Somehow I missed this when it came out in February. Presenting Ben Lee’s I Love Pop Music.

For those of you too lazy to watch even 30 seconds of a YouTube video because you’re doing something really important like drinking a chai latte, the lyrics go like this:

I love pop music, this is how we do it
It’s politics you can romance to
I love pop music, sprinkle sugar through it,
Philosophy that you can dance to

Inane, yes, but pretty typical for Ben Lee as anyone who caught his disease would know (not herpes, the song).

No, what sends this song into new unseen realms of awfulness are the spoken word verses:

The price of oil is at an all time high and rising,
Global warming threatens life as we know it on this planet,
And leaders have not committed to a plan of action on renewable energy,
The food crisis is currently affecting a hundred million people world wide.

No, really. Go and watch it. Instead of bringing public attention to these issues (global warming? what’s that?), as well as high-lighting the power of music to achieve things, he’s instead ended up making a mockery of these issues, pop music in general, and himself.

Something I’ve always noticed about Ben Lee is his videos always feature good looking young people who fete him like a god, presumably because no one likes him in real life. This video is no exception. What is the exception are the mindless call-and-response background lyrics. Pay attention to the words in brackets in the next verse:

There are over 6 billion people on this planet and not enough fresh drinking water (we’re in trouble),
Religious intolerance creating geopolitical instability (shine a light),
Politicians battling each other like professional wrestlers (ooh),
Further division is not the answer, division is not the answer

We’re in trouble? Shine a light?

A brief search reveals the album on which this song appears, The Rebirth of Venus, has been panned mercilessly worldwide with a slew of one-star reviews, from Uncut  to Slant magazines. And not just because it contains another song called I’m a Woman, Too.

GrodsReaders, what’s your favourite political song? My vote goes to This World Over by XTC. What’s yours?

On the phone to a mate just now. While we were talking I heard the sounds associated with gathering keys, wallet etc., closing the front door, and walking down the street. A couple of minutes later the background noise increased dramatically as he walked into a shop. Pausing mid-sentence, my friend said, “Excuse me, Scott,” before holding the phone away from his mouth and saying to somebody else, “Large latte, please.”

Tossing and turning in my bed last night, I had an epiphany – why doesn’t GrodsCorp use its blogging reach for good? Why always so down on the Liberal party? It’s the Leftist way to support the underdog, and there is no bigger underdog than Christopher Pyne.

It’s not just that his website is at the lamely rhyming www.pyneonline.com, or that the first thing that assaults you on the site is a pop-up box demanding that you keep in touch, and totally friend him on Facebook. It’s clear he needs help. He wants to be leader, but he’ll never do it on his own.

Malcolm Turnbull hasn’t helped things by handing him a dud portfolio like Shadow Minister for Education, Training and Apprenticeships. Turnbull is obviously threatened by Pyne’s oration skills and animal magnetism, and why shouldn’t he be? Pyne is the only sitting member of Parliament with the ability to grab the Liberal party by the balls and return it to its former glory – you know, lying about asylum seekers throwing children overboard, sending us off to war based on phoney evidence, putting value back in the pound, that sort of thing.

So right now I would to announce my campaign to make Christopher Pyne leader of the Liberal party. He deserves it, and Australia needs it.

What you can do:

Write letters: write letters to all the major newspapers talking up Christopher Pyne’s record of whatever it that he does. Be sure to mention his steely glances and come-hither stare.

Send emails: Set up fake Christopher Pyne email address and badger Turnbull by email. Chances are he won’t tell the difference and will crumble instantly.

Join the Young Libs: For no other reason than the active social life (their Get Smart series 3 fundraiser was a huge success).

Phone talkback radio and repeat what you wrote in your newspaper letters. Chances are Alan Jones will hang up on you, but don’t let that stop you phoning in again under a Mexican pseudonym. If he tries to hang up again cry “racism!”.

Together, GrodsReaders, we can return the Liberal party to its glory days.

Peter Costello: gone but not forgotten.

It’s quite appropriate that Costello is displayed next to books about fear and chickens

Steve Fielding’s wife has written an article for The Punch.

In the article, Steve (via Susan) trots out all of the lines he’s being spewing into the media recently about looking at both sides of the story, the science not being settled, and pretty graphs presenting arbitrarily-selected data proving something or other (Tobias covers this in more detail over at Pure Poison.) But the most brilliant moment of deluded madness is this:

I briefly met Mr Gore at a breakfast in Melbourne attended by more than a thousand people. He was aware of the important role Family First plays in the senate and was keen to catch up.

After a series of phone calls I was met with a stonewall of resistance. I offered to meet Mr Gore at any place at any time but had no luck. Here we had the former Vice President of the United States, a self proclaimed climate change preacher running away from me over a few simple questions.

Don’t you know who I am? I am the leader of a Party of one that on the basis of 50,000 votes is holding the Upper House of Australia’s Parliament to ransom in a futile effort to get myself re-elected in 2010.

Steve’s just pissed off that he paid for dry cleaning for nothing.

Everything’s topsy-turvey.

One minute you’ve got Steve Fielding urging the prevention of divorce on the grounds that it worsens climate change …

We understand that there is a social problem (with divorce), but now we’re seeing there is also environmental impact as well on the footprint.

… but the next you’ve got Steve Fielding denying that climate change is even occurring.

And one minute you’ve got Tony Abbott flatly opposing gay marriage on the grounds that teh homos are unnatural, but the next you’ve got Tony Abbott resigning himself to gay marriage as long as traditional marriage is strengthened.

… a society that is moving towards some kind of recognition of gay unions, for instance, is surely capable of providing additional recognition to what might be thought of as traditional marriage … Even though [marriage] is probably the most important commitment that any human being can make, in fact there are many, many contracts which are harder to enter and harder to get out of than this one.

A cynic might suggest that these guys trot out any old argument they can find, regardless of whether they believe it, to force their religious beliefs onto others.

Mr Turnbull’s personal position is now the same, or worse, than Brendan Nelson’s when he was replaced as Liberal leader late last year …
– (source)

Last week I poked fun at Malcolm Turnbull’s seemingly-lame attempts to reverse his terribad polling figures by visiting Afghanistan and launching a debt trailer truck. This morning Mr Turnbull’s efforts were revealed to have been effective, leaving me with very serious egg on my face.

Satisfaction with the Leader of the Opposition lifted in the past two weeks after he spent a week overseas visiting Australian troops and a week in Perth attacking the Rudd government’s debt and budget deficit.

[...]

Last weekend, satisfaction with Mr Turnbull rose from 25per cent to 31 per cent, and dissatisfaction fell from 58 per cent to 55 per cent.

I apologise unreservedly to Malcolm Turnbull for ridiculing his campaigning methods.

In unrelated news, Andrew Bolt says that drawing conclusions from “changes that fall even within the margin of error” is “a waste of time and credibility”. What did The Australian ever do to Andrew to deserve such a scathing attack?

I’m happy to admit that I don’t fully understand climatic science or the technical arguments behind global warming. I’ve got a rudimentary understanding of science but I’m not qualified in such areas. I’m happy to admit that my scientific knowledge is open to scrutiny. I haven’t brainwashed myself, to the point of intellectual orgasm, that I’m some kind of home-baked expert on the topic. I freely admit that an education in the liberal arts is about as relevant to climatic science as, say, doing Year 12 in Werribee or a drama degree in Queensland.

An engineering degree might have more relevance – or at least it would if you’d actually done any engineering work since graduating in the early-80s, like our unrepresentative in the Senate, Steve Fielding. Lately Steve has risen from his near-sickbed after receiving Tamiflu for a case of almost-swine flu, to take up the cudgels of global warming scepticism. He’s probably just after a dinner date with Bolta, we’ll never know, but whatever the reason the Herald Sun is playing along. Today it bellows “This is why Al Gore’s wrong“ on Steve’s behalf and links to the pseudo-Senator’s own website. The reason? Steve has done found himself a graph – and it’s a purdy one – showing the correlation, or lack thereof, between rising CO2 levels and ’steadying’ global surface temperatures:

Ain’t that sweet? But is it true? According to the Herald Sun “the graph was used by the UN in its reports on the effects of climate change” but I had a quick search and couldn’t find it. OK, no sweat, it cites temperature data from two sources: the Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia. Was Fielding’s graph – or at least the temperature component of it – on their websites? Nope. Hmm.

So what do these places have to say about global surface temperatures? Here is the Hadley Centre’s summation of global average, land surface and sea surface temperatures. And here is the University of East Anglia’s. Each spans a longer timeframe than Steve’s 15-year snapshot, but nevertheless looks different to his Al-you’re-wrong graph.

In any event, doesn’t “air temperature anomaly” describe variations from the norm? All of the anomalies on Fielding’s graph are in the positive range, so if we accept this data as valid then all Steve has ‘proven’ is that global temperatures have risen less in some of the last 15 years. In 2008 it almost dipped down to average, but otherwise there’s been a steady increase of +0.3 or higher since 2001. The increase in global temperatures may have flattened out but global temperatures themselves have not returned to normal, in fact they more than a half-degree higher than when Steve Fielding was going through puberty.

I’m hoping Steve can pop around for a cup of rooibos tea and a Marie biscuit to explain to me where in his God’s name he got this graph, whether he thinks its title is deceiptful and if he genuinely believes it disproves a link between CO2 emissions and global warming. Just don’t bother dressing up as an inanimate object, and leave your Bible at home.

Chrissy Pyne loves himself the phrase “part-time Education minister”, concluding most of his poncy press releases with the Julia Gillard smear. His latest effort is no different:

“Hundreds of thousands of dollars are being paid to State Government appointed contractors. Quotes are being inflated beyond all reasonable levels. School communities are being regularly sidelined as faceless bureaucrats dictate what will happen in their schools

[...]

“It is clear that this Minister has a set against programs designed at empowering parents and local communities, and prefers giving money to state education department bureaucrats. We have now seen the waste and mismanagement that naturally follows.

“Australia deserves better than this part-time Education Minister.”

Pyne took some time out of his busy leader-of-opposition-business-and-lobbying-for-leadership schedule to write this press release; a press release that readily admits that the Howard Government’s school infrastructure program ($1.18 billion) was “more modest” than the Rudd Government’s school infrastructure program ($14.7 billion). But, you know, what’s a lazy thirteen billion clams between empowered communities?

Malcolm Turnbull, fresh from trying to distract people from his appalling polling figures by hanging around soldiers, has today tried to distract people from his appalling polling figures by developing solid policy in response to the biggest challenges faced by Australia and clearly articulating his party’s philosophical foundation.

Just kidding. He recycled a thirteen-year-old stunt and launched a debt truck.

Well, a debt trailer. Can’t Malcolm get anything right?

Just say you’re a political leader whose career is in serious (some say terminal) trouble after a self-inflicted couple of horror weeks in domestic politics, reflected by three simultaneously disastrous opinion polls. The winter break arrives to give you some welcome relief from the onslaught, a chance to lick your wounds, and the opportunity to regroup. So what do you do to try and reverse your fortunes? Work hard at developing policies? Grassroots campaigning?

Of course not. You visit the troops in Afghanistan for some nice pictures that aren’t at all a cynical attempt to boost your standing in the electorate by co-opting everything the soldiers stand for.

Here’s Malcolm arriving in Afghanistan wearing the sort of gear he needed last week in the House of Reps.

“Welcome to Afghanistan, Mr Turnbull. Mr Rudd’s office emailed to say you’re a dickhead.”

Of course, what’s a trip to the battlefield without a stirring speech to the troops, including a stunned Julie Bishop posing stupidly in the background and a random soldier staring at your arse?

“He must work out.”

And this photo was captioned by Malcolm’s press people as: “The Opposition Leader, The Hon Malcom Turnbull MP, shares a joke with Australian Defence Force personnel during his visit to bases in the Middle East and Afghanistan.” Your job is to caption the photograph with the joke being shared.

Have at it!

Tony Abbott debates policy using gut feeling.

Coalition frontbencher Tony Abbott says New South Wales is playing nanny state politics with its ban on smoking in cars when children are present.

[...]

Mr Abbott says the ban is over the top.

“I was a child that was regularly imprisoned in a car with heavy smokers,” he said.

“My parents both smoked heavily when I was a kid. Now has it done me any harm?

“You be the judge …”

Forget research, expert opinion and statistics, Tony’s fine so let’s legislate based on his personal experience.

Imagine you are a husky fellow of simple tastes and modest abilities. Imagine that, until now, you’ve been a long way back in the queue to the throne, but that suddenly the whole line of succession has been catastrophically blown up, leaving you as the heir apparent.

Where would you turn to find a precedent for your frightening situation? Could there perhaps be a work of cinematic art that might provide a way for you to understand your predicament?

Joe Hockey: The King Ralph of Australian politics.

Ahhhh, school holidays. You gotta love that feeling when you wake up on a Monday morning in the middle of the year and know you’ve got two lazy weeks while every other sucker is still at work. Thing is, you do tend to get bored during that fortnight if you’re not going away on holiday, so sometimes it’s nice to try and find a casual job to tide you over. With that in mind I got out of bed this morning, brewed a coffee, and got to browsing the job pages of backpacker networking site The Gumtree. And can you imagine my surprise when I found this ad:

It all made sense when I read this:

The Coalition and Malcolm Turnbull have received a devastating blow from the OzCar affair, with 53 per cent of voters saying they have a less favourable impression of the Opposition Leader as a result of it.

Mr Turnbull’s approval rating has plunged a massive 11 points while disapproval soared by 13 points in the Age/Nielsen poll taken on Thursday to Saturday. The Coalition’s two-party vote has slumped five points since May in the wake of Mr Turnbull’s call for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s resignation, which backfired spectacularly.

Even The Oz is anticipating Malcy’s political death.

Malcolm Turnbull’s political career has been smashed in just one week, and senior Liberals believe there could be moves within the party to remove him as Opposition Leader within days or weeks.

[...]

According to a Newspoll survey, conducted exclusively for The Australian last weekend, satisfaction with Mr Turnbull’s job as Opposition Leader has suffered the single biggest fall in the survey’s 25-year history. His position is now worse than Labor’s Mark Latham ever was and is at, or lower than, the levels of Brendan Nelson when he was dumped as Liberal leader to make way for Mr Turnbull.

Accordingly, the GrodsBook is now open. Leave in comments your prediction for the date on which Malcy will resign or be forced out of the Liberal leadership. The winner, being the person with the closest prediction, will win the Liberal leadership.