Paul Sheehan, adrift in a sea of spin, or was that business-class seating in a chartered Boeing 757 ...

(Above: signing a deal with an intransigent, inflexible, ruinous inner city elitist devil. Why oh why?)

When the pond last caught up with generally grumpy Paul Sheehan, he was reporting in My plane, my way on his most excellent adventure, cruising the world in a $30,840 a person twin share 22 day equatorial adventure on a chartered business-class Boeing 757 with personal chef, guides, and five star hotels.

Call it the Marie Antoniette principle. Let the readers stick to bread (no, forget the sourdough, white bread will do, they can think themselves lucky it's sliced), while Sheehan gloats in print over his cake.

Reinvigorated, Generalissimo Grumpy Sheehan today steps up to the plate to deliver his standard bit of bile about the federal Labor government, though it does have the air of having been written by rote while the autopilot took charge of the Boeing.

Swinging in breeze over the abyss seizes on a state by-election to heap it on the federal government.

Amongst the targets dragged in for a dose of bile are Sheehan's favourite piñatas, hapless independents Tony Windsor ("lives on borrowed time") and Robert Oakeshott (don't you just love the punitive use of "Robert"), who is "facing electoral oblivion". Sorry Rob, er, we mean Robert, hasta la vista baby.

Throw in Kevin Rudd, Craig Thomson ("let us not forget") and Adam Bandt, and it's scorn, and doom and gloom, a classic outburst from a "born to rule" man who feverishly resents the outcome of a democratic process.

Can you imagine a day when Sheehan spends a column examining critically the thoughts, deeds and policies of Tony Abbott and the opposition, ladling out bile and scorn and righteous indignation?

You can? Why you deserve a slice of cake ...

Meanwhile, over at the punch-drunk The Punch, Tony Maher maintains the Labor party's war on the Greens and greenies and inner city elites, in A sensible carbon scheme, despite those pesky Greens.

Pesky?

Surely the header should have included words like Birkenstock-wearing overlords, a fundamental barrier, and intransigent supporters of policies bad for jobs, costing too much and no fun at all. Oh what killjoys they are ...

Maher spends reams of work explaining how the carbon tax has been cunningly designed to do sweet bugger all, and cushion everyone from any suffering.

It doesn't do much to affect industry - billions of dollars have been spent giving free permits to heavy industry, and no sector has been overlooked. There'll be no excessive price rises, it isn't designed to force consumers to use significantly less energy, and it's designed to give heavy industry a feather tap over decades, a smooth gradualist transition.

Why it's just like Kevin Rudd's grand scheme in 2009. Or perhaps it's Norman Lindsay's Magic Pudding reborn again, so we can all come again and get another slice. Paul Sheehan will be pleased. He so loves his cake and puds and junkets ...

The only fly in this vast ointment of spectacular policy achievement - and the Labor party's failure to sell it - has been the Greens.

Everything's the fault of those intransigent bastards.

No matter how effectively Greg Combet explains the carbon pricing scheme - and when he gets the chance he does it very well - the Greens factor is a fundamental barrier to popular acceptance by ordinary working Australians.
Selling the carbon tax is hard. But beyond Leichhardt or Brunswick, selling the Greens is impossible.

Ah those deviant, perverted inner city elites, how they ruin everything.

Maher's tag notes he's the national president of the CFMEU, but why doesn't the tag also note that he's a national Labor president for stupid arguments?

If it's all the fault of the Greens, if the Greens are so reprehensible and intransigent, if the Greens are responsible for driving an unsellable policy, if the Labor party is doing so splendidly well, which means scraping home by a couple of votes in a Victorian state by-election, what on earth is a federal Labor government doing in bed with them?

Cop this logic:

The 2012 scheme, fundamentally the same but understood by the public as a Greens-negotiated deal, has fuelled the perception it is an extreme measure. It has helped Tony Abbott turn an economically responsible, modest carbon scheme with public support into a hydra-headed monster devouring jobs and starving pensioners.

Uh huh. So it's all the fault of the Greens that Tony Abbott has been so successful, while the honest, responsible, modest Labor party has dithered on the sidelines, unable to explain its wondrous government policies?

It's just as addle-brained a bit of nonsense as Paul Sheehan anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Messiah, when in reality the country is likely soon enough to be run by a very naughty boy ...

While the likes of Sheehan ploughs on, blaming Bandt and the Greens and the independents, Maher ploughs on blaming Bandt and the Greens ...

'Dum, say hello to 'Dee, or should that be, Dumb, say hello to Dumber, and a new movie title ...

If the Labor party really imagines that a "please sir the Greens ate my homework" routine is going to save them say hello to mass delusion ...

This is the way they're going to combat the propaganda spewing out of The Australian, with a recent typical example Henry Ergas's Electorate right about PM's left turn? (behind the paywall, but you know how to google).

AT the heart of Labor's problems is its reaction to the 2010 election. In that election, voters swung to the Right, but thanks to Julia Gillard's deal with the Greens, the government shifted sharply to the Left. Those opposing movements transformed a gap between Labor and the electorate into a chasm. And with voters sceptical of the Prime Minister's trustworthiness from the outset, that chasm now threatens to swallow Labor whole.

Tony Maher, say hello to Henry, you've got so much in common.

And sssh, whatever you do remember that leftism is an evil disease you can catch if you visit the inner city of a big town and mingle with the elite ...

Where it gets even funnier is reading a business class junketer like Sheehan sneering at inner city elites in a rag that sells to inner city elites, and gives said junketer a chance to tour the world in a way many inner city elitists would envy. Here's a typical outburst from 2011:

...when an inner-city Green voter like my friend scorns Abbott as a bogan, he is not merely indulging in cheap snobbery but referring to the cut-through quality that makes Abbott appear an island of humanity in a sea of spin. (here)

The messiah cometh, and he won't be green, because you can care for the environment and the world without being green, or drink coffee ...

Now ponder this.

Is Sheehan an inner city elitist, on the principle that a person that lives like one, and looks like one, and junkets like one, and quacks like one in a rag dedicated to quackery is most likely to be one?

Is Mosman and associated areas on the lower north shore part of an inner city elite, since the median price for a house in the area is around the $1.97 million mark? (here)

Mosman is right in the heart of the division of Warringah, currently held by Tony Abbott, though don't tell it to Gerard Henderson...

Currently the area in which the pond lives has a median price for housing of $802,000 (here).

That's part of being an inner city elite? While Mosman gets off scot free, with a lovely main street of high end clothing?

There's stupidity, and there's rhetorical silliness, and then there's all this jibber jabber about inner city elites, mostly coming from inner city elites, or buggers who are a damn sight richer than your average elitist.

But of course you can't have a go at Tony Abbott for representing the filthy rich lower north shore, that would be class warfare, and we know how the Murdoch elites just hate class warfare. Except of course when waging class warfare on inner city elites.

Conclusion? Just make sure you know how to hit the spin cycle so you can keep on living in Paul Sheehan's and Tony Maher's sea of spin ...

You will of course need an automatic washing machine, but the pond expects you to have one, as any decent elitist would.

Why in the old days it would be a copper and a bit of boiling and for sheer luxury a hand wringer, but still the copious amounts of class envy and bullshit would be in ample supply ...

(Below: has Australian politics and the reporting of it, always been so dumb and simple minded? Afraid so, this poster from the days of Lord Bruce recently caught the pond's eye).