Oh lolcat, another day of Paul Sheehan, the Bolter and Tony Abbott, with a sauce provided by Amanda Vanstone ....

tl;dr.

That's all that can be said about Paul "Generally Grumpy" Sheehan's explanation of the dangers of capitalism and share market trading in Computer panic: why you should take stock.

Oh okay, it's a slow Monday, and the pond is just catching up with ancient internet memes, while running shots of nakedly ancient lolcats.

Back to Generally hysterical Sheehan.

Some days Colonel Grumpy (yes he's easily demoted) sounds rabidly socialist, and so it is in today's piece as he rabbits on about the greed of financial advisers, tax lawyers, casino capitalism, volatility, instability, the deep and churning waters, the sinister evolution of markets, electronic eyes, massive transfers of wealth, the siphoning off of wealth, public distrust, and then lordy, he even quotes Jim Cramer as an authority berating the disgrace of the market's attitudes to small traders.

Would that be the same television personality Jim Cramer who made a complete fool of himself back in 2008, leading ABC News, amongst many others, to propose Small investors who follow Ceamer stand to lose big?

Should You Stay Away From Jim Cramer? Only if you don't want to follow that Bear Stearns into a cave ...

Anyhoo, it wouldn't be a Monday without Generally Gloomy Paul "Chicken Little" Sheehan running about predicting that the falling of the sky is imminent, and this today it's the systemic failure and near misses and serious structural failures of the sharemarket.

Yep, there's market dysfunction on a massive scale, the boat people are coming, the seas are rising, and only two options remain: hide under your bed, or hide in the wardrobe, and don't come out for at least a week.

Or go socialist, at least until next week, when Sheehan will explain how Republicanism and Abbottism are the only viable alternative to big regulatory government, and the Labor party ...

Contradictory? Why swallow a gnat when you're adept at swallowing an elephant?

Is this a form of therapy for Sheehan?

After all, while a substantial number of Fairfax employees have in recent days trudged into the office to pick up their redundancy packages, Sheehan goes on warbling and burbling how we'll all be ruined, and all the while being paid to warble like an off-key Indian myna bird ...

It's funny, but can it be funnier than Amanda Vanstone accusing Julia Gillard of a sickening element of grovelling in her speech to the US Congress? (here in Abbott's big problem is not his unpopularity, but his team).

Was it only a few months ago that Tony Abbott made a speech to the Heritage Foundation which included this exceptionally fine grovelling?

These days, America does not need to be told where it is going wrong but where it is going right.
By a large margin, the United States has the best universities, the most creative research, the most sophisticated intellectual property and the most accomplished high-end manufacturing.
America needs to believe in itself the way others still believe in it.
It needs once more to take to heart President Roosevelt’s advice that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
America is exceptional so exceptionalism has its place.
American world leadership might only truly be appreciated were it to disappear.
None of us should want to find out the hard way what a shrunken America might mean.
Australia wills America to succeed because a strong America means a safer world.

Why does Vanstone think she can get away with such a wilfully stupid denunciation of Gillard? Both sides of Australian politics have long sucked up to the US alliance, and it's impossible to sort out and separate one big suck from the next.

How routinely conservatives forget that it was during World War 11 that the Labor party started the trend when, to the consternation of conservatives and Brit lovers and Menzies, Curtin sucked up to MacArthur and Roosevelt (and more on that here).

Anyhoo, Vanstone continues on by explaining how the punters deeply distrust Gillard, but there's no need to worry about Tony Abbott's low approval rating.

Well she would say that, but why is this blather presented as commentary in Fairfax?

Vanstone seems to think that the solution to Abbott's woes is to blame his team:

One problem for Abbott is his team. We see only a few of them. Where are the shadow ministers other than Chris Pyne, Joe Hockey, Malcolm Turnbull and a few others? Are they lazy or incompetent at working with the media? Or is the opposition being managed in such a way that others don't get a chance?

And who would be doing that managing?

Amazingly this blather is at the top of the Fairfax opinion page:

Is this the way it's going to be in the new straitened, reduced circumstances at Fairfax? Aged political hacks trotted out to fill out the gaps in the opinion pages?

Fair enough if it's free, but what happens when the titillating, tantalising Vanstone is planted behind a paywall? They'll be wanting a payment to access unadulterated blather? In your dreams ...

Never mind, perhaps it's time for Ms Vanstone to head back to Italy for a refreshing pasta ...

After proposing that either Tony Abbott is incompetent and doesn't know how to manage his team, or alternatively that Tony Abbott is competent but his team is hopeless, she's done her bit for the Liberal party, and deserves a rest.

Naturally the Bolter is outraged by Fairfax and the way it promoted the Vanstone piece, as you can see in Never mind Gillard. Behold the AbbottAbbottAbbott.

The Bolter is such a dolt when it comes to picking an obvious angle in relation to a piece that is profoundly silly.

Still if you visit the Bolter's pages, you'll have another chance to catch up on his epic conflation of weather and climate and statistics and long term projections, with his short, evocative Skiing on snow they said wouldn't fall.

The pond is slavering for a sequel, perhaps headed Sailing through Arctic seas free of the ice that the Bolter said was as solid as a rock.

Speaking of the Bolter, how will he tackle Colin Rubenstein rabbiting on in the Oz about how We still need race hate laws? (behind the paywall).

The Bolter has been feral in his assault on section 18C, and Tony Abbott has been uxorious in his love of free speech, the freedom wars and the suffering of the Bolter, as you can gather by suffering through the speech he delivered to the tobacco-lovers of the IPA (yes, it was titled Freedom Wars, and remember the freedom to inhale killer smoke is a vital freedom for sponsors of the IPA).

Now Rubenstein, AM, executive director of the Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council, has dared to join the debate, on completely the wrong side:

Regardless of the Bolt case, it would be an overreaction to remove all protections from racial hate speech acts in Australia's multicultural society.
The fate of this law should not be confused with the separate debate about media regulation. The two issues have little to do with each other, except in the minds of those whose preoccupation is a campaign for absolute "free speech" at all costs.
The Opposition Leader and the legal affairs spokesman have not yet clarified what they see as the best means for protecting the human rights of victims of racial hate speech. Their constructive specific suggestions are keenly awaited.
Our common objectives are, as always, to improve our legal standards so that they will more effectively address the genuine harm caused by public expressions that vilify, incite, intimidate or harass on the basis of racial or ethnic origins.

Outrageous. Shocking.

The pond is looking forward to a post from the Bolter denouncing a Jewish conspiracy to ruin the freedom wars (don't they run the banking system and Hollywood as well?)

Run it past us again Mr. Abbott:

If it’s alright for David Marr, for instance, to upset conservative Christians, in his attempt to have them see the error of their ways, why is it not alright for Andrew Bolt to upset activist Aboriginals to the same end?

Indeed. Of course Bolt wasn't upsetting activist Aboriginals, so much as fair-skinned Aboriginal people identifying as Aboriginal and allegedly making out like bandits, with the Bolter making plenty of amazing factual errors in the process, unlike Marr identifying the way the Sydney Anglicans had pissed $160 million against the wall, but never mind, we catch the drift.

In the world of Abbott facts are of little consequence, whereas the right to sound like a feral yammering jack-hammering shock jock is crucial ...

Well if the Bolter wants to upset activist Jews, would the pond or Tony Abbott stop him? Is it time for the Bolter to make a stand against the Jewish lobby?

The rallying cry attributed to Voltaire, "I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it", should have been invoked to defend Bolt, no less than it has been to justify robust speech from different points in the philosophical compass.
The Coalition will repeal section 18C in its current form. Any prohibitions on inciting hatred against or intimidation of particular racial groups should be akin to the ancient common law offences of incitement and causing fear.

Say what? Would that be the ancient law the English got rid of in 2008 because it was a mess? (Incitement).

It's taken awhile for responses to Abbott's speech to drift into the world, and naturally Rubenstein is an interested player for all sorts of reasons:

...the value of 18C's provisions in combatting genuine hate speech has been demonstrated and uncontroversial. In a series of cases, in which the applicant was Jeremy Jones, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affair Council's director of community and international affairs, who acted for the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, a series of principles were established.

Newspapers were given guidelines on responsibility when publishing material from external sources which were recognised as racist. The internet was found to be covered by Australian law. Holocaust denial was recognised as anti-semitism. Most importantly, victims of harassment had legal recourse.
As a matter of common sense, a judicious review of the racial hatred provisions in the Racial Discrimination Act might be timely. It could yield opportunities to improve on the current law and to examine the relevance of some academic analyses which have critiqued the current provisions for ambiguities and inconsistencies.
But any attack on the basis of such laws is a serious error of political and moral judgment.

A serious error of political and moral judgment?

Now is that Tony Abbott's serious error, or the serious error of Tony Abbott's team?

Did Tony Abbott merely read his speech to the IPA and his team write it? Or did his team stay silent, when they should have been doing the running?

Oh it's all too hard.

Over you to you Ms Vanstone. Is Tony Abbott a dunce, or is his team?

Oh, and please feel free to get the Bolter to explain how Fairfax is responsible for everything wrong in the world ...

(Below: the pond, always maintaining the rage and the meme).