WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

I'm surprised he didn't look up how many hours she spends playing Steam games.

quote:

Non-Partisan and independent
Many of our team (and even our name) comes from what might be described as the Australian right however we are fiercly non-partisan and independent of any political party, union or corporation. We will applaud good policy wherever we see it and criticise bad policy wherever we see it.

Unless otherwise specified all content solely reflects the opinion of the author and not the editorial team, a political party, employer or any other organisation.

Many of our team (and even our name) comes from what might be described as the Australian right however we are fiercly non-partisan and independent of any political party, union or corporation. We will applaud good policy wherever we see it and criticise bad policy wherever we see it.

Unless otherwise specified all content solely reflects the opinion of the author and not the editorial team, a political party, employer or any other organisation.

Anidav posted:

Spurred by four years of conservative State Government and the worst conservative Federal Government in living memory, the Victorian Greens Party primary vote surged by a whopping 0.02%. Clearly the Party of the future.

The Hun posted:

LOCAL residents believe a mosque planned for Bendigo could threaten their “safety and freedom”, a tribunal heard today.

One objector said in a submission that the Islamic “call to prayer” would cause noise pollution and the mosque would increase traffic congestion because the aim was to have “as many Muslims as possible” on the site.

Opening the case in VCAT, Shire of Greater Bendigo lawyer Mimi Marcus said the objector submitted that her family was Catholic and she was concerned for their “safety and freedom”, especially as Islam had “no respect” for females.

The case before VCAT president Justice Greg Garde continues.

quote:

Feminists ignore the real root of misogyny

WRITER and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a formidable woman of substance, intellect and courage. Naturally that makes her a loathed figure in the modern feminist movement.

We can’t have a fiercely intelligent woman talking about worthy issues when there’s trivial nonsense to be bleating about; why worry about female genital mutilation when Tony Abbott is brazenly winking and looking at his watch?

Hirsi Ali’s principled and uncompromising approach to equality and human rights is at odds with the vacuous attention seeking ways of the shrill feminists who dominate the agenda in Australia, UK and the US, though it could be argued that our local frightbats have set a new standard in faux fury.

It’s not just Hirsi Ali’s preoccupation with justice that infuriates the sisterhood but it’s her determination to highlight what she sees as the root cause of much of the world’s entrenched misogyny — Islam.

Many on the left simply cannot abide by the only religion they don’t find abhorrent being scrutinised; time and again leftist feminist have sided with radical Islam instead of standing with the subjugated women from communities who adhere to backward cultural practices.

Who can forget the idiocy of Australian women donning hijabs in solidarity with their Muslim sisters at a time when women in Iran were being blinded in acid attacks for breaking the strict hijab code?

Then there’s Germaine Greer who has likened FGM or female circumcision, carried out on millions of women every year, to getting a boob job or piercing. It takes a truly twisted mind to compare a young girl being held down while her clitoris and labia are excised without anaesthesia to a woman choosing to change her appearance through cosmetic surgery, piercings or tattoos.

For educated, Western women to liken the agonising pain and lifelong devastating effects of FGM to plastic surgery is not only offensive, it is depraved. But this cultural relativism is popular among some feminists, who see condemnation of FGM as an attack on cultural identity.

But you won’t hear any such arguments from Somali-born Hirsi Ali who is among the estimated 140 million women around the world who have suffered FGM. She underwent the genital cutting, which is designed to rob a woman of sexual pleasure and make her socially acceptable for marriage, when she was just five years old. When she spoke recently at the Independent Women’s Forum Women of Valour dinner, Hirsi Ali called out the women who have turned the feminist movement from a vehicle to educate girls and empower women to one obsessing about “trivial bull---t.”

She implored the audience to “reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women” and to fight the real war against women; that being waged by radical Islam.

The plea to reclaim feminism was also recently made by political activist and co-founder of Justice for Women, Julie Bindel, who wrote about her despair at the “current climate of McCarthyism within some segments of feminism and the left”.

Bindel cited gender apartheid being promoted by a UK University as an example of how far feminism has strayed from its original objectives; students at King’s College London supported gender segregation in line with the wishes of some Muslim students.

When even left wing feminist campaigners are calling their own movement “toxic” you understand why so many women refuse to identify themselves as feminists.

There’s good reason why accomplished women from all facets of life, from Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to actor Gwyneth Paltrow, do not want to be labelled with the F word.

Why identify yourself with a movement that’s more concerned with silencing debate than championing the interests of the most powerless women in society?

And when they begrudgingly take an interest in genuine cases worthy of protest, it is in the most superficial, self-serving manner possible such as the hashtag activism that followed Islamic terrorists Boko Haram kidnapping more than 200 girls from a Nigerian school.

Surprisingly the sadistic militants who burned to death 59 schoolboys in an earlier attack have not released the girls despite celebrities posting sad selfies demanding them to do so. The students kidnapped by Boko Haram are the girls that Hirsi Ali is fighting for. They, like her, are victims of the most brutal misogyny imaginable, the type that sees girls mutilated, sold or killed in the name of religion. The type that thinks a just god wants a woman to endure the slow torturous death of stoning for the “crime” of infidelity.

For daring to speak critically of Islam, Hirsi Ali has been attacked and received death threats. She was collaborating with Theo van Gogh on a short film when the director was shot and killed by an Islamist terrorist. And earlier this year an online petition led to Brandeis University reversing its decision to give her an honorary degree.

But Hirsi Ali is not one to wrap herself in the warm cloak of victimhood. She uses her insights and intellect to shine a light on the plight of millions of voiceless girls and women around the world.

That should make her a heroine within the sisterhood but alas the stupidity that characterises much of the feminist movement has cast her as an enemy.

Fruity Gordo posted:

FGM isn't a Muslim problem, it's an African one. Christians, Muslims and Animists all do it, in majority-Christian and Muslim countries.

quote:

Victorian result bad for growth

By electing a Labor government headed by political apparatchik Daniel Andrews , Victorian voters have handed the state over to an unreformed Labor party led by a socialist-left-faction premier and a cabinet with little experience outside the Labor party and the union movement. Victorian voters have elected Mr Andrews’s Labor party to govern even though they mostly disagree with his key policy pledge to rip up a contract for the $6.8 billion East West Link road project designed to ease traffic congestion in Melbourne. They were encouraged to do so by the Labor party’s better political organisation (a legacy of its trade union background), which will be rewarded with a bigger public sector wages bill that will threaten Victoria’s AAA credit rating. Yet the will of the voters may also translate into minor parties, stretching from the Shooters and Fishers to the Sex Party, holding the balance of power in the upper house.

All this cannot be blamed on the compelling attraction of Mr Andrews and his Labor Party, for voters clearly don’t feel that attracted to him. Some blame may be due to the Abbott government’s unpopular federal budget and the harmful narrative of broken policy promises. But most of the modest swing to Labor that ousted a first term government must be sheeted home to the Victorian Liberal Party and its National Party coalition partners. Ted Baillieu’s narrow win in 2010 was so unexpected that the new Coalition government did not know what to do with it.  The bloodless coup that replaced Mr Baillieu with Denis Napthine in March last year offered some hope of more dynamic leadership and a clear message of how the Liberals could help revive the state’s economy – just as Mike Baird has done in NSW following the resignation of Barry O’Farrell in April this year. Instead, the Victorian Liberal message remained muddied under Dr Napthine. At the weekend, the Liberals lost the rural seat of Shepparton even after handing out money to the SPC Ardmona fruit cannery. More decisively, however, the government’s razor-thin lower-house majority remained hostage to rogue Liberal MP Geoff Shaw and his religious-right policy push against abortion and whatever else. Thanks to Mr Shaw’s antics, the government turned into the sort of soap opera than voters rightly hate. What voters want is stable and competent government that, particularly in the case of state governments, puts the delivery of public services ahead of sectional interests.

Whether Victorians will get this with Mr Andrews and Labor, of course, remains to be seen. But Mr Andrews will be in debt to public service unions that cover ambulance drivers, fire fighters and nurses just at a time when state budgets will come under increasing pressure from the squeeze on national income that is being imposed by lower iron ore, coal and gas export prices. While Tony Abbott is taking political heat for seeking to restrain wages growth for the military at a time when the federal budget deficit is blowing out again, Mr Andrews has encouraged Victorian public servants to think that taxpayers can be counted upon to fund increased wages growth.

While this will not end happily, the even darker prospect lies in Mr Andrews’s debt to the militant Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union that has barricaded Melbourne’s CBD, defied the orders of its courts and imposed an illegal boycott on law-abiding companies seeking to do business in the Victorian capital. Not only has Mr Andrews refused to condemn the plain illegality of the CFMEU that heavily funds the Labor Party, he has vowed to dump the Napthine government’s building code that seeks to impose basic standards on the construction industry. This sends a dreadful message to business and investors at a time when Melbourne and Victoria need business and investment to drive the city and state economies. With voters installing a motley crew with the balance of power in the upper house, Saturday’s Victorian election is unlikely to stimulate the business confidence required to get the state, and its job market, going again.

Mr Andrews went straight from university to a job working for a Labor MP, and has been an apparatchik ever since. Of the others in the shadow cabinet 16 are from the union movement. Shadow planning minister Brian Tee, who may have considerable influence in the construction industry, is a paid-up member of the rouge CFMEU and apparently proud of it. Deputy leader James Merlino is a former shop assistants’ union state secretary, and shadow treasurer Tim Pallas is a former ACTU official.

With the line-up of minister likely to emerge from that front bench, and the absurd, populist promise to rip-up the contract for the $6.8 billion East West Link project, Labor will have trouble convincing investors that the state is open for business or that his government can tackle Melbourne’s growing congestion, particularly as the East-West link was meant to deal with that congestion.

Instead, the lack of any major figure from outside the union-Labor system in the new state government, will simply entrench the party’s factional system. Labor will remains the political wing of the union movement with a handful of factional power brokers wielding the real power. As NSW Labor and the Rudd-Gillard labor governments have shown, this system often confuses policy making and, at its worst, can result in substantial corruption.

A foretaste of what may happen on Mr Andrews’ watch is his intention of scrapping the coalition government’s building and construction code of practice. As this newspaper has noted before, that code is one of the few restraints on unlawful behaviour by unions and contractors on government projects.

Despite those concerns and despite the lack of precedent for beating a one-term government in Victoria, Mr Andrews’ win is far from surprising . Ted Baillieu’s narrow win in 2010 was unexpected, with the coalition subsequently showing little in the way of dynamic leadership or any indication that it could solve the state’s problems. Among other policy missteps was to react to a scare campaign by preventing gas field development in large parts of the state.

Apart from showing little promise the new government was dogged by the secret tapes affair and compounded its problems by allowing the religious right of the Liberal party to much sway. One result was a move to revisit the abortion debate. This development would have horrified the vast majority of voters with no interest in returning to debate, but it also fed into the on-going drama of rouge Liberal MP Geoff Shaw. All this would have been enough to switch many voters off the coalition, and Mr Baillieu’s successor, Dennis Napthine, was not the man to bring them back.

Those state issues may have been compounded by the unpopularity of the Federal coalition government, and the first austere budget after years of plenty. But if so the eventual swing of 3 per cent for Labor was far from a crushing victory, or an indictment of the Federal government, considering the troubles of the coalition in the state.

But by rejecting the coalition for understandable reasons, Victorian voters have installed a government that shows little promise of being able to manage the state’s economy, or encourage business. In particular it has no interest in standing up to rouge unions like the CFMEU which, as the Royal Commission into union corruption and media revelations are now demonstrating, have been breaking laws and bullying companies for years with no one to stop them. The new state government is more likely to encourage rather than stop such behaviour.

Mithranderp posted:

So instead of the Iron Lady, will she be the Asbestos Lady?

Nibbles! posted:

Yeah. You have different bills but the main appropriation is the day-to-day running of the country and funding for established institutions falls into that. The Senate would have to block that bill, which Labor didn't due to convention. If they had it would be blocking supply which is what happened to Whitlam.

Nibbles! posted:

The constitutional requirements as to why they have to split them up is to prevent that from happening.

It's not that the Senate can't block it, it's that convention says they shouldn't. That's why it's usually the Libs and Labor voting them through whilst the minors and independents block it, cause I guess they don't really care.

quote:

t is disappointing that Labor and the Greens voted to shut down Senate debate on the government’s higher education package before amendments could be considered. However the government will not be deterred and will move to introduce a new higher education reform package into the House of Representatives. It will be passed and sent to the Senate early next year.

Great reform takes time.

Haters Objector posted:

That sounds like a double dissolution trigger

Murodese posted:

parlview

Urcher posted:

Special bonus word clouds because it's nearly Christmas and you guys are awesome.

Murodese posted:

So, is it liberating for a politician to be able to decide when an election promise doesn't matter?

Those On My Left posted:

So, don't mistake me for saying "THIS IS SOMETHING GOVERNMENT MUST FIX". It's more that I'm saying "for gently caress's sake, could the government at least not make it worse?"

Gough Suppressant posted:

This assumes that politicians actually want a better class of politic in the country which is not something I believe.

SKY COQ posted:

I'm absolutely not defending GTA here - the series has always had massive problems with depictions of women. But. This particular 'feature' has been in the series since GTA3 came out in 2001. This is a really weird moral panic campaign that's inexplicably only targeted a single retailer.

Gorilla Salad posted:

quote:

Crikey says: refugee bill an immoral disgrace

At 8.06 this morning it was done: the House of Representatives passed the government's Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (Resolving the Asylum Legacy Caseload) Bill 2014, following its passage and amendment just after midnight in the Senate. Parliamentarians then got to go home for Christmas, having delivered the Immigration Minister extraordinary powers that in effect obliterate any further pretence that Australia regards asylum seekers as human beings.

The bill restored the failed Howard-era policy of temporary protection visas, a mechanism that actually increased boat arrivals when last attempted. Whether Clive Palmer seriously believes that there is a pathway to citizenship contained in a kind of homeopathic form within the legislation -- or it merely suits its purposes to pretend there is -- we don't know, but Scott Morrison has been crystal clear that TPVs will never provide permanent protection.

But the bill goes much further, freeing Australia from any obligations associated with the Refugee Convention, including giving Morrison and his department -- which has repeatedly demonstrated it is profoundly incompetent and resistant to the most basic forms of accountability -- the power to return people to torture and persecution without judicial review.

That the passage of such a bill was only secured with the blatant use of blackmail, in which Morrison used detained children as hostages to be bartered for Senate compliance, says much about the wretched contents of the bill, about the complete amorality of the government and about the depths to which it has needed to sink in order to give itself a win on which to end a wretched year. That crossbench senators like Ricky Muir, Nick Xenophon and the PUPs gave in to such threats, however, is a reflection entirely on them. Their ostentatious anguish at having to deal with such a choice can't hide the grim reality of their actions.

The bill is immoral, it's bad policy, and it's been passed using the lives of children as bargaining chips. The division lists in the Senate and the House of Representatives will be a roll call of shame in years to come.

quote:

For now, however, the focus will be on the committee's remarkable finding that the head of the department charged with running Parliament appears to have misled a Senate committee on a matter that nearly earned a finding of contempt.

Those On My Left posted:

Thanks for keeping me posted on this.

quote:

Cruising in opposition, adrift in government

TONY Abbott’s transition from opposition leader to Prime Minister has failed.

There has been a technical failure and a psychological failure. The two have combined to make the government appear uncertain, hesitant and disorganised.

This failure is not the entire cause of the Abbott government’s grave difficulties, and fixing it won’t solve all the problems, but the Prime Minister and his office have to behave with more authority, clarity and direction if they hope to address the challenges.

The blame within the Coalition for the government’s lack of recognition and perverse public reaction is placed on Joe Hockey, Abbott and the Prime Minister’s chief-of-staff, Peta Credlin.

Some of the criticism is justified, some is not. But there is no doubt that a fundamental part of the problem is the hangover from the five intense years Abbott, Credlin and a handful of loyal advisers spent in the opposition leader’s office working with incredible discipline to turn the Coalition into an alternative government in just one term and defeat two prime ministers.

The formula of a tight-knit group directing everything from the leader’s office, being on the frontline every day, keeping secrets, operating with few res­ources and controlling shadow ministers worked well in opposition but cannot translate to ­government.

As one senior minister told Inquirer yesterday: “There is no doubt the problem with the office is that they were a tiny group in the opposition leader’s office and it was them against the world. Senior frontbenchers were only allowed in now and again. They did a magnificent job but it doesn’t work in government.”

Liberal Party pollster Mark Textor, who has provided the Liberals with invaluable insights and strategies for years, including the re-election strategy he entitled “government for grown-ups”, said on the ABC’s Lateline this week that getting messages across was different in government.

‘‘Governments in the first term that are usually learning how to use their stripes find that inevitably you make some mistakes and then the temptation is to control even more, but the thing that makes government better rather than problematic is its size,” Textor said.

The size of government could be useful “in that you’ve got lots of arms — Treasury, Health — and various ministers who can be out there helping to flood the market” with the message.

‘‘But you’ve got to learn to channel it through more rather than fewer spokespeople.

“Centralise the message and strategy but decentralise its delivery. This is what the government has to do better,” Textor said.

Ministers complain about the communications strategy of control by the Prime Minister’s office and its clear tendency, which Textor warned against, to seek even tighter media control on ministers when mistakes are made.

The breakdown in communications last week between the government and public over the government’s agenda and uncertainty over key reforms such as the $7 Medicare co-payment crystallised dissatisfaction within the Coalition, in both the ministry and on the backbench, and sparked a new round of complaint about how the Prime Minister's office operates.

The government appeared to be backing away from the principle of the co-payment and its paid parental leave scheme, although Abbott, the Treasurer and Health Minister Peter Dutton were agreed on pressing ahead.

The complaints are essentially that a concentration of decision-making in the Prime Minister's ­office leads to delays and re­sentment and restricts the breadth of consultation, all of which breeds complaints, criticism and blame shifting across the government.

One senior Liberal told Inquirer this week: “There are some bitter and twisted people around who cause trouble, but there are also genuine concerns about it taking forever to get stuff approved by the PMO.” A minister complained that the Prime Minister’s office demanded the final decision on “minutiae” relating to junior staff that was unnecessary, time­-consuming and meant it could be sitting in the “in-tray for months”.

Credlin’s control of the appointment of new staff, up to and including ministerial chiefs-of-staff, because she was determined to get the best staff, caused some resentment and her demand that advisers be Canberra-based is being credited with causing divisions between electorate and ministerial staff.

Some senators believe the meltdown in the office of Defence Minister David Johnston was made worse by having staff divided between Perth and Canberra.

There are also complaints that Abbott and Credlin don’t seek broad enough consultation and advice before making decisions.

There has been angst over the strategic decisions to delay the release of the National Commission of Audit and all its controversial and difficult recommendations until after the re-run of the West Australian Senate election and a deferral of a deal on the $7 GP co-payment until after the Victorian election. The subsequent break-up of the Palmer United Party ensured the co-payment would not pass the Senate.

One long-serving Liberal with close experience of the Howard prime ministerial office said Abbott had to approach seeking advice by using “a sieve, not a funnel”, so there was broad input that was sifted rather than a narrow input that could be blocked.

Some of the complaints were repeats of what has been said since early in the government’s term about Credlin’s “command and control” attitude but are not restricted to Credlin.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann was rebuffed by his own economics committee when he tried to push a piece of legislation through the committee without sufficient warning. While the knockback prevented an even greater embarrassment of a backbench revolt in the Coalition party­room, it was a strong signal that the backbench MPs were drawing a line in the sand. Liberal MPs wanted to make it clear that they were the elected representatives and “deserved respect”.

“We are elected representatives and don’t like being dismissed by staffers or even the minister,” one Liberal MP said. Another complained of being “barked at” over the phone by an adviser from the Prime Minister’s office.

There are also MPs who believe Abbott’s frontline communications office lacks political experience. They point to the loss of Australia’s longest serving prime ministerial press secretary, Tony O’Leary, who worked for John Howard for his entire term and as a consultant to Abbott.

O’Leary, who has retired, tells Inquirer he feels for the Prime Minister’s office because it is “always a tough gig” and requires “great discipline and application”.

He also says it “takes time to build such an office” and one of the hallmarks of the Howard office was that advice was sought from a “broad range of people within the office and beyond”.

While loyally defending all his staff this week and particularly praising Credlin as the most “ferocious political warrior” he knew, Abbott conceded the government appeared “ragged” and tried to adjust his message accordingly.

This adjustment included adopting a far more aggressive stance towards Bill Shorten and the Labor opposition after a discussion in the Coalition leadership group that concluded that Abbott had to adopt his more natural style as a “fighter” and use the parliament to take down the Labor leader for his “cockiness”.

Since becoming Prime Minister Abbott has tried to tone down his aggression, but a slew of frontbenchers this week were happy to see him become more combative towards the Opposition Leader. Dutton, Christopher Pyne and Hockey all dipped in to help.

This is where the psychological hangover from opposition has hampered Abbott since he became Prime Minister.

His single-minded intent on winning government through personal discipline and relentless repetition of key political messages also led to a rigidity and control that buried his personality. On becoming Prime Minister he has had troubling assuming the mentality and authority of the role.

At the end of an epic press ­conference on Monday that was designed to put him on the front foot politically and provide clear air in the media fight, Abbott conceded voters might not “support” his decisions at the next election and on Thursday night said the voters could take “their revenge” at the election.

These are the words of someone who still can’t seem to believe he is Prime Minister. What he must do is use his office and undoubted powers of persuasion to convince people to support him, not to sit back fatalistically and await judgment.

With the truckloads of advice, public and private, hostile and friendly, coming at Abbott and Credlin, there is no doubt they are aware of the challenges confronting them and have started to address them.

The appointment of former Howard adviser, ambassador to the US and financier Michael Thawley as the new head of Prime Minister and Cabinet is seen from within the Prime Minister’s office with relief and from outside as an opportunity. Thawley is highly regarded by Abbott and seen as a “better fit” as a departmental head; his remit is to refocus the public service and reshape the form of advice going to the government.

One of the Abbott government’s complaints and excuses for some lacklustre performance has been that the public service has been cowed and abused by the incessant demands of the Rudd government and needs to become a powerhouse again.

But unless there is a speedy improvement in the communications from the government, more use of diverse voices, a lighter burden carried by Credlin and an assumption of authority from Abbott, all the public servants in the world won’t help.

Pred1ct posted:

Am I reading that right, the intake was 20,000 and they're reducing it to 18,750, and that's somehow a concession?

The whole narrative of concessions is bullshit. They could have made these decisions at any time, they didn't need any legislation, it's just a bargaining tool. And poor old Muir fell for it despite wanting to do the right thing.


Great news speak right there, always use lots of words when a few will do. Like "Australia will now refoule refugees".

Nibbles! posted:

A cabinet reshuffle may get certain people worried enough that they let others know they'd support them in a leadership spill, and the closer it gets to an election the more of a problem Abbott's numbers will be. I think from what we know about him too there's little chance he'll ever step aside short of losing the election and his seat, if they want to remove him it will be a fight.

Cartoon posted:

The 'funny' thing about this is that if they hadn't jumped off the 'do nothing*' play book (The standard Tory play book) and just kept the ship 'steady as she goes' they would probably have sailed into a second term promising to deliver all of these unpopular things.

Les Affaires posted:

Personally I like the idea of both. State funded / subsidised childcare AND paid parental leave. The more we can remove economic impediments to having children, the better off we are long term.

Lid posted:

Then a few days later Tony added on Andrew Robb without explanation, which has actually pissed off Robb as not only does he go to a conference on a subject he doesn't believe in (alongside things like reality) but that while he was in South America at the time touring for trade meetings now he has to make a large schedule adjustment to several trade meetings just so he can go to Peru, where he is unwanted, to prevent Bishop from doing anything, who doesn't want him to be there.

quote:

@MSMWatchdog2013 @ewe2 @jackinbocks2025 @GregHuntMP's office categorically told me they could not tell me if he was going "due to security reasons". Pfffft.

quote:

@MSMWatchdog2013 @ewe2 @jackinbocks2025 @GregHuntMP Yep.They were quite tetchy when I asked a simple question i.e. "Is Hunt going to Lima?" Weird & paranoid.

Sanguine posted:

Without the media frenzy I think Bishop could quite easily slide into the leadership spot and the thing would be painted over as a 'responsible move to suit the mess labour left us in' as well as 'a progressive move in having a female leader, showing how modern and progressive the libs really are'.

Sanguine posted:

I hope you're right, I do, but I worry. Things can get much worse from here.

Anidav posted:

quote:

Outside the inner circle, which is certain to be shaken up before long, only the parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, Josh Frydenberg, offers a gleam of talent for the future.

Matthew Beet posted:

They'll just double down for a few more election cycles yet I reckon.

gay picnic defence posted:

Howard must have had an iron will to keep this bucket of crabs in line.