Short Kicks: Whoa-oh, onion skin

Still snowed under with work, so no time for longer pieces.

- I presume no domain expertise on Aboriginal matters so I can only sit back in my chair while reading pieces like this from the Oz or this from Piping Shrike, One aside from the Shrike stood out for me, though:

By the Martin Place siege, Abbott was toning down the cultural warrior rhetoric, which he could while his main threat was Turnbull. Now in attempting to cling on to right support against a more serious rising threat from Morrison, he has speeded up again.

Yep, that appears to me to be a pretty cutting summation of Federal politics at the moment, as the Christian/Tory wing of Eric Abetz and Kevin Andrews is suddenly the only constituency that Tony Abbott cares about, as it's the factional key to a Scott Morrison succession.

- The Clive 4 Eva bandwagon has its wheels on fire, rolling down the road. He only has himself to blame. If I was an American lefist blogger here I might start railing about the double standard in the media, in that Abetz and Hockey don't get nearly enough scrutiny for their near complete lack of negotiating skills to get the 2014 budget through the Senate. Journos seem to be giving them somewhat of a pass as an indirect commentary on the quality of the independents. How Abbott must yearn for the prudent competence of Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott.

- Abbott ate a raw onion in front of TV cameras, brown skin and all. Who does that? Has that ever been a thing? Is he actually clinically insane by this point? What is the procedure for having the Prime Minister taken away by the men in white coats?

Short Kicks: The furniture is revolting

Still working hard on business stuff so no time for anything more than Short Kicks.

- As Piping Shrike rightly points out, the current leadership tension over Tony Abbott's increasingly woeful performance on so many issues is not going to have a happy ending for the Liberal Party. Backbenchers are leaking, journos are hyperventilating, it's #ruddmentum all over again. But as with the disappointing Rudd return, there is no thought that replacing Abbott with any of the clowns in the current front or back bench would lead to any different policy agenda. Perhaps getting rid of PPL and Abbott's other pet projects would be enough in itself. I doubt it. The only logic that works for the Libs at the moment is the same logic that they relentlessly mocked Labor for, in that they could write off the next election result but with a short term honeymoon poll bounce they could "save the furniture" by minimising the losses with a view to jagging the next one.

- As such, Abbott may look like a galah on the national stage on a daily basis but he is showing a some rat cunning regarding internal Liberal Party politics. His cabinet reshuffle seems to be focused mostly on making everyone else look bad in comparison to him, even though that is a negative-sum game. Sussan Ley has already been thrown to the wolves through the public humiliation of announcing the backflip on GP co-payments. Shifting Scott Morrison to Social Services is very shrewd, I think, because it means Morrison can wear all the blame for terrible decisions that Abbott makes as he tries to shaft his gray power voting base with tax hikes and welfare cuts in a vain attempt to balance the budget. Abbott has left Hockey as a shag on a rock for the most part during the failed budget negotiations, even though there have been leaks to try to pin blame for Abbott's dud policies on the PM. Turnbull is busy being shoulder-deep inside the Telstra cow, planting fiscal timebombs. Abbott has also allowed the media to scrutinise Julie Bishop without coming to her aid particularly, and since there's never been much substance there, that's a bad thing for Bishop's aspirations. Morrison is still the only hope for the Libs, but only if he makes a move before he gets too much of the Abbott stink on him.

- Meanwhile, though I got excited about Palmer populism last year, the cat of reality was quickly belled by Lenore Taylor and the public has reacted by abandoning PUP in the polls. Palmer has now stiffened up somewhat on other budget measures, but it's too late for his electoral fortunes as I suspect he has lost his chance to be the new face of people power. My analysis was not wrong as such, because the opportunity for Clive was real at the time - I merely overestimated him. Oh well, what can you expect from a billionaire. If only we had an Elizabeth Warren type in the Australian parliament.

Short Kicks: Je suis occupé

Not much time for blogging as work has me flat out like a lizard drinking, having launched CricketFan as the first addition to the FanSports Network (which had previously only consisted of FanFooty) and shortly to officially add FanLeague. Time for some short kicks!

- The Charlie Hebdo story has been done to death elsewhere. I had a blog post brewing in my mind which would have mentioned the word "arsehole" about 250 times, because my opinion is that the fact that some Islamist arseholes blew some French arseholes away for being arseholes has drawn a predictable response from libertarian arseholes in their seemingly unstoppable campaign to Let Arseholes Be Arseholes should not mean that non-arseholes should give in to any of the arsehole-aligned factions. I was also going to draw some allusions between the childishness of Charlie Hebdo and the English tradition of Private Eye and Viz of publishing obscenity as a kind of white privilege - back in the 1960s they might have been fighting a real battle against power and privilege, but by now that sort of thing is just kicking down. That post will never be written now, as I haven't the time. I'm sure you're all sad about that.

- What is Henry Ergas doing writing about Islamism? He's an economist of some renown (or some previous renown). His competency is not acting like every other hack political commentator. I know Krugman freelances a lot in his columns, but at least he maintains some semblance of aloofness from the culture wars.

- Saw the third Hobbit movie. Was disappointed that the film rather squibbed on the fate of the gold. There was an opportunity for a Pikettyesque narrative about the 99% rising up against the elite to bust open the trove of hoarded wealth and kickstart a new era of prosperity with some good old-fashioned redistribution. Instead, we were treated to a string of sequences of the mayor's sidekick Alfrid acting all craven and covetous, over and over, as an impossibly crude parody of the bourgeoisie. It was a middling attempt at lowbrow humour, a classless dig at the middle classes of Middle Earth.

Short Kicks: The People's Hamstring

- ASADA have convinced Cronulla Sharks players to take a plea deal to admit guilt over the Stephen Dank drug saga, which means they only miss the remaining few weeks of the current NRL season. The amount of games they will miss is equivalent to that if they all injured a hamstring. On one hand, ASADA gets to claim a victory and focus on the club giving them most resistance, in Essendon. On the other hand, the "win" is about as hollow as the head of an average Sharks player. Unfortunately for Essendon fans, the EFC hierarchy are unlikely to be offered such a deal because of their intransigence. Even if such a deal was put forward, they most likely wouldn't accept it because it would mean the sainted James Hird would have to be rubbed out for life, and captain Jobe Watson would have to lose his Brownlow Medal. The sideshow of the current Essendon court battle is only a distraction before we get to the third act in that tragedy.

- Bill Shorten has addressed all the rumours about being the Senior Labour Figure at the centre of rape allegations, which have now been confirmed as never going to go anywhere. While the media are asking questions of every Labor politician who bobs his or her head up today, the only real remaining question is whether the media is going to pursue the story well beyond its nominal shelf life, in particular by airing the allegations directly from the woman herself. Who am I kidding? After the Gillard era, nothing is too grubby for the "mainstream" media to run with.

- Liberal Party failure John Hewson is now advocating for a Tax Commission, to remove powers to set fiscal policy just as the RBA was created to stop the National Party dictating monetary policy from Cabinet. This would be a complete abrogation of responsibility by the Australian political class, an admission of incompetence on a grand scale. Just because Hewson can't explain GST on a birthday cake doesn't mean we should abandon the ongoing search for a politician who can build consensus for reform. It is all too easy to look at the gradual degradation of the skill level of our politicians at a federal level and conclude that economics should be left to the wonks. Even if the Tax Commission was a paragon of Keynesian orthodoxy, that ideology must be leavened with healthy doses of democracy lest it become just another tool of unaccountable elites.

Short Kicks: Is everybody happy?

- On one hand, we have the right saying that the market will decide so we don't need anti-discrimination laws to prevent gays having weddings in Arizona from being denied service by cake bakers. On the other hand, we have the market deciding that anti-gay discrimination is bad in Boston as the beer industry sides with its customers in gay bars, yet the right is up in arms in horror at the supposed misuse of market power. Which is it, wingnuts?

- The backlash of snark (snarklash? backsnark?) against the New New Media continues, with Wonkette making fun of Vox.com's launch video featuring Matt Yglesias in an admittedly terrible Happy Hammond style tartan blazer, Ezra Klein slammed for hiring a self-hating gay columnist clickbaiter, and Balloon Juice fact checking Nate Silver's allegorical use of a fox as FiveThirtyEight's new logo. The unresolved sexual tension is getting rather steamy in the Web media industry in America at the moment, leading up to the launch of these new titles. Pity we don't have anything like that happening in Australia - chatter about the Saturday Paper since its launch seems to have disappeared.

- Stephen Koukoulas is still swinging the cudgel lustily on behalf of his prediction that the economy is going to turn around and rate cuts will happen this year, maybe as early as May, and he's had plenty of material to work with from recent economic data. His prediction is that in 12 months' time, interest rates will be a full point higher and the Aussie dollar back at parity. That set of numbers would have major implications for the Australian economy as our manufacturing base would continue to be hollowed out, which would blow out budget expenditures. Would revenue bounce back, though? Only if Joe Hockey raises taxes, and/or closes loopholes like the Double Dutch/Irish lurk used by Google, Apple and other multinationals. Given that this government's policy is evidently to do absolutely nothing until they get a mandate after the next election, I would advise not holding one's breath.

Short Kicks: Hockey kicking buttocks for Keynes

Another week where I'm hard at work on my other commitments, so only time for a short roundup. Not that I'm trying to compete with Homer!

- Joe Hockey wants the other G20 nations to engage in Keynesian stimulus so that he can implement austerity in Australia and not have it plunge the domestic economy into recession. We have benefited from China's stimulus during the latest resources boom, and Hockey can see the terrible effect it would have on the nation if it was scaled down at the same time as the high Australian dollar continues to cudgel manufacturing. This is a classic example of talking one's own book; then again, it's rare for a politician not to do so. Judith Sloan feigns ignorance of Hockey's motives, but she knows that Hockey is a Keynesian. The "age of responsibility" palaver from Hockey is a crock, he merely wants someone else to pay for his free lunch.

- Speaking of manufacturing, those blaming the carbon price or union demands for Alcoa's closure should read this, which details how the real reason is most likely cartel price manipulation.

- Mark Kenny points out that the WA Senate byelection would fall just after Hockey's first full budget, which is looking like a stinker. Fat chance of the Libs retaining those three Senators.

- I'm not the first person to say this, but how do you shoot someone in the buttock unless they are running away from you? Perhaps the Libs could take a leaf from the book of Turkey, which seems to know how to build refugee camps. (Yes, I know Manus Island was a Rudd initiative, but it's six months into this government already, at some point the Libs have to be responsible.)

- It was pointed out on Twitter that the last Liberal PM not to hold a royal commission into unions was John Gorton... so that's the last four. The previous one resulted in zero convictions. The witch hunting continues.

- Craig Thomson was found guilty of some of the charges against him, with sentencing due on March 18. I am tipping no jail time and a wet lettuce fine, as the pre-judgement comments by the judge regarding the flaws in the charges make the case ripe for appeal so there's not much that would stand up in a higher court. The question, as is so often the case in law, is whether Thomson will have enough money to pay for lawyers to achieve the correct decision.

Short Kicks: Br'er Abbott and the IR patch

Spending more time on work lately so don't have mental bandwidth for feature length posts on a single subject, or proper sentence structure. Dot point time!

- Tony Abbott's War On Workers continues apace, with a raft of rightwing lies about SPC's industrial relations which were summarily shut down by the company, the stupidity of Judith Sloan telling the orchardists to have a cow or two, and continuing with Paul Howes trying to come across all Hawkey-esque with talk of a grand bargain. Howes is playing Br'er Rabbit: please don't throw me in the IR patch! Only fools could pretend that Abbott has anything like the power and skill of Hawke to achieve anything like the Accord. While Howes looks like a shag on a rock, Abbott's swift repudation of any sort of deal with unions only highlights how little of substance he has to say on industrial relations.

- Regarding SPC, SPC is Shepparton in certain respects. I have relatives around the Goulburn Valley (I was born in Shep), and they tell me that the northern part of that region has been forgotten time and again due to it being so uncontested. Seymour is included in the Federal seat of McEwen so it gets some attention (bugger all really), but even in the regional movement in which Jeff Kennett failed but Steve Bracks succeeded for so long in state politics, the battlegrounds were always Bendigo and Ballarat, with Shep not featuring. There is no Cathy McGowan in that area, though Sharman Stone is being pushed to emulate her through her own party's abandonment. Now she knows how it feels to be a National MP.

- Tom Sizemore, so flakey that he spent most of his appearances on the Celebrity Rehab reality show obviously still on drugs, made up the story about Liz Hurley having an affair with Bill Clinton which was passed around the wingnut blogs... because he got high. Hillary is going to have a field day with this crap.

- The Kouk has been acting like a jackrabbit who found Sizemore's stash lately because he's got it in his head that the RBA are going to hike rates due to the economy heating up again, and he's excited to be going against consensus predictions. He is quoting insanely short-run market fluctuations as if it's a herald of the Second Coming. Koukoulas' theory seems to be that Joe Hockey has already nobbled Treasury and that Treasury's forecasts are significantly lowballing reality, which along with the RBA grant money possibly being refunded at an opportune moment, means that Hockey will be able to build some sort of war chest for the next election. Empirical testing of economic assumptions is always good, I suppose.

- Is it just me, or does anyone else not remember the dressup scene in Groundhog Day at all? Did the Australian censors cut it from all those times I watched it?

UPDATE: Stephen Koukoulas has confirmed the nature of his conspiracy theory.