Category: [Idiots]

Well done Angus, etc.

Via the estimable Terry Sedgwick on FB:

So that’s two weirdly unsurprising things happened in local politics this week: the Coalition reunited again and Sussan Ley got the arse as Liberal leader. And this apparently leaves the Coalition with a potentially complicated parting gift:

[Ley] intends to resign in coming weeks, sparking a by-election in her massive western New South Wales electorate.
It could be a very interesting and complicated election.
Having served a few weeks longer than Alexander Downer did in 1994-95, and a couple of weeks less than Brendan Nelson after the defeat of the Howard government in 2007, Ley’s leadership is the second-shortest of any federal Liberal leader.
But her tenure as the member for Farrer is the second-longest in the seat’s history.
The seat was held by former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer, a National, until his retirement in 2001.

This could be a headache on two fronts, one being the resurgence of One Nation who are going to want the seat, and the other being the Coalition’s own rules… under which, the sitting member in a Coalition-held seat isn’t challenged by the other side at election time, if the sitting member is Liberals then the Nationals don’t put up a candidate, and vice versa. But when there’s a by-election and there is no sitting member, it’s fair game for both sides… and given they’ve both only just patched up their differences, they probably don’t need this sort of potential tension. Ley has been saying things about clearing the way for Angus Taylor by not sticking around to undermine him, but I feel this is more like leaving a big steaming shit on his doorstep out of spite…

As for Angus Taylor himself…

…THIS is still what he’s best known for all these years, i.e. providing Australia with one of the great social media self-owns. But what has he done otherwise that was actually, you know, useful instead of just inadvertently comedic? I mean, he lost to Sussan Ley at the Liberal leadership contest after the last election; he was clearly considered so piss-poor that the Libs would rather vote for a woman of all things. Today Malcolm Turnbull was calling him the best-qualified idiot the party had ever met. I can’t believe the party couldn’t find a better option; obviously Sussan’s time was up (and I’m kind of impressed they let a woman run them for so long anyway), but was no one else available? This dickhead is the best they can do? How does Dave Shittleproud feel? Eh, whatever. As long as people (especially Labor) keep using that gift of a Facebook fuck-up against him while he’s there, cos that’s what matters most of all…

Who rules over you, etc

“THEIR head of state”? Oh Albo. What an interesting phrase, and an unfortunate one too. I can see those words being repeated throught racist and antisemitic propaganda of the sort spread by The Noticer (and, as the article notes, further spread by certain far-right characters in our so-called government), questioning whether Australian Jews place their loyalties with Israel ahead of Australia… cos if I, er, noticed the potential implications of that choice of words, I’ve no doubt the cunt behind that “news” site did so too. Not exactly what our Jewish friends need right now.

Insert Carl McCoy here

On a lighter note, Threads (which I still check out most days) has turned particularly silly in the last few hours…

So, the weather in the US has been quite foul lately, even for this time of year, and someone somewhere was inspired to develop the idea that the US “government” has engineered the weather to stop the Biblical Leviathan from awaking and to drive it back into its frozen slumber. This is FUCKING MAGNIFICENT, especially cos no one seems to know how it started nor whether (nearly wrote that as “weather” HO HO) the people who started it  mean it or not. A lot of people do seem to be invoking it sarcastically as a meme, but the funnier and sadder responses come from people not getting the joke (if it is one), e.g.:

Well, in spite of my own education (Matraville Primary 1980-86, Sydney Boys High School 1987-92, University of NSW 1993-97, and two TAFE courses 2001-03), I’ve never seen satellite imagery off the tip of Argentina/Chile before because there’s never been any reason why I SHOULD have done. I generally don’t NEED satellite imagery of anywhere, let alone the arse of South America, my interests and activities generally don’t require that sort of thing. I imagine MOST people are in a similar position to me, in that they don’t take a regular active interest in this sort of thing, but when someone shows them a cool picture like this they’ll say “oh, that’s a cool picture”, they’ll acknowledge it positively despite that… and then some prat comes up and screams at them for not being more interested in science.

Then there’s Paula here:

Here’s something else she seems to be serious about:

I think I’ll pass on that offer, thanks. At least some people are retaining their senses of irony:

And this is hard to argue with too:

As a respite from the horrors, this whole Leviathan thing certainly has been one. And, as a final note, this is also hard to argue with:

Up, up and aw-AI?

This won’t end in catastrophe at all.

The Trump administration is planning to use artificial intelligence to write federal transportation regulations, according to U.S. Department of Transportation records and interviews with six agency staffers.
The plan was presented to DOT staff last month at a demonstration of AI’s “potential to revolutionize the way we draft rulemakings,” agency attorney Daniel Cohen wrote to colleagues. The demonstration, Cohen wrote, would showcase “exciting new AI tools available to DOT rule writers to help us do our job better and faster.”
Discussion of the plan continued among agency leadership last week, according to meeting notes reviewed by ProPublica. Gregory Zerzan, the agency’s general counsel, said at that meeting that President Donald Trump is “very excited about this initiative.” Zerzan seemed to suggest that the DOT was at the vanguard of a broader federal effort, calling the department the “point of the spear” and “the first agency that is fully enabled to use AI to draft rules.”
Zerzan appeared interested mainly in the quantity of regulations that AI could produce, not their quality. “We don’t need the perfect rule on XYZ. We don’t even need a very good rule on XYZ,” he said, according to the meeting notes. “We want good enough.” Zerzan added, “We’re flooding the zone.”

There’s several hundred living human beings on any given plane flight, and I feel like settling for “good enough” in this situation could lessen their chances of making it back to the ground alive. Does Gregory want to potentially “flood the zone” with corpses? I don’t know, maybe we overstate the potential problems of this sort of thing, but then again, maybe we have to so that the problems don’t actually ensue?

Coalition splits again…?

David Littleprick appears to be taking his ball and going home again:

The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, says the federal Coalition is now “untenable”, blaming Sussan Ley for this week’s damaging split with the Nationals, as Liberal MPs say the opposition leader’s position is badly weakened by the chaos.
Wednesday’s resignation by three Nationals shadow ministers quickly escalated, with Littleproud and the party’s entire frontbench walking out. Littleproud confirmed on Thursday the party would sit separate from the Liberals when parliament resumes, ending decades of partnership.
Already under pressure over poor polling and a messy first six months in the job, Ley could face a challenge as soon as February. Liberals speaking on the condition of anonymity conceded a challenge by Angus Taylor or Andrew Hastie was increasingly inevitable due to the Coalition split. […]
Former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull was blunt, telling ABC radio the Coalition fight was “just making them more unelectable than they were before”.
“The bottom line is this: the Liberal party, to form government, needs to have the National party because it needs to have those regional seats,” he said.
“It also needs to win back seats in the city, which had been thought to be their biggest problem, but now they’ve lost the National party.
“But I think when they survey the scene, it looks like just a smouldering wreckage, doesn’t it?”

I don’t know. The last time this happened, the Coalition was back together only about a week later… but also the last time this happened, the Coalition hadn’t split for nearly 40 years, and this time it’s the same people squabbling and it’s only eight months since the last round. As for Sussan Ley’s leadership, well, she’s a woman leading the Liberal Party. They were never going to permit her to go far anyway. The real question, I think, is about Shittleproud’s leadership, cos apparently some Coalition sources reckon he could be as screwed as Sussan; maybe Colin Boyce is finally going to get his long-held desire… I’ve no doubt they’ll all be back together again sooner rather than later, but in what form? Maybe Barnaby Joyce’ll jump ship back to them from One Neuron if Littleproud does go…

Whatever happened to Peter Dutton?

I was just thinking the other day about how we haven’t heard much from the erstwhile leader of the opposition since the last election, and lo, here he comes again:

The release of the Liberal Party’s review into its disastrous 2025 election campaign has been delayed because former opposition leader Peter Dutton claims elements of the report are defamatory to him and his staff.
The ABC has confirmed that Mr Dutton and other key players were given the report ahead of its release, which is usual practice.
However Mr Dutton has claimed in response that releasing it in its current form would be inappropriate because it contains claims about him and his staff he believes are defamatory, and has suggested its release carries legal risk for the Liberal Party.
The party’s secretariat has now held off on releasing the report in order to deal with the issues Mr Dutton has raised — with some believing he may sue the party if changes are not made. […]
The ABC understands Mr Dutton has told the party he is worried that his former chief of staff, Alex Dalgleish, is unfairly targeted in the report, and that his staff deserve protection. […]
One senior Liberal told the ABC the party’s review of its 2022 election loss was also critical of then-leader Scott Morrison, and accused Mr Dutton of holding himself and his office to a different standard.
The threat of potential legal action by a former party leader is also unusual and exposes a rift within the party.

I’m just wondering what might be “defamatory” in a report like this. I mean, the fact remains that the Coalition failed terribly at the last election. Someone has to take responsibility for that at some point. If Dutton thinks the report is unfair to his staff, then he can take it in their place, as he should anyway; he was a catastrophe of a candidate that even Australians weren’t stupid enough to vote for, and Australians voted Abbott and Morrison into power so that tells you how bad Dutton was. Ultimately YOU failed, Peter, rather than the people working for you… maybe let them decide if they want a legal battle.

Shittering prize

If we learned nothing else from this week in politics, it’s that there actually is one person with even less capacity for embarrassment than Mushroom Cock, and that person is Maria Corina Machado, Venezuelan opposition leader, seen here giving his majesty her Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his commitment to Venezuela’s oil reserves… er, freedom or something. Yeah, she actually gave him the fucking thing and he’s kept it, BECAUSE OF FUCKING COURSE. What else would the cunt have done? This is all despite the fact that the Nobel committee swears up and down that she can’t actually do that cos the Nobel laureateship can’t be revoked, shared or transferred, and I bet there’s going to be some discussion very soon about changing that first detail if nothing else…

…And this grotestque show of fawning STILL won’t work for her. Trump’s got the prize, which is what he cares about, but Delcy Rodriguez has the leadership of the country and the oil, and that’s even more important. I have seen a conspiracy theory (which I personally find at least somewhat credible) floating about that the whole Maduro business was in fact instigated by Rodriguez and others in the United Socialist Party, that they’ve been working secretly with the US government for months to get the latter to remove Maduro on their behalf and let them take over, with obvious recompense and favours for the US. I think Machado’s going to have to pay Trump a lot more than that if she expects him to install her as his puppet instead.

In any case, the whole stupid affair has started producing memes of people giving Krasnov prizes on social media, and if we have to be stuck with generative AI then let it be used this if nothing else. The most inspired one I’ve seen so far is this little bit of genius:

Milli Donilli: fake singers, fake president

Parenthetically, this is not actually the first time this bullshit with the Nobel Prize has happened; in 1943 Knut Hamsun, famed Norwegian author and, er, Germanophile, shall we say, gave his own Nobel (for literature, awarded in 1920) to Joseph Goebbels in recognition of the Dritte Reich’s efforts to save Norway from itself in the early 1940s. As Mark Twain said, history may not repeat but it does rhyme, and that’s kind of what I’m seeing here…

Still “avoiding” divisive debate

The repercussions of the horror at Bondi Beach last month have reached all the way to Adelaide, with the cancellation of the Adelaide Writers’ Week after the latter disinvited a Palestinian author, Randa Abdel-Fattah, and invoked Bondi in doing so; a bunch of other authors (from here and abroad) withdrew their own RSVPs in support of her and several board members quit, and finally Louise Adler, the director of AWW, resigned and today the whole thing was duly called off. It should be noted that Louise Adler is Jewish and objected to Abdel-Fattah’s removal from the invite list.

Who, then, is actually to blame for all of this shit? Well, this writer has an idea:

Premier Peter Malinauskas has repeatedly insisted that he bore no influence over the board’s decision to drop Abel-Fattah. He reminds us that, legally, he cannot issue directions to the board – but that he did give the board his written opinion that Abdel-Fattah had no place at the festival.
Far from keeping an arm’s length, however, the Premier has led the public charge at every stage. If the move to overrule Adler and dump Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah was the board’s alone, why did it go to ground while the Premier mounted a well-prepared media offensive to defend the decision and discredit Abdel-Fattah?
If it was the board’s decision, why did all its members resign, choosing to walk away from their duty of care to artists, audiences and festival staff less than two months from opening night?
Whatever the true circumstances behind the decision, it’s also surprising to see the Premier forcefully back a move that so plainly risked plunging Adelaide’s famous – and economically vital – ‘Mad March’ into crisis, especially after the state government has spent months fighting to save South Australia’s tourism industry in the face of a damaging algal bloom crisis.

And Louise Adler also mentions Malinauskas:

In 2023 AWW programmed a handful of sessions devoted to contemporary Palestinian writers. Propagandists leapt to exhume, misrepresent and misquote social media posts to cultivate the conditions for cancelling writers. The South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, took exception to one writer’s tweets, expressing his personal distaste, as was his right as a citizen in a democratic country.
It was heartening then to listen to his subsequent speech to a packed Town Hall audience. He shared his thinking about the arts, their role in society and the responsibility of the government of the day. He confessed that he had thought of withdrawing our funding. And he concluded that if “politicians decide what is culturally appropriate … it leads us to a future in which politicians can directly stifle events that are themselves predicated on freedom of speech … it’s a path that leads us into the territory of Putin’s Russia”.

By his own acknowledgement, though, Malinauskas specifically said “the state government” didn’t want Abdel-Fattah at the festival. That’s a bit more than merely “personal distaste”. And maybe he can’t actually order the board about what to do and all that, but specifically invoking the government like that could be read as trying to lean on the board to do a certain thing at least. Anyway, the Adelaide festival board has been restocked and it’s going ahead as scheduled, just without the writers… and without at least some of what credibility it had. Remember, the bullshit over Khaled Sabsabi was just last year, it’s not even quite twelve months since that began; seems Australia is in no danger of learning how to do deal with Middle Easterns creators in any hurry…

Say everybody have you seen my balls

Someone on Bluesky linked to a really interesting article, came out in April last year but I didn’t see it until late December:

The new right is a great purveyor of images. Our new Secretary of Defense revels in taking off his shirt and displaying his tattooed, muscular chest. Andrew Tate is much the same, but poses with a cigar and a raw steak while he lectures millions of young men about the right way to treat a woman. Meanwhile AI or OnlyFans or Instagram delivers you an endless stream of dewy girls with flowing hair and glossy lips just barely parted at the camera.
The internet offers a psychedelic dreamscape of gender, perfected. Men with bulging pecs and gleaming biceps. Tradwives bursting out of their cottagecore dresses, slowly whipping batter and cream. You know the aesthetic I’m talking about. You see it on the news every day—or on YouTube, or Tiktok, or wherever visual content is sold. We are all drowning in it.
I call it reactionary camp. Fox News Face, the pancake makeup and bleach-blond hair that every female Fox News anchor is required to adopt. GearBod, the puffed-up look men get on too much synthetic testosterone, veins writhing beneath their skin like grey worms.
It’s not enough to just be a man or a woman. You have to crank the dial up till it breaks. Every stereotype must be magnified to the utmost technologically possible. And I do mean technologically. I’m just saying what everyone knows. “Hard work and good eating” will only get you so far. And you’ll watch guys who took the “hard work and good eating and mail-order meds” option rocket past you.

It goes on in that sort of vein about how this sort of “reactionary camp” (great term for it) requires taking masculinity and femininity to a sort of excessive extreme, and I meant to post about this about a week ago, but I’m so glad I didn’t cos I think we just got the greatest example of it—assuming that it’s serious—in the form of the photo at the top.

Now, “Man Cereal” is an actual thing, in that there’s a website and an Instagram for it; the extent to which it may or may not be some sort of joke is something I don’t know, but the website indicates that they are serious but also self-aware and there’s quite some degree of irony involved… the question then becomes: how seriously do The Manly Men of the right take this “man product”? Do they get the apparent joke? And how much of a joke is it, really? The person who posted the picture also posted this grab from the website…

…and, well, those are some pink balls. I don’t know what to make of it all, though I can’t say I don’t find the whole thing greatly amusing…