The fun continues at denialist headquarters.
The latest riff is the slap-down Dame Groan has delivered to jolly Joe.
Oh just shut up Joe.
This could become the pond gold standard response to any minister in the Abbott government who dares to speak about issues related to their portfolio.
"I'm turning the NBN into a bloody marvel of mixed technologies and useless connections".
Oh just shut up big Mal...
And so on and so forth.
"Look at me, I'm being a statesman".
Oh just shut up, lean Tony.
The problem of course is that the reptiles wasted a lot of energy and a lot of heat celebrating Joe's budget and explaining how it was just and right and proper and so and thus.
Remember the good old days? (click to slightly enlarge). Oh the reptiles were right at the head of the charge:
And the ersatz reptiles at Fairfax, the reptiles you have when you don't have a Murdoch reptile to hand, were also onside:
Now Dame Groan's telling us the budget was dodgy, a dog, full of highly suspect measures and not worth a cheroot to a slumming cigar smoker in need of a puff?
Why she's gone plumb crazy, or even worse, she's gone plumb Fairfax:
Oh it's great to see the Tories go at each other, and the reason for Dame Groan's revisionist tendencies is easy enough to understand.
It's actually got very little to do with the budget, wretched shambolic exercise in flim flam by the snake oil seller that it was, no, it's all to do with the events highlighted in Damien Murphy's Joe Hockey biography heats Canberra's winter hibernation (forced video at end of link)
In the latest account of the bio fallout - up there with the bio fallout in Contagion - Peter Credlin speaks above her pay grade as a king maker and PM caller, jolly Joe listens to Tony when he should have heeded his wife, big Mal is untrustworthy - who'd have guessed - and jolly Joe fancies himself as Dirk Diggler:
King received the biggest laugh when noting that her book recorded Mr Hockey’s desire to enter hospital for stomach surgery under the pseudonym Dirk Diggler (the name of Mark Wahlberg’s porn star character in the 1997 film Boogie Nights).
The doctors knew best, and he was admitted as Joe Little.
‘‘And that’s unlikely to help negotiations with Jacqui Lambie,’’ Ms King said.
Oh dear. No wonder Dame Groan isn't amused. Somehow jolly Joe's managed to get himself compared to Mark Wahlberg ... and Jacqui Lambie:
Talk about a heavy hung penis fixation.
And now jolly Joe's going to leave his desire to become PM to destiny.
Just as well he's not leaving it to Dame Groan.
She's not happy, and it's not just the bulge in the underpants that's got her going:
The government, including Hockey in the important role as Treasurer, can be criticised for failing to make the public case for cutting government spending and altering the features of many entitlement programs.
Perhaps Abbott and his colleagues were caught out by the re-run of the West Australian Senate election and the delay in releasing the National Commission of Audit report.
In reality, there was an eerie silence from the government when it was first elected, when a compelling case for repairing the budget should have been made.
My sense is that the public will wear a degree of short-term pain if the budgetary position is well explained and the alternative is outlined (harsher adjustments down the track, an inability to respond to an economic downturn).
The trouble is that the government has not really provided this exposition.
We know (sic) learn from his newly released, authorised biography that Hockey suggested that the income tax levy on higher-income earners should have been extended to a greater proportion of taxpayers.
This is a little more than passing strange.
Australia now has one of the highest marginal income tax rates among advanced countries and we know that high marginal income tax rates reduce work effort and labour-force participation.
For all the carry-on about the impact of the (unaffordable and unjustifiable) paid parental leave scheme on women’s labour-force participation, why would Hockey support a policy that will drive down labour-force participation, as well as being antithetical (supposedly) to what the Liberal Party stands for? Sometimes it’s better simply to shut up.
Income tax? Et tu jolly Joe? The Tea Partiers now roam the jungle at night sniffing for your blood ...
Okay, the pond knows it's childish to chortle at these squabbling children, but the pond loves the sounds of playground feuds as a way of ushering in a new day.
It gives every hope that the country will move forward with all the sense of style and functionality this sign displayed when it did the Twitter rounds:
Quite so, DP, you've nailed it. The official word from PM&C is that we are bored and tired of being sickened by details from MH17 and Gaza. It is well time to move on, to #goldGoldGOLD where dinki-di winners are on the dias.
ReplyDeleteSorry DP - but Tongues is such a complete shit. He's bringing 150 asylum seekers to Australia for processing (they are apparently floating around somewhere near the Cocos Islands under the excellent care of BPS. It's nothing to do with the High Court challenge, none of them are sick, it's all now somehow India's responsibility, and 'we stopped the boats! ' (repeated ad infinitum). And he can't say any more because of 'operational reasons'
ReplyDeleteWhat a dick.
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteLaura Tingle in the AFR found that Hockey's biography “most devastating feature is the tone of self-congratulatory smugness that emerges from its subject and his colleagues”.
Hilariously such is the size of Hockey's ego he evidently read the biography prior to publication and singly failed to spot that it made him look like a self absorbed blow hard.
I read a few excerpts in The Guardian and was amazed how thin skinned he came across as. Always nursing bruised feelings when not given the due respect he felt he was due. If he felt that this book was going to provide the evidence necessary for his leadership ambitions he is both a fool and a fraud.
Please keep up the fine work in skewering the Climate Denialist Headquarters over at the Oz, with so many targets you can set up a free fire zone.
DiddyWrote
The funniest bit about the book is Hockey claiming that it is his destiny to be PM. Nothing to do with him. The gods will decide for he is marked. I had a very good laugh.
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