Mood:  accident prone

We've managed to flush out the defensive Peta Credlin profile from the flagship of the Liberal Party media machine, namely The Weekend Australian, via their colour supplement and teaser on page 1 main paper.

It's a grasping the nettle sort of situation for the Liberal Party and the newspaper itself so heavily invested in that side of corporate politics.

The opening line is priceless, referring to those "swirling rumours".

We posted this on facebook, last week, complete with politician network, as follows:

Tom McLoughlin

I think it's time to acknowledge the rumour swirling around the Canberra insider club aka beltway. The rumour, even if false, is that the leader of the opposition is having an affair with his chief of staff. I've heard this rumour exists, from two independent sources now in the last 4 weeks, the latest political in Canberra. Even if it is not true it is swirling. Abbott's family values platform may be up for review in an election. Wednesday at 2:31pm

Of all the verbs journalist Kate Legge could have chosen in her opening sentence, it turns out to be an echo of "swirling". We used the same word on a Crikey thread last week also.

And the two independent sources of the rumour "swirling" in Canberra are real.

Four years ago at the outset of this SAM blog we nailed Abbott for being a student thug in the 1970ies.

Now we offer these comments on Credlin:

1. For a West Winger fan she missed the one about Josh Lyman ("joking lie man"!) and the imperative of the chief policy adviser staying out of the spot light - "it's not what we do" he laments.

2. Seems her husband and no doubt herself are interested in two things out of this story, given it had to be written, with social media closing in:

(a) to harvest the profile position for her own career ambition to be the first conservative female PM, if and when Abbott crashes (as predicted by the real political journalism today by ... Laurie Oakes in the sister SDT), that is some insurance post Abbott;

(b) to get ahead of the social media curve and control the story of those dirty laundry rumours.

3. But what the Liberal Party can't publish are updated pictures of happy families - the Abbott marriage, the Loughnane-Credlin marriage, in contra distinction to the Happy Couple PR image of PM Gillard and partner at CHOGM recently over in Perth - under byline of Gemma Jones of the Sydney Daily Telegraph in the belly of the conservative beast, so to speak. That sort of says it all.

 

4. Credlin and her allies may want to note (unkindly) this story leads the soft and gossip section of the newspaper with not one reference of substance in the main newspaper. That's an expendable kind of PR perch there. Most serious colour mag profiles have a cover article in the main press too.

5. Despite clumsy metaphors about dirty laundry and washing of Abbott's lycra, the article ominously did not meet or even attempt to address the real "swirling" rumour and by ramping Credlin's attractive 40 year frame can only intensify the swirl, so to speak. Is this indeed the infamous News Ltd turning of the rack on Abbott's DLP economics and a warning of corporate big brother to get back on script re the IMF funding etc? One does wonder. If so, it highlights the danger for Ms Expendable in a much bigger game of real politik thuggery internal to the Coalition over 'pure' free market economics after the GFC made it look like the mumbo jumbo it really is, and of course, IR ideology etc.

And what we noticed about alleged bright burning brain Credlin in my google research last night, pre The Australian story, was this quote with clumsy, awful grammar, of a so called lawyer of words amongst mere mortals, courtesy of the Sacred Heart Women newsletter:

 "wouldn't be able to have achieved the things I have ...." Whoa, stop, help, give me oxygen, grammar crime underway! Passive, not active, repetition of word choice, excess length.

That ain't no Ainslie Hayes talking there (badly hazed Ainslie - everyone's favourite conservative on West Wing show, and the hilarous Gilbert & Sullivan episode with the dessicted hate flower delivery, saved by gallant Sam Christ Born err Seaborn).

And note the confusion over hair colour - seems some therapy may be called for contrary to the 'happy in her self' cliche from Ms Legge. Perhaps via the First Bloke known for his hairdressing and listening skills?

Posted by editor at 3:06 PM EADT

Updated: Saturday, 5 November 2011 3:42 PM EADT

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Mood:  caffeinated

We've met one or two in our political activist career, both nominally same side and opposition. The truism about the enemy being behind you tends to apply.

These short arses can be quite recalcitrant about their own central and special power role. They won't compromise. They will push and push and push until yes, metaphorically they magically grow another 12 inches from 5 to 6 feet as properly befits their status in the world.

This is the psychology the Australian people are dealing with in Joyce, who as smart and plausible as he is, assumes above all democracy that he must know best. That is, an attack on democracy itself aligned to corporate executive self interest.

Napolean is th exemplar, who famously spent human lives as a daily allowance of cannon fodder. 

No doubt union hard cases have another psychology again, of ideological rejection of individual talent and profit above the group interest.

Pre GFC the corporate free trade mantra might have been valid, but those days are gone, well gone. Govt intervention is highly necessary including nationalisation of the carrier again.

Posted by editor at 9:17 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 30 October 2011 9:19 AM NZT

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Mood:  accident prone

Really.So what the hell is the point of this post? You work it out, smarties. Caio, caio.

Posted by editor at 11:24 AM NZT

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Mood:  down

Chris Uhlmann's spouse is an ALP politician which is well known in the belt way of insiders, but not to the general ABC public audience. 

Here is a beltway report of same:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/05/06/chris-uhlmann-a-pro-says-abbott-but-is-there-an-abc-double-standard/

Uhlmann runs his pompous jaded cynicism against The Greens tonight on the 7.30 Report. We think it's projection of his own flaws.

His concluding punchline is that the Greens are just like any other political party by failing to criticise Asher, who has quit the C'th Ombudsman role. 

Wrong.

Wrong for failing to disclose his own ALP family connection.

Wrong on the merits because anyone in said beltway knows that no one else at the Senate Select Committee from the major parties was ever going to pursue the questions that needed to be asked, other than the Greens, regarding the desperate plight of asylum seekers and broken detention policy.

Asher in effect voted with his morality and his heart to save peoples' lives, which both major parties have abrogated with extended mandatory detention, not least in the face of Dept of Immigration senior bureaucrates saying the system is broken.

Which by definition makes the Greens a political party, granted, by cooperating in asking critical questions the answers of which the public has every Right to Know.

But it also makes the Greens a very different kind of political party to the lazy, arrogant born to rule characters in the two major parties. Including said ALP spouse.

And Uhlmann appears to have deliberately airbrushed out the role the Greens played in embarrassing Gillard on her failed Malaysian solution as an obvious grounds for subjective bias in the quotes from Senator Faulkner. The only real news indeed in the story was that the two major parties are bullies against the Greens and free speech. Nothing new about that. 

What Asher has done is basically verified what most thinking voters already know. That the two major parties stink with inflated self interest and have no ideals or convictions and only the Greens fight against injustice. Because if Asher had given the dorothy dixer questions to other parties to ask you can be sure the chair of the committee would have shut him down real quick.

But Uhlmann prefes sophistry to reporting the obvious real politik? Conflict of interest have anything to do with that Chris?

Posted by editor at 9:17 PM NZT

Updated: Thursday, 20 October 2011 9:20 PM NZT

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Mood:  quizzical

Unreasonable people change the world and society. Lee Rhiannon is such a person, no doubt. I find her unreasonable no doubt.

But then we have puffer fish (they are poisonous too) Graham Richardson pontificating on talent pool and sanity of elected officials. 

Which might play pre GFC but a wise person said: The definition of madness is doing the same thing - read doing the same kind of politics and business - and expecting a different result.

That's Richo in the frame there. A dinosaur mendicant to big media and corporate interests including the business donation base of the ALP and broader corporate interests.

One notes that Rhiannon's greatest achievement is the promotion of the Democracy4Sale research of such assistance to journalism. 

Even to the extent of a backlash on herself regarding donation to Survey by a foreign nominally hostile power under Gorbachev. The irony.

Mmm. What could Richo tell us about cash in brown bags I wonder? The man has a vested interest. Even if it is ovetaken by the parental career instinct nowdays.

As for talent pool of the Greens 'dropping off' after Brown and Milne'. Not according to reports (Crikey) of the green think tank behind the climate change committee. 

And the WA green senators are superb speakers and thinkers. No problem with talent there. Hanson Young will mature and is already a raw beauty in the political talent stakes that any major party would be proud to annexe, but won't.

Qld practicising lawyer. Medical doctor from Victoria. 

Indeed how deep is the talent in Richo's old mates network, you know, deeper than self interest and Keating's most cynical of philosophy that ushered in the dregs of the middle class?

People in glass houses Richo, will not prove to be a sustainable provider. Understand?

Secondly the deification of leader Bob Brown, admirable as he is, and courage beyond measure, has his human failings. Failing to publicly stand up for Alec Marr would have to be a big one, duly noted. Especially with Garrett's mates behind the unravelling of Marr. More irony.

Posted by editor at 9:21 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 16 October 2011 9:33 AM NZT

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Mood:  accident prone

What's in a cartoon and headline today? 

Did all this start with Moir's hilarious cans of "spin' and Tony as a 'one sandwich short of a picnic' Popeye character? 

Or did it start with the humble SAM expose in January 2007 of a thumping student politician Tony back in his bladish student glory days amongst the Sydney uni snobs of the 70ies?

Or the unnamed caller to abc radio who knew Tony at school throwing oranges at people.

One  wonders.

One notes a certain echo, a certain theme with a big mo, in today's major Sydney press, indeed even a cross corporate consensus News to Fairfax, that Tony Abbott is energetic to the extent of dangerous violence. That or his mates in the right wing who follow his lead.

Tony is not your Gandhi style politician. He's not for taking a whole country with him. No he's a hard action man into the fray no matter how wrongheaded, self serving, or backward.

Tony's own weather system of activity can generate the vortex of attention even as it leads downward.

Tony believes in transubstantiation but not climate science. Go figure. 

And so the big press note insightfully Tony's oath "in blood" yesterday against the carbon tax in the wake of the mass murder by a Norwegian right wing extremist, the day after a page 1 story of similar ilk in the Sydney Morning Herald on the same local concern, backed by the authority of the intelligence agencies here.

Just like the critical error over the Iraq War - supported by Tony.

Conservative people, nay conservative voters, will note the concern, and surely agree. No matter your view say on asylum seekers and their miserable situation, you have to wonder about a man who makes light of that misery with a deliberate quip about "stop the boats, stop the smokes".

But why?

We speculate such a person may have taken a few too many knocks to the head in their younger, rugby sporting career. Whatever the reason, it's all Tony's own work and the media have reported today to useful effect.

Posted by editor at 9:21 AM NZT

Updated: Thursday, 13 October 2011 9:24 AM NZT

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Mood:  cool

There will be some ABC types invited to the ANU AFL 50th anniversary reunion dinner tonight who won't be feeling too celebratory at the shocking demise of expert work colleagues. The grief in the broadcasts this last 24 hours has been palpable. And yes we are tearing up. Seems bloggers have a sympatico with dedicated news people who create light more than heat.

One person we have no sympathy for is a dog of a man, advisedly.

Last Thursday at about 8.40 am Alan Jones had a call in from his "mate" who helped organise the buses for the right wing rabble at federal parliament protest earlier that week. All well and good. Democratic voices who have a right to be heard you might think. But that same day of protest was also the day when photos of Norway's white supremacist mass murderer appeared in all the big press. The images showed the killer on site going through a police renactment. 

So back to Alan Joness "mate" 2 days after that chilling press, describing to Jones on Sydney public radio how he helped cause "carnage" in Canberra earlier in the week and was now in contact with the next right wing protest cavlcade - of truckies from NW Western Australia heading to Canberra. 

 "Carnage eh? Ha ha ha ha" laughs Alan Jones. Then Alan's little "mate" boasts in a tone of high spirits how the truckies are now coming to Canberra "to clean up the carnage".

Get it? Right wing white supremacist kills the cream of Norway's organised left wing youth. Then Alan Jones thinks references in polite society to political "carnage" is funny.

How are we to interpret this? Presumably Alan Jones' big mate Tony Abbott doesn't need a bullet proof vest when addressing these right wing pro gun rabble  unlike John Howard famously at a protest in 1998, because Tony feels he is behind the gun sights with people like Alan Jones and his little "mate" not in front. Other people altogether are the targets.

We think Jones is a violent dog roaming the streets of Australian public life and should be treated as such. Mad, bad and dangerous to know. One can theorise about the psychology, that Jones' has sublimated his minority sexuality for so long as he panders to conservative power to make a living, that he is now filled with hateful rage at other minorities, as an expression of his own self loathing. 

Whatever the reason, we are witness to the banality of evil on Sydney radio now, courtesy of Alan Jones and 2GB.

Posted by editor at 9:15 AM NZT

Updated: Monday, 22 August 2011 4:47 PM NZT

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Mood:  cool

The Dolt is promoting a smear against green MP Rhiannon. Bolt only exposes his own profound ignorance of science. Rhiannon is far more likely to be correct on science than Bolt will ever be.

We well recall this science reportage some 9 years ago:

Scientists Blame Deadly Africa Famine on Pollution From North America, Europe, Asia

22 July 2002
By Joseph B. Verrengia

...The starvation brought on by the 1970-85 drought that stretched from Senegal to Ethiopia captured the world's attention with searing images: skeletal mothers staring vacantly, children with bloated bellies lying in the sand, vultures lurking nearby. Before rains finally returned, 1.2 million people had died.

Now, a group of scientists in Australia and Canada say that drought may have been triggered by tiny particles of sulfur dioxide spewed by factories and power plants thousands of miles away in North America, Europe and Asia.

The short-lived pollution particles, known as aerosols, didn't have to travel to Africa to do their dirty work. Instead, they were able to alter the physics of cloud formation miles away and reduce rainfall in Africa as much as 50 percent, say the researchers.

Copyright 2002 The Seattle Times Company

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/07/21/home/main515765.shtml

 AP)  Nearly two decades after one of the world's most devastating famines in Africa, scientists are pointing a finger at pollution from industrial nations as one of the possible causes.

The starvation brought on by the 1970-85 drought that stretched from Senegal to Ethiopia captured the world's attention with searing images: skeletal mothers staring vacantly, children with bloated bellies lying in the sand, vultures lurking nearby. Before rains finally returned, 1.2 million people had died.

Now, a group of scientists in Australia and Canada say that drought may have been triggered by tiny particles of sulfur dioxide spewed by factories and power plants thousands of miles away in North America, Europe and Asia.

Posted by editor at 12:47 PM NZT

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Mood:  d'oh

The local Murdoch tabloid smear sheet is getting comical.

Apparently cars when sold should indicate the specification of their fuel usage. 

But people selling leases and selling houses should not provide basic information on energy usage to consumers so they can exercise informed freedom of choice. Like one expects in a genuine "free market".

Well it's not surprising  that a liar like the Sydney Daily Telegraph that breaches the commercial norm prohibiting misleading and deceptive representations in the course of business, should promote secrecy in household energy usage.

A liar campaigning against truth, and never mind the Right to Know. Such mediocre hypocrites, along with Alan Jones beating this particular drum.

Not serious people. No wonder eyeballs are migrating everywhere but the Murdoch smear sheets. How long before NotW factor kicks in locally? Soon one hopes.

Posted by editor at 3:57 PM NZT

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Mood:  cool

Well, well. Akerman in today's Murdoch owned Sunday Daily Telegraph in Sydney writes what can only be described as an apologia for political mass murder:

"He [Breivik] has opened an obvious wound in a policy [multiculturalism] which has for years been defended by the soft-Left in Europe and Australia, indeed in most Western cultures, though not elsewhere because multiculturalism can only exist in liberal regimes."

Under the headline "This was a deathblow for multiculturalism" no less.

Is the subtext of this grotesquery in the Murdoch tabloid an unvarnished white supremacism, and apologia for the horror of the poltical mass murderer? 

The article is notable for not one outright condemnation of the mass murderer. Is this really acceptable press behaviour in a civil society? Should Akerman be hounded out of decent society?

How can anyone stomach this blame the victim [supporters of multiculturalism] moral excrement parading as journalism?

Over to you Lachlan Murdoch. 

Posted by editor at 5:46 PM NZT

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