Catsidhe

What the politician said:

"Fines such as these for publishing blatant untruths or misleading news reports, or temporary suspensions of the right to publish or broadcast, would lead to a major improvement in the accuracy and fairness of our media."

(My emphasis.)

Which seems clear enough: if you lie, if you say something blatantly untrue, if you make shit up or don't bother checking, then you should be punished for it. That's not "Oops, we spelled this witness' name wrong", or "we were honestly misinformed," that's talking about Andrew Bolt-ian levels of disingenuity and agitprop.

How was this reported?

MP wants journalists fined for mistakes.

THAT'S NOT WHAT HE SAID AND YOU FUCKING KNOW IT YOU GODDAMN HACKS!

But thank you, nameless ABC journo, for proving his point. I have no doubt all the other sources will be similarly misquoting and mischaracterising Steve Gibbons MP from now on in, and squealing that they're the aggrieved parties the whole time they're shamelessly pretending he said something he didn't.

'Rewriting of Act' puts offshore deals in doubt.

Well, yeah, duh! That's the whole point! ONOZ, go the media, what an embarrassment for Julia and her government! Maybe they have to fall back to Nauru or Manus island!

Um... no, no they can't, because Nauru and Manus are not legal dumping grounds for exactly the same reasons Malaysia isn't, namely, our international treaty obligations forbid us from dumping refugees in a country which isn't a signatory, or which is a technically a signatory but has ‘reservations’ (ie., “except this bit”) for all the sections which matter.

And no, it's not “rewriting the Act”, it's a finding that the Act is, and always has been, incompatible with an international treaty, and therefore basically nullified. It is not a lawful law. It never was.

And you in the media? Yes, you. Do you think you might see fit to mention that these offshore dumping laws were just as illegal when Little Johnny was doing it, it just didn't get tested. The treaties and obligations haven't changed in the meantime. The only reason this didn't happen to
Johnny and his happy gang of smug sociopaths is the vagaries of the legal system (ie., the refugee advocates pushed harder this time). If this had been pushed to the High Court then, it's really difficult to see how they could have come to any different conclusion: the law which allows demands offshore refugee dumping is an illegal law.

If they really want to pass a law to allow it, then they're going to have to, one way or another, repudiate the International Treaty on the Rights of the Refugee. Let's see if they have the testicular fortitude to plainly and openly do what they so badly and obviously want to: go backwards in our adherence to international Human Rights Law.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2011/3268730.htm

Executive summary: Monckton is an arrogant lying fraud. Every word out of his mouth is a lie, including articles and conjunctions. If you find yourself on the same side of any argument as him, it's time to seriously consider your position.

And the people who cheer him on (literally mindlessly chanting slogans of hatred) are hypocrites and idiots. "The ABC are fascists for daring to print anyone who disagrees with me! I don't think there should be censorship, but anyone who disagrees with Monckton will be locked up when we take over, and any media who published them will be broken up and sold. Because they're fascists."

For fuck's sake. Do they really not see their own jackboots?



If you quote him, or anyone who approvingly quotes him (yes, his obnoxiousness is contagious), for any reason other than to point and laugh at the logorrhoeia of lies falling continuously from his mouth, then you have just lost whatever argument you were participating in, as you have just given up the right to have any opinion you hold taken seriously.

Seen last on A Tiny Revolution:

By: Aaron Datesman
It is possible, though unlikely, that you have not yet read this joke:

A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across, takes 11 cookies, looks at the Tea Partier, and says, "Look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie."

Credit to Gar Lipow for making my life 320% more awesome.
— Aaron Datesman

Before the election, Joe Hockey made a big song-and-dance about how the Opposition's budget was audited. He explicitly used that word. He made the point that it was audited by a top-five accounting firm, because they could not trust Treasury. He claimed that its numbers were superior to Labor's, because it had been audited.

He lied.

It was looked at by a big accountancy firm, that much is true. But they explicitly did not audit it, and indeed a statement to the effect that it was not an audit was countersigned by senior Opposition folks.

It was an outright, deliberate lie.

Now that they've been exposed, Hockey and Robb are pleading sophistry: they used the technical term ‘audit’ in the non-technical sense, and it's not their fault if they forgot to mention that this audit was not technically an audit.


I thought there was something suspicious about the anonymous accounting company and the refusal to let Treasury see the numbers when it first became an issue, but now we have the evidence that he was lying through his big cuddly-bear teeth.

And it's buried in The Age on page five or seven or something. (I forget exactly, and I haven't got a copy handy.) The so-called Left Wing rag. The Australian seems to have deleted the story from its site (it comes up in a search, but the liked article doesn't exist any more). It's there in Adelaide Now, though. I wonder if Adelaide Now is anything to do with the Adelaide Advertiser. Maybe the low rent version. You know, like MX is the Herald-Sun for people who don't have time for the H-S's level of intellect.


I'm sorry, media, I thought that this might be slightly more important than whether Gillard thinks Abbott used ‘harsh language’, or who's going to be playing for Collingwood next year. Maybe I just have different expectations.

I know it's a sideshow, but I have some comments on this mishegas about Oakeshott being Speaker or not.

Point the first

How long has Oakeshott been in parliament? A quick look at the Online Encyclopaedia of Lies and Rumour informs us that he was elected to the NSW parliament in 1996.

And it's only now occurring to him that when serious be-suited men with smiles that don't reach quite as far as their eyes take you into a back room and promise to be your bestest friend for ever and ever, they might not be entirely trustworthy?

Also: nice to see how long Abbott's “Kinder, Gentler” polity lasted. Which is: about ten seconds.

Point the second

The argument largely stems from a ‘Gentlemen's Agreement’ to do an end-run around the Constitution.

In the Constitution it says that the Speaker does not vote unless as a tiebreaker. No, really:

40. Questions arising in the House of Representatives shall be determined by a majority of votes other than that of the Speaker. The Speaker shall not vote unless the numbers are equal, and then he shall have a casting vote.

OK, so Oakeshott, if he were to become Speaker, would become the Nanny of Parliament, but not be able to actually vote on anything himself. Unless Parliament were tied.

Well, first, that's probably a large part of why neither Labor nor the Coalition want him as Speaker; because with a hung parliament and minority government, it is far more likely that his tiebreaker vote would come into play.

But that's not even counting shenanigans. The shenanigans here is the practice known as "pairing". Pairing is not something that many people have heard about before this whole thing blew up. But what is it?

Basically, Pairing is a Gentlemen's Agreement between Labor and the Coalition that the opposition would have a member who would be the designated pair to the Speaker – the Deputy Speaker – who would also abstain from voting. Even though there is nothing preventing him from doing so beyond this agreement. So in effect, the Opposition gives the Speaker's vote back by removing a vote against.

(So, if the Government's numbers were x+1 including the speaker, and the Opposition's were y, that means that the Opposition has agreed that they will only use y-1 members to vote against the Government's x, which gives a virtual extra vote back to the Government.)

Still with me?

So: this happy little agreement has the effect of making the spirit of §40 of the Constitution completely void. One or two people have noticed that this might be a problem in its own right.

But it's even worse than that, because if Oakeshott were named speaker, it reveals this happy fraud for the farce it is. Because he's independent, and beholden to no Whip, he can vote how he likes. So first problem: just because he backed Labor for Government, doesn't mean he would want to vote with them all the time. Which just makes things messy. But more than that... What if the Pair did his usual thing and abstained from a vote, which then was tied? Because then the Speaker gets to make the tiebreaker. Even though he has, in effect, already voted.

It wasn't just that the Coalition are acting like petulant five-year-olds having a quiet sulk at being denied their rightful place in charge, it's because if Oakeshott became speaker, it would reveal the whole sorry mess of the (until now) quiet détante to render a section of the Constitution meaningless.


Don't get me wrong. There are sections of the Constitution which are thoroughly contemptible. Such as §25.

(Oh, and that 20-year-old electee in Queensland is safe. Although §34 says that a candidate must be “of the full age of twenty-one years”, a law was passed which reduced this to 18 years in 2001. Lucky for him, eh?)

But still, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the idea that the Speaker should be above day-to-day politics, in preference to trying to keep the place running smoothly. In England this is an ideal kept to the point that the Speaker resigns from his party. But here, oh no. Simply not good enough. So the big two parties made a deal with each other that whoever got control would have that extra vote, and they wouldn't complain when it was the next guy's turn. Except then the big two got a great big scare, and the farce was revealed to more than the policy wonks and back-room suits.



Oh dear. I seem to have turned this into a rant. Ah, well. So be it.

Maybe someone who knows more about Parliamentary Procedure and the Constitution can explain where I've gone wrong.



EDIT: On the mathematics of an Independent Speaker or not.

Hey, media? I'll make you a deal.

You stop printing conservative press releases as if they were news, correct, or meaningful, and I'll promise to try to take you a little bit more seriously.

This includes you, ABC.


FFS.

But only 29 per cent of people believed Australia should become a republic as soon as possible, with 31 per cent saying Australia should never become a republic.

For a start, they don't mention the ‘I don't know’s. But assuming that they're negligible, hell... assuming the ‘IDK’ is 10%, that leaves 31% with “No republic ever”, an assumption of 10% “Buggered if I know/care”, 29% as “WE HAVE TO DO IT NOW!!!”, leaving about 30% for the remaining option: “Yes, republic, but we can wait to get it right.”

By my count, that's almost 60% for a republic, versus 31% vehemently against.

And despite David Flint's fever dreams of relevance, that is not overwhelming support for his side.

I'll leave discussion for another time on whether this is further evidence for or against the proposition that the ABC is biased against conservatives.

John Quiggan on ‘Lord’ Monckton.
Executive summary: Monckton is insane. Anyone who takes him seriously is either similarly insane, or an idiot, or a liar.

Larvatus Prodeo on the ‘MMR vaccine causes Autism!!eleven!’ doctor.
Executive summary: Andrew Wakefield is a liar and a fraud, and was paid to lie about the ‘connection’ between vaccines and autism. And the MMR hysterics who paid him — and are still paying him — are lunatics. And are causing more harm to their children through their actions than what those children already have from autism.

Islamism is a serious problem. The world would be better off if Islamism were defeated, robbed of its power. I don't think anyone seriously disputes that.

The argument, then, comes down to the means. There are two possibilities:

1. We could bomb the fuck out of brown people until they are dead or acknowledge the West as their betters and masters, or
2. we could not be rampaging dickheads and steal the force of Islamist propaganda by, and this is an amazing concept: proving it false

Guess which one works?

The radical, xenocidal Islamists base their rhetoric and theory on ignorance and hate. Maybe, just maybe, what the saner of us (in our millions) have been trying — to whit, extending education and hope — is the way to solve the problem, in a way that justifying that hate does not.

Of course, this relies on bloodthirsty lunatics in power and their equally bloodthirsty but far less well informed useful idiots to get back in their fucking box and stop fucking up a winning strategy.

Obama fronts angry protesters on health reform

Hmm. That doesn't seem quite right...

Obama fronts usefully idiotic, ignorant, ideological, astroturfing shills, hostile to everything Obama does without even understanding why or what they're supposed to be opposed to, who are deliberately trying to shout down the actual majority in favour, and kill universal healthcare in the United States because Fox News, on behalf of the multi-billion dollar insurance industry, told them to because having an actual efficient and effective universal health care system is Stalinism or some such similar bullshit.

There: I fixed your headline for you.



(ETA: It's really not funny.)