In which the cowardly, craven Caterists pop up to abuse the good citizens of Gungahlin, aka nowheresville ...

(Above: and as always more Pope here).

It was inevitable that the head, detached from the body, would keep on rolling around in a bloody mess, but thanks be unto Pope, the pond's bestest papal advisor, the pond suddenly remembered Chairman Rupert ...

How is the doddering old bugger going?

Sounds almost fascist? Well you know what they say, it takes a fascist to spot a fascist ...

Meanwhile, it was inevitable that the show the pond doesn't watch would again be a headline hogger.

Now it's not just because blogger can't handle the ampersand in the show's title that the pond dislikes the show. It's because it generates much heat and little light.

Who would want to spend a nanosecond in the company of little Timmy "free speech" Wilson as he goes on about suppressing the right to speak?

Who could stand watching that professional bloviator and pompous ass Paul Kelly go about his Murdochian business, unless they had a serious desire to be transfixed by chin wobbles?

What's to be gained watching Kelly summonup a paroxysm of rage and indignation, which in old Victorian days would have seen him diagnosed as a hysteric, in need of some kind of treatment inducing detumescence?

As for craven, cowardly Alan Trudge, too wimpy to face the light, he only exists so that we might all enjoy a David Rowe cartoon (and as always, more Rowe here).

The pond hastens to add that it is not Alan Tudge, but does enjoy Spartacus, especially that once lost, then recovered scene, where Sir Larry leers at Tony Curtis and speaks of oysters and snails ...

Oh yes, but as to that Pope cartoon, sure enough, the news today, it almost goes without saying, is that the pack of hounds is still out and running, in a feral way, howling at the moon, baying at anything that moves, neighing at the fiendish notion of a public broadcaster and its outrageous thought crimes.

This is just a quick sampling:

Though perhaps not so much an ass as Peter McAllister ...

Go dog molester go ...

There is comedy to be had of course, most notably that splash featuring the grisly Dame Slap. Who else but the arrogant one could talk of cultural arrogance? Who else could join in the public hanging at the square and not realise she's just a fair average part of the rat pack set loose by the hound meister?

The shrieking, howling, baying Murdochians talking of cultural arrogance?

It's all too tedious of course, though it does show how fortunate Australia is, how luxurious the lifestyle, that this sort of distraction, hysteria and fear-mongering could run for days in the Murdochian press, as if nothing else in the world was happening.

Here the pond must pause to give Bill Leak a special tip of the hat. His recent efforts have been outstanding, an exemplary example of what happens when you tipple hard and long on the kool aid that runs free in the office:

You see, how the clever cartoonist manages to weave in the current hysteria with climate science? By golly, falling off that balcony did wonders for his wit ...

But it serves as an important introduction to the pond's guest for the day.

Now the craven, cowardly Nick Cater ducked the opportunity to do a Q and A session, and the pond applauds him, but really, he should have taken a more principled stand.

He should boycott the whole of the ABC and forever, and the pond would applaud him for being a man of integrity and vision.

It's just a distant dream, a hope, a vision, but please allow the pond a smidgin of optimistic delusional thinking ...

As it is, the wretch is still turning up on the ABC to complain about the ABC - he did it on RN this very morning - which shows he still has a little way to go before he understands how utterly tedious and what a dial shifter he is ...

Why doesn't he just frolic amongst the Murdochians like the little train that couldn't?

Ah well, it's the peter principle at work where the dullest knife in the drawer is given easy, gummy work to chew on, so let's get down with the jawboning.

Where else could you find a man confusing and conflating a tram with climate science?

Now let's try to ignore the traducing of the citizenry of Gungahlin - you can Greg Hunt the noble district here.

Sure there was almost 50k living in the area, sure there might be advantages in having other kinds of transport, but remember, if you're going to become a Murdochian commentator - a noble ambition, let it be said - you must always show a thinly veiled contempt for the citizenry, and perhaps on occasions allow yourself a little joke about oysters and snails and a "tram to nowhere".

Because outside your own fetid navel-gazing, everywhere is nowhere. Now if a lefty did this, they'd be accused of being out of touch and out of sympathy, but in Murdochian circles, you score brownie points showing contempt for people who might benefit from public transport - the poor, the young, the elderly, or to put it more succinctly, the losers and the drop kicks ...

From there you can quickly jump to climate science and Belarus and wind turbines and the outrage of a First Dog cartoon:

You see how easy it is?

Having called the good citizens of the Gungahlin district - wherever that might be - losers and dropkicks living in nowheresville, you can suddenly, with the grace and style of a Torville or a Dean, do a Silicon Valley pivot, and find yourself berating the paradox of the sophisticated classes, and their peculiar notion of inclusiveness - which of course can't include the good citizens of Gungahlin, living the long absent lord knows where, except it's nowheresville ...

Keep on with this sort of pivoting, and you could find yourself routinely showing off your dull edge, stupidity and inconsistency in a Murdoch rag near you.

And so, summoning up the sinews, it's on to the closer - always be closing, as the used car salesman used to say - but take care, because now we must pivot to slag off the ABC, because sigh, when you're a bear of little brain, you must always imitate the other bears, no matter how tedious the other bears are, or repetitive to the point of redundancy:

And so you see the dullard at work, pivoting once again, to talk of a gated community, as if somehow the class dunce had announced he was moving out to Gungahlin to live with the good citizens out there, who'd been mocked by the cardigan wearers at the ABC ...

In short, we're back with the monkey grinding away to the organ grinder's tune, and there's nothing new under the sun, and lordy lordy, there's the Caterists doing a Bill Leak and managing to join the mad Mallah with climate science, and pretending they're at one with the common folk and live outside the gated community, except who'd be an idiot and live in Gungahlin ...

It must be truly wondrous to be a Caterist.

Oh wait, speaking of new under the sun, there's a small distraction going down elsewhere in the world. What might it be, Mr Pope?

Hmm, now how can the pond link that to the ABC and Q and A (and never mind the ampersand) and trams and nowheresville and First Dog and gated communities and sophisticates?

Sigh, failed again at becoming a Murdochian columnist, but let's face it, at least the Greeks aren't rocking the boat on climate science ...

And so to that cartoonist who seems to have outraged the Caterists, and you can find more First Dog here.

The pond has already failed the test, but you might make the cut. Develop a dullard mind like a Caterist and you'll come top of the class:

In which the pond thanks Malcolm Turnbull for his prompt response and makes a great scientific discovery or two ...

(Above: discovered, a $3.80 waif, lost on an airline terminal seat, and the only thing worth looking at a Rowe. Amazing scenes, but you can go online to get more Rowe here, and not rely on what you find at airports).

Dear Malcolm,

what a pleasant and unexpected surprise, but how thoughtful of you to reply to the pond with such alacrity, and better still, through the forum of national television.

Quite frankly, the pond hadn't expected you to bother, but your tremendous display of poncedom was extremely gratifying.


MALCOLM TURNBULL: ....Now, it may be that we do make some, I do make some formal recommendations. It may be that, once the facts are exposed, the conclusions are so obvious the ABC takes it up. I mean, one thing that is perfectly obvious is that the security protocols surrounding the assembling of the Q and A audience have got to be improved.
BARRY CASSIDY: Yeah, but that's a bit exaggerated too. How many hundreds of shopping centres has this guy walked into and exposed himself to thousands of people in that way? How has that been a threat?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: ...you, you...

May the pond intrude here Malcolm? Were you reaching for some words here? Perhaps you, you, fatuous fop, you, you blithering idiot?

BARRY CASSIDY: What is the difference between him going into a shopping centre...
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Are you pulling my leg?

Lordy, lordy, a leg puller! Is there no indignity you might suffer at the hands of these wretches?

BARRY CASSIDY: Well what is the difference between him going into a shopping centre? MALCOLM TURNBULL: After the Martin Place siege, you're saying to me that there is no security issue with putting Zaky Mallah in a live audience with...
BARRY CASSIDY: Well what's the difference between that and Zaky Mallah walking into a shopping centre?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, if you can't see that, Barrie, I'm sorry. I mean, seriously, you've lost the plot there, with all due respect.

Indeed, indeed, and with all due respect Malcolm, you should have immediately pointed out to him that in fact, not only had he lost the plot, but he had missed the point, and worse still, he simply had not the first clue as to the cleverness of attention seeking politicians or come to think of it, terrorists.

A shopping  centre!? Why the obvious target, as we recently learned from the United States, would be a church. Perhaps St. Mary's, or St Andrews, or even Hillsong. Hit the Christians where it hurts them the most.

Or perhaps a movie theatre. There are some good precedents for that, though perhaps waiting for Superman v Batman might be tedious. Why not be post-modern and do it in a dinosaur show?

Why not the Opera House when it's full of patrons? Think of the way Turandot would resonate then ...

How about a railway station at peak hour? There are plenty of precedents for that ...

What about driving up a truck filled with explosives and parking it next to a building full of public servants? You don't have to whistle the tune to Oklahoma to remember that precedent.

Perhaps it might be worthwhile heading off to a gathering of socialists, remembering that Norway provides an excellent example.

I know, I know, all these thoughts rushed through your mind much later, but the best you could come up with was a response so totally lame that you must still be kicking yourself for being the enormously stupid man you are:

This is a high profile audience. It's a very high profile target. This is a fellow that has threatened violence in the past, has been impris- threatened to kill people, gone to jail for it, been involved in, you know, buying ammunition...

So what's he doing on the streets right at the moment, able to walk into a cafe, strut amongst the hipsters and demand a coffee before embarking on a frenzied killing spree? 

How about Bondi beach, there being a most recent and unfortunate precedent for that sort of madness.

You've got an answer for that, haven't you Malcolm?

BARRY CASSIDY: Well why is he walking the streets? Why is walking the streets if that's the case? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, because he's served his term of imprisonment and he hasn't committed another offence, but that doesn't mean that you would then consciously and willingly put that person in a very high profile environment on a live television program. I mean, if you think there's no physical security issues with Zaky Mallah in that audience... 

But if he's a problem in the audience, then surely he's a problem everywhere. A church, a beach, a street, a cafe, a cinema, a school, anywhere a number of people gather ...

Or have we entered a logic-free zone designed simply as a scapegoating of the ABC?

BARRY CASSIDY: No, I wasn't saying that; I was just asking for the...
MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, that's exactly what you are saying, and I've just got to say to you, I'm really glad you're not in charge of the physical security of the ABC, Barrie, because the idea that this is a non-issue, I am stunned that you would be so blasé about it.

Which is why the pond is so stunned that you managed to sound so stupid Malcolm, but as the pond noted at the start, it was tremendously gratifying and most unexpected that within the space of a few moments you would degut and publicly expose the intestines of your enormous stupidity and the folly of the paranoid hysteria you and your colleagues have been peddling.

If the man is such a problem in one space, then he's certainly a problem in many others, and you should forget all that jibber jabber about Magna Carta and the rule of law that you and others in your party indulged in over recent weeks, in the most remarkable display of nauseating hypocrisy the pond has seen in many a year, and throw the miscreant in the slammer.

But thanks for the hollow laughter, as you confirmed in some fair style, not only that you're a logic free zone, a man who could easily be led down the garden path by a Godwin Gretch, but you're a facilitator, a ponce, a quisling, and a willing member of the Vichy ...

And what's even more agreeable is the way that it's up on the full to overflowing intertubes here so all may enjoy the spectacle.

Yours in great delight,
you truly reprehensible and foolish man,
The Pond

PS Malcolm, do you want an example of how low, how much in the gutter you are, how much your quisling and Vichy ways leads the Murdoch press into even more deeper levels of depravity and filth?

Did you see this effort in the Murdochian press this morning, with the reptiles in fine loathsome form?

Now the pond has little time for the clap happy Mark Scott, but that's about as loathsome and as stupid as you are Malcolm. Shame on you, you truly reprehensible and foolish man ...

And now, while the pond is still getting back into gear, can we just announce another great discovery made this weekend.

Now the pond has noted in recent weeks some agitation about wind farms and wind turbines and the infra nano red noise that comes from them, and thanks to the great skills of facilitators and quislings like Malcolm Turnbull, there has been talk of a Wind Commissioner being appointed, though really if said commissioner has to look into the wind emitted by Malcolm Turnbull, there's a lifetime's work, just there and then.

Never mind, here's the thing. The pond has discovered, purely by accident, in the manner of most great scientific discoveries, that there is an enormous amount of infra nano red noise to be heard at the seaside, along with a crashing, and a sobbing, and a sighing, and a creeping withdrawal which is as bad as the Constellation aircraft the pond listened to as a child while residing inside Mascot airport.

On and on it went, over and over, at short intervals, one pounding followed by another crashing, and a foaming and a spraying, and the sounds of a dribbling retreat, 24/7, and apparently all year, without end, let, or stop, ceaseless and unendurable.

By the end of the weekend, the pond's nerves were frayed beyond measure, and so the pond urgently demands that the federal government urgently appoint a Wave Commissioner to see if, Canute-like, something can't be done to stop the hideous behaviour of this natural energy.

Bizarrely, the pond was made to understand that some foolish Victorians actually pay a premium, above the odds, to enjoy this experience, and ritually retreat to remote and dangerous locations to willingly expose themselves to the damaging sound - a bit like young folk heading off to a music concert. Which might explain a lot about Victorians.

Now it's not just the bleakness, the utterly alien moonscape that makes up the Victorian coastline. No doubt there are nice places where waves break, ones with a less direct connection to Antarctica, one less intent on affirming climate science is a myth, but this is what the pond experienced, and something needs to be done.

The other great scientific discovery this weekend was that some shameless farmers allow cows to mingle with wind turbines.

Now the pond has nothing against these majestic monuments, but given the recent publicity scares involving them, it occurred to the pond that right that morning, it might have had porridge diluted with Mad Cow Milk!

Think of it, the cows of Gippsland driven insane by wind turbines, and innocents like the pond supping on their Maddened Milk! Full of infra nano red particles!

Or is that logic simply a sign that the pond was driven mad by wave action, or the enormous stupidity of Malcolm Turnbull?

Whatever, here's a few shots of a wind farm in action - native Victorians will know where it is, and what majestic beasts they are, and how surprisingly quiet, except for the infra nano red sounds that sent the cows mad ... (click to enlarge)

And let's also pay tribute to Caravaggio, who inspired Rowe, though the Barbieri at the bottom could also claim some credit:

What joy to be a loon and to be alive in these remarkably silly times.

In which the pond gets personal with big Mal and says farewell for the moment as Melbourne in mid-winter calls ...

(Above: the pond has no idea of the provenance of the above image but thanks the correspondent for forwarding it, combining as it does a natural disaster and the Catholic Church's attitude to useful birth control devices).

Dear Malcolm,

I hope you don't mind the familiar first name. We once talked and though you wouldn't remember, you were even then the convivial, scheming and ambitiously self-aggrandising ponce you've stayed true to ever since.

But now you're a little longer in the tooth, have you ever wondered at your legacy? You are, at the moment, participating in the most hate-filled, fear-mongering, divisive and offensive government in many a decade.

Do you imagine that by participating, you ameliorate and soften the blows, and help provide good governance?

That's the sort of logic that sustained the quislings and the participants in the Vichy government.

Have you ever wondered what you will do when you turn, as inevitably happens to roosters, when the political feather duster calls, to post-political life?

Will you become a Malcolm Fraser, driven by guilt further left than many lefties, trying to expiate your many political crimes while in office?

Will you do a Bob Hawke and turn to business, and perhaps do deals with dictatorships such as the one in Burma, while applying a peg to nose?

Will you become a wan angry letter-writing aesthete like Paul Keating and assist in producing abominations like Barangaroo, and its mighty casino complex?

Perhaps you might turn into a Gra Gra and start scribbling for the reptiles and become a Swiss bank account loving reptile television personality?

Or will you, irony of ironies, become a resident wet at the ABC, like Amanda Vanstone, and blather on about various matters, knowing that your words are now irrelevant and useless, and that what you did in office will be your true legacy?

One thing seems certain to the pond. You have spent your time facilitating this government, in the hope that at some time the crown will slip from the current king and you will be able to snatch it up and put it on your own head.

But the odds are extremely high that you will never wear the crown. All that you have done - debasing the NBN, consorting with climate denialists, assisting with the ruination of education, promoting foreign adventurism, fellow travelling with gay haters, and now launching a vicious assault on the ABC - will have to stand on their own, without any redeeming gestures you might have been able to apply if you had become king.

Instead you will be known as the man who would be king, and who sold his principles for a mess of thick, tasteless pottage, and in the end, you will be judged for having committed many very, very serious errors of judgment.

No doubt you will have plenty of time to reflect on all this. Perhaps you could share your wisdom, acquired too late in life to be useful, with Bill Shorten, another man whose ambition vastly out-vaulted his integrity and his ability.

yours in sorrow,

The Pond

And now, since the pond is off to Melbourne, this will be the last post for a number of days, depending on how well the pond survives the culture shock. Melbourne in mid-winter? And they wonder why it's called loon pond ...

Silly delusional Melburnians, some of them Billists, and just as aggrandising and self-promoting as big Mal:

Yes, there's a lot more at Fairfax here, and that's where interstate rivalry gets you, somehow thinking that biggest is best, when all it means is a terrifying urban sprawl of a limitless kind which the pond will shortly be driving through, marvelling at the jungle horror.

The prospect is even more terrifying than the agitated reptiles at the lizard Oz.

The reptiles were up to their old and predictable form this day. Look big Mal, $330 million for the castle you will never rule in:

Ah, the good old days of Versailles still live and walk amongst us ...

And look big Mal, down there at the bottom of the page, a headline you've helped promote, you've helped deliver:

Is that fully sick or what?

Of course online they've shortened it a little, but look how they dance and mock at the notion of free speech. How remote, how lost was that campaign about 18C:

Yep, you won't find any jokes about the reptiles routinely allowing extremists of the right wing hack kind to litter their pages with vile rhetoric and outrageous claims, because you see, like an eastern suburbs ponce, it's the devine right of bolting Murdochians to be as outrageous and extremist as they can, and no one should mind.

Never mind, the pond dutifully followed the link to Gra Gra - well it's easier than locating the average Swiss bank account - and found a lot of hand-wringing and worrying about the children, before these two concluding pars:

As feeble and as pathetic as ever, but whoah, Mallah. Have you thought about using the pond as your agent? We'd have to insist on 20% because of all the Murdochian-inspired death threats, but we could make a fortune flogging your interviews to the Murdochians as the resident mad Mallah ....

But now for a special treat. You see big Mal the hapless dumb Victorian Liberals - too dumb really to be allowed to conduct a chook raffle, let alone a decent fund raising - really belled the cat, and revealed the genuine reasons for the current hysteria:

Scurrilous, outrageous, pathetic, nakedly obvious, but the special treat is that the AFR has for the moment let Laura Tingle step outside the paywall, and so the hoi polloi can read The Coalition has found that fear is a powerful weapon against Labor.

Now that header might seem like the bleeding obvious, but with big Mal also playing the fear game, it's good that there's an alternative read, instead of having to endure yet another round with the reptiles.

Regarding the Victorians, amongst whom the pond will shortly be, though happily not cackling Victorian Liberal geese doing their hysterical chicken little routines. Can geese be chickens? Where can you park an ostrich at the climate change talks?

Do you have a sense of apparent irony big Mal?

How does it feel to be part of a government that has relentlessly used fear and fear-mongering as its primary tactic?

Terrorism bingo!

Was there ever a more tragic photo op, misusing and abusing national security than that very recent effort?

But you're one of the players, big Mal, of terrorism bingo.

Now look the pond in the eye. Are you man enough to admit it? For heaven's sake, man, face it, the poodle is your colleague!

Or are you too wrapped up in your quisling, facilitating lifestyle, still yearning for the crown that will never come your way?

Look at the photo above. You're not in it, but you're just out of shot, because, you see, you're one of the mob standing behind the fearless leader saying you've got his back, and as a result, you look and sound as pathetic and as tragic as any punter running their coins through the slot machines of life ...

Aren't you supposed to be one of the adults? Do you know what the child is doing when you turn your back?

Have you taken a look at today's Pope cartoon? And remember, you can look through his back catalogue at his gallery here...

And so with a yippee ki yay, the pond is off to Melbourne:

In which the pond worries about terrorists such as Steve "Sweeney Todd" Chiobo and the banishing monk roaming wild and free in Australia ...

The pond does enjoy the information provided by correspondents - we have to confess that we'd completely forgotten terrorist Steve "Sweeney Todd" Ciobo's use of choice language inciting violence on Lateline.

But the pond is always fair - "Todd" Ciobo - he of the cut-throat gang - didn't directly propose that he was a throat slitter himself, he was merely encouraging throat slitting, and in lieu of that, stabbing in the back:

STEVE CIOBO: ...I think that if anybody had the opportunity to slit Julia Gillard's throat, Nick would be one of the first ones to be there. 
NICK CHAMPION: That's an appalling way to refer to any politician and Steve should moderate his language. 
STEVE CIOBO: Oh okay, Nick, would you prefer if I said stab in the back?

The trouble of course with these mad mullahs advocating murder, terror and mayhem is that they incite violence in others.

How does the contagion spread? Well you only have to read Reith echoes 'throat slit' comment to see how others easily fall into the terrorist trap ...

Yes, weak, impressionable minds like the one embedded in Peter "$50,000 phone card anyone" Reith are easily swayed, and soon enough they're out and about parroting "slit the throat" slogans, chanting like zombies in the killing fields.

You only have to look at Graeme Morris urging the citizenry to rise up and kick Julia Gillard to death to realise that we're only a nanosecond from the biblical days of stoning women - you can read that mad mullah's mouthings at Prominent Liberal says Gillard should be kicked to death.

And that's before we fondly remember Alan Jones' invitation to put Gillard in a chaff bag and drown her at sea, or the notorious terrorist standing next to all those 'ditch the bitch witch' signs ...

Should the pond ever be invited to sit in on Q and A - an unlikely event given the pond's fear and loathing of the show - we would have in any case to decline, because of the safety issues involved in sitting down at a table with a Liberal.

Especially those quislings, hacks and time servers like Malcolm Turnbull, for whom the pond reserves a special contempt. They should know better, but when given a chance, they turn into Albert Speer (yes, the Godwin's Law swear jar is running low) and do their best to facilitate the gutter tactics.

Oh sure, Liberals look nice, like a rottweiler, but who knows when the fangs are bared and the rabies pours in ...

The trouble of course is when the terrorists begin exporting their terror to neighbouring small states, and it seems that Nauru is now well on the way to becoming a fascist state, thanks to generous subsidies by the federal Australian government to the reigning junta - as you can see on what's left of the ABC, in Government and Police in Nauru escalate attacks on Opposition MPs.

Then there's the business of sustaining the gulags which will see both major parties unite today to make sure that laws can be changed at a whim to keep the gulags running.

Which brings the pond to its first cartoon, currently doing the rounds on Facebook:

By golly that's downright weird and eerie ...

Then belatedly came a few bleeding hearts hand-wringing and worrying and whining, as if it was new news Citizenship could be stripped for wide range of offences under terror laws (with forced video):

Under the legislation, dual nationals who are convicted of certain offences would be automatically stripped of their citizenship. Those offences range from treachery, sabotage and mutiny all the way down to damaging or destroying Commonwealth property. It also includes a broad range of speech-related offences such as urging violence or advocating terrorism.

A serial graffiti artist who shares British ancestry with notorious British terrorist Tony Abbott noted:

Mr Smith paid his debt - a bill of $16,350 to the Commonwealth for the clean-up as well as an additional fine. "To be under the threat of deportation for an action for which due restitution has already been made seems quite Orwellian," he said.

Good old George, but Orwellian hardly seems the best adjective for the orgy of demonisation and throat slitting being conducted by the bandits in charge, and only a few have bothered to protest - thank the long absent lord for George Williams and his Deeply flawed citizenship law throws a wide net.

It reached a height for the pond when the chief bandit explicitly and proudly invoked the notion of
"banishment", as if Australia was now a fundamentalist theocratic state run along the lines of an Amish shunning ...

How ironical does it get? Well you can figure that out with the full blown irony contained in the Graudian headline Foreign fighters need 'modern from of banishment' says Tony Abbott in Magna Carta lecture ...

Banishment and Magna Carta!

That's the trouble when you're a devout medievalist, out of your mouth will pop a fundamentalist religious concept and give the medievalist game away ...

Meanwhile, the Terror-ists at the Daily Terror continue to have a field day:

But these are the usual suspects, and the pond as always turns to the reptiles at the lizard Oz, for a moderate, informed tone:

Oh dear, what a classy illustration.

Well you might be able to take the fascist out of the reptile - how to leave a cult - but you can't take the reptile away from a love of fascist demonising imagery ...

Naturally once you've lanced a wound with an illustration like that, all the pus and bile must flow, and flow it did as the reptile editorialist got on the high horse of indignation:

Poor Miranda. After all her terrorist activities were mild and limited. All she did was urge that greenies be hung from the nearest lamp post, and who could argue with that?

Be fair, there are some who say hanging's too good for them, and they should be first drawn and quartered ... now that's genuine terrorism.

What's more, at no point have the Murdochians called for the immediate privatisation of the ABC, and its assets signed over forthwith to the benign rule of Chairman Rupert. That will come later. But the pond does begin to understand the sort of TV that will soon be the rule around the land, thanks to David Rowe (and more Rowe here):

By golly that looks like it's going to make for great viewing.

Now back to the reptile channel of choice:

Indeed, indeed, but strangely not a word about Steve "Sweeney Todd" Chiobo, or Peter "cut-throat razor" Reith, or Alan "chaff bag" Jones or Tony "medieval banishing monk" Abbott or any of the other radical terrorists who stroll about casually today walking amongst us, dysfunctional, radicalised lone wolves who've somehow ended up in positions of power and influence.

A serious debate on counter-terrorism would focus on such patterns of behaviour and work out how to avoid their ability to radicalise young people. Why, soon enough, if their influence continues, young Liberals will end up reading Ayn Rand and aspiring to join the IPA...

But there must be something more to all this terrorism, you say, there must be an ulterior motive, and of course there is ...

It's called misdirection, and it's well known to magicians - here the pond must cite Perceptual elements in Penn and Teller's Cups and Balls" magic trick to achieve academic respectability - and all the yammering about the ABC and terrorists and citizenship achieves a number of aims:

1. Silence and degut an already cowering ABC;
2. Slowly and remorselessly turn the state into a gulag while maintaining power;
3. Distract from other issues.

Those issues are too numerous to mention in a single post. Let's just whimsically look at a few:

Yes, the mad monk's mates are in need of a banishing, but you won't find the man who's self-confessedly threatened by gays doing anything but go along with the fundamentalist religious zealots, our very own Taliban.

And then there was this one:

Freedom's not at risk at all. Remember, will retain the freedom to be sued ...

And then there was this:

Oops, and there's more at Fairfax if you can be bothered getting past the forced video to read Free trade agreements 'preferential' and dangerous, says Productivity Commission.

The Productivity Commission has launched a scathing attack on Australia's latest series of free trade agreements, saying they grant legal rights to foreign investors not available to Australians, expose the government to potentially large unfunded liabilities and add extra costs on businesses attempting to comply with them.

Indeed, indeed. Quick, wheel out a terrorist and banish him ...

And then came this:

There's more at Fairfax here, PM confronted by Liberal sceptics, but how unfair is that!

There's Greg and Tony doing their level best to defy the Pope - why the sinful Tony is even prepared to put his mortal soul in jeopardy - and get rid of wind farms, and banish all this chat about renewable energy and keep the coal mines running out, and it's not good enough for some!

Ah well, at least it provides a lead-in to today's Pope, and as always more Pope here.

And now just to balance things, the pond was delighted to receive this photo from a correspondent who regularly visits toad land - not that the toads are in any way responsible for cockroach hippe blow-ins:

Grown to classical music! Is there nothing classical music can't do? Oh wait, the Bolter listens to classical music. Scrub that theory, banish it if you will ...

Warning: Murdochian attitudes contained within. Please make sure your child's internet safety filter is working as distress may be caused ...

(Above: and more Wilcox here)

At a time when Tony Abbott's government is doing its level best to make its thought crime legislation retrospective, and demonisation is running rampant, it takes a skilled apologist to weave and warp the message so it feels pretty tasty ...

In times of crisis like that, the pond always turns to the Oz editorialist ... a balanced and judicious reptile, who after a dose of kool aid, can always manage the chant, Tony Abbott good, four legs bad:

Yes, it's a sensible approach, and getting even more juice out of the controversy by attempting to make the laws retrospective is even more sensible, and is designed to put the matter to rest, and remove any hint of controversy or demonisation... by at least the time of the next election, or maybe not, because then there's the election after to consider ... and besides wedging the wets is an ongoing duty too ...

Thanks be unto the sage reptiles for their calm talk of notorious monsters. Let the drones fall from the skies on wedding parties, it's so much more clinical and clean.

Thank the long absent lord the PM has been strong and assured!

What's that you say? So was Hitler? Off to the Godwin's Law swear jar with you, and let us listen to the concluding verses of the reptiles in rapture:

Uh huh. Let's communicate the right message, let's show how we can engage with the Muslim community, let's conduct an early intervention and indulge in community engagement.

At first the pond was resistant to highlighting the Murdochian idea of community engagement, but it's important that we see skilled engagers at work, so show us Murdochian reptiles, show us how it's done:

Joseph McCarthy would be proud ... Joseph McCarthy would be pleased ...