I do not know the status of the donations to the Liberal (CONservative) Party in general nor on the Central Coast. But I must say an acquaintance was surprised to see that all the Liberal (CONservative) candidates he saw passing through or parked, had the same/similar van with the same/similar advertising on it.

The conclusion was that there was a "central" orchestration of campaign designed to maximise the visual impact. Nothing wrong with this. Very savvy. The only problem now is to make sure that all the funding for this campaign was kosher. (Photo supplied).

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From Der Speigel

A few journalists call News Corp "news corpse"... I often call it the merde-och press. We're all wrong. News Corp is an art form taken to the limit of insanity and distraction with brilliance...

As dawn broke over Australia's new federal budget on Wednesday, it found some interest groups reeling at the new and straitened circumstances under which they will henceforth be obliged to live.

Among the hardest hit are firebrand conservative columnists, whose crucial supply of rant fuel has been cut off abruptly by the newly released national fiscal blueprint.

"No surprises" they claimed... And as far as I am concerned there were no surprises. I knew these characters were lying to be elected and I knew the flow of lies would not stop ever after. 

It's only for those "swinging" voters who believed these dodgy farting politicians, that I feel sorry for. Yes, swingers, you were duped. You were bullshitted to. You were taken for a ride. You were being pissed on. You wuz robbed.

I knew they would.

Australia - From Le socialisme sans doctrines To A Corporatised Client-State

by George Venturini …..

from Mike Carlton …..

The Commonwealth Bank has been forced to reopen its compensation process for victims of shoddy financial advice provided by two of its planning businesses.

In politics one of the cheapest and most cynical things you can do is to stand far away from the scene of the crime – to leave the country while your deputy delivers bad news, to let underlings do the sackings, to pretend core responsibilities have nothing to do with you.

Forget inflation; forget the government bond rate. Treasurer Joe Hockey on Thursday morning injected a new price measure into the political lexicon: the Middy Exchange Rate (MER).

It's amazing how much stuff that's unremarked on in Australia (let alone Adelaide) can be found by googling "defenSe" and not by our own spelling.  I can't find local reporting of a US Congressman serving on the Armed Services Committee visiting Adelaide last February, but the jaunt has raised eyebrows "back home".  It was written up in the Washington Examiner as "the most expensive privately funded trip on record".

On what was (across the dateline) Valentine's Day in the US, Congressman Mike McIntyre and his wife arrived in South Australia for a week-long visit.  The trip was paid for by South Australia's Defence Teaming Centre, an industry organisation that liases with the State Government run defence department DefenceSA.  DefenceSA is run by Mr Andrew Fletcher, who served as Halliburton's Global Vice President for Infrastructure during the early Iraq war years.

Tony Abbott is dishonest 

A political staffer who set up the alleged NSW Liberal Party slush fund Eightbyfive wrote a false corruption complaint against senior public servants under an assumed identity, the Independent Commission Against Corruption has heard.

Palmer United Party leader Clive Palmer has called on the government to take its harsher budget measures to an election.

He declared the GP co-payment and pension changes were not matters for negotiation and there was no chance his party would support them.

In an interview with ABC TV on Wednesday, Mr Palmer also predicted that the Prime Minister would not call an election if he could not pass his budget measures.