Tony Abbott, Gillian Triggs, Human Rights, bribes and threats

For a connoisseur of schadenfreude such as myself, watching Tony Abbott self-immolate is pure delight. He tries to play his tough guy act and ends up surprised when it blows up in his face. Most recently his target has been Gillian Triggs, President of the Human Rights Commission. she has come under sustained attack from Abbott and his lackeys for daring to publish a truthful report which heavily criticised both the past Labor and current Coalition government’s handling of asylum seeker children in detention.

Watching his nasty attacks having the opposite attack to what he intended is only half the fun. Now it looks like the Federal Police may be getting involved over allegations of bribery.

And then Malcolm Turnbull, the person who will sooner or later knock Abbott over as leader, fired a broadside that I’ll wager Abbott didn’t see coming, saying “debate about Gillian Triggs misses the main point … the main point is the children. Children in detention is something nobody wants”. I’d bet money Abbott is losing his mind behind closed doors because this is Turnbull straight up saying “Abbott is full of shit and I’m pretty much ready to replace him.”

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Trans Pacific Partnership

The Trans Pacific Partnership has been in the news quite a bit lately and a lot of people have been asking if I’ll make a video about it. This is fair enough because the TPP is bloody horrible. A warning sign should be the way Tony Abbott has been prattling on about “more trade! It’s a good thing!”

If that cretin is pushing an idea it’s probably pretty bad.

But the point is I have been making videos about the TPP – at least six of them, stretching back to March 2012. Which brings me to another point – while I hate Abbott and the LNP, it’s unfair to blame it all on them. The previous Labor government were pushing it just as hard.

March 2012

April 2012

May 2012

December 2012

September 2013

November 2013

Ask a sex worker

For something a little different I decided to do a collaboration with my friend Jez who wanted to explode some of the myths about sex workers.

A little disclaimer: This is about one person’s experiences. Your ,mileage may vary. This is a complicated and delicate issue and there are many differing views/experiences. One person’s experiences do not invalidate smother person having a totally different experience. If you want to comment, don’t be a jerk about it.

It’s official, Tony Abbott is the most fucked up leader of any industrial democracy

Gotta love it when an international observer describes ol’ Tone’s performance as “Abbott has proven so incapable of clear policy thinking, so unwilling to consult with even his own ministers and advisers, and so poor at communicating that he has to go.” Ouch. The Council on Foreign Relations was not mincing their words.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what foreigners think. Or even what an overwhelming majority of the Australian population think. It only matter what his own caucus thinks. And it’s pretty clear a majority of his caucus think he’s shit and his days are numbered.

After barely surviving the spill motion AGAINST NOBODY his backbenchers made it clear he was only going to survive until his next fuckup. No more captain’s calls! Surely Abbott is not so detached from reality that this is beyond his capability? Surely he can last for a while without making any unilateral decisions that alienate his backbenchers?

Nope. Didn’t even make it to the end of the week.

A single word that sums up the Internet

I subscribe to a “word of the day” email. It provides a bit of a diversion and occasionally brings up some very interesting words. The other day, the word was:

CAPTIOUS: (adjective) Marked by a disposition to find and point out trivial faults.

In other words, this is the one word I didn’t know I needed because it sums up every annoying motherfucker on the internet. I can be as big a grammar nazi as anybody but one of the things that makes engaging with the average idiot online is this very thing. It isn’t so much that they disagree with me that’s the problem, it’s that they have this intellectually dishonest habit of focusing on trivialities and expecting you to waste your time with every tiny quibble they have while they ignore the actual issue at hand.

“Shut up, you’re being captious.”

“Wha?”

“It means you’re wasting time pointing out trivial things.”

“Ah, so you you’re acknowledging that I have attention to detail.”

“No, I’m saying you’re an annoying [rick and a waste of time. Now shut the fuck up before I defenestrate you.”

Thanks, word of the day!

Dead Man Walking – Tony Abbott survives for now

Tony Abbott rushed a party room vote today (presumably he thought the longer his opponents had to organise, the more votes their would be against him) and got a result that was close to the best the Labor opposition could have hoped for. He defeated the motion 61-39 and he’s playing that up as a victory. All the facile comments about “that’s an end to it” and “looking to the future” are completely ignoring reality.

Tony Abbott is a dead man walking.

For a bit of historical context, in June 1991, Paul Keating challenged sitting PM Bob Hawke and Hawke won the vote 66-44 but it was only delaying the inevitable. In December 1991 Keating struck again and this time he won the vote 56-51. Keating then went on to win the next Federal election (somewhat surprisingly).

More recently, the first time Kevin Rudd challenged sitting PM Julia Gillard in February 2012 (after himself being knocked off by Gillard) he lost the challenge 71-31. Despite Gillard winning the vote by a wider margin than Abbott did today, nobody thought it was over. Rudd came back in June 2013 and defeated Gillard 57-45. Rudd then led Labor to a rather resounding defeat at the next election.

Those number alone tell you Abbott’s on borrowed time. The really damning fact is that all of the challenges detailed above involved an aggressive challenger taking on the sitting leader. Abbott was facing a challenge from NOBODY. It was pure a vote to say “this bloke totally sucks balls – we need to get rid of him, don’t we?”

Tony Abbott sitting with all of his friends

The Liberals seem to be marching in lockstep now, publicly saying Abbott now needs time to show he can turn things around. But it’s all bullshit. Everyone knows Abbott is mortally wounded. His own words damn him.

Angry Comix: Am I the only one who…

I think I might actually do a rant video of this idea too. People are always asking me to bring back the angry mask and this seems like a good opportunity.

It’s ON! Tony Abbott to be sunk by #LibSpill

Tony Abbott is circling the drain and it keeps getting funnier. He is so screwed and I couldn’t be happier. Even if he survives the spill he seems too arrogant to realise he’s mortally wounded and is dragging his party down with him.

A RABBI who knew an accused child abuser might flee the country says he did not know at the time that it was illegal for an adult to touch a child’s genitals. If his god was real he would be struck dead.

Missouri boy’s family stages his own 4-hour kidnapping for being ‘too nice’ to strangers

Anti-vaxxers – they aren’t getting any smarter

This is one of those things that seems so apt I start to suspect it’s fake. Spotted on Imgur.com, this purports to be an editorial cartoon from the 1940s. If it’s real and not a mock-up, it’s mildly terrifying how fitting it is today. My favourites are the “Faddist” and “anti-everything” – they really remind me of the anti-vaxxers plaguing the world right now.

A new blog milestone

I didn’t make any big announcement about it but on January first I decided I’d see if I could get back to my old standard of posting at least once every day. This is something I managed for the first year of this blog and coming up to my nine year anniversary I decided to see if I could do it again.

That’s one months down – the first month I’ve posted something every day since June 2007! In order to celebrate essentially re-birthing this blog I thought I’d go about revamping my blog roll too. If you have a blog that you update regularly (that’s important!) let’s be blog buddies. Put a link to your blog in the comments for this post and I’ll add at least a few to my blog roll.