The pond goes on yet another tour of the crony commentariat circuit, and discovers the usual bombastic bunch of busy-bodies ...

The reptiles at the lizard Oz are still continuing their EXCLUSIVE campaign to get the NBN out of the trenches and roll out the fibre overhead, dragging any moth-eaten politician they can find, including David Bartlett, out of the cupboard to deliver an astonishing EXCLUSIVE.

The push is so EXCLUSIVE you could read about the Tasmanian agitation yesterday at itnews under the header Tas Govt tries to resurrect NBN on power poles.

Now rather than add the EXCLUSIVE name of David Bartlett to the lobbying, the pond is patiently waiting for an EXCLUSIVE chance to report the shock, horror and dismay of the crony commentariat at cables being draped in the air, blocking out the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars, heaven and hell and baby Jesus, as they did during the Labor years ...

Oh, and in passing, an acknowledgment that people desperately want a good NBN and will sacrifice a little by way of aesthetics, as the bleating begins in Queensland, as you can read in Coalition cut NBN lifeline to key Ipswich suburbs, Businesses plead for NBN rollout, and perhaps most poignant of all, this from the Murdochians in Western Corridor residents set to miss out on connection to National Broadband Network (behind the paywall so you won't have to cry a river):

Thousands of southwest residents could be forced to rely on last century's copper for their broadband after the National Broadband Network updated its rollout maps. (though strangely the reptiles at the lizard Oz seem to have left it outside the paywall here)

Copper is last century's technology? Nooooh, oh say it ain't so ... surely it's good old fashioned 19th century Queen Victoria technology ...

Go cry a river, and ask for Campbell Newman to dress it in pink. That'll bring Queensland into the twenty first century, right up there with Arizona ...

Meanwhile, while doing its daily tour of the crony commentariat, the pond was irresistibly drawn to the Bolter getting very stern and severe in Intolerance and rudeness shouldn't be the bottom of line.

Now some people might have trouble decoding the Bolter's message, and so it falls to the pond to provide proper moral standards for public discourse.

It is, though it should go without saying, absolutely fine for Miranda the Devine to call lefties pieces of overflowing shit bubbling up out of the sewer, and absolutely appalling for Dan Savage to say someone is full of shit.

It is absolutely wrong, and appalling to watch the ABC:

...we pay the ABC more than $1 billion, so it could set the moral standard, not trawl the meanest streets for cheap tricks. 
Yet we've seen ABC TV even show a picture of a conservative critic doctored to make him look as if he was having sex with a dog.

But it's absolutely fine to pay Rupert Murdoch your weekly stipend so you can burst into laughter at Bill Leak's fine cartoons:

Leak's cartoon was a riposte to another cartoon, celebrated by the Fairfaxians in Tasteless, offensive and of no merit at all:

The outraged Bolter concludes his sanctimonious, righteous piece (some might say with his head stuck up his arse, but the pond could never say that) thusly:

The crude rule. And it's not OK.

Yep, amazingly the pond and the Bolter are as one, as we call solidarity, with a united voice, for the sacking of Bill Leak and the closing down of The Australian.

But that Indonesian cartoon did remind the pond that Australia has long been missing one of its favourite expert climate scientists. Lordy, lordy, has the one time ETS lover returned with a vengeance:

Yep, you know when a man calls is speech One religion is enough that your with a safe pair of scientific hands, willing to conflate science and religion at the drop of a hat.

But what does this mean for expert climate scientist Cardinal Pell? 

If one religion is enough, will Pell have to give up his Catholicism so he can pursue climate warming alarmists with religious fervour?

Naturally the Bolter was on hand, patrolling the streets like a mad mullah, tape measure in hand, ready to dole out more abuse to the wilful abusers, under the header Warmists want to stamp out meangingful debate.

Debate isn't the same as abuse, shrieked the Bolter, having spent years abusing, shouting at, stamping feet out, and getting hysterical about all kinds of alarmists and warmists and warmistas. Because, you know, hysterically calling panicky hysterics panicky hysterics is a form of calm, measured debate ...

Is it possible to get wildly excited about the scientific insights of a man who self-confessedly and cravenly went trawling for votes, without the slightest sense of conviction? Yes, the Bolter can, because now he's seen the light, and anyway it was the media wot made him do it:

John Howard is called a "conviction politician". But the media - corrupted by alarmists - got too much even for him. 
This week Howard admitted he'd caved in to the global warming hype not because of "the science" but the votes. 
"I am unconvinced that catastrophe is around the corner," Howard said in London, where he told the pro-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation he was a warming "agnostic". 
But in his last year as prime minister, Howard could no longer resist the panic pushed by our Leftist media.

Our Leftist Media?

That'd be the Leftist media controlled by Rupert Murdoch, who owns most of what's left of the print media in the country.

Once again, the Bolter and the pond are as one, and with a single Cry god, for Harry, England, and St George, demand that the leftist Murdochians exercising such evil influence be shut down and forced to flee the country ...

Of course some will find the header for the Bolter's piece rich in irony, because he spends his time abusing Wendy Bacon before donning the aggrieved air of a scientist, who has been wrongly abused for being abusive:

A warmist like Milne can exaggerate wildly, yet gets nothing but praise on the ABC and in Fairfax newspapers. 

You see, he lets loose with a word like "warmist" because it's now an automatic reflexive response. He doesn't even get that he's being abusive. The pond understands that calling the Bolter a denialist is a cheap, common form of abuse. But what else are you going to do, when confronted with a ratbag denialist?

Now do go on:

A sceptic can point out Milne's mistakes and that's just "abuse". 

Does he have the first clue about the religious fervour of his binary approach? Good v. bad, denialist, v. sceptic, wicked v. pure of heart? Does he imagine the language or the argument is in any way, even remotely, scientific?

Nope, not a clue:

That's just another wicked sceptic who "says it in a factual way that they are lying".
No wonder John Howard gave up.

Uh huh. Is there any chance the Bolter will follow his craven hero, and give up, and then maybe send back reports from a London gathering of denialists? Fat chance ...

There is of course no point in debating the Bolter, who carries on his crusade with a religious fervour that confirms Howard's point, in a perverse way. One religion is more than enough, and one fanatical one-man band is also more than enough ...

Meanwhile, the pond is enjoying the rich and astonishing range of comedy items on view, from Joe Hockey announcing that the budget emergency, the budget crisis, requires him to cut revenue, as you can read in Hockey blows $3b hole in budget, while good old Barners defiantly explains that attending the footy is a legitimate part of his job, as you can read in Barnaby Joyce won't pay back NRL expenses.

The pond proposes that anybody who has done a bit of business at the footy put in a claim to the ATO, clawing back all the expenses involved, but the pond accepts no liability for any penalties incurred.

Come to think of it, the pond was once shouted a ticket to a club breakfast and AFL grand final by a business acquaintance intent on securing more deals. It was a bad move for both parties. Only god remembers who played, but it was a blow out score, and the football seemed to be played always at the other end of the ground, and the crowd groaned at things that were absolutely invisible to the pond, and the only relief was that it confirmed to the pond that anyone who willingly attended AFL matches had to be addled in the head.

Now that's the sort of business insight the ATO should be supporting ...

Well played Barners, resolute in maintaining the right for snouts to be dipped into trough. Let all who waste their lives at the footy be given a tax break and generous allowances.

And finally, as the pond concludes its tour of the bizarre world of the crony commentariat, let's pause for a moment to contemplate the work of Paul Sheehan, who this day is all agog about twitter, here, while maintaining a curmudgeonly stand on actual twits who twitter:

With 230 million registered users (as distinct from active users), Twitter has become the world's wire service, the first point of contact for breaking news. It is useful, but I don't feel the need to make many contributions. I notice that those who have passed the threshhold of 40,000 tweets - which means they would have had to averaged 20 tweets a day, every day, for the past five years - tend to be bombastic busy-bodies.

Bombastic busy-body?

Why that's the finest description of the work of Paul Sheehan and the rest of the crony commentariat that the pond has read in years ... and yet Sheehan doesn't seem to understand that his bombastic, heavily borrowed, review of Twitter would have been much better reduced to a series of tweets.

Speaking of twitter, a correspondent drew attention to a tweet by Leigh Sales, which led to the pond giving the 7.30 show another go.

After all, there's plenty of meat for a feast. The government has already, in a remarkably short time, delivered a remarkable number of blunders, not least the matter of electricity pricing, as noted by Crikey yesterday:

"The ACCC and the Government more generally should also be aware that outside of energy prices, carbon price passthroughs have been limited and the impacts of repeal will also be limited. 
An Ai Group survey earlier in 2013 found that 70% of businesses in the manufacturing, services and construction sectors were unable to pass through any of their carbon-related energy cost increases to customers. The remainder of the sample were able to pass through small amounts of their carbon cost. Across all businesses, just 6% of total carbon costs were estimated to have been passed on to customers." 
The Ai Group has belled the cat. The carbon tax has not amounted to a "great big new tax" on everything. 
John Howard and Abbott like to warn of the "alarmism" of experts who say that humanity's emissions of greenhouse gases are causing serious environmental problems. Abbott's hysteria over carbon pricing is a much clearer example of alarmism, as the Ai Group statement indicates. He deserves to be called out over this. 
And as for his promise that the repeal of the carbon price will lead to a significant drop in the cost of living? If the Ai Group is right, that just won't happen. Voters should hold Abbott to account over that promise, too.

Sadly, Sales didn't land a blow on jolly Joe Hockey when he fronted last night (as you can see here), with the interview descending into jolly jokes about whether Hockey attended Sales' wedding. It was pathetic stuff, and Hockey batted away electricity prices, the carbon tax hysteria, Grain Corp, the Reserve bank, and so on. 

It helps explain why Hockey is one of the few who fronts the show - he didn't even raise a sweat, and cruised along in smirk mode - while the rest in Abbott's government follow the Pope's rule:

(more Pope here)

So the 7.30 show is off the list again, but credit where credit is due, at least Sales, via Twitter, laid a glove on Gerard Henderson, surely the most bombastic busy-body of them all, and so for the record, you can select your favourite barb. The pond is inclined to give Stephen Spencer the nod: