The recrudescence of the orange putresence

They enthusiastically embraced a convicted felon and known rapist to be their country’s exemplar. Not hesitatingly, not with caveats, not in ignorance of his crimes but knowingly and cheerfully. A tainted vulgarian represents their nation, its ethos, its character. He’s their role model – a man who ran for president to stay out of prison.

Trumpism was rampant across the popular vote and every single swing state. Not just a Republican Oval Office but a Republican Senate and a Republican House supplementing the Republican-stacked Supreme Court all pledging fealty to the outlandish cartoon creation of Roy Cohn and Mark Burnett without who Trump would’ve remained a carpet-bagging real-estate shonk ripping off creditors and assaulting women. And without Murdoch’s Fox support he’d be wearing a colour-matched jumpsuit and a be-spooning Bubba would be cupping his balls in a hairy palm.

His support was spread beyond the expected rapacious oligarchs, cryptobro chancers, Christofascists, Klansmen, proto-nazis, Qrackpots and the thinking-is-hard chucklefucks.

The normalisation of the crazy was enabled by a craven GOP, a supine Merrick Garland In the DOJ and the corporate media, particularly but not solely the Fox navvies such as our very own Excretia Borgia – Mandy Devine on Murdoch’s NY Post. Consequently, gormless, low information dullards will define the new America.

21 million Americans, out of the 81 million who voted for Biden in 2020 after seeing just how egregious Trump was as president the first time, swung back to support the orange burst trash bag of human failings after clear evidence he’d become even worse.

Women, the sexual assault targets and foetus incubators without recourse to abortions under any circumstance, with their menstrual cycles to be recorded and tracked, were expected to be the saviours of American democracy by overwhelmingly rejecting the dystopian Handmaid’s Tale of MAGA misogyny. Yet white women voted in the majority for Trump and young women went 8% more Trumpian than they did in 2020.

45% of Latino voters (Latino men 54%) thought that Trump’s disparagements and threats against their demographic was intended for those other Latinos – you know, “those ones over there, the Mexicans, not us”, anyway, look – Haitians are Black and it’s nice to be able to look down on someone else. Pulling the ladder up behind them – the essence of arsehole fuckwittery but all good for the Americans’ version of fuck-you capitalism, doncha know you commie fuck?

Older white males were again the single biggest cohort within the Trumposphere. If you’re in the group that holds the power then you stay within that group. Big surprise if it was any other way. The ‘Others’ who join in are a perverse group of camp followers hoping to share the spoils.

As a paid-up member of the union of old, white men I shall posit the view that some potential waverers stuck with the orange aberration as a ‘fuck you’ to the self-righteous wowsers who assign every wrong throughout history to the “pale, stale and male”. With 18-29 year olds, white women, Latinos and Black men all edging towards Trump while 65+ was the only age bracket with a movement to Harris and with Trump’s lead among white men shrinking (from 23 points in 2020 to 20 in 2024) it’s perhaps time to retire that tired old trope.

If only

The only demographic emerging with dignity intact is Black women. “Harris won them by 85 points – a bigger lead than any other gendered and racial group measured by CNN” as reported in The Guardian. The other voters have retrospectively endorsed the 6th January coup attempt by default and were cool with his threats to do it again. They have given permission for Trump to live up to his promise of Putinesque defenestration of resistance and the shuttering of accountability.

The country that trumpets itself (pun intended) as the resolute, heroic John Wayne of the world (“USA! USA! USA!”) has celebrated a bloated, cowardly dog who disparaged those with character and with courage as suckers and losers; who used an Arlington Cemetery headstone as a prop for a look-at-me, grinning, thumbs-up photo-op and who whined at acknowledging veterans’ sacrifices at a WW1 commemoration because rain would risk dampening that ridiculous yellow coiffe.

They further embraced the cult by re-electing MAGA effluvia such as sporkfoot Marjorie Taylor-Green, the dumbest woman on the planet, and hand-shandy aficionado and skank-in-residence Lauren Can-I-Pull-Your-Dick Bobert. Dog abandoner Rafael Edward (Ted) Cruz who fled to Cancun when the state he represented froze over was put back into office by the very people he deserted in a crisis.

The GOP platform was built on grievance, violence and hate. The Democrats countered with unicorns farting rainbows and singing Kumbyah. Much of the GOP is comprised of cowards and collaborators, the MAGA faithful are not disturbed by Trump’s vileness as it provides succour for their own awfulness and it appals those they hate. It’s why they adore him and it’s why over the next 4 years playing nice aint gonna butter any parsnips.

The Trump regime V2.0 will be an horrendium of freaks, kooks, criminals, morons, rent-seekers, Old Testament literalists and the miasma of resentment, retribution, white supremacy, unfettered avarice and violence.

Dollar Store Goebbles Stephen Miller and his Wannsee Conference2 app will target migrants, legitimate or not, for mass detention and deportation. Sound familiar meine Freunde?

Elmo the Space Nazi who single-handedly trashed Twitter after buying it for well-over it’s value then wiping 80% off its worth will be reshaping the entire federal bureaucracy to shave off 1/3rd of its size. Good luck with your next welfare cheque, Cleetus.

RFK Jnr, who in Kennedy family tradition has come to a gruesome end being Donny’s choice as anti-vax health czar and Cooker In Chief. Polio, diphtheria, meningococcal, some new viral outbreak? Character building.

Anyone participating in this regime will need to have significant MAGA credentials on their CV and be prepared to suck mushroom dick in public. Allegience to the Constitution will be entirely dispensible.

Waiting in the wings, watching the hamburger grease accumulate in Trump’s colon is alleged furniture fornicator and gofer for FRWNJ tech billionaire oligarch Peter Thiel who’s most revealing
quotes are:

“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible” and

“The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”

Vladimir Putin will of course be available at all times for consultation.

° ° ° ° °

The face of the USA, the one it will present to the world, will be that of a bloviating simpleton, it’s lips pursed like a puckered sphincter, its tiny hands concertinaing in time to meandering, narcissistic gibberish, a look of incomprehension behind the squinty, piggy eyes in those pallid tide marks within the congealed orange stucco. The self-titled Land Of The Free has opted for a moronic autocrat.

What the fuck did you just do, America?

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer.

Trump, the personification of America’s decline, is Norma Desmond redux

An aging silent film queen refuses to accept that her stardom has ended.

The Washington Post and charactour.com drew some parallels:

A Norma Desmond-like character, Trump watches Sunset Boulevard, “one of the greatest of all time,” again and again and again according to former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.

Grisham notes, “I’m sure that Trump has no clue – like none – how similar to him she was.”

“I’m a star… The greatest star of them all.”

“I’m rich! I’m richer than all this new Hollywood trash!… I own three blocks downtown…” (Norma Desmond, Sunset Blvd).

A narcissist, “obsessed with her looks” and “convinced that everyone loved her and lived in a fantasy world of her own making. With delusions of grandeur, living in a “big white elephant of a place,” a home filled with portraits from the glory days, and she spends every afternoon in the projection room, watching her old films.

“Every character in ‘Sunset Blvd.’ is tragic.” Norma’s life is a lesson. “Movie stars did not have happy lives.”

° ° ° ° °

Trump, Grand FUBAR and Loser-In-Chief is an addled old man.

In his first tilt at the presidency he had some control of his faculties and was driven by the grift and privilege and celebrity. For this round he has the self-awareness, bowel control and temperament of a toddler and a panicked desire to avoid bunking in with Bubba. Not so much alpha male as scared, insecure, whiney bitch. His verbal discharges are a drone of self-pity from an otherwise vainglorious blowhard, the sibilance of a deflating cognition lisping from a puckered sphincter pout. His gibbering idiocies are part-formed in what’s left of the mind of a life-long reflexive liar and braggart.

Then there’s his soaring rhetoric – better found scribbled on a truck-stop cubicle door. Discursive harangues on sharks and batteries, Hannibal Lecter, schools undertaking sex reassignments, Marxist, fascist radical left windmills killing whales and causing cancer. There’s his slurry of slurs and hate and grievance that rots his brain and may kill him before the corpulent Junk food epicure* has one double cheese-burger too many and vomits his intestines into a gold-coloured toilet.

Untroubled by the burdens of either wit or intelligence he unironically refers to himself in the 3rd person, and in fanciful anecdotes as “Sir” wherein scholars, the finest legal minds and big strong men with rippling muscles and tears in their eyes all defer to his genius, overwhelmed by his mastery of whatever issue is to hand.

This self-fellating narcissist surrounds himself with ostentatious kitsch, a vacuous vulgarian whose gaudy Mar-a-Lago horrendium sur la mer is a revival of the “excessive, dated, dark, baronial LA manor” of Norma Desmond; reeking of mould and desperation and the “alcoholic ferment of generations of cougars in Chanel No.5” (ouch New York Intelligencer).

Trump is spiralling into dementia but deserves no sympathy. Recall his character, some of which I remind you of below.

His only gift is the grift. An inveterate cheat he believes that playing by the rules is for losers.

Putin’s plaything is an insecure pantywaist with a dictator fetish. Desperate for validation, readily manipulated with flattery he’d sell out his country to murderous despots in exchange for a military parade and a statue in his honour in Red Square, Riyadh or Pyongyang.

The sluggardly wibbley-wobbley gelatinous biomass of moobs and complaint was laughed at by world leaders and the UN General Assembly. He has a no humour but a fragile ego and hates to be mocked.

Lacking all introspection, he’s a graceless bore who’s indifferent to nuance and to issues beyond his immediate self-interest. He’s an appallingly ignorant simpleton yet he cannot stand being challenged.

Grandpa Donny the family man, who you just know doesn’t recognize the names of his own grandchildren, would fundraise at a funeral of his own spawn. Imagine a silent auction of tawdry trading card NFTs and gold-painted sneakers festooned around Junior’s corpse, posed life-like in his coffin, the residue of Bolivia’s finest dusting his nostrils, the marquee merch an autographed Trump bible™ clasped in his cod, dead hand as pneumatic Strumpettes collect the bids. Classy.

“Norma Desmond… epitomises super-rich self-delusion. Cocooned in privilege, she fancies herself a meritocratic success story. The fantasy of her self-made triumph is abetted by an information silo that she doesn’t even know she’s trapped in. Her sycophantic enabler… showers her with forged fan letters, as though anticipating the echo chamber that would manifest under the banner of Fox News.” (Sunset Boulevard at 70, The Guardian).

Unlike Norma Desmond, the tangerine man retains a significant retinue. Trumpworld is populated with thralls, sycophants, Nazi apologists, Bull Connor replicants, insurrectionists, conspirators and the hordes of cultists with their $9.99 gas station sunnies, goatees and MAGA caps and their insouciant Brian Moran grammar and spelling with which to drag the libtards.

Photoworks

There’s the ammosexuals, gravy seals and meal team 6ers, the rubes who use family photo albums as an alternative to Tinder, the evangelicals with their selective Christianity, the loons in his orbit – Elmo the space Nazi, Nick Fuentes, Jordan Peterson, Charlie Kirk et al, and MAGAe scamfluencers ala Alex Jones.

The shameless long-drop of Fox News rolls the turd in chocolate and covers him with sprinkles. If you don’t believe that there truly are malevolent lizard people out there then you’ve never met Rupert Murdoch.

Elsewise non-entities and hangers-on, the botoxed, silicon-titted, duck-faced, inflatable-girlfriend skanks who gravitate to flash hucksters. And not least the aspiring fellators of the tumid choad – Trumpoline Laura Looney, parking garage lawyer Alina Habba* and Judge Toady Aileen Cannon. He’s even got simps on the SCOTUS.

But he is quite insane. And he’s ready for his close up, Mr. DeMille.

An authentic photo: Snopes.com

*@itsJeffTiedrich

° ° ° ° °

To beat Trump, we need to know why Americans keep voting for him. Psychologists may have the answer. George Monbiot, The Guardian.

“Trump exemplifies extrinsic values. From the tower bearing his name in gold letters to his gross overstatements of his wealth; from his endless ranting about “winners” and “losers” to his reported habit of cheating at golf; from his extreme objectification of women, including his own daughter, to his obsession with the size of his hands; from his rejection of public service, human rights and environmental protection to his extreme dissatisfaction and fury, undiminished even when he was president of the United States, Trump, perhaps more than any other public figure in recent history, is a walking, talking monument to extrinsic values.”

 

Sunset for grandpa

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer

There’s something wrong with Herr Shikeltuber

“Every instinct in this bloke’s body, every calculation, is about how he can divide the country. It shows this bloke’s not fit to run a bath, let alone Australia” (Jason Clare, Minister for Education).

In a Trumpian world of normalised grotesqueries the Overton Window has skewed significantly rightward making it difficult to rank Right-Wing Scum-Bags in accordance with their relative levels of vileness. Is fascism worse than facilitating mass shootings via lax gun laws? Is stealing from a kids’ cancer charity as bad as diverting $billions in public money to mega-rich pals? Does Dick Cheney’s endorsement of Kamala Harris make him any less of a coont? The RWSBs all contribute to the stink of a shared, amoral ordure where the consequences of their malevolence is impossible to fully quantify so rating them is mostly futile.

Nevertheless the orange-stuccoed, putrescent depravity-stuffed hotdog skin that is Donald Trump, it could be reasonably argued, is the quintessence of the type and the standard by which all the others should be judged. A recitation of the full catalogue of his flaws would dampen the vibe at a riot of English football hooligans – it’s the dumbfounding effect that media stooges cynically exploit to dilute his endless outrages as quirky but unexceptional.

It is a given that the GOP in the US and the Tories in the UK are power-hungry sociopaths and born-to-rule prigs, corrupt chancers, flight risks and sex predators. At a local level, assessing where P.Duddy the aspiring tinpotato of Oz sits on the global spectrum of odiousness is a fraught exercise when his inclusion with mass murderers and crackpot billionaire oligarchs could be considered hyperbolic. But consider for a moment that forty-six per cent of Coalition voters back the orange rapist’s POTUS candidacy (Lowy Institute poll, page 14) – a shocking stat, so we should then ponder the ecosystem in which Duddy would thrive to get a better handle on the threat he poses and the extremism he’ll exploit if given the chance.

From the get-go Hairless Hitler the kitten strangler has been an active participant in the treasure hunt of grift, the dysfunction and indolence and the BAU cruelty that characterise RWSB governments everywhere. Lacking any charm or perspicacity he could believably be drawing upon the Anton Chigurh character for inspiration; supplemented of course by his own inherent talent for hate-mongering, punching down, bigotry and malice that will establish the despotic vibe of any possible Duddy regime.

Duddy’s Trumpification of auspol continues FauxMo’s cringe-worthy fellating of the orange hosenscheißer, but less blatantly given Donny’s current status as sundowning grandpa and prisoner-in-waiting (and the Thug’s aversion to even a hint of homoeroticism). But let’s see where we’re at.

Appealing to bigotry, ignoring facts? Scapegoating migrants? The Trumpers’ dialling it to 11 in the US is reinforcement for Duddy’s own prejudices. It’s a natural fit. It develops from the shameless exploitation of the Tampa and children overboard infamies by John Howard the cryogenic Igor Mortis and is a comfortable filler for Duddy’s own moral void. The duplicity of his Voice sabotage was a dry run – a test case for how palatable his overt racism will be. I can taste a bit of sick in the back of my throat.

Outrage farming, manufacturing crises and the testing of the proles’ tolerance for absurdism is in beta release locally – our trainer-wheeled Trumpies are not so stupid as to go full Dementadon ala “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an (transgender) operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child” but they’re pretty chill with Donny’s porkies such as wind generators killing whales. BTW, a full list of Coalition MPs concerned about whale well-being due to ocean drilling and mining is available here.

I’ve been sensing pumpkin-coloured themes on many things Duddy for some time:

Duddy – “I’ve always seen parliament as a disadvantage for sitting governments.”
Trump – threatens to jail adversaries in escalating rhetoric ahead of the candidates’ debate.

Trump’s stolen election?
Duddy’s accusation that the AEC was “rigging” the Voice referendum.

Culture wars – the imported, facile “woke mind-virus” sledge to cover any outbreak of compassion or empathy.

Blatant lying, dissembling and misinformation? If called out, double down and fill the zone with shit.

“We now see evidence, Mr Speaker, that the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government, has also made a decision about who they’re going to back in the next federal election, Mr Speaker, and that is open and that is obvious, and they have picked this bloke as that candidate.” (Duddy on Albanese, February 10, 2022).

If Peter Dutton isn’t an outright liar, he’s a clear-eyed believer of his own untruths – Michael Bradley lined the prick up nicely in Crikey ($): “Former PM Scott Morrison lied constantly, but couldn’t hide the smug self-awareness that his resting smirk face betrayed. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, by contrast, only has one face, and it always looks sincere. The trouble is that he says things that are objectively untrue, things he cannot possibly believe. He does so often, with increasing frequency and flagrancy. As with Trump, this presents the media with a big challenge. So far, they’re failing the test.”

Dutton is a corpulent, embaldened Tony Abbott sans the red sluggos (take a moment to process that) with the same incessant negativity that the feral friar took into government. And we all saw how that worked out. Keep in mind the Libs preferred Scott Morrison to Dutton – he’s that awful. At some point it will dawn on the Libs that they really need to trawl somewhere other than the discount bins to find their leaders.

The RWSB biome encompasses genocidal murderer Netanyahu through to the masses of credulous rubes and dullards who willingly put their dicks in the chipper by cheering on the likes of Abbott, BoJo, Farage, Bolsinaro and JDVance; their conceits fed by the noisome duo of Murdoch and Musk, the most rapacious, mercenary media effluencers to ever befoul public discourse. The amorality of the wider corporate media cheersquad applies an asymmetric warfare – exploiting the higher standards that left leaning politics is held to for the $ clicks that cultivated offence can yield.

Within the sack & pillage cohort Duddy enjoys the indulgence of a calorie indifferent Gina Rinehart, a bloated sack of avarice and inanity who seems to believe as per Elmo the space nazi that obscene inherited wealth is a reflection of wisdom and insight. It is inevitable that should the Gruppenfritter fall into the PMship his status as Big Vag’s primary gofer is assured.

Division is his modus operandi. National unity, concensus and social cohesion are anathema to this autocratic head kicker. Just how low Duddy will go will be revealed as the election draws nearer. But it’s his embrace of the anonymous fossil fuel plunderers who know they are destroying the planet yet choose to do it anyway and his opportunistic exploitation of the genocidal murder of little kiddies in Gaza as a political wedge that sums up this POS.

° ° ° ° °

👍 Like, comment and share.

Good reads:

Yes, division is Dutton’s business model. But so is damaging national security. Bernard Keane, Crikey ($).

These 21st-century demagogues aren’t mavericks – they’ve repeated on us throughout history, George Monbiot, The Guardian

° ° ° ° °

The Gruppenfritter bigged up his “not a racist” credentials by suggesting the Nazis weren’t all bad, arguing that the Nazis had shame. According to The Thug the Nazis at least tried to cover up their genocide, the suggestion being that Nazis hid their crimes because they felt guilty, making them more moral than Hamas.

Not a racist? You be the judge:

“The Australian people don’t want to have officials out of Canberra jamming some sort of language code down their throat.” That was his response to hate speech.

“I don’t think people should be coming in from that war zone at all at the moment. It’s not prudent to do so and I think it puts our national security at risk.” On Gazans being given refuge while wrapped in an Australian scarf celebrating Olympians. 14th August 2024.

“If the government is returned it will be in minority and “will include the Greens, it’ll include green teals, it’ll include Muslim candidates from western Sydney, it will be a disaster.” Press conference, 4th July 2024.

“At a time when we need to unite the country, this prime minister’s proposal will permanently divide us by race,” On the federal government’s proposed Voice to Parliament.

He took a vague complaint against Bruce Pascoe, author of ‘Dark Emu’, suggesting he committed fraud, to the Australian Federal Police. It was dismissed. January 2020.

“It’s going to mean that people who need medical services in Australia are going to be displaced from those services. Because if you bring hundreds and hundreds of people from Nauru and Manus down to our country, they are going to go into the health network, I don’t want to see Australians who are in waiting lines in public hospitals kicked off those waiting lines because people off Nauru and Manus are now going to access those health services.” 1 March 2019.

“The spotlight is given to people like Fraser Anning or like this senator [Faruqi]. The comments she’s made and the desire to extract some sort of political advantage or attention seeking out of this circumstance, I think is appalling.” Drawing an equivalence between the comments of Senator Anning, who defended the Christchurch massacre and Senator Faruqi who condemned the government’s rhetoric on the subject. Radio National, 18 March 2019.

“I discriminate not on somebody’s ethnic background, not on their religion, not on their country of origin, but on the fact that they have conducted themselves against the law, outside of the law.” The Australian July 2018.

“I do think on the information that I’ve seen, people do need help, and they need help from a civilized country like ours.” On resettling whitee South African Farmers. Daily Telegraph, March 2018.

“The reality is people (in Melbourne) are scared to go out at restaurants of a night time because they’re followed home by these gangs, home invasions, and cars are stolen and we just need to call it for what it is. Of course, it is African gang violence.”
Interview on 2GB, January 2018.

“Somebody once said to me that the world’s biggest collection of Armani jeans and handbags up on Nauru waiting for people to collect when they depart.” Interview on 2GB September 2017.

“The reality is Malcolm Fraser did make mistakes in bringing some people in the 1970s and we’re seeing that today. We need to be honest in having that discussion. There was a mistake made. Lessons from past migrant programs should be learnt for people settling in Australia today.” Sky News November 2016.

“They won’t be numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English. These people would be taking Australian jobs, there’s no question about that. For many of them that would be unemployed, they would languish in unemployment queues and on Medicare and the rest of it so there would be huge cost and there’s no sense in sugar-coating that, that’s the scenario.” Sky, 16 May, 2016.

“I don’t have any issue with what Wilson said frankly or his right to say it.” Endorsing Wilson Tuckey’s comments that Aboriginal recognition a farce. 15 March 2010.

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer

A test article – is he nuts?

“I thought the chance of Dutton being prime minister was so terrible,” Turnbull says. “I thought Dutton would run off to the right. He would be dog whistling. He’d be going on about Muslims and migrants, and any right-wing, hot-button, red-meat issue he could go for, he would go for. And I thought he would do a lot of damage as prime minister of Australia in a short period. Because once people become prime minister, they’re off the leash.” (Malcolm Turnbull, Nemisis, ABC).

It’s now been two and a bit years on the sidelines for Dud and Suss and the chamber pot rodeo that is the Tory coagulation. They now seem to have settled on a key theme for their desperate marketing of the L/NP grift machine as viable, alternative government – nuclear power.

The Thug’s inherent talents had previously been pushed to the fore as a primary strategy – fear campaigns and a Howardesque racism (the Tories’ nod and wink to One Notionists and those at the bigot end of the nut job bell curve). He seemed to have embraced the idea that his innate hatefulness had been validated via his successful appeal to the worst in our nature through his ‘go low, go No‘ mendacity in the Voice referendum. Dud’s FUD¹ is surely the quintessence of the man. Taking time out from drowning kittens to disparage the dusky and the powerless always puts a spring in his goose-step.

Carping negativity and constant doom-mongering, hyperbolic distortions of events, dismissal of inconvenient reality, Trumpian post-truth narratives to frame their hypocritical, self-righteous humbug and their blaming-the-dog-for-farting pecksniffery, accusations of failings that they themselves effected when in government, opportunistic partisan sledging to politicise any issue regardless of collateral damage – all to be deployed as chance arises of course, as per the Tory handbook. And all with the enthusiastic participation of the Murdoch t̶o̶i̶l̶e̶t̶s̶ outlets. But Dud’s now changed tack – pitching a Bjelke-Petersenite “don’t you worry about that” nuclear energy brain fart as his election winning master stroke.

Dud projects a dullard’s demeanor, a gormless oaf who’s confused by the concepts of logic or reasonableness. His narcoleptic personality suggests the power had failed on his cocoon partway through his metamorphosis to a human-like form and his presentation skills trigger a Pavlovian gag reflex so what makes him think he can sell this particular dog? Why does he think it’s a winner? Let’s speculate.

There was a brief post-FauxMo attempt at re-packaging the Dud. Cuddly Pete™ had the shelf-life of a Liz Truss lettuce after the Tory/Murdoch brains trust pinged that a Hannibal Lecter psychopathology in a dull-eyed, lumbering Spudzilla masquarading as your kindly uncle was not only well beyond Dud’s acting skills but also beyond the credibility of their own rabid propaganda. So then came the “party for the workers” pitch.

Dud celebrated this newly discovered workers’ champion status by jumping onto the pointy end of an aeroplane on a 9 hour round trip to Perth to spend just 40 minutes of quality time gobbing Caviar Russe Classic Osetra, quaffing Pol Roger Brut Reserve and plucking the hairs on billionaire Gina Reinhart’s chins at her ostentatious birthday celebrations.

“The same people that said that the minimum wage would wreck the economy, tax cuts for all Australians was Marxist economics in a war on hard-working Australians, the same people who said the weekend would be over and there would be no more barbecues for everybody.” (Katherine King MP).

Was another contrived persona called for following the failure of these facile attempts at repackaging? A nuclear science-literate visionary, a man of energy, a can-do man of action? That notion is ludicrous as is obvious – Dud is more Larry Vaughn, mayor of Amity Island². But such a try-on is no more risible than their previous two try-ons at ‘hide the fuckwit’.

Which brings us to that huge deposit in the mining industry; Gina herself. Gina, aka Big Vag, is a filthy rich nepo baby who roundly embraces an anti-worker, anti-environment ethic and so is perfectly placed to call the shots in RWNJ Toryland. Big Vag has interests in coal mines so delaying the closure of fossil-fueled power stations that further tops up her billions at the expense of a habitable planet is an L/NP face on which she is prepared to sit.

Then there’s the Nats who’ve never seen a regional boondoggle they didn’t like – provided someone else is paying. Nuclear power is being championed by yokel luminaries and one string banjos such as jizz distributer & VB sommelier BJ, the Purpled Priapus from New England. Nominative deterministic David Littleproud and pencil-neck Matt King Coal Canavan (“what have koalas ever done for us”) will also do all that they can to obstruct clean energy – the notion of viable ecosystems being anathema to their $-driven ideology. The play for these envionmental criminals is to stop or delay any more wind or solar power generation. The level of humbug displayed by these plunderers as they profess a heretofore unspoken concern for the wellbeing of whales supposedly at risk from wind turbines is truly astonishing.

These things are all speculative but nevertheless still possible contributors to Dud’s adoption of the nuclear albatross. However the underlying rationale I believe resides within that dark, dank sinkhole of malignant authoritarian cruelty and deceit that forms his being.

“Dutton’s raison d’être? Make Australia Afraid Again. Then he will offer himself as the lesser of two evils. A serious strongman for the age of anxiety.” (Bad Cop, Lech Blaine).

This is not about energy policy, it’s Dutton doing what Dutton does – stoking a culture war.

He has no intention of seeing nuclear energy come to fruition, rather it’s to drive uncertainty to sabotage investment in green energy and then abandon climate action. Positives for Dud are that it enrages Greens, “dirty lefties” and latte-sipping inner-city elites, it disguises his paucity of ideas (“look, squirrel”), he controls the agenda by flooding the zone with shit³, and it helps to camouflage that he’s got as much substance as a snowman in a hot tub and couldn’t carry a stick through an open door. And our pathetic corporate media is lapping it up.

The consequences for national security, energy independence, sovereignty, Australia’s potential pariah status and economic haemorrhaging are all entirely secondary to the ambition of a truly nasty, divisive thug. Is he nuts? You be the judge – psychotic is my take on him.

¹Fear, uncertainty and doubt

²Jaws movie reference

³Steve Bannon, pustulated, Trumpy slimebag

References / Reading

“… the paucity of talent inside the ranks of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party is such that there will be many eager for Frydenberg to return. Right now, if Peter Dutton were to be hit by the bus – or flogged at the next election – there is no obvious leadership alternative. None.” (AFR “journo” and Lib Party stenographer Phil Coorey).

Make Australia afraid again: must we have our own Trump moment for Peter Dutton to become PM? Lech Blaine. The Guardian

Bad cop: Peter Dutton’s strongman politics. Lech Blaine. The New Daily.

Outrage is a key performance indicator for Peter Dutton, the ‘bad cop’ of politics. But what does he value? Judith Brett. The Conversation.

The Stats Guy: Dutton’s migration dog-whistle doesn’t stack up. Simon Kuestenmacher – The New Daily.

Peter Dutton is Australia’s figurehead of fear and fake news, like Trump but without charisma. Katharine Murphy. The Guardian 14 Oct23.

An unusual chess player’: How Labor is approaching Peter Dutton. Jason Koutsoukis. The Saturday Paper.

For whom the pendulum swings. Peter Brent. Inside Story.

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer

From whinging, whining and blowing snot bubbles to playing to the Klueless Klutz Klan

From objet d’ridicule to vile scrubber

“The real competition now is to see who is a bigger drag on the Liberal vote, Dutton or Ley. Either way it’s a race to the bottom.” (Dee Madigan).

The Tory capacity for feculence knows no boundaries. There are no dogs unwhistleable, no sewers untrawlable, there are no hypocrisies too breathtaking nor any lie too blatant in their campaign to re-establish their ‘rightful’ access to the national treasure to then divert to their mates – as is their entire raison d’etre.

There is no outrage that they won’t countenance. Do not doubt, say, that they carefully watch Benedict Orange and wonder admiringly how much of his behaviour they could get away with here.

“Drugs, criminals, gang members and terrorists are pouring into our country at record levels. We’ve never seen anything like it. They’re taking over our cities.” (Tangerine man and career criminal Rapey McScumbag).

Time to up the ante on John Howard’s Tampa and children overboard subterfuges. Step forward Sussan Lley:

“If you live in Frankston and you’ve got a problem with Victorian women being assaulted by foreign criminals, vote against Labor.

“If you do not want to see Australian women being assaulted by foreign criminals, vote against Labor. Send Labor a message.” (Suss’s tweet on the Dunkley byelection).

But let’s start on a positive note. Suss has some worthwhile attributes. As a qualified accountant she can do sums – adding up and taking away; a skill set that could prove handy in any future party room test of fealty, eh Spud <cough>Scott Morrison</cough>? Some say she can also read joined-up running writing and that, as a pilot, she has the unique talent in the Tory sunshine bus of well-developed hand/eye coordination. That’s it, that’s all I’ve got on the + side.

Suss’s feigned outrage is one of the Tories’ go-to-market strategies. If only she was a better actor. Her aesthetic of prolapsed whoopee cushion with duck-lipped pout is a manifestation of the realisation of disappointed expectations that would otherwise be shown by someone who hands out the towels at a Fyshwick rub ‘n’ tug. Suss comes fully armed with a lengthy whine list that seeds a suspicion that she pickles her own vag, denying the reality of her active membership of the most delinquent, corrupt and incompetent government in our history.

The Tories obviously believe that their constant whining handfeeds the lazy and vacuous hordes of flacks who dominate our complicit media, the Lib’s humbug and hypocrisy usually going unremarked upon. “Flooding the zone with shit” as Steve Bannon, one of their admired models of democratic integrity, has championed.

This humbug and hypocrisy is an area where Suss has demonstrated some particular talent, joining the pile-on of Anthony Albanese for his (shock, horror) travel as Prime Minister of a whole, actual country when she has taken 27 flights in and out of the Gold Coast over recent years where her partner owned a bin-cleaning business (some sort of metaphysical connection surely). Two minor details – the Gold Cost is about 270° and 1,400 kms off course from the travel between her electorate and Canberra. All done within the rules of course.

Her boss’s view of folks who don’t match the colours on his chart of acceptable tinges is hardly hidden. The Thug walked out on the apology to the Stolen Generation, he orchestrated a duplicitous campaign against The Voice, he figuratively poked refugee kiddies with pointed sticks, warned of African gangs and deployed black-uniformed goons to patrol Melbourne streets to quiz the dusky-toned. And our consonant abuser Suss is a proven Spuddist – during the 2018 Liberal leadership spills she voted for Dutton against Trumble in the first vote and again voted for Herr Shickltuber against Diddley Scott in the second spill days later. Add ‘fascist adjacent race baiter’ to her CV.

In 2001 Suss lost Tory preselection for the Victorian seat of Indi to the truly horrendous Sophie Mirabella. On a scale from ‘mildly disgusting’ to Peter Dutton, Sussan Lley is now a Pauline Hanson; the Tories’ very own version of the red dipstick. Is that how she rose from Indi reject to her current status as number 2? Because she’s worse than Mirabella?

Spud and Suss. Bubba and Squeak. The crème de la crims of the Tory Party. FMD!

*****

A random sampling of Suss’s greatest hits

What have the koalas ever done for us?

Ley successfully appealed a Federal Court ruling that she had a “duty of care to children to consider climate change harm when approving coal mines”.

She approved a Coalition decision to scrap 176 out of 185 recovery plans designed to prevent the extinction of threatened species and habitats, including the Tasmanian devil.

With 1600 threatened species she claims… we will destroy their habitat for jobs so “we just have to pick winners”

Hiding a document that was handed to the coalition government in December 2021, ahead of the 2022 Australian federal election. The document outlined the poor and declining health of the Australian ecosystem.

She voted consistently against:

• Ending illegal logging,
• Federal government action on animal & plant extinctions,
• Increasing marine conservation,
• Increasing protection of Australia’s fresh water,
• The Paris Climate Agreement.

She approved the clearing of 52hectares of koala habitat for a quarry.

She identifies as a feminist

“While men speak on a variety of topics, they also speak for women so I’m very comfortable with the leadership of our party.”

She has also promised to travel widely throughout Australia to listen to women. Noting her pile-on of PM Albo’s travel.

Moron says what now?

“We know we’re not going to have electric vehicles tomorrow,” Ms Ley said. “And no one in the world is making an electric ute, by the way, and even if they were it would be unaffordable.”

Sussan Ley, Question Time 6 Feb 24

“Will the PM rule out any changes to the current tax treatment of neg gearing?”

Sussan Ley, Sky News 7 Feb 24

“I’m not going to play the yes, this is good, no this is bad, the rule in, rule out. I’m not going to do that.”

*****

‘A bit rich’: Laura Jayes questions Sussan Ley over Anthony Albanese travel criticism as Liberals head to conference. Sky News

Multimillionaire Sarina Russo hosted Sussan Ley at New Year’s Eve parties. The Guardian

Ley twice travelled at taxpayer expense to the Gold Coast to attend events with Sarina Russo, one of Australia’s richest women, whose companies won multimillion dollar contracts under the Abbott government.

The Lib’s number two

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer

Meme from The Shovel

There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader * (Image from mbbshrabdullah.medium.com)

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer.

The recrudescence of Donald J Trump

It was a perfect verdict, a beautiful verdict. Probably the most beautiful verdict the world has ever seen.

A jury has awarded Trump rape victim E. Jean Carroll $US83.3 million in damages all while Perp#1 sweats on the outcome of an in-progress New York civil fraud trial that is seeking the return of $US370 million from dodgy deals he made by cooking the books. The karma bus has big, orange bug spatter all over its windscreen; the eviscerated Gropenfuhrer adding a new word to his vocabulary – consequences.

He’s been rejected, reviled, lampooned, impeached, probed and indicted. He stole highly classified documents to trade for profit or leverage. He incited sedition. He exploited the office of POTUS to further enrich himself and his spawn. He faces 91 criminal indictments. Eleven of his associates have been charged with crimes. He endorsed cookers and election deniers as mid-term candidates, and he threatens and denigrates anyone who dares challenge him. Mafia Don is unconstrained by any notion of decency or compliance with civil norms.

There’s evil and there’s vile. Bleach Boy spans both, yet the MAGA cult remains impervious. The cos-play ammosexuals, the beer belly putsch of Gravy Seals, Green Buffets and other camoed, AR15ed people-of-girth, the douche coup seditionists and the IQ defaulting, credulous simpletons and the morally-agnostic detritus continue to genuflect in his general direction.

A proven sexual predator. (Trump once told a lawyer he didn’t find her attractive enough to sexually assault.)

“He’s our boy.”

Putin’s bitch.

“A true patriot.”

A demonstrably compulsive liar.

“Alternative facts.”

A grifter, serial bankrupt, fraudster and thief.

“Gonna send him my last $20.”

An overt racist.

“Now we’re talkin’.”

A covetous vulgarian.

“Classy guy.”

A petulant, whiney bitch and grievance-mongering, bloated, shit-fit throwing toddler.

“An American hero.”

A wanna-be despot, a bully and a bone-spurred coward.

“I like how he stands up for the little guy.”

Donald Trump has been arrested more times than he’s been elected. A malice-driven, junk food epicure. A fatuous, bloviating braggart. A daughter-fondling sleaze, a homicidal exhorter to violence. A pretender – an inheritance squandering, multiple bankrupts. A veteran-denigrating yellow, scabrous dog. A habitual loser with a mange-ravaged merkin glued atop an umber stuccoed pout that brings to mind a dog-groomer’s floor sweepings humping a jack-o’-lantern.

He is physically repugnant (some have put forward the proposition that he literally smells of loaded Depends), morally bankrupt, mentally damaged and cognitively challenged. An odious chum bucket of every human failing, bar, so far, the machine-gunning of orphans’ creches – but hey, if there’s a buck in it…

He’s a paean to smug ignorance and gracelessness.

Geographer. Specialising in SE Asia – “Thighland”, “Nipple”, “Button”.

The Balkans and the Baltic are the same to Donny Dorito. (Author’s note: his latest wife is Slovenian.)

Historian. Revolutionary War airstrips, WWII ending in 1917.

Physicist. “All I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets.”

Meteorologist. “Nuke the hurricanes.”

Epidemiologist. Drink that bleach, stick that lava lamp up your ass.

Diplomat. Publicly fellating Putin, Kim Jong Un, MBS, Xi – actual murderous despots.

And so on. And on. Ad nauseam.

A self-proclaimed billionaire bilking donations from hardscrabble rubes and swampies.

Trump provokes their grievances, victimhood and anger as his business model. John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Trump cultivates that notion, blaming “radical leftists”, Democrats, the woke, antifa, BLM and immigrants as the cause of the MAGA’s disaffection from the American Dream© that should be their due.

Monetising a white, American Jesus is a doddle for a crude, faithless phony who could not believe his luck when credulous hordes of evangelising creationists jumped into his canoe. He didn’t even need to bait his hook. Low-information chuckle-fuck MAGAs with attention spans that would embarrass a goldfish cheer an angry old man’s vindictiveness, they revel in his outrages and his fuck you politics all while voting against their own best interests in favour of a man who would steal their last dime without a second thought.

Trump may be the GOP’s nominated presidential candidate for 2024 yet despite the angst of the psephologists and opinionista, the cheerleading of the Fox sewage farm and Putin’s inevitable interference the tangerine tyrantosaurus will never again inhabit the White House. Either he will go to jail, the hamburger grease that functions as plasma in his veins will kill him or the meth party being held by the family of raccoons that live in his head will assume full control.

Trump thinks a second term will save him, a prophylactic against pending criminal charges, but sadly for him he’s a serial loser:

“In 2018, Republicans lost the House. In 2020, they lost the Senate and the White House too. And last week, many of Trump’s handpicked candidates lost the midterm elections and delivered a great deal of humiliation to their party, which, instead of a predicted “red wave”, had to settle for a ripple. The party failed to retake the Senate, and might even end up with fewer numbers than in the outgoing chamber…”

House arrest with an ankle-bracelet, a Norma Desmond-like existence at his tacky Palm Beach motel, Tawdry-Sur-La-Mer, is perhaps the best he can hope for provided it’s not sold off to recover some of his defamation and fraud outstandings and to pay his discount shopping mall lawyers.

Maybe his future is to gibber incoherently to guests as he shuffles between tables or to whine self-pityingly about how unfair it all is, shadowed by his security goons with defibrillator and poop bags at the ready. The botoxed patsies and shit-grinning marks with their MAGA tat will pose for Instagram selfies so that their future progeny may wonder at what gormless morons their forebears were to be suckered by a sleazy, criminal dirtbag with creeping dementia.

As the walls close in he will get increasingly desperate, calls for violence and retribution will be more open, and he will frame the inevitable election result as stolen. He’ a loser – a loser’s loser. The question remains – will a palatable, mutant strain of Trumpist authoritarianism rise to take his place?

* * * * *

*Junk food epicure. The family of raccoons that live inside his head: Hat tip to @itsJeffTiedrich.

11 Trump associates have now been charged with crimes. CNN.

The long list of legal cases against Donald Trump. The Guardian

What Ads Work With MAGA Voters. Rick Wilson

“The now-unsealed indictment in the case of United States of America v. Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta has it all, seemingly every Trump flaw condensed into 49 pages and 38 counts of squalid detail. It is a devastating legal document, but it is also a damning character study of a man whose faults are all too familiar yet retain the power to shock and appall.” The WashingtonPost.

“Donald Trump is facing five years in prison and a felony because of a law HE SIGNED in attempt to punish Hillary Clinton in 2018. The law HE SIGNED upgrades the crime of wrongly moving classified material from a misdemeanor to a felony. Trump signed the bill after spending the 2016 presidential campaign accusing Hillary Clinton of improperly handling classified information.” Salon.com

 

 

“He is under a dozen investigations for crimes ranging from espionage to seditious conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and is going to prison.

He committed treason, sedition, and incited a deadly insurrection.

He lost in 2016 by 3 million votes. Lost the GOP the House in 2018, lost them the Presidency (by 9 million votes) and the senate in 2020 and lost them the senate (again) and prevented their red wave in 2022.

He’s a 76 year old malignantly narcissistic morbidly obese drug addicted dementia-ridden abomination who doesn’t believe in exercise.

Accomplishments of his administration, nepotism Barbie. Just crimes, disgraces, embarrassments, impeachable offenses, abuses of power, abrogations of oath, and violations of the U.S. constitution.” Andrew Wortman

 

 

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer.

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

An arsehole is in plain view

Just over half a term ago the prune juice kicked in and Australia had one of its more satisfying movements – the Great Schmo was number two-ed by the voters.

Now, after a fruitless 18 months of unreturned phone calls Schmo (“If you’re good at your job, you’ll get a job”) has finally announced his pending resignation from politics to almost universal relief, not least from the Liberals. With some clear air replacing the stale waft of curry a certain truncheon-headed autocrat thinks the planets are aligning in his favour.

It’s not easy to imagine a slight upward tic at the corner of Peter Dutton’s mouth – an animation not often manifest given Herr Shickltuber’s narcoleptic personality. Watching flies crawl across his eyeballs is usually the most captivating aspect of his lugubrious presence. Yet with Albo’s and Big Jim Chalmer’s fixes to Schmo’s stage 3 tax wedge an aroused gruppenfritter senses another opportunity to indulge the Tories’ favoured practices of fear and division – the emboldened Dutton no doubt thinks this “broken promise” will seal the deal of his ascension to the big, green swivel chair despite his appeal being lower than that of tertiary syphilis.

Dud & Suss’s bedpan rodeo has hitched up to the Murdochrities’ RWFW hypocrisy bandwagon, loaded their confected outrage, mounted their high horse and taken to the airwaves for a wall-to-wall tantrum & humbug expo.

No-one does tits-caught-in-a-mangle, faux indignation as does the gaffe incontinent Suss Ley. Desperately shrieking Sussan, with the face of a half-deflated hemorrhoid cushion underlining the quality of her discourse, announced that the Libs when again in power would reverse the Labor tax initiatives thereby denying 92% of voters (and about 98% of her own constituents) an increased tax cut. Thinking is hard hence Suss’s outbursts, guided by a numerologist, are usually subject to blow-back. A no doubt blistering phone call from Lib H.O. had Suss in Trumpian denial that she’d ever said what she’d plainly said.

“…deputy leader Sussan Ley told Sky News when asked if the Coalition would roll back the changes “this is our position. This is absolutely our position”. For good measure, when asked again if the Coalition would restore the original package, Ley replied “we’ve made it very clear that this is our policy. The policy is the legislated position that stands today.”

Cuddly Pete, self-declared convert to working class hero, copped some derision of his own making for his latest foray in the interminable Tory culture wars by attacking Woolworths as being woke for not stocking Australia Day made-in-China tat – oi oi oi themed bucket hats and double pluggers. The icing on the you-fucked-that-up cake was Cuddly-Spuddly’s notion that Australians should boycott Woolies – the employer of some 200,000 of his new BFF cohort – the working folk. When made aware through the hoots and guffaws of the idiocy of such a call and the consequent vandalising of Woolies stores by his real constituency (i.e. fuckwits) Pete pulled a Schmo and went into hiding. What a guy.

Dutton on same sex marriage: “unconscionable that companies are morally coerced by campaigns to boycott their products.”

Dutton on Woolies: boycott them over Australia Day merch.

Spud is not a deep thinker. Look at how easily his amateurish coup to unseat Turnbull was out-manouvered by an unholy trinity of pentacostalist Mammonites – Schmo, Brother Stuie and Alex Hawke. “We prayed that righteousness would exalt the nation.” The upgraded tax changes require legislation to be voted on in Parliament. It will be hugely amusing watching Spud squirm as the Tories either vote against bigger tax breaks for the majority or they go along with Labor’s changes. Would you like butter on that popcorn? The massive Chalmers wedgie he’s going to cop would bring a tear to a fish’s eye.

By being as thick as a QC’s carpet Spud is also predictable. Spurred by the success of his cynical sabotage of The Voice, Spud will be amping up the negativity, and the conflict and division to indulge his natural instincts for cultivating the culture wars, to invent or provoke outrage, to victimise and to bully.

He re-purposed Australia Day; let’s see what he has in store for Anzac Day.

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer.

One man’s journey

It is self-evident that anyone aspiring to be PM has a robust self-regard. Even the wiser ones harbour some illusions about their indispensability, but it is the bovine dullards and the zealots who despite all evidence to the contrary are the most convinced of their own exceptionalism. Overlay that conceit with an intransigent religious literalism and we have Tomás de Torquemada redux (sans the austere lifestyle but with the familiar sparse coif and man boobs) – a happy-clapping, prosperity gospelling mutation of that Old Testament fantasist Mad Abbott where their shared dogma is righteousness (theirs) vs the unworthy (check for daily specials). Government to them was a comforting, authoritarian patriarchy where the womens do the ironing, grateful they’re not shot when they get a bit toey (but they are useful for explaining the nuances of rape. Not good according to Jen). And it’s where the flock need not trouble themselves with the Godly mission of the annointed one.

He was a smug windbag, a smirking oaf who lost a staring competition with an electric arc welder and who thought it a good idea to publicly wash the hair of a stranger – a laying on of hands for a retinue of obsequious press flacks to help cultivate an image of not-a-weirdo.

He believed his guile had his deity’s imprimatur – further evidence that the worst people are commonly those affectedly professing their godliness. Having a God whose interests always align with your own is a self-sustaining contrivance – ‘because I have God’s favour everything I do is God’s will’. Quite useful whether you’re burning heretics, brutalising toddler asylum seekers or steering Covid vaccines away from a Labor-oriented state.

He thought of himself as special. Not just the smartest guy in the room but on a mission from his God who showers the pious with earthly wealth but has little sympathy for the poors or the non-believers – a convenient celestial licence to intimidate, silence and persecute.

Bad things only happen to bad people according to the handbook for Jesusing neoliberals:

“There shall no evil happen to the just: but the wicked shall be filled with mischief” Proverbs 12:21.

The Public Service was told to unquestioningly toe the line, the AFP raided the ABC, universities were nobbled, whistleblowers were prosecuted, welfare recipients were demonised and harassed while wealthy fridge magnates, party mates and the temples of Yahweh wallowed in buckets of public largesse – no strings attached.

Endorsement from the ethereal realm also over-rides the scientific method. Voices from burning bushes prevail over the observable phenomena of quantum mechanics, expert concensus of pending ecological collapse are ignored because, ya know, the Rapture. Selective, credulous acceptance of biblical contradictions facilitates literal beliefs in comical superstitions that excuse all sorts of bad behaviour – persecution of non-conformers being an historical favourite. It also dispenses with any need for accountability to anyone other than a omniscient, omnipotent yet paranoid phantasm whose tantrums kill millions. The Oaf’s whole Jesusing routine was more than just a PR ruse; he truly believes that secularists are ungodly heretics to be re-educated or reviled.

“Australia is not a secular country… As US Senator Joe Lieberman said, the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. I believe the same is true in this country.” (From his maiden speech to Parliament).

He was fully onboard the 7 Mountains Mandate looney train, at least in spirit (no pun intended).

He facilitated the infiltration of fellow pulpit pushers and the punishers and straighteners of the anti-gay/anti-trans bigots and he sought succour through fellow fabulists – flight risk Brother Stuie and personal bag carrier and co-conspirator Alex Hawke.

He has not introduced one single policy of benefit to this nation – indeed he has failed to even articulate any vision or forethought beyond politicking. During his tenure the country has not progressed in any way – going backwards in most international rankings.

His incompetence, the vindictive nastiness, government as a manelovent force, the hypocritical piety, the cultivation of division, the rampant cronyism and graft, the secretiveness and intolerance of dissent, the five ministries megalomania, the incoherent gibberings designed to frustrate enquiry, the bullying, the tearing down of conventions and standards, the denigration of expertise – the whole horrendous revivalist circus of the worst PM in our history; a national embarrassment who is deserving of the most humiliating removal from our consciousness.

Serial fuck-ups and the application of the smirk removal cream of public approbrium for his failures and his facile, dress-up brand management failed to dent the impervious narcissism of belief in his own ‘genius’ and self-image as a ‘master strategist’. His shamelessness has survived his ostracism to the opposition backbenches where his unemployability stands out like a hi-vizzed walrus at a choir practice – the guy whose smarm included “if you’re good at a job you’ll get a job“, the guy who initiated the dob-in-a-bludger hotline. This is schadenfreude tied in a big, pink bow.

The denigration from his Tory cohort was shrugged off:

“He fucked us and his fingerprints are absolutely fuckin’ everywhere on that. The bloke thinks he is a master strategist. He is a fuckwit.” (Anonymous federal Lib MP).

“Everyone wants him to piss off. But people don’t want a by-election,’’ a senior Liberal source told news.com.au. (Julia Banks, ex Lib MP – “menacing controlling wallpaper”).

Catherine Cusack ex Lib MP – “… it’s just all come a bit late for the Liberal party. The party I joined 40 years ago and loved. The party he has ruined.“

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells – an “autocrat [and] a bully who has no moral compass”, “He has used his so-called faith as a marketing advantage.”

Gladys Berejiklian – “a complete psycho”.

His appearance before the Robodebt Royal Commission elicited humbug not humility.

It took 330 years before Torquemada’s remains were dug up and belatedly burned auto-da-fé. The NACC may be a more timely seal on The Oaf’s deserved humiliation but I doubt we’ll see any genuine contrition.

In 2007, Howard repealed the Parliamentary Pension scheme. This means that he is not entitled to any pension besides his 15.4% Public Service super than cannot be accessed before he turns 65 . Bwahahahahaha!

When the Liberals run out of money they come after the poor

 

“Calculated assaults on the most vulnerable and marginalised are reduced to the natural order of things.” Maeve McGregor, Crikey

The Robodebt royal commission’s findings clearly demonstrate why the Tories fear scrutiny and accountability. They have long abandoned any pretence of principled governance, relying instead on the complicity of the Murdoch spitoons’ fabrications and the fever swamp of RWNJ radio to provide cover for their mendacity. Their behaviour was always there to see for those who could be bothered to look beyond the propaganda but now their ugliness has been paraded down the main street like a turd on a flat-bed truck accompanied by brass band and marching girls.

The ‘guilty til proven innocent’ atrocity that was Robodebt is only now the cause of some red-faced shoe inspections by those who would rule over us, and while they may modify their artiface it won’t change their innate bastardry. They’ll amp up the dissembling, projection and obfuscation; dead cats will be thrown onto tables, dogs will be whistled but they will never demonstrate any humility or genuine contrition and will be only briefly distracted from opportunities to practice their nasty craft.

Aware of the pending exposure Brother Stuie Robert legged it for the exit, following the onomatapaeic Alan Tudge into the perdition of historic damnation for “venality, incompetence and cowardice”. The hubris of Christian Porter, of the born-to-rulers’ catalogue of big swinging dicks, has seen this once PM-in-waiting reduced to Lionel Hutz status, touting his wares on sandwichboards on servo station forecourts.

Brother Scotty still haunts the periphery, trousering the public coin as corporate Australia, conscious of reputational damage, lets his calls go through to voicemail. Never before has the country been led by such a repugnant, bullying blowhard who, convinced of endorsement from his eagle-staffed deity, saw a licence to ignore propriety and undermine anyone who stood in the way of the acclaim he thought was his God-given due. A feckless drudge who’d struggle to meet the KPIs of school hall monitor, a shonk who “disappeared” billions in rorts, a spiv who’d eBay his crusty undies as the shroud of Turin and a serial sackee who through guile and happenstance failed upwards into his risible, karaoke performance of PM – the role he debased with a “sly contempt for political norms” as Maeve McGregor of Crikey puts it.

Spud Dutton has walked into the cubicle after Morrison. A year after the Tories were thoroughly rinsed across the country it would be reasonable to expect he’d take the opportunity to air the place out. Spud’s Cuddly Pete re-imaging is a work-in-progress – stitching together a human skin suit as cover for his mix of Myra Hindley warmth and Norman Bates bonhomie – a teddy bear tied to a bin lorry, a ruse that won’t cover the smell. (Surely though it’s apocryphal that visitors to the Chez Spud basement find themselves coughing up moth pupae.) This Silence of the Lambs metaphor should be qualified with the observation that Buffalo Bill at least showed an artistic bent that entirely escapes the beige that is our real-life lockless monster.

Spud’s newly deployed Clark Kent specs don’t disguise his inner Tubermensch – a truncheon-headed autocrat we’ve grown to loathe and despise since he came to notice with a range of outputs from his racist oeuvre. Untroubled by the burdens of either wit or intelligence he has ridiculed drowning Pacific Island nations, tormented toddler asylum seekers, denigrated Melbourne’s Sudanese communities and exploited division and rancour in the Voice debate, all as supplements to his hobbies of drowning puppies and putting nails in the hoola-hoops at daycare centres.

Spud’s predictable duplicity with his response to the Indigenous voice to Parliament shows a change-over of personel has not improved the Tories’ amorality. His framing of the Libs as victims of Labor’s scheming in the Robodebt saga is Trumpian in its up-is-down audacity.

Not to be outdone in the scorched earth approach to acceptable standards the Lib’s partners in crime, the Nationals, are reportedly again considering a return of pink pachyderm spotter Barking Barmy Joyce. When Barmy remains a viable option it says so much about the lack of talent pool that is the ignorant oik’s party of choice. Temporary leader, the nominative-deterministic David Littleproud projects an image of himself looking for his own brain, but aesthetics aside he’s yet another National committed to their cause of steering pork and the white elephants to regions in need instead of some fundamentals such as health and education that could be serviced by, and hear me out, a fully functional NBN.

Barmy’s mouth is the source of fevered allusions to a woke, left-wing dystopia and home to a random placement of teeth like long-forgotten headstones in an abandoned graveyard. His lack of credibility is not matched by the certainty that his name is amongst the wideboys, spivs and persons of interest who have been referred to the newly opened National Anti-Corruption Commission.

The outcome of the royal commission provides some succour to those citizens demonised and persecuted by their own government. The NACC will provide huge amusement for those of us who can’t wait to see these toads cop some real consequences for their bastardry.

“Given the opposition is clearly in a state of denial over the report of the robodebt royal commission, it has obviously learnt nothing from past mistakes and would, if re-elected, presumably not hesitate to repeat them.” (Editorial in The Canberra Times).

* * * * *

Refrences

Is Barnaby Joyce after the leadership again? – The Saturday Paper

Taxpayers forked out $2.5m in legal expenses for eight former Coalition ministers, including two prime ministers, to be represented in the robodebt royal commission, with almost half a million for Scott Morrison. – The Guardian.