Watch the leftys heads explode

[IQS.RLOW]

Deputy prime minister Joyce has a nice ring to it, don't you think Aussie?

[Rorschach]

Arsie

[Aussie]

Arsie

So, when does the Three Ring Circus resign from the Senate? Who is he now working for....Queensland or New England?

[Rorschach]

Until he resigns he's still a Qld Senator...
a tad too difficult for you eh.
The timing is pretty irrelevant at least until the campaign proper is underway.

[IQS.RLOW]

He will shit it in over Windsor too.

Aussie is gonna get an Abbott/Joyce ticket

Combine that with the smashing of the ALP down to 30-35 seats and the rivers of after election blood letting and airing of grievances, I believe this year will be a Christmas better than ever before.

[Aussie]

Until he resigns he's still a Qld Senator...
a tad too difficult for you eh.
The timing is pretty irrelevant at least until the campaign proper is underway.

An honourable man, one who knows he cannot represent conflicting interests (Qld v New England) would resign now he has the New England LNP endorsement. Bet he doesn't, and that is because he is not an honourable man.

Aussie is gonna get an Abbott/Joyce ticket

Abbott will run with the Three Ring Circus as Deputy? Rubbish. That has been tried before and the Circus was found wanting.

[Rorschach]

There are no conflicting interests dopey.

He is still a member of the Opposition.

Funny you should talk about honour considering what you say on this site.

[IQS.RLOW]

Panicking yet Arrrsssieee?

[Rorschach]

Albo's had a brain explosion....

Anthony Albanese's high-speed train dream as absurd as flying cars
* by: Tim Blair
* From: The Daily Telegraph
* April 15, 2013 12:00AM

ANTHONY Albanese wasted a good 45 minutes of his life last week talking about something that shouldn't be built, can't be built and won't be built.

The transport minister's press conference to launch a feasibility study into a fast train line connecting Melbourne to Sydney and Brisbane was a curious use of government resources during an election year. It was of course a Green initiative like the Carbon Tax.

But maybe I'm judging it on the wrong level. As a transport proposal and a political strategy, the fast train is about as realistic as a return to piston-engined airliners, which would probably still beat any train interstate. As absurdist theatre, however, Albanese's press conference was an absolute masterpiece.

Here we had the nation's transport minister, who has relentlessly avoided any genuine advances on the one issue that actually could address our interstate and international travel demands, a second Sydney airport, carrying on at length about an unbuildable, unaffordable fantasy train. I like trains and a very fast train was a good idea, but this proposal is flawed, flawed, flawed... but then that is par for the course for this government.

He may as well have announced plans to open rural language training centres for cats. They'd be in the "weejuns", as newly-appointed minister for regional development Albanese might put it.

At one point even Albanese himself seemed to realise the slender-to-none chances of some 1750km of electrified rail ever being built through Queensland, NSW and Victoria, given the difficulty of overcoming what would be thousands of environmental impact studies.

Greens adore the idea of high-speed rail, he said, until they see the construction plans.

The thought seemed to give him amused pause, but Albanese quickly collected himself and returned to character as a Very Serious Minister outlining a Very Serious Idea. Then came an inquiry from AAP's Lisa Martin, who, along with anyone else not actively hallucinating, appeared to struggle with the concept of a $114 billion train line that wouldn't be finished for several decades and even then would be slower than present transport options.

"Mr Albanese," Martin asked, "by 2050, is it more likely Australia will have high-speed rail or flying cars?"

A fair question, in the circumstances. Then again, in those circumstances, just about anything would be a fair question. Normal conversational rules don't apply at 3am in an opium den. Same deal at an Albo presser, where, after all, an adult who is paid more than $300,000 per year is trying to convince us that a high-speed Australian rail line isn't completely insane.

Brilliantly, Albanese feigned contempt for the question and refused to answer. It was "disrespectful", he said, as though flying cars are any less believable than two-hour train travel times to Brisbane or Melbourne. Full marks to him for keeping a straight face.

Speaking of respect, here's how Albanese responded in Parliament to a carbon tax protest led by truck drivers and tradies, among others:

"The convoy of no consequence where a couple of hundred people gathered with no support from the mainstream organisations: the people who believe in one world government, the people who believe in a conspiracy along with the Leader of the Opposition convoy of no consequence outside! The convoy of no consequence, Mr Speaker!" Albo-sleazy at his best...
That was two years ago, when the government was polling rather better than it is now. How are them consequences working out for you, Anthony?

Being a stupid idea that will never work, Greens naturally love the theory of high-speed rail. As it happens, Albanese has occasional moments of clarity when it comes to his government's former allies.

In 2012 he said: "Every time the Greens party has been in a position of running something, of actually being able to exercise political power, they've been found wanting."

More usually, under Labor, they've been found receiving. "As part of the agreement to support the minority Labor government the Australian Greens secured a $20 million feasibility study into high speed rail," explains a press release from Greens MP Adam Bandt.

So we've wasted $20 million on a Greens-appeasing feasibility stunt. At current discount rates that'll buy 344,827 Sydney-Brisbane flights. Considering that the main aim of all of this is to improve Australian travel, perhaps the government should have taken those millions and just invested in stand-by tickets. Instead, they've given it to a bunch of researchers to write what is in effect an illustrated novel.

Albanese missed another chance here to help us all out. He's aware, as are we all, that the Greens get everything wrong. The feasibility study for high-speed rail would have been $20 million less expensive if he'd simply made one phone call:

Adam Bandt: "Hello."

Albanese: "Hi, Adam. It's the transport minister. I just wanted to know what's that noise?"

Bandt: "I'm feeding copies of my Marxist PhD thesis into an industrial furnace. What's up?"

Albanese: "I wanted to know what you think of high-speed rail."

Bandt: "High-speed rail is great! It's the perfect sustainable answer to long-term transport issues."

Albanese: "Thanks mate." [click]

At that point, Albanese could have turned to his colleagues and declared high-speed rail a non-starter.

Use your resources, minister.

The Foreign Press are clueless..

Foreign media fawn over Julia

The Golden Globe Awards are judged by Hollywood's foreign press contingent. If there were equivalent political prizes, Julia Gillard would be loaded with more statuettes than Meryl Streep.

The foreign press is infatuated with our prime minister, chiefly because of last year's misogyny speech aimed at Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. Because overseas media doesn't follow daily Australian politics, the speech was seen as a stand-alone piece rather than as Gillard's attempt to distract from the lamentable antics of then-speaker Peter Slipper.

So we now have Time magazine in the US simply describing Gillard as the "Australian Prime Minister whose parliamentary speech about the opposition leader's misogyny was heard around the world". Note that Abbott's misogyny isn't "alleged", nor is Gillard's claim an "accusation". It's just assumed to be true. Here's your prize, Ms Gillard.

Last week Gillard was interviewed in Canberra by US-based Matthew Winkler, the bow-tied editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News. "Prime Minister Julia Gillard said a dishonest opposition using gender rhetoric intended to discredit the country's first elected female leader won't prevent her coming from behind to win the September 14 national vote," wrote Winkler, evidently a Gillard fan.

Winkler was especially alarmed by this strategy to undermine the PM: "Among forces arrayed against Gillard are radio-show hosts who call the Prime Minister by her first name, rather than using her title or surname."

Really, pal? If using her first name is wrong, then somebody should inform Gillard's supporters at Ten's The Project. During an interview with the PM last month, the show's Dave Hughes and Carrie Bickmore both referred to her as "Julia". So did visiting US comedian Will Ferrell, appearing on The Project last year:

Ferrell: "Er, Miss, Mrs Prime Minister, is that ... "

Gillard: "Oh, whatever."

Ferrell: "Can I just call you Jules?"

Gillard: "That'll do too."

Ferrell: "Julia, I have a question for you."

Who knew that the star of Talladega Nights was part of the great anti-Gillard first-name conspiracy? According to the Bloomberg interview, Gillard believes use of her first name "is about lack of respect and lack of acknowledgment of my legitimacy as prime minister". Even worse, as Bloomberg points out, this first-name caper also turns up in newspapers: "Beyond radio, some print media members have used the 'Julia' moniker, including columnists in publications such as The Age and The Daily Telegraph, one of Australia's most widely circulated newspapers."

How very sinister. Memo to Bloomberg: it happens to be her name.

[Rorschach]

Lefty progs beyond the pale... when will they ever grow up.

Farcical death parties symbolise a nation in crisis
* by: Charles Miranda
* From: The Daily Telegraph
* April 16, 2013 12:00AM

I MIGHT be wrong, but Margaret Thatcher secretly suspected Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, forced whole cities on to welfare, and was really a Russian spy behind the alien abduction and faked death of Elvis Presley.

Margaret Hilda Roberts, the grocer's daughter who grew up to become one of the most powerful world leaders of a generation died last Monday and so did the dignity of a nation once long known for maintaining decorum and a stiff upper lip in adversity.

An old woman dies, a family goes into mourning and incredibly for more than a week the nation has descended into an inglorious debate of hate and blame which has now tipped into farce.

The booze-fuelled protest "death parties" by bored socialist university students and the unemployed was typical. The social media campaign to push the anti-Thatcher tune from the Wizard of Oz recorded 70-odd years ago to the top of the national charts was amusing.

But one week on and it goes on - the mass rallies, the vandalism and graffiti, the arrests, the vile tweets and just the spitting pure hatred notably from once respectable MPs and one is left to ask whether this all says more about the state of Britain today than when Thatcher was made prime minister in 1979 and attempted to transform a nation most world leaders thought too sick to save.

It's notable that many of those behind the hate now were barely alive when Thatcher ruled. It's at best a febrile loss of dignity and perspective, at worst a nation in social and economic crisis.

These are the sorts of conditions that abounded in Britain in 2009 during the G-20 summit protests and again the conditions during the 2010 student demonstrations when 50,000 marched on the capital and again the following year in the biggest civil disobedience in modern times.

The bond between communities last year during the London Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee has gone. People are just angry with their lot in life. The celebrity-obsessed are angry they can't all live like their football idols, they're angry their economy is heading for triple-dip recession, and the death of Margaret Thatcher has given them an excuse to blame their lot today as a result of what happened 20-plus years ago. Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, who is overseeing the funeral arrangements, yesterday described the social media campaign and obsession with an anti-Thatcher anthem as extremely trivial.

"I just think that doing it in the wake of an old lady's death doesn't reflect terribly well on us," he said.

He's right. Ironically Britain needs another Thatcher-like character to reset the nation's moral and social compass.

if there is one thing LW Progs are good at... it's hating.