New rulez ...

(Above: the truth as imagined by Clive Palmer and Sophie Mirabella?)

Though known as a species the world over, the school bully perhaps made his most resplendent appearance in Ripping Yarns, in what was the pilot to the series (and of course there's a list of Ripping Yarns episodes on the full to overflowing intertubes).

For some strange reason, the pond was reminded of the school bully turning up in Tomkinson's Schooldays (which naughtily can be seen on Daily Motion starting here) when this strange story, Palmer does not regret CIA claims, popped in to view.

It seems, if the story is correct, that Clive Palmer simply made up stuff, because it suited his cause. All that stuff about the Greens and the CIA was just a distraction, a feint, a way of getting people to overlook the negative aspects of the LNP campaign in Queensland:

"It took a great lot of attention off some of the negative aspects of the election. That was a very good thing," he said.

Uh huh. It seems Clive thinks he deserves a round of applause for delivering up some splendid befuddlement and confusion.

But was it true?

"That's something I wouldn't say at this stage," he said.
"A mistake doesn't become an error until you refuse to correct it, so I'm still thinking about that one.
"But let me just say I don't regret having made that statement."

By golly, that line about a mistake not being an error, and then refusing to correct it any way, is right up there with Donald Rumsfeld's knowing nothing about the unknown unknowns.

It turns out that Palmer was basing his claim on the notion that the US Rockefeller Foundation got funding from the CIA way back in 1974:

‘‘And I know that’s 40 years ago. It may not be the case now.’’

Now it turns out - election done and dusted - that Palmer - chief donor for the NLP - thinks that the Greens and Greenpeace might not be actually funded by the CIA, and that there might not be an international conspiracy involving the United States government to do down Queenslanders and the coal industry, and that perhaps the black helicopters never left the hanger.

Naturally we looked around for signs of shock and outrage, but at a guess, it's probably a little hard for columnists to call a litigious billionaire an unscrupulous liar, a lowlife little better than the average school bully.

And who knows, Palmer - allegedly a national living treasure, or so the National Trust - NSW branch only - tells us - might have some other reason for smearing the Greens than clearing the way for his environmentally ruinous Queensland mining developments, and some day he might tell the world what they are ...

Meanwhile, wouldn't you know it, over at The Punch, there's Sophie Mirabella pondering on the NSW election (thinking about is too elevated a term), and gloating about how ALP evacuees have no love for The Greens, and not a word, not a single mention of Clive Palmer and the CIA and the Greens and the international conspiracy so faithfully reported by the meejia.

It's a singular achievement, as Mirabella manages to extract a message for the ALP:

There are many messages for the ALP in the Queensland result, and many implications at the Federal level, despite their protestations to the contrary.
But they ignore at their own peril the lack of “Greens” in the entrails of the Queensland bloodbath.

Instead she spends her time celebrating the homophobic wonder of Bob Katter's party scoring a couple of seats, and then delivers a couple of closing pars that might have come straight from the mouth of Clive Palmer, paleface forked tongue though it might be:

... many traditional, blue collar, rusted-on Labor voters clearly chose the straight-talking KAP over The Greens radical agenda when looking for a minor party to support.
Acknowledging this emphatic rejection of The Greens must be part of any successful rebuilding process within the ALP.

Uh huh. So now we have another word for poofter-bashing. Up north and down south in Mirabella's fetid brain, they call it straight talking ...

Yep, it seems hunting and fishing rights for indigenous whites in the north are in peril, and a zillion fishing shows will shortly disappear from the multi-channels, to be replaced by American sitcoms ... the price we all must pay for the perfidious greenies and their wicked ways.

Well at time of writing, Mirabella's piece had attracted only one comment, but for some strange reason we feel the need to reproduce it here:

oh sophie your love for clive palmer has no bounds you are just gagging for him. you and the rest of the lnp are nothing but clive palmers little gimps.

Now it's true that primping pimps might have been a little more relevant term than a reference to the GNU Image Manipulation Program, but we catch the drift, and what a fine drift it is ... which is to mention Clive Palmer and the Greens in relation to the election ... because it seems that the likes of Mirabella knows absolutely no shame whatsoever ...

Meanwhile, it being Tuesday, there's just time to note a long and tedious rant by our prince of prattling, our Polonius v. Prufock smackdown master, Gerard Henderson, which proves if nothing else that you can cram the point of an entirely fatuous column into a single header, namely Maybe it's Habib who should apologise for outlandish claims.

Apparently Henderson thinks it was splendid and wise and far- and perhaps fore-sighted for Habib to have been packed off to Egypt for some torture, and then off to Bagram and then off to Guantanamo, and proceeds to cherry pick the report by Dr Vivienne Thom regarding the response by government agencies to the treatment of Habib.

You know how this plays. It's the "Sure but" routine, and Henderson is a dab hand at "sure, but":

Sure, in Thom's report, there are some criticisms of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (then headed by Dennis Richardson), the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australian Federal Police. However ...

Oh okay, "Sure ... however" doesn't have quite the billy goat butting punch of a "Sure, but" routine, but it's always a wondrous sight to see a cherry-picker get agitated about others and the way they pick cherries. Deep down, you can tell that at some point Henderson learned the art of the bureaucrat (and yes, so did the pond, but ...)

Here's how Henderson wraps it up:

The big story of the IGIS report was that Habib's claims about mistreatment by Australian authorities had been dismissed by Thom. But this finding was buried in the news reports - especially on the ABC.

Oh those fiends at the ABC yet again. Did we mention the outer suburbs, deviant inner city dwellers and dissenting academics and the liberal secular conspiracy?

Now it might well be that Dr Thom rejects some components of Habib's story as well as criticising the actions of the agencies involved.

Sure, but in preparing a column on the story, you might have noted that the big story was that Dr Thom recommended that the Australian government agencies involved should prepare an apology to Mrs Mahra Habib for failing to inform her about what was happening to Habib, and that the Gillard government refused to do it ... though they agreed to the other five key points in Thom's report.

Sorry? Sorry, no sorry here ... Sure, but ...

Now just one question. Did Henderson really write the header suggesting that it was Habib who should do the apologising? For being tortured and getting a little agitated about it and wanting to blame someone, anyone for what happened?

The moral of the story? When you want to be one eyed and always abuse the ABC, make sure you poke out your left eye. It helps to present a balanced argument, or at least the imbalanced argument you take for a kind of balance ...

Oh and there's another moral, one Julian Assange might take to heart. When the United States comes knocking on his door, likely as not he can expect little to no help from either the Liberal coalition or the Labor party ... and perhaps in ten years there'll be a report on why he was abandoned, and then some little Sir Echo will turn up to explain "sure, but" ...

Now just remember the new rule and all will be well.

Billionaires rulez ... and please, no billy goat butts ...

(Below: we don't usually quote Fairfax cartoons, tucked away as they are in their galleries here, but this one by Moir we did enjoy. Hark, is that a school bully?)