What a shameful man he is.
Steele Redux,
You are way more shameful & embarrassing to this country. People from overseas reading your posts must think Australia is really upside down.

Dear Leo Lane,

How is it going young lad. You are one bloke who always brings a smile to my face on this forum.

And I will admit there is something a little gutsy about popping over here from your usual AGW threads where having your pants around your ankles is your raison d'etre. Your eagerness not to disappoint with a claim in your second post here that “Abbott never used the term “died of shame”” is applauded.

Beautiful work my friend, simply beautiful.

It is hard to shake an image of you on your shiny trike beetling over from the other sandpit with your little bell tink tinking crying 'Look at me, look at me!'.

Anyway welcome.

Steele, you're talking through your hat. Abbott punching a wall near a woman appears to be a fabrication. The left called for Pauline Hanson to be punished for her views, does that make them misogynist? Abbott didn't connive to keep women out of his cabinet - he just didn't have many to choose from. He had no problems making his friend Bronwyn Bishop speaker.

I've met a number of the women that Abbott has worked with, like Kerry Jones, and there is no way he is a misogynist. They still have close confidential relationships with him.

If you're going to try to hang Abbott because of his comment about women ironing, then why not criticise Paul Keating for similar comments he made, if that is your test of a misogynist?

The whole misogynistic slur is a left set-up and typical of what I'm pointing at. You won't find anything to approach it from the right.

DavidK, if you look at this thread it's got plenty of participants from all sides. In fact, I think the left have been piling on towards the end. Even Poirot has returned to the fray.

I set OLO up as it is because I thought politics was dangerously divisive 15 years ago. It's got worse, as evidenced by false claims like the one you've made. I hoped OLO might bring people closer together, but you all come here with preconceived positions to brawl.

Graham,

".... I hoped OLO might bring people closer together, but you all come here with preconceived positions to brawl."

It's odd then that you would begin your article thus:

"If you want to know how the left in Australia thinks, then check out Twitter. It will also explain the slow degradation of Australian political reporting into gotcha exposes and personal slurs"

Straight away you're impugning the "left" by linking their behaviour to " the slow degradation of Australian political reporting", etc.

Strange way to bring the sides closer together.

You say...

"We're asked to believe that Abbott is too stupid and inept to be our Prime Minister, despite successfully bringing down two PMs."

Abbott is the leader. He's a prime focus, and I don't believe "progressives" think he's stupid and inept. I believe they consider him awkward, deceitful and lacking in real vision - apart from a puppet-like persona beholden to and guided by his masters.

It's (apparently) easy to lie your way to power, especially with the assistance of Murdoch. But it's not so easy to maintain the charade once the lies are exposed and your actual agenda turns out to be the polar opposite of your pre-election spiel.

That's the kind of operation Abbott and his cohorts represent - not merely a backsliding on commitments here and there, but a "government" agenda that bears almost no resemblance to the spiel delivered ad nauseam when in Opposition.

Is it any wonder that people would choose twitter to share information and opinion after the electorate was shafted in such a manner?

......

Leo Lane,

"579 is no better, seeing value in making baseless allegations against Abbott, of lying, while he lies himself about a non-existent promise of a double dissolution"

Non-existent, eh?

What's this then?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/tony-abbott-says-hell-call-double-dissolution-if-carbon-tax-isnt-repealed/story-fn59niix-1226309463036

And...

"... Abbott is accused of breaking promises. There is no basis for accusing him of lying."

There is every basis to accuse Abbott of lying - and not just lying, but wholesale deception of the electorate prior to the election.

<<the left in Australia …[and] the slow degradation of Australian political reporting into gotcha exposes and personal slurs>>

Spot-on, Graham.

It cuts against the egalitarian nature of most Ozzies which makes us want to say that no side as worse than the other – but few could survey politics in Oz (or academia for that matter) and not reach the conclusion that those on the left side of politics are the worst offenders

And we need look no further than olo where some were ranting and raving even before Abbott was sworn in.

The hypocrisy of the leftists just defies belief. Just to remind you, you guys are the ones who believe
a) there's nothing wrong with politicians lying to get into government "There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead". Remember? According to you guys, that's perfectly justified? Hypocrites!
b) people have no right to be free of unlimited government power. That's what you keep arguing against me for, remember? According to you, you have no right to criticise Abbott; because government automatically represents "society", and if you criticise it, you're an "anarchist". Take a dose of your own medicine!

We need to understand that intellectual dishonesty is in the very DNA of leftist thought, which is why their arguments are always, without exception, nothing but double standards, logical fallacies, ad hom and hypocrisy. Ever since Karl Marx was completely unable to refute the classical economists to the effect that the division of labour makes society wealthier, he made his whole argument depend on ad hominem, as the left still and always do. There is no need to deal with the actual rational arguments, to disprove them by reason. It is sufficient to unmask one's opponent as a class enemy.

That is what the left does, and that is all the left does, except that they instead of just saying "bourgeois" they have added to their armoury of abuse such anti-rational insults as "sexist" (always used in an irrational way to assume the equality of the sexes, advantage women and abuse men), and "denialist" (assumes what they can't prove except by appeal to absent authority).

Asked to actually provide reason, all we get is endless evasion and repetition of logical fallacies. Ho hum, same old, same old.

Their very participation in discussion is a self-contradiction since, according to them, the argument is to be settled by force of their god the State, your right to freedom is laughable, so why even bother with rational argumentation or ethics?