I am a great lover of sleaze, I take it lightly dusted with extreme german porn and lashings of substances, it feels like moral victory even when I am forced to bury my head in shame at the depravity of my own thought processes. It is one of my saving graces when televison has so little to offer.

However, I am not one to take suicide lightly, it is a deadly serious business, involving hastily scrawled notes of a either a self serving nature or a general declaration of hate and self loathing on hotel note paper and should at the very least contain some hint as to what music you would like played at your funeral. It should be remembered, it is final and that the leap into the vast void of blackness will forever stain whatever good you may have done, unless you have done vast amounts of evil, when it will redeem you somewhat in the eyes of a bunch of barren, wan youths in goth clothes that you probably would not be seen dead with in any case.

So is this the fate that Alexander Downer is predicting for sleazebag and poster boy of the disengenuous, Santo Santoro, does Alex have some news that we dont know about yet. Does Alex have a few answers to those myriad questions that Santo has refused to answer, or is Santo just waving a pill bottle in the air in the hope of distracting the world so that his shady dealings need never see the light. Does Santo really want to be on the walls of goth teenagers next to posters of marilyn manson, espcially as he still maintains that he has done absolutely nothing wrong, that its all just a figment of someone elses imagining of wrongfullness. Would Bruce Lee agree? If Bruce Lee is dead, we must remember that it is because he wanted to be dead or didnt want to be alive enough. Thats the beauty of the power of positive thought, you are only wrong, or dead, or a complete sleazebag, because you either wanted it that way or didnt want it enough to not be that way.

He insisted that at no time had he acted with "dishonesty, deceit or deliberate intent to withhold information". Nor had he ever held assets which provided a conflict of interest with his role as a minister or senator.

Except the shares he orginally declared and potentialy several other shares he did not declare until forced to by disclosures from factional slime rising within his own party. Now he is threatening our foreign minister with suicide if he has to answer a few questions he doesnt feel comfortable or competent answering. Questions of character are rarely so clearly stated from a minister of the incumbent government. And now the slime has oozed out the backdoor, he will not have to answer a single question on record.

Downer: "Does the Labor Party want him to go out and do something even worse. Leave him alone now. He has resigned. Think about him as a human being."

Can this ploy work for the ever multiplying list of scandals being unearthed regarding the governments elected representatives. Should parliament now have a special watch room where coalition members can be kept under observation any time a hiccup is detected in their electoral allowances or their mates get preferential "jackpot" deals or they just dont feel like answering a few simple questions about what they havent done wrong. These watch rooms must allow the provision of no questions being raised about the occupants, just being in the room quarantines the occupant until they feel safe again in the hostile "real" world.

Of course this plea for the life of Santo Clause would be a hell of a lot easier without the members of his own party questioning his character:

"Santo Santoro behaved like a dope, he's paid the ultimate price," Mr Hockey said.

PM Puffy Nipples: "I feel sorry that he got himself into that position, I am totally unsympathetic though"

Meanwhile one of the other members of that poisoned chalice, the Coalition of the Willing, GW Bush is mired in a another scandal and refuses to allow any of his highly prized team to testify unless there is no transcript, no oath and behind completely closed doors. But there is nothing to hide here, trust us, were all christians, so swearing on a bible is just abhorent, an anathema to all that we hold sacred like the truth. Or the truth as we would like it to be seen.

If it all seems like a good put up to steer the conversation clear of the 4th aniversary of the Two Month War, it isnt, its just the usual shit pumped out by a whitehouse which violates every principle it is meant to uphold, then when its duplicity is unveiled, throws it hands in the air and demands to be trusted, no matter what the evidence points to in the opposite direction. Its all just political point scoring is the catchcry of our government and the bushies, its all just incompetence and coverups comes the reply. Such as this on a seperate topic, but one that has so many uncomfortable precedents:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1600678,00.html