Ms Mirabella, Ms Maguire, and punching on with the punch drunk Punch once again ...

(Above: giving Mr Chifley a vote, found at the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library. Click on to enlarge).

Here at the pond we're not in the business of gloating.

Oh heck, we love to gloat all the time. Which brings us to Ms Tory Maguire, and her fine piece Let's just pull the pin on Delhi 2010 now.

In which she spent much time explaining how the Indians couldn't get it together, and the Indians were hopeless, and how Delhi was full of terrorists, and how it was chaotic and everybody was doomed. And did we mention how the Indians weren't the Chinese?

Well it's the pond's proud boast that we didn't watch a single event in the Empire Games, nor even snatches of a single event, but still we remember this conversation from weeks ago:

@Tors, Will you be happy to indulge in humble pie if the Games do indeed succeed and an attack does not occur?

I’m not confident this will happen, but still, I’ve been wrong before.

Reply Tory Maguire says: 01:44pm | 21/09/10
Absolutely Macca - am hoping very much to be served up a big plate of humble pie…

Please, can someone now whip up a very big plate of humble pie, and send it to Ms Maguire, care of The Punch, Australia's most punch drunk conversation. And perhaps with a little card, for services rendered in the cause of fear mongering ...

Perhaps you could also attach this quote, from Sally 'it's gold, gold, gold for Australia' Pearson:

''I could never have envisaged anything like this happening,'' she said. ''It's been amazing. I cannot believe these Games have been pulled off like this. India has really surprised me - just how they've put the whole Games together. It's been amazing and it's been so much fun and so intense at the same time. It's a Games that I'll never forget.'' (here).

And now India has beaten Australia at cricket, and Australia stands fifth in the international cricket, though that's certainly only news to cricket tragics for the way it puts yet another dagger into the heart of John Howard. Not that we're into gloating. Jolly hockeysticks anyone?

Meanwhile, it being Friday, the punch drunk conversation offers up Sophie Mirabella asking the bizarre question How would Chifley judge modern Labor?

Which begs the question How would Mirabella judge Ben Chifley? Or better still, what on earth would Ben Chifley make of the feral Mirabella?

Well here's your answer to the first question. Mirabella thinks Ben is a visionary, mainly so she can thwack the current mob around the head:

While Chifley spoke of a Light on the Hill, Labor’s culture (and soul) has been replaced in recent times with a detested class of ruthless, robotic machine men – playing politics at any cost.

She thinks he was a caring politician, mainly so she can cudgel the current mob:

The Labor Party of today could not be further removed from Chifley’s description of the Party in 1949 when he said “I try to think of the Labor movement, not as putting an extra sixpence into somebody’s pocket, or making somebody Prime Minister or Premier, but as a movement bringing something better to the people…”

Labor today continues to fail so spectacularly in this objective and instead continues to inflict great harm that will be felt for generations.

And of course by celebrating Ben, she can put the boot in to Julia Gillard:

While Chifley and Curtin will be recalled as genuine leaders, Ms Gillard and her current group of Labor misfits will be remembered more for their mind-boggling incompetence and ongoing policy failures.

Uh huh. We now look forward to Ms Mirabella bringing back Ben Chifley's desire to nationalise the banks:

Assisted by newspapers increasingly vitriolic towards Chifley, the private banks mobilized grassroots middle-class opinion in a way that conservatives had not managed since 1932. A High Court decision (1948) to disallow the nationalization legislation, the Banking Act of 1947, was confirmed by the Privy Council in 1949. Chifley admitted to Frank Green that he had moved too fast on banking: 'It is a mistake to show the rooster the axe when you are going to take his head off; you should show him a bit of corn first'. (here)

Perhaps Ms Mirabella prefers the reintroduction of petrol rationing?

The resumption of petrol rationing on 15 November—the day after Chifley's flat policy speech lacking 'glittering promises' and predicting more tight economic controls—had been a mistake. Another was his rejection of child endowment payments for the first child: here the prudence of the lonely boy from the bush, the childless Australian male, overcame electoral realities.

I know, what she really likes about Ben is the way he smashed the miners' strike:

By 1948 international tensions and the emergence of the Cold War were impinging dramatically on Australia to the disadvantage of the Chifley government. At the behest of their communist leaders, the coalminers struck on 27 June 1949. The New South Wales Labor government, the Joint Coal Board (Chifley's own creation), public opinion and a growing right-wing faction in his own party led (with cabinet's concurrence) to the most drastic solution possible for a Labor leader: a virulent 'boots and all' gaoling of militant miners' leaders, the smashing of the strike by state action and, above all, the use of troops to cut coal. The strike was broken by 15 August, but popular approval of the government's firm action soon dissipated and sections of the Labor Party were alienated and demoralized.

Or perhaps she really likes him because of the way he led the Labor party to electoral defeat:

The Chifley government was destroyed on 10 December 1949. A loss of 3.7 per cent of the total vote reduced the A.L.P. to 47 voting members in the House compared with the Liberal-Country Party coalition's 74. Chifley's social faith had been rejected in favour of other priorities.

Whatever, and let's not get into Chif's offering mortgages, a well meaning gesture that got him into trouble thanks to gadfly Jack Lang.

As you'd expect from Mirabella, her piece is a totally fact free, ramped up rhetoric zone full of her usual 'four legged Liberals good, two legged Labors bad' comedy stylings.

It's hard to see why she bothers to get out of bed to scribble a column for The Punch, unless she thinks of some kind of oyster, and a bit of her sand might just result in a string of poils.

Actually it's a bit more than that. It's downright offensiveness that motivates her. Here's her opener:

This week Labor launched the latest incarnation in their constant quest to re-write history and glorify their role in it.

Re-write history? The site she's referring to is a collection of documents, still and moving images and with modish interactive opportunities, which you can find here under the title Labor History.

It's not a particularly well designed site - we prefer the more sedate offerings of the John Curtin library, linked to at the head, or the solid musings of the ADB (here) - but how is the attempt to put down historical information part of a "constant quest to re-write history"?

As opposed to Mirabella's constant quest to display her ongoing stupidity and relentless gutter raking attack dog mongrelism?

Because in the very next few lines she scribbles this:

The website itself is an interesting historical collection of film, images and documents and is a very slick production.

It takes a truly impressive stupidity to be so contradictory within a few short pars.

And that's when she gets on to the Curtin and Chifley eras, and comparing them to the present day:

But the only actual content that stands out as having any real soul is all from the Curtin and Chifley eras – more than 60 years ago.

Uh huh. Well it's true that compared to Mirabella Curtin and Chifley were moral giants. And so was Gough Whitlam.

And the rest, as they say, is history, as Mirabella goes on to prove she knows diddly squat about those eras, and bugger all understanding of what's happening now, outside parrot-like squawks about Tony Abbott being glorious, and Julia Gillard bad.

Here's a sample:

In fact it is almost as if those pioneering leaders from earlier years had such strong beliefs, and created such momentum and force, that they continue to carry the Labor Party onward through the inertia, scandals and infighting that have dogged modern Labor.

Yes, yes, on with petrol rationing and nationalising the banks. That'll carry us forward to a long reign by Sr Robert Gordon (Bob) (Ming the Merciless) Menzies ... who also makes Mirabella look and sound like a moral pygmy (and more on Bob here).

In the usual way, Mirabella wonders how history will judge the current mob in the Labor party. Happily we don't need to wait on history to judge the meandering mendaciousness of Ms Mirabella ...

She's already shown her stuff with her mind-boggling scribbles and ongoing capacity for meaningless blather, right up there with her co-contributor Ms Maguire ....

(Below: cartoonist Ted Scorfield on Ben Chifley's vision thing).