In which the pond joins the dog botherer and Polonius for a meditative Sunday ...

Amazing, startling, dazzling! An update on the haunting, and from an unexpected source with an unexpected twist. 

The ghost haunting the battlements has emerged to strut his stuff again, just so he provide Terry McCrann with an astonishingly brilliant idea. 

Whip up a federal budget, trot it out say in January when all the punters are still on holidays, February at the latest, then bung on a do, either February or March, whatever, just beat Gladys to the punch, and romp home a winner…

Indeed, indeed, and with our Gladys scheduled to let voters celebrate her ability at tram building and stadium demolition on 23rd March 2019, there can be no delay in delivering a budget …

Thanks battlement ghost, the pond knew that talk of a May budget was delusional. Please keep up the haunting …the reptiles might fear you, but they can recognise a man capable of wrecking the NBN can also have the odd brilliant thought ...

Meanwhile, the pond was forced to choose between the holy trinity of the dog botherer, prattling Polonius and the bromancer for its Sunday meditation. 

In the end, the pond had to drop the bromancer. It's true that Brexit and May and Tory fools are dear to the pond's heart at the moment - how the pond loved to see the meerkats jump up and down in the standing room only Commons until spirits flagged and the great debate could barely muster a couple of dozen half-hearted stooges rabbiting on …

But a man who concludes a column "What a mess" isn't providing that much of an insight, especially as he cheered on the making of the mess whenever he wrote his patented brand of tosh.

Truly a devoted Brexiter of the Boris and Nigel kind, the bromancer frequently managed to sound an even bigger fool than Boris. It's a singular achievement, but that's no more than every day of the week bit of scribbling for the bromancer …

So the pond passed on the Bromancer, and it was on with the dog botherer in the usual way …

The pond knew at once that the dog botherer would deliver a splendid rant on climate science denialism, perhaps alerting the lizard Oz readership to the insidious textbooks Colbert discovered lurking in school libraries …

 

Yes, the time was right for the dog botherer to set emotion aside and deliver an hysterical rant at naive schoolkids ...

Now there's nothing like self-abuse and railing at Newspoll and the media zeitgeist of the reptiles at the lizard Oz to make the pond's day - the dog botherer is an expert in that sort of fluff gathering - but the pond for a moment began to fear that the dog botherer had forgotten his primary mission - displaying his world famous climate science credentials and ranting at schoolkids in a calm, reasoned way …

Even worse, what if a photo of the ghost of Liberal Xmases past should turn up in the text? How distracting would that haunting be?

Ah well, that's to be predicted, and meanwhile, Comrade Bill has folded, and the pond has to endure rants from tech heads about the enormous stupidity and dangers inherent in the idiotically flawed security bill that was rushed through before Xmas - ostensibly to prevent anything happening over Xmas, but without a single thing in it capable of being implemented before Xmas - and after Xmas, with the ability to become one of the great pieces of train-wreck legislation …not that anyone will know about it because of the draconian provisions of the act, which will see anyone writing about it cop five years … in much the same way that exposing one of the most shameful acts in Australian history in the East Timor matter now sees a couple of people being persecuted in what is as close to a Star Chamber as the original one that ran up to the seventeenth century ...

But enough of that, it's back to the dog botherer getting extremely emotional, all in the name of reason and rationality (why do fuckwits always plead they're being rational when ranting to schoolkids that they alone know the truth?)

Actually the Victorian opposition in 2018, not so long ago, did everything to warn the voters of the dangers of pesky, difficult blacks in their midst, of crime waves, of the need to look under the bed every night, and where did it get them? 

Well it got them stacked branches full of Xian fundies, and the astonishing discovery that the world had moved on …

But not the dog botherer … he's still back fighting election campaigns, and possibly even the Iraq war, in which his valiant work as a minor war criminal still remains under-appreciated …

But now it feels about right to get on to that difficult subject of climate science ...

Indeed, indeed. The dog botherer himself has moved on from simple climate science denialism to "sure it might be happening", but nothing we can't live with, or can't be fixed with a few technology gimmicks, so let's do absolutely nothing …" … a most remarkable evolution, and an example of distilled essence of emotionalism to any passing school kid ...

In particular, the dog botherer has now arrived at the position that Australia should show the world how it's done by resolutely abandoning any pretence that it should or can do anything …

Perhaps instead we should join the Donald in a show of defiance …

And with those distractions over, it's on to the final gobbet ...

Yes, there's nothing like a climate science denialist advocating that there's nothing to be done, and no need to do it, to offer children the hope of a better planet in which to live …

What's that kiddies, you're a little agitated about your futures? Don't worry, the dog botherer and the pond will be spinning in our graves by the time the shit hits the fan ...

And so to prattling Polonius and what a relief, because he offered something more suited to a meditative Sunday ...

Jerusalem isn't out of reach? It was prattling Polonius in distilled essence of Crusader mode …

1099, and Jerusalem was within reach, as Greg Hunters know from heading here …and it's within reach once again ...

Here at last was genuine rationality and sanity, as Polonius seized the chance to show his oneness with the speaker in tongues and the Donald ...

Ah Polonius, what a wondrous mathematician he is …and how inherently silly, because (a) it was a wretched attempt to pitch to the Jewish vote (see the AFR here), and (b) the 12.5% - 18,214 people -who stated their religion as Jewish in the 2016 Census (13.6% didn't state an affiliation) represented a juicy target in a seat that, in a TCP tally, involved just 1,850 votes (here).

Shouldn't there at least be room for a little honest mendacity in Polonius's crusader world? Nope ...

Uh huh, so here's the rub. If anybody says they're motivated by the Donald's decisiveness, they're likely as delusional as the Donald. And that might explain why they refuse to acknowledge that the Donald is driven by an inane desire to pander to evangelicals, no matter that a more unevangelical President could be imagined.

What's more, in a speaker in tongues world, if you're a true believer, all of your actions are supposed to be driven by your relationship to the long absent Lord  … and …

Here for the links, but if you click on the one about the 'doctrinal basis',  you'll end up with many delights, including these ...

Divine healing? Creationism? The imminent coming? The millennial reign? Perhaps even the rapture?

Who knows if the speaker in tongues is genuine in his faith, but if he is, perhaps it's his clap-happy millennial creationism that explains his love of dinkum clean true blue Oz coal, oi, oi, oi … and the recognition of Jerusalem as a precondition for the second coming as the final solution for climate scientists …

But for the moment it's back to Polonius for a final prattle …

A degree of reality? The speaker in tongues and the Donald?

That reminded the pond of what it had wanted to talk about with Polonius, a review of a recent book about Pius IX in the NYRB which is sadly inside the paywall …

Never mind, here's a few lines …

Pius adopted the faithful Catholic people as his true church. The liberals and radicals were a small flock in contrast to the vast crowds who came to Rome to celebrate the various new holidays and ceremonies that the pope introduced. Pilgrimages and cults of saints rejuvenated the church. In the 1850s new Catholic mass organizations refreshed traditional piety, and Catholic political parties emerged in Germany, Switzerland and France.
Pius IX renewd the cult of the Virgin Mary. In the Ineffabilis Deus of December 1854, he declared that the Blessed Virgin Mary “in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.” The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was now an article of faith and was celebrated with large devotional exercised and mass gatherings of the faithful.
Pius IX became the true “suffering servant of Christ.” He mingled with the crowd and blessed them. He became in effect the “people’s pope.” The humble, approachable priest (with a will of iron) was a beloved figure. He lived simply and dressed humbly but behind his modesty was a new vision of the Catholic Church, with a different kind of political and spiritual influence, and a flexible modern amalgam of humility and doctrine.
On June 29, 1868, Pius IX called a Vatican Council, the first of its kind in the modern era. In Session IV of July 18, 1870, the First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ was promulgated. Chapter 4 was called “On the infallible teaching authority of the Roman pontiff.” The reason to the new doctrine was violent both inside and outside the Roman Church. Many Catholics were simply unable to accept papal infallibility as a binding article of faith. They split from Rome and founded the “Old Catholic Church.” The Old Catholics have more or less disappeared …

Greg Hunters wanting to know about the old Catholic church can head off here, but now, it seems,  we're left with the new Catholics of the Polonial crusader kind, finding some sort of infallibility in the speaker in tongues and the Donald …

Well there's reality, and then there's reality ...

And for those with a sense of humour about the international economy, here's a couple more …