Just the other day, Turnbull hitched a lift with Con Trump to the G-20 meeting. While some would be cautioning Turnbull about the dangers of asking lifts from strange men, John Howard is telling us to trust the Dumpster:
“I do think there’s a rush to judgement on this bloke, on Trump, which is understandable because he’s so powerful … but we’ve got to be careful we don’t fall through the trap of rushing to judgment.”
Actually, that wasn’t the strangest thing in the news.com.au article I read. I was rather confused by this sentence:
Howard refused to speculate on whether Trump would stop tweeting, only saying: “He’s not going to.”
So, he won’t speculate on whether he’d stop tweeting, he’d only predict that he won’t, which seems like speculation to me, but, hey, the fact that anyone even bothers with the opinion of the only living PM to lose his seat in a general election is beyond me.
Anyway, I thought I’d share it, in case you missed it, and because, well, Johnny Howard’s opinion must be important because he is the longest service Liberal leader this century, followed by Tony Abbott who has the great distinction of spending twice as much time as Opposition Leader than he did as Prime Minister. Tony was once referred to as the most successful Opposition Leader in Australia’s history after the 2010 election which I found strange. I thought the ones who actually won elections should be considered more successful, but Tony showed how good he was as an Opposition Leader by continuing when he won in 2013. No, that’s not meant to be “until he won in 2013” – he continued to be Opposition Leader throughout his term as PM – even once referring to Bill Shorten as the Prime Minister – and, to this very day, shows us all how a good Opposition leader can bring down a government.
And, to be fair, John Howard does have a great track record of reassuring Australians. Starting with Peter Costello whom Howard assured that, if he didn’t challenge for the leadership, he’d step down after an appropriate time and let Peter have the job, Mr Howard’s reassurances have generally proved worthless. Or as Sam Goldwyn said: “A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on”!
When John Winston Howard became Opposition Leader, he assured us all that the Liberals would “never, ever” introduce a GST, and by that, he meant until after another election, because a week is a long time in politics but “never” is no time at all. And when he introduced it, he reassured us that their were safeguards that meant that it could never, ever be raised above ten percent. Obviously when the current mob were speculating about raising it to fifteen, they hadn’t heard about the safeguards.
Of course, let’s not forget that when some naughty lefties suggested that children weren’t thrown overboard in 2001, Howard reassured us that we could trust Peter Reith. Perhaps not with a phone card, but certainly with statements like, “There is a video, but it’s not really worth watching because I’ve already revealed all the spoilers, so you’d be better off waiting till HBO get their act together and you can watch really top shows on Rupert’s cable network”…
Ok, Reith never actually said that.
But the Honourable John did tell last week that the decision to go war with Iraq wasn’t “based on a lie”; it was based on faulty intelligence. Now he didn’t say whether this was his or George W. Bush’s faulty intelligence so I think we shouldn’t fall through the trap of rushing to judgement. (Mm, that’s what he said about Trump and now that I think about it if you fall through a trap, doesn’t that mean that you don’t get caught in it?)
Of course, in 2003, Howard was assuring us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and it was just that those silly UN weapons inspectors weren’t looking in the right places. And he was also assuring us that he still hadn’t made up his mind whether we’d go to war, while SAS officers were in Iraq carrying out operations just in case we decided to. Meanwhile, his government was attacking the ABC for bias because some of their reporters had a “cynical tone” when asking questions about the existence of Iraq’s WMDs.
When no weapons were found, John Howard again reassured us that Saddam may have destroyed the WMDs before the war began which strikes me as a completely plausible. “Saddam the coalition of the willing are attacking us, what do we do?” “We must quickly hide all our weapons and fight back with our bare hands in effort to make us look tougher.”
And, of course, he reassured the Liberal Party in 2007 that he was the best person to lead them into the election. On this, he was probably right. He certainly achieved the ambition that he and many of his colleagues shared, of ensuring that Peter Costello never became Prime Minister.
So when Honest John tells us to give Trump a chance, one has to wonder whether he’ll be passing that off in a couple of years as simply an intelligence failure.
Meanwhile, we have the spectacle of our current caretaker PM announcing a policy while surrounded by troops with gas masks. The Labor Party complained that he was using the ADF as “props”, but that’s a little unfair. The troops were there to protect Turnbull from an attack by Peter Dutton!
Poor old fellow..the dementia has broken out again. Wheel him back to the sundeck.
Excellent Rossleigh. But you had better watch out as I see John Lord also has an excellent satirical piece in the AIMN today.
I certainly agree about that disgusting rodent “Little Johnny”. And re your last para, I was alarmed to see the masked ADF backdrop to Turdball’s announcement – I even preferred the rAbbott’s multi-flag scenes to that scenario that was so obviousy designed to conjure up fear and terror.
I wonder if Turnbull has put it on paper that he plans to be our PM for a very long time.
Love the picture above; $ 2.95 is still too much for Tony’s book. The second hand bookshop I frequent gives it to you for free, if you spend more than five dollars.
Customers smile, and say politely: No, thank you.
No. He is too clever to leave evidence, unlike Abbott.
I feel frustrated whenever I see Howard rolled out for his “wisdom” as an ex PM. That is because Howard has no idea how many despise him. He wanted to be a war time PM and to be seen as Churchilian. A failed PM is what he really is.
Johnny wanted us to “Be alert but not alarmed”. Mal urges us to be agile, strange, but I feel that am getting very agitated and afraid of late…
Something to do with this government…?
And don’t forget Little Johnnie’s fridge magnets, helvityni. Oh, and his mouse pads. All those lovely little reminders to plonk on our fridge door or in our office telling us to be alert.
I’ll be checking my letter box for Malcolm’s latest versions and I’ll be disappointed if I don’t find a ‘Trust Trump’ among them.
To live so long and to never evolve just reflects Plato’s quote on John Arsewipe Howard that “An unexamined life is not worth living”,
Did anyone else notice that Malcolm described “our enemies” as being “agile and innovative”??
Does he want us to be like ISIS or does he just need a Thesaurus?
Perhaps the military Turnbull groupies in their gas masks were just protecting themselves from the usual political flatulence?
Kerri: Wealth and privilege and a good formal education does not make an inciteful,wise or streetwise man.
Wise words, Jack Straw.
As Scott Ludlum would say…. SRSLY?
Is this Mal’s way of making friends…is he visiting North Korea…?
Anyone else notice Stan Grant’s “Australia is going to be invaded” piece the other day just before Malcolm announced the amalgamations of the security agencies.
Grubby little Uncle Tom.
Roflmao, what utter wankery!
So the man who assured us that Iraq definitely had WMDs and that “we don’t want regime change, we just want to disarm Saddam” and then committed us to years of eternal unwinnable wars in the Middle East now wants us to accept Trump unconditionally.
He got away with own “children overboard” experience and probably thinks Trump can tweet away any old nonsense regardless of truth and without consequence.
It’s all because he (like his lickspittle Abbott) believes the end always justifies the means, but political short-term gain often means years of long-term pain for the rest of us.
I also noticed the seed of invasion and North Korean missiles stories being planted, the same way as the ongoing talk about “clean coal” and renewables over the last few months were softening us up for recent announcements about mines and power stations.
If anyone is going to invade us for our resources it will more likely be the USA than neighbours to our north.
Trust ’em like tiger snakes.
They think that if they drag the old reprobate out again his divine presence will magically lift the combined fortunes of the their beloved Liberal party from the pits of Dantes Inferno into a stateof Nirvana,culminating into visions of Budda and Jesus both ascending from Heaven and showering them with Divine eternal gifts that only they….. the ”chosen” ones, can attain to,and us mere mortals left behind to struggle and to ponder if we will ever scale the dizzying heights that these Liberal ”Deities” have accomplished!
And i know why those soldiers were wearing gas masks standing behind The Supreme Dear Leader and his blond Nordic sidekick Bombshell Bob... because the absolute putrid stench emanating from these two evil war mongering bastards was so overpowering that every tree and plant within a 10 klm radius withered and died, and whole populations surronding the complex had to be evacuated and re-educated, and their memories restored and altered to a Conservative mindset!
What’s that? No i dont like them…………………………….
replying to George McAulay:
Grant’s sounding-board on that segment was Chris Barrie (the ex-Admiral, not the guy who played the hologram on Red Dwarf). If memory serves, he retired as head of the ADF not long after supporting the Government’s position during the Children Overboard affair.
Note to Stan: when asking an ex-military person about the prospect of war, it’s best to remember the old adage “never ask a barber if you need a haircut”.
Also: Mark “Arm-Breaker” Latham was writing in the Daily Birdcage-Liner today, telling us what a great job Donald Trump is doing. It was a disappointing article as he only managed one “political correctness” and one “cultural Marxism”. Maybe he needs to upgrade the Artificial Stupidity program that he uses to write his pieces.
Quote: “The new President hasn’t been to hundreds of backslapping international talkfests…” Nope, because he has been too busy playing golf.
Still, it’s great to see two of the leading disasters of recent Australian politics in agreement on the leading disaster of current USA politics.
Don’t underestimate Trump VS Deep State!
I think Fraser started this dishonesty with the Liberals and Howard perfected it now Abbott and Turdbull are fighting to take the honors as the biggest liar and cheat in the Liberal Party although Brandis is following very close.