In which the pond moves on from Judeo-Christian and celebrates Anglo-Protestant values with the Oereo ...

If ever the pond wanted confirmation of the dire state of the world, it only had to look at the reptile digital splash today ...

There's Malware still pushing the TPP, there's the heroic onion muncher shot down in tragic flames, and there's Artie, unblemished from his time cavorting and splashing in Sydney water, as investigated by the ironically titled Operation Credo ...

Credo examined corruption in the Eddie Obeid-linked water infrastructure company, Australia Water Holdings, for which Sinodinos was paid $200,000 to be deputy chairman, then chairman for three years up until he became a federal senator in 2011...
 During his embarrassing testimony, which was punctuated by a flood of "I don't recalls" or "I don't remember", Sinodinos admitted he did nothing to investigate why AWH was billing huge expenses to the state-owned Sydney Water when its work delivering water and sewerage infrastructure to new housing estates in Sydney's north-west was winding down. 
Even more astounding was Sinodinos' testimony that he knew nothing about AWH's $75,000 in donations to the Liberal Party at the very same time he was the NSW Liberal Party treasurer. 
During 2011, as Sinodinos was eyeing a political career, the salary for a backbencher was about $140,000. This was not nearly enough to support the $100,000 a year rental payments on his Rose Bay house, or the lease payments on two cars, a Jaguar and a Mercedes... 
 The ICAC heard that Sinodinos stood to make up to $20 million if the incoming NSW Liberal government entered into a private-public partnership with AWH. 
The corruption inquiry heard that, while Labor was in power, Obeid's close political allies Joe Tripodi and Tony Kelly, both of whom have subsequently been found to be corrupt in other ICAC inquires, although have yet to be prosecuted, had forged a cabinet minute in an attempt to get AWH the private-public partnership that would have made AWH a billion-dollar company and delivered an estimated $60 million to the Obeids.

Indeed, glory days, and if anyone can bear the usual forced commercial, there's more at Fairfax here this day, and gluttons for punishment just have to google "Sinodinos water Obeid" to produce a surfeit of holiday reading ...

Is it any wonder that in these troubled times, the pond should turn to a refreshing, insightful munch on a smooth and creamy Oreo biscuit? Look, see how birds of a feather flock together ...

Yes, from the Green Left through the ABC to the Oreo, everyone is contemplating the pollies and their perks ...

Now if we might stop there for a moment early in the harangue, the pond was struck by the talk of decay, decline, counter-revolutionary and the need to adopt realism.

It had the eerie echo of a Maoist rant ...

And endlessly more here ...

Of course the fatuous pond assumed it might just happen, realistically, to be more about the cost of pleasing a partner, maintaining a fabulous pad with harbour views and keeping the Jag and the Merc on the road, but as always, the Oreo is on hand to correct the pond's limited understanding ...

Now here at least the pond can help, by deciphering exactly what "Anglo-Protestant values" might mean and why American culture is rooted, or even rooted in them ...

Of course there will be pedants who point out that in 1790, while at something of a peak, less than half the population of the United States could claim English ancestry (don't trust the pond, Greg Hunt it here).

And even then the pesky buggers told the Anglos and good King George III - who tried to keep his eye on them - to get lost ...

As for the rest of the world, Anglo-Protestant values are a tad hard to find - it goes without saying that France, Italy, Spain and so on have way too many Catholics and far too few Anglos ...

Actually what Huntington was saying - how simple it would have been to acknowledge it - was that there were too many hispanic wogs in America, and seeing as how they were Catholic, it would be impossible to talk of that other great concept, Judeo-Christian ...

"High levels of Hispanic immigration threaten to disrupt the political and cultural integrity of the United States," and "the United States faces the loss of its 'core Anglo-Protestant culture' and may soon be divided into 'two peoples with two cultures (Anglo and Hispanic) and two languages (English and Spanish)."

Bloody Catholic wogs, and to think that the pond was worried about Judeo-Christian, when the Oreo and Huntington were on to the main game ...

Now it might well be that things weren't as simple as they seem in the simplistic, simpleton world of the Oreo and the Huntington ...

Whether Unitarian, deist, or even Anglican/Congregational, rationalism focused on the ethical aspects of religion. Rationalism also discarded many “superstitious” aspects of the Christian liturgy (although many continued to believe in the human soul and in the afterlife). The political edge of this argument was that no human institution—religious or civil—could claim divine authority. In addition, in their search for God’s truths, rationalists such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin valued the study of nature (known as “natural religion”) over the Scriptures (or “revealed religion”). 
At the core of this rational belief was the idea that God had endowed humans with reason so that they could tell the difference between right and wrong. Knowing the difference also meant that humans made free choices to sin or behave morally. The radicalization of this position led many rational dissenters to argue that intervention in human decisions by civil authorities undermined the special covenant between God and humankind. Many therefore advocated the separation of church and state. (here).

But the pond is as game as anyone to preserve and enhance core American culture rooted in slavery and other essential eighteenth century American values - it turns out looting and dispossessing native populations is another handy trait - which is just as well, because now we must do the long hard yards of the last Oreo gobbet ...

Barking mad of course, and by now, that obvious truth should go without saying. One minute Anglo Protestant values, the next moment talk of a West full of bloody wog Cathoics ...

Nevertheless, in these days of Malware and the TPP, the pond is thankful for Oreo making one obvious point, which is the decadence of Europe. 

And the pond can now identify the root cause of the neo-Marxist destruction of once great European nation states who from Napoleonic days through to a couple of world wars and the Holocaust, managed to bung on epic conflicts with great derring do ...

The plan was in operation for four years beginning April 8, 1948. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, make Europe prosperous again, and prevent the spread of communism.
The Marshall Plan required a lessening of interstate barriers, a dropping of many regulations, and encouraged an increase in productivity, labour union membership, as well as the adoption of modern business procedures...
...The Marshall Plan was one of the first elements of European integration, as it erased trade barriers and set up institutions to coordinate the economy on a continental level—that is, it stimulated the total political reconstruction of western Europe. 
Belgian economic historian Herman Van der Wee concludes the Marshall Plan was a "great success": 
It gave a new impetus to reconstruction in Western Europe and made a decisive contribution to the renewal of the transport system, the modernization of industrial and agricultural equipment, the resumption of normal production, the raising of productivity, and the facilitating of intra-European trade ... (Greg Hunt it here).

A great success? A European project?

And so it turns out that it's that great communist socialist power, the United States, which turned Europe from the path of Anglo-Protestant values and righteous world wars into a socialist dead-end, and worst of all, by putting the soul of the European world up for sale ...

Shame, United States, shame ...

And now,  as we're speaking of chow hounds and gravy ...

... it's time to wrap up things with a Rowe cartoon, and more Rowe here ...

And now as a frivolous postscript to all the frivolity, the pond would like to add a little more to its study of Oreo lore ...

And then there's this, with even more here ...

And you thought you were just devouring a Monday Oreo ... while in reality, in the guise of realism, being exposed to dangerous dark forces, from Mao through Marxist America to the Knights Templar ... 

Be warned, little ones, play not with the dark forces or be prepared to pay the price. Oh and there might be a little weight gain too ...

Put it another way: One extra Oreo column a week = five IQ points lost. One year's consumption = brain dead ...