Judging by the tone of media coverage, Tony Abbott’s Prime Ministership has now entered its terminal phase. Everything he does and says is being judged on that basis, with every slipup a potential disaster.
But having just beaten a spill motion, and with at least moderately good news from the polls, he can scarcely be removed immediately. On the other hand, as long as he stays in office, the government is effectively in lame duck mode, with its every decision open to reversal by his successor. To take the most recent example, if Abbott were replaced by Turnbull, the attacks on Gillian Triggs would cease instantly.
The big timing issue relates to the Budget, due in May. It’s obvious that, if Abbott goes, so does Hockey, which would be highly problematic if the removal took place after the budget was delivered but before it got through Parliament. Yet some reports I’ve read suggest that a lot of senior Liberals want to give Abbott & Hockey a chance to make a success of this Budget, then dump them if it fails.
On a side issue, the fact that the Prime Ministership is decided only by the Liberal Party members of the coalition is quite a big deal. Abbott would obviously do better if the two parties merged, or even if the Queensland LNP were part of the federal Liberal party rather than the bizarre camel it is now.
John Quiggin 
for the record steve from brisbane said john howard ” was not, by comparison with 1/2 of today’s party room, overly ideological “. imo, the liberals did not go to war in iraq because the liberal party is the party of war any more than labour or labor did not go to war is because it is the party of peace. i think a non-ideological case can be made it was in the national interest. i believe that to be an incorrect view and argue against it not because i think liberals are the party of war but because i think going to war against iraq was not in the national interest according to arguments liberals advanced at the time. -a.v.
@steve from brisbane
That the Blair ld Labour Party went into that war too would be more evidence of ‘ideology’ in the more vulgar sense rather than evidence against it.
I really don’t care much for the currently frivolous deployment of the term ‘ideology’ and unless everyone knows what is intended and there’s a meeting of the minds on the matter, I’d sooner avoid it. There’s no doubt that ‘children overboard’ was a manifestation of existing political convention — adducing longstanding xenophobia and ‘wag the dog’ populism to wedge the opposition and make them look weak. You could call that ‘ideology’ if you wanted and be on good ground.
Personally, I have no problem with a government being ‘ideological’ if by that one means to say that the government is seeking to situate policies with a coherent, evidence-based, socially inclusive and equitable paradigm. If one means ‘dogmatic and hostile to equity and empowerment’ then plainly I’d oppose ‘ideology’.
The overarching ‘ideology’ of this country is the defence of unwarranted privilege. Both major parties support it but appeal to somewhat different tranches of the populace in seeking to implement it. That makes them equally ‘ideological’ albeit that they are politically distinct.
Is there an agreed upon definition for this term ideology? Of course as JD explained so clearly recently, carefully defining things doesn’t solve the problem but it makes the problem more obvious.
I remember one sentence from John Ralston Sauls’ book, “Voltare’s Bastards” that I read years ago that went something like, neither capitalism or socialism are ‘real’ ideologies – they are methods of dividing ownership and income. He didn’t define or describe his idea of a real ideology as far as I remember.
As Fran says there are different ideologies and those decisions that Howard and Blair made in common are not based on their capitalist or socialist ideology but a deeper ideology that is able to accommodate both of these methods of assigning property. This ideology would need to be vague and difficult to examine so that it could accommodate ideological dissonance and it remains so because no-one wants to go there.
Whatever “ideology” means, I think I am pretty strong grounds for arguing that the American Right has gone off the deep end because (as Krugman argues all the time) they are simply impervious to evidence they are wrong, such as years of failed economic predictions, or convincing scientific consensus on climate change (or even evolution!) Call it a weird American belief system if you want, but whatever it is, John Howard was not much at all like a modern Tea Party-ish Republican, in my opinion.
But the Abbott government has large elements within it that are influenced by the way the American Right has gone, and that is a worry.
I saw something on tv showing who Credlin had worked for, and all bar one were potential or actual leaders of the Liberal Party.
If Turnbull takes the leadership again, he will presumably not have Credlin looking over his shoulder. Interesting…
Well, the story’s about that some backbenchers believe Turnbull already has the numbers; just the process of how to get a spill going is unclear.
I have been able to watch most of Question Time this week – the benches behind Abbott have been unusually quiet and glum looking. It is heartening to know, I suppose, that there are a substantial number of Coalition MPs dismayed at the Triggs attack. How they can continue to work with people who think it a good idea, I don’t know.
@Uncle Milton
We do not have compulsory attendance at polling stations in Australia. There is nothing in the Act that says that it is compulsory (or mandatory or obligatory) for voters to attend at polling stations; there is nothing in the Act that says that voters must or that voters shall attend at polling stations; nothing in the Act makes it an offence for voters not to attend at polling stations; there is no provision in the Act equivalent to anything of the kind. Every election there are substantial numbers of voters who do not attend at polling stations with perfect legality.
@J-D
Within the last 24 hours was a statement from the head of the aec to the extent that it had discovered around 7,000 instances of voter fraud (multiple voting), enough to swing an election if the frauds acted in the right electorates; he said that he was disappointed by the response of the AFP who said “lck of resources…mumble…money in an offshore account (ahem)…lie back and think of Team Straya etc.
Can’t now readily find a reference but will persevere.
Point is, these Tea Party fascists know no bounds. Imagine that? Legions of Happy HAnd Clappers setting out to violate the system. It couldn’t happen here, could it? Oh nooooo…it is in train, mate, they’ve got a plan.
As a matter of theory, your (implied) position is correct; but as a matter of practice, Nathan’s position is correct.
There is nothing in the Constitution saying that a Governor-General’s proclamation dissolving both Houses of Parliament must be counter-signed by the Prime Minister or (bearing in mind that the Constitution does not use the term ‘Prime Minister’) by any Minister at all. There is also nothing in any law saying anything of the kind. So far as anything in the text of the Constitution or any statute goes, there’s no need for a Minister (Prime or not) to advise the Governor-General before the Governor-General calls a double dissolution.
But if you go by the text of the Constitution, the Governor-General has the power to refuse assent to any Act passed by both Houses of Parliament (or instead of refusing assent to reserve it for the monarch’s pleasure to be known). Yet no Governor-General has ever done this — not one out of twenty-six Governors-General over 114 years, which have seen I don’t know how many Acts passed. Why not? Has every one of those Acts been something that the Governor-General of the day personally approved of? That would be an enormous coincidence. So what’s stopped them?
What has stopped them are powerful expectations. It’s not correct to call them unwritten expectations, because in fact they’ve been written about extensively in books and articles describing the workings of the Australian constitutional and political system (and other systems of a similar kind). Still, the expectations existed before the writings documented them (although the writings have assisted in reinforcing them).
There are some things that people don’t do because it’s so powerfully expected that they won’t do them. Of course, sometimes expectations change and sometimes people act in violation of them. Right now, at this moment, it’s so strongly expected that no Governor-General will call an election without the formal advice of a Prime Minister that no Governor-General will do it. But that might change in the future. The only way we’ll know for certain that it’s changed is when a Governor-General actually does call an election without the formal advice of a Prime Minister. Personally, if somebody tells me tomorrow that circumstances have changed so much that it’s become possible for a Governor-General to call an election without the formal advice of a Prime Minister, I’m going to say ‘What makes you think that? I can’t see it myself.’
@jungney
I would be interested to see the actual words of the head of the AEC myself. But I don’t see what that has to do with the question of allegedly compulsory attendance at polling stations. You seem to be raising a different (although possibly indirectly related) topic. I don’t believe that the head of the AEC said that we have compulsory attendance at polling stations in Australia, and even if the head of the AEC did say it, that wouldn’t automatically make it true. It’s false. Anybody can readily verify this by consulting the publicly available text of the Act the same way that I did.
The Act doesn’t even contain any reference to “polling stations”.
But, of course, voting is compulsory.
Section 245, the section which covers compulsory voting, doesn’t even contain the word “compulsory” in its operative provisions!
With all this hoo-haa over Gillian Triggs and Moriatis’ missing meeting notes, you would think at least a couple of journos would take a step back and think: “Wait a minute, didn’t Scott Morrison effectively blackmail the indeps/PUP to vote for his bill, because if they didn’t he wouldn’t release any more children from detention?”
If they thought that, they could do a quick online search and go, yep, he did, and he did this *after* the HRC Children in Detention report had been released, while it was languishing on some beautiful new bookshelves somewhere. Or, in Ian MacDonald’s case, being used as a doorstop.
@Donald Oats
Ah, Kristina Keneally got there first, and made the connection.
Pr Q said:
I’ve already made a prediction on this, back on February 1st, 2015, and I’m standing by it:
So I expect there will be a decisive spill no later than 06 AUG 2015, which is one year out from the earliest possible calling of a normal election (HoR + 1/2 SEN). I have bet Abbott will lose.
Pr Q said:
The phrase “media coverage” is somewhat weasel-worded, given that it appears to apply equally to all parts of the MSM. Some parts of the “media” have totally given up all pretense to unbiased or balanced coverage.
In particular, the Fairfax press have mounted a shameful, and grotesquely unprofessional, campaign of destabilization against Abbott’s premiership rivaling anything that Murdoch press did to Gillard. Anyone who gives this tawdry spectacle a free pass, and this would be virtually the whole media-academia complex, has lost all credibility as a media commentator.
I don’t have much sympathy for Abbott’s policy program, which is basically austerity, tax-cuts for billionaires and some mild Muslim-bating. But I have some sympathy for Abbott himself and this is being nurtured by Fairfax’s one-sided diet of scurrilous rumour, confected outrage and beat-up non-stories.
If the Fairfax media feeding frenzy keeps up I would not be surprised by some sort of public backlash of sympathy for Abbott. It will be interesting to watch the next few polls for L/NP rebounds. The Idiot Left could snatch a Turnbull defeat from victory. Worse still, I could lose my bet against Abbott’s premiership prospects .
More generally, post-modern liberals seem to have ditched the practice of old-fashioned unbiased MSM journalism, going by the practice of the Fairfax Left-wing and Murdoch Right-wing. The politicization of journalism mirrors the politicization of science by Left-wing anthropological academics and Right-wing ecological academics. Both media and science are now heavily tribalized with the fundamental question being no longer “True or False?” but “Who or Whom?”.
I may as well re-state: I think Abbott will lead the LNP into the next election (either full-term or DD).
For years now there has been a very reliable rule-of-thumb that if it is written in News Ltd it probably isn’t true. The ABC’s “political” commentariat is now getting into that territory too. Uhlmann is hopeless.
@J-D
I’m intrigued. The AEC appears to believe it is able to fine people for not attending a polling place (I have received one of the threatening letters). Is there anything in the act which supports this practice?
Jack, what you say might sound good, sort of, but it leaves a bad taste for me, sorry:
You say, “I don’t have much sympathy for Abbott’s policy program, which is basically austerity, tax-cuts for billionaires and some mild Muslim-bating. But I have some sympathy for Abbott himself …”
I find it extraordinary that a Prime Minister can inflict harm on a large number of people and somehow there are no consequences. So you can take someone you never met and chuck them off their unemployment benefits for six months, on a whim, and take no responsibility if they commit suicide. You might like to explain exactly what you mean by…”some mild Muslim-bating”. What does that consist of? Perhaps spitting at a thirteen-year-old school girl while tearing off her hijab? She’s terrified and won’t leave the house without her brother. The whole family is angry, but don’t worry, it was only ‘mild’. It was just Tony being Tony, chuckle.
Make no mistake, Tony Abbott is a dangerously divisive and politically destructive person who inflicts harm every day he clings onto the job and he causes our reputation to suffer too. He will go to pieces if he loses the PM job, but it only matters when its about him. Other people are unimportant to him. He makes that clear, which is why he has to go.
It should happen in the next couple of days…if we’re lucky. Better make it quick, before Tony commits us to some more military kit we don’t need – and we’ll find he’s bankrupted us for his khaki fantasy.
@zoot
Please don’t go there. If for some reason voting isn’t compulsory, then that is an oversight that should be fixed forthwith.
@zoot
For some perverse reason JD loves to play pointless semantic points without actually making an argument.
I think he enjoys doing it.
In this case he was pedantically taking “Uncle Milton”, at #30, to task over the point that there is no “compulsory attendance at voting stations” contained in any of our electoral laws.
Even though our electoral system can correctly be described as being one of “compulsory voting”, there is nothing in the operative provisions of the law that contain the word “compulsory”. Similarly, although the law refers to “polling booths” and other polling places, it also allows for other types of votes that do not require personal attendance at a polling place (such as postal votes).
Only an immature pedant would take the point without making any further point following from that distinction (in my opinion).
@zoot
As far as sending people letters about not voting and penalties, yes there is a quite detailed section about that.
It is fairly straightforward.
@zoot
If I were a spambot for some overseas scam I’d have no trouble getting a comment up with a link.
But since I’m just a real person, based in Australia, with almost ten years history of commenting here – I get sent to eternal moderation for including a link.
That’s “freedom and democracy” for you!
Anyway, if you can work out how to stick the following back together, you will see the section of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 that allows you to be fined for not voting:
w w w 5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/cea1918233/s245.html
Somehow Abbott and his govt seem content to live with contradictory messages. Abbott says that Triggs has lost the confidence of the govt and Turnbull, of the same govt, says that Triggs is a “very distinguished international legal academic”.
Certainly the debt n deficit disaster mantra is wearing a bit thin. Financial advisors are now advising their clients that talk of debt is not justified by the evidence
I don’t believe that Tony Abbott can last very long. Asking the president of an independent statutory commission to resign is both exceeding legal authority and denying accountability. Whatever can be made of the semantics, the reasonable conclusion is that on resignation, alternative employment was flagged, if not expressly offered. Professor Triggs correctly asserted she would be party to this scheme.
This situation may be without precedent, so perhaps an example of innovation on the part of the Attorney-General. The personal attack on Professor Triggs represents bullying, and might be reasonably held to limit her independence. This is going off the beaten track, a situation with unseen hazards, especially if pursued without foresight or care. In and of itself it sufficient to confirm that the person responsible is unfit to hold the office of Prime Minister.
@zoot
I can read what the Act says, so I’m confident AEC staff can too. The Act certainly does give the AEC the power to issue penalty notices, but it does not give the AEC the power to issue penalty notices for failure to attend at a polling place/booth/station. Is that what your penalty notice says? I bet it doesn’t.
@J-D
Yes … The act reads in part:
(My emphasis)
Since voting is secret, the evidence for the appearance of having failed to vote is the failure to have one’s name so marked on one of the polling places set aside for the particular division or has submitted a vote by other means. The argument you are having with zoot in this case turns on whether one narrows the cause to a state of mind of the electoral commissioner, or the antecedent condition — the null value in the voting record, or as zoot might have it the inaction of the enrolled person which predisposed the said null value.
As interesting as this is from an epistemic POV, I rather doubt it’s germane to this discussion.
Jack
Have you read the resignation letter by Mr Philip Higginson? You can read a transcribed copy here, but I’ll quote a paragraph that might give you some idea of the personal dynamics that are relevant to the leadership rumblings, as Fran Kelly has just called them, that are going on inside the Liberal party that died from dishonesty and corruption some decades ago, possibly with Howard. The smell is becoming obvious to even the most apathetic Australian voter.
http://pbxmastragics.com/2015/02/24/washing-your-dirty-linen-in-public-while-squeezing-your-donors-dry/
Poor Mr Higginson wrote: “When as a party overall are we going to grow the necessary knowledge of good governance practice and develop the necessary courage to tackle this serious problem that is deleterious affecting both sides of this party and in particular the relationships on a very, very wide front: Personal, Business, Family, Colleagues of both Wings and Coalition Partners, Media, International Media, Voters, Donors, Supporters, you name it.
I am overwhelmed daily by the sheer vitriol, and pent up animosities, and enmities that exist, and we are all who are personally affected by it and contributing to it, the longer the conflict of interest exists. I haven’t worked pro bono for over four years in this role and over ten for my good friend to see him brought down this way. We all need to do our bit to encourage him to see what is so plain for all to see.”
Higginson seems to have an ideology that protects him from realising the lack of character in Tony Abbott’s behaviour – while many others just observing Abbott from a distance could see from that Abbott had no character to speak of – never had any – is so distressed by what is going on in the party he thought he knew and by the disrespect the poor old bugger is getting that he has run away to his family, leaving this letter for his party – some party – to peruse and hopefully consider seriously.
He asks that it not be made public. That was never going to happen.
Those that still maintain that JWH was a good bloke should remember that by his own definition Abbott is the ideological product of a Howard/Bishop union. Abbott is Howard in a different form.
Read what Richard Flanagan recently wrote on institutionalised cruelty
@J-D
You are raising a fuss over nothing.
If you do not deal with your vote by turning up or by some other manner as provided for, for no good reason, you will incur a penalty.
This makes it compulsory and a good thing too.
If it weren’t so serious in a ‘life or death’ sense, I can envisage Joko Widodo saving Abbott’s job. By commuting the sentences on the two Bali inmates, the Indonesian president certainly won’t say anything that could be construed as support for Abbott, but in the context of the ‘last phone call’ and Abbott’s restrained comments afterwards, it could have enormous benefits at least until ‘next slip-up’.
@J-D
I don’t think that this alarming information is too far off topic given that it concerns the AEC’s capabilities.
http://tinyurl.com/o69kctz
Apparently the AFP would want CCTV footage in polling booths as the minimal type of ‘corroborative evidence’. They would, wouldn’t they?
This is a shocking failure by both the AEC and the AFP. Who knows how many times some of these people voted? Who are they? Why can we not expose their faces, in court, to public view as rorters of our system?
There’s a passage in Treasure Island that sums up the pros and cons.
Turnbull gets his best chance at government if the change is about two months off from the next election, but there’s no way to persuade the backbenchers to wait. They want Hockey’s pickles and wines.
> Those that still maintain that JWH was a good bloke
He’s a s****y human being, undoubtedly. But he’s still better — by any measure — than abbott.
[the reason it’s once as tragedy and again as farce is because people who think “it worked last time” are, you know, stupid. By definition the second time around the plan isn’t tailored to the circumstance, it’s just cargo-cult repitition done by cargo-cult minds. I think it’s important to realise that a person’s politics is shaped by their personality.]
@zoot
The people discussing compulsory voting above are engaged in a bit of semantic game-playing, presumably for entertainment purposes. 😉
Section 245 of the Electoral Act makes it the duty of all electors to vote, requires the Electoral Commissioner to make a list of all electors who appear to have failed to vote after each election and then requires divisional returning officers to send penalty notices (i.e. fines) to the electors on the list. The way the Electoral Commissioner determines which electors appear not to have voted is by identifying those who were not registered as having attended polling places or obtained and returned postal ballots. The arrangements concerning the operation of polling places and postal ballot are dealt with elsewhere in the Act. So the way it works is: formally, electors are required to vote, and will be penalised for not doing so, but practically, ‘not voting’ for the purposes of section 245 amounts to not showing up at and being ticked off at a polling place, or not obtaining and returning a postal ballot.
@Tim Macknay
It is of course, silly to have compulsory voting, or more precisely to require electors to furnish evidence that they have satisfied the related compliance mandates.
@Tim Macknay
Yes, yes there is ambiguity between the word “voting” and “turning up”.
I do not think you would be penalised if you turned up, had your name crossed off, but then walked back out without collecting or touching your ballot papers.
In effect “turning up” is “voting”.
Looking at it all from Bill Shorten’s POV you’d want Abbott’s axing to be a long drawn out affair. Which means looking at it from the putative new leader’s POV you’d want it to be as immediate as possible. Which means I don’t think the putschistas actually have the numbers, else they’d do it now.
This stuff they’re putting out about “waiting till after the Budget” or “after the NSW election” is crap. I think Abbott is secure until the election unless he commits another string of bizarre “captain’s calls” – always perfectly possible with that man, of course.
@Fran Barlow
You’re missing the purpose of “compulsory” voting. It is, simply, to make it a bigger hassle NOT to vote than to vote – which does not need a huge amount of hassling.
You could probably achieve the same effect by handing out a lotto ticket with the ballot slips.
@derrida derider
Doubtless you could, and indeed you might get multiple voting then!
I remain of the view that if you are genuinely indifferent about the outcome you really ought not to vote. Indeed, if in your own opinion, you lack the information or the cognitive acumen to make an informed choice, then again, you ought not to vote. You should leave the matter to those who believe they can make a well-informed choice.
Perhaps the EC could allow registered voters to declare in advance their unwillingness to vote in a particular election allowing them to be removed for that election from the rolls. Alternatively, those who failed to register a vote could be allowed post facto to declare that they failed to vote on grounds of conscience (perhaps with a tick-a-box set of explanatory options) and avoid a fine.
That said, on those occasions when I have chosen not to vote I have not been fined. I have written letters explaining my disgust at the options (or in the case of the 1978 state election my objection to entering a polling booth in which their were scab ballots) and somewhat to my disappointment no further action was taken.
@derrida derider
I seem to recall that there was an episode of the satirical TV series Absolute Power where the protagonists developed a scheme to get the UK public to adopt a controversial national ID card by making the possession of a card the entry ticket to an extremely rich lottery.
(mind you, the idea of an ID card seems both somewhat tame and archaic now that the security services can apparently spy on everyone, all the time).
If Malcolm Turnbull is hoping for the top gig in town, I imagine he will wait as long as possible, or until events force the decision upon him. He would want the largest majority possible, for once in the best seat in the house, he would need to cull some previously influential theo-neo-cons, and to clip the wings of several more. On the other hand, waiting has its own risks, not least being that Julie Bishop runs for the captain’s spot, cruelling the majority for whomsoever gets to wear the shiniest bag of fruit.
As far as I am concerned, the biggest single issue facing the Abbott government is that it is the guy who goes into the ring with a horseshoe in his glove; they don’t just turn up to win, they go down and dirty to do it, all without even a conscious thought for the collateral damage along the way. The fact that the opponent is playing by the rules wouldn’t bother them in the slightest, on the contrary, they see it as weakness, a barely concealed sneer of contempt being the one acknowledgement of the asymmetry of the situation. And it has been this way since the Fraser government. The GG is meant to be a referee of sorts, but they are MIA.
What a toxic stew is the Liberal Party. How vile they are. Their sitting members are the vilest of all. There is a sense in which the personnel of a party, the employees and elected representatives, actually do reflect the culture and values of the membership and those electorates at large who vote for them.
What do we have here? People who either are or approve of policies that are: exclusionary, racist, sexist, homophobic, generally opposed to genuine any personal freedom but their own. They delight in authority, hierarchy, the exercise of power for its own sake.
They constitute roughly half of the electorate.
Personally, I want Abbott to bite his own anus, in public, until he bleeds to death. The longer we can keep this particular stinking ideological corpse hanging on the neck of the Coalition, the better.
I agree with the commentary around the place that now really is the sensible time to dump Abbott because:
a. it gives time for the new leader to shape the budget, which is going to be pretty much a do or die effort for this government;
b. leaving a move until soon after the budget (assuming the budget does not go over well, and given precedent from last year, who really could expect otherwise) makes re-shaping it tricky, and would look like an admission that the entire first two years of the government have been a waste of time;
c. leaving a move until well after the budget will look very Rudd/Gillard – last minute panicking.
If the party wants a “re-set” (and it desperately needs one), it would be best to do so now rather than in the run up to an election.
Sorry, this thread has become so long that I had forgotten that what I said is pretty much suggested by what JQ wrote in his post!
@steve from brisbane
When you say the LNP needs a “re-set”, what do you have in mind – roughly?
Abbott’s situation reminds me of the following story.
There was a cricket match in which Dr W G Grace and his batting partner were scoring freely, hitting the ball all over the park. At one point Dr Grace’s partner said to him between balls “I think the bowler might be a chucker*”. To this Dr Grace replied “I’m sure he is, but don’t say anything to the umpire about it. We don’t want him to be taken off.”.
Those of us who specialise in the study of invertebrate pests and parasites can report that QuadRANT and the habitues of the Ozfail letters page are prepared to die in a ditch for Abbott, while Catallaxy appears split. Expect fireworks on the hard Right if Turnbull gets up.
@Paul Norton
Speaking of “invertebrate pests and parasites”, the ALP has just agreed to support the LNP’s plans to extend the surveillance/police state.
Given that the ALP is as hard right in practice as the LNP there is no reason whatsoever to dump Abbott. Turnbull will never ever get the gig. It simply isn’t going to happen.
@Megan
I’m picturing something like shock therapy, where memories of their recent madness are erased, and they start from scratch.
@Paul Norton
Your comment inspired me to go and look at Quadrant and Catallaxy. Wowsers, some serious problems in the brains there it seems, but looks like there sure will be problems if MT takes over.
Two OT but intriguing questions:
Why do right wingers think it makes them sound scintillatingly witty and smart to call left wing people “luvvies” (etc)?
Sinclair Davidson is a Professor, and he writes stuff like this
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2015/02/25/is-this-a-typo/. How can those two things be reconciled?
> Personally, I want Abbott to bite his own anus, in public, until he bleeds to death.
See, I don’t think that Abbott should hog all the opportunity there.