I’m not sure where Joe6pack is, and there’s no draft Friday thread so … this is going up as a work-in-progress. Witticisms, pictures, etc., will be added as (and if) they occur to moi.
Meanwhile, start kicking back, or forward, or whichever way you want the ball to go.
Have fun.
(Credit: Fox Sports)
Yeah, yeah, moi knows – sooooooo last week.
Alright then, for all you NRL fans, who’s gunna win?
These guys?
(Credit: NRL)
Or these?
(Credit: NRL)
Though you’ll end up with a flock of bird-brains either way …
Meanwhile, for non-Victorians (and, indeed, Victorians) who may have missed this:
In time to avoid the grand final frenzy he famously deplored, Australia loses one of its great journalists, writers and voices — the inestimable Keith Dunstan. Contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence provides a touching tribute.
KEITH DUNSTAN, as befitting the quiet man with the bow tie who co-founded the Anti-Football League, surely timed his departure from this mortal coil to avoid non-attendance at today’s Grand Final, considered a defiant act of notorious calumny and civic treachery in this State of Victoria.
(Credit: ABC)
A gentleman in every respect.
Now, Joe6pack’s story is …
Hello Pubsters. Running a little late. Stuck in traffic. Really truly I was.
Of course we believe you, Boss – wouldn’t dare do anything else!
Joe also mentioned a long weekend – I feel very jealous of all you lucky people in the ACT, NSW, Queensland, and South Australia. However, whatever the length of your weekend, I hope everyone has a delightful one.
And may the best bunch of bird-brains win.
THE PUB 
kaffee – They should ‘just do it’. All the way to Edinburgh/Waverley in one go.
Insiders is sick-making. All confetti on Abbott’s Indo’n visit.
Et tu, too , BB. ?
The Insiders aren’t satisfied simply that Abbott won the election. They feel the need to turn him into a diplomatic genius as well.
Abbott shat in his own nest. He constructed a dangerous situation between Australia and Indonesia all by himself, with his overblown rhetoric and 3-word slogans on Boats. He was like the schoolyard bully who threatens everyone A real tough-guy.
When finally faced-down by one of his victims he turns to water, grovels, says it was all a misunderstanding, actually someone else’s fault, and then hands over his play lunch and his fizzy drink to the person standing up to him.
Abbott’s bluff was called and he went to water, conceding everything he said before the election was a crock of shit.
Yet the Insiders tell us that this is just the normal process, a “reality of government” that you abandon your election promises, shedding them like a lizard sheds its skin. They tell us that it’s OK to lie and exaggerate – that’s politics.
These are the same people who vilified Gillard over one sentence, in one interview, on one television station, three years ago, concerning the Carbon Tax. There was no “realities of government” talk then, and indeed for the next three years of slow political crucifixion.
They conned the whole nation into thinking that no politician is ever allowed to change their mind, or modify their stance to conform with the practical realities of unanticipated numbers on the floor of the house, changed circumstances or a simple recognition that what they had promised before the election was unwise.
The media did such a good job on this that even Abbott had to persevere, during the campaign (and before) with stupidities like towing boats back, turning them around, eliminating Indonesia from any solution to the “threat to our sovereignty” (it could all be settled in Canberra, apparently) and bellowing loudly about each and every boat that arrives at Christmas Island.
Suddenly, towing boats, turning them around, going it alone and publicising the arrival of any that get through are now anathema. Not only that, but would the Indonesians like to buy a couple of our cattle farms? Suddenly, buying up our “food security” is not the cardinal sin it was just last week.
It’s all “the realities of government” don’t you know.
Forced to grovel before the Indonesian President, Abbott skipped getting down on his knees and went straight to crawling on his belly.
How to put this as not breaking an election promise?
Easy!
Simply declare it to be not only sure-footed pragmatism and common sense, but a sign that all this time we thought Abbott was a sloganeering thug, he was actually a Master Diplomat. It wasn’t enough to just dismiss all this “Backflip” talk and change the subject to the footy finals. They had to gild the lily by turning the Blood Oaf into the greatest Foreign Affairs genius since Henry Kissinger… overnight.
Abbott dug a hole for himself with his braying slogans, infuriated the Indonesians to the point that they leaked confidential transcripts of diplomatic discussions to correct the record, then went to Indonesia to apologize, beg forgiveness and shower SBY with gifts that only a few days before (we were told) would never be handed over.
This wasn’t political gymnastics. This was a whole new Olympic sport, invented to get Abbott out of the shithole he’d crapped in and then dived into. It wasn’t one line in one interview on one TV station. This was three years of bragging, bullying, misinformation, hypocrisy, stupidity and jingoism abandoned in 24 hours of humiliation.
Faced with having to call it what it was – a lie – the media couldn’t bring itself to do so. So they not only papered this horseshit over, but invented Diplomat Tony… a week into the job, yet out-doing everyone who’d ever gone before him, taking the Australia-Indonesia relationship to new highs.
“Shameless”, “egregious”, “Disgusting” are words that come to mind to describe the infamy of it – both Abbott’s cringe-inducing backdown and the media’s sycophantic air-brushing of it.
Our media are a disgrace to their profession. Faced with reporting that Abbot has backed down on just about every macho promise and tough-guy fetish he planted in the minds of Bogans, Australia-wide; instead of pointing out that all he did was “solve problems” he, himself, created, they have blithely explained it all away as “responsibilities of government”. Then they elevated this grovelling performance he forced on himself to the level of “Diplomatic Genius”, just to put the boot in.
From The Daily Telegraph Pole, on Facebook –
From the link below:
http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/27248
And –
But…but…Tony is the lovechild of Howard. Howard who had such warm relations with SBY. You know Deputy Sheriff of the region Howard. Who had that master of diplomacy, Alex Downer as Foreign Affairs Minister. It’s just great the adults are back in charge.
Well, they are all treating the Australian public as mugs, but the Indonesians know better I feel.
This could catch on – I might make up some stickers myself…..
The OM is merely emphasizing its infallibility. They told us, for three years, that Tony Abbott was wonderful and, hey presto, here are the facts to prove it!
Who wrote these immortal words?
It was none other than Bananaby Joyce. The same person who said he just wasn’t thinking when he claimed all those expenses for attending Michael Smith’s wedding. Not thinking anyone would bother checking, most likely.
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/sneaky-or-not-some-expenses-still-reek-20131005-2v0rl.html
Nice comment Bill, I put it out there.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-ally-alan-lewis-2343532
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10356401/Leonardo-da-Vinci-painting-lost-for-centuries-found-in-Swiss-bank-vault.html
We’re in a great situation at the moment. We’ve got the media fawning and grovelling to a man who is fawning and grovelling to Indonesia. Have any of them picked up yet that all of this sycophancy leaves us with no policy regarding asylum seekers? If the Coalition have repudiated everything they were saying pre-election, and won’t do a thing to put Indonesia offside, to the extent of not even bringing the subject up in their presence, that leaves us with a policy vacuum. I don’t think having naval craft slinking around Christmas Island, secreting asylum seekers wherever they can until somebody spills the beans as to what they’re up to, is a sustainable policy. It’s a short-term interim measure, and a rather pathetic one at that.
Is it worth mentioning that we had – not once but twice – effective policies that could have been implemented under the previous ALP government. The Malaysian solution and the PNG agreement. I can’t see how either of those could be worse than the current idea, of just kind of hoping as many of them drown as possible, and then hiding the news when it happens.
There was a bit of a disconnect on Insiders. The group think of CPG crew was that Tony trip was some thing never seen before and then you get the cartoon section of Insiders where all the cartoons are putting shit on “our dear leader”. The guest cartoonist on with Mike Bowers said all the Indo. taxi drivers were laughing at Australia because of Tony’s statements.They CPG are still trying to put lipstick on the LNP pig.
Leonetwo
“It was none other than Bananaby Joyce. The same person who said he just wasn’t thinking when he claimed all those expenses for attending Michael Smith’s wedding. Not thinking anyone would bother checking, most likely.”
If I remember correctly, BJ is an accountant with a degree in economics. I wouldn’t want him to be doing my tax return!
Well said , BB. …..My “Et Tu , Too, BB. ” was in referrence to your post being snipped over the road…I too was snipped for an abusive (but honest) word toward on of the regular bastards there yesterday!
I sympathise with your cross-post about the Abbott daughters…What is supremely ironic and was missed even by Kezza2..was that for months those same daughters had been paraded , talked up, talked over , put on display and even kind of “pimped” by their very father, but when YOU pointed out their physical shortcomings in regards to ” examples of beauty” , you were snipped as writing “sexist” comments!!!….For weeks and months we are sold a spiel and THEY are paraded as nothing more than sexual objects and just NOW when their ACTUAL physical characteristics are called into examination as examples of beauty, YOU get excoriated!!..what a bloody double standard!
Anyway…I cross-posted my above observation and told HIM he could ban me if he wanted to!
Jaycee
Well said re double standards.
On another level, will there be a Hall of Fame for those who have been “snipped” across the road? For making honest comments of course, not just gratuitous abuse.
Not only THAT, but the very bastard I was reffering to puts up a racist stereotype slur on the Irish and gets away with it!….bullshit!
Yeah, I know..one shouldn’t criticise other blog-sites…and I will say no more on the subject!
I don’t recall any reference in the pub to Loon Pond, a marvellous blog by a woman (?) using the nom de plume, Dorothy Parker. Many pub patrons will know the site which acts as a kind of much more strident and funnier media watch. She’s certainly no unqualified apologist for the Labor Party, but she is on fire currently, with outstanding posts on Prince Harry’s visit, Abbott in Indonesia (and some useful support for Fiona’s record of the Libs’ saying one thing in opposition and doing another now on boats), and her regular take down of Bolt.
Highly recommended:
http://loonpond.blogspot.com.au/
Short of Abbott being caught molesting small animals, the crooked media will not allow any result other than his return in 2016.
It’s one rule for Labor, who must of course play by the rules 100%, and the Coalition, for whom any sin is forgivable as part of playing the game hard.
Any stuff up will be ignored, massaged into a comprehensive victory for Abbott, or blamed on Labor.
It’s like one local under 18s League game some time back, where the referee was so obscenely biased to the home team that their coach apologised to his opposite after the game, and the referee has never dared show his face near any local ground since (the Referees Association won’t allow him any involvement with any club). Except I can’t see Abbott or Credlin apologising.
I’m onto Loon Pond, PJF. Only came across it a couple of weeks ago, but it’s a regular read for me now.
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PJF. thanks for that ..I just added it to my favourites bar…in place of one I will delete!
NEW POST: THEY’LL NEVER DESTROY THE TRUTH OF ME