Who's the Leaker??

Ordinarily if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck it's probably a duck but this is the ALP so it's probably a deceased parrot. Kevin Rudd, who at one time was Laurie Oakes' cleaner almost certainly is not the phantom pisser. For one thing he's the obvious choice and more importantly he has nothing to gain. It would be a dumb thing to do and he isn't dumb. He's as evil as any of them of course but if he takes his revenge it will be from a great distance and it will be when they least expect it.
I subscribe to the theory that it's an elaborate attempt to frame Rudd and finish him off once and for all by the brilliant minds that brought you the NSW Government. The revelations so far haven't done any real harm but they've kept Rudd's name floating around with negative messages and made it easier for Julia to put hims aside after the election. Thus freeing up one senior cabinet post for one of the deserving string-pullers.
Marb Arbib thinks he's Graeme Richardson, well mate, I knew Graeme Richardson, I worked with Graeme Richardson and I'll tell you mate, you're no Graeme Richardson. He was good at that stuff and of course he was also working on behalf of peopole who had a vision for where they wanted to take the place, not just a wish to get their arses into the big white cars.
So my guess is it's Arbib and Bitar. Possibly with Simon Crean helping out with the cabinet stuff. You can bet Laurie is not making any of this up. I wonder what will come out next. So now doubt does the PM.

Election Latest zzzzzzz

The high spot of the election so far has been Julie Bishop's appearance on The Chaser. Julie is my favourite out of the two Bishop's in the Liberal Party. She gave a very good impression of a woman who actually has a sense of humour and fun...difficult to fake that and perhaps I've been misjudging her because she is otherwise pretty scary. Now that I've seen her give the death stare to a garden gnome (causing him to fall of the table and shatter) I won't be able to see it again without smiling. She should get out more.
The rest of it though has been just as dull as commercial TV. Political journalists reporting on the leaders debate presumably actually watched it from start to finish and all I can say is that they are worth more money and no wonder they drink. The bosses obviously have Julia drugged so that she just drones on and on and on about moooovving foooorrrward and goiiing fooooorward and the Austraaaaaaalian people, all of whom have surely nodded off by now.
Poor Tony is obviously pretty drug resistant so they've just tied him up and stuffed a wallabies scarf in his mouth. You can see from his eyes that he's busting to say things but he can't get it out. I've got a hint for them from The West Wing When the election was going badly for Bartlett one of his campaign team came up with the brilliant idea to "let Bartlett be Bartlett". It'll never happen of course, that was just TV. But if they were to let Abbot be Abbot they just might win. Of course he'd frighten a few horses on the way but the horses he frightens were never Liberal voters anyway.

Here's a picture of Penelope Plimpton. I'm a very slack grandfather because she's 6 weeks old and I've only just managed to put a picture on my blog, but her dad has more than made up for my slackness (see tassieblather@www.plimpton.org)
Barb and I went down to beautiful Tasmania to visit her last school holidays, I also managed to fit in two meals in three days at the Shipwrights Arms.

Election 2010
Labor will get back, possibly with a slightly reduced majority but if Abbot puts his foot in it again or fails to lock Eric Abetz in a dark well sealed room (perhaps with some nazi memorabilia to make him comfortable) for the duration of the campaign the Tories could do even worse.
This isn't to say that Julia and Co are the answer to anyones prayers but rather that the punters won't wake up to them quickly enough. Of course letting them back without any sort of punishment only reinforces their inclination to abandon all pretense of leadership in favour of poll driven populism. I remember one of our truly great leaders saying that leadership was not about tripping over TV leads in shopping centres, it wasn't about being popular it was about being right. He put his faith in the common sense and intelligence of the Australian electorate and look where that got him.
Julia's Labor party are putting their faith in the common sense and intelligence of the elctorate too or more correctly the absence thereof.
I hope plenty of people do punish them though by voting first for the Greens in the Reps and the Senate. People who vote green are smart enough to direct their preferences toward the overall outcome that they want and a big primary vote will make their preferences even more desirable next time. We also have a small chance of getting a Greens senator up in NSW with Labor preferences.
There are three leaders in this election. Two represent the political equivalent of Woolworths and Coles and the third represents leadership based on principled ideas rather than opinion polls. More power to Bob Brown I say. He's a national treasure
It's going to be a very long five weeks and Julia is making it very painful by using the dreadful expression "moving forward" several times a minute. I hated the phrase before it became the slogan so it looks like the CDs are going to get a big workout in the car because listening to the radio could provoke outbursts of rage.
I'll have more to say abut the Bob and Blanche saga when I stop throwing up.