And the conservatives see him as a closet leftie. It’s all very well for some here to laugh at Peter Phelps with the latte-sipper cliches and the ominous “out there in the suburbs” to the backing of the Jaws theme. But he’s right. Rudd has convinced Australians to believe in Father Christmas for now. As with Whitlam, they will wake up from it. And when they do they’ll be angry.

This time, they won’t be looking for a Fraser who stands back and lets the country grow the way it wants to. They’ll be looking for a conservative, who asserts control on the same scale that Rudd does, just with a different set of values - conservative rather than (what passes for) “leftie” ones.

It’s going to be a blood bath and I’m going to enjoy every second.

James Mac, Let not the effects of the most recent injection of pituitary extract into the far right dismay you. The 2013 election with Turnbull out thinking and out manouvering Rudd will be one of the best campaigns we’ve seen since 1993. Gillard will then take over the ALP and thngs will get back to a policy debate intead of the shameless populism we’ve seen.

Atleast the oppositions cabinet is more well known than Stalin, Gillard and the ummmm errrrrr the treasurers name? escapes me now, I’m sure it will pop into my mind when I next visit the latrine.

The lefties will hate and scream rape with this new team. They are so predictable, its boring.

Edit - enough of your foolishness

Let us face the facts.

A baby is carried by a woman and the woman decides whether to carry the child to term or not. It is her right, and her right alone, to decide what happens. No-one has the right to force her to carry the child or to force her to abort it. The mother decides if the child lives or dies. World-wide, millions of women make that decision every day.

It is a power women hold, and one men greatly fear. Their child’s survival depends on the decision of the woman carrying it. This must be one of the greatest feelings of powerlessness a man can face. Hence the restriction of abortion and the fanatical fight against it by misogynist organisations like the Catholic Church.

No it’ll be the pinkos against the trogs, the way the Good Lord intended

Hmm, I think there is much more evidence that, at least at a late stage, that an unborn baby is human than there is that “we live numerous lives, not just one”. Though, I do see that you were not making a case for evidence or even logic here.

And I am not so sure how consistent you would be with this. If you had a female friend who had a miscarriage or a still-born baby, I doubt even you would say, ‘Brighten up, sister, after all the “human container is just a terminatable vehicle that even ‘god’ throws out in the trash … there’s an infinite supply of containers and about 5 billion Earth-years to go till the Sun implodes, so if [your] soul or spirit [is[ looking for a vehicle, it can move on to another one!”’ I can’t really see you making the grade as a hospital counsellor.

If a baby can survive outside of the womb, then that seems one good case for the unborn, at least at a late stage, being at the very least provisionally human.

There is a strange double standard when an unwanted pregnancy is “foetus” but when it is welcomed it is a “baby”. But is intrinsic worth simply the product of maternal intent? And … no, I don’t like Catholicism or Tony Abbott. And I don’t want to establish a theocracy. I am pro-choice. But I think most pro-choice women and men would want, in the best of worlds, for abortion to be safe, legal and rare (to quote the Clintons). And to make it rare, there is nothing wrong with counting the number of abortions to see if one’s policies are accomplishing this.

Enjoyed the speech by the way. Positively Churchillian. I love the way you move me baby.

I liked you better on Stingers.

Regards,

Rollo.

I mean, if they are that bad, then Labor will win handsomely, won’t they? And you can have your ETS and new Trade Union resurgence and your arts funding and your boat people and loads of taxpayer dollars for whatever is the cause du jour.

But of course, that’s not what you really believe.

No, you know full well that out there in the suburbs - the suburbs you deride from the vantage point of your inner-city coffee shops - the majority of Australians are conservatives at heart. You know they are. Real social and fiscal conservatives. You know that they will like what they see in the Liberal team. You know they’ll like their conservative policies.

The Howard Battlers haven’t gone away. The ones who booted Keating out are still around - a little bit older, a little bit more conservative. The ones who shocked you in 1999 at the Referendum and in the 2001 Federal election. Yes, they are still there, waiting to be listened to. Waiting to be taken seriously.

Waiting, in their modest but air conditioned houses in places like Asquith and Chadstone, to have somebody who’ll speak for them.

So ask yourself: if the Liberals are now so bad, why are you so sad?

Right on! Women get abortions because they get pregant when they don’t want to. Often this is because they are young, precocious, uneducated and promiscuous.

It happens more in what we euphemistically call ‘lower-socioenconomic groups/areas’ — areas where the rich don’t live, areas where low-middle-income people battle on against successive Liberal governments supported and run by wealthy money-grubbers who perpetuate the lower-socioenconomic groups/areas by making life difficult for them financially. The majority soothe the hopelessness with alcohol and other recreational drugs and, after young people have had a few/toke/snort etc, well …

If Abbot wants to reduce abortion rates, he needs to go the root, and make life easier for low-middle-income people by creating a 0% tax bracket for the lowest 20% of workers, and introducing a foreign company tax of 0.05% — which would more than make up the deficit.

‘So……. whilst we consider “our own ontology and metaphysical structure” let’s not even question the killing of half of ‘em? ‘Are you seriously that intellectually shallow?

No, I’m far more intellectually shallower than that. If some other being or beings is/are responsible for the existence of human beings, they don’t mind killing off 100% of them by any use-by date that happens to take their fancy.

I’m just saying that an ovum is just a cell, a sperm is just a cell, and if a conceptus is anything more than two cells fused, how does it happen and what’s your evidence? The only thing that can be demonstrated to happen from here to birth is cell division (and, yes, apoptosis). So when and how does this cell mass become a muderable human being?

It can’t be demonstrated scientifically, so it’s a matter of faith. And in matters of faith, one person or group should not be allowed to force their views on others. History is littered with more corpses of formerly living humans than all the aborted fetuses in history put together, who were killed (murdered) over issues of faith and religious bigotry.

At bottom, the real problem is not with abortion and the conundrum about when human life begins, but that the human body is over-rated because much of humanity has lost the original universal Indigenous knowledge that we live numerous lives, not just one. My view concurs wiht the traditional Indigenous one — that the human container is just a terminatable vehicle that even ‘god’ throws out in the trash. It’s the cumulative experience (like learning to accept difference and to respect the rights of others to believe what feels true to them) that is important, not the containers.

If a woman doesn’t want to sponsor an incarnation at a particular time or under particular circumstances, no problem — there’s an infinite supply of containers and about 5 billion Earth-years to go till the Sun implodes, so if there’s some kind of soul or spirit looking for a vehicle, it can move on to another one.

I believe this as strongly as Abbot believes abortion is murder. The difference is that I also believe that he should be allowed to hold that view, but he is not willling to extend the same privelege to me.

You still haven`t answered the questions put to you: why should a woman feel obligated to give details like this to a central data collection agency? and, how does a woman, unknown to you, having an abortion affect you personally?

Can you answer those questions?

Thanks to Bob Hawke (I’m actually a fan of of Hawkey and Keating) we know precisely how many cardiac operations and appedicectomies are carried out in the country each year.

Mind you the USA is centre-right and they also know those stats.

The US, however in contrast, also knows in fine detail the stats on abortion rates.

You say: “Nobody has ever been able to demonstrate the humanity of fetuses as an established fact beyond dispute”

Are you seriously attempting to equate the intentional kill of a foetus, identifiably human with a brain, heart and senses that demonstrably function with the death of millions of cells in your body hourly by a natural process of apoptosis? Or even with completely natural attrition rate (compared to their evident purpose) of sperm and ovum cells?

Ok ………….let’s allow tgat silliness thru’ to the keeper.

So……. whilst we consider “our own ontology and metaphysical structure” let’s not even question the killing of half of ‘em?

Is that it?

Are you seriously that intellectually shallow?

Hear, hear. Bet you the dude can/will not answer. He couldn`t answer how a woman unknown to him having an abortion affects him personally when I asked. Like Bernie Goldberg saying on Fox News stating Democrats would be far more likely to abort a feotus with Downs Syndrome. Because, obviously they ask women in America having abortions questions like:

Q: Do you vote Democrat/Republican/Independent?
A: Democrat.

Q: Oh, you must be here to abort you down syndrome feotus?
A: Too right, we Democrat women love aborting feotuses. It`s right up there with smoking crack and having sex with lesbo, commie, unpatriotic, pinot grigio drinkers.