In which the pond enjoys the stench of hypocrisy in the morning ...

Of course David Pope nailed it all in one - and more excellent Popery here - but on we must plod in his dazzling footsteps.

What's this, a rising gorge and an incipient note of fresh floral nausea, with subtle herbaceous and grassy undertones?

Is the pond the only one who finds the nausea from the stench of the hypocrisy occasionally overpowering and overwhelming?

Especially when that sort of splash sits on the same digital page  with this splash:

It's all there in Veterans group use Anzac centenary to fire up over pension reforms, and it's always the same, the cheap rhetoric and the hollow pieties, followed by the cash grab and the penny pinching.

This time the irony's even richer, because having done the dirt, Abbott's headed off to Gallipoli to don the sackcloth and ashes and keen and moan about the diggers.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is under fire from groups representing military pensioners and war widows who say the government's proposed changes to veterans' payments threaten the quality of life and dignity in retirement of nearly 300,000 people who sacrificed for Australia. 
Mr Abbott, who is en route to Turkey for the Anzac centenary at Gallipoli, met with the leadership of the RSL last month but refused to back down on a decision to index payments to the rate of inflation rather than wages.
Veterans groups have been working behind the scenes since the budget but recent meetings between the Federation of Totally and Permanently Incapacitated Ex-Servicemen & Women (known as TPI), the Defence Force Welfare Association and the Alliance of Defence Service Organisations resolved to increase the pressure to coincide with Anzac Day and as Treasurer Joe Hockey finalises his second budget. 
"It's all very well to commemorate the fallen – and we support the centenary commemorations – but we have to fully support the living as well," TPI national vice-president Pat McCabe told Fairfax Media.
The TPI wrote to Mr Abbott this week, reminding him of the words of Prime Minister Billy Hughes who said in 1917: "We say to them, 'You go and fight and when you come back we will look after your welfare' ... we have entered into a bargain with the soldier, and we must keep it!" 
"It's that bargain they have broken," Ms McCabe said.

Billy Hughes, the greatest ratbag of all?

Oh well never mind, and the pond should perhaps declare an interest, having benefited as a child from Legacy, but there's nothing like the moment when the cash hits the road that the pond's infallible detector of sanctimonious bullshit springs into action.

The change is expected to save $65.1 million in 2017 but the cumulative effect will erode the value of veterans' pensions by more each year as time goes on. Legislation to facilitate the change has been introduced in the House of Representatives but is yet to be tested in a hostile Senate.

Enough already, before the pond has some kind of seizure.

And then there was this little joke from Rowe today, and more Rowe here:

Well yes, and the pond was especially moved to see this from the reptiles of Oz:

Oh no, they didn't go there, did they? Even the pond knows that to use an extreme weather event is likely to send the world's greatest climate scientists, the Bolter and the Pellists, into something of a frenzy:

...raindrops keep falling on his head. 
Sydney rainfall in the 24 hours to 9am yesterday: 119mm.

Oh they did, they did.

Do they have any idea of how ineffably stupid they sound?

Probably not, the lizard people are never big on science ... but hey, the pond is big enough to go there. Do they realise that California has had to use Star Trek technology and William Shatner to sort out its drought?  Or something like that ... you can see Bill on K5 news here, but the pond accepts no liability for any damage, to emotions or rationality ...

But as always, it's time to put away childish things, and think like adults, and perforce that means joining the reptiles of Oz on their lifelong learning lessons.

First up today is one of the world's most famous climate scientists:

Poor Moorice is in the grip of a deep funk:

Okay, time for a pause. Just how did we get from celebrating bullet trains in Communist Shanghai to deploring the state of Europe because of radical leftism and dangerous progressive thinking?

Could it be that the fascist charms of communist China work like the lustrous scent of myrrh and frankincense in Moorice's nostrils?

So it seems, but hey ho on we go, and the pond urges you to remember that this is Tony Abbott's business advisor speaking:

Yes, it's coal, coal, coal for Australia (and India) and hey let's freeze activist bank accounts, because hey that's how they do business in communist states, and now if only Tony would appoint me chief Kommissar, by golly, things would be different and better ...

But much as the pond would like to brood and dwell with Moorice, and perhaps reach for the stars, or at least land on the moon, there's other urgent advice pending.

The pond has often wondered what's the best way to negotiate with minorities. Start off by calling them moral gnats, dummies, doofuses, lowlifes, scumbags, losers or dropkicks, or some other pleasantry?

Silly pond, we should have turned to a master of negotiating ploys:

Pygmies! Oh why didn't the pond think of that.

Perhaps said with a sinister sneer and a curling of the lips and a tossing of ash from the cigarette holder while adjusting the cravat. Should one be carrying a white Persian cat, stroking it gently, while saying in velvet tones, 'now listen up, pygmies ...'

Is there any more of this invaluable wisdom to hand?

Yes, it's yet another bout of demonising the cross bench, and hit seems the certain way to charm  and woo them is to call them eccentric, perhaps craven, pygmies.

No wonder the Abbott government works so well, and negotiates so capably and with such consistent and excellent policies too ...

Could we please have another dose of sneering condescension from a tremendously wise sophisticate?

You have only to ask the reptiles, and as your anxious, routinely loss-making servants, they are only too anxious to please:

Yes, and if they make all that genuine commitment of time and intellectual effort before chancing their hand, no doubt they too can get to piss four million dollars against the wall on the likes of Bjorn Lomborg ...

There's just one question. If this is the sort of offensive, fuckwitted, pollywaffle condescension we can expect from a sniggering academic, laughing at pygmies, who's going to educate the useless tools that pass themselves off as educators?

(Below: yes Cathy Wilcox, the pond is up to the challenge, we do it every day with the reptiles, and more Wilcox here).