The Easy Way to Stop Troubles: Ignore Them

Facebook is full of people repeating such silliness as this:

“Everyone is worried about stopping terrorism.  Well, there’s a really easy way:  Stop participating in it.”

—Noam Chomsky

How wise and true! Here’s what will surely happen:- 

In a back street of a large, major city a jihadist grabs a passing stranger, Joe, and holds a scimitar to his throat.


Jihadist:  Die, crusading bastard!


Joe:  Hey, stop! I’m not involved.


Jihadist (holding his scimitar away from Joe’s throat but still holding Joe in a strong grip):  What?


Joe:  Your struggle has nought to do with me.  I don’t participate in terrorism.  I believe in live-and-let-live and, to the extent that I have any awareness of the issues, I support your freedom to follow your religion in any way which seems best to you for I am a man of cultured reason and tolerance.  I have “an audacious confidence in the fundamental goodness of others”, including your good self.*


Jihadist:  You’re not a tool of the oppressive, imperialist crusader dogs?


Joe:  No, not I.  I am the very definition of a non-participant.


Jihadist:  Wait, I don’t kill you?


Joe: If it’s no trouble.


Jihadist (releasing Joe):  Oh, well, sorry to have bothered you.  I’ll go grab another victim to behead then.


Joe:  Nice chatting with you.  Good luck with your endeavours. See ya.


Jihadist:  Thanks.  Bye.

*  the words from “I am” to “self”, featuring a quote from the ABC’s jihadist-loving Jonathan Green, were suggested by a poster, Rabz, at Catallaxy Files.

Remember, you too can gain an underserved reputation for wisdom simply by voicing similarly quotable admonitions; for example, try “There’s a really easy way to stop x: stop participating in it”, wherein x = “murder”, “rape”, “burglaries”, “the heat-death of the universe”, “poverty”, “rough, dry elbows” or “superhero sequels”.

The Great Heritage Highway Walk

Please print and display these posters wherever it is appropriate and legal to do so.
For more information, see the Great Heritage Highway Walk website and blog. 
The first and fourth posters are by Jonty Dalton; the second and third are by Basil the Scribe.
PDF versions can be found here, here, here and here.

Everything Is Gonna Be All Right

“Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief”

Illuminating Mischief

Turnbull’s light-bulb ban
was, I say, emblematic
of the statist man.

His awarmist views
suggest that Turnbull’s present
restraint is a ruse.

Awarmists can’t be
rational, logical or
prudent* fiscally.

* earlier, at Catallaxy Files, I posted this comment:

As I have suggested elsewhere it it impossible to be an awarmist and a fiscal conservative at the same time.  To believe in the pseudo-scientific conjecture of AGW a person has to reject logic and science in favour of immoderate irrationality; to support the supposed solutions to the non-existent problem of global warming—which involve massive spending, increased taxes and illiberal statist controls—believers perforce deny personal liberty and freedoms in general; such a person cannot reasonably be expected to consider other issues logically, scientifically or prudently.

The egomaniacal, amoral and seemingly psychopathic Turnbull is evidently more dangerous than Rudd and Gillard combined.

“Death or Liberty”

Bás nó Saoirse (2015):

The docudrama (in two parts) will be screened in Eire on 6 and 13 October.  A screening of both parts (with a panel discussion, as part of Parliament Week) will be at the People’s History Museum, London, on 19 November.  Australian broadcasting dates have yet to be announced.  A shorter “Death or Liberty” will be screened on ABC1 on 5 January Sunday, 24 January, 2016 at 10:00 pm (see updates III and IV) Thursday, 14 January at 9.33 pm.
Many scenes were filmed in Tasmania and I was an (uncredited and unpaid) extra in a few:

UPDATE I (15 September):  Another trailer:

UPDATE II:  The BoFA festival has announced that it will feature the world premiere of Death or Liberty on 5 November in Launceston.  (A strange world premiere that would be of a documentary which had already been broadcast on television.)  In The Mercury, Kane Young—being a modern sort of journalist who, seemingly, cannot distinguish between journalism and rewriting media releases—not only agrees that the screening in Launceston will be the world premiere, and neglects to mention a co-director, but also gets the date wrong; he writes:

BOFA’s five-day program […] kicks off on November 4 with the world premiere of new Tasmanian film Death or Liberty, directed by Steve Thomas.

The documentary is co-directed by Keith Farrell and Steve Thomas.

UPDATE III (18 September):  co-director Steve Thomas kindly explained that there are now three versions of Death or Liberty:  the version which will be broadcast in two parts (of 50 minutes each) on Irish and Welsh television; the abbreviated film version of 80 minutes which will be screened at the BoFA festival; and an even more attenuated version of 57 minutes which is all that the ABC would accept.  (The longest version, in two 50 minutes parts, has itself two variants:  the English and the Irish.)

UPDATE IV (5 October):  the Australian version of Death or Liberty will be screened on ABC 1 on 5 January, 2016, at a time yet to be announced on Sunday, 24 January, 2016 at 10:00 pm Thursday, 14 January at 9.33 pm.

UPDATE V (7 October):   from the broadcast by TG4 this morning (our time) of the first part of Bás nó Saoirse, I pull a coal-cart; I follow and then precede Llion Williams as Zephaniah Williams; I also listen to John Xintavelonis as Sir John Franklin admonish Zachary Lennon as Linus Miller:

UPDATE VI (14 October):   from the broadcast by TG4 this morning (our time) of the second part of Bás nó Saoirse:

UPDATE VI (27 October):  Death or Liberty will be shewn at Melbourne’s Sun Theatre on 29 and 31 October and on 3 November.

UPDATE VII (3 November):  I asked the director of the BoFA festival why it still calls its screening of Death or Liberty this Thursday as the “world premiere” since the film has now been screened elsewhere; he kindly responded, writing (inter alia): 

We are the World Festival Premiere. We’ve changed that on our website.

UPDATE VIII (3 November):  recently, on ABC Radio National, Micheal Cathcart discussed Death or Liberty with Steve Thomas, Dr. Tony Moore and Mick Thomas; you can listen to “Death or Liberty: Australia’s rebels and radicals on Books and Arts”:

A new documentary film by Steve Thomas [and Keith Farrell] tells the story of the rebels and radicals transported to Australia as political prisoners during the convict era.

UPDATE IX (11 January, 2016):  ABC TV (with no one within that vast organisation, apparently, who knows not to capitalise conjuctions) has announced a new time for screening the shortest version of Death or Liberty:

A stirring lyrical journey into the heroic lives of the Empire’s rebels exiled to Australia – the prison without walls.  They were martyrs to the cause in their homelands but their convict lives are an amazing untold story – until now. 

“Don’t Overestimate Threats,” Shriek Scaremongers

In “Don’t overestimate Islamic State threat: Malcolm Turnbull” David Wroe (of the seditiously scaremongering, awarmist SMH) reports the soothing words of Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, the former federal Minister for the Environment and Water Resources:

The threat posed by the Islamic State terror group should not be overstated, and critics of new national security measures should not be denounced, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said.

The threat posed by the Islamic State terror group, judging only by its murderous acts and not by its quite minatory pronouncements, is great; the threat posed by a very slight increase of average temperatures around the world, in contrast, is extremely slight.  When Malcom Turnbull was Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, however, he banned incandescent light-bulbs in Australia, “in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, and because of his deep but groundless fear that their extremely slight contribution to supposed global warming would doom us all:

“A normal light bulb is too hot to hold—that heat is wasted* and globally represents millions of tonnes of CO₂ that needn’t have been emitted into the atmosphere if we had used more efficient forms of lighting.”

On his own department’s projections (at the time), his banning of incandescent light bulbs was expected to reduce Australia’s total output of allegedly threatening “emissions”—i.e. beneficent CO₂, essential for life—by as much as 0.1%.
So, a real, murderous regime trying to impose a barbaric caliphate—meh; a fantasy of doom predicated on a pseudo-scientific conjecture insisting that the world’s climate might warm by as much as half a degree—run for the hills after destroying industry!

The man is a nincompoop.

* in cold weather, in many homes, the heat from internal incandescent light bulbs was not wasted: it helped warm living spaces.

Entering the Sixth Mass Hysteria

Meanwhile, Paul R. Ehrlich—notorious doomsayer and anti-Cassandra, predestined to be wrong but believed, famous for inaccurately foreseeing all manner of catastrophes, who predicted in the ’60s (in The Population Bomb) that “[t]he battle to feed all of humanity is over” and that we’d all die of starvation in the ’70s—has co-authored “Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction”.

Hysterical, credulous, unsceptical journos naturally cover such stories as, for example, “Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Has Begun, New Study Confirms” [using the word “confirms” in its rare meaning of “asserts”]; note the cool, unemotive, scientific language:

This latest research tells us what we already knew.  Humans have in the space of a few centuries swung a wrecking ball through the Earth’s biosphere.  Liquidating biodiversity to produce products and services has an end point.  Science is starting to sketch out what that end point could look like but it cannot tell us why to stop before we reach it.
If we regard the Earth as nothing more than a source of resources and a sink for our pollution, if we value other species only in terms of what they can provide to us, then we we will continue to unpick the fabric of life. Remove further rivets from spaceship earth. This not only increases the risk that it will cease to function in the ways that we and future generations will depend on, but can only reduce the complexity and beauty of our home in the cosmos.

UPDATE (21 June):  the BBC has uncritically reported the alarmist findings of the “sixth mass extinction” paper—disingenuously describing it as “a study by three US universities”—and, of course, the awarmist, misanthracist, duplicitous misanthropes who infest the “progressive” movement are incoherently wishing that mankind perish very soon whilst simultaneously lamenting all the other species whose final days are supposedly nigh.

A New Protector of Marriage

In “Gay marriage advocates must now protect marriage as I’ve tried” Andrew Bolt claims:

The battle for same-sex marriage has been won.  Now the winners must defend marriage as fiercely as we conservatives tried.

And their first test comes now.  Before they get our politicians to take the final step and change the Marriage Act, they must help to maximise the good — and minimise the damage.  […]

Moreover, the Yes vote in Catholic Ireland last week broke the back of any real resistance here, too.

We can, no doubt, expect to hear discussions, in defence of marriage, like this very soon: 

Bi-bloke:  Hey, Gay-chap, old friend, you were allowed to marry your boyfriend for two reasons according to you:  “love” and “equality”.  Well, I want to marry both my boyfriend and my girlfriend for the same two reasons:  “love” and “equality”. 
Gay-chap:  Nah, but you could just live together and call yourself whatever you like.
 
Bi-bloke: Isn’t that what people said to you? 
Gay-chap: That was different.  My man and I wanted a big, fancy wedding, with all our friends and family there to witness our eternal commitment to each other, and lots of wedding presents, and lots of flowers.
  We also had a big cake.  Admittedly, we had to sue the baker because, though he made and decorated a lovely cake to our exact specifications, he didn’t enthusiastically support our marriage, the bastard.  We did get a nice out-of-court settlement.  Anyhow, cake, flowers, presents, and friends and family! 
Bi-bloke: We want a big fancy wedding too, with all our friends and family.
Gay-chap:  You can still have a ceremony—just without State sanction.

Bi-bloke: But we want State sanction; we want what you got. 
Gay-chap:  Well, you can’t.
 
Bi-bloke:  Why the hell not?
 
Gay-chap:  Because marriage can only be between two unrelated, adult human beings, to the exclusion of all others.
 
Bi-bloke:  Yeah?  Says who?
 
Gay-chap:  I do.
Bi-bloke:  See, I want to be able to say that.  Tee hee.  Seriously, what’s the basis for this old-fashioned, bigoted and narrow notion that marriage must be between only two people?
Gay-chap:  Tradition, and, and, and that’s just the way it is.
Bi-bloke:  Isn’t that what opponents of your same-sex marriage said?
Gay-chap:  There is no similarity and, anyway, it’s the Law.  And it’s different.  Because, well, because.  So there.  You can shut up now. 
Bi-bloke:  Now, look—
Gay-chap:  Homophobe!  Racist! 
Bi-bloke:  But—

Gay-chap:  Fascist!  Hater!  Misogynist!
 
Bi-bloke:  Hey, steady on, I’m not the one who won’t touch women—
Gay-chap:  Police!  Help, Police!  I’m being oppressed by an opponent of same-sex marriage!
Constable Sonja:  Is, uh, there, uh, a, a, oooh, is there a, uh, problem?  Sorry, I, ooh, just had to, uh, jog nearly seven, oooh, yards then, uh, in full rig.
  So, uh, wot’s goin’ on here, then?
Bi-bloke:  I give up.

Gay-chap:  Yay!  I have successfully defended marriage!  I’m a hero!

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Says No Mo’

The ‘Marriage’ Game the Whole Family Can Play

Richard Griggs, the Tasmanian director of Civil Liberties Australia, has argued (for want of a better word) in favour of same-sex marriage in The Mercury.  His assertions in favour of same-sex couples marrying could just as well apply to siblings or other closely-related people (even by adoption*) who might wish to marry each other but, under current, bigoted laws†, may not thus ‘express their love’.  Accordingly, here is Richard Griggs’s article only slightly amended:

Talking Point: Same-family marriage simply gives each person equality in law

[No one] recently argued in these pages that same-family marriage was not a civil rights issue.
Same-family marriage, [no one] said, did not equate with the historic civil rights movements which gave women the vote or dismantled whites only zones in public places.
These are examples of civil rights campaigns but a full explanation of what actually constitutes a civil right needs to go much deeper.  When we do that, same-family marriage clearly becomes a civil rights issue.
Civil rights are about giving everyone the same opportunities to participate in civil society.
When we change legislation in recognition of civil rights we give more people full participatory rights in society.  We open the door and let more people in.
You can tell it is a civil rights issue when an identifiable group in society is prevented from accessing a public institution for no reason other than their membership of that particular group.
Public institutions can be physical, like shopping centres or public transport, or they can be rights of passage or rights of citizenship, like voting.
Surely marriage must sit alongside voting as an important part of civil society and should actually outrank shopping and transport in terms of its importance.
Marriage is a central part of civil society and, therefore, to exclude some couples from marrying is a civil rights issue.
Marriage has been with us for centuries and parliaments have elevated the institution of marriage into law.
Marriage is entered into by many couples.  Some marry for good reasons, some for poor.  Some marriages last a lifetime and others less than a year.  And of course some people are perfectly happy never marrying at all.
It is the freedom to choose to marry which is important.  The freedom to have the same options as other couples [or, surely, triples or quadruples, etc.].
For some readers marriage is a religious institution of long standing that only in more recent history (the past few hundred years‡) became enshrined in law by parliament.  There is historical debate in some quarters about which came first, marriage or organised religion.
Current marriage laws passed by our Commonwealth Parliament make clear that marriage is now owned by the people and Parliament, not any single religion.
The law allows non-religious couples to marry in a non-religious location with a non-religious marriage celebrant.  It also allows for people of two different religions to marry.
There will be some religions which do not support same-family marriage and they should be free to choose to practice [sic] their religious beliefs.  But those same religions shouldn’t assert ownership or control over marriage for the remainder of society.
They should be free to practice [sic] their beliefs but not free to mandate their beliefs on others.
Earlier this year my wife and I were married on a summer afternoon in the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens.  Gathering together our friends and family and making a public declaration of shared loved and commitment in front of them was a very proud and emotional moment.  It was a beautiful day which I will never forget.
My wife and I were lucky to enter our marriage with the support of the law and the love of our family and friends.  I feel deeply sad that same-family couples are denied the same opportunity to share such a wonderful life event.
One day the law will be changed in Australia to allow same-family couples the same freedom to choose as unrelated couples.
Why am I so sure?  Civil rights movements grow in momentum over time until most in society no longer see the particular issue as a threat any more.  We are very close to that point in Australia.
Once society thought it best if only men could vote and only white people could use public transport and enter the shops.  One day we will also see the error in denying same-family couples the freedom of choice to marry, just like everyone else, and have their marriage recognised by society, just like everyone else.

*  see §22B of the Australian Marriage Act 1961:

(2)  Marriages of parties within a prohibited relationship are marriages:

(a)  between a person and an ancestor or descendant of the person; or

(b)  between a brother and a sister (whether of the whole blood or the half-blood).

(3)  Any relationship specified in subsection (2) includes a relationship traced through, or to, a person who is or was an adopted child, and, for that purpose, the relationship between an adopted child and the adoptive parent, or each of the adoptive parents, of the child shall be deemed to be or to have been the natural relationship of child and parent.

†  for example, in Massachussetts, since at least 1784, no man may marry “his mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, stepmother, grandfather’s wife, grandson’s wife, wife’s mother, wife’s grandmother, wife’s daughter, wife’s granddaughter, brother’s daughter, father’s sister or mother’s sister”.

‡  yet see, say, the Code of Hammurabi which, oddly, only a mere 3,370 or so years ago, featured many civil, secular laws relating to marriage.

UPDATE I (2 July):  see “German ethics council calls for incest between siblings to be legalised by Government” by Lizzie Dearden:

Germany’s national ethics council has called for an end to the criminalisation of incest between siblings after examining the case of a man who had four children with his sister.
Patrick Stuebing, who was adopted as an infant and met his sister in his 20s, has launched several appeals since being imprisoned for incest in 2008 and his lengthy legal battle has prompted widespread public debate.
Sexual relations between siblings or between parents and their children are forbidden under section 173 of the German criminal code and offenders can face years in prison.
But on Wednesday, the German Ethics Council recommended the section be repealed, arguing that the risk of disability in children is not enough to warrant the law and de-criminalising incest would not remove the huge social taboo around it.  […]
The Ethics Council’s recommendation only covered incest between siblings and members did not recommend decriminalising sex between parents and children.

UPDATE II (11 July):  Virginia Utley (according to Charles Moore in The Spectator) has written to both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the United Kingdom:

‘Please could you tell me what a family is?’  Nowadays, she goes on, you teach us that a family can be made up of men who love men or women who love women, who must therefore be equally entitled to marry one another.  ‘Now,’ she continues, her sister and she ‘both think boys are very nice but neither of us met one we quite liked enough to marry…  So my sister and I have bought a house together and have lived happily there for years and years and years.’  So, ‘Please can my sister and I get married?’  If not, the sisters themselves, and Virginia’s sister’s daughter, will not get the benefits which accrue to married people.  ‘I am sure,’ she entreats Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne, that ‘you will not say “No” to us when you said “Yes” to all the others…  Because that wouldn’t be fair, would it?’

UPDATE III (21 November):  Hon. Will Hodgman, Premier of Tasmania, made a speech in the Tasmanian House of Assembly supporting a motion to legalise same-sex “marriage”; an edited version of that speech was published in The Mercury and here is part thereof only slightly amended:

I have supported changes to the law that remove legislative provisions that were discriminatory of incestuous couples and polygamous groups or that did not adequately provide for incestuous couples and polygamous groupings—for example, where a partner was unable to attain a legal entitlement to a partner’s estate, property or financial or superannuation benefits, or indeed better provision or protections for children who are part of an incestuous or polygamous relationship.
While it is true that in the early 2000s when I supported this legislation I did believe that significant relationship registration adequately dealt with the interests of those in same-family or polygamous relationships, in 2015 my perspectives and views have progressed.
Reflecting on what I said in this place in that debate in June 2003, a year or so after being elected, predominantly they are things I still hold true, such as promoting a fairer, more accepting, tolerant society.  As I said, I believe our society these days is more understanding and accepting as a community and I believe today that extends to incestuous and polygamous marriage.
In 2003, I expressed a view that registering incestuous and polygamous relationships would not jeopardise the concept of marriage.  I do not believe that incestuous or polygamous marriage will either; in many respects it will strengthen it.  Particularly when any couple or other group upholds the values and the integrity of their marriage vows, they are displaying great commitment and their relationship is strengthened by doing so.
Our community contains many healthy and stable de facto relationships and, as I said in 2003, these so-called non-traditional relationships can and do involve perfectly committed and secure individuals.
The fact I am married does not automatically attribute greater standing or make less significant the relationship between those de facto or less traditional relationships, many of which have far outlasted formal marriages.
We live in a world that contains non-traditional relationships, de facto, single parents, significant relationships, same-sex relationships.
If I paraphrase what I said in 2003, I do not believe that the legislation before us then, nor do I believe that same-family or polygamous marriage in 2015, will affect the sanctity of the institution of marriage and those who choose that institution, like myself, and I would sincerely hope that many more will continue to embrace and revere it.  For those who do not or cannot, why should we judge their relationship as any less valid or important?
I intend to vote in support of the motion today.  I intend to vote in support at the national plebiscite in support of incestuous and polygamous marriage.
I believe it will allow an incestuous couple or polygamous grouping to strengthen their relationship and validate it in a way that [wife] Nicky  and I are able to do.  It will provide the same responsibilities, protections and entitlements that Nicky and I have, and in my view, it will strengthen the institution of marriage.
I am offended by the notion that our community says same-family couples or polygamous groupings are less capable of love and commitment and marriage than heterosexual or homosexual people.
It will remove a disadvantage that exists for incestuous couples and polygamous groupings who want to marry and it will allow them to be treated equally.
I believe it will also provide better protections for children being raised by incestuous couples and polygamous groupings who want to marry.
I believe it will remove discrimination and inappropriate community attitudes that incestuous couples and polygamous people suffer by accepting their diversity and validating their relationship, their choice, their decision and commitment to marry a lifelong partner or number of partners.
I will table an amendment to the motion that will incorporate key elements of the matters I raise today.  We recognise marriage is defined in the Commonwealth Marriage Act, that every Tasmanian should enjoy full freedom of belief and freedom of expression and a respectful debate leading to the national plebiscite proposed by the Australian Government.
I give my in-principle support to same-family and polygamous marriage and the proposed amended motion which I now table.

St. Patrick’s Embarrassment

Ireland, March, 2015,
a pub with the usual Irish decorations…
Declan:  Ah, Paddy, you seem glum; what’s upset you, lad?
Patrick:  Oh, Declan, I can’t enjoy my usual six or seven pints of Guinness tonight because I’ve heard in passing that the Australian PM might have implied, or at least said something that could be so interpreted, that many Irishmen are hard drinkers or, at least, that they enjoy a drink now and then.  Or that they might.  Or something.  It’s a vile and bigoted defamation,  I don’t mind telling you. 

Declan:  That is a perturbation, Paddy. So would you care to have another ball o’ malt? 

Patrick:  Well, just one more, then, to console myself, but I’m sure that I shan’t enjoy another whiskey with an e tonight (though I shall doubtless drink a few), and I’ll be having no more than four pints of Guinness, I’m that flustered and solely grieved. 

Declan:  Curse that evil Tony Abbott!

How did this sad situation come to be?  We must look at the historical record:-

Australia, March, 2009,
a pub decorated, it seems, with an assumption that the Republic of Ireland encompasses the entire island, and ignoring Ulster…
Dave:  Did you hear what Kevin Rudd said, Gazza? 

Garry:  No, Davo, what did he say? 
Dave:  He began by saying, and I quote, “it is customary on St. Patrick’s Day for politicians to lay claim to their Irish ancestry, however tenuously.  To wax lyrical on the bonds of history that tie Australia—and in fact one in ten Australians who come from Erin’s shore—with Ireland itself and to so kiss the blarney stone on a night such as tonight that in fact we see fact itself form a seamless bond with folklore and fiction—so that by night’s end, courtesy of a Guinness or two, you’ll all be believed that in fact you are led by a lady called Anna O’Bligh and that her opponent is Liam Patrick O’Springborg.
“Such is the power of Guinness.”

Garry:  Ah, what an orator!  He has a touch of the real Irish in him! 

March, 2012,

a pub with the usual “Irish” decorations…

Dave:  Hey, Gaz, you hear what Julia Gillard said? 

Garry:  No, Davo, what did she day? 
Dave:  She said, and I quote,

“Could you have a larrikin without Irish emigration?  The answer is no.
“And if we’re more English than we like to admit—well, we’re not nearly as Irish as we would like to be.
“This year I took the opportunity to make the Federal Cabinet just that little bit more Irish.
“I already had that fine Sydney Irishman Tony Burke, a grand representative for all the Irishmen who’ve been in the great south land for a century or more.
“But this time, I thought two was better than one, and if I could get one who came out here on a boat “himself, all the better. […]
“Patrick O’Farrell reminds us of the United Irishman Joseph Holt—a true political prisoner—sent here after 1798 and who found himself farming near Sydney, and he said in 1803:   ‘My usual time to commence to sow crops was the first Monday after St. Patrick’s Day, it requiring a few days to get the men sober’.”

Garry:  Ha!  What a wit!  She has a touch of the real Irish about her! 

March, 2015,

a pub with the usual “Irish” decorations…

Dave:  Gaz, you won’t believe what our retarded PM said! 
Garry:  Oh, Davo, what was Tony Abbott’s latest gaffe? 
Dave:  The creep ended his foul St. Patrick’s Day speech with a feculent slur; he apologised because, and I quote, “I can’t be there to share a Guinness or two or maybe even three”.  He thereby unjustly and slanderously suggested that all the Irish are drunks and rascals. 
Garry:  Wow, what an embarrassment to our country that illiterate bastard is!

UPDATE (19 March):  see Andrew Bolt’s “If That’s a Gaffe, I’m from Ireland”:

How deranged have the Tony Abbott haters become?

Sydney’s Lansdowne Club of Irish Australian businessmen had invited people to come “enjoy a Guinness or three” at its annual St Patrick’s Day lunch.

Abbott couldn’t make it, but sent a video in which he said this was “a great day for ... everyone who cares to come to a party”.  He was sorry “I can’t be there to share a Guinness or two or maybe even three”.

See anything offensive there?

Yet a ninemsn report claimed immediately Abbott’s speech had “backfired” by focusing on “stereotypes around drinking”, with “Irish business leaders” calling it “patronising”.  In fact, the “business leaders” was one person, unnamed.

Why the exaggeration?

But that was all the media Left needed for yet another pile-on.

“Abbott’s cringe-tacular St Patrick’s Day video”, crowed one Sydney Morning Herald headline.

“The rise and rise of Tony Abbott as an international laughing stock,” gloated another […].

The ABC news grimly reported the offence Abbott had allegedly caused before finishing its TV news with its own St Patrick’s Day tribute—with shots of, yes, Irishmen drinking Guinness.

But here’s the full measure of these hypocrites. Abbott is hanged for merely saying he’d like “a Guinness or two or maybe even three”.  Yet not one journalist attacked the Labor prime ministers [Rudd and Gillard] who actually accused the Irish of being drunks.