Caution, unpredictable political animals ahead ...

(Above: sheesh, and we're only up to black Wednesday).


The pond was astonished to learn that the TV soap Home and Away was trotting out the hoary old device of a bomb going off.

The pond hasn't thought of this sort of trick since the glory days of Number 96, but despite a temporary bump, that attempt to refresh the show was a sign that the end days were upon it ...

It reminded the pond that it had never, not once, seen a full episode of Home and Away or Neighbours. There's probably an entire book to be written about things not done, and not regretted for a moment. Non, je ne regrette rien, ni le bien qu'on m'a fait, ni le mai tout ca m'est bien egal ... (sung in a sultry tone with a frog in the throat).

Speaking of  bombs - it seems the only way to ensure constant hits from the NSA - the pond has also never seen a single episode of The Bolter Report. No, je ne regrette rien ...

But we do like, in a belated way, to keep track of how the show is going, and last Sunday delivered most peculiar results:

Insiders: 173,000 / 93,000 / 41,000 
The Bolt Report: 134,000 / 19,000 (here, with other ratings)

The 134k isn't bad - for a loser - but what's with that repeat figure?

The pond could only think that TV tonight had made a typo while transcribing the figures.

What's more, the ABC did over Ten, with 18.7% to 16.9%. They couldn't even win with David Attenborough - Nine hauled in 1.32m for Attenborough in India, while Ten could only score 309,000 for DA living with baboons.

Of course the rot starts at the head of the ranting right wing ratbag fish that hangs like a pall of doom over the daytime Sunday schedule, but the pond is tired of explaining this to Ten network execs ...

But it's easy to see why the likes of the Bolter fears and loathes the ABC. Why, the cardigan wearers are doing the Bolter like an easy TV dinner re-heated in the microwave ...

Meanwhile, Paul Barry has been shamelessly teasing the Bolter, and the Bolter being a man of shameless self-importance, as most preening demagogues are, Barry got a bite:

Sure enough, today the Terror was shocked and appalled.

You might have thought that the poodle Pyne betraying a core election promise, with the approval of Abbott, who had made the core, read my lips election promise, would have provided enough work for the hagiographers, crony commentariat and assorted knob polishers. 

Or the ongoing saga with Yudhoyono, but what do you know, right below an update on Indonesia, came a story on the fluff gathering navel-gazers:

If you were stupid enough to click on the Twit-for-tat story, you found the Bolter blathering on in a way that suggested there was a hint of fear in the eyes, the sort that some allege can be seen in the eyes of English cricketers:

Bolt said: "There are a couple things about Media Watch that I thought made Paul Barry look foolish or deceptive and Media Watch a disgrace, just one more evidence of how wrong it is for that show to have been left to hosts of the Left since its birth. 
"There has been no balance. 
"And tonight I think he abused his position and trashed the journalism standards he is allegedly there to police."

The specious grounds for this is that the public doesn't pay the Bolter's salary, when in fact any dolt who contributes a sub to the HUN or helps out Ten with advertising revenue (almost invisible as they are) is helping to pay for the Bolter's salary.

That's how it works, and frankly the pond is utterly compelled to discover what it's worth to have a pet demagogue who can be let off the leash as required ...

So let's have the amounts the Bolter gets courtesy of the public. That would be his Ten fees, his work at the HUN, and anywhere else a foolish public chips in to help him maintain his rage.

Anyhoo, Barry obviously hit a raw nerve, because the ravaging, raging, frothing and foaming fearless crusaders have come out in force after the Media Watch show.

The Terror  thoughtfully provided a link to a Bolter piece, Paul Barry really is a fool, which suggests that only a fool would go around calling someone who got a bite out of the Bolter was a fool ...

The only problem, if you followed the Terror link, is that this is what you got:

Yep, completely blank, except for the ad - perhaps all revenue going to the Bolter as a basket charity case - though we haven't bothered to fill in the full blank page, since reading the Bolter is enough to induce a state of blankness up there with Will Smith waving a magic wand at you ...

Never mind, the furious foolish fulminations can be found at the HUN here.

Meanwhile, the piece also links to Tim Blair saying Paul Barry can't read, a neat side-step which completely avoids the issues of working for a gutter trawling, sleazoid gossip rag of the yellow kind relentlessly dedicated to exposing fornication between consenting adults.

But then Blair cut his teeth on the Melbourne Truth, so ferreting through the trash can must be business as usual ...

Crikey had a neat satirical wrinkle on this, proposing how wrong it was to publish salacious, unsubstantiated gossip about the private lives of public figures, and then linking to sundry Murdochian follies, including Gawker ... yep, what's good for the NSW Labor goose is clearly good for the strutting gander.

And then it came to the pond with a startling clarity. What was the point of staying mentally pure and not watching TV soaps, and then spending all this valuable saved time looking at idiots like the Bolter and the Bleagh?

I mean, who on the planet would resort to either of them for insight into climate science, or almost anything else? And how much are they paid for their dissembling, distortions and preposterous huffing and puffing?

Clearly, if the ratings of the Bolter's show for Ten is any guide, the vast majority of Australians feel the same way ... why he might only be paid with sixpences ...

Meanwhile, remember that Terror story about Indonesia?

To a casual reader, it's a deceptive header, a header which actually is deceptive about the content of the actual story, here.

The reality is a tad different with SBY keeping Tony Abbott on the rack and giving him a few more spins, as you can read here.

It's a subtle difference, but that's the art of the hagiographic knob polisher at work.

In one header, you'd gather that SBY was seeking to end the games, and in the other, you'd see his fury remains fresh, and Abbott must agree to kow tow, humble himself, and eat a little more egg before things are set aright ...

You can see this hagiographic spin at work in the Murdoch rags at a daily basis, which is why it seems that hundreds of Australians have taken to clicking on the Jakarta Post to see what's really going on:

Yep, there it is, SBY isn't seeking, he is still demanding, and he's not just demanding that silly old Peter Leahy work out what city he's in to receive a letter ... with this sort of story, RI to stop arresting boat people, still coming out of Jakarata, posing an interesting ongoing challenge for Abbott ...

What's interesting and disturbing about the JP stories which have comments is how there now seems to be a festering proxy war going on between comments from Indonesians, and comments from what seems to be an invasion of Australian ratbags, who litter the pages in the same way they soil Bali ...

SBY is doing a Keating and doing Abbott slowly, and there's very little the hagiographers can do about it, but what's going to be even more interesting is the way the Abbott government is right at this moment gearing up to make a mess of its relationship with China, as the Chinese crank up their campaign against Japan, and thereby, the United States ...

No doubt Hugh White is inclined to be hysterical in Abbott playing with diplomatic fire in Asia, but there's also no doubt that we are going to live in interesting times in the next few months ...

And this is where the simple-minded ratbag demagoguery of an Alan Jones or an Andrew Bolt, or a man chanting three word slogans, is more than useless.

So there you go. Internationally, going the wrong way with Indonesia, the Middle East, and now quite possibly and domestically, thanks to poodle Pyne, the Abbott government is now at war with conservative state Liberals, educators and in NSW, big Bazza O'Farrell who started to talk about the children still being in an opposition mind set ...

It seems to be a fine old mess, as Lara Tingle notes s in Government of 'no surprises' rewrites history ...

Perhaps the only surprise is that some foolish people thought there'd be no surprises. There will be a Gonski reform process under my government ... oh sure, and let's talk about Julia Gillard and carbon taxes, and who can tell the biggest lies and the most shameless porkies ...

Let's face it, as a way of sustaining audience interest, the Abbott government is well on the way to a Home and Away solution to diplomatic relations and to government ...

(Below: please, don't blame the pond. We merely report on what's in The Jakarta Post here)