In which the pond cries Et Tu, Akker Dakker?

First a little mood setting, and you can find more First Dog here:

Now let's get one thing straight.

The only reason the pond keeps getting distracted from actual Abbott government policies, their implications and impacts, and instead keeps mentioning Peta Credlin is because the pond covers the carping, crooning, carry-ons of the krazed right wing kommentariat loons that infest the inner city Surry Hills gulag known as Murdoch la la land ...

The pond does not have a Credlin fixation. It is only a pale moon reflecting the white hot heat of the angry sun going nuclear about Credlin ...

For example, et tu Akker Dakker?

Now the pond just had to make that large screen cap so readers who never stray into the horror known as the Sunday Terror can see how a portly pompous windbag portentously poses for the photographer ...

You see, if you just idly glance at the splash, think 'now there's a smirking, self-satisfied loon', and then move on, you have no idea:

You see! You need the full arms-crossed pose to get an idea of what the Sunday Terror fancies is the way a cultural warrior should stand when taking arms against foes ...

With that out of the way, you can get down to the nitty gritty. Like:

Credlin’s gender is only an issue with feminists unhappy that her very presence in the prime ministerial (and previously Opposition leader’s) office undermined Gillard’s malicious claim that Abbott was a misogynist.

Yes, that's the sort of gem that keeps the pond trekking back, hunting through the vast tailings heap for the speck of comedy cold ...

Strange, remind the pond again of Credlin's gender as an issue ...

Of course, Wormtongue's a man, a lying, devious, cunning manipulative man, no gender issues there. Why it's not like calling her a witch ...

But as for the rest, it is the pond's solemn duty to report that even Akker Dakker, yea even the hard rocker himself, has marked the Abbott government down:

Abbott’s poor polling can be put down to a number of different causes but the major weakness is its failure to sell its core message.
It has failed to hammer home the message that Labor so badly mishandled the national wealth it plunged into ongoing debt that will affect future generations. Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen should be laughed out of court whenever he appears and criticises the government for its handling of the debt – it’s his debt, Labor’s debt that the government is trying to fix.

Sorry, can we stop a minute there. The pond would like to award Akker Dakker a share of the Golden Zombie, awarded to the debt story from a quartet of Liberal untruths. And the winner is:

Hmm, hard to pick the difference in the zombies, but sorry Akker Dakker, do go on:

As Abbott has said he relies heavily on Credlin, he must ask himself whether her advice has been helpful or has it been ignored? 
Why has the government so spectacularly failed to meet public expectations?

Say what. A spectacular failure? Et tu Akker Dakker? But do go on:

Has too much energy in the prime minister’s office gone into micro-managing and centralising of control, as the internal critics claim, at the expense of reminding the public of the simple and understandable narrative that the government used to win office? 
There is either a lack of strategy or the government’s tactics need overhauling as the polls would indicate that they seem to have been ineffectual. 
That communications from the Abbott government need overhauling – the lack of consultation with (even conservative) premiers about budgetary measures which dramatically affected their states – is self-evident. 
It seems to have been caught flat-footed by the election of the PUPs and Independent senators. Abbott has some breathing space over Christmas to consider why his government has not got its message through and decide a course of action. 
Leaders are often forced to choose between what is best for their organisations and their loyalty to those who they believe have served them well but whose skills no longer match changing operational needs. 

And there you have it. Credlin has served her purpose, irritating feminists and showing what a gender-friendly man Tony Abbott is, but her skill set no longer matches changing operational needs. Instead he needs to stand alone, and reveal his inner prick ...

Yes, they speak that sort of language in toady Murdoch la la land. When will come the day that the Terror's editor looks Akker Dakker in the eye, and says sorry Akker Dakker, your rants no longer serve the operational need of providing laughs for loon pond ...

Oh sorry, we missed the punch line:

Abbott’s goal must be to win the next election and realise his nation-saving policies.

Indeed, indeed, what would happen to punishing the poor, the helpless, the pensioners, the refugees, or to making blacks work twelve months a year (yes, that's what they said) for a pittance, and as punishment for living in the outlands ...

Meanwhile, the Terror was all over another dissident, unhappy Warren Entsch:

The pond only mentions this so it can EXCLUSIVELY confirm it isn't obsessed with Credlin - it's all the fault of the reptiles and their current fixation.

First of all, Maiden establishes Entsch's dinky di credentials. Why the honest pumpkin has been a crocodile farmer, railway porter, Harley-Davidson lover, supporter of gay marriages, attacker of Cory Bernardi, and defender of big Mal being raised by a single dad (oh and the sick should have the right to a whiff).

And then decided he was Peter Finch:

Entsch decided once and for all he was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore. He picked up the phone to the nation’s longest-serving federal MP Philip Ruddock, known as the Father of the House for his 41 years as an MP, and laid a formal complaint against the Prime Minister. While he was at it, he warned him that if any journalist happened to call him to ask about Credlin he would tell them exactly what he thought.

A formal complaint to Philip Ruddock! Join the queue ... should work a treat.

And then, just like Akker Dakker, Maiden goes quiet and stern at the end. After re-cycling Entsch complaining about Credlin being hitched to federal Liberal party director Loughnane, she ends with a prophecy:

Like other MPs, he complains of being “in the frozen zone. Because I dare to have a view’’. Like others, he draws a comparison between the covert power of John Howard’s former chief of staff Arthur ­Sinodinos and the overt power of Credlin. It’s an echo of the complaints of some Australian business leaders that they cannot sit down over dinner with the Prime Minister without Peta Credlin in the room. 
All the signs to date however are that the Prime Minister is digging in, because he respects, admires and needs his hard-driving, hard-working chief of staff who was responsible for the tough strategy that delivered him power. The option of finding a federal seat for Peta Credlin, perhaps greased with a diplomatic appointment for a sitting MP could however provide an elegant solution. Some suggest that Kevin Andrews for example would make a delightful ambassador to the Holy See. 
But if the Prime Minister does nothing and changes nothing trouble lies ahead.

A spectacular failure! Trouble lies ahead!

And the pond should confess to its own spectacular failure, because it absolutely failed to mention Peter van Onselen also going Credlin for the lizard Oz ...

Not that van Onselen had much  new to say that wasn't encapsulated by Eric Lobbecke's accompanying portrait of Abbott in a balloon:

By golly, when they turn, they really turn ...

Anyhoo, van Onselen rabbits on about how discreet Arthur Sinodinos was - amen to that, where would ICAC be without such $200,000 discretion?

And so to Credlin's outrageous crimes!

In a piece I wrote for Wednesday, in which a front­bencher described her interactions with deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop as “like two Siamese fighting fish stuck in the same tank”, Credlin gave on the record quotes to deny the story, in which she referred to a minister of the Crown as “Julie”. 
It was remarked on to me by numerous MPs as inappropriate, not something Sinodinos or Nutt would ever have done. Formalities can wane in private (if not for Sinodinos or Nutt), but certainly not when giving a public comment.

First names? As if they were friends? Why dammit, that's going way too far. Oh sure Julie's website might say "about julie bishop" and "meet julie" and "a message from julie", but that's for the common folk.

Here's how you address her in public Peter - and please no short cuts or evasions: The Right Honourable Julie Bishop, member for Curtin in the house of representatives, minister for foreign affairs in Australia's federal coalition government, and deputy leader of the Liberal party ...

Why loose talk of "mama's lover" might have brought down Queen Victoria and the Empire ...

At the end of it all, van Onselen runs the usual line, which is to praise a mythical Abbott and heap all of the failures of the Abbott government on one woman:

But in the here and now, with the government suffering in the polls, weighed down by divisions and policy backflips, Credlin has become a major distraction at the worst possible time for the PM. Perhaps the summer hiatus will see everyone move on from the sideshow, but perhaps not. Can Abbott afford to lose the summer waiting to find out? 
All of this is to say nothing of what may be Abbott’s biggest problem. My favourite line about Abbott has always been: “If you don’t like Tony Abbott, do not meet him because he will change your mind.” 
The volunteer firefighter, surf lifesaver and pollie pedalling fundraiser, who could almost always win over anyone he met, now seems to be living in a prime ministerial bubble, divorced from the reality that always served his political instincts so well. I wonder who put him there?

Yes, never mind the policy back flips and the policy fuck ups, here (with Jedi mind trick and hand wave), focus on this woman. It's all the fault of this woman ...

And so, in a breath-taking, gob-smacking way, all talk of the Poodle's destruction of education, jolly Joe's destructive, cruel and badly constructed budget, and the even worse sales pitch that followed, and big Mal's destruction of the NBN and the introduction of a filter, and Morrison's un-Christian crucifixion of refugees, to the point of using children for blackmail, and so on and on, is somehow transformed into Abbott being in a bubble ...

It was always thus, that women had to wear the fuck ups of men, but this is so rich, this is so naked, that it finally makes obvious what went down in the Gillard years ...

Oh for fucks sake, reptiles, harden the fuck up. If an on the nose government delivers on the nose policies in an inept, fumbling way, have the good grace to acknowledge that Tony Abbott's not some pathetic little boy being herded to his doom by some Amazonian matriarch ...

Sheesh, it's public school boys fawning over the nurse all over again ... and we know what they get up to after lights out, and it isn't devising good public policy ...

Remember only a little while ago, it was Tony Abbott's inept fumbling, and the inept fumbling of the Abbott government's policies was all the go, and the talk was all about how soon the Abbott leadership might face a challenge, and who might be a likely challenger? You know, of the kind heralded by First Dog at the start of this piece....

Or even just how soon jolly Joe would have to go, and be replaced, perhaps by big Mal? (Oh Monday's going to be such fun, and though the holes are rather large, at last we'll learn how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall).

Now the conversation has been transformed into one the krazed commentariat is komfortable with. They learned the lines long ago. You know, ditch the witch, kill the bitch, blame the witch, an endless monotonous chanting right out of Lord of the Flies, and led by ... Tony Abbott ...

Well credit where credit is due ...

(And more Moir here).

And just what was she trying to say Mr Moir?

Ah Peter Credlin, you've done it again ...