With his New York Post, Uncle Rupe told the Yanks how to vote in the last presidential election... to no avail... Poor Rupert...

But I am afraid that Aussies are far more gullible than the Americans on this score, especially when they have a mass media that is as piss-weak as the Fairfax media and the ABC. And I mean piss-weak... Apart from a few bright lights, who would be quaking in their boots for having mentioned in the past that Tony is an arse-hole, the rest of the journalists will play it safe and plunge both leaders in trickle, but of course will tar and feather Rudd far more — as it's the fashion of the day...

I can see it now, the nightmare of all the extreme right-wing nutsos rejoicing in the streets: The Bolt, the Albret-whatzername, the Jones, the Nova, the Pell, the Ackerman, the Ergas, etc... And let's mention all the idiots who are part of that select group of MPs in the LNP (conservative) party...

The plan by Murdoch is not so much to make Tony Nutty win the gig but to completely ANNIHILATE Labor and its annoying NBN...

Uncle Rupe's revenge is in your hands.

The Coalition will not increase funding for its “Direct Action” even if the climate policy fails to deliver Australia’s promised greenhouse gas reductions, an outcome several attempts to model the plan have indicated is very likely.

Speaking at the National Press Club, Tony Abbott attacked the “almost unimaginable” long-term costs of Labor’s emissions trading scheme, but would not commit to any modelling of his own scheme despite two recent studies showing it would either cost billions more than budgeted or fail to meet Australia’s internationally pledged target.

“The bottom line is we will spend as much as we have budgeted, no more and and no less. We will get as much environmental improvement, as much emission reduction as we can for the spending we have budgeted,” Abbott said.

“We are very confident we can achieve the 5% target … but in the end we have told you the money we will spend – and we won’t spend any more,” he said.

Indicating that he is already preparing for the post-election parliamentary fight over his promise to repeal Labor’s emissions trading scheme and the possibility he will be forced to a double dissolution election on the issue, Abbott spent much of his press club address attacking the long-term costs of Labor’s scheme, as revealed in comprehensive Treasury modelling, and arguing that a defeated Labor party would be forced to agree to its repeal.

In a cautious speech without any new policy announcements Abbott, now almost assured of victory, according to opinion polls, returned to his theme of the past three years, declaring the election would be “a referendum on the carbon tax” and that he would have a mandate to repeal it.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/02/coalition-direct-action-no-funding-increase

------------------------

Anyone listening to Tony or reading the above should be HORRIFIED: The little SHITTY RUNT does not believe in global warming. This is obvious. If he believed the planet was warming up — WHICH IT IS, DANGEROUSLY, DUE TO ANTHROPOGENIC CO2 — Tony would not make such lousy excuses "about the cost" of doing something RIGHT for the planet... HE SIMPLE DOES NOT CARE.

THE "CARBON PRICE" is the best effective cheapest solution to the problem of reducing emissions and it can be tweaked incrementally... Tony's solution is a horrible expensive crap that has no potential of meeting the targets now nor of any necessary increments in the future... It's lunacy... KICK TONY WHERE IT HURTS... He deserves it.

I don't know how Malcolm can look at himself in the mirror, every day... Maybe he doesn't look, despite what I feel is a discreet tendency for narcissism...

Malcolm Turnbull WOULD HAVE TO KNOW that Tony's hell-bent desire to destroy the "carbon tax" and to replace it with something that is not worth it, is sheer lunacy... MALCOLM SAID SO HIMSELF...

Thus, GOING ALONG WITH TONY, MALCOLM SHOWS HE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT the future of AUSTRALIA. He cares more about being in the Liberal (CONservative) Party... Some forgiving nuts may think Malcolm is waiting back-stage to take over from Tony as soon as possible, but this won't happen... Most geezers in the Liberal party are weary of him, despite being nice to his face. Malcolm was prepared to go with the ETS and Malcolm has a list of "pasts" (so has Tony) such as the Grech Utegate affair...

As well, Malcolm would have to know that "his" NBN is ELITIST and not worth the megabytes it would deliver or not... Actually I believe the NBN would become a dead duck under the Liberals (CONservatives) to please Mr Murdoch.

ON these two issues alone, Malcolm is unfortunately showing he has become a Liberal entrenched idiot (CONservative turd) though he is more intelligent than that... He should not be in the Liberal Party...

If you live in Malcolm's electorate, just dump him like a dirty sock...Don't vote for him and don't vote for anyone who would give him preferences... 

We need to give Abbott and Mr Murdoch a lesson... Loosing Malcolm would be neat...

THIS COMING ELECTION will seal the fate of the coming generations like no other.

Yet the ‘greatest moral challenge of our times’ ‒ as pronounced by the incumbent Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ‒ has barely rated a mention. If we credit scientists with the warning that we have only a 50 monthwindow of opportunity to act on climate change, our votes could cast our children into a future of reckoning.

Climate change is more than a moral challenge and it is already here. Recent findings by the Climate Vulnerability Monitor estimate some 400,000 people are dying annually from climate induced communicable diseases and hunger, and that children carry 88% of the disease burden. Over the term of this government, a series of reports have been released with findings that leave the climate aware alarmed before the prospect of a Coalition government.

Our atmosphere that has, for millennia, cocooned us in our ‘goldilocks’ climactic setting reached an unprecedented threshold when, last month, readings from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii measured 400 ppm of CO2. Ice core samples show that the earth has not experienced these conditions in 3 million years, when temperatures raised 3-4 degrees Celsius and sea levels were up to 40 meters higher. A leaked draft of the IPCC’s fifth assessment report projects sea level rises of between 29-82 cms by the end of the century placing 800 million people and a trillion dollars in infrastructure at risk of storm surges and coastal flooding by 2080.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/the-future-election-and-the-wrong-man-for-the-times/

Tony Abbott is continuing to resist pressure to reveal his policy costings, asking voters to trust that they are as "irresponsible and scrapulous" as he believes.

Labor has repeatedly attacked the Opposition Leader for not revealing his costings, saying the lack of detail gives Australians good reason to be wary of electing him to the top job.

But speaking on the ABC's 7.30 program, Mr Abbott denied the lack of budget detail makes him untrustworthy in the eyes of voters.

modified by Gus, read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-02/abbott-asks-voters-to-trust-him-on-budget-costings/4930166

The Australian share market has had a strong start to Spring, with some encouraging local data and better-than-expected manufacturing figures from China boosting sentiment.

The All Ordinaries Index has closed up 53 points to 5,178 and the ASX 200 has added just over 1 per cent to to 5,188.

Industrial stocks and retailers have been the stand-out performers.

Building materials group Boral has climbed 3.8 per cent, Paladin Energy has put on 3.6 per cent and Caltex has jumped 4.75 per cent.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-02/local-data-china-figures-push-market-up/4929920

Bushfire researchers say vast swathes of Australia face above average chances of grass fires and bushfires this summer, after months of above average temperatures.

The Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre has released its seasonal bushfire outlook for the south of the country.

It found recent warm weather, coupled with generous rainfalls has led to a build up of dry fuel in grasslands and forests.

The last 12 months have been the warmest on record, according to the weather bureau, and most states recorded their warmest winter since records began.

Large parts of southern Australia, especially along the east and west coasts extending inland, face above normal fire potential this fire season.

However, fire authorities said the at-risk area is not as extensive as last season, when the danger zone extended right across the south of the country.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-02/large-parts-of-australia27s-south-face-higher-risk-of-bushfires/4929700

Unfortunately, Tony Abbott is an iddiott...

In part one of this Kitchen Cabinet Election Special, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott invites Annabel to his Sydney home for a barbecue.

Wednesday 4th of September...

Is this a bit close to the election?... Sure... but who knows about the ABC decision to program this episode in which Annabel tells us:

TONY ABBOTT’S NUTTY QUINCE CRUMBLE

I've always suspected Tony Abbott's self-confessed Anglophilia would extend well into the dessert department, so I was determined to make him some sort of nursery comfort food dish he might have experienced while living at Oxford. I toyed briefly with the idea of Spotted Dick, but ultimately decided it was too rude. But who could object to a delicious crumble with custard?

Annabel ! Annabel!... Tony is a dangerous dork who has no understanding of GLOBAL WARMING and you pander to him, even with a bit of school girl humour?... You're an idiot !... The issues at stake are bigger than your silly kitchen...

About nine months ago I wrote this, repeated below. Still CURRENT, except that the summer that soon followed after the few "cool" days I described (still above average) beat 123 records of temperatures. Since then, Autumn and Winter plus Summer has become the hottest year on record for Australia. GLOBAL WARMING IS READ, DANGEROUS AND THIS IS NOT A DRESS REHEARSAL — but read on:

The Sydneysiders on the North Shore are depressed... Business is slack, shops are deserted and going broke, street malls are empty, the summer weather so far has been crap... On top of this, most of the North Shore is the electorate of Tony Abbott. This by itself would be depressing... and more depressing still — for many of the North Shore Siders Tony is Jesus of Nazareth, walking on water and coming to save Australia from its Labor sins...

The North Shore is an area of Sydney where the money is —or was — still is... but they are penny pinching because Tony like Moses on the molehill, keeps telling them the economy is bad or is going to be bad or should have gone bad yesterday, while things are still cruising along quite reasonably compared to the rest of the world... 
The mining stocks went up to a 17 month high yesterday, the approval from home loans has hit a relative jackpot for a few months now, the price of iron ore is up... What else do they want?... They want to get rid of Labor. They hate Julia.
Labor helped the poor and the larger part of the middle class, unlike the Liberals (conservatives, including the North Shore) who would have helped the rich, during the Global Financial Crisis... Labor helped the country stay afloat — ahead of everyone else. This is highly resented by the rich, because financial acumen is an area of Liberal (conservative) privilege — stomping on the workers to be feasting on bonuses... The result is that the rich, in an anticipatory move, might have exchanged their dough into US dollars, but now the Aussie dollar is so high, they cannot move the money back without loosing more of their pants... They resent that.
Mind you, there is money nearly everywhere in Sydney, especially if you have a view of the water, live on the water's edge or own acreage... or even have a big mortgage in the "inner city suburbs" from Pyrmont to Kings bloody Cross... 
Point Piper in the Eastern Suburbs could be the most expensive place to live on this planet, if Elizabeth Bay did not have a couple of magnificent homes better (but smaller) than Buckingham palace... until one discovers it's ONLY a place to live and die, with a fantastic view from a manicured estate... 
On the "lower" North Shore, there is Mosman where old money has been kept in families for yonks — families that own big mansions. Even the small mansions are being "extended" to make them look like bigger mansions. Most have views of the city, of the harbour, of the ocean, of the sky... of their own navels and bank accounts.
But the "upper" North shore siders are generally a special breed of rich... The upper North Shore is a space created by god himself:  beaches, surf, sun, leafy nature reserves, palm tree gardens, more jewel beaches edged by gem-like little villages sunk between rocky cliffs and oasis of flowers. It's pretty. 
The blond bronzed kids who grow up there become surfies and/or drug addicts. Not all of them though. Some become junk-bond traders and make it to the 200 rich list. The lesser crafty intellectuals of them enter trades... Even these tradies are trendy, polite, half-naked and showing muscular bods like Michelangelo statues...  and they go to the pub with their mates, the traders. 
In the past, they wore singlets and thongs by day's end... Dee Why was a bit of a genteel heavenly dive. 
I knew Dee Why in the seventies... It was a bit like Mount Druit on the beach... Plenty of unmarried young women pushing prams filled with unplanned babies, in a burb that looked crappy to say the least and overrun by billboards — out of control advertising had turned what could have been a half-decent agglomeration of fake fisherman huts and housing commission flats, into a mecca for extreme crass low-end consumerism... 
The main pub was claimed to be the biggest (or the most patronised) in Australia. There, as the youth got seriously smashed, were launched the careers of many famous Australian bands on a stage set like an island with flashing lights, in a sea of beer... I have been told, the pub got demolished to make room for a bigger pub with more class and a 15 storey tall building. Like the rest of Dee Why, the crassness has vanished somewhat... It's been gentrified, polished, de-billboarded, tradied, re-plumbered... The plumber who comes to fix your leaky tap (good god... the entire world is going down the gurgler) will be the young brat you discreetly snooted the family of, when you collected your own kids from school... But he has smartened up now and earns good money, while your own rich kids, now grown up, are still bludging from you... The school bullies have become politicians, or aspiring pollies by filling the benches of some organisation with the word organisation in it...
The North Shore Siders are generous to a fault... 
The North Shore Siders who can afford acreage and mowing vast expanses of lawn the size of the Versailles gardens really love the quiet, the quiet and the very quiet, except when they mow, blow or mulch something... For some it could take half an hour by car to go and buy a carton of milk. It's pricey isolation. Some go and drive half an hour to buy a loaf of bread impulsively, just to diminish the boredom and say hello to someone...
This is where the votes for Tony Abbott ferment... Most North Shore Siders are Liberal (conservative) and they think global warming is crap... True. Look at summer... Barely a day so far to get a tan on that fine James Bond cut face with blue steely eyes and a blond fringe on top. 
But comfort tends to make some of them — even those who have retired —  a bit lazy, complacent somewhat... Not to the point of reading a serious book but the hunger in the belly has been replaced with whale watching from the bay window, with a telescope that the Palomar Observatory would envy.... Those who used to follow the stock market and made their fortune, don't follow things too closely these days until they find someone, possibly a neighbour, took them for a ride and they lost a couple of millions on a dicey "little" sure thingy venture... Or a rich neighbour objected to the council about their plans for a bigger swimming pool and that huge concrete pergola. That hurts. 
Transport on the North shore is still travelled on roads that were drawn, like most of Sydney's network, by goats on the loose... So one can be in a Beamer or in a tradie's truck and it takes longer to drive from Palm Beach to the city, than to travel to Wollongong. 
The North Shore Siders dream of better roads... Trains? You're kidding aren't you.?... The place would end up looking like Strathfield... Secretly, they think that better transport to the area would bring twice as many hordes of Westies to the beaches than it does now... Sure the local councils make a killing from car park fees, but there are other problems than over-crowded beaches. The topography that is so pretty is also a curse for roadways. One would have to destroy the landscape to put a highway through.... 
Even where there is a short six lane highway, here comes the constriction of the Spit Bridge — built in 1958 and back then already too narrow. 54 years later, with compounded doubling of road traffic every ten years, things are not pretty. The buses get a slightly better run because of exclusive Bus Lanes, though the rich drivers in Mercs and 4-whee-drives will flaunt the rules and zoom into them as if per mistake. That is their explanation to the cops usually waiting at the bottom of the hill... They don't care about being booked... They have lawyers. Or they are lawyers. Or they know someone in the system, high up... Or the fine is like the discounted price of a chocolate bar to you and me. Anyway, I've seen 10 lanes of heavy traffic from three major roads going into one lane while the other three lanes of the bridge are dedicated to the opposite traffic...
The North Shore Siders blame the inaction of the successive state Labor governments for their traffic woes... When there is a Liberal government in place — their favourite colour of political paint — they hope the transport status would improve but they know it won't... Should a Labor government come back, they will blame it for the problem, again...
They would not live anywhere else for quids... It's where they were born and bread, mostly blue-eyed Aryans-like, apart from a few rich Japanese who took over a suburb in the 1990s and may have left since — who knows — when the Japanese economy tanked.... Multiculturalism on the North Shore is tolerated, as long as you have money... Plenty of money.
The summer dress code is often pressed-casual with expensive labels, apart from the geezers who go to the city in Savile Row shirts and Versace pinstripes... Gold is de-rigueur... Mums do not push prams anymore, they drive ultra comfortable monster-trucks disguised as 4-wheel-drives, to the schools... They often park in the middle of the road, to let junior and his friends (not mates) out via a long ladder... After this, they go to the tennis club.
The North Shore Siders don't "believe" in global warming... See, the 2012 summer so far has been crap... Really crap. That's a sign that things are cooling... 90 per cent of them are denialists because that's what Tony Abbott believes despite making semi-mitigated noise to the contrary... 
If Tony Abbott did not believe that global warming was crap, they would turf him out in a jiffy. They would replace him with someone harbouring more rabid views on the subject... Bernardi sounds good. Anyway they know by talking to the guy that Tony's solution to the "problem" is crap and they know that Tony thinks that too, but no-one can let the cat out of bag until he's there, implanted in Canberra... and starting to flog the workers back into submission, for profit... and remove that tax... on carbon... What was this crap? I ask you... 
The rest of the North Shore Siders (apart from a few rabid Laborites), would think that a) humans are not responsible for a warming which does not exist and b) humans can't do anything to solve a problem of such magnitude that only exists in mad communist scientists' mind, as asserted to them by Alan Jones and Lord Monckton...  
No, no. They don't listen to Alan Jones. They tell him what to say...
The North Shore, I have been told, is thus going broke... Pity... The North Shore Siders are going broke because they once believed in Greenspan, the old financial guru, when he was whispering sweet nothing into the US president's ears — while Monica was taking care of another part... So those North Shore Siders over-invested in their business, homes and gas guzzlers when things-financial were wanking at full speed. Then they found out in 2007 that things were starting to go south... The value of their homes (plural) was halving by the minute... And not only that, they had also invested much of their pocket monies in businesses like Channel Ten and Channel Nine — as sure things — but now these shares are tanking fast as well... As business models go, these things were terrible compared to the NBN which they hate, because Uncle Rupe hates it... Sure they diversified their portfolio, but there is so much one can invest into mining, when Gina owns the lot... 
And all those people who had bough a nicknack-store with dreams of making it big, would have saturated their market with oil scented wax candles in three days max...
No, don't get me wrong, I like the North Shore and its people... Plenty of good people there. Though I wish they would drop Tony Abbott as their representative... And pick someone decent (mentioning Bernardi was a joke). The way Tony and his mob of wolves went after Julia in regard to an old union-onion twenty years ago smells of bullies punching females in a university election lost by the said Tony...
Dropping Tony would be an improvement. A weight would lift from the shoulders of this nation. The air would feel fresher instantly and the future would soon rekindle the North Shore Siders tarnished silver... I'd even give them a medal.
Their pigheadedness and beliefs on global warming are hard to take... They have no scientific basis, only religious-like beliefs that this cannot be happening on their watch of burning sacred carbon to the god of comfort... The only reason their power bill has gone so high has nothing to do with the air conditioning running all day nor the poles and wiring being replaced at the average price of gold, for wood-sticks in dirt. It all has to do with that wretched carbon tax which won't save the world from anything that does not exist...
Those doing the whale-watching of course also blast the anti-whalers with loads of venom, like they did in the past about Greenies saving trees in forest, when the North Shore Siders had plenty of them in their acreage. Anti-whaling gives the nation a bad name to our friends in Japan. Should the North Shore Siders be in charge of the coast guards, they would put these pirates in prison, or sink them whichever came first... Yes, some glorious ancestors of theirs might have been a commercial whaler — hence the family fortune.... Who knows...
But on a morning like today, the 12th of the twelfth, 2012, when one looks up at the sky, one can feel a tinge of global warming.. unless it's my rotten knees indicating an unsettled weather... The humidity through the night was around 99 per cent — no rain but heavy dew... The temperature is not high, just weird in the mid range. The planes on landing  are creating their own moving clouds, as the dew point was low. The disturbance of the air below the low clouds was enough to create another cloud as if attached to the plane. But this is not enough to tell us that things are not quite right and even if climate change was happening, it would not be an anthropogenic global warming anyway — on the North Shore... 
Even the North Shore had its first few threatening bush fires of the season. If one looks around, most lawns are parched dry despite the humidity in the air... Some normally resilient plants get leaves burnt by the sun on a hot day... It does not rain much. Elsewhere in the world, glaciers are melting faster than ever...
Presently, Sydney weather is strongly influenced by the south east coast current, running around 24 degrees... The cold air from the south picks up moisture and heat from the surface, but being "too warm" this southerly wind that would normally drop the temperature to below 21 degree C and form a southerly "buster", cannot do so... It often fizzles before getting there. Because the energy in the air has become nearly tropical in nature... Too much confused warm energy in the air and the clouds stay low and fuzzy instead of shaping up into a front... Except last weekend when the unusual strong wind vas blustery and whirly for two days, but still no rain despite a small drop in temperature. Too warm. El Nino is having a hell of a time getting a foothold, despite all the factors being in place. The humidity combining with EL Nino makes it behave like a warmish dry La Nina... Weird...
Now the wafty clouds have disappeared and the sun is shinning. The North Shore is back on track for a brilliant day at the beach... Global warming is thus far from the mind of the North Shore-siders... They know how to make serious money (and lose it too) but they know zilch, nada, nothing, niet about global warming apart from repeating the mantra that "global warming is crap"... Some of them might venture to say that the "science is not settled on the subject" as a way to shut the argument...
Global warming does not exist on the North Shore. And if it did, a few more degrees would make the place, the North Shore, become like Queensland... Beautiful one day, perfect the next...
And Tony is on track to be the king of the castle... Everything is great in the North Shore paradise.
Except the North Shore Siders are gloomy. They have been told to be gloomy by Tony...
I would despair if I was not determined to show the proper science over and over until my knuckles hurt...
Meanwhile, on a day that Peter Slipper's case was thrown out of court (12/12/12), as "a politically motivated case" to put it mildly, one can smell the little rat droppings on the North Shore will try another stunt soon to debase the Labor government...
Gus leonisky