Miranda Devine and Donald Trump (Images: AAP)

Simply Devine Yesterday News Corp internationalist Miranda Devine wrote a fantastically fawning love letter to US President Donald Trump in the New York Post: “If the president bounces back on to the campaign trail he will be an invincible hero …” and so on.

Trump, as he is wont to do, retweeted it, including Devine’s email address, which led exactly where you’d expect.

But it’s all content, and Devine simply wrote a column about the emails she received and how it illuminated the “deranged hatred the left has for Trump”. She catalogues 25 examples of this “deranged hatred” and, let me tell you, it’s pretty rough, including: “You suck”, “I farted”, and “You are dumb. And Trump sux”.

Thank you, Miranda. Many of us would not have the bravery to reveal that a cyberbully had told them to “kick rocks”.

She goes on to mention that Trump “was kind enough to delete the tweets”, which of course, he wasn’t, Twitter did that for him. But then love means never having to say you’re sorry.

Ask and (some of) ye shall receive A lot of groups have been entirely left out of the budget’s calculus — say, the unemployed. But private health insurers can walk away smiling.

They get a new policy allowing families to keep their adult children on their health insurance policy until they are 31, giving them something they’ve long asked for — a way they may get young people to stay on private health insurance.

As we’ve long noted, young people are consistently ditching or not taking up private health insurance for a variety of reasons that basically come down to the fact that it’s a scam that has young people pay for older Australians.

That was then, this is now After reviewing today’s response to the budget, we’re left with the question: did the government’s spruikers desert it or did it desert its spruikers? Cop this from The Australian Financial Review’s editorial:

This budget … amounts to pouring record amounts of debt-funded fuel into a still faulty motor in the hope this is enough to carry the government across the line at the next election.

That’s not a million miles from Crikey‘s own conclusion.

Spare a thought for the poor Institute of Public Affairs having to contort itself into a pretzel to make its budget response as much about lockdowns as government spending:

Lockdowns have robbed Australians of their lives, livelihoods and freedoms. Governments must abandon the fanciful elimination strategy which has plunged Australia into the highest level of debt on record …

Remarkably, the phrase “big government” does not appear once in the free-market warriors’ response.

The Australian reliably, is more generous, with its editorial concluding that:

This is not the year for preaching fiscal prudence, however … Scott Morrison, the treasurer and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann have thought out their strategy clearly. Far from crowding the economy with a larger public sector, they are getting out of the way of the private sector, leaving it to businesses, workers and consumers to rescue us through the real economy. This beats gratuitous handouts and government-sponsored make-work schemes.

National affairs editor Simon Benson praises the government’s business handouts as “the right strategy and the only strategy”.

As Bernard Keane noted at the time, the paper compared then-prime minister Kevin Rudd to Gough Whitlam over the 2009 stimulus in response to the global financial crisis, arguing for tax cuts rather than stimulus.

Once the worst happened (the stimulus worked) the Oz resorted to attacking every part of the implementation. We’re sure the paper will be entirely consistent in its coverage and attack the implementation of these measures with every bit as much forensic rigour.

A few remaining Qs Someone check on Pete Evans, probably staring directly into the sun just to calm himself down. Facebook is strengthening its August policy that banned QAnon accounts that discussed violence — now any Q accounts will be banned across all platforms.

Of course questions remain about whether this will be more successful than previous attempts to crack down on fake news, conspiracy theories, hate speech, etc. Regardless, the move is a positive one, albeit one coming far too late.