If you never hear from me again, it’s because Bushfire Bill has dealt with me for publishing this brilliant post that should have been up on Sunday.
Just because he hasn’t had time to do the pics!
I ask you!!!
Anyway, if I’m not around tomorrow, that’s why.
So, I leave you with . . .
If Murdoch has to write letters to Abbott through his newspapers, then that means he’s not getting to him via the usual channels: closed door meetings, a quiet word, Friday night get-togethers, surreptitious visits to the New York News HQ, and so on.
Abbott seems to have gone off the reservation. He’s always had a high opinion of his own judgement and intellect, and now there’s no holding him back.
Truly Murdoch has created the monster. It has broken its shackles and now wanders the world, frightening children and shirt-fronting adults at random. Its crazy ideas, reflecting its piecemeal make up – part journalist, part thug, part priest – are being let run wild. It won’t even listen to its master now, the man that gave it life.
Only one thing can tame its excesses, and that is Peta’s sweet whisper. She is with him night and day, always at hand, just off camera, in the room at even the highest level meetings. But lately even her calming words are not being heard.
Abbott is becoming used to being in charge. He’s learning that what he says goes. He’s never had this before. He’s always been the protégé, the golden boy who’s headed for great things, guided by the wisdom of a wise patron.
Well, now he’s arrived – and he’s doing to do those great things. Why confine your psyche to just inside your head, keeping counsel, waiting for The Day when you can paint a nation with your grand ideas and force even the mighty to call you “Sir”? There’s no more waiting. This is destiny. Tony’s mind has expanded, and now his canvas is a nation, but one he’s never loved for itself. It’s always been one he wanted to change to look more like where he came from, not realizing that place too has changed and has moved on.
He got rid of the schoolboy fringe he used to cover his thinning hair. He applied … something … was it Botox? Or some surgery? … to his forehead and his eyes to ease out the wrinkles. He’s combed his hair over like he’s seen real leaders do, the better to look the part. And his speech patterns have changed. He sounds more hesitant now, as if every word he utters is gold, to be taken down by adoring scribes and kept for posterity.
Sure, he can’t resist the simian swagger, and his suits are still too tight. That’s the boy in him, wanting to show off his physique. The hands are everywhere too: defensively, pushing away questions and criticism. He used to have a cruder use for his hands in his boxing days. One king-hit out of nowhere and he’d deck his opponent. But he can’t do that now. He has to settle for mugging his old punching bag, Joe; not really satisfying, but something of an outlet for his natural instincts.
Maybe he’s timed it well. Maybe he thinks he can cast off his backers in the media because the media isn’t as powerful as it once was, making and breaking kings and queens. Maybe he’s right. Maybe he’s wrong.
But he can’t cast off the ridicule. As he tries harder and harder to be ever more serious and statesmanlike, he’s the butt of more and more jokes. He believed once that cometh the office, cometh the man, but the cartoonists cruelly still depict him with those ears, those budgie smugglers, that hairy torso, those exaggeratedly cruel lips. They never show the New Tony, the one he’s always wanted to be, and was always told he could be. They laugh at him and his narcissm instead.
The man must be going crazy with frustration. It’s all fallen apart. His Macbethian plan to claw his way to the top has ended as all such progresses do: with more enemies to use as shields, no-one to trust, more blood and more dysfunction.
He thought Labor was dead. He killed it himself, didn’t he? He won so many battles against it … and still Labor lives. He made promises he shouldn’t have, and which he couldn’t possibly keep, right on election eve – and now they, like Labor, are coming back to haunt him, no matter how much he licks his lips, protests his innocence and redoubles his lies. Now he’s lying about lying. Did he say he’d never do that? He can’t remember. There have been so many lies. So many contradictions. So many speeches and interviews. Can he be expected to remember them all?
Bill Shorten just won’t play the way Tony wants him to play. Bill – boyish, quiet, considered, and intelligent, won’t come on to the battlefield and fight him man to man. Bill’s biding his time. It’s a war Abbott doesn’t like: one of manoeuvre, skirmishing, probing, even agreeing with him from time to time, avoiding a fight. With each clash Abbott loses a few more devotees he can’t replace. Volunteers and supporters are thinning out as they contemplate whether being otherwise engaged is the better option. He just can’t line up Bill Shorten for the sucker punch. He has to face it, Bill intends to go the full fifteen rounds. Until that time, Bill will dance and sting to weaken his opponent so that Abbott will be wounded and bloody when they come out into the ring for the penultimate bell.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. People have always been scared of Abbott, of his sheer naked aggressiveness, his mercilessness and of his ability, without reflection, to turn on anyone who gets in his way. He’s always liked being surrounded by bodies – friends or enemies. They’ve been his substitute for sandbags. But bodies bring blood and flies. People start to notice the stench of death around him.
The Catholic Bishops saw his temperament, and threw him out of the seminary for it. Jesus didn’t need a holy warrior to minister to a parish. He needed someone with empathy and humility, not a thug.
Australia celebrated his thuggishness, in a shameful period where they valued light entertainment because they could afford to. The nation was prospering. Vilifying Gillard was good sport. We kidded ourselves that if we called Gillard a liar over legislation then that would mean Global Warming would go away. We were on top of the world … ironically because Labor put us there while other countries fell by the wayside.
But now, digging holes and lecturing other nations has lost its authenticity. We’re becoming a basket case state, with a basket case leader at the helm. It’s no longer Reality TV. It’s Reality. Slogans and slagging-off won’t put meals on tables. A nation that is taxed higher and suffers cutbacks to basic services simply to satisfy its government’s insane surplus fetish – when that government puts little back by way of innovation, and actually closes productive industries down – is not a prosperous nation. It is a nation that is being laid waste by its own rulers to serve their vanity.
Why did we close down manufacturing? Who cares if imports are cheaper, if no-one can afford to buy them? What’s the point of the government’s coffers being full if the peoples’ are empty? And then there’s the dollar … are imports really even cheap anymore? We have high price tags on the things we’ve taken for granted for so long, and diminishing capacity to compete with those who charge them. We’ve pissed our economy up against the wall, in favour of a few brief, nothing moments on the world stage so that Abbott can indulge himself in his schoolboy fantasy of someday growing up and being respected among his peers. He had the chance to impress world leaders with his vision for a magnificent estate, and all he talked about was how he’d tidied up the back yard and pulled out a few weeds. Not satisfied with stalking the land, the monster now stalks the world.
THE PUB 
“In a statement on Wednesday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said the government would provide $200 million over four years from Australia’s foreign aid budget for the Green Climate Fund.”
Not new money.
The money could have come from the ‘let’s spend a few billion looking in the wrong places for a crashed aircraft’ fund.
Great post from Roy Orbison – is everyone tweeting it? It needs to be out there in response to the abbott’s advertising his backflips, reboots or whatever else he and his fan club are promoting.
Doncha just love the abbott asking voters why the likes of him and Shorten should be able to go to a doctor and not pay a cent….the stupid journalists allowed that to go over their heads. One of them could have asked if he is still claiming refunds for his expenses to attend friends and colleagues weddings. Since when has the abbott EVER dipped into his own pocket to pay for anything he can get the taxpayer to fund.
If Abbott’s GP fiasco actually happens you can bet private health funds will leap in and provide cover for whatever extra doctors decide to charge. Exactly what Abbott and Dutton want. The thin end of the wedge, private health insurance getting into GP clinics, soon to be followed by the two-tier system that was being talked about when the GP tax appeared in the budget. Priority appointments for those with insurance, guaranteed after-hours service, special deals. Coming soon to your local GP.
I hope the senate gets rid of this whole thing, but I’m afraid the nutters will go for it.
Abbott and Shorten pay the Medicare levy, as do their wives and on their incomes they pay a substantial amount, so they do not go to a doctor for free. WHY can’t some daring journalist ever come back at The Idiot with that one.
Daring journalist?
leone
Journalists ought to go to hospital and have major surgery. They might then learn something from the professionalism and competence of the doctors and the nurses.
Financial discrepancies emerge in fundraising body linked to Tony Abbott
The Warringah Club may have failed to declare gifts in kind in pre-election audit, finds Australian Electoral Commission
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/dec/10/financial-discrepancies-emerge-in-fundraising-body-link-to-tony-abbott?CMP=soc_567
Well, I researched the theory, wrote some software to drive a graphics design program, designed and 3D printed a 4-start, 8mm trapezoidal (Acme) nut today to go into a project I’m working on and it worked perfectly.
Chuffed, I is.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/10/shirtfront-the-word-of-2014-as-tony-abbotts-pot-shot-at-putin-lives-on
Just another of his many achievements.
BB
It’s the future!
Chuffed
Well done, gold star.
This little black duck
The “after” shot of “daring” Newscorp journos.
BK, it’s the present!
I get as much pleasure out of solving the problem as I do out of building the solution.
Leonetwo, (been at work in my Public School, just sat down to see what has been going on at the Pub) sadly you can look at School Spec that way but the same situation exists as far as sport is concerned as well. However I still think it is great, I love going down to see it when I can and I know that our local kids work hard to get there and I will not detract from that effort.
BB
It’s called professional fulfilment.
BK, I must fulfill myself more often. HI agrees.
Lord of the Fridge
I know how much the kids love it and what a great show it is, I know how hard performers work, the sacrifices they make to get to practice and rehearsals, I know some of the local girls who went this year. All that is excellent. I just think it is dishonest to claim the show as an advertisement for public education when the skills needed to be chosen are learned elsewhere, at a cost to parents.
When I say I’d like the money to go to something that would benefit all students I think of the kids I used to teach, disadvantaged kids from rural areas who would never have had a chance to perform because their parents could never have afforded the private tuition needed to get them chosen.
I can’t get my head around what BB does in his waking hours. He has penned the best Australian political commentary on the WWW. He never stops. And he has a business that I can’t fathom. He obviously makes things for clients that are based all over the Globe. Now he has solved some problem by writing software codes. And to top it off, he has a wife who is obviously very smart, tenacious with great values.
I dips me lid. It’s often so uplifting to come here.
leonetwo, I can see the point you make but we all exist on a bell-curve and the Public School bell-curve has its very talented students who have parents who but virtue of their role as parents will do the best for their kids with talent, as they should. However don’t lose sight of the thousands of kids that just love to be part of the various chorus’ and dance ensembles who unquestionably make the show with their support of the kids who take lead roles. I think the public education system does a great job in promoting inclusiveness and while we all might want to be a star, the chance is there to be a part of something truly spectacular regardless of individual talent. I just can’t accept that Spec doesn’t do great things for Public Education, its just sad that you won’t be in the audience by the sound of it. For me it is all about the supporting roles; the stars will always shine and why not?
Good point, Leone. I’ve always maintained it was never about just the $7. It was about chipping away at Medicare in the most dishonest, insidious fashion. Weakening our universal health care system by means of a thousand cuts. Each one disguised in such benign fashion. $7. Pah! A trifle! Two cappuccinos. No matter that such trifles strike at the heart of bulk billing. Such a clever way to nuke Medicare! And muddy the waters by floating Medibank Private.
Meanwhile Robb declares that many grand opportunities are now about to open for our health-provisioning industries in burgeoning middle-class markets of Asia. There you have it. Whitlam’s OUR Health is to become BIG Health.
It was never to be about health. This government is a business. There are cost-cuttings, profits to be made.
Anyone else think Snot has that CIA report for bed-time reading?
Lord of the Fridge
We are going to have to agree to disagree.
For the record, before health issues forced my retirement. I taught in both state and Catholic primary schools.
I have very fond memories of concerts where every class performed an item – EVERY kid in the class, not just the ones thought to be ‘talented’. I also have fond memories of a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat which included every child in the primary school in the cast. And a Bicentennial extravaganza for local schools where the entire primary cohort of the school I was involved with at the time performed a routine which won ‘best in show’. Every child, even the ones with disabilities.
It is possible to allow ALL kids to enjoy the excitement of learning, rehearsing, dressing up and performing, especially kids who otherwise would never get the chance. The Spectacular does not give this.
You mentioned inclusion and there you really hit on a soapbox issue for me.There is too much alleged ‘inclusion’ which is really ‘exclusion’. The Schools Spectacular includes a ‘special’ group performance for kids with disabilities, presumably so audience members can sit back, smile and say ‘Isn’t it wonderful what ‘THEY’ can do’. If the show was truly inclusive kids with disabilities would be included in the ‘normal’ routines.
You are right though, i won’t be attending any Schools Spectaculars any time soon. There is no-one close enough to me performing to justify the expense and difficulty (my own disabilities) involved in traveling to Sydney.
duck
It’s Morrison’s style of porn.
Ah, civil discourse.
Let’s hear it for joe6pack’s blog!.
BK
I hear he has a Jack Bauer poster on his bedroom wall.
Some terrific batting from Smith and Clarke today. Glad I saw some of it.
For Smith, the ball was the size of a soccer ball. Some totally outrageous shots.
If you ever think of a captain’s knock, Clarke’s was it. He was in obvious discomfort but just buckled down.
So The Idiot’s big – only – achievement this year has been Word of the Year? Ye Gods and Little Fishes!
It seems that report on torture by the CIA is a “political” document. So say the Repugs.
The Repugs, like Your Government, has trouble when presented with facts.
A basic tenet of putting your argument is to show that the facts support your argument.
Which leads to: why doesn’t the Fourth Estate drill down fallacious arguments? That is rhetorical.
I bought Michael Mori’s In the Company of Cowards yesterday. Should be even more interesting in the light of the report about What The CIA Did.
Can someone explain what “enhanced interrogation methods” means?
Better torture? (whatever that means).
Can anyone point me to how torture has ever revealed truth? About the victim. It tells us a damn lot more about the torturers and those they work for.
Leone,
Well, there is the “shit happens” T-shirt with a picture of the NE.
SA does it again. Part of a power plant is to be mothballed due to increased use of renewables!
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2014/12/09/essential-research-53-47-to-labor-5/?comment_page=10/#comments
power plant
F: Not to mention “increased” . . .
‘Lord of the Fridge
We are going to have to agree to disagree.’
That’s fine
“uncreased”?
I ordered Michael Mori’s book the other day.
This is next –
https://www.mup.com.au/items/154221
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/malcolm-fraser-savages-scott-morrisons-new-asylum-seeker-laws-and-senators-who-passed-them-20141210-124bp1.html
A James Carleton should be good.
Much respect.
TLBD
It stopped being “My Blog” a fair while ago.
“THE Pub” belongs to all who venture through its doors.
And I am going to chop my leg off soon if this dull ache behind my knee doesn’t go away shortly.
Flying (or maybe not) lemons – you know that bloke who is such a good salesman he sells fridges to Eskimos? He is now selling F35s to gullible governments…..
The F-35 Can’t Run On Warm Gas From A Fuel Truck That Sat In The Sun
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-f-35-cant-run-on-warm-gas-from-a-fuel-truck-that-sa-1668120726
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/10/tony-abbotts-reset-can-never-work-because-he-cant-reset-himself
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/bush-mail/2014/dec/10/a-country-road-should-the-nationals-rethink-their-place-in-the-coalition
http://www.zdnet.com/article/australian-isps-forced-to-block-piracy-websites-send-warnings/
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/jacktheinsider/index.php/theaustralian/comments/no_cures_in_co_payment_shift
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/coalition-under-pressure-on-ret-as-poll-finds-most-australians-prefer-renewables-82233
joe6pack,
Will pantocrator do?
As your family GP (to which I am as competent as Tone is to be PM) I could prescribed all sorts of remedies. Try a heat-pack for temporary relief. If it is only behind the knee and no further up or down it is likely to be tendinitis.
joe6pack,
Get it checked out! The favourite place for DVTs to form is behind the Knee and the calf of the leg.
The Libs can’t “reset” Tony.
A reboot or entirely new software won’t do: a new box is the only go.
With that lot, they’ll choose Windows 95.
Trouble at t’mill
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/10/david-hicks-heckles-george-brandis-and-claims-government-knew-about-his-torture
Any public engagements coming up, JWH?