Paul Sheehan, a pinch of salt, and don't forget the hysteria or the cheese ...

For those who came in late, and mislaid the skull on which they were to swear undying loyalty to the conservative commentariat, last week Paul Sheehan embarked on an almighty rant about United States politics.

Obama deserves his insecurity and the disaster that follows, was the header, and Sheehan celebrated within his column the imminent demise of Harry Reid, running up against Sharron Angle. Sheehan didn't see much wrong with Angle demonising Hispanics in her advertising, or showing Mexican gang members in all their glory. That was just Obama payback.

Well a week's a long time in politics, and Angle went to tea party heaven, partly because of the Hispanic voter turn out, and partly because she's "black is the colour of evil" crazy.

And continuing his lack of discrimination, Sheehan also selected Michele Bachmann as a figure of interest, for being a mother to five children, being "highly telegenic", a "major drawcard" for Republicans, and "politically seductive in the context of an energised grassroots".

Meanwhile, Bachmann has gotten herself involved in the strange notion that Obama's trip to India is costing US$200 million a day, proving once again that she's batshit crazy. Like so many others who repeated the nonsense without considering the source, or then apologising for getting it wrong.

These days bare faced lying and far fetched internet sources seem to lie at the heart of the political debate in the United States. After all, Fox News is one giant political propaganda machine feeding the world's trolls ...

Well I guess it's not the business of a cloth-eared columnist to pick wisely in celebrating his American heroines, or to attempt any kind of balance.

But it means when you read Sheehan, you have to take anything he says with a pinch of salt. A giant pinch, which of course might be bad for your health. Which reminds me of that splendidly absurd story about cheese in the United States: While Warning About Fat, U.S, Pushes Cheese Sales.

Yep, the Department of Agriculture, responsible for the federal anti-obesity drive with one hand, is using the other hand to promote the consumption of cheese, and so successfully that Americans now eat an average 33 pounds of cheese a year, nearly triple the 1970 rate. Blessed are the cheese-makers, and .... only in America ...

But back to Sheehan, the cloth-eared wonder. So what's he up to this week, in In bed with the devil - a deal that has tainted Green politics.

Well first there's the posturing and dissembling:

I would vote for a green party ...

Uh huh. Always lead with a horse laugh to get the party going. Then of course comes the backtracking and the slander:

... if such a party existed, but instead we have the Greens, a bipolar coalition of genuine environmentalists and genuine hard-left, anti-corporate progressives hiding under the flag of convenience of environmentalism.

Uh huh. Actually if we're talking about bi-polar, I can't think of a better example than the notion that deep in his heart Sheehan is a "green" party voter.

A voter for magic water, with no known side effects? Or actual effects? Sure thing (and the original story is still hanging around in the full to overflowing intertubes here). A voter for Ian Plimer and his views on climate change? You betcha, and you can still read his dire warning Beware the climate of conformity.

Sheehan's latest effort is actually straight from Liberal party headquarters, a press release transcribed from the mouth of Barry O'Farrell, in which Sheehan seeks to conflate the Greens with the Kristina Keneally government, the evils of unions, and self-serving political bastardry.

It concludes with a rousing finale:

In NSW, the occupational health and safety laws are a union blackmailing device and they have been abused systematically for years.

Think about all this the next time the Greens talk about political morality, which they do constantly.

Uh huh. Think about the political uses made of the four people killed during the pink batts saga, and wonder why occ health and safety has been treated as a political football for years ...

Think for that matter about the sanctimonious righteousness of a columnist blathering on about the wonders of Michele Bachmann and then having the cheek to chide others about political morality.

But that's just Sheehan getting ready to launch both barrels:

If there were truth in advertising in our politics, the Greens would be called the Browns, reflecting their true nature as a hybrid of the personality cult of Bob Brown, their template of the socialist Greens in Germany, and their rump genuine environmentalists looking for a place in politics.

Personality cult? Say what?

You mean he's "highly telegenic", a "major drawcard" for green voters, and "politically seductive in the context of an energised grassroots"?

Yep, in the usual way, one person's personality cult is just another person's magic water.

Unless of course you happen to be jolly Joe Hockey looking for an ally in your bank bashing. Then you find yourself doing deals with the Browns party ...

This week will again find the Greens whoring around with unions in pursuit of money, power and self-perpetuation.

Actually this week will again find Paul Sheehan whoring around in a column, in pursuit of money, power and self-perpetuating opinion making ...

The point being of course when these kinds of terms are flung around in a political debate - pure evil, whores, political bastardry, rats and ships, and so on and on - any sense of a considered discussion is flung out the window with them, and we end up once again in loon pond.

The irony of course is that the Keneally government is on a hiding to nothing at the next election, and in a short time Barry O'Farrell will likely be in a position to amend the current proposed laws in the next term.

But deep down there's a lingering fear in the Liberal party that they might not be able to put a wooden stake through the heart of the Labor party, which might just manage to buy its way back into power or somehow raise itself from the dead, vampire-like, and so the rage must be maintained.

At a time when many people in NSW want a government that can manage and forward plan in a half-way competent managerial way, the best the Liberals can do, by way of demonising Labor and the Greens, is to bleat about electoral donation reform, and how unfair it is to them ...

How about a plan to fix a truly stuffed government?

It says a lot about the paranoid small target mentality of the current state Liberal leadership, at a time when the electorate has Keneally and the Labor party so far down the drain, it's a wonder they're not already rapidly receding heads bobbing miles offshore in the Pacific ocean ...

Perhaps O'Farrell and Sheehan should get out some garlic and some holy oil just to be on the safe side.

If you want a more modest assessment of the actual story, you might care to read NSW set to cap political donations, which also turns up in the lizard Oz here, with the AAP story in both cases stripped of the Sheehan wild cat rhetoric.

Meanwhile, wide eyed innocents might have expected Sheehan to take seriously the matter of of donation reform, and included a reference to this story: Liberal fund-raiser broke the law with its failure to declare political donations.

In your dreams. Perhaps you might also dream at the same time that it's only the Greens who are whores and marvel at the way the Liberal party bestrides the world like a colossus of integrity.

The reality? The Greens is a political party, and acts in a political way, and if you have to turn to Imre Salusinszky for some insight stripped of verbal hysteria, in Labour's cunning exposed, then that's a really good measure of how far away with the pixies Sheehan is in his scribbles ...

Lather yourself up long enough with that kind of dreaming, and you might just be about ready to scribble yourself a Paul Sheehan column ...

If you do, remember to crank up the rhetoric to eleven so that the punters can marvel at your follies, and always put a good horse laugh at the start of the piece, to keep the punters in good cheer.

Something like: I'd vote for a green party, or sit down with the devil herself, if it meant I could save the world from ratbag commentariat columnists ...

(Below: eek, she's a bunny, and hangs out with Rusty. Now there's a good reason not to vote for her, and never mind that the trains will never arrive on time, let alone be finished in time so they can't arrive on time. More bunny pics here, and the trains not arriving here).