Wherein the pond drifts from talk of class warfare to thoughts of Tony Abbott in the nude ...

(Above: The Australian deep in class warfare, with Bill Leak rapidly turning into its resident Patrick Cook, an object of pity and concern).

Here's hoping the stench emanating from the Leveson enquiry keeps floating around the world.

Next up is Andy Coulson, already creating dismay and confusion for David Cameron, as you can read in Andy Coulson is likely to have attended sensitive meetings, No 10 admits. And waiting in the wings is Rebekah Brooks, texting friend of Cameron (here).

At some point, and likely sooner than later, it will occur to functional News Corp business people that nirvana - in the form of pay and cable TV - has been lost, at the expense of keeping and propping up newspapers at a time when physical newspapers are dying, all in the name of sustaining Chairman Rupert in the business of power and influence.

The current jump in quarterly profits (here) is due to improved earnings from cable TV and films rather than newspapers, but just when it was within grasp, the chance to really turn into a cable powerhouse in the UK with BSkyB was pissed against the wall.

Perhaps at some point the attention of institutional shareholders will turn to the antipodes and the bloated (profitless, loss-making) hysterical right wing activities of The Australian, and the bean counters will begin to wonder what's the point of alienating a sizeable slab of the readership when they should be focussed on future trends, and making money out of cable.

Which is a roundabout way of noting that the lizard Oz is at it again today, running the class warfare routine:

Truly The Australian has jumped the ideological shark, and landed in a theological neverland. Pay to read this sort of tosh? Do you get an enema as a bonus?

The other angle doing the rounds amongst the myrmidons of Murdoch is that the Welfare budget is costing $5000 a head (sure you could pay to read it at the HUN, but why not read it for free at the Daily Terror?)

What a pity that the Murdoch press only seems to have discovered a bias towards families now, as opposed to the Howard years, and as opposed to the promises of family Nirvana in the coming Abbott years ...

It is of course part of a frenzied group think Murdochian assault on the budget, which is unprecedented for such an obvious bit of pork-barreling of the Howard kind (trust the pond, it's been out of pork and barrel in the entirety of the Howard, Rudd and Gillard years).

Which brings us back to the Leveson inquiry as the best hope for the Australian media. If there's a cleansing in Britain, at some point a few of the suds will drop into Australia, and perhaps moderate this oligopolistic print media hell.

Meanwhile, for devotees of the Liberal party, the Kroger fun continues, with Furious Costello denies seat bid. Who knows if the smirk wanted to become the Komeback Kid, but what fun to see that he and Michael Kroger are going at it head-on. If Costello keeps going on this way, he could become notorious as not just a one-time loser who lacked the pluck, but a triple- or quadruple-time loser.

It's much more fun than reading Paul Sheehan, yet again putting in the boot to Craig Thomson in Thomson charade still going as the players await a final curtain.

Sheehan is in a fine righteous fury, but Thomson is a dead unionist walking, a man without class and without style, and all that's left to him is to hang around like a bad smell providing raggedy ann fun for conservative pit bull warriors like Sheehan, pumped up high on magic water and the smell of sourdough.

But is it possible to imagine Sheehan unleashing the same level of frothing and foaming righteousness on Christopher Pyne and Mal Brough?

Is that the sound of silence in the forest?

Deep into autumn
and this caterpillar
still not a butterfly (more Basho here).

Probably not, but if you want sordid grubbiness, now with bonus homophobic comments below the fold, you can't look past the muck-racking of Vex News as it does over James Ashby.

This must be part of the lowering standards of discourse on the intertubes, in contrast to the elevated standards of discourse provided by the myrmidon Murdochians in the feral HUN, daily Terror and class warfare lizard Oz (never ever enter the cesspit of comments below the fold in Piers Akerman's, Tim Blair's and the Bolter's blogs unless you want to emerge with your hair turned white through shock and horror).

What else? Well casual readers will recall that hapless desiccated coconut Gerard Henderson was recently quite distraught that an erect Tony Abbott had been shown in a cartoon .... in budgie smugglers, as he explained at length in Sexist abuse of PM fits a general deterioration in political discourse - the deterioration in discourse of course being the fault of the ABC and the internet, and certainly not the ranting ratbags raving about class warfare in Murdoch land.

But eek, what's this we see this morning? David Rowe has stripped Abbott of his budgie smugglers and dared to present him starkers ... in a ... cartoon?

Now will Henderson write a lengthy assault on Rowe and will Fairfax publish it? Or is he just happy to go on being a goose about cartoonists?

You know, cartoonists who are witty and clever and never mind breaching Godwin's Law, Stalinist sub-section. Come on down Bill Leak:

Never mind, Patrick Cook needs a friend, and we await the next day's live blogging of the Leveson inquiry at The Guardian here.

With a bit of luck, it might produce another bout of paranoid defensiveness right up there with this recent flurry of floozies at the lizard Oz:

"Exclusive"? Get your paranoia and Murdoch worship here is an "exclusive" worth a gold bar?

No links, it's a screen cap, but in any case would you want to spend money to help sustain the current level of anal retentiveness and paranoia that's alive and well at Hearst castle?

Take it away Rowe, always a bright moment in any dull Murdochian day, and you can find more Rowe here for your pleasure.

And just think, by looking you'll be shocking Gerard Henderson and lowering the tone of the discourse.

Unlike Rupert Murdoch's minions, fighting valiantly against rampant Stalinism ...