The Bolter shaking the hand of fellow scientist Pastor Danny, now that would be something to see ...

(Above: a handy range of Bolter greeting cards from First Dog. Click on to enlarge, or visit the original cartoon here and enjoy the doggery).

It's unnerving to discover that people who drop by the pond have more intestinal fortitude than the pond.

Apparently some of them can even summon up the courage to step in to that steaming, festering pit of bile, anger, resentment, hatred, and fear and loathing known as the blog of Andrew 'the Bolter' Bolt.

This is like loading up on arsenic as a scientific experiment, when even professional Bolt watchers like the team at Pure Poison couldn't stand the pace. Sure after they closed it, they turned to a weekly Something Wonky, but there's something about the Bolter's relentless negativity and the love of failure that in the end only offers a mind warp.

Take the recent posting, though any posting will do, headed The warmists' electric car crashes.

Right there from the get go there's an instinct to say oh why don't you just fuck off with your relentless use of terms of abuse.

But of course that's what the Bolter wants. He wants hostility and negative energy. He feeds on it, like a devouring monster in a comic book. (for an example, look no further than the Parasite, a villain who absorbs the energy and knowledge of others and turns it to evil use).

Anyhoo, the Bolter spends an inordinate amount of time dancing on the grave of electric car technology, because it's another stab in the heart for the warmists. It seems that the Bolter is somewhere lost in gasoline alley, still sniffing the petrol fumes ...

There's no consideration of the actual state of electric car technology or hybrids or alternative technologies or the desirability of a sustainable planet, it's just a pure hate fest and utter delight that anybody seeking different, cleverer ways forward has failed, failed, failed ...

Even more unnerving, apparently some people have the fortitude to dip into Tim Blair, which is a bit like dipping into a mud bath without a peg over the nostrils.

Blair's idea of fun is to mock the drawings of children stuck on Manus Island by crediting their work to Sarah Hanson-Young. It's childish, beyond silly, and shows as much empathy for the lives of others as you'd expect from a robot who hadn't been introduced to Asimov's three laws.

In his spare time, amongst his hobbies, Blair undoubtedly pursues the fine art of picking wings off flies, if only because it keeps him dinki di and authentic.

Tim squatted on the brink catching flies and letting them go again without their wings — a favourite amusement of his (oh okay it's Joe, and here's chapter four of On Our Selection)

The pond's not up to this permanent, ongoing level of abuse.

And what to make of the alternatives, like Miranda the Devine, now back from China, and pushing out this sort of stuff?

Abbott and his family are refreshingly normal. They live in an unpretentious house in an unpretentious suburb surrounded by family and long-term friends. The kids work part-time in shopping malls and do volunteer work. The working mum does volunteer work. 
 The dad has an unusual job that often takes him out of town but he also volunteers. Demonising Abbott demonises any suburban family bloke. You can’t draw an imaginary line between them. And it will prove to be Gillard’s most profound own goal. (Gillard's kicking own goals)

Ostensibly it's meant to be merely supportive of Tony Abbott, but in fact it's nauseatingly dismissive of anyone who dares to be different, who isn't an average bloke drinking blood and munching on flesh at the local Catholic hoedown, and doing volunteer work without any thought of how the posturing might garner a few votes.

Apparently ensuring gays don't have full rights is so much better coming from Tones than coming from a barren atheist redhead in a de facto marriage doing the same social conservative routine.

The pond's first instinct is simply to retch into the nearest bush.

You'd swear the Devine, ostensibly presented as a commenter of some insight by the Murdochians, would have woken up to the fact that Abbott has got an unseemly low popularity rating, still lower than the low Julia Gillard enjoys, and by golly that's pretty low.

If that's how the average non-demonic suburban family bloke rates, then it's time for a make-over. Maybe less time in the public eye, and more time trying to be refreshingly normal, as opposed to alienating the women folk.

How is it possible to live 365/24/7 in a world of alternate reality?

No, the pond can only stand so much, which is why reading a lightweight like Niki Savva is so much easier.

In the usual lizard Oz way, her piece was presented by the desperate, diminishing subbies in two different formats, a classic bait and switch.

At the top of the page came this ominous and cryptic message, like the Delphic Oracle in overdrive.

Many things will go wrong, and not all of them for Gillard? What on earth did it mean? That was soon clarified by the bigger splash down the page:

It turns out that it's actually just more of the same. The Delphic Oracle doing doom and gloom. Gillard is mad, Tim Mathieson gauche, the Ruddster the only hope, but what a dismal hope he is, there are short circuits everywhere, and everything's a disaster. It was illustrated with a tasteful cartoon featuring Gillard:

The illustrator, Eric Lobbecke, could at least point to the text as an excuse:

...Which brings us right back to Rudd and the kind of scenario that gives Gillard, half the Labor Party and all the Liberals nightmares. 
 After trying to turn him into mincemeat last year, Labor ministers now want him to help them win the election by playing monkey to Gillard's organ grinder. 

Indeed. Which leads us right to the notion that Niki Savva is some kind of monkey to Tony Abbott's organ grinder.

Could someone please do up a portrait of Savva as an organ grinder?

Oh steady on.

Why, as a member of the fair and balanced commentariat, Savva also delivers a Delphic warning to Tones:

Many more things will go wrong between now and September 14, not all of them for Gillard. Apart from the obvious advantages knowing the date provides the opposition, it leaves no room for errors by Abbott and his team, not on candidate selection, or on logistics or costings.

Yep, after hundreds of words of abuse of Gillard, of the most idle gossip-laden kind, that's her dire prediction for Tones. Could the pond suggest a little re-wording?

Many more things will go wrong between now and September 14, not all of them for Gillard - planes will fall out of the sky, cars will crash - but in politics at least a hundred trillion quadrillion gazillion things (or 99.99%) of things will go wrong for Gillard. Given the obvious advantage knowing the date provides the opposition, there's now plenty of room for errors by Abbott and his team, on candidate selection, or on logistics or costings, because when in doubt Niki Savva and the team at lizard Oz will avoid them ... because they will always have Tim Mathieson to write about.

Yes, it's just another step in The Australian's long march of fair and balanced coverage of the longest election campaign ever launched, and never mind the complete and utter stupidity of the Liberal party's lower order of thinkers attempting to put the government in caretaker mode right here and now.

Meanwhile, the pond has saved a delicious sorbet to the end, and who better for a bit of acidic lemony froth all foamed up into a heap than generally grumpy Paul Sheehan.

Freedom fighter and freedom saviour Sheehan is shocked and appalled that people don't want to associate with a Dutch extremist whose star is on the wane in his homeland, with the last election giving him and his party a solid rebuff.

Gert Wilders stock in trade is fear, as is Paul Sheehan's - he just loves the smell of fear in the morning - which is why it's so funny to see this header at the top of Fairfax:

Sheehan shows himself a complete fool by opening with a reference to Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, and proposing that they show plenty of historical accuracy. Sure and Shakespeare didn't do a hatchet job on Richard III (the pond can say with heartfelt sorrow that Zero Dark Thirty is a total dud of a film).

Anyway, the fear and loathing of Islamics is a Wilders message much loved by Sheehan, who is outraged that nobody much wants to know about a minor European politician attempting to gear up a panic about Islamics down under. Venues have cancelled, PayPal is being naughty, why "It's been like an Orwellian nightmare".

And just in case you missed the organiser of the tour's invocation of Orwell, Sheehan offers it up one more time:

Robinson is disheartened by all the fearfulness. ''The Sydney event may have to be cancelled if I can't even get a venue. I'll have to refund everyone. This is supposed to be a democracy but something Orwellian is going on.'' 

Here's the fearfulness which the pond finds disheartening:

 ''Q Society is a volunteer, Australia-wide organisation whose charter is to educate Australians as to how Islam may change this country … We believe Islam is different from other religions and poorly understood … 
''If, in 20 years, some Australian politicians are living under armed guard because of comments they have made about Islam, we believe we would have failed as individuals, and collectively as a society, to protect our democracy and our freedom.''

Fear and loathing about an unknown unknown twenty years down the track, used for the moment to browbeat a small minority?

Now that's real fear-peddling, real fear-mongering, real fearfulness, and it doesn't need a visa, just Paul Sheehan ensuring the pond will never subscribe to Fairfax.

Sheehan presents as some kind of failure the fact that only four politicians accepted, out of 830 invitations sent out. The other 99.5% per cent of politicians declined or did not respond.

Who'd have thunk it. 99.5% of politicians with good sense and good taste, and no interest at all in Sheehan peddling the fear-mongers peddling fear ...

And speaking of failed tours, who'd know that Lord Monckton, once the star of the circus, indeed its top notch glittering clown, is currently in country and on tour.

Oh sure the Bolter has stayed engaged and attached, providing details of the speaking tour, here, which puts him in company with the Catch the Fire Ministries, who also provides news of the tour here. The Bolter and Pastor Danny, now there's a pretty pair ...

Even Menzies house, home of loons, was curiously subdued, here.

Try googling to discover mainstream coverage of the tour. Apparently Monckton has already delivered his first lecture in Adelaide (on February 2nd) but it's been given the dome of silence treatment. Where's Tony Abbott, or a local rep like Poodle Pyne to shake his paw?

Was hitching his Lordship to Pastor Danny a strategic mistake? Can an eminent climate scientist and a creationist agree on the science of global warming? Well they can if the scientist is a half-baked lord and the creationist is a scheming pastor on the make ...

As for the wretched mainstream media, and their double standards, and their forgetfulness, it's simply not good enough.

Apparently it's still full steam ahead for Lord Monckton to launch Pastor Danny's Rise Up Australia Party on the 11th February in Canberra and he'll also be addressing the Catch the Fire Ministries in Melbourne on the 16th February.

The pond expects saturation coverage, from the Bolter, to the Blairites, to The Australian, Miranda the Devine, Paul Sheehan, the baying Murdoch press, and all the other acolytes who once worshipped Monckto as a sage and a seer and an impeccable scientific guide, and now seem to have dropped his lordship like a hot potato.

The pond looks forward to a shot of the Bolter shaking the hand of Pastor Danny ... a bit like this ...

Please no correspondence on the title, the pond would never dream of taking away Screaming Lord Sutch's title either,  but please more correspondence about the work of the loons, retrieved by brave souls willing to plunge into the heart of darkness. So many loons, so little time ...