The Liberals are not very good at the human factor. They work on unseen bogeymen, and when a living human person appears in their cross-hairs — Slipper, gloomily stepping down; Nick Sherry, attempting suicide; John Brogden, attempting suicide; Don Dunstan, resigning in a dressing gown; Alamdar and Montezar Bakhtiyari, little boys in baseball caps, pleading for their lives– they are flummoxed by the immediate public rage at their evident cruelty.
Now it suddenly seems Craig may hurt himself, may do himself in, perhaps; bereave two infant children and smash the Liberals posthumously with a nationwide broadcast of his weeping funeral and of course, of course, they are backing off now; Abbott, his primary waterboarder, asking timidly after his health and wishing him well after jeering him down Golgotha for weeks and months and years.
He does not yet understand how the Liberals’ ancient accustomed method, the puppetisation of one’s enemies, now, in the age of the phone camera, the iPad, the tweet and ABC 202 has become technologically impossible. The enemy now can answer back, he can answer back, as the Arab Spring showed. You may ban him from the Letters Page but he can answer here, or on YouTube or Lateline. He is a puppet no longer. He has words. He has teeth.
And you can see the Liberals as they truly are on the floor of the House, repeatedly through the long loud raw foul-hearted bickering day: Abbott snarling and Pyne shrieking, and Bishop calling ‘tricky, pretty tricky’ the shrewd Bob Carr’s emollient merciful saving of Schapelle Corby’s life. You can see them on this technology as they really, truly are: schoolyard bullies, red in tooth and claw, shrieking for blood, more carnage, more vengeance, hurt and shaming, hating the human race, the common stumbling sorry lustful human race from which they feel such exiles.
And the game is up for them now. They used to be able to make us believe that mothers would throw their one-year old babies into the sea. They can do this no longer. They used to be able to make us believe Shock and Awe was not terrorism. They can no longer.
And they have lost the game, for good.
Name:
“You may ban them from the Letters Page but they can answer here.”
That’s a nice idea you have there. Pity if anything should happen to it.
Banned for life.
Just kidding.
What we all need to do Bob is petition Barry Cassidy on the Insiders to do the moral bloody thing this sunday and tell the nation about the fraudulent card presented by fairfax in its defamation defence regarding Craig Thomson.
Australians need to fight for Craig Thomson and the Presumption of Innocence.
Australians need to know there has been a fraudulent credit card in play and Barry bloody cassidy owes us the truth.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-25/cassidy-alarm-bells-are-ringing/4031494
The ALP should find a piece of policy,an amendment perhaps, vital but not crucial that the Libs want and get Thompson to vote with the Tories, and watch the Libs not accept the “tainted” vote.
Oh well ryuten old spice…please don’t try on any more threats as there could be consequences beyond you wildest dreams
Actually fuck that…get stuffed!
Simo, whilst Bob knew what my attempt at a humourous comment meant, it is obvious that you have no clue what the hell I was talking about.
No.
Too deep for me.
I actually thought Abbott pointing at the PM and saying its all her fault was a smart move. Perhaps Julia needs to tell THomson to be a nice independent and take a week or two off from parliament on stress leave its not like there will be an absolute majority voting against the Govt, now they have Wilkie on the hook again with $400M for Tasmanian health.
The story has a momentum all of its own now. If the Libs were smarter they would be quieter. The longer it ticks on the better for them.
Speaking of lack of smarts Thomson can hardly ask the media to leave him alone when he continues to slag them off in twitter.
PS Wasn’t Sherry hurt by the blowback from the ALP pointing fingers at the Libs?
No he was not.
But Bob, Tony Abbott is concerned for the health and welfare of Craig Thomson? He said so himself.
Consider:
Tony Abbott has accused Julia Gillard of threatening Craig Thomson’s welfare by requiring him to remain in the parliament.
The Opposition Leader said the Prime Minister was preventing the sidelined Labor MP from doing the right thing for himself and his family because she was “clinging’ to his vote.
“At the moment, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, it’s not Craig Thomson’s welfare that matters, it’s her political welfare that matters,” he told the Nine Network.
Selfish. Julia. Selfish.
Bob, a fellow Christian like yourself and like Tony Abbott is concerned more for the welfare of his fellow man than playing cheap politics?
Is this so?
Did I miss anything?
Well, he’s going to gaol and I’m not. Visit him and and ask him and counsel him there.
And keep out of my way, Christ-eater.
I am an atheist.
How dare you.
Q: What’s the difference between Tony Abbott and a prostitute?
A: They’ll say anything for the money.
http://www.crikey.com.au/?p=292996
Not true about prostitutes and I find this an ugly turn.
$80,000 would tempt very many people.
Not sure how that is funny. Is there a line which says
A : “Nothing at all – they’ll both do and say anything for money”
Now we see today that Mary Jo Fisher wants taxpayers to pay for her conviction for assault and that a deal was stitched up for her not to be convicted of shop lifting.
What the media are not getting is that it is not about paying for sex or even using a credit card to do it.
The charge is a lack of rules regarding the use of credit cards.
This morning I heard Marius Benson twittering with Dennis Atkins and then Fran twittering with Michelle and they all agreed it is the most salacious scandal in the history of Australian politics.
Far worse that agreeing to slaugher 1 million Iraqis, driving refugees to suicide, giving
$300 million to Saddam Hussein and so on.
All this twittering over a contested claim of $5900 on a credit card in 2005.
So to keep Mary Jo Fisher in the senate the liberals stitched up a deal but Thomson has no right to say he is innocent.
And now even Crikey is behaving like a snigger machine.
Yeah, its an uncomfortable sight isn’t it. But this kind of collective reality-blocking tends to run its course.
I note some are now saying they should shut up, like Tony Wright.
They are like school kids in the shelter sheds.
In a far and distant land littered with the bodies of it’s own and their children, a machine was set up to defend it by a monster that ruled. It was painted ten times it’s size with big painted teeth and all who ventured near get savaged and turned away. But deep inside after a couple of miles if you continue,the chopping blades are honed and are very real for it must save it’s big painted face. The honer’s live high and fine lives hiding behind it pretending they sweat at their management labours for the love of their own.
One day,a noble and gentle man armed with all he knew with the only ways he knew how, ventured forth to confront and save the children. His time was one of honesty and men and reason.
Times change.
He went straight in, they saw him coming from miles and back’s straightened and some shook at the threat. They feared the showboat, the lights, saw a spotlight and steeled for a confrontation and manned the battlements of no retreat. The man’s task a mighty one before he even stepped from the deck of the old faithful ship Genuine.
Another, a deadman, crawling amongst the dead and wounded in his own fair land, saw the boat go past and shut his eyes at what’s to come. He yelled, turn out your lights! The monster can see you. But on it sailed.
He has to get his home. The other’s course his.
He may have made things right if they’d met. The monster kills him all the time again and again. You must wear Mocassin’s, it does not know or care for emotion, you must sneak up behind it and when it turns and looks you in the eye, you must make or leave a way for it to turn and run.
Hurts sometimes but when you get back through the dead to tomorrow, there’s always a first aid kit on the Krait.
Jim, you are banned for a month and you must not come tiptoeing back in disguise. Your swarms of apostrophes and ghastly paragraphing (which I have here corrected) are unmistakeable.
Do it again and it becomes two months. Twice more after that and it becomes a year.
Do you really think i’m stupid enough to try tip toeing? Not that i’m not honest enough to let everyone know anyway, as I do, that it was a defying statement in reply to a slur?
It was obvious it was me.
I don’t upset your blog and respect the manner you want to run it in.
I’m going to get a scanner and start putting my Fathers war letters, Repatriation and Veteran Affairs files, Australian history and names associated with his abuses and death, political, military, medical and legal up on a site.Let everyone put the pieces together.
Always hoped my country and his people would come to his and families rescue but that’s just a thing of Hollywood and American spin and Australian recruitment drivel.
You’ve got this blog format in hand and working it well but I find writing in these small boxes more than a chore and the code posting hell. 5 and 6 attempts at times.
I can’t think of a better format for you though, and I’ve been on a lot.
Thanks for your tolerance and air space. Best wishes with your ventures.
Do so.
Learn to write English.
Or get a translator.
1. Write on a Word Program,
2. Edit it carefully! Save, then :
3. Copy and paste to these little boxes.
4. Copy and paste the password.
Someone else may have posted at that same time; if so, go out, copy and paste afresh, then copy and paste the new password. Voila.
Sorry, addressed to Jim, not Bob!
I heard you Doug Quixote. These blogs and posts move on too fast to indulge for my deficiencies.
I’m second gen post stress. You may understand the affliction of first gen.Trench fighters, as my Dad. If you can comprehend the scar for our veterans sake and their attempts at participation in life and to speak up for themselves.
Bob wishes ,as you do, better for me, but the statement to learn English or translator is very cruel.It’s like saying to a Vietnam kid to grow a leg and keep up you shit.I love old Bob and only ever had this countries back hand so he’s pretty cool and I know where it’s coming from.
Don’t know what the fuck we’re going to do without him, warts and all. People don’t realize.
This countries defences against pensioning of the war tolls is elitist crime. The people should also know that 80% of post stress afflicted ,does not intrude into the liberal political favourable ground of wife bashing selling and like the words dole bludgers, into public opinion.
That is a rich man’s and elite trades convenience held by news print majority over and sold to the people.
Our frontline men are much greater. I’ve slept on many as a kid and cleaned up much vomit.
Catch you around the traps. May not always agree on finer points, but your opinion as all others often opens my eyes and I will be polite in my questioning.
While i’m not still sure whether your’e a gay couple coupling and typing while your talking to me, or Helvi is standing on her head with a vibrator and compliant hippo smiling beside or whether p casey and Eleanor are actually teenagers naked in a dorm playing after hours, I totally enjoy all your company.
My day is coming after 50 years. I guarrantee no one will forget.
Thanks Jim. I do enjoy your posts, even the cryptic bits.
My suggestions are only made so that our host won’t ban you!
I was just thinking…….
Dear Julia and Tony,
While we are waiting for a Leader, could you please -
*Remind us what a safe beautiful country this was
*Release the 9 & 10 year old unaccompanied children from detention in Darwin
*Stop driving asylum seekers insane,they are not criminals
*Hire someone to see just what the ASIO people are actually doing
*Try to do one thing a week, or even a month to make me feel proud again
Like · · S
Jan I haven’t felt proud since 1967 when I discovered that there were hundreds of thousands of human beings considered to be flora and fauna and denied their own land and we were off murdering the Vietnamese and the moments of temporary pride in this shit hole country with shit hole people have been few and fleeting.
One such day was August 25 2003 when a brave full bench of the family court defied the government and released 5 traumatised kids from the prison they had been in for 32 months without charge.
The day was a day of me and Bob dancing in the family court and a young muslim man called Abbas entering a pub for a drink of beer.
The hate came back on 30 December when the evil bitch Vanstone deported the Bakhtiyari family to the wrong country without papers and left them to die.
If Australians had not heeded my call for help they would have but $40,000 was raised in three days.
Interesting though the Herald has admitted the sympathy and care now lie with Craig Thomson.
It’s a little puzzling that you appear happy to present yourself as a precise mirror image of Sophie Mirabella.
The same self-righteousness, the same vindictiveness, the same monotonous yammering tone, the same, the same, the same…
It’s not the same because the motivation is not the same and the actions are also quite different. To quote Sophie Mirabella, “I have been advised that family members sometimes feel that they have a right to ask about a parent’s affairs but in fact they have no formal right to do so”. Does that sound like Marilyn?