More about those hapless bakers with Erica and the Caterists ...

(Above: well it didn't take long for the jokes to flow and more flowing Rowe here and more twittering Rowe here).

Much as the pond would like to dally with the opinion polls and the jokes ...

... oh so cruel. Fair but cruel ... 

But sadly the pond has other fish to fry and that's to celebrate the importance of diversity and of religious freedom ...

Why only this morning the Caterists were expounding on their favourite theme of the right to be free and fundamentalist ...

Oops, sorry, the pond has no idea where that came from, or how it slipped in. Please allow normal service to resume ...

Ah, that feels better, that's in the ball park, the right of Islamic and Catholic fundamentalists to maintain the rage against teh gays ...

But sssh, no mention that your world view might happen to accord with the Taliban or Daesh. It must be dressed up, with formidable lack of rigour, in all the usual mealy mouthed cliches about diversity, when ranting about the idle ways of the 'progressives' ...

Splendid stuff all of it, but that last note "Tony Abbott's gift of a plebiscite" is surely one of the greatest... though on the upside, that does give room for the pond to acknowledge Tim Dunlop's thoughtful summary of Abbott's many gifts to the nation:

Mr Abbott was damaging our collective soul, making us feel bad about ourselves, hitting us between the eyes with the bullet we dodged by not electing Mark Latham. 
Nearly everything Mr Abbott did left people in despair: his first budget; his onion eating; his reintroduction of knighthoods, and then giving one of them to Prince Philip; his winking; his endless broken promises; his hyper-masculine attitude; his craven use of national security; his national-flag orgy every time he had a press conference; his instinct to treat opponents as enemies; his instinct to divide the nation; his flicking tongue; his inability to articulate anything remotely like a vision for the country. 
And let's not forget: all this came after two-terms of Labor nonsense as well. (more here)

But enough of Abbott's gifts, and speaking of Orwellian, as we always do in the company of the Caterists, the talk of gifts is as good a transformation of a sow's ear into a silk purse as the pond has seen in recent times, Abbott's gift being designed as a way to delay, defer and hopefully defeat the very notion of gay marriage.

Even now, we have been blessed with rearguard actions arising from the concept, lead by the redoubtable Erica:

This morning, Mr Entsch said he simply wanted to prepare a plebiscite question and get agreement and a timeline for holding it. 
"You can't have a plebiscite without a question, and you can't have a plebiscite without having an idea about when you're going to do it," he told Radio National. Mr Entsch is consulting with Attorney-General George Brandis about his plan but there are concerns it could run foul of the constitution. 
 "As far as I know there has never been a public vote of the kind that's being talked about," Australian Marriage Equality spokesman Rodney Croome told AM. 
 "I have certainly spoken to legal and constitutional experts who have expressed some concerns about whether it's even possible for the current Parliament to effectively bind the next parliament by handing over legislative power to the people." 
Senator Abetz said he found himself "in rare agreement" with Mr Croome on the legality of binding a future parliament to a position. 
Another Liberal MP, backbencher Dennis Jensen, described Mr Entsch's suggestion as "strange". "I certainly haven't heard of anything like that before ... any plebiscite where the legislation was put up before the plebiscite." 
Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek, meanwhile, described the proposal as "kooky". 
"The idea that we will now vote in the Parliament and then spend $158 million of taxpayers' money doing an opinion poll on whether we've voted the right way just seems quite bizarre," she said. 
"This is an attempt by Malcolm Turnbull to bridge the gap between what he was saying a few months ago, which is that the Parliament should vote and it should vote now, and the promises he made to the conservative wing of the Liberal Party to be allowed to become Prime Minister." (here)

Indeed, indeed, even though in the heat of battle, Erica got tangled in a cake or two:

On 2UE, Smith and Senator Abetz had been discussing the right of bakers to refuse to make wedding cakes for gay couples who intended to wed. 
Senator Abetz said business people had the right to make such decisions, adding if a baker refused to make a cake for a Liberal Party function "I don't think I should be able to sue them or put them out of business". 
Smith suggested Senator Abetz would be furious at such a refusal and would stand up in the Senate to complain about "the cake that got knocked back". 
Smith suggested the refusal was akin to saying "No Asians please, I don't like Asians so don't come in here and buy a cake", to which Senator Abetz launched his defence. (here)

But enough of the Dolce and Gabbana guy, because it's time to get back to the Caterists and relish the urgent plea for bigotry to be allowed to stay on parade.

Naturally this will involve avoiding all mention of the practicalities of the plebiscite and instead will focus on the ongoing benefits of demonising gays.

Oh sorry, the pond got that wrong too. What we meant to say was the ongoing trauma of the unthinking, careless demonising of gay haters by the wicked progressives:

Of course it's terribly thoughtful of the Caterists to show such concern for the very confused Chris Bowen and his constituents:

Mr Bowen, a member of the NSW right, holds the western Sydney seat of McMahon and many of his constituents are first or second generation migrants who are devout Muslims or Christians. 
In 2012 he voted against gay marriage, saying that "many in my community have explained to me the great importance they place on the traditional definition of marriage and their support for the existing definition in the Marriage Act". 
I have decided it is appropriate to reflect this overwhelming and strong community view in my vote," he said. (here)

Now sadly the always craven Bowen, ready to blow with the wind, then upped and changed his mind, and decided he could support same sex marriage, but how pleasing it is to see the Caterists maintain their rage and support for the devout fundamentalist Muslims and Christians out there, who simply want to maintain their right to be be bigoted and prejudiced about teh gays.

Oh sure it brings the Caterists into alignment with southern Baptists, Daesh and the Taliban, but that's just a consequence of standing up against those wicked inner city 'leets and their vile secularist, anti-fundamentalist ways ...

What we need is a plurality of prejudice and abuse, and if a few gays kill themselves, why there's plenty of other reasons for them to kill themselves, so everything balances out ...

Of course, it could just be a cunning plot to get Erica into more trouble blathering about cakes and negroes, but the pond can't, in all fairness, attribute that level of cleverness to the routinely ,monstrously stupid average Caterist ...

Meanwhile, the pond looks forward to the Caterists vigorous assault on the Daily Terror for daring to stand in the way of religious freedom, not to mention their assault on the ANZACS across the sea ...

Oh okay, that's just designed to allow a quick segue, a follow up to the Terror's idea of the vision thingie ...

It will be recalled that, at a time when others are talking in futurist ways about the way the intertubes thingie might allow the revision of the concept of private car ownership and the monstrous roads that choke and strangle cities (involving public and private sharing of the taxi/car/hotel room kind, and including Toyota to Launch Trial Car Sharing Service, DriveNow Launches Car Sharing Service in Stockholm, More-sharing options may be offered at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport, etc ad nauseam), the Terrorist vision thingie really only extends to abuse of Clover Moore and calling out for more roads, roads, roads, and more cars, cars, cars for Sydney ... as we defy Ozymandias and build a new southern Dubai ...

Now there are some monstrously inept things about the Terror's selective vision thingie ...

No, don't worry about the cars thing or the grandiose Dubai aspirations.

Instead note the hostility to the y'artz.

Now the pond will confess to really liking Melbourne's public art. The city's been doing it for a long time and it does it in style. But when you have cretinous philistines of the Terrorist kind setting the tone for a city, why it makes the HUNsters seem positively aesthetic. After all, even the Bolter loves a decent drop of Grange while sobbing over an opera ...

Of course the stupidity of the Terrorists is a wonder to behold, what with the talk of "massive, expensive and grating",  because within this very month, beneath the obligatory celebration of the nags, came a headline of a different kind ...

A cultural desert? Arts neglect?

Well that'd be thanks to the enormous, irreducible, ongoing, unrelenting stupidity of the Terrorists ...

Oh all, right, it was all just a chance to run a Pope and so reference Homer and Malware and the NBN, and more Pope, not all with a Canberra ding dong about it, to be found here...