Paul Sheehan, and time to demote the generally grumpy scribbler back to Colonel Grumpy?

The corollary to the above cartoon is that the likes of generally grumpy Paul Sheehan have always had their own column, and have been boring the world with their cockamamie theories and insane opinions for years.

It's blogging which has revealed the way the commentariat was just a refined, elite, much better paid precursor to a world where everybody has an opinion, and is in a position to express it, and the opinions tend to be worth the paper they're printed on. Invaluable for lining cockie cages and wrapping fish and chips ... or for filling up the full to overflowing intertubes with even more digital detritus.

This bleak existential view of the world arose once again having copped yet another outburst from the generally grumpy Sheehan in Loss of faith prompts a death march to oblivion.

If you read it closely, it seems Australia is just one step away from an economic basket case roughly equivalent to the great depression, and democracy is dead.

Sheehan starts his doom and gloom tirade by slagging off Tony Windsor - I say, damn it, wot wot, don't trust the man, don't trust the man at all - and accuses him of being a weasel, or at least a man inclined to weasel options.

Yep, it takes some kind of weasel to take the constant abuse dished out by the likes of Sheehan.

It seems that Sheehan knows the minds of the New England electorate, which somehow makes it quite bizarre that the said electorate voted in Windsor and by a handsome majority, with 71.5% of the votes (with a still handsome 61.88% first preference vote as detailed here).

You might forget this fundamental statistic in all the other statistics led by Sheehan in a confected lather of froth, rage, doom and gloom, as he goes about the business of re-fighting and re-defining the last federal election. Talk about maintaining the rage ...

To perform his statistical monkey tricks, Sheehan has to resort to the Senate vote, and then to comparing the country Labor and Green votes.

It was the lowest combined Labor-Greens vote in the entire country. From these emphatic anti-Labor votes in the House and Senate, Windsor conjured a mandate for Labor.
He placed his animosity towards the National Party, to which he had once belonged but become estranged, over the will of the electorate.

Uh huh. And yet Windsor copped a two party preferred 75-25 share of the votes. From this emphatic Tony Windsor vote, Sheehan conjures up a mandate for the Liberal party ...

If nothing else, Sheehan provides a good example of a surly, truculent bad loser, rather like Tony Abbott in manner and demeanour ... an indecent, fraudulent manipulator of statistics as a way of expressing enduring hostility, bile, doom and gloom.

How many times has he been to the noble town of Tamworth this last year to test the views of the elecorate? As many as Tony Windsor? Do tell...

Next Sheehan performs the same routine on Rob Oakeshott, with this kind of verbal abuse:

... he has become a whiner since his fantasy that he would become Canberra's charismatic cleanskin kingmaker has degenerated into a political death march.

Uh huh. Well Sheehan would know all about whining, as he next concludes the Federal Government has a legitimacy problem.

This is of course a routine that the Federal Liberal party embarked upon immediately after the election, that somehow a minority government must be illegitimate (and yet minority illegitimacy flourishes in the upper house in NSW, and will likely continue to flourish in the Senate even if Tony Abbott gets hold of the preciousss at the next election).

To read Sheehan, you'd swear the economy is one step away from disaster (confidence, jobs, and spending are "plunging"), and it's all outrage and cascading bankruptcies and defensive staff shedding and creeping unemployment and vicious cycles, and lurid scandals, which of course is the pretext for a solid round of union bashing.

The amazing thing? Sheehan has the cheek to call Oakeshott a whiner ...

Well it's a fine and noble thing that the minions of Fairfax routinely print a Liberal party propagandist, but amidst all the welter of negativity, you won't find a single word about the policies of Tony Abbott and how they will lead Australia to the promised land.

That's way too hard for the generally grumpy Paul Sheehan, and if he keeps on going with this unremitting Colonel Blimp routine, we might just well demote him back to Colonel Grumpy ...

First scare the sheep, so they can be herded more easily, and shorn and plucked while quietly submissive to the will of their masters ...

If you want more of the same, you can of course resort to the man dubbed the poison dwarf by Paul Keating, with Glenn Milne now seemingly back in his favourite bunker at The Australian, standing by to scribble alarmist tracts such as PM a lost cause for warring unions.

Milne is most impressed by the Mafia-style dirt-covered shovel dropped on the doorstop of Kathy Jackson, but surely this lacks the class of a horse's head in the actual bed ...

Along with Andrew Bolt, Milne trawls back into the deep past of Gillard to find another scandal, which proves that, if nothing else, his nick name as bestowed by Keating continues to be well-earned.

Can we commend this new iPad app to the commentariat?

Yep, just go sulk in the corner, with silence a bonus extra (and more First Dog, and the full range of apps here).

Enough. The local dirt merchants are in fine form, but it's the start of the week, and we need a little lighter fare, and as always the United States is ready to oblige.

Come on down Pat Robertson, and give the start to the week a good cackle.

What's that you say, an earthquake caused a crack in a wall?

"Ladies and gentlemen I don't want to get weird on this so please take it for what it's worth," Robertson said.

"But it seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America's power, it has been the symbol of our great nation, we look at that monument and say this is one nation under God," he continued.

"Now there's a crack in it, there's a crack in it and it's closed up. Is that a sign from the Lord? Is that something that has significance or is it just result of an earthquake? You judge, but I just want to bring that to your attention," he said.

"It seems to me symbolic," Robinson said. "When Jesus was crucified and when he died the curtain in the Temple was rent from top to bottom and there was a tear and it was extremely symbolic. Is this symbolic? You judge."

No word on what sign Robertson thinks God was trying to send with the damage to the National Cathedral. (and you can get the video by heading off to TPM here).

Well I guess Robertson is an honestly religious, or perhaps religiously honest fool, which is more than you can say for the assorted snide asides and crude propaganda of Sheehan and Milne ...

And now let the pond help you with any technical problems you might encounter as you begin your week of Labour, though it might be all in vain, seeing as how the Labor party and its policies are due to produce a global depression by 5 pm Friday ... or at least keep Tony Abbott another week away from holding his precioussss aloft to the admiring cheers of the entire commentariat ...

Yep, it's the no problem flowchart, an old internet meme, but always handy in times of strife. Click to enlarge ...