Vote the bastards out!

The Australian Federal Election is coming up and I wanted to provide some information for people who may not be sure of who to vote for – mainly about why you shouldn’t vote for the LNP coalition. This is not a neutral presentation, this is a shamelessly partisan call to oppose political policies that I think are nasty and hurt the most vulnerable people first. Here are the key things that rule out the LNP for me:

Protecting workers

LNP policies are a non-stop assault on ordinary workers. Painting unions as evil bad guys and trying to get people to forget that it was unions who fought for and protect every basic condition workers enjoy today. Here’s what you can look forward to if they get their way on industrial relations:

• No penalty rates at all for anyone. If you think nurses working midnight to 8am on a Sunday don’t deserve penalty rates then you are quite frankly an awful person. If you can’t open your café on weekends because of penalty rates either learn how to run a successful business without exploiting people in an already lousy job then close it.
• No protection of any type from unreasonable behaviour from bosses. Look forward to travelling in to work for a two hour shift because you’ll get sacked if you don’t. Look forward to being sacked if you protest against sexual harassment from your boss. Look forward to not even being paid – a serious LNP proposal is to make payment “in kind” legal. Thanks for coming in to work – this pizza should cover your pay for the shift.
• Rampant exploitation of workers, particularly of young people. There’s a very strong push in the LNP to abolish any sort of minimum wage but their latest brain child is “internships” for young people that pay anywhere from $0-$4 per hour. Unpaid internships make sense in industries that are very hard to break into which makes any experience valuable. But the travesty proposed by the LNP would extend as far as “internships” stacking shelves in supermarkets.
• Continued abuse and expansion of temporary work visas. Various forms of temporary work visas were meant to allow employers to import workers when an appropriate workforce couldn’t be found locally. They’ve been little more than a rort for years used to drive down wages in areas like construction, engineering and IT where local workers could easily be found. Isn’t it amazing how they consistently find “skilled” workers from countries with much lower pay rates? When Gina Rinehart describes Africans who will work for $2 an hour as something to aspire to, you know which way the LNP intends to push this policy.

The environment

LNP policy goes beyond not caring about the environment and climate change to aggressively pursuing policies that will accelerate the destruction of our environment and the worsening of climate change. They not only continue to push coal as an energy source despite the poor economic return and catastrophic environment al damage, they launch unhinged attacks on renewable energy and aggressively cut investment and research into renewables.

Education

The LNP continue to cut funding to state schools while increasing funding to private schools. They keep cutting funding to universities and making it more expensive to attain a university education. They clearly intend to deregulate university fees as much as possible making education even more expensive. And as far as borrowing for uni fees and only paying back when you reach a certain level of income – the LNP’s latest brainwave is to count the entire “household” income when calculating when repayment is due. So young people forced to live at home because of other government policies that stop them from earning a living wage will see their parents hit with the education bill. Purely and simply, LNP education policies take away opportunities from those who need the help the most and reward the richest in society.

Medicare

Make no mistake, Turnbull’s promise to not privatise Medicare is nothing short of a lie. They may go to the trouble of gutting the system and slowly bleeding it to death rather than straight out killing it so they can preserve the illusion that they didn’t lie but their policy goal is to destroy Medicare as we know it. Once again, the hardest hit will be the people least able to afford it.

Marriage equality

If you want to be part of the 21st century and acknowledge that two adults who love each other should be able to marry no matter what their gender or sexuality then the LNP is going to screw you and not in a consensual way. Malcolm Turnbull may or may not support marriage equality but he’s utterly beholden to the bigoted extreme right of his own party and he doesn’t have the guts to go up against them.

It’s obvious that Tony Abbott used the idea of a plebiscite after the election as a stalling tactic to put off any vote and never intended to go through with it. This became clear because when he was replaced with Malcolm Turnbull who definitely was going to go ahead with a plebiscite, the religious right panicked and went into high gear trying to derail the process. The simple fact that several members of the government have made it clear they won’t vote in favour of marriage no matter what the result of a plebiscite makes the whole thing an expensive farce.

If the LNP are in charge of the wording of a marriage equality they could easily corrupt it to increase the chance of rejection and if they get to set the public discourse, get ready for a lot of hate and increased attacks on LGBTI people. Just look at the wave of racism sweeping across the UK after the Brexit vote if you want an example of what can happen when bigots have their hate filled views validated.

Welfare

The LNP are typical Tories in that they oppose welfare if it goes to needy people but all in favour of welfare when it goes to corporate interests. You can’t get a clearer picture of the LNP priorities than the news that they intend to give $50 billion dollars worth of tax breaks to big companies (most of which will end up being funneled out of the country) while cutting $2 billion from welfare and pensions.

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I’m not saying people who vote for the LNP are evil but I am saying the things we regard as important are very, very different. Top it off with Turnbull basically admitting you can’t trust anything he says and there’s no way they deserve your vote. At a press conference in Banyo, Queensland on Tuesday he said “What political parties say they will support and oppose at one time is not necessarily ultimately what they will do.” A rare moment of honesty.

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#ScoMoPhobia is out of control!

Today in Australia we were treated to the ridiculous spectacle of Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison playing the victim card, saying he’d been subjected to hate speech and bigotry. In general terms I’m opposed to hate and bigotry but it doesn’t count when they’re made up.

Morrison’s ridiculous bleating was in response to Labor Senator Penny Wong saying the government’s proposed plebiscite on marriage equality is a bad idea because opponents will use it as an excuse to inflame hatred and homophobia. I don’t know why she’s so worried, just because of the hateful comments already made by members of the government and other opponents of the safe schools initiative and the so called Australian Christian Lobby saying “pretty please can we be exempted from anti-vilification laws for this plebiscite so we can say what we really think?”

I’m sure there’s lots of reasons you would want to be exempted from laws designed to protect people from undue vilification and it’s pure conjecture that the ACL’s is to push hateful rhetoric any chance they get no matter who it hurts.

Anyway, Scott Morrison has piped up and said he understands Penny Wong’s concerns because he’s “been exposed to that hatred and bigotry for the views I’ve taken“. Yes, when will someone stand up against the oppression suffered by rich straight white men who are actually part of the government actually running the country? What power do you have when you’re only the second most powerful position in the government?

So Morrison has equated being somewhat answerable for things he actually says and does with being vilified and attacked for who you are. Because that’s what bigotry is – being called out for being an arsehole isn’t bigotry, being told who you are makes you a lesser person is bigotry.

So far as people saying hateful things about Morrison, well I guess when you push policies that deny people basic equality based solely on who they love you might get some blowback. Not that it adds to the debate to call Morrison a shit gargling fuckwomble but I can see how some people might be angry enough to say that.

It’s impossible to overstate the fragility of these conservative white christian men. You can almost see the tears in Cory Bernardi’s eyes when someone calls him a homophobe just because he directly associated being gay with bestiality and launches hateful lies against a school programme aimed at protecting LGBTI kids from harassment and bullying.

Calling him a rancid pustule infesting the rectum of Australian politics might seem accurate but can’t you see how oppressed he is? When he spreads his despicable slander with no concern for whose life he’s ruining, he never expected to be held accountable for it!

Social media has taken Scott Morrison’s side with #ScoMoPhobia. You might think it’s ridiculous to say people being angry at Morrison, Bernardi and the rest pushing their bigotry is a form of bigotry in itself. But that’s just because you don’t understand the oppression of rich white christian men. Who literally run the country. WHEN WILL SOMETHING GO THEIR WAY?!?!?!

 

A conversation with Donald Trump’s campaign manager

Hey, how ya doin’? I’m Joey Soulfucker, Donald trump’s campaign manager. It’s a high pressure job but I wouldn’t give it up for the world. The question I’m always asked is “How do you think the campaign is going?” and my answer is always “unbelievably good!” I mean that literally. There is nobody in the campaign, right up to the Donald, who can believe things are going this well. It makes no sense. Any rational human knows Donny aint fit to run for president but that’s only half of it. It would make a bit more sense if he was running as an independent but he’s running as a Republican! He’s spoutin’ all that family values and jesus rubbish when he’s clearly a complete degenerate.

Now don’t get me wrong, I say that with love because I’m a degenerate too. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a goody two shoes. But the Donald doesn’t even try to hide what he is. His life and history is public and the divorces and womanising aint even close to the worst of it – you have no idea what sick stuff he’s really into. You think wanting to bang his daughter is the grossest thing about him? But he stands up and says “I love the bible” and the crowd goes wild. “Family values” and they eat it up. We figured early on that he’d get a bit of attention, say some outrageous things and we’d use the boost to his profile to go on talk shows and sell books. We didn’t even think he’d make it half way to the first caucus vote, let alone be leading.

I mean, come on! What kind of idiot would vote for the Donald Trump that’s been campaigning? He’s mean, nasty, obviously lying, completely out of touch with reality… I know I just described a decent chunk of America but how can they not see he’s making fun of them? Half the time the things he says don’t even make sense – he’s up on the stage being a gibbering idiot but his popularity keeps going up and up! We’ve started making bets on what outrageous things he can say and get away with it. I’ve lost so much money on those bets!

The shooting someone in the street – that one was mine. Donny was laughing about how stupid his supporters were and how it had gotten to the point that it didn’t matter what he said – they’d support him no matter what. So I thought I was calling his bluff, I said “OK, come out and say that, say you could shoot someone and they’d still love you” and he said “Just watch me”.

Think about it – someone running for president, the frontrunner for one of the major parties starts saying it doesn’t matter if he shoots someone! No rational person would say that. In The Donald’s case, it’s no serious person would say this. He’s been treating this as a joke for months. He was already probably the biggest ego in the country but now, when he doesn’t have to care what he says? He’s a force of nature. He doesn’t have to make sense. He doesn’t have to be consistent. He doesn’t have to take responsibility for anything.

I thought I’d finally found the limit with the KKK. First, I thought he’d back down when I told him not to reject the endorsement. Then when he called my bluff I knew he was done with this whole thing and wanted out. Even he’s getting embarrassed about how stupid people are. But it doesn’t make any goddam difference! They don’t care!

Seriously, his supporters are a rampaging mob of psychopaths. They make racist attacks on people, actual physical attacks and he just eggs them on. He says they’re “passionate”. In no sane world can a presidential candidate whip up a mob with hate speech and get away with it.  But Donald can in this world.

I’m not gonna surprise anyone by saying Donny aint the sharpest tool in the shed but he knows people. Hey, I’m in PR and politics so I already think people are morons. Nasty, greedy, out for themselves idiots. But I wasn’t prepared for what this campaign showed me.  The Donald knew all along this was a joke. And the America that comes out of this ugly race is the punchline.

Treasurer for Rent

So Joe Hockey “won” his defamation case against the Sydney Morning Herald but it could cost him more than the settlement.

My second VEDJINA:

Christopher Pyne – The Fixer Dance Mix

Christopher Pyne is all kinds of fucked up. He’s one of this fucked-up government’s all star fuckups. While I could go on at great length about all the fuckups he’s committed in his education portfolio or all his fucked up antics in parliament, this post is all about the fucked up and downright freaky interview he did on Sky News this week.

The were the terrible faces, the awful giggles and the deeply creepy turns of phrase. When I saw the interview I thought someone should do a dance remix. Then I thought, why not me?

Taylor Swift is worse than Satan and Fred Nile is even worse than that

A packed TFU Video – over 20 minutes of ranting in a single take including:

The Australian Federal government has set a new speed record for backflips after saying they would scrap plans to cut a Medicare rebate for short GP visits.

Fred Nile is possibly the worst person ever and has made controversial comments about whether or not all Sydney siege victims should receive bravery awards, saying “the only man, really man, there was a man with a gun“.

Sad, self-absorbed boy think the #Tay4Hottest100 campaign is the worst thing ever. How would they be if they had actual problems in their lives?

Tony Abbott threatens to shirtfront Vladimir Putin

Sometimes I wonder if Tony Abbott will ever stop giving me material. Usually several times a week, word vomit escapes his face hole and it’s so stupid, self serving and/or downright evil the collective face palm in Australia can be heard around the world.

This week, as his mental and emotional growth clearly never progressed beyond early high school, Abbott decided to use some school yard bluster because apparently actual international diplomacy is too hard for him. As is basic English as well, it seems.

Oh, and what does “shirt front” actually mean? Here’s one interpretation.

Palmer United Party – good thing or bad thing?

Clive Palmer appears to have surprised some people by doing exactly what he intended to do all along. I’m more than a little confused by people who express any sort of surprise or disappointment in Palmer United Party getting rid of the carbon price and/or the mining tax. Personally I think these actions are both mistakes but they were pretty much core promises from PUP in the lead up to the last federal election. If they hadn’t gone through with them that would have been a pretty major broken election promise.

Palmer’s decision to mess around with Abbott for shits and giggles has been funny to see but it was never anything more than a sideshow. On those major policy points PUP was always going to give the LNP coalition what they wanted. Palmer just decided to bend Abbott over, repeatedly thwack his arse and make him say “Thank you sir, may I have another?” each time. And if this government is going to destroy the lives and futures of the majority of the country, we at least deserve some entertainment to go with it.

Clive’s a “character”. Which is to say that virtually everything he says and does publicly is scripted as opposed to being the real him. Some of his PUP cohorts however, seem far more interesting. Jacqui Lambie is someone I’d like an opportunity to talk to and see how open she is to exploring issues. She seems to fancy herself as “down to earth” and I have no reason to suspect she’s anything but the ordinary person she projects. I feel inclined to defend her a bit when people call her a bogan because (a) I grew up in the country and (b) I’m more than a little disturbed when people who consider themselves progressive use classist insults.

It’s perfectly possible Lambie is a horrible regressive bigoted person and I wouldn’t like her. I don’t know her so I have no idea what she is really like. While her discussing her preference for big dicks on a radio station was less than edifying, I don’t think that episode means something should be done to change her behaviour. I’d much prefer it if something was done about the absolute dreck pumped out by commercial radio stations. The most interesting thing to me about her is she’s recently been speaking out about Palmer acting like an idiot.

When Palmer was supposed to tip a bucket of water over Lambie on a TV show called The Project (as part of the ubiquitous Ice Bucket Challenge) he saw a second bucket and apparently thought they were going to spring a surprise on him and challenge him to have the same done to him. He took exception to this and stormed off and has honestly looked a complete tool whenever he has been asked to explain his reaction. Lambie’s simple response of “Welcome to my world” seems rather telling.

More than once Lambie has publicly said she wishes Palmer would be less of a clown which seems like quite a promising sign. She essentially relied on Palmer’s profile and bankroll to get elected but doesn’t seem bothered about speaking out and criticising his poor behaviour when she thinks it’s warranted. It’s far too early to see what sort of lasting impact (if any) PUP will have on Australian politics. But they seem to not like Abbott and take some delight in torturing him and that’s enough for now.

Christopher Pyne is a LIAR!

Christopher Pyne is a liar. That isn’t saying very much – he’s a politician. Everyone lies at some point, politicians more than most. I’ve also made no secret of the fact that Pyne is probably my least favourite Australian politician so it’s hardly surprising I’d single him out. 

Think about that for a moment. With my regularly expressed contempt for politicians he’s the bottom of the pile. That takes some doing. Admittedly it’s very crowded at the bottom of the pile and there’s a lot of close runners up for the worst of the worst but for me, Pyne is right down there at the very bottom.

The reason I feel compelled to call him out as a liar is a very specific thing he said to the media recently. After the clusterfuck that was the ALP’s destructive wrangling about who should be party leader was resolved**, Pyne said that he was still receiving text messages from Labor MPs who had a definite plan to replace PM Gillard with challenger Rudd.

This is a complete fucking lie.

Just on the face of it, it’s utterly ridiculous. Dissident Labor MPs messaging an opposition front bencher and telling him their plans? Really? I call bullshit. I know the media has gotten into the habit of uncritically swallowing and regurgitating LNP lies for years now but this is too fucking far. It’s worse than if it was only another one of their lies, it’s insultingly stupid.

Pyne’s statement to the ABC “I’m still getting text messages from supporters of his in the caucus telling me that they plan to remove Julia Gillard in 71 days (June 3),” is a straight out lie. He should be made to publicly admit the lie and apologise.

Here’s an interesting thing: what I’ve just written is actionable under Australian defamation law. Unless it’s true. There’s no such thing as “freedom of speech” under law in Australia. If I have falsely accused Pyne of lying it would be quite simple for him to sue me and win in an Australian court.

But he won’t. Because I’m not defaming him. I’m telling the truth.

I will admit to being a little surprised that he’d spout such an easily provable lie. Saying he had text messages was a big mistake because these are traceable. Even if both he and the sender deleted the messages the carrier would still have a record of them. And that would have to be presented in court if he wanted to sue me.

So despite the fact that Australia has some pretty fucked up defamation laws, I’m not worried about calling Christopher Pyne a liar. Because it isn’t defamation. It’s the simple truth.

Lets be clear: he said multiple Labor MPs have texted him with definite plans to topple Gillard in a fixed timeframe. If he can’t provide evidence to back up those specific claims, he’s a liar. “Sources” who claim they know what’s going on isn’t good enough, he said it was actual Labor MPs. A single Labor MP isn’t good enough, he said it was more than one. And whispers in his ear aren’t good enough, he said it was text messages which, as I pointed out, can be recovered even if both sender and recipient have deleted them.

So how about it media? Will somebody please put this pathetic liar on the spot and force him to admit to his lies? Or are we going to have to continue to put up with this blatant unchecked bullshit?

Don’t worry, I know the answer.

**A little aside to LNP supporters: None of this is intended to suggest that the repeated attempts at self-destruction by Labor are anything but pathetic and frankly embarrassing. They will almost certainly pay by being utterly crushed at the next Federal election. But that doesn’t change the fact that Pyne is a fucking liar.

George Bush – president for life

Anyone familiar with my videos will know I’m usually quick to dismiss conspiracy theories as stupid paranoia so you may need some explanation for this video.  The dialogue comes from the web site of a group called “Family Security Matters”.  They’re a bunch of right wing nutbags who apparently think the US should nuke anyone who disagrees with them and that George Bush should declare martial law to make himself President for life and ultimately Emperor of the world.  Oh, and they have direct links with Dick Cheney.

When their little piece of freakazoid propaganda got wide circulation they were apparently surprised to learn that the majority of the population thought they were fucking nuts.  They took the article down after seeing the response but not before a number of websites copied the information.

And if you still think this is paranoid, you might want to look into the presidential order that allows Bush to declare martial law and suspend the constitution.

Personally, I’m working on the assumption none of this crazy shit will come to pass and the coming elections will pass without incident.  But I wish they’d hurry up and happen so this nagging fear would go away.