman", said marriage should be limited to those who could procreate.

So: does Ruddock think that not just gays and lesbians, but no women past childbearing age, and nobody of either sex who was born or has been rendered infertile, should be allowed to get married? And to take his remark to its logical conclusion, does he think that any existing marriage in which either partner has become unable to 'procreate' should be dissolved? Including, presumably, his own?

This man held important portfolios in the Howard government for eleven years, and is now on the front bench of an Opposition that came within the width of the fabric of a silk georgette hanky of getting back into government. If it's true that we get the politicians we deserve, then we have all been very bad, and if they are a reflection of us then clearly we have all been very bonkers as well.

Who's sorry now?

Tim Dunlop has a sharply pointed post this morning on the subject of Tony Abbott's sudden discovery that he's actually quite sorry the Howard Government was a bit nasty to Independent Andrew Wilkie (you know, the one almost certain to win the seat of Denison) back in the day, calling him 'unbalanced' and everything.

The fact that Abbott apparently can't see how this looks tells you everything you need to know about his judgement. A nice hot cup of STFU would have been a great deal more to the point. And the waspish comment of the spokesperson suggests that news of this particular apology was never supposed to get out, which indicates that Abbott and his bad judgement are living in Fantasyland as well.

Presumably Jesus wants them for sunbeams instead

One of the things that occurred to me very forcefully several times during the nightmare morning I spent a few years ago in the Assemblies of God stronghold in the Adelaide suburb of (wait for it) Paradise, researching this piece [update: they seem to have put it behind a paywall, sorry!], was that many of the less, how you say, cerebral people among Christians tend to use Jesus (Assemblies of God are very very big on Jesus) as a sort of all-purpose blank screen onto which to project their desires, fantasies and fears. So while I didn't see Q and A last night [CORRECTION: it was not last Monday's but an earlier Q and A, on April 5 this year. This error has been kindly brought to my attention by Ken Lovell. Hi Ken *waves*], the telly still being borked and me still being too disorganised busy to get and set up a new one (new antenna, furniture-moving, nine-yard logistics narrative), it comes as no surprise to read this morning a particularly stupid and indeed mildly offensive remark made last night [on April 5] by Mr Rabbit in answer to a question about asylum seekers:

"Jesus didn't say yes to everyone, Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it is not necessarily everyone's place to come to Australia."

Jesus wept. 

Last time Abbott said something like this (for it is his line, and he has been holding it for some years) I was silly enough to make what I would have thought was the obvious 'No room at the inn' argument to a Christian, Abbott-loving friend of mine (yes yes, I know). It made him incandescent with rage and scorn, but I'm still waiting for him to explain exactly why it's not a valid point.

He's grounded in a what now?

The only possible explanation for Miranda Devine's latest shamefully dishonest naive rave (Rooty Hill was not in any way scripted or rigged? Yes, and I am Scarlett Johansson) is that some sub at the website has been at the Laphroiag, for how, otherwise, could this manifestly nonsensical sentence have made it online?

His wife Margaret's amused disdain for his baby-holding abilities in the campaign gives another clue to Abbott's groundedness.

Got that? The facts that (a) by Devine's own account, his wife is disdainful of him and (b) he doesn't know how to hold a baby (which would seem to indicate that he rarely held his own when they were small), taken together, are a 'clue' to Abbott's 'groundedness.'

Remember that raspberry thing Paul Keating did in Parliament that time with his index finger and his bottom lip? Consider it done.

His is bigger than yours

Thanks to Clementine Ford (aka Audrey Apple) for alerting me on Facebook to this extraordinary item about penis size.

You'd think it would have to be a joke, but they sound deadly serious to me. And you'd think that they'd be aware by now that penis size tends to vary depending on what you happen to be doing at the time, and if they're going to get a girl to measure their bits, then, well, you know.

Why do they want to know? And what do they plan to do with this information once they have it? It's already clear that neither of them trusts his girlfriend, or each other, so obviously this is a rocky quartet of relationships to start with. Have they given even a moment's thought to the effect this little exercise is going to have on their friendship? It looks to me as though what they really want is to never speak to each other again, but you'd think in that case they could just do it, in the Nike spirit, and save themselves the fifty bucks.

Men are weird.

Moving Australian working families forward with a great big new tax

Can anyone familiar with PR and/or media training please explain to me the reasoning behind advising pollies (for surely they must have been advised; they can't be doing anything this stupid off their own bat) to just keep plugging away with slogans despite the fact that it makes everyone in the country want to take to them with a baseball bat after they've heard it the first ten times or so?

Is there some deeply rooted belief that slogans will sink in if repeated often enough despite conscious resistance to them? I do not believe that this is true. None of them have sunk into me yet, nor into anyone with whom I've discussed it. Every time Kevin Rudd said Working Families I thought Christ this is a stupid slogan, it doesn't even make sense, unless you picture tiny tots being shoved up the chimneys or down the mines. Every time Tony Abbott says Great Big New Tax, all I think about is how pathetic and unrealistic people are who expect the guvmint to do stuff for them, like build roads and provide hospitals, with fairy dust or leprechaun money, and I redouble my commitment to paying tax even for stuff I don't personally approve of. (Someone who wants the guvmint to support opera needs to be pretty generous in her tolerance of supporting the Institute of Sport, after all.)

And now we have Julia Gillard chanting Moving Australia Forward, another bit of meaningless wankery. No, no, let's move Australia backwards. Eventually we'll bump into South Africa. (And won't that be fun.)

Gillard is a very very bright person and must be aware from her years in the law how easy it is to irritate and alienate the people you are talking to. She gave Working Families a fair old nudge herself when she was Deputy PM and there's obviously some heavy pressure coming at her from somewhere to keep this chanting up. But why? And from where? And why don't the pollies rise up in a bipartisan body and say No we're just not doing this any more, it makes us look like idiots? And who invents these mindless little choruses in the first place?

This is hilarious

Memo to the Liberal Party: if you want to sell something to women, enlisting the aid of the aggressive, amoral, antifeminist dick-wavers in their 20s who tend to abound in PR and advertising is probably not a fabulously good way to go about it.

That would be the case with any product you were trying to sell. But when the product you're trying to sell is Tony Abbott, well, think of a number and double it.

The party is understood to have appointed Splash Consulting, an agency that focuses on marketing to women, to conduct research in up to eight key marginal seats where women have been identified as crucial to a swing against the government.

And I bet it's cost them a squillion bucks and we don't need to ask where that money came from, do we now. And yet, I can think of a foolproof way of selling Tony Abbott to women voters and the Liberal Party is very welcome to my advice for free:

Give him a head transplant.

FTFY.

Sometimes what you're advertising isn't what you meant to say

I've just come home from brunch with friends down the posh end of town, and as I crossed the road to return to the car I became mesmerised by a large banner slung overhead across King William Road. It was an ad for Pulteney Grammar School, one of Adelaide's pricey private schools, showing a picture of a little girl with plaits, bent studiously over an exercise book.

Above the photo, in giant letters wholly innocent of punctuation, appeared the following exhortation:

SEE YOUR CHILD DISCOVER WHO THEY REALLY ARE

(Thinks: 'Hello darling, how was your day?'
'Excellent! I saw Ermintrude discover who they really are!'
'Who who really are?'
'Ermintrude.'
'Um, what?'
Etc.)

Now, I don't have any kids, and if I did they'd probably be beyond school by now, but if I had and they weren't and I was looking to educate them, any school that advertised itself using the so-called 'singular they' would get crossed off my list sharpish.

Equivalences

Let me get this straight: Christine Nixon is to be crucified for taking an hour off, when she wasn't even rostered on, in order to have dinner -- but it's cause for gasps of meeja admiration when the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition goes AWOL on a nine-day bike ride, taking yet another opportunity to wobble his budgie at slavering photographers and horrified truckies for the entire length of the Hume Highway.

Because, like, he's fit, and she's, you know, not, and everyone knows the skinned rabbit look equals virtue whereas a traditionally built lady must by definition be, you know, evil.

Have I got that right?

Have a read of that linked article, and then ask yourself how much more vile, ignorant, sniggering, misogynist fat-hate Nixon would be copping even than she already is if she were to emulate the Leader of the Opposition and say, in defence of the shocking crime of having an evening meal, 'I'm just being myself.'

I know Florida is odd, but still

The 'Say what?' feature at the Doonesbury site offers a daily sample of demented quotations from US public life. Here's today's:

"If you voted for Obama... seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your health care begin right now, not in four years."

-- sign on the office door of Florida urologist Jack Cassell

I suppose long immersion in matters urological might do strange things to your temper and world view eventually, but this is just extraordinary, possibly even illegal. And Robin Williams reckons we're unevolved.

Mind you, I imagine anyone who voted for Obama would, on seeing Cassell's sign, fall over themselves to get as far away from it and him as possible, so the Pollyanna view is that it's a win-win.

Only 8 days to the SA election, but who will save us from Lara Bingle?

If I see the mindless expression 'spin over substance' trotted out one more time with reference to SA Premier Mike Rann and his government, I'm going to have what my grandmother used to call A Turn.

But alas, there's only one thing journos (and apparently their readers) love more than alliteration, and that's a nice simple false dichotomy. Those who keep saying 'spin over substance' believe, or would have us believe, or both, that the relation of spin to substance is the same as the relation of black to white, good to evil, night to day, you get the picture. I don't know which is the more annoying, the woolly-mindedness or the sibilance and sussuration.

Because as any South Australian with eyes in his or her head is perfectly well aware, Rann has both spin and substance in abundance. You may not like his substance, but you cannot deny that he has it. He may have less of it in some areas (like water), but he certainly has more of it in others, like the healthy state economy, the low unemployment rate and the massive improvements in Adelaide's roads and traffic flow in half a dozen different places over the last eight years. Everything except the really intractable problems (like water) appears to have gone pretty smoothly throughout his two terms thus far, in spite of his, erm, strange team and his apparent ongoing, erm, disagreements with the legal profession.

But the brutal populist Laura Norder policies, even in their weird ideological disconnect from the Social Inclusion Unit headed by a priest appointed by fiat, are a different thing from a lack of substance. So, even, is this silly business with the former waitress, she of the 'funny, flirty friendship' (and if you believe that, then I've got a nice bridge you might like to buy -- though 'funny' is appropriate, if not in the way Rann meant it). Take down their pants and their brains fall out, as my baby sister is wont, tersely, to observe, but that doesn't indicate 'lack of substance' either, whatever else it might be a symptom of.

Unfortunately, shapely blondes are right up there with alliteration and false dichotomy when it comes to what the meeja likes most, so the non-story about the alleged long-gone affair with the waitress is the one we keep hearing over and over again, not least because said waitress keeps popping up behind microphones and in front of cameras -- not unlike that other shapely blonde whose non-story is taking up so much space not only in the sports pages but also in the news pages at the moment. The SA election is only eight sleeps away, but who knows how much longer we're all going to be subjected daily to more breathless, sleazy fluff about the hapless Lara Bingle?

And meanwhile, back on Planet Janet ...

I missed Janet Albrechtsen's bizarre paean of praise to Tony Abbott's honesty, sexiness and social grace in yesterday's Australian and frankly I wish I'd missed it altogether, but since it has been called to my attention, here is an interpretation.

Her overall argument appears to be that, in general (and in spite of the ghost of the example of Mark Latham that is forever before us, and away from which few of us can tear our gaze), a propensity for physical violence self-expression holds irresistible sexual allure. If I were Abbott, I would be backing away from that one at a run and yes I am sure he is indeed fit enough to run backwards. NOW READ ON ...

[Abbott] has something that is rare in the hermetically sealed, carefully controlled politico-bubble of Canberra. It's called authenticity.

That will be why his pronouncements on climate change (or, rather, on the government's actions on climate change) suggest that he wakes up every morning and tosses a coin to decide whether he'll believe in it today or not, depending on what he thinks is more likely to win votes.

And I'm betting women kind of like that.

Really? How much? Double or nothing?

Sure, some will never admit it openly.

How handy for your argument, then, Janet, should anyone ever challenge you to prove it.

Aghast, they will tell you that his religious convictions about abortion, RU486 and stem-cell research jar with a modern girl's feminist choices.

They are not 'feminist choices', and here you are showing, yet again, just how little you know or understand about feminism. They are human choices, to which, feminists argue, women have at least as much right as, say, the 20-year-old Tony Abbott you refer to below, the one whose frankness about his abandonment of his pregnant girlfriend you find 'graceful'.

But sure enough, many of these same women may find themselves muttering quietly among their closest girlfriends that, secretly, they find Abbott attractive.

I've certainly known more than a few women to mutter that secretly they found Turnbull attractive. Abbott, not so much.

While Abbott is known in today's neutered world of politics

This, of course, is nasty code for the inoffensive-looking and quietly spoken Kevin Rudd. Who, when last one looked, had a wife who looks like she has lots of fun, plus an assortment of happy-looking children.

for his off-the-cuff clangers

'Clangers' are the opposite of 'neutered', got that? Yeah, see, some of us think of Abbott's clangers .. erm .. no, I can't go on.

*Sticks fingers in ears, sings LA LA LA very loudly*

he is also a complicated mass of contradictions

About things like whether or not he believes in AGW from one day to the next, you mean? Or perhaps whether or not people should be allowed to choose whether or not they're ready to be parents?

The antithesis of the political nerd,

More nasty code for K. Rudd.

he is a head-kicker with a brain and a heart.

If either his brain or his heart were working properly, he wouldn't be a head-kicker. QED. Head-kicker. A kicker of heads. Think about it.

Sounds kind of interesting, doesn't it?

Um, no.

There is a candour to Abbott that is disarming.

Perhaps it disarms you, Janet. Personally I find it very, very arming.

He has admitted that as a 20-year-old, he was callow and unprepared for fatherhood. "I was psychologically unready for parenthood: that is the sad truth about me at the time. I just wasn't ready for it," he told The Bulletin in 2005

*Waits for other shoe to drop*

*Crickets chirping*

Try lining up the men in Canberra. Now look for the one who is the quintessential Aussie bloke

Because as we all know, the quintessential Aussie bloke is what we want running the country. No women, no poofters and no bloody foreigners thank you very much. Nobody with glasses, either. Or who speaks Mandarin. Especially not who speaks Mandarin.

try telling me, girls, that this mix is not even a little bit fascinating.

Janet, this mix is not even a little bit fascinating.

Compared with, say, Rudd.

THAT was unexpected!

So carefully controlled is his exterior,

Some of us call that 'grown up'.

few have any idea about the real Rudd.

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *Sound of sinister organ music*

He could not be more different from the new Opposition Leader.

Well, quite. And how fortunate we all are that that is the case.

I was going to say something about Albrechtsen's misty-eyed paragraph about Abbott's self-described 'love rug' and her hint (made via Nigella Lawson so it wasn't actually really Janet who said it, was it) that women who don't like Tony Abbott must be lesbians and everyone knows lesbians are, you know, icky. I was going to say something about it. But it is too, you know, icky.

As an old hippie myself I have neutral feelings about hair. I am far more interested in what is inside the hair or the absence thereof. It's this article's disturbing 'Doesn't being a hairy boxer make Tony sexy!' approach and its dreadfully clumsy attempts at effective rhetoric for propaganda purposes that are the real turnoff here. That, and the viciously unpleasant insinuendo about Rudd, and Planet Janet's generalisations about 'women', to whom she refers throughout not as 'we', but as 'they'. So it's not her that's thinking all this crapola about how sexy Abbott is, oh no. It's just 'women'. Because of course any real woman is far more interested in alpha-male body hair, head-kicking and punch-throwing skills than in wanting to keep her own freedom and live her own life in her own body.

The Return of the Three Stooges

Just happened to catch Tony Abbott's press conference live, the one where he announced his reshuffled front bench. Didn't catch all of it, but here are three of the new faces:

Kevin Andrews
Bronwyn Bishop
Barnaby Joyce

Heh.

Heh heh heh.

Tell you what, too, Mr Abbott, you know that thing you do with your rhetoric, where you say 'contest' or 'fight' or 'battlelines' or 'tough' or 'wimp' about once every 30 seconds? That's really really good. Excellent stuff. Keep doing that.

Also, you know the way you kept ostentatiously picking out and loudly naming female journalists in order to answer their questions? Most of us know you probably wouldn't have done that unless somebody had had a wee word in your shell-like about it beforehand. Wonder who it was.

It's Abbott

Who beat Turnbull by half a toenail, 42-41, after the surprise elimination of Joe Hockey in the first vote.

Holy sh*t. As it were.

Of course you realise this means they will never beat Kevin for the foreseeable.

*Does little dance*

Not to mention the ongoing Liberal Party nomenclaturial farce if Julie Bishop retains the deputy leadership.

Are they mad? I mean, like, barking?