Graphical Manipulations #35: Budgets, A Letter, Calibre, Emergencies, Contemplative Moments & Sheep!

So Wayne Swan delivered a budget that was fairly unremarkable and actually took some middle-class welfare away from the middle-class and everyone else and what was remarkable was that the populace (apart from theobligatory whines from vested interest groups) was generally favourable of his budget!  In a country full of whiney, whingey Hanranhan’s, who would have guessed!  Surprise at the response led to this;

The budget was followed, a few days later, by Phoney Tony Abbott’s response.  I was particularly impressed by the NO Coalition loading up the general public area with supporters who cheered and clapped at every utterance of the Leader of the Opposition.  As a budget reply it left much to be desired, long on slagging and short on detail.  As a campaign speech it left much to be desired, long on promissory notes and short on trustworthiness.  And that led to this;

And that naturally led to memories of ‘women of calibre’ and then to ‘calibrations of man’.  It didn’t take much to take those thoughts to this;

And that bought a reminder of Phoney’s claim that we had a ‘budget emergency’ caused by that naughty, ‘can’t manage the economy’ Labor party.  But it seemed that his emergency was somewhat different;

Those promises given about there being no surprises with all the sincerity of a rattlesnake heat seeking the desert mouse before the kill led to this;

Naturally, thinking of mus musculii led to thoughts of rattus rattus [a natural progression when thinking of the Opposition].  And cheerful rats came to mind;

And again;

And, surprisingly, again;

Alas, thoughts turned once again to patinas of platitudes hiding nasty surprises and this was the result;

And all of this drew a recollection from a hedonistic university passed of booze and powerful music and a recollection of my favourite group Pink Floyd, their album ‘Animals’ and the piece designated ‘Sheep’.  Nicely descriptive of how the NO Coalition views the voter I thought, leading to this;

 

And so there we have it!  Leaving you with the usual postscript . . . . . . !

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• Graphical Manipulations #31: Con Jobs, Fools, Bigots, Liars And A Touch of Gilbert & Sullivan! (deknarf.wordpress.com)
• Graphical Manipulations #32: Strategy, Gonski, Drones And, ‘The Day Of The Billboards!’ (deknarf.wordpress.com)
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Graphical Manipulations #34: Calibrated Women, Airports, Policies & Laborious Dilemma’s!

The previous week of Wayne Swan and various Labor politicians looking serious about the need to trim back the deficit and Phoney Tony Abbott and various NO Coalition hyperbolic’s telling us that Labor had ‘lost the plot’, and that the ‘world was about end and disappear into a fiscal black hole’, and ‘we’ll have to wait to be open about our policies until we see the state of the budget’ really did need a pressure breaker!  And Tony Abbott was only too happy to oblige with his inept phrasing ‘women of calibre’ while talking about his parental leave which, apparently, he is the only one ’wrapt’ with such a Rolls Royce policy!  The business community seems wholly disproving about paying for it, but I doubt we’ll see much of a hue and cry and advertising blitz decrying it!  Unlike the mining tax hoo ha!

But nevertheless, our thanks to Phoney for giving us an entry point into a bit of graphical manipulation.  A poster seemed an adequate way to try and discern the true meaning of what represents a ‘woman of calibre’.  So there’s this;

And then a consideration of the word ‘calibre’ which gave us: 1. The diameter of a cylindrical body, especially the internal diameter of a tube or the bore of a firearm; 2. The diameter of a shell or bullet; 3. Ability, distinction (as in a ‘musician of high calibre’) and 4. Personal character (as in a [wo]man of high calibre).  From Old French, via the Italian calibre, from the Arabic galib = a shoemaker’s last, mould.  So there you go.  And the general militariness of the word led, naturally, to this;

That was followed by imagining who might be calibrated in the NO Coalition and Julie Bishop came immediately to mind;

Leading naturally to the antithesis of ‘calibre’ which gave rise to this;

Turning back to the week’s proceedings was the ire raised by the continued obfuscation and badgering about, ‘passing the buck’ and umming and awing about the site of the next airport in Sydney.  There’s been enough reports on the airport issue to paper a full scale model Airbus A 380!!  The angst gave rise to this;

And that turned to policies or the lack of them from the NO Coalition (of course) giving rise to;

And to the NO Coalitions release of their Industrial Relations policy when you don’t want people to know what is ‘actually’ in the policy;

And finally, despite managing to run a minority government to full term (probability 92%), hold together the disparate interests of the Independent and The Greens, and to actually get some decent stuff into legislation.  As well manage the economy reasonably well whilst the Global Financial Crisis continues to wreck economies world-wide, you have to wonder why, whatever Labor does, it just can’t get clear air.  And such thoughts led to this;

PS: I do try to be bipartisan but it’s a bit hard when you think that the NO Coalition will bring recession to Australia, when we are well positioned to take the opportunities from the GFC recovery – see graphic below!

 

And so there we have it!  Leaving you with the usual postscript . . . . . . !

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• A woman of calibre? Yeah, bite me, Tony (cateswannell.com)
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• Abbott attacks ‘Labor waste’ but doesn’t offer own savings (abc.net.au)
• Abbott facing revolt over paid parental leave (abc.net.au)
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Graphical Manipulations #33: Leftovers, TV Interviews, Dud Jets, Dud Gents & Portents!

Apparently, Australians have ‘switched off’ from the political toing and froing with more than a third having ‘little’ or ‘no interest’ in the forthcoming election.  Well it is four months away! And, in the national survey by Melbourne University, (so the survey of 1,000 people was done country-wide or just in Melbourne?) found most (interesting number ‘most’) believed that the quality of leadership and tone of the debate is worse than usual (another fuzzy paradigm).  And, what’s worse, 70 percent lack confidence in the Federal government, including almost half of Labor voters ( so is that half of 5, or 10, or 500, or 1,000)  All I can say is that they don’t appear to acquire and analyse data as I was taught once upon a long time ago.  Maybe statistics has changed since then, maybe?  So the punter (sorry!  A Waterhouse slip there), voter has turned off the boring, negative, hyperbolic, ‘we’ll do it better’, abusive, smarmy, bigoted, sniping which represents the political discourse today?  Well, who could blame them!  Anyhow back to the raison d’être of the Graphical Manipulation.

Obviously, in the anxious rush to stick the last of GM’s up on WordPress one of the graphics got left behind.  So here it is;

The word ‘BAD’ stirred thoughts of bad interviews and why an interviewer like Leigh Sales of the ABC would, generally, be aggressive and interruptive when interviewing Labor politicians and yet, when it came to that much anticipated Tony Abbott interview, allowed him to actually finish his sentences without interruption and then ask the next question in a polite tone?  Food for thought that one, which led to this;

Thinking of the antithesis of simpering and whimpering induced a quantum leap to growling and the enlightenment that the next batch of unbelievably expensive aircraft we would be receiving from the good ole US of A would come accompanied by ‘Growler Technology’.  The mind boggled and produced this;

Expensive aircraft, growling, air superiority naturally induced strong feelings about that supposedly brilliant (and ultra-expensive) piece of as yet not quite, but nearly there, sometime, well pretty soonish, give or take a century, aircraft the JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER!!  Thanks to John Howard for committing us to what looks like being a very expensive piece of dud airframe which reflects this view;

Expensive (well the suits are), duds, lacking real strike capability led, without much of a stretch to this;

And, given that another of the NO Coalitions many duds can actually ride a bike, to this;

Such thoughts devolved into thinking of the vapid and vacuous, the lack of substance and led to this;

Naturally this led to NO Coalition leftovers from the Howard Trauma and bold plans for a bright Australian future, and brought forth this;

And finally, such reminiscences led to dark thoughts and grim portents which ended up looking like this;

 

And so there we have it!  Leaving you with the usual postscript . . . . . . !

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Graphical Manipulations #32: Strategy, Gonski, Drones And, ‘The Day Of The Billboards!’

It’s the last day in April and the month has left with barely a whimper.  May awaits bringing with it, in all probability, more of what amused, intrigued, and bemused us in April!  Innuendo, rumour, promissory notes, lots of facts all lost and looking for a home as the NO Coalition continues its sloganeering, disingenuous journey to the next election.  In such circumstances electioneering strategy comes to the forebrain and one begins to wonder just exactly what battle plan our illustrious ultra-conservative, free-marketeering carpetbaggers have in store for convincing the voter that their little world vision brings great promise of being ‘comfortable and relaxed’!  Now where have I heard that before?  So I thought that the Liberal National Party Coalition strategy might look something like this;

 

Strategy, voters and gullibility brought about thoughts of education, and that led to Gonski proposals for an education revolution in Australia.  Better educated, literate children leading to better educated, literate and thinking adults?  Now wouldn’t that be great for Australia, both in the social welfare and well-being of the populace and a vibrant, flexible economy!  Well, NO! Not from Phoney Tony Abbott’s perspective who shoved out one of his usual one sentence utterances.  And that led to thinking about what was said and what might have been meant if Tony Abbott had decided to expand on his one liner erudition and not vanish after delivering his ‘in brevis’ view of such a significant moment in history.  It came out something like this;

After Tony’s enlightenment on the value of the Gonski reforms one usually awaits the emergence of his chattering party negatives to add even more negativity to the debate.  And that lead to thinking about NO Coalition drones.  And strangely that led to thinking about the bold statement of spending $1.5 billion on drones to patrol the Northern Oceans to protect our oil rigs and in their spare time watch out for those nasty little boats full of people invading our shores.  Just what the drones would do should they come upon such invaders remains a mystery – call for marine backup I guess or perhaps, rather than ‘turn back the boats’, sink them with a well placed anti-personnel missile?  Anyhow such thoughts led to this;

And, of course, thinking of drones, boats and the subtle use of the billboard to get across a propaganda piece led to initially the one below, and then to a few other’s which I’ll let speak for themselves.  First off was this;

And that led to this;

And then to Abbott’s favourite word;

El Francaise and then el Oz;

And mysteriously monosyllaby to speechless nodding when asked about context in an interview;

And then to his latest piece of brilliant oration of about 9 minutes on the ABC’s 7:30 report;

And that really sums it up I guess!

PS:  A Twitterer kindly gave me the lead on the ‘ah’s’ but, unable to track back to the original Tweet, I underwent excruciating torture listening to the interview AGAIN to do a count!  I’m still recovering from the trauma of listening to Tony Abbott say it all AGAIN – and nothing changed!  Definitely not recommended listening from my perspective and very much akin to eating uni! (The word is Japanese for possibly the most undelectable dish you’ll ever get acquainted with – definitely an acquired taste).

 

And so there we have it!  Leaving you with the usual postscript . . . . . . Well, not quite!  With just a slight textual variation.  ‘Variations on a Scream’ perhaps?

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Graphical Manipulations #31: Con Jobs, Fools, Bigots, Liars And A Touch of Gilbert & Sullivan!

Oooooohhh!  I’m still as mad as hell about Malcolm Turnbull (Fraudbull) and Tony Abbott’s (Phoney Tony’s) disgustingly puerile attempt to provide Australia with a Fraudband not exactly second to none, but ranked around 70 to one with the rest of the world.  I’m even more annoyed that someone reputedly as intelligent as Fraudbull would debase himself to such an extent that he would knowingly present such a dud to the electorate, and try to be convincing whilst doing so.  Well you weren’t Malcolm, you weren’t!  Your squirming embarrassment whilst deliberately lying was blatantly evident in your body language.  As for Phoney calling you “Mr Broadband’?  Any other person would have hit him, fully prepared to suffer the consequences.  You suffered the ultimate insult from someone who quite obviously dislikes you intensely and you obsequiously accepted it.  Oh how the mighty have traduced themselves!  Anyhow, enough of the rant!  From the angst came this;

There was also the glad tidings that Barnaby Joyce is prepared to give up his Senate seat (well, possibly, potentially, perhaps, maybe, depending on the election outcome) and is the rump party of the NO Coalition, the National’s, representative for the New England electorate.  One hopes that the strength of Tony Windsor’s support gives him the election and consigns Joyce to history!  After listening to Barnaby’s rambling attempt at verbal coherence and folksy rationale as to why he was the best thing that New England would ever have, brought this to mind;

We also had Alan Jones doing his usual turn of pre-emptive bigoted nastiness in relation to the Boston bombings.  It doesn’t need much to set Alan going as he spew’s his nasty bigoted, misogynistic, righteous bile into the airwaves.  Trying to encapsulate the revolting nastiness of this person in a word led to this;

Such contemplations led, naturally, to thoughts about that scoundrel of scoundrels, Phoney Tony Abbott and his deliberate attempts to avoid engagement in any form of discussion or questioning of what he (and his NO Coalition) has planned for Australia should he become (perish the thought) Prime Minister post September 14.  Should that happen it will be a day of infamy!  ‘Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it infamy!!’ Sorry!  So, thinking of Tony, his general slipperiness, his policy vacuum and Gilbert & Sullivan’s humorous and farcical operettas gave rise to this (maybe Federal parliament is a G&S comic tragedy – worth a thought!);

Such post September 14 apocalyptic thoughts and the announcement that there might be some pain, just a little mind you, not too much, by Phoney “should” they become the next Federal government led to the next Graphical Manipulation.  I use Tony’s “should” advisedly since it is now quite apparent that the NO Coalition has already assumed government and is just waiting to occupy the government offices!  The Labor government is a ‘caretaker government’ for God’s sake!!  The ‘prepare for some pain’ statement led to this, and strangely to ‘Mack the Knife’.  No doubt a subliminal expectation of the slash and burn and knifings that will probably occur “should” the NO Coalition actually occupy the government offices;

Naturally such depressing thoughts brought about an overwhelming feeling of ineffectuality in the contemplation that I possessed only one (that’s 1) vote and, consequently, would be relying on a lot of other voters seeing the light (or the impending darkness and horror) and casting their vote for Labor!  Thoughts immediately turned back to that razor, but being of an optimistic mind and always carrying the thought that being somewhat of a ‘Candide’ things would naturally turn out ‘all for the best’, the black humour of the situation came to the fore and became this;

Followed by how you would respond to those who complained about voting NO Coalition;

And finally, how might we cope with three years of possibly the worst NO Coalition government ever in the worst of all possible times (sorry Mr Dickens!);

 

And so there we have it!  Leaving you with the usual postscript . . . . . .

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Graphical Manipulations #30: We’ve Been Rudded, Rhineharted And Fraudbanded! What’s Next?

Praise be the parliamentary break! Peace has reigned upon the land and the msm has been somewhat unhuffy puffy and has focussed more on reporting the news that creating it!  NB:  Henceforth the mainstream media will be uncapitalised as they don’t deserve the honour of capitalisation.  So, in the absence of the msm’s usual hype and breathless reportage, the mind has begun to wander again and think of other things, like how Kevin Rudd could make such a cock-up of his last chance at being our Oberfuhrer.  Such thoughts resulted in this;

The Archibalds (grandiose art of the grandioso and not so), naturally, came to mind in such circumstances and this was closely followed by the Bald Archies announcing their winner as a delightful bit of graphical expression by Warren Lane of Gina Rhinehart and daughter Ginia (doing a Marie Antionette?).  I’m sure I’ll be forgiven as Warren’s piece of art resulted in this piece of Graphical Manipulation;

For some reason Bald Archies and Gina led, in a totally unexpected way, to that expectant Oberfuhrer with Jesuit leanings, Tony Abbott (Phoney Tony to the cognoscenti) and his penchant for opportunism;

And that opportunistic streak in Phoney led naturally to his bold (but rather stupid) statement that Whyalla would cease to exist once the GREAT BIG CARBON TAX took effect.  One wondered what Whyalla would be thinking now? Maybe this;

And bold statements sans substance, Anthropogenic Global Warming, and the penchant for the NO Coalition to indulge in oppressing the working classes whilst saying loudly that they don’t brought to the fore once again, their bold visions, as well as a bit of wishful thinking on their behalf for September 14;

Strangely fire and brimstone led to the contemplation of other worldliness, and despite being of an atheistic bent, thoughts of godliness.  Media godliness;

And if there is indeed such a media God who would show their abject obeisance to such a one? Especially if they held your new job in the palm of their hand, or media perhaps;

Such a promise from a supplicant led to thinking about the NO Coalition’s alternative vision to that of Labor’s of an Australia with an advanced broadband communication and information system based on the most modern fibre technology, with something just a tad more, shall we say, mundane?  We could also say positively Luddite;

And after listening to, and watching, Malcolm Turnbull (now known as Mendacious Fraudbull) and the gormless Phoney Tony Abbott put forward the NO Coalition’s pathetic proposal for a piece of almost immediately obsolescent broadband service that would end up costing the user an arm and a leg for anything faster than a snail’s pace, led to this;

And after considering all the various discussions and comparisons of the two plans might I just add that my view that, ‘the NO Coalition is inhabited predominantly by the biggest bunch of Onanists that Australia has had the misfortune to be inflicted with’, has been totally confirmed!!  Probability of being right on that one: 0.9999999999 recurring!

Were I given to angry and frustrated outbursts at just what a bunch of retrograde thinking Mr Magoo’s you all were, I’d say that; ‘you are a bunch of Witless F**king W**kers!!’ So there!

 

And so there we have it!  Leaving you with the usual postscript . . . . . .

 

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Graphical Manipulations #29: The Pillock Chronicles II!

Well, as predicted last week  it didn’t get much more exciting this week, unless you consider the NO Coalition’s announcement of their slothful ‘kind-of internet broadband but not really’ important.  Well it’s important from the perspective of being a complete and utter backward looking joke in terms of looking into the future!  Really! Is that the best you can do?  So here are the Pillock Chronicles revisited (sans apologia to anyone)!

With a quick reminder.  Pillock: (noun, UK, mildly pejorative, slang) a stupid or annoying person; simpleton; fool.  Etymology – the orgin of pillock is believed to go back to the 16^th century meaning penis from the Norwegian word pillicock, presumably akin to the slang dickhead meaning inept fool. (Source: Wiktionary).  NB: I didn’t make the association, Wiktionary did!!

So, well start with this;

Followed by this;

And this;

With a little bit of this;

Plus this;

And an insensitive this;

And a knowledgeable this;

And insulting this;

And finally a totally crass this;

 

And so there we have it!  Leaving you with the usual postscript (well almost!) . . . . . .

 

 

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