It's half-time, the game plan isn't working, it's time to start running into walls full-speed

THE campaign has become post-modern and it's hard to tell the fakes from the phonies.

Julia Gillard yesterday:

THERE are times when the coach says to the players: play safe, lock it down, short passes, keep possession of the ball. I think we've been playing our election campaign like that. But you see the best of the players when they're really going for it. I'm going to be really going for it now.

Leo McGarry, the fictional chief of staff to fictional president Jed Bartlet, in the West Wing episode "Let Bartlet be Bartlet".

LISTEN up. Our ground game isn't working; we're gonna put the ball in the air. If we're gonna walk into walls, I want us running into them full-speed. We're gonna lose some of these battles. And we might even lose the White House. But we're not going to be threatened by issues: we're going to put 'em front and centre. We're gonna raise the level of public debate in this country, and let that be our legacy.

Phillip Hudson in the Herald Sun yesterday:

JULIA Gillard will today unleash the "real Julia", discarding a safe campaign approach to personally seize control of her battle for The Lodge.

Michelle Grattan writing in The Age yesterday:

AS Julia might say, "give us a break". The Prime Minister declares that she's unleashing "the real Julia" and taking "personal charge" of the campaign. Which raises the questions: "Who, precisely, have we been seeing? And who has been running the campaign up to now?"

Mark Davis and Jacqueline Maley The Age yesterday:

3.17pm: This election campaign has become, like, so postmodern. It is not often in a campaign that the style of campaign becomes a campaign issue in itself. By announcing that she will unveil the "real" Julia this week, Gillard is admitting to having been hitherto gussied up and glossed over, over-managed and super-spun. And now her rejection of a confected campaign style becomes a campaign style in itself. The Pulse feels its head spinning.

Afferbeck Lauder in Let's Talk Strine 1965 on ontological phenomenology

HAGGER night telephime reely reel? Hadder Y. Noah Fimere? Car sigh only nowered I thing ky feel, An maybe I'm knotty veneer. I mipey no lesson I mipey no more, Than a shadder we idle fancy. Prabzyme the moon! Can I Telfer Shaw, That I'm nodgers a nant named Nancy? I coobie jar sreely a loafer bread, Or a horse, or a bird called Gloria. I mipey alive - but I coobie dead, Or a phantasmabloodygoria. Hagger nigh tellime notonia dream, Cook tarpner mare chick's pell? Cos sigh my pig zackly what I seem, Bar towg nigh reely tell? Wunker nawlwye stell; yegger nawlwye snow, If you're reelor yerony dreaming; Yellopoff the topoff your nirra stow, A new wafer the sander the screaming.

How many jobs did the stimulus create? Think of a number. Phillip Hudson in Fairfax papers on February 3, 2009:

THE Treasurer, Wayne Swan, claimed 90,000 jobs would be created by the package over the next two years.

Double it and add 30,000. Sue Dunlevy in The Daily Telegraph June 15, 2009:

MR Swan said the stimulus would create an extra 210,000 jobs and reduce the forecast peak in unemployment from 10 per cent to 8.5 per cent.

Add another 140,000. Petrina Berry in the Sydney Morning Herald July 8, 2010:

MR Swan told reporters, "We have created 350,000 additional jobs over the past year. That is a very good outcome for the Australian economy when there has been very difficult circumstances elsewhere."

Add another 100,000. Sid Maher and Pia Akerman in The Australian July 31:

DESCRIBING herself as "a fighter" Ms Gillard turned to the economy as she pitched Labor's case, arguing the government had created 450,000 jobs during the global financial crisis.