Last week, Malcolm Turnbull became the first right-wing leader to be deposed for the ideological crime of taking global warming seriously. Turnbull was a confident politician, from a party that had dominated Australian politics until Labor's victory in 2007.
He thought he was at the centre of the English-speaking world's conservative consensus. He dutifully committed his Liberal party to go along with Labor's plans to use a cap-and-trade scheme to cut emissions. His party's members went wild.
Tony Abbott, a reactionary Catholic, saw his chance, added opposition to green taxes to the old agenda of opposing gay marriage and abortion, and replaced Turnbull as leader.
How concise.
Cohen also claims a "right-leaning" Australian journalist told him that :
"climate change is now morphing from a science issue into yet another front line in the culture wars, in which any obsession of the inner-city, mung-bean-flavoured-tofu-eating, latte-slurping political/academic/media class is automatically the target of resentment and scorn".
So many cliches. There isn't a Google entry for Piers Akerman using "mung bean flavoured tofu eating" elites. Yet.
Globally, environmentalism is a middle-class cause, and in Britain, disastrously for its supporters, the children of the aristocracy and super-rich dominate the green movement. As before, many onlookers fear that they will pay the price for the soothing of the consciences of the wealthy.
Poor people like trees and clean air, too.
Soft Porn For The Howard Huggers
Bob Hawke sure loved to dance. Get pissed and dance :
Bob Hawke had a stripper perform at his 80th birthday a few nights back. She burst out of a cake and disrobed, wearing a John Howard mask. This is a video of the same burlesque act from 2007, with added George W. Bush :
This is both extremely disturbing and curiously arousing, on far too many levels to contemplate without introspective fungus-based drugs.
Expect an eruption of indignant fury from the MoralOutrage! activists that the ABC would dare to embed such titillating, amusing filth on its news site.
If we want to see strippers and women rubbing themselves against each other on a news page, we got to news.com.au, or in a pinch, smh.com.au.
I'm going to watch it again a few times to make sure I'm sufficiently outraged before I get busy with my complaints about how the ABC is debasing Australian morality and society.
Does the performer also do this show in a Brendan Nelson mask? It's not me who wants to know...I'm just asking on behalf of a friend...
“It was very gracious of Bob to invite me to his party, and I’m glad to know that after two years I still bug the Labor Party.”
Excellent! .
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Well Fingered
Powderfinger are releasing a seven album box set on vinyl on December 22, including their mostly unknown debut album, Parable For Wooden Ears (1994), Double Allergic (1996), Internationalist (1998), Odyssey Number Five (2000), Vulture Street (2003), Dream Days At The Hotel Existence (2007) and Golden Rule (2009). Just under $200 for the lot.
It's a shame they couldn't cram in the EPs, though. The Mr Kneebone EP, from 1995, sees Powderfinger dramatically re-inventing their songwriting, and contained two absolutely hard rocking Powderfinger classics, Swollen Tongue and I'm Splitting, Terry.
But the reason for this plug is to bring to your attention the way Powderfinger is promoting the box set on their website. A decent length excerpt from every song from all seven albums can be heard, and if you click on the first song of Parables, and let it play, you will be hurled through the recorded history of Powderfinger, in chronological order, in about an hour.
Great fun, and plenty of proof that the Finger have been (mostly) successfully mixing up styles and sounds from day one. And if you want to hear the band back when they still had some metal in their blood, check out Tail and Citadel from Parables For Wooden Ears. Pounding.
"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.
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.
---------------
....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.
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.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Dave Gleeson of The Screaming Jets has a small onstage accident :
"Prime Minister Kevin Rudd....has attempted to drive a wedge between voters who favour board-shorts and those who opt for sleeker nut-huggers as worn by the new federal Opposition leader, Tony Abbott."
"....pro-lifers...would see abortion promoted not as a last resort but as the contraceptive process of choice, are debasing what should be a serious debate."
So pro-lifers want abortion to replace the pill? Is he back on the gack?
I'll take any conservative's God-infected raging against safe, legal abortion seriously when they also begin discussing the far more devastating, and shattering, events of miscarriages in Australia.
Why do they never discuss, debate or even mention the awful tragedy of miscarriages? What are they so afraid of?
The Screaming Jets/The Radiators, St Mary's Band Club, December 4, 2009
A review, of sorts, of The Radiators 30th Anniversary gig at St Mary's Band Club to follow (well, not follow, but up Sunday sometime, along with all the other stuff I've committed to getting up here, eventually. Good thing I'm not charging for it, eh?)
I think this digital camera has seen its last gig, and its last drop down a flight of concrete stairs, and the beery splashes of drunk fucks who never learned how to headbang without spilling their drinks. The colours and bleeding of the pics are getting a bit too surreal. Even for me.
Friday, December 04, 2009
"I've Had A Yearning Inside Of Me For Quite Some Time"
Australian conservatives! The time to break free of Rudd's Totalitatyrannical Rule is now!
Here is your inspiration :
It probably seemed like a good idea at the time to spend all that money getting the Hey, It's That Movie Trailer Guy! to do the VO, but it just makes the whole thing immediately seem like a parody. A good parody, but hard to take too seriously, when obviously a certain level of seriousness was intended.
After all, Obama is clearly the Devil/AntiChrist/New Hitler/Hitler II/American Ayatollah
Abbott Redefines The Lies That Led To The Deaths Of 5000 American Soldiers And 100,000 Iraqis
The GodBott on the 2002 lies about Iraq WMDs and the alleged threat to Australia posed by Saddam Hussein, from ABC News :
".....whether something is a lie depends not on what turns out subsequently to be so, but on your state of mind."
Presumably Abbott thinks that rule applies even if your prime minister had personally committed Australians troops to an illegal War On Iraq within days of 9/11, and literally signed onto the war in February 2002, regardless of the WMD threat, or lack of one.
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Thursday, December 03, 2009
Murdoch : It's Not Thievery When We Do It
By Darryl Mason
One year on, the man who sold his Australian citizenship to start Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, is still ranting like a senile old goat about digital "thieves" helping themselves to his "expensive" news content.
"Good journalism is an expensive commodity," he announced, while delivering a speech at a journalism conference in the United States.
Ousted federal Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull and his former deputy Julie Bishop reportedly have fallen out over this week's tumultuous ructions inside the party.
Mr Turnbull was deposed by Tony Abbott in a leadership ballot on Tuesday, but Ms Bishop remains the parliamentary party's deputy to a third leader in less than two years.
Shortly after the ballot, there were suggestions Ms Bishop had voted for Mr Abbott.
That led to a blazing telephone row between Mr Turnbull and Ms Bishop on Tuesday afternoon, ABC Online has reported.
This AAP story is barely a rewrite of this exclusive by the ABC's chief political writer, Annnabel Crabb. All the key quotes and new information from Crabb's story is reproduced in the AAP story, and unlike most of the bloggers and aggregators that Murdoch and his executives have accused of thievery, neither AAP, nor any of the Murdoch media sites that ran the story, provide a link back to Crabb's exclusive.
Bloggers and aggregators play far more fair than the Old Media do, when it comes to reproducing or reusing news and information and quotes that have originally appeared in other news media. We provide direct links to sources, where possible, and more often than not acknowledge where non-original content has been reproduced from.
Lifting, rewriting, reproducing, the best stories from your competition is a 'news gathering' technique as old as newspapers themselves. It's usually the first kind of work assigned to cadet journalists. Scan the competition's newspapers, magazines, and reproduce the best of it. If there's time, expand on it a bit.
What many bloggers do, and what Digital Rupert rails so helplessly against, is downright traditional media practice.
And as the AAP reproduction of Annnabel Crabb's exclusive proves, it's still as popular as ever.
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"The Liberals Are Back!" @AlexHawkeMP favourites this brilliantly accurate, only slightly exaggerated, take on last week's Liberal Party Meltdown from Hungry Beast :
When the next Newspoll shows a 10 point two party preferred leap for the Liberals, you are going to see that headline all over the media....Well, The Australian anyway.
The Libs should move fast and get that phrase, "The Liberals Are Back!", into their advertising as soon as the Newspoll results are out.
It works, and it will also provide plenty of fodder for the satirists.
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Here Comes The Rooster
Annabel Crabb, now chief political writer at the ABC, broke the news of a raging three-way feud (with e-mail revelations) between Liberals Tony "unelectable" Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop.
But on Twitter, Sky News' David Speers reveals he might have a bigger, follow-on scoop :
Don't get carried away. Twas merely the result of some teasing auto-pruning by Twitter's 140 characters per message limit. The full message :
‘We had on board large quantities of malt, of which was made sweet-wort ... and given from one or two pints in the day to each man’. So writes Captain James Cook in this article to explain how he lost not a single man to scurvy on this, his second, voyage (1772–1775). As late as 1740, long sea voyages were losing in the region of two-thirds of their sailors to scurvy. Cook also discusses the merits of ‘sour krout’ (i.e. pickled cabbage), ‘portable broth’ and, more familiarly, ‘a rob of lemons and oranges’ (although he had ‘no great opinion’ of the latter and considered them too costly). While we are still in doubt whether it was the malt, which Cook reckoned to be the best anti-scorbutic, or simply the practice of frequently replenishing the ship’s fresh food that caused this dramatic decline in deaths from scurvy, it remains one of the earliest triumphs in the study and endorsement of proper nutrition.
As for Abbott's lack of female appeal, he's decisive, fit and virile, for starters, hardly a turn-off to women...He's a rugby playing, boxing Rhodes Scholar....a surf lifesaver and a volunteer firefighter.
It's going to be one of those elections.
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Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Tony Abbott's office denies hot Canberra rumours that this will be the Liberal Party's 2010 federal election campaign theme :
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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.
Stop Laughing, This Is Serious Now
By Darryl Mason
The Rudd government will move fast to a federal election - March 2010 - on the off chance that Tony Abbott will quickly find a comfortable zone of support to build on amongst the Australian public. That off chance is in fact a good chance.
We will now be introduced to Tony 'Reasonable Guy' Abbott. The humble man, a man who has faith in God and himself, but wants to Save This Country From The SmugRudd.
This is exactly how the Liberal Party will market Abbott through the election.
Tony The Reasonable Vs Rudd The Smug.
And that approach will work better than you might imagine.
* The Liberal Party will get a boost in the polls, thanks to Tony Abbott. And it will be big enough to shock the poll watchers and cause some nervous titters in the federal government. I say about a 10 point leap for the Libs.
* Tony Abbott, in his first press conference as leader of the Liberal Party, has clearly been practicising his "I'm A Reasonable Guy, I Am" face. Which probably means, at least for a few weeks, the end of those chilling Abbott Death Stare.
* The five key issues Abbott will fight the first quarter 2010 federal election on are those he hooked into at the start of his press conference : delaying the ETS/Carbn Tax, Rudd's Schools Refurbishment Program, The RuddNet, Interest Rates, WorkChoices/Industrial Relations.
* Abbott claims nobody will ever mention "the phrase 'WorkChoices'" again. Fat chance. Abbott will simply rename the reintroduction of Howard's WorkChoices 'Fuck The Workers' policy something else. But the Australian public won't forget.
* Abbott is reminded by journo that he has referred to the reality of climate change as "crap."
"It was a bit of hyperbole, it's not my considered position," he replied.
Does Tony Abbott believe in climate change now? Yes, yes he does.
"(saying climate change was "crap")....was in the context of a heated discussion, where I was trying to argue people around. I do think climate change is real, and that man does make a contribution. The essential point here...is the mechanism for dealing with climate change. We should not be rushing through a new tax so Kevin Rudd has something to take to Cophenhagen."
In the face of Mr Hockey's insistence that the matter be a conscience vote, Mr Abbott eventually lost his temper.
"So," he summarised bitterly.
"Malcolm Turnbull's for the ETS. I'm against the ETS. And Joe - nobody knows what the fuck you stand for."
Abbott : "I accept at times I have stuffed up. I also believe that when you become leader, you make a new start. The Australian public is very fair, and they are always ready to give the leader of a political party a fair go."
And they will. Watch the polls next week.
* Abbott The Apologist : "I should take this opportunity to apologise for all my mistakes of the past."
Abbott thinks reality is a confessional booth, and all sins are immediately absolved.
That's pretty much what everyone in the media thought, just last night.
News.com.au PreNews Fail earlier today :
Not an unreasonable headline to drop into the system in preparation. The entire press gallery appeared to believe Hockey would win the leadership. I can't think of anyone who predicted Abbott would win. Let me know in comments if you find someone who did.
This is the first thing I wrote as a theme note for this post :
Welcome to the New Ugly Age of Liberal Party Religious Extremism.
Things are about to get very, very nasty indeed.
I don't think they will, after watching the Abbott press conference. They might get shouty, but I think Abbott really does believe, with a self-righteous fervour he appears to have learned to conceal overnight, that he can actually win an election against Kevin Rudd. But he won't win it by hammering Muslims and immigration and embracing, thankfully, nasty minority views.
The truth is, the Rudd government has had a pretty easy time of it, as far as formidable attacks from the Opposition goes, these past two years.
Tony Abbott has polished up his People Skills, and has already debuted his Reasonable Guy persona for the media. We will now see the soft and cuddly Abbott, edged with just enough venom to batter and sometimes better Rudd and Gillard.
Abbott wants to win. And he thinks he can. He Believes He Can Do It.
Look, if anyone in Australia still believes in actual miracles, Tony Abbott is amongst their number.
Can he do it?
Note - The above was mostly written as events unfolded, that's why it reads like a bunch of notes. It is. I just hate the look of 'UPDATE' appearing all over a post. A little * is less intrusive. Something more coherent coming on my theory that Abbott will tone down his religious extremism, not ramp it up. Australians are clearly sick of that kind of crap, the polls show it, the Libs know it. So it will be Tony The Humble Vs Rudd The Smug.
This will be the real battle in parliament. Rudd Vs Gillard. They've been sparring and flirting for years :
. .
Malcolm Turnbull : Not As Much Fun As Brendan Nelson
As one who supported Malcolm Turnbull’s bid to oust Peter King in the electorate of Wentworth, and his subsequent deposing of former Opposition leader Brendan Nelson, I admit an error in judgment.
The Turnbull I admired then read widely, listened to argument and made up his mind on the evidence placed before him.
---------------
Now, Turnbull has joined Rudd and Wong and global warming tarts like Tim Flannery in denying the work and purpose of those who seek nothing but the truth....
Global Warming Tarts? I've had one of those. The woman behind the counter in the cake shop warned me they were bloody hot, but when I bit into one, I discovered it was actually quite cold.
After showing great promise, and being given great assistance...
Particularly by The Daily Telegraph, and The Australian.
....his political career is coming to a humiliating and inglorious close.
Who are you going to put the kiss of death on next, Piers?
@AlexHawkeMP better hope Akerman doesn't start praising him to the heavens, or he will never get to lead the Christian Liberal/Christian Greens Coalition of 2016.
This isn't widely known, but in the wake of the hilarious fuckapalooza of Godwin Gretch e-mails, Malcolm Turnbull was offered shocking, damning photographic evidence of KevinRuddPM's darkest secrets, but by then Turnbull was too scared of leaks to bring them before the public :
"We Don't Need Maps, We've Got An Aboriginal Elder!"
It's been a long time since I've watched any new movie trailer three times in a row.
This blog has been going for getting onto four years, it has a few thousand regular Australian visitors, I've written here fairly often about new Australian movies, and yet outside of the one publicist working on the ultra-independent movie The Jammed, I've never received an e-mail press release or been sent a trailer link by anyone from either major or minor movie distributors.
You'd think Australian movie distributors, producers and publicists would be going out of their way to find every single online avenue to publicise, promote their movies, even at a blog like this.
