How Australia's 5th Richest Man Is Trying To Fuck With Your Mind

By Darryl Mason

It's like watching Jabba The Hut channeling Glenn Beck, with a script written by Rupert Murdoch's chief propagandist Andrew Bolt :




Clive Palmer has had some exceptional training in psychological manipulation.

You can break down most of the key Palmer responses into three categories - Emotional Triggers, Fear Triggers and The Brighter Future theme, to inspire hope of better things to come. All of it done purposefully.

The Emotional trigger phrase is "Mums and Dads".

The Fear trigger word is "Destroy".

'The Brighter Future' theme can be seen in variants on what will happen "when" (not if) opposition leader Tony Abbott wins the 2010 Federal Election.


Emotion :

"....when mums and dads and ordinary Australians have seen the treasurer destroy their future and the future retirement."

"Everyone knows this is true. And this is bad for our workforce. It's bad for the mums and dads that work in the mines."

"But don't destroy the economy and don't destroy the industries that are employing thousands of Australians - ordinary mums and dads around Australia."

Fear :

"....ordinary Australians have seen the treasurer destroy their future and the future retirement."

"...that's what the Labor party and Mr Rudd's about - destroying the wealth of Australians."

"But don't destroy the economy and don't destroy the industries that are employing thousands of Australians..."

"(Treasurer Wayne Swan is) suggesting 'Let's take our best industry and destroy it and bring it down to the level of the rest of our economy'."

"...give them the ability to invest in projects that will provide real jobs and create real wealth, not destroy wealth. "

"And that's why we don't like to see it being destroyed by these guys."

"...he's the first person that I'd sack for bringing a tax like this, trying to destroy our resources industry."

"If it ain't broken, leave it alone. Don't try to tinker with it. Don't try to destroy it."

The Brighter Future :

"....let's make a firm stand against the ALP and send them into the Opposition where they belong. And that's what Tony Abbott's going to do in the next election..."

"...this tax is thrown out once and for all as it should be and the Treasurer is thrown out of office as he will be in the next election."

"...the Treasurer should get the boot as well and as the Prime Minister will get the boot at the next election..."

"...that's why Tony Abbott's the last sentry at the gate and he'll throw the Government out at the next election."

Here Palmer manages to cram all three into less than 15 seconds :

"....when mums and dads and ordinary Australians have seen the treasurer destroy their future and the future retirement.

And this is what's really wrong - it goes at the whole viability of our nation and that's why it's got to be stopped and that's why Tony Abbott's the last sentry at the gate and he'll throw the Government out at the next election."

And, for the smirking amusement of his mega-rich pals and his allies in the conservative media elite, he remembers to label his enemies as Communists and Socialists :

"Just because you happen to be a socialist or a communist like we know Mr Swan is, as he wants equal distribution....But comrade Rudd and his team are going to bring them back to Australia."

Communist China is, of course, one of Clive Palmer's biggest investors.


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On April 30, Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, published the transcript of a short debate she had with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott on Channel 9's Today Show. The transcript included every stutter from Abbott, every repeated word, every uh and um.

Was this done for purposes of accuracy, or mockery?

Excerpts :

TONY ABBOTT: There’s no, there’s no, there’s no confusion.

...But let me say this, but let me say this, let me say this....

...I, I, I don’t see why, ah, if they want to make a donation, ah, we, we shouldn’t accept it.

The Full Transcript Is Here

The Greens Are Now Bigger Than The Nationals, Even In The Bush

It won't be the Labor Party or the Liberal Party who see startling swings towards them at Federal Election 2010. It will be The Greens, as Lenore Taylor explains in National Times :

In 2010 the Greens want to be seen as a mainstream party, not a protest movement in political disguise. They base the claim on their polling and on how they have used the power they have already got.

In the latest quarterly breakdown of Newspoll the Greens are polling 11 per cent, 3 percentage points ahead of their 2007 vote. Even taking into account the tendency for opinion polls to slightly overestimate the Greens' vote, it's a strong position. The Greens now outpoll the National Party in both the cities and in the bush.

And ever since 2007, when they found themselves the largest party on the Senate crossbenches with five senators, after the demise of the Democrats, they deliberately set about proving they could be "responsible" holders of the balance of power.

They negotiated the passage of many critical bills including the government's second stimulus package, which Malcolm Turnbull's Coalition opposed. The Greens also negotiated through bills like the youth allowance and the Medicare levy surcharge. The claim to be mainstream could have a significant impact on this year's poll.

In the Senate the Greens will be pitching to the centre - with a message that a vote for them is a vote for stability because they can negotiate a way through legislative deadlocks.

"We're the ones that made the stimulus package better and then voted it through. Without us there wouldn't have been a stimulus package and we are not going to let that be forgotten," (said leader Bob Brown)

The Greens vote in the recent Tasmanian elections was a whopping 21%. Their best result yet. And this makes the gatekeepers of the traditional Two Party State System very, very nervous indeed.

It's going to be a strange election. You'll see Labor hammering The Greens wherever they can, while the Liberals will stay quietish. An unofficial Greens-Liberals coalition may become reality sooner than most political pundits think.

The Full Story Is Here

@TwitterHype

Politicians are calling Federal Election 2010 'The Twitter Election', apparently :

Federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming told a parliamentary seminar discussing the "Twitter election" that politicians could use the social networking site Facebook as a powerful tool to phish phone numbers.

Yes, a federal member of parliament does appear to be lavishing praise on a form of digital identity fraud, at least according to this headline :



From the Courier Mail :

"There is extraordinary capacity there to create non-political pages and harvest and phish huge numbers of not only emails but mobile phone numbers," he said.

"And once you have a mobile phone number . . . they don't have to follow me, I phish them and can sort of harvest huge numbers of mobile phone numbers and then I just drop them onto a single piece of software and I can SMS hundreds if not thousands of people directly when I choose."

Yeah, that'd work great. If people didn't furiously mind getting spam messages from politicians on their phones and want to punch the sender in the face, or the nuts.

What's the thinking here?

And if it really is going to be 'The Twitter Election', what should we make of the massive gulf in Twitter followers when it comes to the main event?






There's no denying the incredible power of a politician being able to reach thousands, or tens of thousands of voters through Twitter updates, free of media filtering or re-interpretation.

So far on Twitter, Rudd (and/or his team) is making Abbott look like an amateur.

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Two Believers In Old Superstitions Battle For Leadership Of Australia

What in all fuck?

Kevin Rudd has taken on his arch-rival Tony Abbott on a heavenly question - whose saintly namesake is the best?

At a dinner in Brisbane to mark St Patrick's Day, attended by both leaders, the Prime Minister jokingly contrasted his namesake - St Kevin of Glendalough - with Italy's St Anthony.

Mr Abbott (said) "...the PM is trying to be more Queensland and more catholic then he really is."

Sticking to the Irish-Catholic theme, Mr Abbott joked that Archbishop John Bathersby said that Mary Mackillop's second miracle was to bring him as leader of the opposition.

Can you both step into the 21st century, please?

The Full Story Is Here

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Apparently, deputy prime minister Julia Gillard excites the same sort of weird fantasies amongst middle-aged conservative men as Margaret "You Naughty Boy!" Thatcher once did:

"Has she bent global warmist Tim Flannery over the dispatch box in the middle of Question Time and administered a richly deserved spanking with a dead penguin....?"

I predicted it would be a month or more before Australia's conservative media elite began claiming that Julia Gillard is planning to, or is "set to challenge", prime minister Kevin Rudd for the leadership of the Liberal Party. I was wrong.

It's Already Begun

Tony Abbott : It's Time For Big Business To Share The Wealth Around

By Darryl Mason

Tony Abbott on paid maternity leave, July 2002 :

"I'm dead against paid maternity leave as a compulsory thing. I think that making businesses pay what seems to them two wages to get one worker are, almost nothing could be more calculated to make businesses feel that the odds are stacked against them."

Tony Abbott, last night on Lateline, stacks the odds :

"If we are gonna have a comprehensive paid parental leave scheme any time soon, the fairest way to do it is for it to be a cost on business, and the fairest way to make it a cost on business is to ask larger businesses, the businesses that have the greatest capacity to pay, the businesses that have suffered least through the global financial crisis, they're the people who can best bear it."

Tony Abbott wants big business to share the wealth around, in particular to single-income families?

Who does he think he is? Obama?

"(Compulsory paid maternity leave) is pro-family, it's pro-child, it's pro-mother, and in the end, it's gonna produce a much stronger economy, because if we look after mothers in the workforce, we'll have more kids, and there is no greater contribution to the future economic strength of Australia than the kids we have now."

Well, kids, and coal.

Tony Abbott wasn't too keen to be reminded of the statements he made back in 2002 by Lateline host Leigh Sales :

TONY ABBOTT: ....I'm fully aware of that quote, Leigh. I have changed my mind.

LEIGH SALES: I'm sure you are. Our viewers ...

TONY ABBOTT: And isn't it a good thing to change your mind as your understanding grows?

LEIGH SALES: That is quite a change of heart.

TONY ABBOTT: Yeah, no, look, I accept that.

LEIGH SALES: So what's brought it about?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, what's brought it about is deeper understanding of the practical difficulties of women who are trying to juggle families and careers. We should not ...

LEIGH SALES: And how have you come to that deeper understanding?

TONY ABBOTT: By, I suppose, being more conscious of the burdens that friends and family members are carrying and of thinking more deeply about the sorts of choices that I would like to be available for my own daughters.

He wants big business to pick up the tab for his daughters' maternity leave.

So what's good for Abbott's children is good for Australia. I wonder if he had elderly relatives who smoked cannabis to relieve arthritis pain and reduce inflammation he would suddenly be backing medicinal marijuana?

Last night, Abbott also attempted to unleash on prime minister Kevin Rudd :

"It is pretty clear he is a guy who is all announcement and no follow through. He is, t coin a phrase, 'All Hat And No Cowboy'."

Abbott didn't coin the phrase. It's been in common usage in Texas for decades :

"It is not a compliment in West Texas to be referred to as 'All hat and no cowboy'. It is a term of derision used to indicate the person has little real character beneath the very thin veneer of appearance."

It's a good line, but it doesn't sound very Australian.

There is argument that the correct West Texas historical phrase is actually "All Hat, No Cattle", which certainly sounds more local.

Or perhaps Abbott knows this phrase, too, and decided not to use it to attack Rudd, because it has been popularly attached to George W. Bush since the late 1990s.


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Juli-aaaaaahhhhh

By Darryl Mason

Liberal Party activists Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt get started on their campaign to seed division in the federal Labor Party vote, by pushing deputy prime minister Julia Gillard as the person who should leading Labor into the next election.

After all, Kevin Rudd is a one term prime minister, or so goes the new chant, even though polls show nothing like the anger and outrage against Rudd that professional Liberal Party activist-columnists, including Miranda Devine, claim is running wild across the land.

You know what's coming next, don't you? A full-blown campaign from the Friends Of The Liberal Party in the opinion pages of, mostly, the Murdoch media claiming that Gillard "has almost got the numbers" and "is set to challenge for the leadership of the Labor Party."

It's early March now, the election is likely to arrive before late November, so they'll need at least four months to really get those Gillard Vs Rudd rumours flaming up, after they light the first fires of course.

So expect rumours along the lines of "Senior Labor Party officials believe Rudd is dooming the government to one term" and "Gillard knows she can win where Rudd cannot" to start flooding the gruesomely predictable opinion pages of the Herald Sun, the Daily Telegraph and The Australian in a month or so. Paul Sheehan from the Sydney Morning Herald can be relied on to join in the chanting, too.

Murdoch-funded Liberal Party activists like Andrew Bolt want to get started now, he's champing at the bit, but he knows it's still a bit too soon.

First, Glenn Milne has to fill a Sunday Telegraph page with "leaks" from "senior government figures", and then it's on.

Not the federal Labor government leadership challenge, just the column filler that will breed more columns and heated talkback debate. Anything, anything, to avoid devoting all but the most hostile attention to The Greens, who are shaping up to gain control of the Senate.

The 20th century newspapers have to at least try and give the impression that they can still influence the outcome of elections, even if they no longer really believe it themselves.

And it surely must be only a matter of weeks now before some Liberal Party politician embarrasses himself by claiming Kevin Rudd is an "Epic Fail."

Or maybe they're saving that for some of their 'hip' new campaign ads?

March 10 update : And so it begins, earlier than I predicted :

"Jones and I aren't alone among conservatives for falling for a politician whose choice of books now suggests she's readying to take over from the increasingly friendless Kevin Rudd."

"Watch your back Kevin."

"So while we love challenger Gillard now...."

She's already challenging Kevin Rudd for leadership of the Labor Party? Scoop!

And this note of warning :

"I fear this love for La Gillard may well end in tears, like Act 5 of Romeo and Juliet itself."

Julia Gillard will appear one day to be dead, and Australian conservative journalists will commit suicide and then Gillard will wake up from her sleep to find them all dead and then kill herself out of intolerable grief and loss?

And, man, and I thought I had some weird fantasies :

Has (Julia Gillard) bent global warmist Tim Flannery over the dispatch box in the middle of Question Time and administered a richly deserved spanking with a dead penguin....?

Weirdo.

Presenting Friendly NewKev : The 2010 Edition

Australian panel TV shows where comedians allegedly show their razor sharp wit are notoriously scripted and rehearsed.

So how many times did prime minister Kevin Rudd run through the questions he was thrown on Good News Week last night, with his staff? I'd say, at least ten times. Probably a few times with his image handlers as well, just to get the nuances of Friendly NewKev just about right :



Has a laugh track been added to enhance the crowd reaction?

Rudd had to change his public image, he was moving dangerously close in real life to the impersonation by Anthony Ackroyd :



UPDATE : 2UE political correspondent Latika Bourke reports the prime minister's office has confirmed Rudd had plenty of time to rehearse :

"(GNW) producers volunteered the seven comedy quiz questions to the Prime Minister in advance...'

I wonder what would have happened had they changed those questions on the night, without letting Rudd or his people know?

You just don't get that kind of anarchic behaviour in Australian TV comedy anymore.

It's all so safe.

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The Greens : Vote For Us Or....We'll Politely Ask You Again To Vote For Us

Below is the absolute opposite of your bog standard political attack ads. And it cuts through. The message is clear, there's a vision for the future, and The Greens are not trying to scare you into voting for them. That in itself is refreshing.



I like a tastily vicious political attack ad, and I'll probably run a few here during FedElect2010, but all that bitterness and "Gotcha!" and 'nyah!nyah!nyah!' becomes incredibly tiresome, very quickly.

Let's hope we see plenty of creativity, or at the very least something we haven't seen before, in the video messages and ads served up by the political parties this federal election year.

They have to catch our attention now with great vids to even think about catching our votes.

Quality Death Exploiting Journalism

Glenn Milne, The Australian :

....more Australians have died as a result of the Rudd government's home insulation program, "administered" by Environment Minister Peter Garrett, than lost their lives in the Iraq war.

This is what years of alcohol abuse does to your brain, kids. So go easy.

Nothing from Milne, of course, about the dozens of young Australians who served in the Iraq War, witnessed the gruesome brutal reality of an illegal invasion that Milne fully backed and came home and killed themselves.

That Milne can even dare to mention Jake Kovco's name as he attempts to blame Peter Garrett for the deaths of four insulation installers shows just what a foul and odious Liberal Party hack he really is.

Oh, this is going to be a very, very bitter election campaign. Not so from much from Tony Abbott or Kevin Rudd necessarily, but it's already clear that aging, empathy-fucked Murdoch opinionists have convinced themselves they can ensure that the Rudd government only serves one term.

A politically historic event they no doubt intend to be an active part of.

It's going to be grim.


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The Joe Hockey Experience

Isn't Question Time humiliating enough? No.



ABC's Lateline, February 11, 2010. Let's go straight to the highlights :

TONY JONES: ....if the next election is largely about economic management, and most likely it will be, we can pretty much script the Labor Party's election ads right now. Tony Abbott says he's not interested in economics. Barnaby Joyce can't tell his millions from his billions, and says the country's pretty much bankrupt and wouldn't be able to repay its national debt, and then up flashes a picture of the Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey wearing a tutu, a tiara and carrying a golden wand. I mean ...

JOE HOCKEY: Well they've obviously shown you the ad.

TONY JONES: I have seen it.

JOE HOCKEY: (Laughs). You have seen it already!

TONY JONES: I've seen the pictures.

JOE HOCKEY: As long as you weren't a part of the production of the ad, Tony.

TONY JONES: I've seen the pictures and imagining what the ad would be.

JOE HOCKEY: Well, you know what: Australians can see through that, and they will see through that, because Australians ...

TONY JONES: See through your tutu.

JOE HOCKEY: No, no, look, can I tell you - gosh. I mean, if you're a real person and you do real things and you engage in, you know, the activities that Australians do ...

TONY JONES: Cross-dressing!

JOE HOCKEY: Oh, well maybe you do, Tony. I mean, you don't know what happens at the ABC, do you, really?

JOE HOCKEY: If you want a real person...I care about real people, I live with real people, I engage with real people.

In this Lateline interview, and many others, Joe Hockey seems obsessed with the idea that there are both real and fake people, in politics and walking around in everday life.

I hope Joe Hockey pursues this idea further. Here's Philip K Dick on the subject :

Fake realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves. So we wind up with fake humans inventing fake realities and then peddling them to other fake humans.

Okay, maybe that's a bit too far.

JOE HOCKEY: ...I really want real people to be in politics. I want real people with real words engaging in real activity. Barnaby Joyce is real. Lindsay Tanner, Peter Garrett - these people aren't real. Kevin Rudd's not real.

TONY JONES: You cut them and they bleed, they are real.

JOE HOCKEY: Well, no.

Perhaps Hockey could push for mandatory Voight-Kammpf testing of all politicians running for election this year.



The imitation people must be weeded out, even those with pre-programmed four year life spans.

And to finish, back in the 'real' world :

JOE HOCKEY: ....Australia was very lucky to have China with massive stimulus and fantastic terms of trade and demand for our resources.

TONY JONES: Oh, so - sorry, can I just interrupt you there? Stimulus works in China, but not in Australia?

JOE HOCKEY: Well, their demand for our iron ore and various other resources had a huge impact.

TONY JONES: But their stimulus worked to drive their economy, but not ours?

JOE HOCKEY: Oh, well, yeah, well.

The video of the full interview is here. It's mostly Gold.



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"Sorry Puppy, We're Putting You Down For Gaia"

By Darryl Mason

Opposition leader Tony "Treeple Skills" Abbott is continuing to push his eco-credentials in the confident hope that if he's interviewed in front of enough wilderness money shots, dappled in the sunlight breaking through canopies of palm fronds, then those who think The Greens are simply too gay to earn a real Christian's environmental vote will go for him.

And they probably will.

But how Green will Tony Abbott turn? Will he come up with that will out-eco even The Greens?

Some inspiration may be found in a report examining revolutionary society-transforming ways to allegedly halt rapid climate change :

Its State of the World 2010 report published this week outlines a blueprint for changing our entire way of life. "Preventing the collapse of human civilisation requires nothing less than a wholesale transformation of dominant cultural patterns. This transformation would reject consumerism... and establish in its place a new cultural framework centred on sustainability."

Surely a report like this would include a long list of things we should no longer do, or products and lifestyles we should no longer embrace? Oh, it surely does :

Get rid of the dog.

No bottled water.

No takeaway menus.

No fun cars.

Don't buy books or toys, borrow them from libraries.

Grow your own (food) in community gardens.

All products should be designed to last a lifetime.

Public transport only.

No plane-related holidays, or air-based trips at all.

Probably not much in there for Tony Abbott. Though it would be good to see him come out for community gardens and more public book & toy libaries. And the idea of any politician trying to rally local industry to go back to creating quality products that last (most of) a lifetime would be exciting indeed.

But Abbott won't go GreenXtreme, no matter how many new votes there might be in it.

He will stay the coure of the lo-fi greener, all the "What's Good For The Environment Is Good For Australia" pap, and leave alone any moves towards killing off the airline, publishing, pet, fast food and disposable product industries with a radical Fight Club-style anti-consumerist platform.

In Abbott's favour, when it comes to greening up, is the fact that he doesn't seem out of place tromping through a forest, where Kevin Rudd looks about as comfortable and competent amongst the trees as John Howard did on a cricket pitch.

Vote Liberal, Labor Or Greens, It Doesn't Matter, Australia Will Still Get A Carbon Tax

By Darryl Mason

Chris Ulhmann writes on ABC's The Drum that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott knows he has only one shot at becoming prime minister, so this is it, he's going in hard...or so it would
appear :

The Coalition is not going to win a war for the votes of climate change purists or the devotees of detail. What it wants is to set up a position that it can defend while it seeks to win a war of attrition against the Government's emissions trading scheme.

It is reminiscent of what has happened to United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given its domination of the sky, no conventional army can stop an America invasion. But as Machiavelli knew, taking a country and holding it are two very different things. The way to beat America is to get its soldiers out of their planes and tanks and into a prolonged street-by-street battle.

The Coalition doesn't want to engage in lofty debates that it knows almost no one understands. It wants hand-to-hand combat on the cost of living increases that come with putting a price on carbon.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong was almost, almost, worn down by Tony Jones on Lateline last night, when he refused to stop asking her how much pricing carbon will eventually cost the average family. She avoided answering at least twelve questions on the subject. It was gruesome, like watching John Howard in late 2002 trying to deny we were about to go to War On Iraq, when Australian soldiers had already been deployed, knowing they were going there to fight.

The Rudd government for now has not much to counter the opposition's claims that the GBNT (Great Big New Tax) will cost everybody. It will.

But Abbott already appears suspicious is his mind-numbing repetitive use of "Great Big New Tax" by not calling the GBNT what it really is, will eventually become, was always going to be. A Carbon Tax.

Abbott is reluctant to call it a carbon tax because he knows that if he becomes prime minister, it will be all but impossible for Australia to function in the New Global Economy without one.

Labor and The Greens want a carbon tax, the Liberals will accept one, and Barnaby Joyce will be told to hold back from shouting about '"Carbon Tax!!" in public, too often. Entertaining his own dreams of one day becoming prime minister himself, Joyce will also, reluctantly, play along.

The Carbon Tax was always going to be the end result of either the introduction of an ETS, or the abandonment of an ETS. It doesn't matter which reality unfolds between now and election day. The introduction of a carbon tax was the mission from at least 2006 onwards for Labor, the Liberals and The Greens, irrespective of how oppposed they appeared to be of each other's plans.

To really whip up the growing tide of climate change skeptics in Australia, to get on side a new Liberal conservative base, Abbott needs to go to the election pledging 'No Carbon Tax!' if he really wants to win.

But he won't do it.

No matter how much he wants to win.

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Cat Plunges Nation Into Debt

Yes, the illustrations for Kevin Rudd's first children's book look innocent enough....



But while Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is fussing over his cat, outside two children are waving frantically to stop an ice-cream van, or perhaps a debt truck, from running them down :



Does Rudd notice? No he does not.

The book is not about those children, it's about Rudd's cat and dog's secret life as pro-Union Jack flag rescuers :

The Prime Minister's trusty four-footed patriot friends, of course, save the day. ''Quick Abby!'' said Jasper. ''You nab Chewy and I'll save the flag.''

In a curious piece of politically pointed satire, Senator Barnaby Joyce writes his own dialogue for Rudd's dog and cat :

Jasper – Well Abby, if we have to plan for our future we have to build on what provides for us cats now. For instance where do we cats catch mice, rats, frogs and other cat food? Where do us cats hang out and get down and dirty with other cats?

Abby – Generally derelict buildings!

Jasper – Spot on Abby! So I have been building a whole new portfolio of future useless buildings, some buildings that aren’t even needed today, so our kittens will never be short of food again. I have put them in schoolyards so they can fill up with scraps of food and old mats and furniture – and mice!

Abby – You crazy cat, you really are revolutionary. Your kittens will be so fat.

You sort of get where Senator Barnaby Joyce is coming from, and then think '.....What in all fuck? This is the shadow finance minister!' :

Jasper – I am a pretty major cat, Abby. You should see my plane and have a gander at my passport. I hang out with all the major talent and will fly anywhere in the world to do it and for absolutely any reason. No party is complete without me. You should pass by my alley and have a look at the photos.

Abby – But how did you pay for all this you crazy cat?

Jasper – Simple! Just borrow the money. I have borrowed more money than any other cat in the history of this alley, and I have made sure that we have stimulated the growth of the local tip with the purchase of a whole range of crazy cat consumables such as flat screens and toys and other electronics so if the school halls burn down we can head back to the tip.

Abby – You revolutionary cat! By the way what is the debt on the poor suckers account?

Jasper – About $120 billion and rising fast, but this cat is not the one paying for that. There’s no easier, more guilt free way to spend money, than by spending some other cats money on other cats!

Always blame the cat.

Andrew Bolt Hates Democracy

By Darryl Mason

Not just democracy, but free speech as well :

"Those who still like (Malcolm Turnbull) should urge him to keep his silence...."

"(Malcolm Turnbull) should be manouvered out of Parliament, if not the party."

The Professional Idiot wanted democracy in Iraq, even if it cost a trillion dollars, the lives and limbs of hundreds of thousands of people, and made orphans of millions of Iraqi kids. But when a Liberal Party politician holds a differing opinion to his own and that of the new Liberal Party leader, Tony Abbott, well, The Idiot wants democracy and free speech in Australia to be subverted.

And with his usual cowardice, The Idiot refuses to link directly to Malcolm Turnbull's blog, so his readers can see exactly what Turnbull wrote, and make up their own minds.

Bolt droogie and fellow gatekeeper, Tim Blair, also refuses to link to Malcolm Turnbull's blog. Maybe he's just jealous because Turnbull gets so many more comments than he does these days....

Anyway, this is what Malcolm Turnbull wrote on his blog that has so infuriated Andrew Bolt and made rant like an anti-freedom of speech fascist :

While a shadow minister, Tony Abbott was never afraid of speaking bluntly in a manner that was at odds with Coalition policy.

So as I am a humble backbencher I am sure he won't complain if I tell a few home truths about the farce that the Coalition's policy, or lack of policy, on climate change has descended into.

First, let's get this straight. You cannot cut emissions without a cost. To replace dirty coal fired power stations with cleaner gas fired ones, or renewables like wind let alone nuclear power or even coal fired power with carbon capture and storage is all going to cost money.

To get farmers to change the way they manage their land, or plant trees and vegetation all costs money.

Somebody has to pay.

So any suggestion that you can dramatically cut emissions without any cost is, to use a favourite term of Mr Abbott, "bullshit." Moreover he knows it.

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....the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, it's cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world.

Which, in a remarkable coincidence, also happens to be a theory long promoted by Andrew Bolt and his commenters, some of whom were Liberal Party politicians, staffers and advisors writing under fake names.

Turnbull :

The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is "crap" and you don't need to do anything about it.

Tony himself has, in just four or five months, publicly advocated the blocking of the ETS, the passing of the ETS, the amending of the ETS and, if the amendments were satisfactory, passing it, and now the blocking of it.

His only redeeming virtue in this remarkable lack of conviction is that every time he announced a new position to me he would preface it with "Mate, mate, I know I am a bit of a weather vane on this, but....."

Many Liberals are rightly dismayed that on this vital issue of climate change we are not simply without a policy, without any prospect of having a credible policy but we are now open to the charge that we are also without integrity. We have given our opponents the irrefutable, undeniable evidence that we cannot be trusted to keep our word or maintain a consistent position on the issue of climate change.

Unlike the cowardly Andrew Bolt, Malcolm Turnbull's blog is open for comments from readers on his stories and opinion, and unlike Andrew Bolt, Turnbull is not afraid to let through some very harsh criticisms indeed :

"are you throwing nothing more than an articulate tantrum?"

"As usual, you're hell bent on getting your own way like a typical spoilt brat, and couldn't care less about anyone else."

"Your a farce now Malcolm"

"(You are) nothing but a egocentric backstabbing bastard"

"Sour grapes from one of Rudd's elves. It doesn't matter what party you say you're on Malcolm, you are Rudd's boy. "

"unclench yours fists, stop stamping your feet and stop behaving like a spoiled brat."

"sour grapes comes to mind. Give me a break. You banter has as much BS in it as anyone who wants to take bat and ball and not play the game. Grow up"

Expect Andrew Bolt to grow only more hysterical and shrill when the Tony Abbott experiment doesn't produce the results the Abbott Army, firmly embedded in the Murdoch and Fairfax media, have been praying for.

It's going to be one of those elections.

Entertaining.

Australian politicians attacking and criticising each other through blogs and on social networking sites like Twitter is a new phenomenon. But it will cause much chaos, debate and delight as we move into the federal election campaign proper.

It's going to be ugly, and funny, but that's free speech. That's democracy.

UPDATE : After visiting The Orstrahyun to read the above story, Andrew Bolt finally provides a link to Malcolm Turnbull's blog, noting the harsh criticism of Turnbull in the comments section that I noted above. Bolt thanks reader 'Steve' for pointing this out to him, even though he based a lengthy post on what Turnbull wrote in that now controversial post.

So it appears Bolt didn't even read the Turnbull blog post himself, before writing about it here.

So much for research.

Rudd Too Busy With Obama To Notice Abbott

KevinRuddPM on Twitter reacts to the elevation of Tony Abbott to the leadership of the Liberal Party, and the sudden dumping of support for any carbon tax at all by the opposition :

Good meeting today with President Obama in Washington. Long discussion on climate change. Only 18 days to go to Copenhagen.

All countries now need to push as hard as possible for the strongest global action possible.

We need it for the environment, the economy, for jobs and for our kids.