Tony Abbott, Michael Costa, Ross Cameron and Phillip Ruddock, a gallery of rogues delivered by some useless stork ...

(Above: oh take me back, take me home to west Virginia or perhaps north Tamworth, mountain momma).

It's one of the peculiarities of righteous hypocritical conservatives indulging in cant that they regularly, routinely celebrate the centrality and significance of the family as a fundamental underpinning of society.

It's often compounded by Christian rhetoric, and usually lathered with words like 'compassion' and 'forgiveness'.

The reality is just as likely to be Ross Cameron, saying one thing while doing another, or today the resonating pettiness and sordid gutter brawling style of Tony Abbott in the matter of Craig Thomson attending the birth of his child by way of a parliamentary pair.

Thomson might or might not be a hypocritical grub of the union kind, but in the process Abbott has revealed himself to be a hypocritical grub of the conservative Christian kind.

The pond blames it on Cardinal Pell and Catholicism in general, since the words of Christ are usually ignored when it comes to institutional politics in that wretched tower of babel.

No doubt a few of the conservatives indulging in the unseemly torture of Thomson wonder what the fuss is all about, since they conform to the cartoon view of the nineteen fifties that the male role is to pace about in the corridors, waiting anxiously until the stork arrives down the chimney, then after giving wife and bub a peck, rushing off to the club to dole out the cigars and the champers, and turn up a day later hung over with a sheepish bunch of flowers.

Yes, why would you give anyone a pair for a piss up down at the club?

What's that? Modern men attend births and actually watch and perhaps even assist in the labour? Eek ...

Speaking of unmitigated gall - as we regularly do - it takes a special gall for former politicians to write opinion pieces offering advice on how to play the political game, and Michael Costa has gall in abundance as he scribbles Trashing the Hawke-Keating legacy.

Gall
1. See bile.
2. a. Bitterness of feeling; rancor.
b. Something bitter to endure: the gall of defeat.
3. Outrageous insolence; effrontery

As a man front and centre at the NSW Labor Rights trashing of New South Wales, no doubt Costa's qualified to speak on trashing legacies, but who in their right minds would bother to read such trash?

Readers of The Australian? Say no more ...

What's more, he has the gall to chatter on about the NSW disease, which is a bit like a canker at the core (to borrow a phrase from Adelaide's Barbara Hanrahan) complaining about the presence of cancer.

Canker

5. A source of spreading corruption or decay. (the first four meanings here for cat, dog and horsey types).

Can anyone imagine a better explanation for Barry O'Farrell's current majority than the vision of Michael Costa as NSW Treasurer?

Say no more, and hey nonny no, on we go, because speaking of cant, today Ross Cameron turns up like a bad penny in the Fairfax Press, with One-armed bandit set to rob Gillard government of its mandate. (warning: forced video at other end of link).

It seems Cameron has abandoned the chase, the hue and the cry surrounding Craig Thomson, and now pins his hopes on another "wild card", namely Andrew Wilkie, as a way of bringing down the government by next weekend.

Does Cameron spend his column, in classic conservative Mother Grundy way, deploring the deplorable influence of drink and gambling on righteous family life, especially in the matter of poker machines festooned and draped through clubs and pubs like Xmas decorations?

Not on your nelly. Oh there's a few pious bleats about 'real tragedies' resulting from gambling, but most of the piece is a celebration of the way that organised clubs are going to tear the federal government apart.

The final par gives an idea of how Cameron likes to play the game:

Last week the government was body-slammed by two penniless Iraqis in a detention centre. Now it's going to be held up and beaten to pulp by a one-armed bandit.

Beaten to a pulp. Now there's a fine choice of words to evoke politics in the age of Abbott.

What's that you said about principles and problem gamblers and ruined families?

The clubs see this as a death-match and they will fight it as hard and dirty as the union movement fought Work Choices.

Yep, and courtesy Wilkie, it's going to bring down the Gillard government. Yippee, let's get down and dirty like the union movement.

The clubs have already shown they know how to kneecap ineffectual, weak-kneed Christians, in their brawl with the Salvation Army. The Army denied that it folded, but resorted to blather to explain why it went to water so its brave soldiers could keep selling its newspaper War Cry in the moral cesspits that are New South Wales clubs.

''The Eastern Territory shares a similar concern for the impact of gambling, however based on consultations with its frontline staff, people in its programs affected by problem gambling, and researchers, the Eastern Territory supports further trials of mandatory pre-commitment before fully endorsing it.

''The Salvation Army values its access to the clubs and hotels but any threat to this access was not a factor in determining the position of The Salvation Army Eastern Territory.''

Oh it's a grand time for cant and hypocrisy, and if you want to read more about how the Salvos fire Xian blanks, you can head off to Clubs lift ban on Salvos after poker reform spat.

In recent times, Cameron has also been vocal in the matter of overdue changes to the federal school chaplaincy program, as you can read, with video link, here at Ross Cameron's tantrum over changes to school chaplaincy on The Drum.

That's the problem with righteous sanctimonious types full of cant to the core, you just can't shut them up, you just have to watch how they play the grubby game ...

But sometimes there are delicious ironies to be found, and none more delicious than the ironies that Richard Ackland finds in the matter of the righteous Amnesty badge-wearing Phillip Ruddock and the recent High Court decision regarding the Malaysian solution.

The irony starts with the header Suddenly, Ruddock is a human rights hero (warning, forced video at other end of link), and it gets richer and richer until the punch line:

Step up Fabulous Phil, friend of asylum seekers.

Yes, the pond confesses that the sight of Ruddock wearing an Amnesty badge used to send the pond into a frenzy, and then a termination of relations with Amnesty, but the delicious ironies Ackland discovers makes it all worthwhile.

It's a fine way to end a long week full of the usual bitterness and acrimony and negativity Tony Abbott has honed to a fine edge as part of the new paradigm of political discourse in the gutter ...

If that's genuine conservatism, then perhaps it's fucked, and the pond now considers itself a new flag bearer for genuine compassionate Xian conservatism ... minus hypocrisy and righteous cant.

And now for a short reading:

There was a canker in the dream that was not a dream; a canker at the core - which was me ...

All about me was a wild world that broke through the symmetry of prim brick borders, neat vegetable rows, tortured roses. With the night, rats wove between the creepers on the fences that divided the yards. With winter, the galvanized iron sheds were lapped by sour-sobs and grass; the houses became Noah's arks, bobbing in a swollen sea.

I watched it all, and it was in the wild night garden that I discovered I did not fit into the snug electric world as others did - as they thought they did. I discovered I was different, yet I did not know where the real world lay ... (and more from Hanrahan's The Scent of Eucalyptus here at google books

(Below: an oldie but a goodie. Perhaps the Pope considers attending a birth a frivolous matter too, at least if the bub hasn't been signed over to the Catholic church).

And just in case you were wondering: