Fighting Fake News with REAL, 27/7/20; Right-Wing Bunnies at Bunnings; America's Friendly President; The shit will hit the fan and it should land on Abbott; Right-Wing Media have turned Socialist

theguardian.com

Australia doesn't need Reagan and Thatcher's neoliberal economics of misery | Van Badham

These economic times demand bold intervention to reconstruct our shattered economy and rebuild Australian workplaces

Australians experienced both the onset and impacts of neoliberalism in the 1980s in a more moderated form, given its introduction was facilitated by a Labor government, not a conservative one. Even so, its deprivations of job-offshoring, casualisation, privatisation and the end of full employment policy introduced economic insecurities into working life here that have been painfully exposed by the disappearing wages, layoffs and stand-downs of coronavirus.

These economic times demand bold intervention from government to reconstruct our shattered economy and rebuild Australian workplaces. Frydenberg spruiking Reagan, Thatcher and their economics of misery as the answer is just another hapless stagger, downhill in the wrong direction.

 The woman in Bunnings was right: the 1948 Universal Declaration Of Human Rights does have a clause about the right not to wear a mask at discount hardware chains | The Shovel

 

News In Photos

White House Clarifies That Trump Was Just Sending General Well Wishes To All Sex Traffickers

James Ashby sued the Speaker and lost — but the piper must be paid

Ross Jones 27 Jul 2020

The matter of a $3.75 million legal bill has been simmering since 2012, when James Ashby made false accusations against Speaker of the House Peter Slipper.

 The matter of legal and public relations expenses has been simmering since the 2012 attempt to overthrow the former Labor Government, when Ashby and sitting Coalition MP Mal Brough colluded with others to make false accusations in the Federal Court against the Speaker of the House, Peter Slipper.

 News Corp (Abbott's major media firm) played the part of magnifier, splashing fantasised lurid stories across multiple pages and screaming "sex scandal" at its readers. Ashby is openly gay and News Corp used his sexuality and his allegations as to what the married, religious Slipper allegedly liked in life, to beat Labor over the head so hard it could only reel.

 

 

 

Ultimately though, the bill will be settled one way or the other. James still has the wood on the Liberal Party. He can destroy the current players by exposing what their party did to gain the power it has not yet lost.

And nobody wants that.

 

How the illogical Right hijack debate

Rashad Seedeen 26 Jul 2020

Conservative political commentators preach simplistic narratives that align with their toxic worldviews, writes Rashad Seedeen.

 RECENTLY, THE HERALD SUN conservative columnist, Andrew Bolt, made the barely coherent claim that the outbreak of COVID-19 in Victoria is largely the fault of multiculturalism. Such a baseless claim is typical fodder for a pundit like Bolt.
Here is a sense of his diatribe:

‘Victoria's coronavirus outbreak exposes the stupidity of that multicultural slogan “diversity makes us stronger”… tribalism does tend to make us think more of our own than of other “tribes”. That’s not good in any crisis where Australians must make sacrifices for the safety of all.’

The correlation is absurd, at best.

Returning to Bolt, rallying against multiculturalism is one of his favourite projects. The COVID-19 pandemic is only his latest bugbear. Bolt’s racist diatribe has a scatter-gun tendency. Previously, Bolt claimed that multiculturalism was ruining Christmas, brought violence to "our streets"  and is a form of "colonisation, turning this country from a home into a hotel".
Bolt’s rants have many targets but common themes include confected outrage and reliance on false information. He reached a new low when he described Greta Thunberg as "deeply disturbed" and with "so many mental disorders".
Thunberg, a globally-recognised teenage climate activist, has been quite open about her Asperger’s syndrome, yet Bolt’s mocking was so egregious that the Australian Press Council deemed that he had breached standards.
Meanwhile, Bolt has been regularly exposed for pushing inaccurate and false science in the denial of climate change.
 If we want to see the end of illogical and divisive rants from conservative commentators, we’ll need a combination of re-framing and direct political action. Either way, it’s up to us to make change possible.

FAKE NEWS

CORONAVIRUS DEATH TOLL: HOW IT COMPARES

COLUMN Australians can’t leave their country and can’t travel freely inside it because 155 people have died this year from the coronavirus. Meanwhile, in the first four months of this year, 3937 Australians died of respiratory diseases such as  pneumonia, influenza and chronic bronchitis. That isn't the only comparison that should give us perspective.    

27m ago 

What perspective Andrew Bolt what perspective politics? Should we be surprised that when Bolt's demonises Dan Andrews and doesn't mention that the deaths are found to occur in those sectors of our health system controlled and regulated by the Commonwealth? Dan Andrews hasn't politicized this but talks of excellent mutual cooperation between the two. 

Patients are being moved. However, the contagion's epi-centres tend to be found in areas regulated by Morrison's LNP .The majority of cases resulting in pneumonia and respiratory are due to a failed immune system which is common to all viruses. But COVID-19 has other long term consequences that effect the heart and kidneys. What Bolt fails to mention is those found with COVID antibodies lose them over a short period of time making them vulnerable to repeated infections and damage already done.

Bolt's comparison is a little like comparing chalk and cheese as pneumonia,influenza and bronchitis are some outcomes as they are of various viruses well known about which isn't the case with COVID-19. So Bolt's comparison suggesting the conclusion that they are the same similar or less dangerous has no currency and/or logic. But  Bolt's effort seems to be suggesting COVID-19 isn't particularly serious and that we are overreacting. He's being totally reckless and irresponsible. However, Bolt's a yo-yo declaring Andrews was underreacting without mentioning that the deaths were in Morrison regulated centres. Politics is the essence of Bolt's information and is Murdoch driven and unwanted in the circumstance. He's actually backward as Trump and Fox News were 2-3 months ago.

CORONAVIRUS DEATHS: SHUT THE DAMN DOOR

What's easier? Trying to stop all infections, or stop them getting into aged care homes?: "Here a third of all deaths have been nursing home residents... In the UK, The Guardian reported 16,000 people had died in nursing homes by late May... The New York Times has reported 40 per cent of all deaths in the US are in aged care facilities."

5m ago 

What Bolt conveniently overlooks is that currently, less than 10% of that 30% of deaths have occurred in his hated Socialist controlled Aged -Care centers. Today that 10% has shrunk to even less. So these deaths have occurred in private institutions not regulated by Dan Andrews but Scott Morrison which before COVID Bolt deemed  best but over-regulated system. He's now been calling for even stronger regulation somehow suggesting Dan Andrews take them over completely.  https://theconversation.com/heres-what-we-know-so-far-about-the-long-term-symptoms-of-covid-19-142722 (ODT)

CORONAVIRUS TESTS TOO LATE IN AUSTRALIA'S DEADLIEST STATE

COLUMN On Sunday, we saw the same deadly incompetence after Premier Daniel Andrews said another 10 Victorians had died of the coronavirus. This is the state that makes fit, healthy people wear face masks — even when alone in the open air — while leaving open the door to nursing homes. Killing zones. And it doesn't get test results back until too late.

11m ago 

  God Bolt repeats himself doesn't he and conveniently ignores so many facts. 

1) Victoria was the most successful state in the country the boom state for jobs. It should be no surprise when a recession hits the biggest downward impact will generally be felt here.

2) Victoria the jobs state had the highest number of new arrivals looking and finding work. 

3) However, across the nation, the precariousness of that work has been exacerbated across Australia due to the LNP's attack on industrial relations and the unions.While Australians battle against casualisation, wage theft and imported labour making those conditions felt more here along with anxiety. 

4) That impact is felt the most among the working poor and that's where COVID-19 has hit the hardest. In the State that 6 months ago provided the greatest opportunity for work.

5) The "deadliest" State as Bolt calls it is now suffering because it was the best and it's borders now closed. Job loss, financial need, desperation and anxiety has now increased

6) You won't hear Bolt arguing for a UBI to alleviate that pressure in the need to beat this virus. No all you hear is his call to get back to work no matter the precariousness of that work. A precariousness he doesn't have to face being paid for unproductive work. We hear him telling workers that the virus is a trivial matter and immunity is easily achieved just get back to work. Children are perfectly safe and should be back in school. All facts that research is to date proving to be wrong advice.

7) His illogical efforts to debate is the right-wing attempt to hijack a political conversation which can be found in MURDOCH's MEDIA global approach in the US,UK and Australia. supporting the policies of the clowns currently leading the countries to the world's greatest failures. (ODT)

Anderw Bolt's Blog 23/3/19; Sociopathy of the Right Murdoch's toxic media voice permeates Australia; Morrison's low shots against Islam can't begin to compare with Andrew Bolt's; Truth the difference matters facts and fiction News Corpse is killing the difference;

  Sociopathy as Strength: The Modern Right - » The Australian Independent Media Network

Sociopathy is a broad term that refers to various personality defects. In this instance, I am using the term in the popular sense to mean one who is devoid of empathy for their fellow humans. The resultant lack of empathy often leads to cruelty. This has largely been the approach of right wing governments over the decades. Instead of taking a compassionate and humanistic approach to the issues of the day, the right demands conformity. Indeed, conformity is the price for safety.
As examples of the ostracism principle, consider how Trump treats anyone who looks at him sideways. Alternatively, consider Morrison’s or Canavan’s response to the protesting climate kids. Even if brownshirts do not yet exist and our so-called leaders are not yet actual fascists, they are hardline ideologues who are about using fear to control the population. We will keep you safe from this thing over which we keep stoking fear. Don’t believe me? Let us take a look back.
Compassion is not weakness, and we need to stop viewing in this way. It is possible for humanity to do better than this. We need to stop seeing governmental sociopathy as strength. Rather, we need to see it for what it is: vindictive cruelty designed to maximise fear, breed conformity and maintain the current power structure.

1. Morrison said all the right things after Christchurch, but his history tells another story

   By Laura Tingle about 2 hours ago

   Morrison's call for an end to tribalism would have been more potent if his side of politics had not made it their standard modus operandi in the past 25 years, writes Laura Tingle.
   
   Morrison's history of taking low shots is too obvious to most people to allow him to be able to really exercise leadership in this space.
   
   But if you are really trying to stop it, you don't immediately respond to someone else attacking you with dodgy moral equivalence that begins in sentences like "I'm not going to be lectured by a party that.....", rather than acknowledging possible fault, or at least arguing your own position rather than simply attacking the other side.
   And you don't, just now, try to find the positive side to a politician who refers to Islam as a disease.
   

   The Coalition's track record when it comes to its preparedness to, at the very least isolate, and often tar the Muslim community in a way which excludes it has been in the spotlight all week in the wake of the Christchurch murders.

   
   

   

     Yo-yo Morrison And The Ups-And-Downs Of Making A Decision! - » The Australian Independent Media Network

   Getting your point across with reason

   
   Yes, leadership has its ups-and-downs, but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen someone who moves up and down as much as the human yo-yo, Scott Morrison. You know how the yo-yo works: it reaches the end of the string and it hurries back up to the top only to immediately sink again.
   I guess the thing that struck me about Yo-yo Mo’s threat to sue Aly was the simple fact that Waleed was reporting something that had been widely reported in various sources years ago. When it was first reported, our PM told us that he didn’t comment on Cabinet discussions. Not so last night, where he assured us that he brought up concerns about Muslim immigration because he wanted to “address them”. He didn’t explain how he hoped to address them as Shadow Opposition Immigration minister. Maybe he planned to help promote unity by complaining about the taxpayer funding flights to the funeral services of asylum seekers who perished when the ship crashed on Christmas Island.
   Or perhaps he was trying to help last night when he assured us that there were over fifty people on Manus and Nauru who had “character” concerns. When asked how many of them were actually “rapists, murderers and pedophiles”, he was less clear, but it was clearly “significantly more than one”…
   Is three significantly more than one? It is 300% after all.
   Still, I’m not sure what the point is. Is he suggesting that a non-convicted pedophile with a life-threatening condition which couldn’t be treated on Nauru would be allowed to die because we couldn’t keep them under control if they came to Australia? I mean, George Pell was taken to hospital because he’s got the flu and he’s an actual convicted sex offender.
   Watching last night, I couldn’t help but think that this Waleed Aly interview will be called a “trainwreck” which – as I wrote a few weeks ago, trains actually have tracks which they go off; this mob in Canberra resemble a car where the fighting for the steering wheel has become so intense that the wheel itself has ended up in the boot.

   
   

  The Ghost of Fascism in the Post-Truth Era.

Truth has no place in Bolt's world speech has no meaning other than the power of those with the ability to be heard. We saw Bolt's message in the fiasco called meaningful reasoned debate between him and Dr Robert Di Natali on the Bolt Report.  Andrew Bolt failed to listen or bother to communicate, but then he had no intention to do either, and it showed. (ODT)

While questions about truth have always been problematic among politicians and the wider public, both groups gave lip service to the assumption that the search for truth and respect for its diverse methods of validation were based on the shared belief that “truth is distinct from falsehood; and that, in the end, we can tell the difference and that difference matters.”[1] It certainly appeared to matter in democracy, particularly when it became imperative to be able to distinguish, however difficult, between facts and fiction, reliable knowledge and falsehoods, and good and evil. That however no longer appears to be the case.

 

PERSECUTED CHURCH: PRIEST STABBED DURING TV MASS

Scenes of the persecuted church. In Canada, a Catholic priest is stabbed as he conducts a Mass on TV. In Australia, a Sydney University student magazine publishes a front-page cartoon of Cardinal George Pell being hanged. In Britain, an Iranian Christian is denied asylum because his faith is "violent". These are frightening times.

4mLink

PAYWALL 
Firstly Bolt didn't seem to care that the Priest's stabbing in Montreal wasn't related to terrorism according to the police. We can be assured. Bolt will just walk away from that one. Never however admitting he was wrong.
Bolt's back trying to convince us our cup is half empty his innocence and joy stolen by those who'd disparage the Catholic Church. But you need to remember Bolt's an Agnostic and a living Oxymoron. But then his sensationalist banner is really only trying to sell News Corpse papers an Institution unto itself, not unlike the Church that's as influential and sits shoulder to shoulder with the with it in business. When and if Murdoch could be found on a balcony with the Pope at say Easter or the Fox Corp celebrations. Bolt, if he were in the crowd, would be heard yelling "whose that up there with Rupert?"

 

MASSIVE FAKE NEWS FAIL: MUELLER WON'T INDICT TRUMP

NYET TO COLLUSION Special investigator Robert Mueller has handed in his report on what always seemed a fake claim - that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election. This could humiliate the mainstream media (and our ABC), which has maniacally flogged this conspiracy theory for two years.  UPDATE: Mueller says no to any indictments for collusion.  

4m
PAYWALL 
Andrew Bolt selling Newspapers has taken the un-independent line of the Vatican of News Corpse and head office USA.  The truth of the matter was a counterintelligence exercise to investigate if there was any Russian government effort to interfere with the US 2016 election. The FAKE News was Trump's efforts with the assistance of FOX to redefine the investigation into an investigation of Trump's collusion with Russia. The line which Bolt is taking here and is as Fake as his celebrity suntan.
".So far, his investigation has ventured into work done by former Trump advisers and Russian nationals. Thirty-four people have been charged with wrongdoing. "

THE MADNESS OF THE DEMOCRATS: BETO AND THE BESERKERS

Conrad Black on Beto O'Rourke: "A hyperactive limb-flailing imbecile, babbling compulsively in a torrent of extremist nonsense. This is the candidate the media have been looking for." Matthew Walter: "Why are Democrats so weird?...  I do want to know is whether he actually took a handful of green feces, put it in a bowl, and served it to his wife."

18m Link

 Let's begin with who Bolt references for this post, Conrad Black. Imagine if anyone referenced Duncan Storrah or Zacky Malka for any opinion piece what Andrew Bolt would have done in disparagement. He refused and never forgotten them for their pasts. However, Conrad Black has been forgiven.  There we have it Bolt's stance that he really believes in any sort of equivalency is bullshit.

Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, KCSG is a Canadian-born British former newspaper publisher, author, and convicted felon. In 2007, Black was convicted on four counts of fraud in U.S. District Court in Chicago. 
Black has been barred from entering the United States for 30 years though that could be appealed at any time. He has expressed no interest in returning to the United States.^[89]

Bolt's second pick Matthew Walther writes for The Spectator The American Conservative a sure thing for a balanced opinion. But then Bolt just might be struggling to find a list of Democrats to mock.

Rumpelstiltskin

DI NATALE'S MISSING LINK

Curious. Greens leader Richard di Natale asked to come on my Sky News show and came with written notes to read from. He clearly wanted to make a public statement about me and Sky, yet has not since referred to or linked to the debate we then had. Total silence, including from most of his green army. Why? Didn't it go quite as hoped? See and judge.

4m Link

Is it any surprise Andrew Bolt is writing about himself, and it's not a Paywall? Bolt's yelling, screaming are qualities that Dr Richard di Natali wanted to highlight what he calls "debate" a word he's never understood. Now Bolt somehow regards a reasoned rational and a defeat when all it was was a circus on Bolt's part emotionally zig zagging around the globe declaring Dr di Natale a loser for what Bolt accused him of "not knowing". Something happened in Senegal, the Philipines Montreal pick a place and an event connect them and yell now that's reasoned and rational. You have to laugh he didn't know he was wrong and the stabbing in Montreal wasn't according to police terror related.

 Nevertheless, Bolt knows the devious Green and doctor was on his show to "harm" him Sorry Andrew Bolt The leader of the Greens has never been seen to attack or attempt GBH on anybody and the same can't be said however of you.

What we have here is Andrew Bolt in some weird fashion admitting he was going over the top screaming and frothing at the mouth but is blaming Dr di Natali for his tilt. Guess those Muslims were to blame for Tarrant's irrational outburst too. 
Why if Bolt while he thinks he's so smart always puts his foot in his mouth? First, he goes home feeling guilty as shit about how badly his show went and how he came across. He then does even worse by not shutting up coming out trying to blame "them" in this case "him" for his dummy spit.
Go back and think about deleting this piece of stupidity Bolt you might feel better. 
Waleed Aly did an Interview with our PM Bolt could but won't use that as a yardstick to measure his own interview techniques it starts with listening. Understanding the other point of view rather than flooding the space with " I, I, I, I.... Otherwise, Bolt could have comfortably sat alone as he always does and editorialised.