It just gets worse and worse

This is the third disgracefully dishonest headline I've seen today.

Bob Brown has written today to Julia Gillard saying how appalled he was by the placards being waved by Tony Abbott's posse of bussed-in flat-earth clowns, and saying that he knows she has 'broad shoulders' but he also knows that this kind of stuff can be hurtful.

How has The Australian reported this online? Under the headline Anti-tax banners 'hurtful' to Gillard.

The clear implication is that Gillard found them hurtful, and said so, and is therefore a wimp, all of which is complete crapola.

Furthemore, they are not in any way 'anti-tax banners'; they are banners saying, and I quote, 'Ditch the witch' and 'Juliar .... Bob Browns [sic] bitch'. This one is written over a crude background sketch of what I presume are supposed to be the flames of hell, in which they presumably want to burn her. I mean, it wouldn't be a picture of the planet going up in flames, would it.

I've got a headline for them: how about Genetic link suspected between the inability to place an apostrophe correctly and the belief that the sun revolves around the earth.

A message from my computer

'The file “768208-rally-abbott.jpg” could not be opened because it is empty.'

Truer word was never spoken.

Meanwhile, check out this photo. Classy, no?

You can't see her in the photo, but Pauline Hanson was there. I bet Mr Rabbit was very, very careful not to go anywhere near a moving bus.

Because everyone knows you've got a right

A British backpacker has "defended" himself against the breach-of-privacy charges laid against him for covertly filming a young woman in a 'uni-sex bathroom' at a Queensland resort by saying 'I just wanted to see her naked.'

Spot the weasel word here. Yes, that's right: 'just'.

'Just' as distinct from what? The unavoidable implication here seems to be 'I only wanted to see her naked, which is my perfect right as a man and anyway what's the harm, I didn't rape her or anything so what are you all going on about?'

His lawyer calls his actions 'a lapse in judgement.'

Me, I'm off to the bottle shop to see what Scotland has to offer. Somehow a glass of wine just isn't going to cut it, after that.

In the words of the First Dog on the Moon ...

Australia, what have you done?

'One tends to get the type of person who is terribly thrusting and ambitious...'

'Thrusting', eh? I notice Abbott's world view as reflected by his vocabulary hasn't significantly changed in 30 years. Here for your listening pleasure (because it will confirm all your worst fears, and there's always something lushly satisfactory about that) is Tony Abbott, student politician, interviewed at UNE in 1979. Via Larry Buttrose on Facebook.