Piers Akerman, Tony Abbott, a break from budgie smugglers, and some threads worth tying ...

(Above: bored with images of Tony Abbott in budgie smugglers - why this even site ran one - we decided to declare this Sunday "topless Putin" Sunday, for benefit of glorious Russia).

The fat owl, aka Piers Akerman, displays his usual standard of insular ignorance with his whimsical lead off to Circuit-breaker for a struggling Coalition:

You have to love Australian politics, fair dinkum; in what other nation would a party leader’s choice of swimwear become a topic for national debate?

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, overlooking the Labor precedent set by his budgie-smuggler-wearing ALP predecessor Bob Hawke, has attempted to drive a wedge between voters who favour board-shorts and those who opt for sleeker nut-huggers as worn by the new federal Opposition leader, Tony Abbott.

Oh please. In what other nation? Well how about Russia's obsession with a topless Putin? How about the French obsession with Sarkozy and his partner Carla Bruni, who fortunately for all, in an earlier life posed for nude snaps? And nothing wrong with that. And what about Silvio Berlusconi, who has gone the full monty, not to mention going the full fling? By the time you get to a nation held breathless by a blowjob, thanks to Bill Clinton, a choice of swimwear as an item of debate seems charmingly provincial, if in the terrain of standard flesh obsessions amongst nations with an unhealthy puritan Christian or Communist background.

Moi? I go with the cheese eating French for a sense of style (see Sarkozy down below, as the male peacock lets the hen do all the work). There comes a time when a man should put aside childish things, and budgie smugglers, even when seen through sunglasses darkly, and Abbott has reached that time (as had Peter Debnam, but didn't know it until the voters told him so).

Meantime, Akker Dakker attempts to take off the table all kinds of interesting subjects, as usual the work of the deviant, devious ABC and their lick spittle followers:

Abbott’s ascendancy could prove to be the Opposition’s much-needed circuit-breaker, if the media permits voters to look beyond the prejudiced spin with which it greeted his election.

Through a process of manipulative winks and nods, attempts are being made to paint him as a religious fundamentalist answering only to Rome and whose primary agenda was to recriminalise abortion.

The ABC’s prime-time talk hosts around the nation led the charge, with their print friends following.

Um, yes but back in November 2005, Abbott as Federal Health Minister said he would not approve the use of the abortion pill RU-486 (it just so happens that here is a link to an ABC story on the subject). Yet at the time Parliamentary secretary Sharman Stone and former GP Dr Mal Washer were pushing for a conscience vote, and the ban - however it was dressed up - was for political reasons.

No one made that up, not even the ABC when it did the story. It was Abbott's own work, as he followed the edicts of Rome, and yes, the Romans would like to recriminalise abortion, though uncertain how to go about the sordid business. Abbott will have to wear this albatross around his neck until he makes a definitive policy statement settling past and present suspicions (you know, like there will be no GST in my lifetime, or it's a core promise that I won't revert to the Pellist heresy when it comes to social and cultural policies).

But back to the fat owl:

In the land of the fair go, it was anything but. Abbott has never made a secret of the fact that he was a Catholic seminarian, just as he has never hidden the reality that he dropped out because he felt he had not established a sufficiently personal relationship with his God to sustain a life devoted to the priesthood, or that he used to believe he may have fathered a child to a young woman he was going out with as a student.

The question of fathering a child before he married his supportive wife Margaret, with whom he has three daughters, was cleared up in 2005. He was not the father of the young man who had been identified as his son.

Yes, but has the matter of a pontificator who turns out to be a fornicator been cleared up? As a fornicator myself, I don't happen to see anything wrong with it. But sadly that's not the view of Romans, nor of some hypocritical politicians who go around bemoaning moral failures, and the lack of decent social standards in the country, while seemingly thinking it's okay - in a kind of Berlusconi or Mike Rann way - to cavort in private.

The fact that Abbott fired a bullet and it turned out in a Russian roulette way to be an empty chamber doesn't give him a 'get out of jail card' on the wild oats front, or more particularly on the question of the proper use of contraceptives, or the benefits of a decent sex education.

We don't have to look far to be reminded that the Catholic church promotes a rigorously dumb and backward looking line on contraceptives, and their use, or the education of people in their use. Let's look no further back than the encyclical letter of his holiness Paul VI on the regulation of birth, 25th July 1968, under the header Humanae Vitae:

Unlawful Birth Control Methods

14. Therefore We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. (14) Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary. (15)

Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means. (16)

Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (18)—in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.

We already know that Abbott is as thick as two thieves with the Pellist heresy, in much the same way as Chairman Rudd has been busy trying to ingratiate himself with the fundies at ACL, and their fearless leader Jim Wallace. The question is whether Abbott will keep toeing the Vatican line, or whether he will preach as he practised. Which is to say others can't indulge in fornication or if they do, it should be sexual intercourse which is deliberately uncontraceptive.

Or whether we'll be able to keep politicians and priests out of the bedroom and out of clinics which provide abortions to desperate women. Or will the coat hanger make a triumphant symbolic return?

As a Roman Catholic, Abbott was also immediately targeted by a hostile feminist lobby over his views on abortion. As Health Minister in the Howard government, he did question whether abortion was the best form of birth control and whether Medicare funding should really be funding 75,000 abortions a year.

The same questions are asked by most thinking people. It does not seem very smart to be terminating the lives of thousands each week as such other political leaders as US President Barack Obama and newly promoted NSW Premier Kristina Keneally have also pointed out.

Mrs Keneally, also a staunch Catholic, is a long-time opponent of abortion and also voted against stem cell research.

Um, actually, I can't think of a better reason to vote out the current NSW state Labor government. Oh alright, I can think of hundreds of reasons to get rid of the turkeys, but Kristina Keneally's elevation is the cream on that particular cake. By golly, we're currently doing worse than when the DLP was doing the rounds in the fifties and the sixties.

My vote for a decent secularist, and you can keep the kingdom for a horse.

Poor Akker Dakker thinks that somehow being surrounded by a flock of chanting, canting Christians somehow makes everything alright. But his appeal to that satanist Obama is surely the height of absurdity. Doesn't he know that the man is an illegal alien, who has stolen the presidency away from legitimate contenders like Sarah Palin? How could you use the views of that kind of devil to buttress your own arguments? (Palin boosts the Birthers: 'I think it's a fair question).

President Obama in his book The Audacity Of Hope, wrote of the “undeniably difficult issue of abortion” and dwelt on “the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion”. “Abortion vexes,” he said, echoing the thoughts of millions, but Abbott, not Obama and Keneally, gets viciously targeted by the “get your rosaries off our ovaries” crowd for pondering the same question.

Um sorry but Obama isn't planning to overturn Roe v Wade any time soon, despite the chanting of maddened Christian fundies. But consider this a vicious targeting of Kristina Keneally, and what a pity Akker Dakker that you'll be forced to leave out her fundamentalism (voting against stem cell research) in your next tirade and vicious targeting of NSW Labor.

In resorting to such trite arguments, the so-called pro-lifers who would see abortion promoted not as a last resort but as the contraceptive process of choice, are debasing what should be a serious debate.

Actually what's there to debate? Sex education is a good thing, the use of contraceptives is a good thing (something Abbott himself should have learned), and abortion, which is a painful, ugly process, should be a last resort. But the last thing women want or need are the constant ministrations of the Catholic church hectoring and lecturing them about their bodies and what to do with them. Or politicians getting into a cabal with priests to cabin and confine them.

Akker Dakker might think 'get your rosaries off my ovaries' a trite line, but then he's a recalcitrant luddite misogynist of the old school, so he would think that, wouldn't he. But if he keeps on attempting to redeem Abbott and the Catholic church, and their line on sex education, contraception and abortion, he'll be doing more harm than good to the conservative cause. Much of secular Australia has moved past that debate to a settled position (here, where even the pro lifers have to report the news).

Hopefully Akerman and Abbott will get to the same place as the majority of Australians within the next decade.

And finally, it would be remiss of Akker Dakker not to trawl back over the climate change debate, and remiss of us also not to mention he's up to his old tricks.

In the usual way, he manages to conflate, confuse and obfuscate assorted issues in his campaign as a sceptic nee denialist. So he recycles yet again the matter of the East Anglia emails, which he links to the "so-called scientific argument" about global warming.

And then for good measure he tops that off with the usual stuff about "Clive Splash":

This unscientific modus operandi has been mirrored at Australia’s own CSIRO where last week a climate economist, Dr Clive Splash, has been forced from his job because he wrote and released a paper critical of cap-and-trade schemes similar to that proposed by the Rudd government.

His resignation followed allegations of censorship at the CSIRO raised by climate scientists in April when four employees were barred from presenting evidence to a Senate inquiry into climate change. The Rudd government’s political gagging of scientists now threatens to destroy the CSIRO’s independent reputation.

Oops. Poor Dr. Spash. On a couple of counts, and not just how to spell his name. You see Dr Spash is, for want of a better word, a 'believer' in the 'so-called scientific argument' for the concept of global warming. He just thinks a carbon tax might be a better idea than a cap and trade scheme.

You can find out what Dr. Spash thinks by heading off to his website, here.

Unfortunately while Dr. Spash provides detailed links to his role in the debate on carbon emissions trading (here), and while his paper The brave new world of carbon trading was supposed to be tabled on 26 November by 1 pm (here), it doesn't seem to have made its way into the Senate documents or on to the full to overflowing intertubes (but the debate is here).

If Akker Dakker was interested in a discussion of a carbon tax as a way forward in response to the issue of climate change, perhaps he'd have published a link to the paper. After all, it's a serious issue, and subject to serious debate, rather than the trivial one liners of sceptics and denialists.

So it goes in the macho world of the wild verbal swinger:

Abbott was an outstanding college boxer in his youth and can probably absorb the wildest swings thrown by his critics, including those about his beachwear. That said, there are a lot of more important threads that need tying before they become part of conventional wisdom.

Keep working on those threads Akker Dakker. They need a heck of a lot more tying ...

(Below: bored and alarmed with topless male politicians, and drawing the line at putting up images of Silvio Berlusconi nude - the horror, the horror - shudder, google Berlusconi nude with your safe filter off if you want to melt your eyeballs from their sockets - we thought that the gentleman reader might benefit from a glimpse of Carla Bruni, and the civilized kind of shorts a French president might wear. Can someone provide Tony Abbott with a French style guide?)

Update: a correspondent claims not to have seen Tony Abbott's budgie smugglers, so here, by special request, and with great reluctance, but simply as a contrast to Sarkozy, we go again: