In which the Caterists, much given to wind, inherit the wind ...

Uh huh. Never mind the grammar - it is hard to believe that sex is still prevalent in Africa and large parts of Middle East - it's clearly obvious that Chairman Rupert is agitated about the shocking events in Nigeria.

He even repeated one tweet twice, here.

Did anyone at Faux Noise care?

"I was not that familiar with this phenomenon," host Chris Wallace said. "It's even got a name: hash tag activism. Do you think that this is significant and helpful and can make progress, or do you think it's really about helping the people who tweet the hashtag feel better about themselves?" 
It's an exercise in self esteem," Will said. "I do not know how adults stand there, facing a camera, and say 'Bring back our girls.' Are these barbarians in the wilds of Nigeria supposed to check their Twitter accounts and say, 'Uh-oh, Michelle Obama is very cross with us, we better change our behaviour?'" 
BRIT HUME: "It's trending! It's trending on Twitter!" (you can see it here)

Of course it's just Faux Noise taking aim at Michelle Obama, but in the process, they were taking pot shots at Chairman Rupert, Pope Francis, and anyone - like the Bolter - who'd taken to social media to berate the Nigerian fundamentalist Islamics, and lefties and drop kicks for failing to note the gravity of the situation.

George Will is the sort of fatuous twit who notoriously declaimed against jeans - apparently he faints at the sight of double denim - while Brit Hume is a typical Faux employee, a few bubbles short of a bubble bath.

But there's the answer to the question Chris Kenny was so desperately posing a few days in the lizard Oz, as to why lefties might be soft on Islamic fundamentalists.

It's because they might get caught up in the cross fire from the crazies at Faux Noise berating Chairman Rupert for indulging in an exercise in self esteem and attempting, via the fate of the Nigerian schoolgirls, to make himself feel better about being chairman Rupert ...

But that's enough of teh international crazies, because today is the day when the hagiographers and knob polishers really have to get cracking. It's last drinks in the last chance saloon before the shit hits the fan.

Confronted with this sort of headline ...

... what's a Caterist to do?

Is there something ineffably Cheshire cat in the supercilious smirk the Caterist bunged on for the camera?

As for the actual content of the splash, did anyone warn the Liberal party? You know, about the promises:

Okay, at least we can agree that the Liberal party is hopeless. On and on they banged like a dunny door in a gale or a needle stuck in a cracked groove:

(yes, they're listed here, these broken promises, this tally so carefully kept and supposedly broken, apparently, according to the Caterist these days, a hopeless measure of a government's worth, and what can you add about the hopeless, useless Liberal party, except to note that it's their turn now?)

Now it has to be said, that of all the commentariat doing the rounds, the Caterist is the most lightweight. Not so much a cauterist cauterizing in a bid to mitigate damage and remove undesired growth as a smirking Cheshire cat who can't believe his luck at being allowed to scribble nonsense for money ...

Most outings he shows he's a  few wanks short of an orgasm, a few crumbs short of a biscuit, a few sausages short of a barbecue, a thousand sheep short of a top paddock, a sandwich short of  couple of clowns short of a circus, and so on (more here, but it's not a good list, because you have to head off here to find not the sharpest knife in the drawer and a few fries short of a happy meal).

The hapless Caterist has to go back to Bob Hawke to discover a politician who made promises and promptly broke them, and stupidly doesn't even mention Hawke's most famous and fatuous promise:

"We set ourselves this first goal: by 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty," Mr Hawke said on June 23, 1987 at an election campaign launch.

Twenty years on, Hawke admitted regrets and an error:

Twenty years after pledging no Australian child would live in poverty, former prime minister Bob Hawke says his comment is one of his biggest regrets. "It was a silly shorthand thing," Mr Hawke has told News Limited newspapers. "I should have just said what was in the distributed speech."

(The distributed speech said "By 1990 no Australian child need live in poverty."here)

Hawke at least came to understand how stupid remarks and broken promises can be hung around the neck like albatrosses, until, as Julia Gillard discovered, the stench can be overwhelming, even if the reality - trying to do something about climate change - might have been an admirable aim to all except the fringe of barking mad Murdochian denialists.

Instead the Caterist decides Hawke's assorted broken promises were just a by way on his progress to becoming one of Australia's most successful prime ministers.

So why is the Caterist peddling this line? And hailing a Labor hero?

Well it's because he's got the fear. They've all got the fear. Within a hundred days Tony Abbott was on the nose:

Now he's in for a right old hammering.

Even if the budget turns out to be a damp squib, and soft, he's going to be given a right old hammering, for failing to muscle up and do the right thing, with the dries yowling and howling as they try to dry gulch him.

And if it's as tough as all the leaks propose as part of the softening up? Why that's why that precious petal, that shrinking Caterist violet, is feeling so tender:

For Tony Abbott the gotcha game begins at 7.30 tonight when the nitpickers comb through his government’s first budget. 
He should prepare for a torrid week, for the expert class has not afforded him the latitude prime ministers customarily enjoy in their early days in government. 
There is a justifiable apprehension in Coalition ranks about how tonight’s budget will be received and the damage to the Liberal Party brand in NSW has not helped to steady the nerves. 
One wag suggested NSW Premier Mike Baird could best deal with the problem by adding ICAC to the dangerous dog register. Say what you like about rottweilers, but at least they ­possess a rudimentary sense of natural justice.

Because that rottweiler Tony Abbott showed an enormous sense of natural justice, and because in NSW, it's only corruption if the Labor party does it and is found out, and never mind all the other pigs with their snouts deep in the trough.

But it's not just the nitpickers and the expert class that's a problem (happily Caterists fit comfortably in the inexpert, dumb, fuckwit class ...)

It's those fiends on the right too:

The Right, however, appears to have become fixated on a metric of its own; that a government’s worth is determined by a single measure; government spending as a proportion of GDP. 
Economic dries are genuinely shocked at the prospect of a debt levy for high-income earners, regarding it as a fundamental breach of faith. The Abbott government is squibbing it by increasing revenue when there are plenty of dumb spending programs that can be axed. 
They are right of course on one level; government spending is out of control and the bloated public sector is an unproductive drag on the economy. Yet reducing government spending is not an aim in itself, since the illiberalism that crushes private incentive is not purely economic.


Oops, that's sounding like heresy. Quick, what can a Caterist do and say to right the ship of state, and get back on side?

The most objectionable consequence of open-ended welfare is not that it depletes the budget but that it drains the ­national stocks of ambition, initiative and enterprise.

Because those bloody disabled types in wheelchairs are being molly coddled!

It is a specious nonsense of course, a meaningless debate by a mendacious fraud.

If the Caterist can name one government since federation that has dedicated itself to the cause of "open-ended welfare", the pond would like to hear about it ...

There is a clue that the professional Caterist above all loves the sound of his own voice:

The business of life becomes foundationless as we head towards the dystopia Menzies once predicted, populated by state-supported boneless wonders. 

Heading towards dystopia? With Tony Abbott as the captain of the ship?

“Leaners grow flabby; lifters grow muscles,” Menzies said in his 1942 Forgotten People radio talk. “Men without ambition readily become slaves.”

Ye ancient bearded cats, Bob Menzies, and yet Menzies was in the 1950s much given to government interventions and government welfare and large government scehemes, and he even announced as much in the very speech the Caterist quotes:

There would be more control, not less, after the war, Menzies promised: "The functions of the state will be much more than merely keeping the ring within which the competitors will fight." He concludes with one last rallying call to the Forgotten People: "What really happens to us will depend on how many people we have who are of the great and sober and dynamic middle-class -- the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones. We shall destroy them at our peril." (the Caterists should read their own paper, and themselves, here, but perhaps they don't know how to evade the paywall)

The planners!

Sack the lot of them.

Poor old Elena Pasquini Douglas, in an heroic attempt to redeem Ming the Merciless at the AFR, banged on endlessly about all that Ming had done for higher education, and for learning and all that stuff:

...it’s an Australian political conundrum why the Liberals have failed to take the mantle of “lighting the lamps of higher learning” post-Menzies. This may be the “tragedy writ large” in Australian politics: Labor’s unjust ownership of the expansion of educational opportunities in the public imagination might be the reason the Liberals fail to resource the task with passion, conviction and their best people. Witness the recent carelessness over schools funding. It’s several generations since the Liberals did major constructive work in the life of Australian higher learning and institutions of culture. Today’s Liberals often fail Menzies’ deepest purpose: the cultural and moral enlightenment for which “homes material, homes human and homes spiritual” exist. In the Gospel of Menzies, education – “the lamp of learning” – and enlightenment are the purpose and prize of increasing wealth. (here)

Well if you've got the poodle Pyne stepping up and trying to assume the mantle of Menzies, you've got problems.

The warden of the Cinque Ports must be rolling in his grave to see the poodle try to emulate the American education system, which as it has turned to privatisation has also seen the United States tumble down the world's educational charts ...

So what's the Caterist got to offer in this dire situation, as we stumble towards dystopia, and never mind that the dystopia has arrived in the form of Tony Abbott and his broken promises mob?

Nothing but idle, mealy mouthed, meaningless blather:

The purpose of deregulation, the reform of higher education, free trade initiatives, removing the incentive to join the ranks of disabled pensioners, raising the retirement age and many other Coalition reforms should not be merely balancing the books. 
Their success must be measured by their capacity to help Australians to make the best of their lives. Forget the Left; the centre Right too needs a refresher course in the principles of liberalism that have built the prosperity of Australia for 200 years. There is no mathematical formula by which to judge an administration. Good policy will inevitably reduce the size of the public sector, but prudence demands more than a hairy-chested obsession with spending cuts. 
Make no mistake, Joe Hockey’s budget today must include a credible plan for a swift return to surplus, but for the heirs of liberalism, that is not the only test. 
As Kemp told the party last week: “Good government must be based on the acknowledgment that it is individuals who matter.”

Actually good government must be based on the acknowledgment that it is good government that matters.

There's more to life than asking everyone to sacrifice everything so that Abbott can don the mantle of infrastructure king by building roads, roads, roads ...

And if individuals matter (let's not make a batter joke) what to say about a government that cares not a jot or a whit for climate science?

Yes today Abbott and Co will fuck Australia. But they've already been doing that for months.

You see, today is also the day when it finally became clear that the world has fucked Antarctica.

You can read about it at Ars Technica here, or head off to The Graudian, here.

Oh yes, this week a hard rain's gonna fall, and the feeble thoughts of the Caterist isn't going to do anything to stop it. Take it away Bob:

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? 
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one? 
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains, you know weather's so extreme these days 
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways, built by Tony Abbott's PP mob, 
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests, but Campbell Newman's a coal man, 
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans, but Campbell Newman's a real coal man 
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard, and Joe Hockey's delivering the budget for it, 
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard 
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall  (and so on, and apologies to Bob if you head off to the official site here)

Second thoughts, take it away David Rowe (more Rowe here) and David Pope (more Pope here).

Let the twilight games begin!

All the signs thus far suggest that the reptiles at the lizard Oz backed a dud. Now let them inherit the wind. Like the rest of us ...