The dying days of the Fourth Reich: it's the 2007 AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION

A pie and pea floater from Harry's cafe de wheels would be nice right now.

Andy the B wields his poison crayon for one of those, the Melbourne daily tabloid Herald-Sun, which is a slightly less rancid version of the Fleet St Sun or Mirror - I suppose a bit like the Daily Mail.

I'm related to people who call that 'the paper.' They bring up something boring and inane that happened in the past week, like some kid in Meadowvale Height Springs winning first prize in a doughnut-making competition, and when we say we haven't heard about it the response is always 'DON'T YOU READ THE PAPER?!??'

Because it's in-laws I've not yet had the balls to say 'NO, ACTUALLY, WE READ A PAPER THAT COVERS IMPORTANT THINGS LIKE THE FUCKING WAR YOUR FAVOURITE PRIME MINISTER STARTED ON TUESDAY.'

The Scum got better last year/early this year when that new editor took over, but better doesn't mean good enough. It's still toilet paper with Howard-loving sewerage disguised as news (after all the primary school doughnut-making competition winners, obv).

Floaters? As I remember from Minder, the under the Hammersmith fly-over was quite a good spot to start looking.

Ugh that's a nasty flyover. Hello welcome new tourists, here's a giant dirty slab of concrete.

Wouldn't The Advertiser be the worst paper in Australia? I could say that but I won't because before Murdoch purchased it in the eighties, it was a good centre-left paper with an awful lot of soccer results. I've seen the proof.

Sunday Mail (SA) is easily the weirdest paper in Australia in terms of focus. From the usual ranks of the rabid Murdoch right-wingers to that camp leftist man about town, Peter Goers.

I almost exclusively read The Age and Crikey online as my major news sources, which says an awful lot...

A pie and pea floater from Harry's cafe de wheels would be nice right now.

I don't think so. You can only get real pie floaters in Adelaide.

OBVIOUSLY

I read the Fairfaxes and the ABC, and try to get international sources as well, but never any Murdoch (apart from George Megalogenis's blog, but I have ads turned off). Crikey is a paid source; I should just pay, really.

Another point I should make here is that everyone I know who supports Howard -- even marginally -- reads a Murdoch paper. Every. Single. One.

xpost

I admit to reading Bolt's blog for a laff now and again.

Anyway, final proof that morans vote Howard.

Recently I've been checking Blot's blog (with ads off obv) just to see how the rednecks justify the unjustifiable. Everything's a conspiracy theory to him, and he never understands why nobody sees things his way.

NOT SO BOLD PREDICTION: Germaine Greer will write an article in the Guardian sometime in the next week or two where she'll state that Australians are fucking stupid if they vote Howard in again. Bolt and the Murdoch Gestapo spend the next week whinging that she has no right to write about Australia blah blah blah.

Newspapers in Australia are really dire. There's The Age I guess, but apart from that there's absolutely nothing to compete with the best of U.S. or British newspapers. Half the non-Australian stories they just buy from British and American newspapers anyway.

Yep.

The Age was beautifully even-handed until Rudd became ALP leader, at which point it went gung-ho apeshit Rudd crazy. I'd be really annoyed at this, if it weren't for Howard being a complete arsehole and every Murdoch outlet licking his knob.

So: tax cuts will save the day for the liberals? What do you think? They can always renege on all promises after the election, as is traditional.

It's not going down well so far. I think the allure of a tax cut has worn off since the last five didn't help anyone much, what with property/rent prices and interest rates and petrol negating the gains. Also, since WorkChoices most people are suspicious of anything Howard does.

And yes, non-core promise.

Has Rudd agreed to Howard's one-sided debate? FUCK.

But who honestly gives a flying ferret's fart about the 'mess-dabate' anyhow? Is there one instance of one single person anywhere in Australia ever changing their vote because one candidate did a better line of inane patter with George or Ray or Red Kezza or who-the-hell-ever than the other? As WOFTAM's go, The Debate is in the same league as Celebrity Big Brother.

No Worm, No Credibility

If anyone writes about Howard's decade in power, feel free to use that as a title.

Love how John Howard wants his debate on pay television only. Obviously people too poor/too intelligent to sign up for programmes of the genre "World's Blankest Blank" don't deserve to watch and listen to John Howard for over an hour.

Aren't you worried that K to the R seems like a bigger conservative than anyone in the Liberal camp?

Well, I think he might just be a little to the left of folks like Tony Abbott, Kevin "Enoch" Andrews and our old favourite, Wilson "Ironbar" Tuckey.

But not that left, mind you!!

Here comes the new boss...

He's just a stooge in The Plan:

November 07 - Ruddster wins election.
December 07 - Ruddster is "assassinated".
January 08 - Comrade Gillard, Beloved Mother of the Nation, decrees that the Socialist Republic of Australia will nationalize every Bunnings Warehouse.

"Well, I think he might just be a little to the left of folks like Tony Abbott, Kevin "Enoch" Andrews and our old favourite, Wilson "Ironbar" Tuckey."

And the judges have called for the developed print....

Rudd will develop a very mildly socialist leaning or two once he's safely in situ. I hope. He'd damned well better, anyway.

Aren't you worried that K to the R seems like a bigger conservative than anyone in the Liberal camp?

Oh come on. The chance of anyone being more conservative than Howard is so tiny it's not worth thinking about.

Here's a useful little swing-o-meter tool gadet:

http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/

*gadget

Rudd continues to turn down Howard's stacked debate.

Brilliant.

But think of the children!

(overboard)

Status is at play here. In 1998, 2001 and 2004, Howard had the high status position.

Rudd has taken that away. Since December, Rudd has very much been in the high status position, with Howard and his minions darting around him trying to throw him off-course. Rudd and the ALP have not been moved by this.

Monday's tax policy was the culmination of the Coalition's low-status behaviour: desperately chucking big money out there to blind everyone, then bullying Rudd and Swan into leaping early. Fortunately the ALP has said it will not move until it's ready - again, staying resolute, in control, relegating the Liberals to low status.

Howard's televised debate tactic is the same, and this is why it's absolutely crucial that Rudd stands his ground and refuses to attend a loaded debate. By refusing and sticking to his terms he remains high status, and as long as he remains high status he has immense power.

I should add that 2004's violent Latham-Howard handshake swung Latham even further into the low status position (i.e. publicly losing his cool), and from that point it was all over.

hahaha oh guys

Almy, that makes sense.

JH is not cuet enuff to be lolcat

lolbaboon perhaps

Experts predict the death of the entire Liberal party (state and federal) if Howard loses this election

John Hewson's hacking into Howard for being an extremist too. Brilliant reading.

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/08/07/wilson_tuckey_narrowweb__300x460,0.jpg

can i has aborgine to tie down and beat with ironbars

Y'know, they COULD be right that a massive split could happen in the Liberal Party. I often wonder what the wets/moderates will do without John Howard who is the only reason why the party has stayed stable on a Federal level. Combine that with the shift to the far-right and the party being totally fucked on a State level in, er, pretty much every state.

MAYBE DON CHIPP MIGHT COME BACK FROM THE DEAD??

I'm so pissed at what Howard has done to that party. Not that I'm a raving Lib or anything but at least it once understood social responsibility to a degree, and didn't go round abusing gheys and chinamans and everything else it doesn't understand.

Before he got into power I was warned by a friend who said he'd do all this. At the time I thought he was ranting.

As Menzies biggest fanboy, Howard being the one to bring about the annihilation of the Liberal party as an appealing irony.

Just to backtrack a bit... the West Australian is CLEARLY the worst newspaper in the nation by a long shot. REF: Ben Cousins in DRUGS SHOCKAH hysteria knocking any other 'news' like federal election off the perch

Do you know the biggest news story the Herald Sun has ever published?

War in Iraq?
World Trade Center?

No, SIXTEEN pages of Wayne Carey rooting Anthony Stevens' wife.

I wouldn't expect any less from those fine publications.

I just looked at all those LOLpollies pictures and they are *so fucking dreadful* that I'm no longer voting Greens in the Upper House.

I did chuckle at this one, through...

Howard has told Rudd to 'grow up.' Gillard has responded by calling him out for schoolboy tactics, retaining the high ground.

I'm telling ya, status is where it's at.

Hockey calls unions irrelevant, which explains why he's attacking them. He looks better with green horns.

"So: tax cuts will save the day for the liberals? What do you think? They can always renege on all promises after the election, as is traditional."

Well, they did say _if_ the strong economic growth continues, so when that inevitably peters out, they can fuck their promises right off the way they always do.

Got a SSAE envelope from bloody Alexander Downer yesterday, along with various bullshit screeds. Our dog once crapped on his front lawn. I wonder if he can be persuaded to crap into an envelope?

Alexander Downer is a talking pudding

who travelled back in time for some reason

to fetch his party leader frin the 19th century obv

from

Housing affordability figures and IMF world economic outlook report both released today. Both grim. The former makes the government look ignorant, the latter makes it look impetuous.

Oh and for all Costello's cries of GILARD OMG COMUMISM he was once a member of Australian Young Labor and did the same student union work as Gillard.

http://reasonsyouwillhateme.com/images/dfiu.jpg

How's the situation in the seat of Bennelong these days?