In which the pond spends its Sunday meditation in quiet retreat with prattling Polonius and Dame Slap ...

 

 

For those who've had enough of the war - not quite the same as those who've had enough of the war but are trapped in a Putin hellhole thanks to a sociopathic monster - the pond thought it might distract from the conflict with a prattling Polonius set in the quiet backwater of crow-eater land ...

 

 

Ah, Sir Tom. When the pond went to live in Adelaide, you had to drive around on a Sunday looking for the one petrol station in the area that was allowed to stay open for the day. And if you wanted a red wine to go with a bowl of pasta in Hindley street, you had to ask for a coke with a nudge and a wink. 

Oh and they threw law lecturers into the Torrens, and though everyone had a good idea of the cops that did it, even Sydney managed to sort out a few killers of gays more quickly.

In short, it's a deeply weird place, with baleful muttering about eastern staters, and an insular outlook that rivals anything you might find in places around Tamworth, such as Manilla or Nundle. There you need to be at least a couple of generations in the making before you can presume to be a local; in crow eater land, you needed to be English or show a direct connection to Wakefield and his tribe ...

Not to worry, that reference to "malapportionment of votes" sent the pond wandering down memory land and off to the ADB ...

...A key component of the LCL’s formation had been an undertaking, by all members of the merging parties, to preserve the provision in the Electoral and Constitution Acts since 1855-56 of a 2:1 ratio of rural to metropolitan seats, even though by 1932 Adelaide and its suburbs contained more than half the State’s population. Playford became the chief beneficiary of this renewed malapportionment; over-representation of country districts enabled him to retain office after some elections in which Labor won a greater share of the votes. Some political scientists have dubbed the malapportionment the ‘Playmander’, although it was Butler’s ministry that had legislated to confirm its place in the State’s constitutional arrangements in 1936, when Playford was a back-bencher.

Sorry Gerry, no room for you, but a reminder they did things differently there ... and so to Polonius's vast relief that he can identify with the new leader, no sneering secularist but a soothsayer of the rosary ...

 

Ah, the old woke lefty meme, with Penbo full of his usual crap, but then Penbo himself is a classic case study of what it's like to be a confused crow eater. As we're speaking of the importance of family and community, the pond is onside with that, and likes the institution of marriage so much it has tried it several times, as has Penbo...

Per his wiki here for a little b/g...

He was the 1990 co-editor of On Dit, the newspaper of the University's Student Association and was also President of CISCAC, the Committee in Solidarity with Central America and the Caribbean, a Marxist political club. In addition he was the energetic frontman for punk band Cerveza y Putas (Beer and Whores), which played originals and cover songs from such bands as the Pixies, Minor Threat, The Lemonheads, The Smiths and Hüsker Dü in Spanish, a language Penberthy acquired while living in Mexico in the late 1980s.
Penberthy started his career as an industrial relations reporter and then political reporter for the Adelaide-based The Advertiser, hired by then editor Peter Blunden.
In 1999 Penberthy switched to work at the Sydney-based Daily Telegraph, another newspaper in the News Limited stable. Three years into his tenure at the Telegraph he was appointed chief of staff. Later he became an opinion editor and roving columnist for the newspaper.[6] One of Penberthy's more famous moments as a reporter with the Daily Telegraph came with his "Five Star Asylum" piece, an article headlined "The truth about how inmates are treated inside Australia's detention centres."

The pond can forgive many things, including the Pixies, but it can never forgive The Lemonheads and the Smiths! Wrong, wrong, wrong.

As for that five star story, in the usual ABC way with its wretched online archives, the best way to find it is in the WM archive ...

 5 Star Beat Up :: 17/02/2003

At least Damian went to Coogee, but what did David Penberthy do before writing this spread in the Tele?
'Revealed: The truth about how inmates are treated inside Australia's detention centres.' 'Five Star Asylums' 'Exclusive. By David Penberthy.'
The Daily Telegraph, 17 December 2002
Not so exclusive - because as David Penberthy explained a few days later, all he did was take -
'a 32-page document from the Federal Department of Immigration forwarded to a bi-partisan parliamentary committee'
The Daily Telegraph, 20 December 2002
And then give it -
'a deliberately provocative treatment'
The Daily Telegraph, 20 December 2002
That, at least, was true.
'Condemned by their critics as concentration camps, Australia's detention centres are providing asylum seekers with everything from DVDs and Pay-TV to classes in yoga, flower-arranging and driver education.'
The Daily Telegraph, 17 December 2002
Three pages of the paper were devoted to showing just how wonderful life is behind the wire with pool tables, Foxtel, medical services, musical instruments, library books and copies of the Daily Telegraph. Apart from excursions for the kids, it's all pretty standard stuff for any prison in Australia and falls a bit short of the tourist industry's definition of five star accommodation:
'outstanding… furnishing and décor….choice of dining facilities…24-hour room service, housekeeping and valet parking …porterage and concierge services…a dedicated business centre and conference facilities.'
AAA definition of five star
The Tele's story was not only grossly exaggerated but much of it was simply untrue.
'Special Facilities at Villawood, Western Sydney.' 'Mini swimming pool for children.'
The Daily Telegraph 17 December 2002
We can't find anyone who has seen it. The Department of Immigration won't confirm its existence to us and Catholic welfare group told Media Watch what the so called pool is really about-
'A couple of volunteers, following considerable requests were given approval to enter the Centre to provide some "water activities". These consisted of the stretching of a length of plastic along the ground and turning on some sprinklers on either side of the plastic surface thus creating a sliding water game. This activity has occurred infrequently and only when volunteers were present.'
Welfare agency
According to the welfare agency, there are question marks over a good many of the supposed five star facilities on Penberthy's list like -
Daily Telegraph: 'Electric guitars'
Welfare agency: 'No one detainee is aware about the existence of electric guitars at the Centre.'
Daily Telegraph: 'Barber and hairdressing facilities'
Welfare agency: 'These facilities do not exist. The cutting of hair is usually done by a fellow detainee with a stool and hair clippers.'
The Daily Telegraph, 17 December 2002 and welfare agency
So how could the Tele have got so much so wrong in their three-page expose? David Penberthy explained he was deliberately setting out to attack the centres' critics.
'It is a question of balance - balance here in the form of, we thought, a long overdue counter-attack on the concentration camp line.'
The Daily Telegraph, 20 December 2002
It's an argument that left Penberthy's colleagues at the Tele cringing. By all means expose the exaggerations of the critics but do it as a journalist not a mouthpiece for the Department of Immigration. Check out the claims and give us the truth. We asked Penberthy -
Did you visit a detention centre to see for yourself the state of conditions in detention centres? … If not why not?
Media Watch letter to David Penberthy
In reply Penberthy gave me and this program a terrific spray in his column last Friday but he did not answer that question. It seems he never even took a taxi to the Villawood Detention Centre in suburban Sydney. Penberthy's regurgitation of the Department's line was greeted with disbelief inside the detention centres.
'The media all the time saying we are in five star accommodation….I am talking with officer. "Where is Foxtel? Where is internet access? Where is swimming pool?" ACM officer agree. It is all bullshit.
Asylum Seeker Refugee Action Collective
While giving us a blast, Penberthy declared -
'I have nothing to contribute to the bourgeois dinner party you pass off as a TV program.'
The Daily Telegraph, 14 February 2003

Where is Foxtel? But that would have made it a one star facility ...

Never mind, talk about a cynical hack on the make, with a fine "bourgeois" flourish at the end as befits a recovering Marxist, but then as the wiki notes, it gets even weirder, which is to say even more Adelaide ...

In October 2010 it was reported that Penberthy had recently separated from his wife and he was romantically linked to federal MP Kate Ellis. A  relationship between the two was confirmed by news reports in January 2011. They confirmed their engagement in November 2012, and were married on 23 February 2013. They had a son in April 2015. Their second son was born in July 2017

And then there was this from Kate ...

I married my husband, David Penberthy, in 2013. We have two children, Sam, 5, and Charlie, 3, and two stepchildren from David’s previous marriage, Sophie, 18, and James [Jim], 14.
People think we’re an unlikely couple. I’m a left-wing Labor polly and he is a News Limited journalist. We have that magic couples strive for. Our differences are there, but we have much more in common.
I knew David had purchased a ring and was going to propose, but there were a few aborted attempts. One night he had the ring in his jacket pocket, took me to a fancy restaurant and then freaked out when the waiter took his jacket. Another time, I was sure he’d propose, but when he didn’t I cried in the toilets. I returned to the table wiping tears. I got down on one knee and asked him to marry me. He said yes and asked if I wanted the ring. I told him to present it to me in a suitable way within the next three months.

Yes, they do things differently in Adelaide. Waiter, another glass of coke to go with the pasta ...

Sorry, sorry, the pond was distracted by Polonius, and still no mention of the ABC not having a single conservative commentator on its books ... just Scotty from marketing holding on in hope, with brave, cheerful Polonius as always at his side, cheering him on  ...

 

 

 

And that's why the pond reads Polonius on a Sunday ... for his infinite wisdom and astonishing insights. "The evidence suggests that this year's federal election, like many before it, will be fought on a seat by seat basis."

The evidence also suggests that the answer lies in the soil: In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.

 

 

 

 

Ask your great grandfather ...

And so in honour of five star Penbo a Kudelka, with more Kudelka here ...

 

 

 

And now feeling positively zen, the pond is ready to turn to a dose of Dame Slap for a Sunday bonus ...

 

A genteel affair? (possibly paywall affected)

...The confirmation hearing was always going to be a circus, given such sentiment and how starkly politicised the Supreme Court is — Barack Obama’s last nominee, Merrick Garland, never got a hearing, despite being nominated months before the election; Trump’s second nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, was accused by a woman under oath of sexual assault, which the Republican senator Lindsey Graham described as “hell” for Kavanaugh; and Trump’s third nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, was rushed through mere days before the 2020 presidential election. ​​
Even knowing this, however, I was shocked by how embarrassing and insulting the whole endeavour turned out to be. Graham, on day one, said that being called racist was “not going to fly” with Republicans because “we’re used to it”, and so I will not say that they were racist, and will instead simply list a few things that Republican senators asked Jackson, a Harvard Law graduate who clerked for the Supreme Court, worked as a public defender, served as vice-chair of the US Sentencing Commission, and was a judge on the US District Court for the District of Columbia before becoming judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, spent part of his time talking about a book, Antiracist Baby by Ibram X Kendi, which is taught in a private school in Washington DC of which Jackson sits on the board. Cruz asked Jackson whether she believed babies are racist.
Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator from Tennessee, wondered whether Jackson had a “personal hidden agenda” and accused her of supporting “progressive indoctrination” of children.
Tom Cotton, a Republican senator from Arkansas, asked Jackson whether the country needs more police and whether the US needed tougher or weaker sentencing for drug crimes; Jackson correctly observed that that was not under the remit of the Supreme Court. Graham asked her to rank her religious faith on a scale of one to ten.
Perhaps most odiously, Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri — who fist pumped the mob assembled before the Capitol on 6 January 2021 and then objected during certification of the 2020 electoral college votes — fixated on the fact that, in seven cases involving child pornography offenders, Jackson sentenced offenders to less prison time than recommended by federal sentencing guidelines. In fact, the majority of all sentences were below the guideline for so-called “non-production” offenders — that is, those who viewed or distributed images of child sexual abuse but did not produce them.
Some noted that, in addition to a bad faith smear, this may have been a signal to, for example, believers in the QAnon conspiracy about a ring of Satan-worshipping paedophiles embedded in government, business and the media.

Of course in Dame Slap land, referencing Q is considered genteel, and best done with a handsome serve of scones, blackberry jam and a nice tea ... and now on with referencing the woke ...

 

Ah the pond is pleased that Dame Slap mentioned the political, because there's been much fun with the political of late ...

 

 

 

 

 

 Of course questions have been asked ...

 

 

 

 

 

But nothing will happen, and besides Ginni has solid grounds for an appeal ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that supreme comedy, the pond must reluctantly return to Dame Slap, wherein the usual folly of trying to save the planet will be given a good bashing ... and if you want sublime evidence that Dame Slap lives on Planet Janet, far above the faraway tree, just read her discussion of how pro-life legislation would have spread in the United States like wildfire ...
 

 

Of course whenever Dame Slap's conversation turns to this topic, the pond likes to dust off a Dame Slap classic ...

Sure, the pond has run it more times than it can remember, but it's an oldie and a goodie, like sipping a bourgeois pina colada in the rain ...

 

 

 

 

And with that we're on the home run and the final gobbet ...

 

Ah yes, the old mantra of activist judges, so beloved by Dame Slap ... and yet surely we should honour judges for their service ...

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Assailed for her texts to the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Ginni Thomas accused her critics of ignoring her three decades of exemplary service as a Supreme Court Justice.
“For the past thirty years, I have listened to oral arguments, studied legal precedents, and written opinions,” Thomas said. “All in all, I am confident that I have earned a place in history as one of our nation’s greatest Supreme Court Justices.”
Thomas said that, after reading some of the criticism that she has received for her texts, she was “shocked, and quite frankly hurt, that my stellar Supreme Court record could be so casually swept aside.”
“I have given thirty years of my life to the Supreme Court, and this is the thanks I get?” she asked.

In much the same way, Dame Slap has tirelessly given to the Australian judicial system, and we should honour her service... why she might even had helped stop world government being instituted by the devious UN by Xmas ...

And so to end with a cartoon, and it will have been noticed that along the way the pond occasionally uses cartoons to catch up on other stories not featured in the lizard Oz commentary of the day. 

So it was worth turning to Wilcox for a final word, thought, image, betrayal ...