Are we already - already? - in the last stages of mental and bodily exhaustion arising from self-pollution?

(Above: and more images at The Graudian here, though some might think they're NSFW)

Well others raised the subject, the question, the issue of the mental and bodily exhaustion that arises from onanism or self-pollution, and we see the matter paraded daily in relation to federal politicians.

You see the pond got paranoid the other day - well more paranoid than its usual paranoia, which rarely rises above the level of General Ripper contemplating precious bodily fluids.

Here's the rub of it. What if stray readers had ignored the link so thoughtfully provided by a pond correspondent?

What if they'd missed this?

Freedom and liberty, 100 years ago this month, were under threat as the gods of war awoke. Armies of empires stretching back before the Middle Ages were slowly moving to Armageddon—a world war with deaths of millions, the end of four royal houses and the beginning of wicked new orders of communist and fascist cruelty. This war ended realms of geography but brought in dominions of political terror imprisoning generations under dictatorship, ending hope, freedom and liberty for many until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, the war that began in 1914 with the invasion of Belgium was the second ‘Hundred Years War’, the war against tyranny, continuing from the Armistice, pausing in 1989, and resuming in 2001 in New York. The ‘Hundred Years War against Tyranny’ continues today on three fronts: first of all Islamist fundamentalism intent on caliphates destroying Western civilisation, especially religious freedom; secondly, democratic governments restricting freedom of speech and association, betraying hundreds of years of liberty; and, finally, leftists delegitimising all views other than their own, especially in media and education. 
Freedom and liberty are not abstract concepts. You either have freedom or you are not free. Whether I serve here for 16 days or 16 years, I shall always judge myself on how I have battled against tyranny and fought for the axis of enlightenment—that is, liberty of the individual, a free market, small government and low taxes. I will let others badge and brand and box me, as, in my great broad church that is the Liberal Party, my pew is a moveable feast. I have campaigned against dictator-loving Islamist fundamentalists in the Maldives; Sinn Fein- and PLO-supporting Labour candidates in London; and godless rebranded communists in Mongolia—not to mention the Queensland branch of the Australian Labor Party!

Barking mad, but wait there's more, much more - yes it's at Quadrant under the heading A Speech Worth Heeding - the barking mad heeding the barking mad - but the pond commends the correspondent's link here, with the Paul Éluard poem set out nicely at the bottom.

Éluard? A poet not of my politics, I confess ...

Well that's the understatement of the millennium. Even for the pond, accustomed to the daily parade of loonacy, it's passing wondrous that a man should be quoting the surrealist who eulogised Joseph Stalin his political writings, or so it seems if you Greg Hunt him here ...

Ode à Staline (1950) 
 Staline dans le coeur des hommes 
Sous sa forme mortelle avec des cheveux gris 
Brûlant d'un feu sanguin dans la vigne des hommes 
Staline récompense les meilleurs des hommes 
Et rend à leurs travaux la vertu du plaisir 
Car travailler pour vivre est agir sur la vie 
Car la vie et les hommes ont élu Staline
 Pour figurer sur terre leurs espoirs sans bornes. 
 Et Staline pour nous est présent pour demain 
Et Staline dissipe aujourd'hui le malheur 
La confiance est le fruit de son cerveau d'amour 
La grappe raisonnable tant elle est parfaite (here, you can get a rough translation into English in the usual Google way)

Yes you can take that and shove it up McGrath's woolly jumper. That's the trouble with rabid ratbags of all stripes, they all flock towards the convenient flag of fundamentalism.

But wait, you don't just get a Éluard poem, you get a set of steak knives suitable for carving up lamb, which might come in handy:

The first McGrath was a convict, rightly punished by a sensible judge and sent down to Australia. Family folklore has it was for stealing a sheep.

Yes, so much better if he'd starved to death and cut off the lineage right there and then.

It turns out that this McGrath worships one Eric Pickles, calling him a consummate grassroots councillor in touch with all things local.

Now the pond's correspondent cruelly drew attention to Pickles' startling resemblance to a thumb:

(You can find the original at the New Statesman here)

But the pond was more interested in the sort of pickle that Pickles created in his local sphere, and so resorted to the Hull Daily Mail's Groans as 'most arrogant' Eric Pickles survives David Cameron's cabinet reshuffle:

At yesterday's full council meeting, Hull's Labour leader Councillor Steve Brady could not hide his disappointment that Eric was still there. 
 "I would have loved any female, in fact anybody, to take over," he said. 
 Local Tories are not impressed with Mr P either. One rolled his eyes heavenwards when his name cropped up in conversation the other day. 
 "He is the most arrogant man imaginable," said my companion. 


It turned out that McGrath was most impressed by Pickles' political skills because he called the down under bum "Skippy".

So much for Pickles. Not even the wit or wisdom to call McGrath "Barking Mad Skippy"!

As someone who grew up in regional Queensland, I grew up with the ABC. But the ABC has left people like me and my constituents behind. I want to support the ABC. I like the ABC. But while it continues to represent only inner-city leftist views, funded by our taxes, it is in danger of losing its social licence to operate. I am calling for a review of the ABC’s charter. And if they fail to make inroads to restore balance, then the ABC should be sold and replaced by a regional and rural broadcasting service. In the meantime, Triple J, because of its demographic dominance and clear ability to stand on its own, should be immediately sold. 

Yes, and they play all this noisy wretched music, oh the muck and the stench and it's too much to bear, all those damned elitists spreading their noise into rural areas and scaring the sheep.

But what about JJ?

And what about the diggers?

In February this year I laid a wreath at the Brisbane Cenotaph to commemorate the fall of Singapore. With only six former prisoners of war of the Japanese left in Queensland, we should always honour and help those who did so much to defend our liberty in this hundred-year war against tyranny.

Oh dear, but not a word about the skill and honour of Japanese sub mariners!

Is the treacherous, subversive McGrath, as well as being off with the pixies, alienated from his very own government, and Tony Abbott's praise of Japanese submariners delivers a blow to nation's psyche?

But wait, there's more, much more:

Likewise, freedom of speech should never be restricted by government, because when speech is regulated in any manner, it is no longer free. People will say hurtful and bigoted and stupid and dumb things. People will make racist and sexist and homophobic comments. Those views are wrong, but the right to express them is not. If you believe in democracy, you cannot cleanse it of the views you disagree with. The true test of a democratic nation is not how we treat those with whom we agree but how we treat the rights of those with whom we disagree. The best way to deal with those with whom you disagree is not to force them into the dark shadows but to let the sun shine, to let the disinfectant of light and public scrutiny judge those offensive views.

Yes because mob rule on social media is so effective, just like mob rule in the streets, and if someone offends you, why just don a white sheet and organise a lynching party ... metaphysical and verbal of course.

That's why the hundred years war was fought. So Hitler and his mates could express their hurtful views!

Excluding, of course, filthy pinko perverted commie bastards, dangerous inner city 'leets, ABC listeners, lefties, greenies, and other rabid filthy types who are attacking this nation's precious bodily fluids! Let them not be heard, not at all, but let us instead point out how women and minorities ruin and wreck this nation's precious bodily fluids!

But wait, there's more, much more, and the pond now makes this solemn promise to dangerous inner city 'leets.

If you're not rolling around in gales of laughter and the depths of depravity by the time you've finished the read, the pond will refund the time you've wasted. And if you believe that, you probably think the Senate is still a house of review, as opposed to a circus full of barking mad buffoons ... as McGrath joins Bernardi and the cross-bench to ensure chaos and confusion and the nation is saturated with used tea bags ...

What else? Well last week was a bad one for jolly Joe Hockey, so the pond was immensely titillated by a story Joe Hockey 'won't trust Malcolm again', wife says, which is all about a new biography of the jolly rotund one, done with Hockey cooperation and due out next week. How's this for an opening flourish?

Prime Minister Tony Abbott sacked Treasury head Martin Parkinson a week after last year’s election, without telling his Treasurer Joe Hockey. 
And Hockey only found out Parkinson’s employment had been terminated after he was told by his Treasury boss.

Well that explains why this government's communications strategies are so remarkably effective, and its planning and strategies so cohesive. A real team of team players, geeing each other up, and going the extra yard to share vital information ...

And it wasn't just in the first week. We've seen that exceptional team work playing out every month since then ...

There's more, a lot more - there always seems to be more - and a lot of it involves some difficulties with Ian Macfarlane and residual bitterness about big Mal, but the real blast will come when the book turns up on the shelves next week ....

Leadership tensions?

Oh it's only just begun - you see jolly Joe doesn't want ever to return to opposition, but he still clearly has a hankering to lead, and only one can be at the top of the circus tent pole.

What fun it will be over the next year or so. Jolly Joe's budget strategy is in a total mess, and no one knows how to deal with the Senate - it is, after all, as McGrath so capably demonstrated, full of barking mad crazies - and last week's eruptions showed jolly Joe was feeling the heat.

Let the fun and games begin.

Speaking of big Mal, the pond had an agent on hand for the Malster's recent attendance at an industry gab fest:

The takeaway message?

The federal government is going to spend as much, if not more, than the original budget for the NBN, so reviled by them, and for what?

Well it's a rhetorical question, and the rhetorical answer is to end up with a half-baked, hodge podge mess of competing technologies that will take decades and much more expense to upgrade and make coherent and useful.

Big Mal's job, while ignoring the realities of climate science and everything he once accepted as necessary and appropriate on that matter, is to obfuscate, obscure and deny this simple NBN truth, which will emerge only in fits and starts over the years. In short, Big Mal is presiding over an epic fail ...

Such is the job of a toffy forelock tugger and knob polisher who sold his soul to retain a sense of relevance. Some soul, some relevance ...

There’s a wonderful scene in ‘Fame Is The Spur’ where Redgrave, now a Member of Parliament and laden with honors, is addressing a mass meeting when a small group of suffragettes bursts in to heckle him, “Votes for Women!” One of the suffragettes is his own wife, a principled bluestocking who supported his career from a mining pit to Westminister. The police beat up the suffragettes, and Redgrave is mute and passive as his wife is dragged out of the hall. His soul dies but he’s too far gone in surrender to know it. (here)

But you already knew all that didn't you?

Unless you happen to be a barking mad McGrath, blathering on about a hundred years war, without the first fucking clue about actually managing a country, an economy or modern technology ...

What happens to a politician's soul when it dies? Well with any luck it will live a comfortable life in Sydney's eastern suburbs and never mind the chaos and confusion in the rest of the land ...

It is not possible to criticise the new Coalition policy on climate change because it does not exist. Mr Abbott apparently knows what he is against, but not what he is for. 
Second, as we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, its cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world. 
Now politics is about conviction and a commitment to carry out those convictions. The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is "crap" and you don't need to do anything about it. Any policy that is announced will simply be a con, an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing. After all, as Nick Minchin observed, in his view the majority of the Party Room do not believe in human caused global warming at all. I disagree with that assessment, but many people in the community will be excused for thinking the leadership ballot proved him right. 
Remember Nick Minchin's defense of the Howard Government's ETS was that the Government was panicked by the polls and therefore didn't really mean it. 
Tony himself has in just four or five months publicly advocated the blocking of the ETS, the passing of the ETS, the amending of the ETS and if the amendments were satisfactory passing it, and now the blocking of it. 
His only redeeming virtue in this remarkable lack of conviction is that every time he announced a new position to me he would preface it with "Mate, mate, I know I am a bit of a weather vane on this, but....." 
Third, there is a major issue of integrity at stake here and Liberals should reflect very deeply on it. We have an Opposition whose current leadership dismisses the Howard Government's ETS policy as being just a political ploy. We have an Opposition Leader who has in the space of a few months held every possible position on the issue, each one contradicting the position he expressed earlier. And finally we have an Opposition which negotiated amendments to the Rudd Government's ETS, then reached agreement on those amendments and then, a week later, reneged on the agreement. 
Many Liberals are rightly dismayed that on this vital issue of climate change we are not simply without a policy, without any prospect of having a credible policy but we are now without integrity. We have given our opponents the irrefutable, undeniable evidence that we cannot be trusted. 
Not that anyone would doubt it, but I will be voting for the ETS legislation when it returns in February and if my colleagues have any sense they will do so as well.   (Malcolm Turnbull in 2009 here, forced video at end of link).

Integrity? That's just another word for disgrace ...

It seems so long ago that the pond started with a link to an image of wankers in the final stages of dissolution.

Did that link offer up another image that suits the pond and its idea of a fun game?

So glad you asked ... the only trouble is, it probably excites some in the Liberal party more than it excites the pond ...