Is this a former Prime Minister raking over old coals to tell us not be be raking over old coals. Why yes it is.
John Howard says he told former prime minister Tony Abbott to remove his chief of staff Peta Credlin, as he warned Coalition MPs to “stop raking over old coals” and focus on the re-election of a Turnbull government.
Just days after political commentator Niki Savva’s new book The Road to Ruin revealed NSW Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells personally warned Mr Abbott of the perception he was having an affair with Ms Credlin and needed to move her on, Mr Howard confirmed he had urged the former prime minister to dump his chief of staff.
Whatever Peta Credlin did or did not do, that is not why Malcolm continually did all he could to “pull the rug from underneath Tony Abbott”. Malcolm is now the author of his own mess because it turns out he is nowhere near as good as he thinks he is. He had better not lose this election, that’s all there is to say. And if anyone has been stoking the flames of division of late, it’s been that confessed teller of untruths and Malcolm Turnbull shill, Nikka Savva and no one else.
A couple of stories, mostly straws in a wind that will become more hurricane-like after January 2017. First this one, Obama: Trump’s rise not my fault. A Trump presidency will be due to Obama, worst president in American history that he is. But the whiny sot is already recognising that the history books may not end up treating him all that well:
Some well-known Republicans have said, however, Obama bears responsibility for voters’ affinity to Trump.
“After seven years of the cool, weak and endlessly nuanced ‘no drama Obama,’ voters are looking for a strong leader who speaks in short, declarative sentences,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this month.
“Middle-class incomes are stagnant, and radical Islam is on the march across the Middle East,” the former 2016 candidate wrote. “No wonder voters are responding to someone who promises to make America great again.”
Mike Ditka will be replaced as a panelist on ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown, it has been revealed.
The announcement came less than a week after Ditka, both a former player and coach for the Chicago Bears, revealed he believed Barack Obama was the worst president ‘we’ve ever had’.
Ditka, who has been a main panelist for the ESPN show since 2006, said Obama was a ‘fine man’ but not a leader when he went on WABC’S The Bernie & Sid Show last Thursday. . . .
‘He’s not a leader. This country needs leadership. It needs direction. It needs somebody that steps up front.’
You cannot say this now in the United States but soon you will be and everyone will be saying it. Worst president in history, and this is even said by people who remember Jimmy Carter.
And now we can add this which is almost definitive, although it is only about Obama’s one and only “accomplishment”: NPR and Harvard say Obamacare is a complete failure. Add that to the debt, deficits and unemployment and you have pretty well summed up the domestic disaster he has overseen.
This is a quote from Alan Jones via Andrew Bolt. The “he” here is Malcolm Turnbull:
I might add he asked me to talk to Tony about it and I did. Malcolm was always ringing around on anything that might pull the rug from underneath Tony Abbott. The point is Malcolm Turnbull’s now Prime Minister and he’s doing exactly what he criticised Tony Abbott for doing…. Malcolm Turnbull seems in government to have been struck with rigamortis. But as I said, when Tony Abbott announced a plebiscite, Malcolm Turnbull’s opposed to [this] and rang me to express that opposition.
It is just said so nonchalantly, hardly worth mentioning, really. What else would anyone do, except that no one else did. That Malcolm asks anyone for loyalty demonstrates how lacking in insight he really is.
Maurice Newman has a post this morning on What the media missed: if not Donald Trump, it’d be another. It is about as pro-Trump as you are likely to find in Australia – aside from here. It’s not as if he says this is the man to vote for because he is far and away the best person for the job. It’s more tepid, but still:
What the mainstream media misses is that a very large number of Americans, and especially Trump supporters, have had enough of the establishment’s political dynasties.
They reject political correctness, illegal migration and the crony capitalists who use Wall Street to make a fortune at their expense, particularly when their incomes are basically frozen. They believe the government manipulates the unemployment numbers and, as they struggle to find and hold permanent jobs, they know welfare cheats and disability fraudsters are gaming the system with impunity. They see government waste everywhere and think Obamacare is a failure. They resent President Barack Obama’s condescending lectures and his use of moral equivalence when comparing Islam to Christianity.
They are mad as hell.
It would be better if he said “we” are mad as hell, but the idea is right. If you want someone who says all that, then you have to go to John Voit.
It is true that we Americans have been part of Donald Trump’s life for many years. We were part of his weddings. We were there to see all his children’s births. We were part of his great shows: Miss Universe, The Apprentice — and all know, without a doubt, his life has been an open book.
I, Jon Voight, can say, without hesitation, that Donald is funny, playful, and colorful, but most of all, he is honest. When he decided to run for president, I know he did it with a true conviction to bring this country back to prosperity. He is the only one who can do it. No frills, no fuss, only candid truths.
There are many Republicans fighting to keep him from winning the Republican nomination. You know why? Because he has no bull to sell, and everyone will discover the bull most politicians spew out is for their own causes and benefits. They never dreamed they would be losing control.
I am very disappointed at the talk show hosts, also spewing out lies and propaganda against Donald. Why, I wonder? The only thing I can think of is he represents a form of freedom none of them ever saw before, and they are bewildered about it, and frightened about it.
I pray all Americans who have seen and felt the meltdown of America with the Obama years, to please fight for Donald Trump. He will not let us down. I pray for all good people to see clearly what faces us now. The right vote will save our nation.
And the wrong vote will continue America’s decline, and ours as well.
I’d like to remind the Liberal-supporting Abbott/Credlin-haters that Turnbull and most of his senior cabinet go back with Credlin in senior staff positions at least 6 years and some of them 9/10. And yet they say nothing.
I witnessed the Labor party imploding via Rudd’s background briefings, but none of them were salacious. Far from it. The silence of Turnbull and his senior ministers including Bishop, Cash, Payne, Ley and O’Dwyer signifies consent to the sliming of Credlin and Abbott in the service of their own personal political ambitions.
I can’t see the Liberal Party base staying inert at this daily shame being wreaked on the party.
As disgusting as what Savva wrote is, more disgusting is that there has been no one at the top of the Liberal Party saying a word on behalf of Abbott or Credlin and criticising Savva for wallowing in the gutter. Their value systems are sick and distorted. Abbott is the single most decent person to rise to high office in this country. It is shameful that even those on his own side of Parliament won’t say a word in his defence because they believe there is some minuscule political advantage in keeping silent.
“When Donald opened his club in Palm Beach called Mar-a-Lago, he insisted on accepting Jews and blacks even though other clubs in Palm Beach to this day discriminate against blacks and Jews. The old guard in Palm Beach was outraged that Donald would accept blacks and Jews so that’s the real Donald Trump that I know.”
Is there more to the story? There always is, but not a bad place to start. Read the full article, but it’s the kind of principled position that makes him so unusual in the world of politics as it has become.
Once you get beyond the handwringing about racism and fascism, Raspail’s polemical—at times frantic—novel is really about this collective loss of soul. A culture is in the end a way of life, even an identity. When one grows to love all the particular customs and traditions of one’s culture, it can be very much like loving a person. It is something unique in the world, and it belongs to you.
And soon the territory will belong to others of an alien culture. Little of what we once knew will survive. Why it will matter less than it might have is that the generation to come are already barbarous, so will meet the invaders half way and eventually split the difference. As for Mozart and Shakespeare, where are they now anyway?
We were talking on the weekend about which of the following attributes we would choose if we could choose only one while the other two were in the normal range: intelligence, good looks or wealth. Most of us chose intelligence, which shows the kind of people I typically hang out with. Nor do I think a review of this book on The Curse of High IQ would have made any of us change our minds.
The book makes the point that high IQ people have a harder time in the world since much of society is set up for the average. Those with a high IQ end up wasting a lot of time because the average person wants to buy lottery tickets with a check or doesn’t seem to mind standing in line or wasting time. Because of this, a high IQ person’s time is wasted since they spend much of it waiting or being annoyed by those who are average. Friends are hard to make because high IQ people have fewer people statistically to choose from. And marriage or partnership? Clarey says it is difficult. For example, abnormally intelligent men face two unique problems when it comes to dating:
1. Very few equally-intelligent women to choose from
2. Not caring because their hormones are rendering their massive IQs completely useless.
These men end up choosing a “hot, crazy matrix” until they are 30 and more experienced.
But this ends with a lot of pain and difficulty. Had the man been average, he might have had more choices and partners to choose from–and not suffered from as much angst and difficulty.
Not that, in my experience, most people of high intelligence are any the happier for it, whereas wealth and beauty can do many things that make for a very nice life. Yet each can also be a curse. But possibly the most intriguing part about having high intelligence is that unless you are recognised as such – you are an Einstein, say – most other people will think you’re an idiot, while no matter how smart you are or you aren’t, you will think your intelligence is superior to everyone else around you.
A new poll by the Independent Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University reveals that Jewish Israelis prefer a Republican to be the next U.S. president — and that 61% say that Donald Trump is friendly to Israel.
If the other 39% really believe the opposite they are also unlikely to know which way is up.
I still recall my amazement when Peter Costello chose Nikki Savva as his media advisor. She was the ideological twin sister of Michelle Grattan, Michelle at The Age, and Nikki at the Herald Sun. Media advisor was, I suppose, different from actual policy but nonetheless, she was every inch a know-nothing leftist. It is why I have never paid attention to a single thing she writes and am always surprised to see her as a supposed spokesperson for the right side of the political divide. Everything she has written about Abbott might as well have been written by the ALP media team. And now she has written a book about Abbott’s years as PM and the role that Peta Credlin played, without bothering to talk to either! This is how Credlin has replied to Nikki this morning: Niki Savva’s Road to Ruin: politics is now unsourced gossip.
I always thought a dignified silence was the best way to deal with Niki Savva’s attacks. They were personal, invariably founded on unsourced gossip and rarely made any attempt at balance.
I have always just got on with the job. I felt my 16 years of service to four Howard cabinet ministers and time in opposition, including as deputy chief of staff to Malcolm Turnbull, said more about my record than any bile from Savva but she was never interested in the facts.
Then, like now, she hasn’t ever wanted to speak with me — including in preparation for her book. Her colleagues in the Canberra press gallery would often ask me what I had done to warrant her attacks. People were often taken aback when I responded that I barely knew her.
It is one of the golden rules of journalistic ethics to provide a right of reply to anyone you’re going to criticise. In the end, journalists are supposed to weigh up the contributions and seek their own truth, but to not want to hear the other side of the story is extraordinary.
It is extraordinary. It also makes her book worthless as an objective account of what went on.
“As a journalist I lied often, usually about my sources, but about other things, too.”
Not even occasionally but “often“. How weird it is to confess to this in print. The story is by Laurie Oakes as well, definitely not someone out to get her.
Law of Markets 