Slippergate…FAIL!

Ah the Coalition…always good for a laugh. Whether it’s the batshit insane hyperbole they spout at the drop of a hat or the lengths they will go to to demonstrate their mastery of hypocrisy, they can always be relied upon to stuff themselves up eventually.

Without even delving into the depths of the Thomson affair, where they are repeatedly asking for his vote to be excluded in Parliament (in defiance of every democratic principle) because he is under investigation for a civil matter, neatly ignoring the fact that two of their own members are currently under investigation for civil matters as well (Mirabella and Turnbull) and that one of their own Senators has been charged and convicted of theft and assault and was still allowed to vote, we can see how laughable any of their intonations of being the party of integrity and principle really are.

Then of course we come to Utegate Mark II Slippergate.  It started out with dire predictions and commentary of corruption and homosexual predation of staffers, manna from heaven for the scum gutter press we have here.

As the days rolled on this has been revealed to be as flimsy as tissue paper, with Slipper first producing Cabcharge copies to refute those claims, resulting in Ashby dropping that issue from his case.  Then we had revelations that both Pyne and Brough, Slipper’s mortal enemy in his seat, had both had contact with Ashby prior to him proceeding with his case…but nothing suss here.  In fact, they both strenuously denied any contact with him only to be caught out later with proof.  Seriously amateur hour stuff.

Next we have a finding that Ashby is running a trial by media because he didn’t go through the normal procedures for sexual harassment of mediation etc., but went straight for the lawsuit and media angle.  Again nothing suss there right?  There have also been whispers around (provided by VexNews) that Ashby was paid $50000 to lodge his claim, which was suspiciously timed to be right before the Budget being handed down with the promised surplus.  I know it sounds a bit conspiracy-theoryish, but why did he sit on these claims for months and only produce them at the time most guaranteed to hurt the Government the most, and couple this with his contact with Pyne and Brough prior to lodging the claims and it looks seriously dodgy.

And now comes the final nail in the coffin, or more likely bullet in the foot.  Ashby has added further to his claims, with him accusing Bob Carr and Barnaby Joyce of “vicitimising” him by comments on Twitter.   I know there’s many people all over the world who are profoundly traumatised by negative comments on a free social network service, especially when you have to search to read those comments or opt to follow the people who are making them voluntarily…I mean it’s the worst pain in the world isn’t it?  /sarc

If this doesn’t immediately highlight the character of the sort of people in the LNP I don’t know what else will.  I fully expect Ashby’s case to be laughed out of court and him to be thrown to the wolves by his LNP/Coalition handlers.  If we’re really lucky he’ll name names and spill the details of how this was manufactured…even the media won’t ignore something this juicy that trashes their sponsors.

Political soft-cocks

While watching Sunrise (yes…I know) this morning I came across yet another example of political media fuckwittery that set my blood boiling.  To top this all off, it was compounded even further by the lamest of lame appearance by a politician on their “Big Guns of Politics” section.  Let me explain.

Sunrise started with Kochie’s “serious” voice declaiming that the government is going to send asylum seekers to a five star resort on the Gold Coast.  Now this statement has very little relation to the actual facts which are:

1. The resort has been closed for years.
2. The resort (Kooralbyn) is 1.5 hours from the coast so hardly counts as “on the Gold Coast”
3. Any people there are unlikely to get maid service and play golf all day.

Of course reality doesn’t get eyes on screen or boost ratings so beat-up has become the method for any and all political stories on these shows…even though they are only going to be superficially covered.

Then the political douchery upped itself a notch when Joe Hockey and Tony Burke hit the screen.  Not missing an opportunity to push the talking points and wheel out a 3 word slogan, Joe hooked in to the asylum seeker debate with the tired old One Nation Liberal lines that Government has no clue, boats should be stopped, Nauru should be back on the agenda yada yada yada….basically everything we’ve ever heard before.

Now you’d think this would be easy stuff for Tony Burke to dispatch considering it’s all been heard before, but does he?  Pigs arse he does!  When Joe trotted out the tired old line that the boats stopped when Nauru was active, in the biggest display of soft-cockery I’ve ever seen Burke let’s him get away with it.  No rebuttal that world wide asylum seeker numbers had dropped at the same time, no recitation that Australian asylum seeker numbers are proportional to world numbers, and no reiteration that the percentage of asylum seekers arriving by boats is miniscule compared to the visa overstayers or those arriving by plane.

The Government should stop being scared of how they are portrayed in the media and use these live opportunities to savage these bullshit talking points of the Opposition.  They should be laughing off their crap assertions and countering with facts and figures at every chance instead of letting them drag the conversation into their own right-wing parallel universe.

You’d think they would have learnt by now that the Australian public doesn’t respect a pussy…show some guts and take the fight back, especially when you absolutely have the facts on your side.

Opposition shows true colours…AGAIN

Once again the Opposition has shown that there is no measure to how low they will go in their attempts to force their way into Government.

Noted humanitarian Scott Morrison has been polluting the airwaves with his notion that the Government shouldn’t have “wasted” taxpayer dollars flying the families of those victims of the Christmas Island drownings to Sydney for the funerals..after all those refos are rolling in it, why couldn’t they pay for their own ticket.

Frankly this just turns my stomach.  The cost of the airfares would probably be substantially less than what this arsehole has for a stationery allowance in a year (especially toner ) and he has the nerve to raise this.  Of course he’s attempting to pander to the Liberals’ loyal following of mouth-breathers and Alan Jones listeners, and has a really good go at it by conflating two of their main (only?) talking points:  refugees and Government waste.  Naturally not wanting to miss a media grab (especially as Mark Riley wasn’t around), Abbott jumps in as well, because as we all know the Independents are simply frothing at the mouth looking for a chance to dump the Government and by golly a few thousand bucks for flying refugees to a funeral sounds like the perfect opportunity.  Arseclown.

Daring to be different, Uncle Joe Hockey pops up with a faux-compassionate take in an attempt to differentiate himself from the raving lunatics in his own party.  Couple this with his attempts to get back on Sunrise on a regular basis and it looks like he’s laying the groundwork for his own tilt as the next big Liberal failure when Abbott get knifed/self-combusts/implodes/gets staked through the heart.

But before we all go into raptures at the thought of a “moderate” Liberal leader, we shouldn’t forget that Joe is the man who:

- was part of the chain of clueless that comprised the Opposition’s budget reply last year

- thinks that having an accounting firm check that your spreadsheet totals add up is an audit

- thinks that $11 billion of bullshit pre-election costings aren’t really that important

Luckily for the Opposition the media has their back and you can expect them to be fully covered by spin and FUD whenever their true incompetence comes to light.

Tony Abbott – nothing but FAIL

Tony, Tony, Tony…ah he’s the gift that just keeps on giving.

Since the beginning of year it’s been one brain fart after another for the Mad Monk, leading us all to realise just how tightly controlled he was during the election.  Frankly I’m surprise we didn’t have photos of Brian Loughnane with his hand up Abbott’s back working his mouth in that period.

Tony’s recent outstanding performances have really come to light since the rains and flooding in Queensland, and he’s just powered on through ever since.

Firstly, he’s opened up with a lovely duet with Bananaby Joyce of “government didn’t build dams so the flooding is their fault”.  There’s so much fail in this statement it’s hard to know where to begin, but the obvious one is that it’s impossible to dam a FLOOD PLAIN YOU MORON.  Also the fact that his state counterparts were against the dams should have given him pause, but that’s for weaker, more logical minds than his.

Next, in the peak of the floods he’s come out with the gem that he wasn’t going to politicise the disaster, but instead was going to go up there and make sure the government didn’t waste any money.  This shows us exactly where his priorities lie…not assisting people after a natural disaster, but money.  The man’s a positive saint!  How he didn’t get elected PM with that caring, all-inclusive attitude I’ll never know.

He then proceeded to return to his holidays…not necessarily a bad thing as it left the people who would actually be useful helping out at ground zero.  Of course he then saw Kevin Rudd getting press coverage by helping out (in his own electorate) so thought he’d get some of that.  He rocked up somewhere muddy, washed a couple of walls WHILE WEARING SUIT PANTS and then pissed off again once the cameras had finished “accidentally” catching him at work.  Truly a man of the people.

He then doubled-down in the hypocrisy stakes by whinging about the one-off levy the Government is going to impose to rebuild Qld infrastructure by:

a)  Stating that people wouldn’t want to pay twice and lying about the fact that the levy is for rebuilding and not for giving to people directly.

b)  Ignoring the fact that his Government imposed 6 levies during their time in office, none of which were to fund infrastructure programs, and most used to compensate for ideologically driven programs like the deregulation of the milk and sugar industries or Ansett failure.  I do agree with the gun buy back one though.

Which finally brings us to today.

To continue with his meme of responsible government by opposing everything, Tony has decided to try to block the levy legislation in Parliament.  After all why should everyone pay for those bloody Qlders…it’s not like he ever goes there (outside of an election campaign).

For the final nail in his coffin he has sent out an email to his army of trogodlyte acolytes stating that he is going to oppose this levy with all his might so they don’t have to waste $400 on money that could be used to get their BMW’s detailed, but at the bottom he asks for a DONATION to fund this campaign.

It’s staggering to think that any rational human being (I know I shouldn’t say that in reference to the Monk) would think this is a good idea on any level.  Of course he’s immediately invoked the Howard defence…”it wasn’t me, I didn’t hear anything, must have been a staffer”.

Surely this sort of tin eared approach to populism must prompt the “brains” of the Liberal party to consider a fast exit stage right for him…but then again they’re not exactly bulging with talent to replace him are they.

I say Pyne for LotO…at least we’d get some good comedy out of it.

Gutless act of the week

Just catching up on Grog’s Gamut this morning and I found out he has been outed by some scumbag at the Oz.

Hopefully this won’t deter him from continuing with his excellent blog, but swing by and offer him your support.

Spartacus no more

I’d also suggest you try to stick one up the Oz, but we all know they won’t publish it anyway.

John Howard – clueless to the end

I got the shock of my life when I saw little Johnny’s head pop up on telly this morning.  It seems that he’s been knocked back by the ICC Test playing nations as the next VP of the ICC.

The funny thing is that he is refusing to accept the decision and says that he’ll keep on fighting.  Hmmm…I’m getting a strong sense of deja vu here.  Has he possibly ignored what a majority of people have said and gone his own way before?

And then he’s trotting out the line that Tony Abbott is directly responsible for the downfall of Kevin Rudd because his popularity started going down once Abbott became Opposition leader.

I know politicians aren’t renowned for their grasp of logic, but maybe someone should point out to him that correlation does not equal causation, i.e. just because it happened in the same time frame doesn’t mean he was the cause…a few other things happened in that period.  Not to mention the fact that Abbott has been totally dominated in Parliament by Rudd since he became leader…not that we hear about that at all.

I sense a hint of future election campaiging here…”vote for Abbott, he got rid of Rudd for you”.  The only problem is it’s the dumbest idea I’ve heard in ages and is most likely to backfire spectacularly.

Mind you that won’t stop little Johnny poking his head up groundhog like and pontificating from the sidelines…and you know the media are going to give him as much air time as they possbily can.

Newsflash: MSM are massive hypocrites

Shocking news yes?

I nearly lost my plasma this morning after switching it on and listening to the latest news.

I was shocked to hear about the leadership spill, more so that the idiots finally made one of the media’s bootstrapped beat-ups real.

The thing that nearly made me throw my cup through the screen was that vacuous dickhead Mark Riley pontificating about the spill.  He ran through a brief history mentioning the recent poll drops and spouting off some of the tired old lines about the “stuff-ups” and “backflips” then proceeded to tell us what Julia would do as new PM.

Get this…he says that they would use this as an opportunity to backflip of the RSPT and move to the right on asylum seekers!!  I didn’t think you could move any further to the right on asylum seekers!  Does this guy know anything?  What faction is Julia from…the Left isn’t it?

I congratulate the mainstream media, for after 2 years of bile and vitriol directed at the elected leader of our country, with numerous distortions and lies about government initiatives that saved us from recession, they have finally got something to stick and have sucked in the more stupid factional warlords in the ALP to causing the leadership spill.

I can only hope that Julia doesn’t hold back and rips them a new one when she comes in, as it’s increasingly looks like is going to happen.

Mining executive protesters…are they kidding themselves?

In the latest round of the mining company whinge-fest we had them organise “massive” protests when the PM and cabinet was in Perth.

Now anyone viewing the footage on the news would assume they had stumbled on a corporate retreat or something…they were all in suits for god sake!!!

Add to that the snippet that the protest were headlined by “Australia’s richest woman” and surely everyone can see that they are pushing shit uphill.  Can anyone really take seriously Australia’s richest woman bitching because she’ll have to pay more tax?  Shock, horror…one less Mercedes in the garage for her!!!

And what about Twiggy Forrest rocking up in his miner’s clobber…if anyone thought that was anything but a stunt they are deluded.  It looked like he just took them out of the packet FFS!!!

Couple all of this with stories that the protester’s signs were professionally made by a PR firm employed by the mining companies and you get a really pissweak attempt to astro-turf a dissenting opinion a la the Tea Party hicks in the US.

Frankly I’d be surprised if any normal person thought the mining companies are out for anything but themselves…but you never know considering the full facts are not being publicised.

Political discourse hits a new low

I didn’t think it was possible, but political discourse in Australia has hit a new low courtesy of Channel 7 and Sunrise.

Yesterday they had a ridiculous stunt where they proposed a new alternative politician to vote for Don Key (donkey, as in donkey vote…you see how clever that was? *end sarcasm*).

They had a touch screen voting booth where passersby could register who they thought would make the best PM.  Now being Australian and fully ready to go along with any gag no matter how piss-weak, 44% of people voted for the donkey.

They then took it one step further and took the donkey to the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra and had various Opposition members and Independents hamming it up on camera.  That tool Wilson Tuckey even whacked some hastily cobbled together saddlebags with “$170 billion debt” on it.

They also had chief political arse-clown Mark Riley interviewing it…mind you it’s the best interview he’s done in a while.

This morning they had the nerve to say this stunt was all in aid of highlighting the fact that voters are turning away from the major political parties and what are their alternatives.

Well duurrrrr!!!  Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy.  The media has done their utmost to make this next election more of a contest, purely for their own sales figures/ratings, by giving the opposition a free pass, beating up any minor issue with government policies and viciously attacking the PM, and then have the nerve to wonder why people are turning away!!

On a side note, I saw the MCA add about the RSPT for the first time last night…it was all I could do not to put my fist through the screen.

What a load of lies and made-up bullshit!  No wonder the government needs to advertise to counter this crap…it’s pure propaganda for the mining companies and not in any way based on reality.

Inaugural Spray

Welcome to my new blog.

The target for my first spray is the 500 kilo gorilla squatting in everyone’s corner…the Australian mainstream media.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s noticed the tone of the media lately…particularly when it comes to anything relating to politics or the Government, but lately it seems to have hit a whole new benchmark of hysteria.

We can always count on the usual suspects in the media to sink the boot into the Government at any point, whether it’s justified or not (I’m looking at you Akerman, Bolt, Milne, any Limited News journo), but now it seems like it’s stacks-on for everyone.

Normally mellow outlets like Sunrise (I’m ashamed to admit I watch it in the mornings) have favoured taking the brick bats to the Government, particularly the arse-clown in chief Kochie.

Just lately I have noticed a distinct flavour to his interviews with either politicians or experts commenting on policy. He will feed them a question relating to the latest media beat-up with expectation of the interviewee reinforcing his not-so-subtly-hidden viewpoint. When to his complete shock they soot him down and inject some long missing reality into his bubble world, he attempts to cut them off and has been seen to shut them down with the “that’s enough of that” line in an attempt to switch to a different topic.

If this is becoming the norm for softies like Kochie, can you even begin to comprehend how things are over at The Australian??

The Australian newspaper has long have the reputation as being a mouthpiece for the Liberal/National coalition.  This was fairly obvious in the dying years of the Howard Government and has kicked up several thousand notches since Labor took power.  It’s gotten to the point where everything the government does is bad and the Opposition just have the best interest of the country at heart.

We all know of the massive non-troversy that the BER beat-up has become in the pages of the Oz.  If you only ever read that you would think that every building added to a school was massively over quoted and not at all what the school needs.  Do you think that they actually reported that of the 24000 projects running, about 100 were being investigated?  If they did do you think they made it prominent?

In my opinion news media these days is no longer about the news…it’s about making money with reporting facts running a very very distant 4th.  They have worked out that nothing sells papers like shock and controversy, so even when none exists it will get beaten up until everyone thinks it is one.

Also no-one wants to hear that an election result is a foregone conclusion…a narrow contest generates more excitement.  Hence the ridiculous amount of character assassination on the Prime Minister and slagging off of every one of his policies.  Now that the last couple of polls have shown a turn-around on opinion against the PM, they must be happy little vegemites that their long campaign has worked.

Frankly, they all disgust me and to this end I have stopped buying any newspapers.  The nightly news is a joke, particularly when they sound more like Today Tonight and ACA every day and when those two programs have become the televised version of New Idea…where the majority of stories are just made-up bullshit pushing the theme of the week, usually a combination of dole bludgers or illegal immigrants or preferably both.

They can all get stuffed.