One MP who was present at a briefing by Professor Louden on Tuesday told colleagues: "You've got to understand – most little kids are confused, but when they grow up they become normal..."

It's normal day here at the pond.

Tony Abbott a double-dealing, treacherous, sniping hypocritical bigot?

Normal.

It seems everyone and everything becomes normal in due course, given enough time and exposure to George and Cory.

Things in the senate are normal, lambs and greens lying down with lions and liberals is normal, Nick putting on the PJs is normal, the poodle being terrified of the Don is uber-normal, and Fairfax finally admitting that Buzzfeed has won ...

Normal ...

...one comment from Aylmer really had them worried. He said the newsrooms had to focus on “what we do best” like state and federal politics, sport, business, international, justice and breaking news and that Fairfax journalists of the future needed to focus on “effective” content, which many took to mean stories which did well online. In other words, they should focus on stories which attract traffic. (More warm Meade here).

Ah, has the pond got just the story for the Fairfaxians, a moving tale of how a one-legged yak beat the odds and became a world famous pole dancer ...

Normal.

Aylmer's famous capacity for online trendiness?

Two tweets? Normal.

Well, more than the abnormal pond ...

Barners and Windsor having a ding dong at the Tamworth hotel - in the old days the pub of choice for the pond's father ...

Normal. Or how to prove your challenger is a real threat ...

Homophobia, prejudice, bigotry and bile in the Liberal party?

Normal ...

Christians who act and sound anything but like Christ?

Normal ...

The pond was struck by the lack of Christ in Christians last night watching Lateline (the segment can be found here) ...

By golly, Christ would just love someone who calls himself a managing director ... and thinks the way to heaven is to work as a political lobbyist ...

And it seems these days you can equivocate and dissemble and outright lie your way to heaven ...

A couple of examples where a sublime disregard for facts or reality will see you right in Christ's eyes ...

Ah John Hopkins...

Of course in the TG community, McHugh is notorious ... not that Jones could go into that on a generalist show ... but it takes some kind of brass-balled Xian cheek to dress up an event in 1979 as some recent occurrence, or an indication of attitudes current in the field.

But if you head off here, you'll find this sort of tasty tidbit ...

If you found the clergy sex abuse scandal shocking, prepare for another jolt: the Catholic bishops are getting their "expert" advice on pedophilia from people who have covered up or even defended sex between men and children. 
The bishops recently chose Dr. Paul McHugh, former chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, as chief behavioral scientist for their new clergy sex crimes review board. Yet Dr. McHugh once said Johns Hopkins' Sexual Disorders Clinic, which treats molesters, was justified in concealing multiple incidents of child rape and fondling to police, despite a state law requiring staffers to report them. 
"We did what we thought was appropriate," said Dr. McHugh, then director of Hopkins' Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, which oversaw the sex clinic. He agreed with his subordinate, clinic head Fred Berlin, who broke the then-new child sexual abuse law on the grounds that it might keep child molesters from seeking treatment.

Yep, McHugh is your average barking mad fundamentalist Catholic and a danger to any TG person who might stray into his path, unless they want to enjoy years of shrink torture.

Now if the pond was conducting the debate at the fetid, mud-slinging level of a Lyle Shelton, we might say that Shelton sounds like he's endorsing a man who actively concealed criminal pedophilia ... and if you get down with fleas, you look and sound just like a flea ...

Normal ...

Instead we'll just move on to the next gobbet ...

Normal.

Memo to Christ ... you pinko pervert socialist you, with your idle chatter about the rich, camels, needles, sharing, tithing and so forth and etcetera, you're out of touch and please note that facts don't matter ... not when you can dissemble, distort, and wriggle on and off the hook of truth as you like and when it suits your needs and purpose ...

And anyway, what's wrong with homophobia? Okay you never said much on the subject, but the prejudices of goat and camel herders must be maintained ...

As normal ...

It's a pity that sometimes there has to be some unfortunate blowback ...

Normal.

Because just as someone prepares to celebrate the new tolerant Liberal and National parties, things revert to normal ... probably in much the same way as those who say the results of climate science are now widely accepted ...

Poor old Freedom Boi, but there you go, if you get down with homophobes, you'll get done over by homophobes.

Apparently it only dawned on Cory that Freedom Boi might suffer a little collateral damage after he'd been busy conducting his latest homophobic campaign in the happy company of gorgeous George ...

Happily everybody hastily pretended that Freedom Boi was a force for good, and on the side of the bigots and happy to raise concerns and ask questions and worry about the parents and the children ...

Because, after all, it's the right of every parent to bring up children as they see fit, and that includes raising them as homophobic bigots...

How else would we get new Georges and Corys?

Normal.

Oops ...

Politics should be about the battle of ideas, not smears ...

Is there bestiality in the house?

Take Cory Bernardi. It would be difficult to get a struck match between his social conservatism and former cross-benchers like Fielding or Brian Harradine. He is anti-choice, anti-marriage equality, and was partly responsible for lighting the garbage fire that was the senate inquiry into Halal food. 
His comparison of same-sex marriage to bestiality was a bit too rich for him to stay, even in Tony Abbott’s cabinet. That hasn’t dented his enthusiasm for defending and giving encouragement to the far right, though: last year he went in to bat for Reclaim Australia, insisting that the racist rallies were nothing of the sort with the old canard that “Islam is an ideology, not a race”. 
Bernardi is not just the most reliably reactionary Liberal senator, he is something of an impresario on the right, nurturing the next generation of young fogies with largesse from his Conservative Leadership Foundation. And now one of the alumni of that institution – James Paterson – has entered the Senate at the age of just 28. (And a lot more at the Graudian here).

And so the new generation of pond fodder begins ...

Normal.

Why if Freedom Boi plays his cards right, some day too he might become normal ...

You know, like Cory. Normal ...

So where does that leave us?

...his greatest weapon in regaining the leadership was his popularity, as measured in opinion polls. And his popularity was based on a perception that he was a centrist, a different kind of politician, a man true to his convictions. 
It is still unclear how he will deal with the rightwing push this time. The strongest thing he was prepared to say on Thursday was that “every member” of the parliament should “choose their words carefully” when discussing it. 
Caving in to the right this time would further undermine what was at the outset the prime minister’s greatest asset. It would set a terrible precedent for the conduct of the marriage equality plebiscite, another conservative-inspired policy forced upon Turnbull despite his previous public objections. And if Turnbull has to govern at the whim of the conservative wing of his party, the religious right and the opinions of News Corp columnists, what would be the point of it? (And more here).

If the pond might answer the question in a robust Tamworth way, Ms Taylor ...

There's sweet flying fuck-all to the point of it ... just as there's sweet flying fuck-all to copper tubing in these digital times ... but we all know that ...

It's normal ...

Is there a Papist in the house with a tidy Canberran reference?

Of course there is. And would the pond provide a link urging people to look up the Papist here?

Of course. It's normal ...