The pond goes parrot, and fills the air with squawking ...

 (Above: the pond joins the Daily Terror by indulging in vigorous satire doing the rounds).

Where to start?

Well as always best to start with grievances. That's the whining, moaning, whingeing, right wing commentariat way.

And possible solutions. Say what? Never heard of them.

First on the agenda, if it pleases the chair, the matter of ASIC and internet censorship, as recorded a few days ago: Bumbling ASIC heralds new internet censorship era.

This copped another outing on RN's Drive last night, as you can hear in Australia's internet censorship, as Jasmine Westerndorf of Melbourne Free University explained the outrageous, secretive, furtive behaviour of ASIC, and never mind that they were incompetently trying to shut down a scam website.

Why only the other day the pond had a terribly engaging conversation with an Indian scam artist, pleasantly chatting on about how Indian cricket is stuffed (it's best when knowing very little about Indian cricket to just keep repeating the game is totally corrupt and rigged, and the scammer really should do something about it, it's bringing disrepute to the game around the world, and you can get a decent scammer taking the bait and going on and on about how Indian cricket and the IPL is one of the wonders of the world. Next thing you know he's entirely forgotten his mission of helping you fix the PC you're running, even when it's a Mac).

But as usual the pond digresses. The solution to the covert, corrupt, incompetent filtering indulged in by ASIC is to get yourself hooked to a VPN. They're cheap these days and you can roam the intertubes with a sense of freedom and wind blowing in your hair, as you drive your sports car through the streets of Paris.

And do what the pond does, and host websites offshore - check out Amazon, which offers a most comforting level of redundant back up and at a modest price. Oh sure you can still be attacked in Australia, and you need to be clean in an American way if you host in the good old USA, but still, the furtive Conroy clowns in Canberra can't stop you delivering to the rest of the world.

That's the way it goes in the world of Conroy. Go offshore.

It reminded the pond yet again why the pond could never vote for a government containing a Conroy. But at least there are solutions.

Now for another grievance, if it pleases madam chair.

Why do journalists insist on telling a story, as Jacqueline Maley does in Joe goes into bat and is hit with a Jones bouncer, and yet they refuse to provide a link to the primary source of their story.

It's a rhetorical question of course, because the intent is to prevent readers leaving the page. It's to encourage "stickability" rather than flightiness, but that's because the rags never seem to have been given a coffee mug with that wretched quotation variously attributed to Chinese proverbs and Richard Bach, If you love your readers, set them free and encourage them with links, and if they come back to you, it's because they enjoyed the read, and if they didn't, it was because they were pissed off having to google the source.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that Maley's story, which concludes ...

Hockey's battering by Jones was all the more worrying because the Coalition doesn't need the loony right to win votes. Let's hope it doesn't court it in government. 

... is made all the more entertaining by heading off to listen to said loon batter poor old Joe, as you can hear by soiling yourself at 2GB here.

Everything Maley says, every adjective she uses, is true. The parrot harangued, screeched, attacked, abused, offered unsolicited advice, was shrill and loud, and was full of rude bombast and standard climate denialism, wind and solar power abuse, and also squawked and made a meal out of Jolly Joe's personal wealth and stomach surgery (what a meal, what a meal), and yes ...

It was amazing because of the way Hockey took it. He let Jones chase him around the microphone like a schoolyard bully. 

All the funnier because Jones wondered about Hockey's lack of spine. Here he was given a verbal bashing and he took it, he wriggled on the hook, but swallowed cold talk about the global warming hoax and jibber jabber about Medicare being unaffordable, the tapeworm in the Australian economy ... and so on and on, an endless rant and jolly Joe just sucked it up, swallowed the humble pie and begged for another slice ...

The shadow treasurer remained silent while Jones compared asylum seekers to cows - although in fact it was not a straight comparison, because Jones was contending the nourishment of asylum seekers should actually come second to feeding "our" cattle (always amazing how cows assume Australian nationality whenever people wish to make a political point about them). 
To be fair, Hockey could barely get a word in. But why did he go on the show in the first place? The opposition has never been in a stronger position. It doesn't need the likes of Jones, and most of his listeners are about as likely to vote Labor as the Prime Minister is to be invited to Jones' Southern Highlands pile for scones and tea.

Indeed. It was the most abject and contemptible performance, deeply humiliating yet richly comic, as deeply and as richly nauseating as chocolate cake ...

A couple of solutions. Please Ms Maley, provide the link, you do yourself no harm, and you add to the fun.

Second, the pond is reminded yet again why the pond would never buy a second hand vehicle from jolly Joe, let alone a used economy. And as for the parrot ... can there be a sadder, more outrageous galah, Major Mitchell cockatoo to you, in the land ...

And so to the standard Saturday wheeze, for which sadly there are no solutions, as the pond contemplates yet again the bizarre world in which the Latin-loving Christopher Pearson, inter alia expert climate scientist, lives ...

(Christopher Pearson, channeling Alan Jones).

Now the whole purpose of Pearson's piece, Roundtable they forgot: wheel turns full circle at fashionable Fin, (behind the paywall to save your sanity) is to deride Labor, the Greens, the ABC and its Fairfax stablemates and the AFR, and the attitude of said  journalists to business and business people, which it goes without saying, almost, but the pond will say it, is condescending and sneering ...

Yes, they must be really peeved at the lizard Oz that the AFR had a surge in circulation by sounding lickspittle to its business readership.

But here's the funny bit. Pearson blames the AFR for persuading business types to go with a price on carbon.

Now why would business types be so easily led?

Well here's the Latinate Pearson telling an anecdote about the Fin's readership:

The worst element in the equation was that a lot of prominent people in business were preposterously vain and susceptible to flattery. It meant that they could be bullied or cajoled by journalists into endorsing all sorts of "progressive agendas", mostly without having given them much thought.

Uh huh. Now that's the way for the lizard Oz to get on the side of that preposterously vain, susceptible to flattery, empty headed, addle-brained, easily led, deluded, bullied and cajoled members of the business community.

Come on down Gina Rinehart, you completely vain, preposterously susceptible to flattery ratbag you, surrounded as you are by toads and lickspittles and the Bolter ...routinely endorsing the Bolter and the rest of the commentariat and their retrograde hideous unprogressive, nay backward agenda, clearly without having given them much thought as you yammer on about ATMs.

Oh it's always an ugly sight to see a pathetic whining moaning billionaire - did you take lessons from Clive Palmer or from Stanislavsky? - but what are we to make of you now after Christopher helpfully explained how preposterously vain and susceptible to flattery you are.

Why next thing you know, you vain wretch, you'll be writing a poem and carving it into stone ...

Yep,  no doubt that the Latinate Pearson is a wondrous inspiration, and the pond eagerly awaits his thoughts on the direct action program proposed by Tony "climate science is crap except when it isn't" Abbott ...

Truth to tell, there is only one opinion piece worth reading at the lizard Oz this day, and that quickly fell off the rotating digital splash at the top of the page, since it indicted both the major parties.

There's not too many who paid any attention to the specious dodge whereby Australia is now no longer Australia when it comes to the migration zone. We have, in the most schizophrenic manner, excised ourselves from ourselves, as Peter van Onselen notes in Lesser angels to stain our character. (behind the paywall because no one cares about staining angels these days).

It is one thing to excise certain islands on the outer perimeter of our nation from the migration zone, but the entire nation? Such a policy does not pass the sniff test. These laws should be challenged through the courts, as they surely will be, and, just like Menzies' legislation attempting to ban the Communist Party, they should be struck out.

Well that's one solution, and the pond has another one, which is to call down a pox on both their houses ...

(Below: now if only Nicholson would whip up a cartoon for Latin-loving Pearson. More Nicholson here).

Oh and before we go, the pond's love affair with David Pope continues unabated. The pond could have saved a couple of hundred words by running the cartoon below yesterday.

More Pope here)