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).

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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.

When too much RWFWittery is not enough

How to succinctly describe Australia’s worst ever Prime Minister? A miasma, an effluvium, a whiff of eau de low tide… a funk that clings to clothes and hair long after his departure? The unlamented ScoMo’s™ awfulness was so all-encompassing that no one pejorative was sufficient to capture the spectrum of his deficiencies. Scotty From Marketing, Scummo, Smirk & Mirrors, Scooter, Sooty, Skiddy, Liar from the Shire, Diddley Scott, the Great Schmo, Scurry, Shirko and more were all wryly derived from his own facile marketing contrivance and thrown back in his face as a “no way, get fucked, fuck off” chorus from the sentients in the crowd.

Phone in hand as he scrolls through Seek while languishing on a nose-bleed seat on the backbenches, his calls going unreturned, he’ll be struggling to reconcile his current status as unburied landfill with his self-image as God’s emissary. But really, who gives a fuck? Now he’s nothing more than a phantasm representing Tory decline into neo-fascist bigotry and wretchedness; a benchmark for whether they can go subterranean in their search for the ultimate in nasty. Turns out Scooter was no outlier; he was a symptom. Enter Bubba and Squeak – a lumpen tuber with the head and attitude of a copper’s truncheon with the befuddled Suss as the Lib’s no.2 slot showcasing her sad loser pique, her misplaced ambition and a lack of self-awareness that, in comparison, promotes Liz Truss to icon of perspicacity.

“Conservative, Dutton-supporting MPs said that Ley had been taking soundings from the backbench for weeks, but they rubbished the prospect of the Liberal moderate becoming the party’s leader.” (James Massola, SMH, 31/3/23).

If you’re the Tories’ Leader Of The Opposition yet also Labor’s best weapon, when your own party hides you away from electors in favour of defrosting the cadaverous John Winston Howard to waddle the streets quacking at startled passers-by, when you’re a hard-right head-kicker in a party abandoned by once conservative, heirloom electorates as the entire country rejects your antediluvian, divisive manifesto then a prudent politician would indulge in some considered introspection. Such sissy reflections are not for our potato-headed hard man Herr Shickltuber – he’s doubling down on the nasty (“I yam what I yam”).

Spud has marked his territory – Abbottesque blanket negativity, culture wars, fear and division, accusing opponents of that for which they themselves are guilty and that old Tory favourite of nurturing resentment by demonising those least able to fight back – cultivating suspicion of the gay folks, blatant transphobia and not so much dog-whistling their racism as broadcasting it by loudspeaker from the back of a truck.

People in outer suburban areas were “very worked up” about trans rights claims Spud, the Libs lost Aston because Labor was mean to them, there’s no need for him or the Coalition to change their brand, they just have to wait for electors to come to their senses. All very amusing given that in a party of roadside dumpers, shrunken intellects, onanists, P76ers, pelvic thrusters, doggers, Trumpers, pimps, Nut Bush lip synchers and shout absconders he’s the best the unelectable Tories have to offer.

What is not amusing is Spud’s response to the proposed referendum for an Indigenous Voice To Parliament. Just as Donald Trump gave permission for the worst of American society to be open and proud about how stupid and ugly, they really were Spud’s “No” campaign has given permission for the racists to be openly racist – albeit clothed in the pretense that they actually give a fuck about the welfare of our Indigenous fellow citizens.

The referendum will be a pivotal moment in our history – an opportunity to capture a mutual generosity of spirit, to give a voice to the longest surviving culture on the planet, for Aboriginal Australians to no longer be marginalised in their own unceded land. It’s a time for empathy and good will, for inclusiveness, and for leaders to show themselves. And it’s only that very last bit that applies to the loathsome Dutton.

His dishonest framing of “the Canberra Voice” or “Albanese’s Voice”, the dishonesty of claimed Voice interference in everything from the Reserve Bank to tying up the High Court in endless litigation, never ending calls for “more details”, a fantastical Aboriginal veto on ANZAC day. The whole No case rests on misinformation, deceit and lies.

Alice Springs revealed Dutton’s true, vile character. Recent images of street crime has been represented as a new phenomenon, except it is evidence of institutionalised, generational failure – failure that Spud cared not one whit for when he was in power. However, exploiting child sexual abuse to paint a picture of undeserving Blacks to score opportunistic political points for his “No” campaign is a new low for a bloke who has form when it comes to demonising those of a darkish hue.

Dutton is as stupid as he is odious. If the “Yes” vote succeeds in the referendum he’s toast – a minor footnote in political history. If “No” prevails his reputation as a naysayer and wrecker will challenge that of Tony Sluggos Abbott but with racist overtones.

But he will never take Scooter’s crown as our worst ever only because he will never be PM.

References

The gravedigger. Rachel Withers, The Monthly.

‘Dog act’: NT police minister reacts angrily to Peter Dutton’s claims of Alice Springs child sexual abuse. Peter Dutton’s claims that “young Indigenous kids are being sexually assaulted on a regular basis” in Alice Springs. Lorena Allam Indigenous affairs editor, The Guardian.

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer.

Australians all lettuce rejoice

They may have dropped the constant, asinine, look-at-moi dress-ups of the moronic galoot but they’ve not abandoned the concept entirely. It’s now band camp for the miffed – the smirking, one man band in hi-viz has morphed into collective, performative outrage to feed to a conflict-hungry media pack.

Their chutzpah is admirable – their acting skills not so much.

High dudgeon from the scolds seems to be the key theme for the Tories right now, filling the void of their miserable, ideas-free existence. The entitled, senior girls’ hockey team from St Salubrious School for Pretentious Mingers’ rampage through the lolly shop ended at the check-out when the electorate, insufficiently whelmed, refused their credit cards. And they’re not happy.

Proving that awfulness is no longer gendered in the “natural party of government” the ladies ga-ga is a rich pallette of Prus and Trudes, trolley ragers, flabbagers and dimwits.

Whine sommelier Sussan Ley, taking advantage of her natural expression of perpetual bewilderment is the ladies’ team captain – sooking and sulking and blowing snot bubbles at her media displays of disaffection. Rather than gravitas her performances convey a tone of ‘a few too many slides down the banisters’. LeyZ has assumed the mantle of national whinger from the bright red dipstick from Queensland, deciding that constant complaint is an easier gig than regaining credibility through, here’s an idea, actual thought and effort.

 

I see dud people (Haley Joel Osment from The Sixth Sense)

 

The Tories have two major problems (well, that is apart from their record of corruption, incompetence and depravity). Bullying and misogyny is their brand. Their game plan so far is to accuse the dog of farting – pointing the finger at Labor for their own failings, where their every accusation is a confession. Their latest, rather too obvious ploy was to accuse Albo of shouting at one of their own. These are the crumb maidens from the Ditch The Witchers, the party that believes it is owed some gratitude for not shooting women protesters, the party of accused rapists, up-skirters, sexual harrassers and desk-jizzers. Their <eye roll> faux indignation </eye roll> is at a pantomime level of authenticity.

The Team Karen line up is a dial-up modem in a broadband world – squawky, slow, unreliable and not fit for purpose:

While not present at Operation Finger Albo it was good to see a return to form of Michaelia Blah Stupenda Cash who’s fully invested in her own well-paid ‘kick-the-workers-in-the-nuts’ persona, complaining loudly (obv.) that any concession to those worst off would “broing Astroiya to its knoise“.

Bam Bam McKenzie always looks as if she’s been dragged from storage in a cardboard box under George Christensen’s bed. Changing gears without using the clutch has loosened Bam Bam’s grasp on reality, or perhaps it’s her Trumpian version of alternative facts when complaining of the kyboshing of her sport rorts (i.e. theft of public money) followed her declaration that “Australians have no tolerance for corruption in sport”.

Holly Hughes – a Joan of snark and what a UTI would look like if a bag of flour blew up in its face, is a self-righteous windbag of no identifiable achievements beyond complaints that Labor has not yet fixed nine years of Tory theft and incompetence.

Jane Hume, with the obsequious eagerness of a head prefect, would happily serve the canapés at a puppy drowning if directed to do so by the Big Swinging Dicks club. Linda Reynolds of “lying cow” infamy is as suspect as a scoutmaster’s lolly bag when it comes to credibility on bullying. Sarah Henderson, Anne Ruston, Melissa Price, Nola Marino and the anonymous et als of the backbench were all complicit in the illegal hounding of Centrelink recipients that went far beyond bullying. None has any credibility nor a sense of shame.

Meanwhile in the UK, thick Lizzie’s 4.1 Scaramuccis as PM, outlasted by a leafy vegetable, you’d think would have set a low water mark for Tories. A neoliberal dogmatist crashing the world’s 6th largest economy in just one day with her Hayekian brain farts had the Tory press rapidly dropping Truss from their Christmas card list.

Here in Oz within a global conservative shift to crazy we can be grateful our RWFW vegie patch is now no more than bubble and squeak; left-overs pushed to the side and largely ignored. Our version of Liz Truss is reduced to bleating her whinges to an audience that has lost interest <cue sad trombone>.

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Good read: UK’s Tory papers call it: it’s Boris! No, wait… Crikey

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer.

The messiah complex: Brother Scotty’s weird grab for power

The reflexive criminal behaviour of the grift & congealed bacon grease that is Donald Trump can be understood if you test his every action against his primary motivation – pleonexia, the all consuming greed of a grotesque, amoral fraud. Burying his dead first wife Ivana at his Bedminster golf resort for the tax breaks is penny-pinching avarice that defines this corrupt vulgarian. The upside of that affront is that it may encourage Melania to double the salt and cheese content of his hamburger intake to ensure he’s not around to have her future, naked corpse displayed in a glass case at Mar-a-Lago for $50 a peek.

That the ludicrous, tangerine ballbag is entirely driven by the accumulation of ostentatious wealth is clear, whereas it’s trickier to pin down what enthuses our very own unchained malady – the artifice trading as ScoMo™.

I was intending to move on from sledging the dolt after his ignominious banishment to the bleachers but his miasma clings to one’s clothing. His behaviour has always been a clear indication he’d be a continuing source of derision as evidenced by his post-election squatting at Kirribilli House when it looked as if the only way he could be removed was to notify the Israeli military that a Palestinian family was living there.

Morrison’s a particularly peculiar unit. Possessed of a self-regard that exceeds the bloated ego of a talentless politician favoured by happenstance to always fail upwards he seems to have interpreted his luck as the beneficence of an all powerful deity, a god who has a grand plan – Scotty the Chosen One. Not for Scooter the standard issue narcissism that drives seekers of high office or the ‘God’s on our side’ invocation of self-righteous self-interests. Scooter has a fully-blown messiah complex.

Pastor Supreme, Blessed Leader, Shepherd of the Flock, The Keeper of Truth, Beloved Father of the Nation, His Benevolence, Keeper of all Wisdom. The latest revelations (there will surely be more to come) of his usurping of power by taking his squatting inclinations into the portfolios of five of his own ministers was Morrison’s take on Trump’s sedition customised for local conditions and in accordance with his fervent belief that he’s the next best thing to the second coming. Brother Scotty the missionary creep.

Source photo: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Apart from their shared awfulness and mutual admiration comparing Scooter to Trump is fraught. Whereas Deckstain Donny cynically exploited the profitable gullibility of ‘Jesus was a white American’ rubes and dullards, Scooter’s motivation seems to have been a sincere belief in his own godly specialness. As Minister For All Things could he facilitate an imminent Rapture – the further accumulation of riches by the wealthy righteous while he encourages the incineration of the planet? To me his Pentacostalist-inspired weirdness is a convincing explanation of his aberrant mindset.

When you have the warmth of a Cobargo handshake, suffer from the underlying conditions of smarm and a suite of off-putting personality tics, if you’re aesthetically unpleasant with the physique of a lasagne thrown from a speeding car and with a head better suited to Jeffrey Dahmer’s fridge but yet retain a skerrick of self-awareness, when lying and artifice are second nature it is understandable you could be tempted to disguise your lack of appeal with a barrage of his “I’m not pretending to be someone else” dress-ups and role plays.

Image: a Twitter clever clogs

But Morrison’s deceit goes deeper.

A give-away was the ever-present, know-all smirk. Morrison has always had an aversion to scrutiny. His modus operandi is secrecy. With God on his side, untroubled by scruples, honesty or shame he thought he’d get away with his despotic power grab pending the end times.

Now with a new government checking the books, with enquiries and royal commissions in the offing, the Morrison carcass is not yet picked clean. I am anticipating further material.

I wonder what Jesus is telling him now.

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Why the former prime minister saw fit to amass such immense secret power may never be properly explained. But his former cabinet colleagues, many of whom have been horrified to learn what had been concealed from them, say it speaks of a psychology of control, distrust and even paranoia. ABC. Behind the scenes of Scott Morrisons power grab.

“It’s clear what Morrison and co are doing here. It would be “indefensible” for them not to cooperate with an inquiry into what happened, as Guardian Australia’s Paul Karp noted yesterday. So they are instead doing everything they can to undermine it – to turn what the government is seeking to make a calm, judicial process (Labor even rejected a bid to take this to the more political privileges committee) into a “political circus”, one that is not credible or genuine because it doesn’t fit some expanded parameters they have created. It’s surely only a matter of time before we hear the term “kangaroo court”, a Morrison favourite. All throughout this saga, the Trumpian parallels have been hard to ignore. But there is something especially concerning about a former leader seeking to delegitimise an investigation into his conduct, and a once-legitimate party that is more than happy to enable him.” Taking full irresponsibility. Rachel Withers, The Monthly

Why did Donald Trump bury his first wife Ivana at his golf resort? Irish Central.

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Interesting reads:

What drives Donald Trump? Greed, and greed alone. Catherine Rampell, Tampa Bay Times.

Mercurynews.com

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer.