The One Where Miranda Hates A (ex) Liberal.

 Don't fret dear readers, the HCQ lives (though it does appear to be on life support) and we haven't forgotten you. 

Column.  

You had to feel for Marcia Langton on ABC TV's Q&A panel this week, stuck between two men so terminally pompous, out of touch and in love with the sound of their own voices you felt at times they might fall stiffly off their chairs and writhe on the ground in private ecstasy.

You have to feel for SMH readers, twice a week your dribble causes them to fall from their chairs, writhing in pain.

Malcolm Fraser and Peter Carey, fresh from the Sydney Writers' Festival, are the sorts of self-styled intellectuals who give thinking a bad name.

Miranda Devine, journalism, bad name. You see where I'm going here.

Now comes news that Fraser formally quit the Liberal Party in December because it's too conservative for him. The former prime minister quit in spirit a long time ago. He seems eaten up with the need to settle old scores and be proved right on every little point, a sad state to be in at the age of 80.

And he's probably right, unlike the current Liberal party, Fraser didn't paint refugees as an invading horde of heathens intent on destroying our way of life. Nor was he an advocate of free market policies, both of which seem to now be the core of the unfortunate group of people that make up the Coalition.

He has always gone out of his way to malign and belittle John Howard, his one-time treasurer who well and truly eclipsed him in the PM stakes. How it must have rankled that some half-deaf nerd from Canterbury Boys' High could best him

Or, he thought John Howard was a terrible PM. 

He showed himself on Monday night to be no better a friend to Tony Abbott

Perhaps because Mr Abbott is the reincarnation of John Howard?

Better yet was his confident claim that the British and American governments knew Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and the Howard government, if it didn't know, "should have".

He's obviously been reading too much Green Left Weekly, or perhaps he gets his history from the Hollywood conspiracy genre of Green Zone. Even the host, Tony Jones, didn't pursue this fruitcake line.

That truly is a fruitcake line. Is Fraser seriously suggesting that before entering a war, the then Government should have used it's intelligence sources to independently verify the reason for said war? Lock that man up, I mean it's not as if the reason turned out to be fake...

While spruiking his memoirs earlier this year, Fraser denied that he had become a leftie, insisting he had not changed but the Liberal Party had lurched to the right.

Haven't we been over this already, or is it just that all of Miranda's dribble just melds into one mind numbing lump?

The odd thing is that he would have done a lot more damage to conservatives if he'd remained in their ranks. Instead, he's turned into the crabby old Muppet Statler, harmlessly heckling the rest of the cast from his balcony seat.

That may be true Ms Devine, but at least he's doing it at the age of 80, rather than in his 40's or 50's like some people. 

New Feature: Facebook Pages That Enrage.

Usually I'd introduce a new feature with a witty paragraph full of puns, but due to my lack of Quarterly-ing over the last little while I thought I'd get straight into it.

Facebook Page that enrages me: "Save Our Scripture - Make a Stand"

The dribble that has been let fly after the introduction of ethics classes has been truly amazing, spend 10 minutes listening to any of it's detractors and you'd be forgiven for thinking that students would be sacrificing small animals to Satan himself and simultaneously whipping a fresh batch of ecstasy in the dunnies.

The moron(s) behind the SOS (Stupidity Over Smarts seems to be a better use of this anagram) seem to have one particular issue with these classes being offered, the fact that they will result in less students in what they call "SRE" classes.

Calling scripture classes "SRE" is a lie in itself, not once in the scripture classes I had in high school was I ever educated about a religion. I was constantly told how good the Christian God is, but never was there any mention of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or any other religion.

But back to the topic on hand, in there own words SOS are protesting the introduction of ethics classes because :

"The NSW Government is trialling secular ethics classes in competition with school Scripture. In some schools scripture classes have lost up to 60% of enrolments." 

Now I'm not sure about that figure of 60%, but if it's true it suggests to me that a majority of students would prefer an ethics class rather than a scripture class, so maybe SOS should be getting it's followers (I prefer zealots) to pester the 60% of kids who don't want a bar or a cross of scripture classes rather than their local MP's.

Their other point is equally as stupid, so what if these classes are in direct competition? If school kids have the ability to opt of scripture classes, than why can't they opt into an ethics class that's run at the same time? Would they prefer these classes to be run at the same time as Maths or English? Classes that might actually help students in their future.

Of course, it's not only SOS who are producing this type of pollution, plenty of others have supplied their own brand of idiocy to the argument.

For example, I just discovered this stupidity over at The Australian.

I really don't know where to start with this article, it meanders from point to point like a drunk after closing time, Ms Shanahan comes out strong with her headline "Godless ethics classes are pointless," but from then on it's just dribble. I assume the writer was either under severe deadline pressure or had recently undergone a lobotomy.

When she does try to address a point, Ms Shanahan falls back on some pretty unethical evidence (see what I did there?).

"It has already happened in Quebec, where an aridly secular relativist ethics course that introduced concepts such as the same-sex family to Year 1 children was boycotted, causing chaos in the schools of the heavily Catholic province.

The NSW course does not introduce any such concepts; in fact some more controversial ones such as terrorism and designer babies have been removed."

This is just unforgivable. What Ms Shanahan has said here is "Ethics classes are evil, in another country they were unpopular due to introducing controversial topics to children too young to appreciate them, but in Australia the classes have been designed in a different way, and said controversial topics have been removed, but remember ethics classes are evil."

Dribblers, the lot of them.

My Financial Pursuit's Means You Suffer

Dear Readers,

                      I must beg your forgiveness, in my pursuit of the all-ighty ollar (those spelling mistakes, unlike the numerous ones in my other posts were on purpose) it is you that have suffered.  The last three weeks of gainful employment have delivered me a tidy sum of squilla, but it has meant I have neglected you.

I admit, Lenoid tried gallantly to pick up the slack in the first week with his own "Fun With Miranda Devine," and whilst it had it's own special charms it lacked some pizzaz. Oh, and that red font, I think he buckled to peer pressure and took a more than hearty drag on the crack pipe.

But chin up big fella, I'm sure as time passes you'll be able to produce a more than acceptable imitation of myself.

But back to you people, I promise that after this week (even though I was only supposed to be working a week instead of three) I'll be back with FWMD and the Hypocrisy Detector and some new things you'll enjoy, and I'm sure Lenoid'll have some more articles to straight up plagiarise.

And if you're especially well behaved and pray to your god/spirit/magic tree, the mysterious third member of our trio may stop by from time to time.

Regards,

Phil.

How could someone infallible be wrong?

 This week, Miranda justifies the molestation of children and cover-up by the Catholic church.

The pursuit of the Pope reached absurd heights this week with news that atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have asked the Australian barrister Geoffrey Robertson to draw up a case to arrest Benedict XVI for alleged cover-up of paedophilia in the Catholic Church.

Your weekly dribble has reached absurd heights with calls for covering up child molestation by ‘holy people’ and saying that the Pope is above the law.

That these exhibitionist atheists should seize on the tragedy of child sexual abuse by a small minority of Catholic priests to pursue their vendetta against religion is stomach-turning. Dawkins has become shrill with excitement, describing the Pope as ''a leering old villain in a frock''.

Your rhetoric is stomach-turning. Why should the Pope be beyond the law? Because what he wears would make Carson shrill.

He said the Pope "should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice - the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gouging, truth-hating, child-raping institution - while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, around his ears''. From what deep cesspool of hatred do those words spring?

Do you understand anything pre-1950’s or does your brain selectively choose only the good form the church, much like a buffet? And you shouldn’t be asking from where does this hatred breed from, but rather why?

But it is even more nauseating to read about the priests who abused children entrusted to their care, of the Milwaukee school where a priest used to creep into the boarding house and masturbate boys in their beds while pretending to be their kind teacher.

Are you arguing for or against?

It is so awful as to be unbelievable. But it did happen, in Australia, Germany, the United States, Ireland and elsewhere. Catholics have to accept that fact, and that for too long church leaders allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by paedophiles, who are by nature, brilliantly deceptive. This was an important lesson from the Wood royal commission; paedophilia is often unchecked because of the naivety of people who cannot bring themselves to believe it is occurring.

It sounds like Dawkins and Hitchens have their newest recruit?

As we saw from the trials of the Sydney paedophiles Robert ''Dolly'' Dunn and Philip Bell, the predators use positions of power in an institution to gain access to children and escape detection. They are endlessly patient, willing to performing hundreds or thousands of good works for every foul deed.

Another point for the Atheists. Maybe you should start arguing your case now before we are all too convinced.

God knows what drives them except a desire to extinguish what is most good and pure about humanity. We know also some paedophiles were themselves victims as children, which makes you shudder from sympathy for the tragic child who grew to such a monster.

And the Catholic church is an institution for this to occur.

Just to contemplate the depths of human depravity can make you wonder about the value of life at all. But it also has to be said that if paedophilia seems to be on the increase, it has been enabled by the eroticisation of our culture over decades, and even priests are not immune.

Hang on, have you just been describing the contemptuous atrocities committed by priests, and then continued to justify their actions by the “eroiticisation of our culture?” Is no, one safe Miranda. Won’t somebody please think of the children.

Why, for instance, should the Dutch be surprised by the launch in 2006 of a paedophile party, the Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NVD) party, which wanted to cut the age of consent from 16 to 12. Since dissolved, it was just another step in the continuum of social disorder in which the taboos and social norms protecting children break down.

You said yourself they have been dissolved. I don’t see a majority in any country arguing for lowering the age of consent. Is this article still about the Pope?

In a similar vein were moves in 2003 by psychiatrists at an American Psychiatric Association conference to stop classifying paedophilia as a mental disorder, thus normalising it as just another sexual preference.

Repetition.

It is the Catholic Church which has been most vocal about the breakdown of moral order, from paedophilia to abortion. And this has made it a target of those who object to moralising they regard as an infringement of their freedoms.

Why stop there Miranda? They are also vocal against homosexuality, women as priests, have banned condom usage, including in Africa, and enforce celibacy if you wish to enter the priesthood. Very moral.

But it is no use saying paedophilia exists everywhere else even though it does, because the church is meant to be better. And defensive pronouncements from the Vatican and other church leaders have been needlessly provocative diversions - one has linked homosexuality and paedophilia and another claimed the church is being attacked because it is anti-abortion. This is not helpful. Nor is attacking the media.

Miranda we will continue to attack you if you continue to write this drivel. You can’t just claim you’re a victim, in the middle of this article on paedophilia, how inconsiderate.

The Pope may have made mistakes, but his letter to Irish Catholics last month could not have been more frank, humbly penitent, or condemnatory of predator priests and the bishops who failed to stop them.

Ah, I thought you were going to go the whole article without referring to the Pope again. Yep, a letter should cover up years of cover-ups, homosexuality, paedophilia, and molestation by holy people.

To the victims, he wrote: "You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated. Many of you found that, when you were courageous enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen … It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the church. In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel.''

They do have some good PR working over there in the Vatican. I wonder if they dress like wizards as well.

To the abusive priests he wrote: ''You betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents, and you must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals.''

Just one small paragraph. You would have thought someone of the highest moral order, with a direct line to God, could have seemed a little more sympathetic.

Yet the baying from atheists and fellow travellers for the biggest scalp of all has only escalated.

We should forgive every molestation, and even those acts that have not been revealed to the media yet, because the Pope took the time out of his busy schedule of kissing babies, and touching young pilgrims, to write a letter. For that amount of dedication he should be applauded. Forget about calls by the victims in Australia for a personal plea of forgiveness. A letter should shut them up.

The process is not unfamiliar to people who have lived under communist rule when destruction of the church was a goal.

Now c’mon, I thought you only brought up Communists when you were really losing an argument.

Professor Piotr Jaroszynski from Poland's Catholic University of Lublin has written in the Catholic country's mass newspaper that the offensive against the Pope is recognisable particularly to Poles who lived under communist rule. "It has elements that have been very well planned, rational to the extreme, but at the same time there is a singular hatred for Catholicism hidden under concern for victim."

If we hold the Pope responsible for his actions, we are as bad as the dirty Communists.

The struggle against religion has taken the form of a new religion. Its new priests "find their greatest ideological enemies in priests, religious brothers, and sisters. They cannot physically destroy them (as was done in communist countries), so they try other methods."

It is not a new form of religion. Non collecting stamps, is not a hobby.

What is the motive: to destroy the credibility of the strongest moral voice left? Would the world be a better place without the Catholic Church? Without Christianity? That is the end point of this game, which should frighten everyone, whether religious or not.

That’s it. You didn’t even mention Dawkins or Hitchens again although many pious people hate their arrogance. That would have surely won you a few more brownie points.

And yes, many would argue that the world would be a better placed without the Catholic Church. If there is a God, Catholicism may be correct, it may not, but the Catholic Church is a man-made and man-run institution, ran by a man. If anyone else, not in a religious position, covered up the same atrocities, they would surely be crucified.

New Feature: The Quarterly's Hypocrisy Detector.

Here at the Quarterly one thing we can't stand is hypocrisy, so we got our technicians down in the lab to get work on a Hypocrisy Detector and after slaving away they have delivered the machine, and just in the nick of time too. You see the SMH decided to give Julie Bishop a run in their National Times section, which is sure to contain at least a smidgen of hypocrisy.

So now we've got the Detector, let's get it fired up and run Ms Bishop's article through it.



First Input: "The Rudd Government has engaged in a Machiavellian pattern of calculated deception with regard to issues involving the massive increase in the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat since it weakened Australia's border protection laws in August 2008."

Result: The hypocrisy level in this statement from Ms Bishop has reached SHEER, mainly because she seems to have forgotten this. 

Second Input: Our Second Input is actually an entire article from Peter Costello.

Results: Mr Costello's article is also deemed to have reached SHEER, given the fact that he is writing an article about Malcolm Turnbull leaving politics as an "under achiever," given the fact that Mr Turnbull achieved something Mr Costello never could, being Leader of the Opposition.

Wow, after all that hypocrisy it's lucky our Detector is made of sterner stuff than some similar devices. 

The One Where Miranda Confesses Her Undying Love For Malcolm Turnbull

Everyone knows that Miranda Devine is fond of any Coalition member, but her worship of Malcolm Turnbull is bordering on scary.

Column: A worthy assignment for Turnbull - saviour of NSW. 

The NSW Opposition Leader has been mighty magnanimous in offering to embrace Malcolm Turnbull "with open arms" to state politics.


By magnanimous, do you mean stupid? Why would Barry O'Farrell, a man who never seems to do anything want a well known, power hungry person like Turnbull anywhere near state politics?


He could enter state parliament via a byelection by July, giving him nine months before the election.


That's exactly what NSW residents want, more changes in political leaders. Seriously, can we just have two leaders contest an election based around releasing constructive policy rather than having a new leader every full moon?


Debnam ran unsuccessfully for premier in a campaign memorable only for his budgie smugglers, and doesn't have many prospects.


Debnam is to politics as Devine is to journalism.


If he were premier he could work on his pet projects of the republic and an emissions trading scheme in NSW.


I think Miranda Devine is confused. NSW is a state of, not a separate country from Australia, so working on a republic movement would be a little silly. As for the working on a an emissions trading scheme, I think Mr Turnbull might be a little gun shy on trying to introduce the kind of policy which lost him the lead of the federal opposition.


Far from being a job beneath his talents, he would have a far greater impact on the nation by fixing the NSW basket case.


Of course, everybody knows that the Premier of NSW is the countries most powerful person, as we speak Kristina Keneally is unifying North and South Korea.


It could be the experimental laboratory for his grand plans and visions and boundless energy.


Yeah, great idea. Here we have the most populated state in Australia with the biggest state economy which is currently falling apart, so rather than having a leader with a plan to get us out of this mess we'll let Malcolm use it as his private plaything.


He could create Sydney in his own image, with reforms to state finances, public transport, power generation, taxes, property development, and greenness. 


I know this might come as a shock Miranda, but NSW stretches past the outskirts of Sydney.


He could build museums, art galleries, roads and rail.


He's faster than a speeding bullet, he can leap tall buildings with a single bound. What? I thought with all the hyperbole this article was about Superman.


Just by being Malcolm, he would attract new talent and investment to the state and get sullen business on board. As the state began to shine, we would worship at his feet.



And children would sing his name with admiration in their hearts, animals would do his bidding, when Malcolm cries it rains. For He is Turnbull and He is all powerful.


The bipartisanship he was so good at would serve him well, as Kevin Rudd would be happy to lavish largesse on an invigorated NSW government cranking up the engine of the national economy.


The kind of bipartisanship that involves using fake emails as a means to force the Prime Minister out of power? I'm sure Kevin Rudd would be happy to give him anything after that. 
"What's that Malcolm, you want my first born? No worries, he's all yours."


Turnbull would singlehandedly raise the prestige of state governments around the country, restoring the federation to its rightful place.



How exactly? The one thing Turnbull will be remembered for is "Utegate," an affair where prestige was left by the wayside.


At worst, he would be remembered as the saviour of Australia's most important state. At best, he could achieve his lifelong ambition of becoming prime minister, having spent the barest time languishing in opposition, for which he's constitutionally unsuited.



Firstly, I'm still waiting for any proof of how Malcolm Turnbull could save NSW. Secondly, are the Coalition going to welcome him back after working out when the going got tough?


He and his wife Lucy would have fun creating their own little Camelot in the Emerald City he loves, his lifestyle would barely change and the commute to Macquarie Street would be a pleasure.



MALCOLM TURNBULL DOES NOT FUCKING OWN SYDNEY!!!


The same insider, however, agrees that if Turnbull were to become leader, the opposition "would be so far out in front, daylight would run second''.



Jack the Ripper, running on a policy of two free murders for each person could beat the incumbent NSW government.


All that remains is a groundswell of public opinion to appeal to Turnbull's natural civic mindedness. But, so far, the Facebook page "Malcolm Turnbull for NSW premier" has only nine fans.



There is no groundswell. Nothing more needs to be said.

Daily Telegraph: Kate Ellis, Not A Normal Woman.

Sick of all the negative press Tony Abbott is receiving about his speedo fetish, the hard nosed sleuths at The Daily Telegraph have hit back, going after federal Sports Minister Kate Ellis.

See the problem is Ms Ellis is currently heading up a campaign for teen and fashion magazines to use more "normal" looking models in photo shoots, and The Daily Terror has decided that Ms Ellis appearing in Grazia magazine has undone all that work.

Now had Ms Ellis been topless on a beach or stretched across the bonnet of a Commodore, The Terror may have been right to question her decision, but they seem to be forgetting that Ellis is a "normal" woman, the exact type of person she has been pushing to be included in magazines.

But the stupidity doesn't end there, rather than just allowing the author to release ignorance into the world, The Terror decided to bring the vaunted minds of it's commentators in to the fray.

TDJ from Sydney had this to say "They just don't get it. If you want to promote body image then you don't promote high heels. It is a fact that high heels cause spinal damage and leg problems."


It appears TDJ has stumbled on Ms Ellis' dastardly plan to destroy the ankle health of Australians, just look here she is in thongs, the least supportive of all footwear. 


After this latest bout of dribble, it appears that all gloves are off if a female minister does a magazine interview .