The unfair dismissal of Hodges who merely told a black woman where Abbott was on a day — an Australia Day — when it was widely known where he would be, in the Lobby handing out medals to heroes, is troubling me more, perhaps, than it should.
It’s like sacking someone who told Lee Oswald, ‘Hey, The President is driving by our building tomorrow, isn’t that cool?’ Or gaoling Haneef for leaving his sim-card with a man who did not blow up Scotland with it, preferring another sim-card, and blew up only himself. It was not as if anyone was endangered by a few thumps on impenetrable plate glass.
On another Australia Day a man approached Prince Charles with a starting pistol and a Premier tackled him to the ground and lost the election anyway; but it is fair to say he had grounds for concern as the gunman ran at the heir to the throne. This Prime Minister had none, and her guards were idiots to pretend that gunfire was imminent and drag her shoeless by the nose across the front pages of the known world.
But she was wrong to sack Hodges, who I keep imagining is an oyster-eating cat, for passing on common knowledge to a black woman who overstated, or overrated, or exaggerated, what Abbott had said. How could he possibly know she would do that? And how could he possibly prevent her from doing it, when the knowledge came to her from someone else?
Murdoch is beating it up into the sort of ‘what did she know and when did she know it’ headline that is lately afflicting him and his son, and putting lots of his pantie-sniffing confederates in the slammer, or is it the Tower, in Great Britain. Whatever the Prime Minister knew shouldn’t matter, because whatever she knew, whenever she knew it, however she heard it, was not illegal. No law was broken. No falsehood was published by her office. No lie was told.
There should be no problem but the Murdochist skull-and-crossbones flagship The Daily Telegraph has fabricated one, they way they do, and it may hurt Gillard mortally. It’s a poll taken on January 27-28 when no-one under seventy was home, that gave Rudd 44 percent, Gillard 27 percent and Shorten 14 percent on the question of who best should lead the Labor Party.
1001 voters were in the sample, the kind of people who stay at home on the Australia Day long weekend — the old, the ill, the maimed, the mad, the friendless, the loveless, the grimily eccentric, the Filipino babysitters, the old age carers, the devil-worshippers, the autistic, the senile — including, unsurprisingly, 540 Coalition voters.
Of these, 237 preferred Rudd. Of course they did. They knew he’d lose, and they really liked that. The sooner we get Rudd back as Labor leader, they reasoned, the sooner we get Abbott up as Prime Minister.
Or do you think they named Rudd because they wanted him to win? Why would they want that? The 237 Coalition voters in the sample? Want Rudd to win the election? What a strange idea.
On the Labor side of the ledger, the Shorten-plus-Gillard aggregate outscored Rudd by 253 to 197. These were the people who wanted Labor to win, and the non-Rudd vote outscored the pro-Rudd vote by, well, about ten percent. Yet the Telegraph headline says ‘Rudd a wanted man for the voters’. For the Liberal voters, absolutely. Sure he is. Of course he is.
But not the Labor voters, it seems, by a margin of 56 votes in a total of 450: eleven percent. Which means the non-Rudd vote would win in a landslide a leadership contest conducted across the nation by even the ill, the old, the friendless, the maimed, and so on. Cream him. Wipe him out. Send him sobbing home to Nambour, or is it Yeppoon.
The Telegraph also says ‘invisible Shorten not the answer’ because of his alleged low profile and low visibility; Bill Shorten, this is; ‘he is not even on the voters’ radar’, the Telegraph says. He would certainly become visible if he were Prime Minister, I imagine, as visible as he was at Beaconsfield a few years ago, and even more visible when his mother-in-law swore him in and offered him and her daughter scones. There would be no chance of him seeming ‘faceless’ then.
Or now. He’s quite recogniseable now, I would think. Ask anyone. The old, the ill, the maimed …
What lies they tell.
The poll they don’t take, of course they don’t, they’re Murdochists and their purpose is the defeat of Labour and Social Democrat governments across the world and the extinction of the Labor Party forever here and the impotence of every union leader now working, is a poll that asks how well Gillard, Rudd and Shorten would go against Abbott in an election; who Australians would prefer as Prime Minister.
They don’t dare do that poll because the real question would then arise of how liked Abbott is as Prime Minister against two other considerable male contenders, or three, or four. Or five. Or six. Or seven.
And the poll would show he was easily defeatable. And that would never do.
I ask them to publish that poll forthwith. Put up against Abbott in one-to-one contests Rudd, Swan, Smith, Combet, Shorten, Albo, Burke, Faulkner, Roxon, Plibersek and Gillard, and see which one does best.
Is there any argument against this?
What is it?
Liars and cheats, the lot of them
They’re Murdochists.
And one by one they’re going to gaol.
Discuss.
Name:
Maybe you’re right. It would be good to have a prime minister who straight up says things. It’s been a while.
Well she did tell Sri Lankan refugees that if they dared to come here she would send them to the back of the mythical queue in Malaysia, too bad for her it broke the law.
The fact is that the film shows nothing happened, but the cops started bashing everyone in sight after Gillard and Abbott had left.
I have never seen so many words written about so little.
To deflect though the imbecile Murdoch man Maley is back to trashing refugees today.
I can’t agree. Like you Mr Ellis, I have friends in high places and I was reliably told that this Hodges bloke is a qualified dill. He called up from the PMs office and did something stupid. Not hanging material, just rank and file dumb. And when he was found out, he resigned.
As it should be, as it always was.
What did he do wrong?
I’m with Bob here. He did nothing wrong as outlined by Gillard. Why did she accept his resignation? It makes no sense unless she and her department wanted a scapegoat. I suspect scullduggery here that went horribly wrong. What gooses these people are.
Well Terrance if stupid is a criteria for sacking, why aren’t all of the DIAC staff being sacked for getting refugee cases wrong over 80% of the time.
Hodges didn’t do anything at all. It is not a crime to tell people where Abbott is, especially when all the rabid media were there to see that no violence happened until after Gillard and Abbott were gone and it was the cops inflicting it.
Bob, as the first class conspiracy theorist that you are (JFK, J Edgar etc etc) I find it hard ot believe that you can’t sniff out a plot among Labor aparatchiks, most likely going up to the Gillard herself, that a ham-fisted plan to try to make Abbot look bad was not only ineptly executed here, but blew up in their faces, veritably hoist by their own petard?
Could Gillard and her motley crew properly organise a piss up in a brewery? Discuss.
Abbott did look bad. He said Aborigines should ‘move on’. He said it on Australia Day. Of the first Australians. This whole thing is a cover-up of that.
I would counter and say…” it is not troubling you enough, Bob Ellis”.
We could ransack through the History of all Man, in vain, to find another instance of dastardly machinations.
That intellectual, moral, nullity that lit the fuse has been absent from our screens for two days….two fuking days…..then appears, rattling points of jurisprudence, citing 30 year analogues and taking a moral ground….higher than that of Ezra in Acts!!
We are played false Bob Ellis……and you should begin by administering the Prescription to these shameful proceedings and it’s even more appalling players – a sound whipping; painful, injurious and memorable.
Brandis and Pyne invaded my home this evening..via that bourgeois Right Megaphone – the ABC…..and those delicate weathercocks, were enough to unnerve me!
Charge yourself Ellis
Into the breach!
Young Hodges must be avenged.
His call was straight and true.
The Nullity must answer for his Matronly Bitch Whistle.
Do it now man!
A fine post, Bob. A Rudd return would be an outright disaster, and probably worse than that if Abbott is still opposition leader.
Speaking of which, once the current storm in a teacup dies down, Abbott is still left howling in the wilderness, not PM not electable and not quite sane.
Abbott is unfit for office, any office; Assistant Dog Catcher in Chief might be about the limit.
Go Julia!
Doug, I can’t quite tell whether you mean really mean, “Go, Julia.” Begone.
As for a Rudd return being a disaster, a disaster is what we have presently.
The masterminds that decided Rudd should go deserve to hang their heads in shame.
Failing a miracle, Labor will be reduced to half a rump at the next election.
A counter coup is a necessity. A Rudd return, a must.
As CIA rep, you would know all about counter coups, one supposes.
The difficulty is that Abbott was a missile directed at Kevin Rudd, and it found its target. Rudd had no answers to Abbott, and was dead in the water before Julia Gillard was prevailed upon to act.
Labor caucus have better memories than the public, and it would seem the media.
Crean was right this afternoon, there’s no numbers and no way.
Ah yes, the Polls :
I would not put it past News Limited to dummy up the polls.
Every week or so, dripping-tap Newspoll says Labor has no hope, can’t win, why do they bother – it must have some effect on the morale of the troops, if nothing else.
Maybe a Newspoll employee will come clean??
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the polls need be right only once every three years and for one hundred and fifty-five weeks they can play funny buggers, influencing the electorate with sensational fantastical fabricated figures each fortnight which please Rupert Murdoch, their fussy principal customer.
This week for instance, with a poll showing Labor losing, but Julia Gillard too popular to remove, Gillard being the only conceivable sitting Prime Minister Abbott could defeat.
Bob, may I refer you to Jennifer Wilson’s reply to certain feminist authors? I think it to be an excellent piece of writing.
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/01/30/3418912.htm
Your opinion on it would be esteemed.
DQ
A new morn and still nothing from Abbott?!?!
We all remember his words, don’t we?
What did he mean?
What do his words mean?
What was his intent…..his purpose…..what’s the allusion, the argument, the connotation……the implication, designation, determination?
what’ s the essence, context or substance of the words “move on”?
not Enough, RW and Frank…..I await a detailed explanation of that phrase.
ARe you apologists up for it?
Or are you simply Catallaxy shift workers just doing time?
JG, I do like your deconstruction. And I do enjoy the tendency to ascribe motive to everything (CIA, Galaxy).
I’m not sure I buy the careful framing of context by Abbott. More likely he was on a riff loosely reflecting his ideological position on the matter.
He always seems, in those pregnant umms, to be desperately listening for his inner self censor. Most of the time that little guy is too busy working out to notice.
On at least one occasion, Abbott’s inner self censor was working out for 72 seconds after a reasonable question.
Seventy two seconds. Perhaps the world should be grateful he is not a contender for President of the USA. (ie, finger on the red button)
(Sighs)
Nice one, Doug. I think the little guy had given himself a bad hernia over that one.
And it’s actually not a red button. At least not the one I’ve seen
how strange!
and I thank you for that strangeness Never.
It is a revelation
……and one I had been hoping to extract from an Abbott apologist.
It goes something like this:
you say you are not interested in “buying” my framing……but you gleefully “steal” that frame by conceding that it was a reflection of his “ideological postion”.
I thank you for that Never.
So much
Close JG, and always happy to inject some strange.
I am suggesting more a loose improvisation rather than careful intent. The sort of thing that emerges without premeditation. It contains a truth, but not the fingerprints of Machiavelli.
Oh, and any theft is merely my version of flattery.
Truth without “fingerprints”!?!?!
Really Never????
Can this get any better????
I agree – don’t ascribe too much credit to an Abbott thought fart.
But once expelled, the smell lingers, and people are slow to name the real culprit.
Not so much Machiavelli as Alan Jones, perhaps.
Come back Never……reading time is here and I shall not return till morn……give me another smile….and tell me again about “truths” and “fingerprints” and how the two are……often confused.
Would you grant me a favour at this late hour?
Top my evening off my telling me….again….how the words”move on” we’re really of no import…that they were only the two word articulation of the Right ideology.
that”s all.
nothing to see here…..
Nothing at all…..
How could I refuse, JG. Do not read further if you are seeking clarity.
I think it is in our nature to make post facto rationalisations. I think we all suffer from a form of confirmation bias that allows us to see that which supports our position at the expense of that which does not. You, me and everyone we know, as Miranda once said.
I rarely see a well executed plan. I often see blunders and attempts to cover them up (resist, Doug, resist).
I can only see my error. I cannot correct it.
Ah Never…..I seek not “correction”……but “confirmation”.
Smile No. 1
“Rationalisations” I have no truck with…..they are the simply the substrate.
Smile No.2
“Move on”, an article of “confirmation bias” that articulates an exact, literal, precise and manifest meaning: “You Darkies, get the fuk off our lawns…..you are an embarrassment, you smell and no-one cares any,ore about your issues….what more do you want from us?? You have all the social and political concessions you want….and these Labor fukers are even tinkering with our Constitution so as to accommodate your wishes!”
It’s amazing, is it not Never, that two words can contain…..so much…..meaning??
Alas, even such fecundity pales next to the “post facto Rationalisations” of the Apologists!
Smile No.3
to JG and Never : Move on.
OK Doug, let”s move on……to here……..
I was profoundly disappointed with your post on the Bongiorno article.
I could say why……. but shall hold my tongue in respect.
today I spent some time thinking through replies to 5 posts…. and an additional 3 thoughts of my own.
none were printed.
8 conversations culled.
It appears you are not the only one asking me, or telling me….to “move on”.
I don’t like it.
I don’t appreciate it.
I don’t respect it.
And I feel disappointed and bitter that confusions and fallacy, once again, triumph.
I was joking, JG! Lighten up!
And it seems I can’t insult Never; what a fine fellow he is for a CIA man!
To JG : I thought this exchange was very instructive :
” Totem Lesson II :
Evidence for the divine in physical processes is all about you Mitor.
look.
I mean…..how many Jehovah’s Witnesses do you know that are in gaol for…..attempted murder, drug dealing and aggravated assault?
is that enough of a “physical process” for you…….or do you require another?
Mitor the Bold :
A physical process in science is not a punch in the mouth, unless you’re calculating velocity, momentum or compression. What you’re describing is social unrest which is not to my knowledge one of the three classical scientific disciplines.
But even if it were it would only be muddied by taking into account the existence of an ethereal bush-burning psychopath.”
Even atomou liked this reply! Did you appreciate its strength, or is your mind just a little closed on these issues? I am interested, since you hint at disappointment with my excellent posts vis a vis the Taliban Christians.
I’ll try to remain civil, even in the face of arrant nonsense.
Doug, do I strike you as a Fool…a dabbler….a casual card player….An itinerant….a wayfarer?
Why do you disrespect me so?
What have I done to deserve such Indignity and discourtesy?
You force my hand……..thus it is I who shall “remain civil, even in the face of arrant nonsense”,
I shall also be terse for fear of losing my patience:
can one be imprisoned for “compression” or be up on a charge of “momentum”?
I was not “describing social unrest”.
what a ridiculous, utterly ridiculous, fallacy!!!!!
I was describing the way in which Belief can inform the actions, the PHYSICAL PROCESSES, of one’s life.
to suggest that it cannot, that it DOES not,is the domain of lunacy.
To further suggest that one’ life is circumscribed solely by “the three classical scientific disciplines” Is beyond lunacy Doug…….it is Unhuman.
I shall NEVEr countenance any utterance that sides exclusively with Mitor’s God of Chemistry.
Mitor and I have been arguing for about a Year now over this same issue…….the difference is that I get four posts and NO responses and she gets ten posts and twenty responses.
conversation is impossible,
and comprehension?
PFFFFTTTT!!!!!!!
I am beyond repair at the moment……spare me any further dabblings.
Oh, I found your post (Taliban Christains) cliched and fallacious……it struck me as intellectually lazy and a little hypocritical…….
I shall elaborate if asked.
Might I say that I enjoy Mitor’s gentle flaying of the concept of religion. The adherents are so self satisfied and so self righteous that they need some flaying. Many of them may even enjoy it.
How does it go, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7)
“God is on my side” is so comforting, as one is incendiarised, or torn limb from limb, is it not?
(Cliched? probably; Truth tends to be eternal.
Fallacious? never. Unless and until Christ appears in the firmament with all the heavenly host, I’ll remain sceptical, thank you.
Intellectually lazy? probably, there is nothing new under the Sun, I’ve seen all the arguments and none of them are convincing.
A little hypocritical? possibly; is there anyone not a little hypocritical? We all think in our Id, and in our Ego as well, that we are the best there is, possessed of all virtues in abundance. Aren’t we?
This response tells me you are blissfully ignorant of the cardinal issues. The fact that you see this as a ‘flaying of religion” marks you out…….wholly, starkly.
The question, the one you admired from Mitor, still stands: will you address its principal…….or will you retreat and feign some affectation toward smugness and Continued fallacy?
this is the heart of the matter man!!
The direction is set, the puzzle is before you….can you decipher, can you locate a cipher?
Or is the gentle, soothing pretension of ” I’ve seen all the arguments” far too comforting?
i shall keep to symbol so as not to confuse you:
a young Frenchman I once met, a Jehovah”s witness, had just completed a charge of draft evasion. he served 18 months. I asked him to explain the nature and purpose of his decision.
He told of faith and belief and honour and humility and purpose and meaning.
I then accosted him with the cliche question: but would you give a blood transfusion to your dying child?
He replied, ‘ I don’t know, I just don’t know”.
so, we come back to the question at hand…..the one that Mitor keeps evading ( with the cheerful assistance of the Drum Mods, of course):
locate for me the boundaries of the Abstract and the Real?
Tell me which is the greater tale…..the God of Creation or the God of Chemistry?
Tell me again……how it is we are to cleave the mind and heart of man……and apportion accordingly?
I suspect you will need to borrow Mitor’s scales for that.
by the way Doug, I found your response to Reader (below) profoundly……disturbing.
It was a shock to bear witness to such….callow twaddle.
but there you have it!
all things…”in abundance”!
are they not?
You take yourself too seriously JG. Get a grip on reality : we are human beings, two arms, two legs, all the appropriate bits.
Oh, and a brain.
Man created God in his own image. If it was the other way around, he/she/it may a real balls of it.
Or rather, a cunt of it; whoever designed the female urino-genital tract ought to be shot.
It is the crowning argument against intelligent design.
God botherers? Spare me!
Hypocrisy and fallacy once again.
either you have no clue as to the frame of this discussion or…….you willfully avoid the substance.
Which is it?
Oh, the comic hypocrisy of your final two,paragraphs made me smile…..
you can see it………can’t you?
We are talking past each other……..
When one party in a conversation does not address that which is put to them……all is lost.
Your criticism of me is that I take myself (this question) “too seriously”. In return I say you are not serious…..at all.
You prefer to trade in trinkets….
Well, whatever you’re comfortable with I suppose….
What is your problem?
Do you expect me to tell you the meaning of life?
I could say 42.
Or I could say what my father always said : “If I told you, you would know as much as I do”
If you have another question it is your right to ask it; but it is my right to say that I have given you my answer. To quote Pontius Pilate : “What I have written, I have written.”
“my problem” is that you (and Mitor) can not or will not, engage with the very questions you put forward.
“my problem” is that you (and Mitor) too keenly substitute fallacy for argument.
It is a cautionary tale Doug Quixote…..bring something to the table……or retreat.
What do you people care about? Abortion rights or articles on issues of sexism (don’t like them)? Can we separate a few threads here? I don’t think a single member of your conspiratorial crew has ever once dealt with an actual issue MTR has raised, beyond the ol’ “Prove the Harm” chestnut.
What is this psychological makeup that cannot tolerate criticism of porn? Or soft porn? Or sexist imagery?
What’s the motive? What’s driving this?
And “I stand noble, solid and true against the scourge of hypocrisy in this land” does not in practice work as an invisibility cloak.
I don’t have any conspiratorial crew. I do have a good nose for hypocrisy, and for self-righteous indignation.
I stand for women to be fully equal with men with the right to determine what happens to and in their own bodies. And whilst I detest the sexualisation of children – let them have a childhood – I also detest the banning and censoring wowsers agenda which would tell everyone else just what they can or cannot do, what they can or cannot watch and what they can or cannot think.
You are the thin blue line between Chris Burgian total freedom and the horror prospect of a MTR article coming to life and ripping that Zoo magazine right out of our sticky hands, Doug. Corporations are people, it’s not too much of a leap to grant dictatorial powers to a Sexpo article.
And just what is wrong with “the golden mean”? As you may have noted, I have my own approach to most matters; generally I seem to arrive at what might be called a “radical moderate” approach. Leftist on certain issues, and my worldview is of the left; but I try to be realistic where I see Realpolitik is the only sensible approach. Certain matters can only be managed : there are no solutions to asylum seekers, climate change, aboriginal health and their other issues, drug abuse, terrorism; the list goes on.
Anyone who says they have the answers to these problems should be treated with suspicion.
When it’s a tide of suspicion drifting across an area covering three quarters or more of the earth’s surface, why stand on the shore in your little sailor suit shaking out a few drops of suspicion from your little sand pail? It’s not going to make the ocean any bigger.
If I was of a sexist bent, I would say you need to get laid.
But since I’m not, I won’t.
To the readership : to put this in context, an earlier exchange :
(quote)
Reader1 February 1, 2012 at 10:48 am
Sexist men are shit in bed.
Reply
*
Doug Quixote February 1, 2012 at 11:41 am
I’ll take your word for it.
But I agree that the brain is the most important sex organ; imagination is 90% of the real deal.
(end quotes)
Not so … disturbing … now, is it? Hmm?
I don’t get how that’s relevant. Which ties into my overall point. What are you people trying to say exactly?
I was just scrambling for a grand metaphor for big with the ocean thing. Adding your MTR outrage to the general din is a pointless exercise, especially when not one amongst you is able to come up with a single, graspable point.
What the hell is so wrong with coherence?
Thank you Reader 1.
Thank you.
JG, can we agree to leave Mitor out of the discussion? I do not know her, nor do I necessarily endorse her posts.
Amongst whom? Do you mean the many and various critics of MTR? There must be hundreds of them.
I am responsible for my posts, not anyone else’s.
And except that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” I have little in common with many of them.
And if by coherence you mean ‘consistency of dogma’, I declare it anathema. I am under no requirement to be consistent, unlike the benighted politicians of whatever stripe.
You have not point, in other words. I suspected as much.
you suspected correctly Reader.
do you see Doug Quixote…..do you see the impression given by such……casual attitudes?
Have you heard of freedom of speech?
Freedom of adult human beings to read or watch what they will and do what they want, provided it does not harm others?
Hmm?
you appear……lost.
You started so…..brash; armed with Mitor’s fallacy and foolishness…buttressed by atomou’s sideline snigger, you advanced……and now, 6 posts on…..the game is lost.
and you had yet to move a pawn.
It is most unlikely we shall speak again.
JGC.
I am addressing Reader1, God botherer. Get out of the way.
I know that, you Fallacious Old Fool!
JG,
Some are fools and don’t know it.
Let me tell it then!
Follow not the Fallacious Path…
Speak true and right and direct.
Respond according to the scope of the question.
Disdain drift…Focus.
Just Focus.
And our purpose he might, just might, be realised.
no, it’s not…..quite amazing what context….articulation and fallacy-free explanation can do for communication and comprehension.
Makes a world of difference, does it not?