What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

I see the pretty knitters are still letting what’s left of their lives ebb into the ether.
Some of you are bright enough to know it even if the messenger is a little shit.
All perspective is lost if you fixate and less is more simply because it has more punch. All this handbag at twenty paces stuff is nonsense, puerile and very unbecoming.

I apologise for being a jerk at times but I am very frustrated. I looked at posts from 2011 and even though there were psychos even then, there was humor and playfulness and far less bickering.

There are a number of problems going on here. We have a hard core group of posters who’s positions from the Middle East to free speech and everything in between are entrenched and even if JC descended and said otherwise people on any side of any debate would not be convinced (those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still as Mother would say).

The other hurdle is that many of them are very intelligent, have very long memories and have all day, every day to argue their case.
Unfortunately for the rest of us who are just trying to find a bit of truth amongst all the sparkling propaganda (let’s face it, most of it is), it becomes difficult to discern what is truth and what is opinion parading as fact.

The other glaring thing about some of the regulars is the hypocrisy inherent in the way they conduct themselves. They rail against the tactics used by the MSM but they have not only absorbed the tactics but ape them at every turn.
They refuse to see that they themselves are a clique and a claque that flatter each other and studiously bolster the ramparts that hold them afloat from day to day.
Interlopers are viewed as Icarus types who will be sent to Coventry if they dare challenge the prevailing orthodoxy.
Personally, I think I understand what is going on here. There are a lot of people on here who are lonely and bored who would be devastated if this blog were taken away from them.
Hence the ferocious border protection policies that go something like this- “Hi Dorie, welcome aboard. Gee Dorrie, don’t know if I agree with that. How long before Dorrie falls underneath the PB bus lol”. It has become their lifeline and they will defend it with every bit of gumption they possess.
This is problematic on so many levels I don’t know where to start.
Frankly there are about 20 regulars who should take a very long holiday.
Imagine being invited to William’s house for a party and being sat next to one of them. They talk and talk and talk and manage to say nothing (except of course about how wonderfully intelligent they are), talk over the top of each other and eventually hurl the simplest and most embarrassingly unoriginal insults at each other at the top of their voices for the entire evening.

The other more temperate guests (lurkers all),try to lighten the evening with a joke but it is immediately wrung though the post modern and entirely humorless mincer of Medusa’s molars.
The club consists of a group of people who are lamentably puffed up by being the first to report a tweet or an ‘update’ or god knows what from the 24 hr news cycle.
Some of them are so desperate for praise that they will stay glued to 79 news feeds just to be cyber patted and and clucked over by all the other headless PB chooks.

I think the blog deserves better than this. There are many people who lurk and occasionally post astonishingly beautiful things but they are drowned out by the loud mouthed and excruciatingly boring bullies who don’t know that they are bullies and refuse to shut up.

Of course, they couldn’t do this in practice because to have done so would have shattered the unity of the coalition base and nearly as bad, they’d have had to do the hard work of policy specification consulting that disrupted base and all of its sub-factions. The coalition would not have been able to stay united for 2 hours let alone 2 years

Fran’s been reading my blog! Knew I’d get through to you

So, WWP, after having proof read the above I probably haven’t answered you properly. I’m afraid my propensity to waffle overides most things in my life ….I apologise and hope you don’t find this as stupid a comment as you proffessed Confessions@708 to be.

No I think confessions enjoys saying silly things about Rudd, that post I largely agree with. Sadly in Labor we have many more Howse and the Catanias they raise up, and very few Gallops and Hawkes.

Did Newman leave Brissie Council a hero ?

No. I think he was generally despised as an arrogant turd.

Murdoch & Abbott knew it too. Fran B has uttered a great truth there.

Possum did a fairly comprehensive study of Poll house bias last year which you may want to check out.

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2012/11/11/trends-the-horserace-and-random-numbers/

Turnbull approached Labor many years ago to join the party, but even then they said no thanks.

Yes, I was aware of that. IMO there’s more similarities between Turnbull and Rudd than there are between Turnbull and Keating.