It's time to demonise your clothing and asylum seekers, as the pond announces an exclusive: harnessing pigeon power is the way forward to a new Sydney airport ...

(Above: click to enlarge.  David Rowe is the best thing going in the AFR. More Rowe here).


Reason 42 (or soixante neuf if you will) that the United States of America is the nonpareil (or sans pareil if you will) home of loons:

Pat Robertson - in response to an anxious viewer asking if she should pray away demonic spirits that might be lurking in her secondhand op shop sweaters -

“Can demonic spirits attach themselves to inanimate objects, the answer is yes,” Robertson said. 
 While Robertson noted that people don’t have to worry that every item they purchase is possessed by demons, he added: “Hey, it ain’t going to hurt anything to rebuke any spirits that happened to have attached themselves to those clothes.”

Here you go, with bonus video, and other places admired the loonacy, as you can find here.

What's astonishing is that Pat Robertson remains a public voice for conservative Christianity in the good old USA.

It puts into perspective why every several months American politicians put the world economy into melt down mode. It's the demonic spirits in their clothing that does it.

Now I can understand why my German grandmother, of hearty peasant stock, loved her superstitions.

The moment her partner died, she stepped into black dress and never stepped out of it, and spent her hours filling our heads with superstitions.

That's how the pond learned that an owl hoot at night foretold  a death in the morning. (hey, all sorts of people believe it, Cuando el tecolote canta, el indio muere - "When the owl cries/sings, the Indian dies" - it's on the intertubes, it must be true).

It's surprising how dumb, how superstitious some people can be, and without the excuse that they never had a single day's formal education in their life.

Equally, it's surprising how low, how gutter crawling, some politicians will go, as they limbo down into a moral void.

Cue Senator Abetz, acting as shortstop for the wretched, obscene Scott Morrison:

"There is a register in relation to those sex offenders and the community has spoken in relation to that, that they do want a register," he told reporters in Canberra. "If I might say, I wouldn't put the two (pedophiles and asylum seekers) in the same category, necessarily."  (here)

Necessarily?

Well if you take the word of PM, apparently when Abetz's office put out a transcript of the interview, the word necessarily was quite un-necessarily deleted. ('Race to the bottom' on asylum seekers).

Because that's the word that's the giveaway to the mindset.

Later Abetz, himself claiming German status, declaimed that he was the one being vilified.

Is it wrong to call a gutter crawler a gutter crawler when they're necessarily sighted in the gutter?

Now the Labor party has been appalling on the matter of asylum seekers, and there are those out in the world who would like to present Tony Abbott in a newly humanised light, a man who realises he was just a boofhead head kicker for John Howard and who realises his campaign of relentless boofhead negativity - on the basis he'd be in the Lodge within the year - was a serious mistake and now he needs a serious makeover.

The first indication he was serious about a moral and metaphysical makeover would be to reprimand Morrison and Abetz and Cory Bernardi, and deny that what Morrison had said was in any way present or future Liberal party policy, and put back in their boxes the hard men that joined in the dog whistling and the gutter crawling.

But he didn't, he was gutless, he was as abject and as cowardly as a Labor party trying to present itself as John Howard lite. Because at heart he remains an attack dog, and he understands the art of dog whistling of the most base kind.

Last night the pond was watching Lateline, and there was Sarah Hanson-Young claiming this:

... this is racism at play and as people like Dennis Shanahan have said today, it is a bridge too far. 
... Dennis Shanahan said today that, "What are we going to do next? Start painting As on people's shirts because they're asylum seekers?" Well, it's over-reaching, it's inappropriate and all it is dog-whistle politics and surely we're better than that. (here)

Dennis "conservative members of the commentariat should wear nice threads" Shanahan said that?

We couldn't find the tie and suit saying it - he's back in his natural element today bagging the Labor party for the umpteenth time, but if it's true, such is the depth the coalition has descended too, it might have resulted in the first known agreement on anything between the pond and Shanahan in the last decade.

The pond had two half way houses no more than half a block away in the neighbourhood, and nobody at any point felt the need to tell the pond, nor did the pond need official advice. The only time the ex-cons did anything to disrupt the community was when they egged the house of a bunch of disruptive noisy drug punks, because they wanted a bit of piece and quiet. Peace and quiet!!

The pond cheered them on, and would have joined in, except for an egg shortage ...

On the evidence, it's the politicians that need a P painted on their back, with Arthur Sinodinos caught up in the Obeid circus, and making the usual bunch of "I didn't do it, I didn't know, the dog ate the paperwork" excuses about failing to declare six company directorships (not to mention that dodgy water business).

Six! And he didn't remember he was a company director! Pity the poor bloody companies ...

Add that to the entirety of the Obeid circus, and the various bits of misbehaviour over recent years, and yet Morrison and the Liberal party hard men have the cheek to ping all asylum seekers for one alleged crime.

Meanwhile, the feeble, impotent and cowardly Abbott's previous policy stupidities are starting to catch up with him.

There he was droning on and on, gibbering on about online education policy, and online learning.

What an abject, pathetic goose (yes you can call that vilification if you will, but the geese won't understand why they've been insulted):

“Most importantly, what should government do or undo to enable universities to make the most of the potential that new technologies create?” Abbott said. (Forms education working group to report in April).

What should government do to enable universities?

How about demolishing the prospect of decent broadband in Australia?

How will they make use of this trashed new technology? How much will it become part of their teaching practices?

Why, three fifths of fuck all, if the new Liberal government has already decided that said new technologies are totally useless.

Meanwhile, Abbott has formed an education working group to report in April with Alan Tudge as chair.

Alan Tudge? Never heard of him?

Why he's the dipstick, the cludge, the dumbo, who told parliament in November 2010:

Most of the applications and uses for the NBN that actually add to economic productivity are available over today’s ADSL2+ broadband speeds. (here)

So there you go. No need for very fast broadband, you silly wretched academics.

Stick ADSL2+ in your pipe and smoke that, and never mind its many deficiencies, nd bugger off with this idle chit chat about E-learning with high definition images.

The question is, why is Abbott wasting our time and his trudging through a report with Tudge, when the answer's as clear as your face on a dark night with an owl hooting?

It was the very same Tudge that stood beside Abbott while back in October 2011 he delivered this insight into enabling universities to make the most of the potential that new technologies create:

... the Coalition’s position is pretty clear. We don’t support a government-owned telecommunications infrastructure monopoly. We don’t support putting all our eggs in one technological basket. We think that the market should be allowed to operate. Yes, where there’s market failure government needs to get involved but there is no way on God’s earth that we need to be spending $50 billion plus of borrowed money on what is going to turn out to be a telecommunications white elephant, school halls on steroids. (here)

Never mind the figure deployed, which might well be wrong in the usual loose-lipped Abbott way.

It goes without saying that when it came to broadband there was a huge market failure. Telstra put up a risible, cheap-arsed plan which would have left vast sections of Australia short changed, and Optus was and continues to be a joke when it comes to investment in infrastructure (they couldn't even deliver a working black box to the pond, and even now the pain still bubbles to the surface).

Clearly the Tudge is handy to have around when you need to fudge.

Oops, is it seemly to make a joke about a politician's name? Is it a breach of some arcane sub-section of Godwin's Law?

Not really, not if your job is to do a cludge, or perform as pathetically as the Mets (Go Abetz).

And why does Abbott babble about the market being allowed to operate, when his policies in relation to climate change is to have direct action government spending on steroids?

The hope is that when and if Abbott gets to hold the reins, he will act sensibly and in a moderate way, and reverse much of the nattering negativity that's been the go in his time in opposition.

But he's surrounded by hard men announcing brazen new policies on the fly, and he's not been able to deal with them. How's he going to go if he gets a sizeable majority?

Worse, he's got abject loons like Dennis Jensen roaming the corridors and the media. Yes, there he is today, punching on again about the JSF at The Punch with I've seen secret files and this jet will blow up in our faces. Here's his conclusion:

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is Australia’s largest weapons program in history. Alone, it is the single largest government acquisition ever. It was set to be a flag ship program, showing our defence force in all its glory. Instead it has showed how best this department lets complex programs slip out of cost and capability control.

Can we just re-phrase that?

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is Australia’s largest weapons program in history. Alone, it is the single largest government acquisition ever. It was set to be a flag ship program, showing our defence force in all its glory. Instead it has shown how John Howard and his acolyte ministers completely fucked over the tendering process and left Defence holding the baby ....

Here you Dennis, remind us how you do science:

Okay, once again we've rambled on, let loose in a world full of superstitious nonsense. So what have we learned today by way of superstitions that can be added to tales of the dangers of owls and demon spirits in clothing?

1. that asylum seekers pose a bigger danger to average Australians than unhinged, fanatical politicians like Cory Bernardi, Scott Morrison and Eric Abetz;
2. that the Liberal party will produce innovative high tech higher education, by abandoning high tech broadband, most likely by universities gearing up to maximise the high tech potential of pigeon power;
a communication device already trialled and proven during the second world war;
3. that Dennis Jensen has had complete JSF memory loss, perhaps because his memory has never been the same since he drank cola to disprove climate science;
4. that the Murdoch press will go into a complete frenzy about the cheekiness of a Manly silvertail heading out to Sydney's west at the same time as Julia Gillard, and pretending he owns the place.

If you believe that last one, we've got a slightly used set of emperor's new clothes to sell you, and at a cheap price if you agree to wear them down the mall in Parramatta.

And now, since we started with the AFR and David Rowe, let's see where they are with their exclusive for the day:

That's an exclusive? The bloody bleeding obvious is suddenly an exclusive? Can we add another superstitious belief to the list?

5. that a second Sydney airport will ever be built by anyone, not when pigeon power connecting Sydney to Canberra by VFP is the clear solution.

You can call that a pond exclusive.

Oops, Another bloody exclusive. Suddenly you can see why it's not just politicians involved in the race to the bottom, and now the pond is busy following Fairfax, which is busy following the lizard Oz, into the wilds of exclusive nonsense.

Finally did you know that Scott Morrison is a member of the Shirelive Church?

Well so the wiki for Shirelive Church says here, and that's confirmed in his bio at his official site here, as he blathers about how his Christian faith is the driving force for his family, his beliefs and his values, including the demonising of clothing and asylum seekers.

Well in another first, let the pond quote and agree with someone who seems to have read Christ's words and understood them: Uniting Church leader savages Shire Live's Scott Morrison:

As a bonus activity - no crayons needed - you can look up the church on its site here.

And here's a little flavour, so you can get yourself into a clap happy mood this thank god it's Friday Friday ...

(Below: no links, screen caps only, click to enlarge. And remember to change that logo to suit your immediate needs. Instead of Reach, Raise and Release, how about Revile, Fear, Tag, Demonise and Imprison?)