A Friday smörgåsbord of delights ...

(Above: yep, we've run it before, and since we like it so well, we might run it again sometime).

It being Friday, it's time for smörgåsbord of delights, though with the commentariat food coming from a bain-marie in best Australian club style, it's likely to be an over-heated, over-done, stewed to the point of lifelessness sludge fest.

First a belated stewed broccoli to Bob Baldwin for his splendid effort in the brain damaged The Punch Kill the pokies and risk killing tourism too.

Baldwin, who passes himself off as the federal shadow minister for tourism - when surely he should be leading classes in rocket science 101 - develops an epic thesis that the tourists of the world are salivating at the bit to surge to Australia to drop their cash in poker machines at the Woop Woop RSL club, and if a limit applies to gamblers, not only clubs but the entire tourist industry will be roooned.

It's a thesis entirely unsubstantiated by facts, which perhaps explains why Baldwin is forced to ramble on about Singapore and unrelated tourist issues, such as processing by customs. Amazingly, the rabid ferals who constitute the Punch's commenters on the commentariat below the fold - usually to the right of Attila the Hun - told Baldwin to bugger off ...

Meanwhile, no doubt Steven Ciobo is waiting for a vast influx of Chinese tourists, coins jingling in pocket, to save the Broadbeach Bowls and Community Club ...

You have to admire the Liberals' valiant defence of the poker machine industry and its capacity to milk the punters at over a thousand bucks the hour (such a sweet way to make a living), but their capacity for kicking own goals is almost as much fun as an advertorial by a couple of mug broadcasters delivering an infomercial during a rugby league game (Attack on pokie reform came from 'up top', says Warren).

Nothing will happen to the boofheads reading the script or the people 'up top' who allegedly gave them the script - ACMA has announced it's become involved, and so that's the end of the matter. Stand by for a firm announcement somewhere around 2013 ... most likely a whipping by lettuce leaf until the leaf breaks ...

Meanwhile, Graham "Swiss bank accounts Gra Gra" Richardson is busy stirring the leadership plot and where else but The Australian, with Kevin Rudd's treachery will be biggest obstacle he faces. Actually you'd have to think Gra Gra trumpeting his case is the biggest obstacle Rudd will face ...

There's actually nothing meaningful, interesting or relevant in Gra Gra's digging over the rancid soil, including this line:

What the gallery is picking up is activity. Those who are talking up this challenge have had much more success in getting coverage than they deserve.

Uh huh. So why are the conspirators getting more coverage than they deserve from the babbling blathering Gra Gra? Well for that you have to head off to Michelle Grattan's A Richo addition to the Rudd game (warning, forced video at other end of link):

Richardson has his own TV program on Sky now, called Richo (of course). He knows the value of political spice. And because of who he is - more to the point, who he was in his glory days - any spice he dishes up has a lot of zing.

So Richo is now a larger-than-life media figure, who breaks a story about a leadership challenge, only to discount the leadership challenge as lacking numbers and credibility? No wonder the media in this country is totally stuffed. Though perhaps there could be a weekly segment giving the punters advice on how to set up their very own Swiss bank account ...

It's a reminder of how Australia always seeks to ape the worst excesses of the United States, in this particular case Fox Noise, which regularly features the thoughts of the likes of Sarah Palin, who thereafter keep on claiming media attention long after the sounding brass or the tinkling cymbal stopped making meaningful noises ...

That's why you can turn to the anonymous editorialist in The Australian, still pumping up Sarah Palin as a top contender in Palin still haunts Obama.

There's a reason why political commentary in this country is abysmal and the anon edit provides regular evidence as to why this is so. At a time when Palin's endless teasing of the media has come to an end, and many in the American media are feeling uses and abused, the anon edit is still in the grip of Palin's 'star factor', and is still calling her as a possible vice-presidential running mate. Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin "moving forward'?

Well as a comedy item worthy of someone's Cut and Paste it probably passes muster, but for an insight into the current view of Palin, why not head off to the Daily Beast, to Howard Kurtz's comprehensive demolition job Palin Ends the 2012 Pretense:

There will be much talk now about how Palin can still impact the “debate,” about the uses of her megaphone, about who she might endorse. But most of that talk will be empty. Sarah Palin will continue to be a huge star, perhaps serve as a party fundraiser, but her days as a powerbroker, and serious political player, are over. She has at long last ended the pretense, and now can resume the lucrative business of marketing the one product she excels at promoting: herself.

Read it and weep anon edit, but it does explain why the pond spends more time visiting sites which deliver more than the empty, idle chatter to be found in The Australian. Kurtz is delivering in more up-market words what hatchet man and common gossip Joe McGinniss delivers in Arrivederci, Sarah!, but the news will likely travel by slow boat to the antipodes, and to the worshipful Palinites still lurking in the Holt street bunker ...

Meanwhile, there's a special joy to be found in reading Dennis Shanahan's Not a first violet in sectarian spring, as he has a fainting fit about Peter Costello daring to raise Catholicism as an issue in the matter of Liberal party policies ...

Shanahan, who will be fondly remembered as the Comical Ali of 2007 election reporting, and talk of the evils of Catholicism is fighting words.

Care has to be taken to keep sectarianism at bay and to be prepared to object to anti-Catholicism along with any other bigotry, but we shouldn't be panicked into seeing a wider movement where there is just a nasty attack against a leader who actually enjoys the widespread support of his party, which includes more than enough conservatives to ensure Abbott's internal support.

Once again Costello seems out of tune with his party.

Dammit, there we were thinking Peter Costello might be the new messiah:

The polling and the mood of the Liberal Party suggest Costello is a better choice than Nelson as Opposition Leader and completely contradicts any suggestion Labor is conducting a campaign of reverse psychology to put Costello into the leadership.

Common sense and political evidence suggest Labor is frightened of Costello in a head-to-head contest against Rudd and has reacted in panic. (Dennis Shanahan, Count on Peter Costello).

Turns out he was just a naughty boy, or at least common sense and political evidence suggest that.

The point of course is that all the blather about sectarianism is a way of hiding the heat Costello and the right of the Liberal party are bringing to bear on Tony Abbott about workplace reform, including individual contracts. While Abbott recognises it as electoral suicide, Costello has nothing to lose, and the sight of him ravaging Abbott is going to keep on entertaining followers of Liberal party ructions ...

And now what got the pond started on this wretched Friday smörgåsbord? Sad to say, it's David Penberthy at work with Tofu-muching Greens are cooking up a big fat tax.

It's a typical disingenuous bit of populist nonsense, revolving around Penberthy's ongoing desire to drive his massive Toyota landcruiser (or perhaps his Hummer) through suburban streets to the city, and his desire to shove 'burgers and Chiko rolls down his throat (while drolly explaining how much he loves tofu and lentils).

You can of course understand all this once you have the right cultural reference. Penberthy is a mix of pompous would-be anarchist and poet Rick (Rik Mayall) and vicious punk Vyvyan (Adrian Edmondson) doing over yet again poor hapless hippie Neil (Nigel Planer).

The trouble is The Young Ones is funnier ...

In the meantime, we thank Penberthy for his solution to the obesity problem confronting richer countries. It's to teach people how to cook, and how to eat sensibly in a balanced way over a week. Hmm, guess for that we'll need cooking classes throughout the land, and seeing as how it's a government solution, perhaps a new tax to fund the cost of said classes. Put it another way:

It shows a desperate lack of imagination that the only way they can envisage changing poor culinary behaviour is through the blunt instrument of taxation.

Yep, and it shows a desperate lack of imagination to think you can change poor culinary behaviour by conjuring cooking classes out of nowhere, paid by no one, and certainly not involving the blunt instrument of taxation. But that's the way it is in policy la la land in the world of the minions of Murdoch, all greasy chips and instant mashed potatoes, and no substance at all ...

(Below: yep chiko-munching Penbo is cooking up a big fat set of cooking classes and eating guides, to be funded by who knows whom).