The pond takes a walk on the Devine and Bolter wild side ...

Titillated by the news that big Ted is now plucked Ted, the pond decided to get out and about and see how the commentariat was coping.

First up was a look at Miranda the Devine, that expert scientist still fondly remembered for her enthusiastic support of creationist fellow traveller and friend of Pastor Danny, screaming Lord Monckton. If you google the unholy duo of names, here's what comes up top of the list, a twittering tweet from 2009:

Those were the days. These days Monckton lays it all out on Pastor Danny.

And these days it seems that the Devine has abandoned his lordship and become a tough nut member of the Rooty Hill clique, because she's been spraying Rooty Hill elitism all over Julia Gillard like a cat marking its territory.

So what do the twittering twits of Rooty Hill get up to?

Maybe that explains why the Devine columns look and sound more brain dead by the day. (Rooty Hill Travel Tips). Jazz her waffles indeed.

It's such a stupid form of reverse snobbery to propose that pissing money and time and brains against the wall on poker machines makes you somehow dinki di, as opposed to dumb, or hypnotised by the lights and the noise, and often broke, and frequently pissed.

The pond would love to know how many hours a week the Devine herself spends playing the pokies.

That's a gotcha question. If she doesn't spend any time, she's sensible and a hypocrite. If she does play, she's a straight-shooting fool.

The Devine has been front and centre in the Daily Terror's bid to demonise Gillard and propose that she's too toffy for the 'spirit of the earth' diggers and Daily Terror readers who infest Rooty Hill like a plague of cockroaches.

It's amazingly petulant and childish stuff, with tirades against spectacle-wearing lookalikes and rangas and food, and presented in a way that suggests the Devine is somehow a card-holding member of the royal order of Rooty Hill bogans.

Strange, after Julia Gillard won the Fix Award as Australia's biggest bogan, you'd think she'd fit right in. Well at least more than a twittering twit schooled at Loreto in Kirribilli.

But at least we know where personal abuse parades as expert political commentary.

So how does the Devine deal with the teddy bear's departure? Why she immediately seizes on it to ask the question Prime Minister Shorten?, which consists mainly of taking a lump of copy from Ken Phillips in The Australian.

What's even more amazing is that she gets paid to display her skill at cutting and pasting.

This is of course also the style of the prolific Bolter.

Large slabs of his copy consist of quotes for others. For example, An Israeli tragedy, an Australian silence, consists of lavish excerpts from stablemate Greg Sheridan ... with a link to the paywalled piece so you can either feel left out, or simply read the excerpts and wonder why anyone would go behind the paywall ...

Then there's a cut and paste bit from an ABC piece, and then a lavish bit of looting of a transcript from another ABC piece.

The Bolter's sole personal contribution? He suspects things.

Now this is not a random example, but a typical one.

The Bolter is a perpetual magpie, or bower bird, constructing his nest out of bibs and bobs that suit his world view, usually accompanied by suspicions and assertions, and when it comes to climate science, a handsome chunk of innuendoes, distortions, inaccuracies and wilful errors, blended with expert ignorance.

Or simple bizarreness. Who else would see something meaningful in this?

13 out of 17 potential finalists of the Web Blog Award's science category are run by warming sceptics.

The Bolter's conclusion:

Shows the mainstream media has failed to provide an outlet for an important debate.

Could we just re-phrase that?

13 out of 17 potential finalists in the Southern Baptists' science category are run by flat earthers and evolution and gravity deniers.
Shows the mainstream media has failed to provide an outlet for an important debate.

Yes, on an argumentative level, it's right up there with pokies mean you're dinky di.

The Bolter's techniques are an inspiration to the pond, so the pond was titillated to see that the Bolter had actually penned an article on the decline and fall on big Ted?

Would it be titled The revenge of Simon Overland, and the disarray of the Liberal party thanks to the HUN and a vicious campaign of sordid corruption and intrigue that eventually bit itself on the bum?

Sadly it was titled High time for leadership, and even worse, it was behind the HUN paywall.

The pond was devastated. Pay for the Bolter?

Happily that forgotten part of the News Ltd empire, news.com.au, ran the piece under the very same header, High time for leadership, with nary a sign of a paywall. (Oh look you can find it at that scumbag pirate paywall breaching site Adelaidenow for free as well).

Who knows why? The News Ltd paywalls seem to be the paywalls you have when you want people to evade the paywall ...

Never mind, the Bolter was understandably upset and agitated.

This isn't quite the fresh start the Liberals needed. They've had our premier effectively sacked by an MP facing allegations of rorting. 

Did he immediately go on to demand that our people, brave-hearted Victorians, be immediately allowed to pass judgement on this new un-elected leader?

Did the Bolter cite the Gillard-Rudd precedent, and the righteous anger that will now flow at a puppet installed as an heroic figure is torn down, a bit like that statue that was toppled in the early days in Iraq?

The Bolter tips a bucket all over Geoff Shaw, the quitter, but is amazingly sanguine about the rest of the wheeling and dealing:

Baillieu could have survived the latest controversies involving his top staff offering favours to a disgruntled ex-adviser, seemingly to hush him...  
It started with front-page headlines about an apparent cover-up of something almost nobody can remember.  

Almost nobody? Guess that makes Simon Overland and Tristan Weston and the entire HUN conglomerate almost nobody.

Along with Ted Baillieu and the rest of the gang that glossed over the way that the Office of Police Integrity found Weston had plotted to undermine Overland, with the handy help of the HUNsters.

The HUN was part of all that shonky dirty business, and now - because it's in the business of recycling gossip in all its forms - it's been a part of the decline and fall of Ted. Thus life balances itself.

The interesting question the Bolter doesn't ask and therefore doesn't answer is who made the tapes that dropped Tony Nutt and Damien Mantach and big Ted in the can, and failed opposition leader Denis Napthine in the chair? And then who gave them to the HUN, and for what purpose?

You have to turn to other sources, of the gutter kind, for hints and clues, like the ones you can find at Vexnews (soap, towel and prophylactics recommended).

Meanwhile, you have to admire the Bolter's capacity for spin. Here's how he wraps up the piece:

Baillieu has left a gift to his successor. He has kept the Budget in the black, even in these tough times, and left Napthine with cash to splash in the two remaining years.

Say what?

Yes you have to go elsewhere to learn the sorry truth, as in Spending plunge tips Victoria into recession:

Victoria's economy has slumped into recession. Spending by governments, investors and even households all went backwards in the second half of 2012, sending the state into its worst slide since the recession of 1990-91. 
The Bureau of Statistics estimates that on its preferred trend measure, state final demand - total spending in Victoria by households, governments and business - slumped 0.7 per cent in the December quarter, on top of a 0.4 per cent fall in September.

Now the pond isn't bitter about the way it lost a windscreen courtesy of the Baillieu government failing to maintain the roads, but the pond did so love the denialism in that same report:

Victorian Treasurer Kim Wells on Wednesday denied the state was in recession, saying it could only be in recession if gross state product fell for two quarters. But gross state product is not measured quarterly; on that definition, the state could never be in recession.

As for the Bolter, he ended up sounding like some died in the wool Collingwood supporter:

Napthine will have a lot of talking to do to get out of this mess.
And he'll need to do even more to give a long-becalmed Government a sense of purpose at last. 

Yep, not a mouse squeak, not a boo to a goose about the immediate need for an immediate election to sort out the sorry mess which sees an elected leader ditched, and a failed opposition leader shoved into the breach.

Just a rah rah rally around the becalmed government, a bit like the cries in Sydney this morning to rally around Cronulla rugby league team by the "boofheads for the taking of drugs" club of Sydney journalists ... (remember how just a short time ago rugby league was being defamed by charges of misuse of drugs, and how wrong it was so close to the start of the season? And they were all innocent lambs?)

Throw in the mess that Campbell Newman is making of Queensland, and the wretched state of WA politics which might see a chair sniffer elevated to the highest seat of power (not that the pond has got anything against chair sniffing per se), and you can see why an Abbott government might prove an inexhaustible, if exhausting, amount of fun.

Pity the poor people, but think how easy it will be to fling together a blog by quoting assorted asides from likes of the Devine and the Bolter ...

Lastly, a timely warning. Remember time is running out, and you should already have in hand your well advanced plans for your party on June 3rd to celebrate First Dog's Andrew Bolt is still not not a dickhead day.

And speaking of First Dog, it's already March and if you haven't acquired your First Dog calendar, why you've missed out on this splendid cartoon for April. More First Dog here: