I tend to think that at the minions of the far left will be having a sort of electric orgasm of sorts with the revelation that the NSA has been monitoring the internet, and phone numbers called. Well all I can say is “big farking deal” its utterly beyond being any sort of threat to anyone’s personal liberty. The reason that I am so indifferent it is simply a mater of the scale of the number of transactions by both phone and over the internet; its just so big that no agency has the manpower to watch each and every one of the people who use modern communications technology.
As for the chap who has outed himself as the source of this story why do I smell the distinct odour of the self-immolation here? What is it with younger people not respecting the oaths that they agree to when they join the likes of the military or the NSA? Are we truly living in an age when oaths mean nothing at all? Are these solemn promises not properly considered by the likes of Bradley Manning and Ed Snowdon? Oh I am sure that Snowdon like Manning will become darlings of the conspiracy theory nutters and the far left but what their treachery really shows us is the anarchy of internationalism. You see last night I actually stayed up and watched the interview with Julian Assauge where he conceded that information that he published from Manning was of use to the likes of the (thankfully) late Osama bin Laden and he was utterly indifferent to that reality. Like so many of his ilk he is indifferent to the the larger implications of his behaviour. Frankly I think hope that he spends many years locked up, either in that tiny room in the Ecuadorian embassy or in a jail cell. The man is clearly an utter egomaniac and nothing more than the leader of a rather seedy secular cult.
What next?
Ah yes who could miss Gillard insisting that under Abbott women won’t be allowed to kill their unborn children with impunity as they can now do. Heaven in a hand basket have you ever seen such desperate nonsense? The woman is utterly deranged with her brain stuck very firmly into bullshit mode and worse yet she seems to be entirely lacking in any sense of the dignity of the office she currently holds. Then again its hardly surprising when she has Brother Number One snapping at her heels, generally I detest Mark Latham but I tend to think that there is more than a speck of truth in his claims on Q&A that Rudd is on a revenge mission and doing his darnedest to ensure that Gillard’s government has the hardest possible fall from what little grace that she has left. If he manages to achieve that then history will judge her far more harshly than it judges Brother Number One. I think that at this point Rudd does not even care about being reinstated , the entire point of his behaviour is to humiliate Gillard. I am reminded of an anecdote told to me by my late father where he reminded me that with in the ALP the real political fight is for dominance within the party rather than electoral success out side of it and the current party is a perfect example of this adage.
All the while a mood of utter despondency has set in among the lefty luvvies they too have given up on there being any sort of good showing from Labor, its almost as if they are beginning the Post mortem on the body of the Gillard government even though it is technically still alive . However the body of Labor is so diseased that it won’t even be considered for organ donation .
Apologies for the rambling nature of the post this morning its wet and more than a bit miserable here today…
Hmm I think that calls for Bacon and eggs for a well deserved breaking of my fast.
Cheers Comrades
Rudd doesn’t have to say a word, actually, he would be better off finding a rock, and crawling under it for a while. Gillard is in self destruct mode, with everything she is trying to say, being totally misrepresented. She is doing a perfect job of destroying labor’s chances all on her own ?
Someone should really pull her aside, and tell her to do a Swanny.
Keep your mouth shut girly, you are digging a hole for yourself, (as well as the party), so deep, that they ALL, have no hope of getting out of.
I guess the plan, to have a long campaign, to try and get the labor party out of the mire, has sort of backfired ?
Well, now there’s a shocker for you ?
Yep Gillard is looking more and more like a chook who has recently met with the Axe and chopping block its the sort of thing we can only watch with a sort of train crash in progress fascination.
So it’s Gillard the ‘headless chook’ vs Abbott the ‘knuckle-grazing neanderthal’? Hard choice.
Pretty well a normal Australian voter quandry !
Take a look at this as one of the finest examples of confected indignation I have ever seen:
Gillard is quite justifiably one of the most loathed Prime-minsters we have ever had and she has the gall to whine about someone being crudely mocking of her appearance. FFS we live in an informal age which the likes of Gillard takes advantage of when it suits her
My guess is that MORE people will read about the satire of that menu and think that its well deserved mockery and it will not change the vote of a single person who has already abandoned Labor.
I bet ye lot would be into the “Red Box” menu.
Look out folks, the “night shift” has just lobbed in.
You’re wrong, Iain. Even Liberal voters that I know are disgusted with Mal Brough’s ‘menu’ antics. He’s a disgrace. Abbott needs to condemn that type of crap more loudly than he has – but he won’t, of course.
Hold your indignation Ray, the whole thing’s a beat-up or a non-event. Perhaps you should keep up with the news.
The update was posted by Fairfax at 7.46pm.
The Telegraph’s Tim Blair had it online even earlier.
Bolta was just as quick, although he asked why there wasn’t similar indignation by Labor over a stripper wearing a John Howard mask at Hawke’s 80th birthday celebration.
Double standards and hypocrisy in abundance by the left.
GD’s rubber night doll?
Ray its certainly disrespectful but as I suggested in my earlier comment the indignation form Gillard is WAYYYYY over the top. Gillard is just using this to paint the LNP as in some sense misogynist, the simple fact is taht they are no better and no worse than the ALP supporters when it comes to attitudes to women.
Its all a smoke screen to hold Rudd at bay because all she has to do to stymie Kevin is survive the next two weeks of parliamentary sittings and then Rudd won’t have an opportunity to replace her before the election, this issue should get her through the week-end. Just you watch there will be a new stunt next week.
Yeah, GD, it was an “in house joke” between a father and a son and the menu was not distributed to guests. No, it was just conceived, formatted and printed out for the hell of it. As a ‘Dad & Dave’ prank. For whose benefit? Givemeabreak.
And the stripper in a USA bikini wearing a John Howard head was a political statement, not a sexist jibe. It was saying Howard was a whore to American interests. It wasn’t a personal slur or attack. Nice bod though.
Gee guys, you are all forgetting, that these guys pride in throwing insults at each other, and do so for a living ?
Ever watched question time ?
What about that radio serial, that has been going for decades, “How Green Was My Cactus” ? Man, that took the pi** out of every polly in the land, without having to face all this political correctness cr*p ?
What’s the difference between the above photo, and watching Paul Keating at his best on the floor of parliament ?
These guys must be getting soft in their old age.
Gillard’s just using this, in an attempt to point attention away from her continual failures.
Getting pretty thin skinned if you ask me.
Ray All of the “budgie smuggler” stuff is though Ray
I don’t think any Labor MPs ever refer to Abbott’s physical features or talk about him having a “small dick” and/or “big hairy dog’s balls”, which would be about the equivalent of this stuff, Iain. It goes a lot further than anything said about Abbott or other coalition MPs and it’s not on for anyone from his party to be involved in such demeaning descriptions of Australia’s PM.
Yes Ray, Labor is squeaky clean in this respect. :(
The Liberal Party weren’t involved in any such demeaning descriptions of Australia’s worst PM.
A Labor useful idiot, a sacked employee from the restaurant, created the whole scam and you, Labor and the leftard press fell for it.
Is that all you’ve got?
Roll on September 14.
Speaking of Howard, gee, did he not dance in tune to Bush’s war tom-toms.
Sadly Richard you continue to dance to the now very tired and dated tune that just makes everyone here dismiss what you say. NO ONE CARES about that war any more its that simple.
Sadly Iain! I don’t care about your idol Tony Abbott. Roll on September 11 oops! sorry ASIO, Sept. 14
I think a few Iraqis “care” about being invaded and having their families killed, Iain.
Just a simple exercise in arithmetic for you labor die hards.
Since Labor came into power, in 2007, they have spent, wait for it :
$9,132,420.00 A DAY that they didn’t have !
That figure is based on a current deficit of $200b, (which is a reserved estimate, we won’t know the exact figure until Swan has to throw the books open before the election ?), and doesn’t include the massive surplus that Howard left them either.
That’s over and above all governmental receipts. That is just what the defecit has accrued in six years.
Again, that’s over nine million dollars a bloody day, every day for six years !
You still going to vote for them ?
If you have a brain, how could you do that, and still look your kids in the face ?
After all, they are the ones who are going to have to pay most of it back in the long run ?
Before you say overseas financial crisis, that only affected the federal labor government, searching the world for funds TO BORROW to cover their inciompetence. No one would/could lend them money.
Ray the Iraqis were themselves mostly responsible for the death of their fellows because the killing was mostly from internecine squabbling between Sunnis and Shias.
That said while what you say has some element of truth at a global level in the Australian domestic context I am absolutely right to suggest that only far left conspiracy nutters like our Richard care at all about the issue now.
Revenge is sweet, do a bad turn to an Arab, and he will remember it to his dying day——as I said before invading Muslim lands is a no-no. Imagine if you had the password to reroute those drones back to America—-OOPS sorry ASIO.
Why do you think that “Muslim lands” should be immune from invasion Richard?
(sarc mode engaged ;) )
\If they invade our lands should we not likewise ‘remember it til our dying days”? You see I consider the waves of Muslim immigrants to be invaders of our western culture so shouldn’t we stand against them and even take the fight to the places they come from?
I have changed my will to state that my children must use part of my estate to pay back my share (and theirs) of the government’s debt. That should come to, oh, about $10,000. Who should they make the cheque out to?
And just how did they become “Muslum Lands” in the first place Richard ?
Talking about another episode of the “Fractured Fairy Tales” cartoon series.
Tony “GOOGLE” is watching you!
As usual, once challenged, immediately changes the subject.
Go back to your fairy tales Cinderella.
Again Richard ?
as I said before invading Muslim lands is a no-no.
How did they become Muslum in the first place ?
Could it possibly be, that they invaded the native population first ?
You really need to be careful, and critique the propaganda you are swallowing Richard.
Europe will be an Islamic state in another couple of decades, so top that Tony. Shalom. Muslims don’t have to invade a country, they just out breed the paleface.
SHOCK-JOCKS, are the jihad of the media.
Well, don’t know about that.
If the radical islamists have their way, certainly, you may be correct, but, and it’s a bloody big BUT the religion has been trying to infiltrate Eu ever since Arthur and the mythical crusades, and it hasn’t succeeded so far ? Neither has it succeeded in Asia ?
So, an important question to you, to help you reinstate some minute form of credibility here,
Just how do you think, that now after over two thousand years, are they going to succeed in that plan ?
Kill everyone ?
Veering off from the current conversation but back to one of the original points of the post; Yes, no great secret that anything you choose to put on or through the internet is never really private. Surveillance and eavesdropping by governments on governments (or their own people) is as old as time and the alleged vacuuming up of so much “international” communications traffic by the NSA is actually a fairly impressive technical achievement.
The objection I have from my understanding is that so much information is being collected that makes any useful investigation or action impossible (though arguably useful to backtrack to follow a trail after any terrorist action), and that the resources and focus needed to maintain and continue to expand this massive world almanac takes away from still the best sources of information: personal connections and active investigations (instead of the passive nature of blindly copying everything that passes along the undersea communication cables).
Also Obama smugly reassuring the American people that only foreign communications has been involved did feel like a kick in the balls to supposed allies and friendly nations.
Thanks for writing to the actual issue of my post Simon. I really appreciate that even when I enjoy the off topic discussion I always hope that what I write will actually be the topic of discussion.
I tend to agree with what you say here
I don’t have a problem with government accessing what I put on the Internet, what I search for on Google and/or what I say/receive in emails. I’m not doing anything illegal. I’m not plotting anything that will attract their interest. And I’m not a: terrorist, paedophile, drug dealer, murdrerer, rapist, fraudster or conman etc. So I have nothing to fear from it.
Don’t think that would do it Ray.
The current population of Australia is roughly 23m, the debt arguably $200b+, (the actual true figure, rumoured to be more, we won’t know until the books are opened before the election), that makes it an amount of $8696 for every man, woman and child in this country !
If you have a wife, and standard two kids, that make it nearly $33k for your family ?
Still willing for them to get the cheque book out ? ;)
Yes, and I tell you what, I might even pay the $33,000 now instead of after I’m dead, if I get a discount. It’s a small price to pay for what this country has given me. But I still don’t know who to make the cheque out to – can you help me out with that one?
I agree with your patriotic sentiment Ray, but, if this country had been managed more compitently, that money would be available, for your kids to perhaps lower, or shorten a lifetime of paying of the burden of a mortgage, which would be the main reason why I would leave a will in the first place. Not for a financially inept and incompetent federal government ?
Or perhaps even more telling, enough money to successfully bury you ?
After all, even with Howard’s failures, and there were certainly many of those, even costello and the treasury, realised that the country could not afford to spend what labor was promising. They left the country totally debt free, with just under $100b cash in the bank. This was done despite labor’s continuing protestations of a world money crunch which was present even then if you believe the experts.
As for the original post Iain, ;) I thought the mismanagement of the country, by Labor was the main premise of the post ?
As for the whohah about Gillard being discriminated by the press, and Rudd’s suposed phantom challenge (who the hell would want to lead a political party to total electoral decimation ? I know I wouldn’t want that to go down in history with my name attached if I was Rudd ? Gillard deserves that title all on her own !)
It is all smoke and mirrors by Gillard, to try and avert everyone’s attention away from her failures.
Thank God the average Aussie is intelligent enough to see right through it.
Btw, to simplify your what this country has given me I thought that was the reason we pay taxes and indirect charges ?
We have paid our way, and continue to do so.
How long must we continue to pay through the nose, for top level economic incompetence, when the alternative has proven historically, that they are well and truly capable of achieving the opposite ?
To set your mind at ease, yes we pay “taxes & indirect charges” and that’s how the $9,000 per person will eventually be repaid. I think we can handle that.
What about the interest Ray ?
The budget does not allow for the repayment of the massive debt, rather, only paying the interest due every year. The principle stays the same, and is growing !
Arguably, 5% per annum, on that figure of $200b.
That works out at $23.4 million a year. I’ll bet as well, that they aren’t getting that money for 5% either for that matter.
Under Howard and Costello, we paid no interest, now every man woman child has to find pay that interest in their annual tax bill, denying money that should be earmarked for roads, hospitals (God knows they bloody need it ?), schools, as well as everything else that we desperately need. That is just the interest. What about at some future point, how does a federal government attempt to pay back the $200 BILLION principle ?
Where is that going to come from ? Increasing the GST (which supposedly was supposed to enshrined in legislation to never be able to go up above 10% ?) has already been tabled as a future alternative.
Surely even you, a labor die hard, can see, that the current crew of candidates don’t have a clue, as to how they are going to achieve that ?
You also have to consider, the massive increase in our dollar, that is literally killing off our export markets at an alarming rate ? We have gone from $0.60 to now parity to a sick US dollar. (even sick, most export markets still pay in USD). That makes our goods for export 40% more expensive than they were over a year ago, making them even more uncompetitive against economic gorillas such as China ?
I honestly think, that Gillard should worry less about Shock Jocks, and more about they plan on keeping this country from sliding more into the muck ? ;)
She has no answers, that is why she is looking for trivial matters such as these, in an attempt to sway the average joe elector’s attentions away from such failures.
Finally, I have said that I like Rudd. I have also said, that if Rudd were to lead the party to the next election, and Gillard and the treasurer from Hell Swanny River, disappeared to the back benches or electoral oblivion, I would still vote for Rudd over Abbott. After all, Abbott has the runs on the board, when years ago, he ran federal Health into the ground.