With his infinite gift for getting it wrong, and getting it wrong at the precise moment when it makes him look more like a tremendous fool than any other, Gerard has suggested that Craig was guilty as charged, and I was a fool to think him innocent, and my offer to pay the union for the hookers to get Parliament off his back was insincere.
He points out, correctly, that I took ten years to pay off a bet I had with him for a thousand dollars, one witnessed by John Ralston Saul who was interested to hear that Gerard, in my view, was CIA and unhinged and so stirred the conversation along a bit.
The bet was that John Howard would lose his seat, and it was a bet I lost. This was because I said he would lose it not in 2007 but 2001, when his party was on 40 percent two party preferred, a month or so before the Tampa saved him. I was irritable that a world war was declared on the first day of the election campaign in order that Howard keep his seat and cost me money and I was raising a teenager and funding two students and was slow, very slow, paying it because I think Gerard is a cunt and a probably underpaid spy. No other person I have borrowed money from (Chris Neal and Denny Lawrence in 1992 I think and the list is at an end) have I failed to pay back within a month. It is a libel, in fact, to say I do not pay my debts as a rule or my bets. I sold my house to pay 280,000 dollars off a mortgage a year ago. I rarely take on a debt, never in the last twenty years.
Gerard has used ‘the false prophet of Palm Beach’ on me for years though I got Tony Abbott’s winning margin right when everyone else was calling Hockey a shoo-in, the cliff-hanger Gillard win right, the Rudd win right, the Obama win right, the British Hung Parliament right, the Mike Rann margin right within one seat when everyone else was saying he was cactus, the Tasmanian hung election right, the Baillieu narrow win right, the Bligh and Keneally defeats right but not the margin, the new insurgent Katter vote right within two percent, the Beatty squeaker victory right in 1997 and the Bracks victory right in 1999 when everyone else was saying he had not a chance. I got the two narrow Wilson wins right in 1974 within one seat, the Hawke margin, a 25 majority, exactly right in 1983, and so on.
Gerard by contrast has got nothing right in forty years; or this seems to be the case since in six months nobody has listed in these columns one instance of his accuracy on anything.
Yet I am the ‘false prophet of Palm Beach’ in his mind, which is clearly failing.
Again I challenge him to debate me anywhere, any time, on any subject he chooses, before any audience he invites.
Or say why he will not.
Name:
As false prophets go, your record is very good indeed.
Gerard usually manages to spell his own name well enough, and collects his paycheck. Does he get anything else right??
Henderson wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald on 15 May: ‘Oakeshott and Windsor are invariably lecturing about parliamentary standards, even though the latter recently called Tony Abbott a ”rabid dog”’.
Tony Windsor in fact said Abbott was a rabbit-dog. An apt metaphor for this aggressive, hyperactive creature, but Henderson evidently lacks the rural experience to recognize it.
Rabbit dog! I love it!
I must admit I misheard him as well, and thought it strange that Mr Rabbit did not object strenuously.
What a pathetic old man you are to reduce yourself to that sort of epithet.
I thought much more of you.
Obama or Romney, Bob?
Forgive me if you’ve said so already.
I haven’t made up my mind yet, but I’m leaning in Obama’s direction. The word I have from acquaintances in the US though is Romney, in a landslide. I can’t see it myself.
Obama. Romney will be undone by past cruelty to dogs and homosexuals and growing up in a religion which thought Negroes beasts.
Romney is accused of being cruel to one dog. But they way they like to half hang out of a car, I can imagine any dog would have enjoyed riding in a crate on top of it.
Obama, on the other hand has definitely eaten more dogs than Romney:
“I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy).” From his no doubt dreary book Dreams from My Father.
His book is one of the greatest ever written. Among American books it ranks with Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn, Look Homeward, Angel, The Sun Also Rises, The Catcher In The Rye, A Confederacy Of Dunces, The Scarlet Letter and The Education Of Henry Adams.
Let anyone who has read it write in and disagree.
Obama did surprise me when he announced the proposed US Marine base in Darwin, naming China as a regional threat. I suppose Rupert Murdoch was somewhere behind this… Imagine if a conservative PM was standing hip-to-hip with a US President.
Discuss.
What are you talking about? Obama rightly fears China and takes precautions. Murdoch has Chinese investments and partnerships and would be against it.
I thought it was a book that showed a rare quality of man. I must admit I have been disappointed in his Presidency. I fear that the US system is so f*d that no one can make it work
Obama in a landslide greater than Johnson over Goldwater in 1964.
Perhaps. Romney’s also already being outspent and out-organised.
Yes, if Romney loses it will be because of his religion. Not in the way you describe though. The problem is his religion the prevents him from being embraced by the evangelical base, many of whom, we should remember, share his hate homosexuals and blacks.
I think so.
(This was to Doug.)
I write in, on the Book of Obama.
I was once encouraged to read same.
So ………..
I say, take yours ‘nuanced’
I’ll take mine straight.
p.s. “conscienceful” is a speedbump of an adjective
and I don’t like it)
What does that mean? Have you read it? Or not?
I read it
Ignored it long enough – I read it!
Your recommendation – specifically noted “conscienceful” and “nuance”.
I pushed aside Prejudice, elbowed out Prejudging, and read it. And yes, it was clever.
But this man has been on too many chat shows, hence my two Pre’s.
“The Sun Also Rises” – not on my list.
“The Old Man and the Sea” – I truly loved. Gave it to a boyfriend, and I know he didn’t read it.
But tastes vary
Someone playing around with the Emoties?
So, Bob, don’t like being called a “pathetic old man” much eh? (I assume this because my comment doing so for your juvenile use of poor language remains in moderation after 24 hours).
I am a regular reader and just feel that you let the ‘tone’ down when you go on like that.
Anyway, your blog and that’s entirely fair.
Onward and upward, but losing the c-word would be a positive contribution to discourse.
Yes, I don’t understand what Mr Ellis finds so despicable (by implication) about vaginas. Some unresolved issues, perhaps? An attempt to spice up his writings with a dash of faux-rebellious “Youthful Cool”?? At any rate, most unbecoming Misogynist Crudity in a man of his Age and learning. Glad I never had to witness my Granddad use that word. He wasn’t a Public Intellectual or anything…didn’t write speeches for politicians…But he had far too much Class to use Gutter Language like that
Personally I’m very fond of vaginas.
As for the name, that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.