Breaking News - Turnbull Diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder!!!

"You need to look up narcissistic personality disorder. There's about 5 per cent of the population who are born with narcissistic traits, and about 2 per cent have narcissism. He's got narcissistic personality disorder.

"He says the most appalling things and can't understand why people get upset. He has no empathy.

"At first, I thought he was demonstrative, demanding, emotional and narcissistic, using his wealth and charm for seduction, and always with a sinister threat just beneath the surface."

Nelson cites the anecdote that Turnbull related to my colleague, Annabel Crabb, of how Kerry Packer had once threatened to kill him for pulling out of a business deal, and how Turnbull had responded by threatening to kill Packer if Packer's assassin missed.

"At first, I didn't think it was that bad. But it is. Most of the people who supported him [in the Liberal party room ballot for the leadership] voted for him to get rid of him," assuming that he would fail as leader and be discarded.

Ok, so it's from Dr Brendan, who has quite a bit to say about Malcolm Turnbull. Of course this blog posited NPD as a possible explanation for Turnbull's behaviour. I'm sticking to it, despite the generally dubious nature of personality disorders, a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Don't expect to see this as front page news. Party muck raking is only acceptable when it damages the Labor party. Kevin Rudd complaining about his meal is front page news but Turnbull's conduct towards his peers isn't.

Rudd-Rage: A Case study

Some of the emails from Grech released by a cowardly, arrogant Turnbull seeking to throw him to the wolves, are quite revealing.

From: Godwin Grech

Sent: Friday, 5 June 2009 10:41 PM
To: Malcolm Turnbull

Malcolm

Perhaps one way of getting me before a Committee to give evidence is to refer the OzCar Guarantee Bill, which is scheduled for Senate consideration in just over a week, to a Committee Inquiry.

Although we will be silly not to allow the Bill through, a short Committee Inquiry could be useful.

But it is important that any inquiry involve only me from Treasury.

Once this gets more momentum, they may try to stop me from appearing and send up one of my bosses instead.

I am the only person in Treasury to have worked on OzCar - quite remarkable really given that they normally allocate teams of about 10 people to such projects; but I have carried this on my own from the very start.

My point is that you will be on firm ground if you demand that only I appear.

I am happy for you to start using my name in Parliament or in media interviews when pressing for this.

In your interview with the ABC this morning, you referred to a Treasury official. I am OK for you to refer to me publicly to make it clear who you are after.

Also, with Swan daring you to haul up the relevant Treasury staff for investigation in Parliament on Thursday - you can simply dare him to follow through with his 'offer'.

I really do believe there is meat in this one.

Swan is probably more exposed than Rudd. Sure he disclosed the fact that he was making representations for Grant - but what is not appreciated is what I did - with the approval of the TO and Swan - in trying to get finance for Grant.

Ford Credit and the subsequent decision by ERC to allow Ford Credit to participate in OzCar - with Swan as ERC chair - is relevant to all of this.

Perhaps we should talk to sort out next steps.

Also, I am happy to meet with you and perhaps Abetz (no staffers) - to show you the various emails I have.

This may help you decide how strong you may want to push.

Let me know what you want to do.

Godwin

Ah Godwin and Malcolm. Does that sound like a whistle-blower or the Liberal party's go-to mole preparing to grease up the government?

It gets better though. Grech had a list of questions he fed to Turnbull and Abetz. Turnbull, being the self-aggrandising attention whore he is, hogged this line of questioning for himself, which he ran with in parliament. He didn't even have the brains to hand it to Tony Abbott or Joe Hockey, or even Julie Bishop. Oh no, Rudd's scalp was going to be all his. Either that or he tried to get Bishop to ask the questions and she told him to get stuffed, in which case Turnbull must be the first opposition leader to be outwitted by a hair-do.

Here's an interesting look into the mind of a sufferer of Rudd-Rage:


Note how the original question, provided by Grech (we haatessss Mr Rudd, yesssss we do! Godwin! Godwin!), fingers Rudd and Swan. Someone, and I like to think it was Turnbull himself, feverishly scribbled out Swan so they could focus on Rudd, because they hate him so much. They have a mental illness, it's not funny. These people need help and Grech is at least where he needs to be in a psych ward (he should still go to prison though).

And the best question suggested by Grech has to be this one:



"My question is to the Prime Minister. Is it not the case that Mr Godwin Grech, who is apparently associated with the ACT branch of the ALP, was despatched [sic] to do a deal to look after Mr Grant? Is this not a stark illustration of the gross politicisation of the Treasury?"

We know now that Grech was a Liberal party member and supporter. That he had a history of breaking the law to serve his political masters and that he actually did favours for dealers who were liberals. How did he know they were Liberals? Don't wait for the media to tell you, they're still either lying or can't figure out what's going on. The fact that Grech was so delusional that he thought this flimsy pretence would survive the barest scrutiny must surely be a sign of mental illness. Also I think we can conclude that the problem with the liberal party wasn't John Howard, it was the Liberal party. Gross, just ew. Howard would have come out with some sort of mealymouthed semi-I'm-sorry-I-got-caught apology, the media would go, 'oh you! You know I can't stay mad when you do that thing with your eyebrows! Come here you evil little homunculus you!' and we'd move on with some of us slowly dying inside. Turnbull on the other hand CANNOT be wrong about ANYTHING. When asked for regrets at his press conference, where he blamed the tides, the orbital angle of mars and Rudd for everything, he had a little George W Bush moment and said it was that he ever met Grech. Scary. I think we've had enough of infallible leaders.

Finally, please Kevin, purge the public service. There's obviously way too much dead wood in at least the treasury department if no one could figure out that leaks were coming from the one guy running the project the leaks were coming from.

The Ute that keeps on giving

Even though you will try Malcolm, yes you will.

Fresh off the ute is confirmation that Rudd and Swan had nothing to do with any dodgy emails or representations on behalf of anyone. but there are a few interesting tidbits which the moronic media will ignore as usual in pursuit of easy scandal-meat.

Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan have been cleared of seeking special treatment for a Brisbane car dealer, a report released this morning by Commonwealth Auditor-General Ian McPhee has found.

But the report levels a number of criticisms at Treasury and its officer Godwin Grech, who was in charge of running the OzCar scheme to help car dealers attain finance.

The report says Mr Grech gave preferential treatment to one car dealer, because he understood that the dealer was "Lib".

Of the 12 representations made to Mr Grech on behalf of car dealers, the responses "varied markedly".

Some were not responded to and others were given extensive assistance.

"The variability in Treasury's response did not reflect any instruction on the part of the Prime Minister or his office, the Treasurer or his office, or senior Treasury management that some representations were to receive more favourable treatment than others," the report, from the Australian National Audit Office, said.

The Opposition had claimed the Prime Minister and Treasurer sought special attention for car dealer John Grant.

But that claim was dramatically undermined by the revelation that Mr Grech had concocted an email sent from Mr Rudd's office.

No, fools, it's undermined by the fact that the guy who fabricated (he fabricated the email and then concocted the lies to support them. Stop abusing the word!) the email was actually providing certain dealers with special treatment because they were Liberals.

This morning's report criticises Treasury for not giving enough resources to the OzCar scheme, placing "a considerable workload" on Mr Grech.

Treasury said Mr Grech was offered extra help if he needed it, but he "always gave the impression that implementation was on track".

I'll bet it was on track, just not the track anyone else thought it should be on. I would also bet heavily against a govt. department not providing adequate support to an employee in a situation like that and opening themselves up to an easy compensation suit. I'd be surprised if he didn't have adequate oversight.

Responding to the report, Mr Grech denied that he gave extra help to one car dealer because its owner supported the Liberal Party.

The audit office said preferential treatment was give to one dealer, "motivated by, amongst other things, the personal circumstances of the dealer principal and Mr Grech's understanding that the dealer principal was a supporter of and donor to, the Liberal Party of Australia, with other records made by the official stating that he was 'Lib'."

SMH

Apparently Grech was interviewed while in a psych ward, probably seated next to a lawyer. With regard to the Public Service Act, this guy is in serious trouble. And that doesn't take into account the other laws he's likely to have broken if even half of this is true.

Now all this looks quite scandalous but as usual it's not the real story. The real story is the interactions between Grech, the Liberals and News Corp. in the lead up to this story. There are reports that Grech showed the faked email to the libs, then asked them not to show it to anyone. He then rang Turnbull to tell him that an Opposition Orifice journo (Steve Lewis) was sniffing around asking about John Grant (the guy who supposedly swapped a used ute for preferential treatment). This was because the libs had gone and leaked the fake email to the OO, who they knew could be trusted to legitimise the fake by asking them about it and starting the Rudd destroying scandal they've been desperate for. This seems to have included faking the actual layout of the email in their papers. At this stage Turnbull was marching around demanding resignations and picking out curtains for the lodge.

Before they leaked the email to the OO, Turnbull and Abetz, a disgusting lovechild of Dick Cheney and a door to door insurance salesman, grilled Grech for over an hour. During this time he fed them questions to ask during the OZCar hearings. This was never an incident of whistle blowing, it was a scumbag who thought the machinery of govt. was the personal plaything of his political party betraying the people he worked for (you) to work with another pack of morons and arrogant born to rule toads and create a scandal. As usual the Opposition Orifice was central to this. In fact I heard on the radio that they're alleged to have leaked news of the terror-raids that happened today hours before they happened. Surely not in an attempt to swamp this story.

Somehow, knowing this, the media are letting Grech spin this debauched tale of treachery, political skulduggery and outright violation of the law and the trust of the public to push personal politics into one of an overworked public servant who should have had more help. Bullshit. He's lying again to cover the tattered hide of the libs. If he was under all this pressure, why not leak that? We'd already had the appalling scandal of Rudd actually expecting the public service to work for a living, so why not leak that? Of course the Orifice will run sympathy stories and will ask, in mock outrage, why didn't Rudd do something to help a beleaguered public service? How could he sit back and watch as the champagne fountains ran dry and high ranking officers were reduced to breaking the law for the party they supported with the aid of a biased media organisation?

You'll barely hear a peep about the Grech, OO, liberal party triangle because the media would have to take a look at themselves and their miserable habit of constantly trying to insert themselves into stories so they can pretend to be movers and shakers as opposed to trained housepets of very rich men. Certainly the most we can hope for is that Grech goes where he belongs, which is prison. This needs to happen as an example to others who think that this is an appropriate use of their office. There is a massive difference between whistle blowing and this kind of disgusting, insidious bastardry.

Finally this entire affair has been a real insight into the personality of Malcolm Turnbull who appears to be every bit as arrogant, smug, self-serving and bullying as he seems. From bullying Grech to pony up info, then using fraudulent info to demand Rudd resign, refusing to accept any responsibility and then finally tossing Grech to the sharks when he could save him by admitting he pressured him. Pathetic. Just piss off back to the oak paneled boardrooms you came from.

Jenny does Logan

We just watched Insight on SBS. It was about jobs and the economy and set in Logan, a less well off suburb in Brisbane's south side. A few interesting things cropped up.

The government's economic stimulus package is working how and where they intended it to work, that is in the pockets of regular people. A couple of people who had voted Liberal at the last election expressed nothing but love for Kev for keeping them in work.

There was one woman in particular who'd changed her vote from Liberal to Labor because, "A couple of years ago I was much richer than I am now, and now I'm not." Good to see my suspicions that Liberal voters are either rich people voting in their own interest or any combination of greedy, ignorant and/or selfish.

There were a couple of die-hard, rusted on Feuhrerbunker Libs. One was a small business owner right out of the Liberal election ads who was able to deny that the stimulus package had created any jobs while deriding the people whose jobs had been saved by said package as being personal friends with Labor apparatchiks.

The other was some nutbar from the Institute for Public Affairs, a loony bin think tank. This 'person' told people who'd talked about how the package had helped them feed their families that they shouldn't have gotten it. To their faces, though she didn't have the courage to look at them. At the end she was asked to provide an alternate solution. Before she started speaking I said "cut taxes" and yup, that was the solution because 'the private sector is the main animator of the economy'. An actual professor of economics told her she was wrong and the private sector has never been the main driver (of any economy anywhere, except places like Somalia and Afghanistan, where I suspect their views on property rights and ownership do not coincide with ours). Only the truly, deeply mad still support Reaganomics. I'm amazed that she wasn't lynched on the spot. Shame on you Loganites! Embarrassingly Jenny Brockie joined in, implying that people who had a job thanks to govt. hand outs were somehow cheating, in the same way that if you have a heart attack and go to a public hospital you've cheated by not waiting for the hidden hand of the market to restart your heart. I think that since the election the cupboard of liberal panel stackers has become increasingly bare, leading to crazier and crazier lunatics being called on to 'balance' out panels.

All in all, most people didn't really seem to get that for the past decade big business has been preparing for times like this by building a 'flexible' workforce of casual employees they can fire at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile the about-to-be-screwed did nothing but enjoy themselves and get into debt. The audience also favoured people over 40, you know, people with assets that they can monetise to stave off hardship. There was very little representation from people who don't have that safety net because they're young and are in similar situations.

Also there was a guy from a community organisation based in Beenleigh who went on about wanting to get hold of a politician to tell them how tough the people he worked with were having it. Rudd held a community cabinet in Beenleigh two weeks ago, I'm pretty sure his organisation attended. Epic fail. The Libs deride community visits like these as media stunts because they hold voters in contempt. They're still in the mindset that the voters made a terrible mistake and if they just look like they were born to rule the voters will come back. Also kudos the Rudd government for doing their best not to cut social spending in a recession. Turnbull would have.

Dear Liberals

Two Australian citizens are captured and detained without trial by a foreign government. They are charged with serious crimes and look set for a decidedly unfair legal high jump. What should the Australian government do?

A) Jump up and down in a disgusting, arrogant orgy of grandstanding with only the barest concern over the welfare of an Australian in dire straights.

B) Assume they are guilty and abandon them to their fate, they've been arrested by a major ally and trading partner after all, we support their right to defend themselves by any means necessary. If possible, slander them in the media.

C) Work quietly and diligently through established channels to get the best outcome for the person, there are established protocols for this sort of thing and we don't want to go off half cocked.

D) It depends which one is David Hicks and which one is Stern Hu


- Edit: I just want to point out that although my name is at the bottom of this post, Gam is actually the author... I (naughtily) signed on using his computer because my own was temporarily dead and forgot to sign out! The inherent cleverness of the post ought to alert everyone to this fact anyhow :)

-S

Media, still dumb/crooked

As usual the media only appear to be doing their jobs when a ready made, pre-packaged scandal falls into their laps. There are indications that it was known Malcopops had the dodgy email before he made reference to it and even after he did:

1) No one bothered to ask him where he got it from
2) The media, mostly the Murdoch rags, were integral in promoting the fake email as true, accepting something from the Libs and printing it as unsourced truth. No doubt as part of the seemingly endless campaign to tar Rudd with something media pea-brains can understand and don't need to do too much work to uncover.
3) There's been no analysis of how the email got from the Libs to the front page of Murdoch's cage liners anonymously. Maybe Godwin Gretch will tell the AFP and we'll find out.
4) The media are still stuck in the lazy loop of repeating other people's statements and trying to insert themselves into the story, as usual.

I read some ridiculous piece by some guy and George Megalogenis on how no one really knew Gretch, but they had the inside line on how he was a bit weird but a stand up guy. Their evidence for this? Gretch's involvement as the treasury official in charge of a Howard government pork barrel hand out to his 'favourite' footy club. He had daily meetings with Howard to report on the progress of the deal and we're to believe that it wasn't shady because he 'never accepted a free footy ticket.' Get fucked guys.

Maybe the real story here is the nature and the extent of the relationship between News Corp., the Liberal opposition and Gretch. Gretch seems to be the source of every government 'scandal' from Fuel Watch onwards, scandals that News Corp. always seemed to have an inside line on. I wonder if having a mole on the inside might explain the smugly confident 'we'll get him eventually' tone of News Corp. reporting on Rudd. The fact that they were willing to throw down with Malcopops and attack Rudd on a single email of dubious origin, when the 'evidence' (evidence that Swan talked to Mr Free-ute, who wound up getting no help from the government) pointed to Swan seems to suggest a lot of investment in one side of politics.

The whole issue is a massive I-told-you-so from this blog which declared when Rudd took office that he should begin immediately by purging the public service of Howard era inbreds, nepotism appointments and water-treaders. Perhaps the image of Godwin Gretch (whose cronies have already started the 'health concerns' stuff) going on a retreat to involuntary accommodation behind bars and showers with soap on a rope might encourage some of his contemporaries to think twice before ringing Malcopops or make them change jobs.

We need a definition

For the feeling that you get when you think: The only thing that makes Malcopops' own goal sweeter is that it happened a week after Peter Costello gave up waiting for the leadership to fall into his lap. Peter Costello: whenever opportunity knocked, he had his door dead-bolted.

Rudd-Rage

Outta my way Godwin, I'm hunting the Pwime Minister!

ICD-10 E2007.10

Rudd-rage or Ideologue Defeat Syndrome is a heritable and communicable psychological disorder with onset in early puberty, recent acquisition of wealth or alignment with the right wing of Australian politics. It is characterised by an all consuming, monomaniacal obsession with what sufferers perceive as the irrefutable evil nature of Kevin Rudd, prime minister of Australia. Sufferers are identifiable by socially inappropriate and vulgar utterances (Tuckeylalia) on the subject of Kevin Rudd. Sufferers show pathological obsession with the idea that Kevin Rudd is

a) Personally cheating them
b) Responsible for their bankruptcy, the global economy, whaling, broken vending machines, dead hooker in the trunk
c) Manipulating the media to hide the crimes he has committed.
d) The antichrist

Sufferers of Rudd-Rage will typically go to great lengths to prove their belief and, having no insight into their illness, will continue to do so long after they have embarassed themselves in public attempting to do so. The urge to pursue this obsession is so strong that sufferers will commit serious crimes and ignore evidence pointing to other, real wrongs in order to satisfy their irrational compulsion.

Tuckeylalia (the spontaneous utterance of socially objectionable or taboo words or phrases) is the most publicized symptom of Rudd-Rage, but it is not required for a diagnosis of Tourette's and only about 30% of Rudd-Rage patients exhibit Tuckeylalia. These utterances are typically characterised by the use of the word "Krudd" which the sufferer will typically find extremely humourous and will often use as a convincing argument that Kevin Rudd is:

a) Personally cheating them
b) Responsible for their bankruptcy, the global economy, whaling, broken vending machines, dead hooker in the trunk
c) Manipulating the media to hide the crimes he has committed.
d) The antichrist

Echolalia (repeating the words of others) and palilalia (repeating one's own words) occur in a minority of Rudd-Rage cases, largely confined to Federal Parliament, while the most common initial motor and vocal tics are, respectively, eye blinking and the use of fake emails to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister.

Rudd-Rage is co-morbid with moderate-severe intellectual impairment, Narcissistic personality disorder (a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.") and poor literacy.

There currently does not appear to be a cure for Rudd-Rage as any cure would require insight to the illness and an acceptance of personal fallibility on the part of the sufferer.

Noted Sufferers of Rudd-Rage include:

John Howard
Alexander Downer - Mr Downer is noted as a particularly severe case, he is reported to break out in hives on observing pictures of comic book character 'TinTin'.
Malcolm Turnbull
Godwin Gretch - Mr Gretch has evidently recently destroyed his career and possibly broken several laws as a result of his illness. It is unknown whether Rudd-Rage will be entered in his sentencing submission.

Liberal Party Makes Decision to Not Make Decision

After meeting with his opposition buddies it looks like Malcopops (stolen enthusiastically from the pollbludger's comments) has decided what to do about the government's emissions trading scheme. He's decided to wait till someone else makes a decision before getting together to try and make a decision. Pathetic.

In his press release, Malcopops stated that Kevin Rudd only wanted to pass an ETS so he could show leadership at the next world meeting in Copenhagen. YES!!! you slimy little toad! Leadership is the whole fucking point! We might not be going fast enough but at least it'll be in the right direction, as opposed to a collection of decrepit halfwits still arguing about if climate change exists while their electorates are flood and drought declared at the same time! His argument is basically that he won't show any leadership on the issue until someone tells him where to go. Hopefully someone foreign. Pathetic. The Liberals always want to be the absolute fucking last people on earth to do the right thing. They don't even have enough balls to outright oppose the ETS they can only decline to make a decision on the future of the fucking planet.

"Captain Turnbull! We just hit an iceberg!!! What should we do?"

"Well, I think we should delay any decisions till the passengers have a meeting and decide how they want to handle the situation. Now give my hammock a push and close the cabin door on the way out."