In which the pond can forget about nuking the country and enjoy a quiet Sunday meditation ...

 

What a relief it is to reach the quiet meditative Sunday waters, and leave aside thoughts of nuking the country, covered at excessive length these last few days...

The only pity was that the infallible Pope dropped too late to make it into the cut ...

The pond is also grateful to be able to leave aside talk of the genocides in Gaza and Ukraine, and hot mike come to Jesus moments, and reports of people being killed by packages dropped from the sky ...

In notes on the minutes of the last meeting, the pond is indebted to an esteemed correspondent for a link to Richard Ackland's The Walter Sofronoff-Janet Albrechtsen imbroglio in The Saturday Paper. (possible paywall).

As there is much further business by doing a spoiler which also serves as a teaser, because the real meat comes earlier in the yarn:

...The proceedings before Kaye were conducted under the inherent powers of the Supreme Court, where he could make declarations of law that Sofronoff’s report breached fundamental legal principles – with no power to go beyond that.
None of which has stopped Janet Albrechtsen indulging in a generous bout of self-justification. Before Kaye’s judgement was delivered, she wrote that her sole purpose was to shine light and truth on the criminal justice chronicle of Lehrmann and Higgins.
Under the self-basting headline “We stand for the principles that guarantee a fair trial” she delivered a lecture about the importance of the rule of law and fairness.
Yet she appears to have no appreciation that she and Sofronoff were in a sub-rosa arrangement that amounted to unfairness and which, if discovered, would result in a report that was for all intents and purposes worthless.
So much for the rule of law.
We can hardly blame a journalist for wanting to get pally with a source in order to get the inside running, but here we have a journalist with an embedded agenda in cahoots with a functionary of government commissioned to make independent critical findings.
Only this week, in an imaginative reinterpretation of the outcome, Albrechtsen told her readers that Shane Drumgold’s reputation “remains in tatters” and that “the Sofronoff report remains standing”.
That’s not exactly true. As retired Melbourne barrister Geoffrey Gibson wrote in a recent edition of his newsletter: “Let me put it this way. Your professional conduct is the subject of a public inquiry conducted by an eminent lawyer with all the credentials for that purpose. You are being pursued in the press by someone who makes a living from that kind of campaign and public vilification. The person hearing the matter then finds against you in very grave and personal terms. Then you find he has been secretly corresponding with your enemy all the time. Which of them do you want to throttle first?”

Bags throttling Dame Slap first, if only in a metaphorical way.

The pond has also finished its serious political analysis, after reading the latest Hydeing, Congratulations, Rupert Murdoch! Let’s hope this love match lasts longer than TalkTV ...

At last, some happy news. Rupert Murdoch is engaged – and for the second time in less than a year. I know! Despite being 93 next Monday, he’s getting engaged even more frequently than serial sex killers serving life sentences. Those betrothals, of course, tend to happen entirely by letter, but as far as we know, Murdoch’s latest love match is a real-world union. His fiancee is Elena Zhukova, 67, a retired biologist who also previously served as mother-in-law to Roman Abramovich. In the absence of an official engagement photo, just sub in that image from Alien 3 where the slavering alien corners Ripley in the infirmary. And please remember – the Fox News chairman emeritus’s lifelong commitment to irreverent stories about people’s private lives means the above is precisely how he wants his latest chapter to be covered.
As mentioned, this is Murdoch’s second proposal inside 12 months, his previous engagement enduring just a fortnight. Hand on heart, I was surprised he couldn’t make it work with that last one, a former dental hygienist/evangelical prison chaplain he met in one of his gardens, who had successfully dismissed a case of “financial elder abuse” brought by one of her previous stepchildren. She seemed so perfect. Back at the time they announced their intention to wed (not hugely long after Rupert reportedly told Jerry Hall via email that he was divorcing her), he gibbered out some hilarious interview to his own New York Post, in which he claimed: “I dreaded falling in love – but I knew this would be my last.”
And yet Murdoch has now faced those fears not once but twice – and all in less than half the TV broadcast lifespan of his disastrous TalkTV channel, which this week announced it was moving to online only. (Something about being “brave”, which felt quite “brave” in itself, given the calamitous rating circumstances.)

And so on - hang in until the last paragraph - though the cartoon in the same edition did give fair warning of what was to follow on the pond down the page, with a serve of left-over, reheated "Ned"...

First it was time to tune into prattling Polonius, raging against either the dying of the light on him, or perhaps on him on the ABC, or perhaps both ... with that dreadfully nasty savvy Savva now basking in the limelight...

Still brooding about Dunkley, and yet Polonius knows how to channel Black Knight syndrome ...

How many times has the pond shed a tear of sympathy at the way Polonius and his prattle was driven into exile by the cruel-cardigan wearing overlords?

Too many to count, but Polonius can always be counted on to remind the pond of the latest indignity...

How is that the allegedly savvy Savva now sits in Polonius's Insiders chair? 

Wasn't he one of the greatest comedy acts in ABC history, helped by David Marr playing the straight man (think Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin) ...

Look at his witty take down of the savvy Savva, wittily taking her down, with a witty display of take down wit ...

Sure there might be genocides elsewhere or comical nonagenarian ruttings, but here we're dealing with a genuine human tragedy, a humble man of inner Sydney CBD 'leet origins forced to step outside the tent, knowing it might be a long while before he's allowed back inside ...

How else can ABC viewers, all five of them, learn how to count the number of times "very" was mentioned on a show? Pedantry by the most expert of tedious pedants? You're standing in it ...

 Verily, very much has been lost by replacing the very sage seer with the very savage mocking Savva and spineless Speers ...

The pond was on a high, only tempered a little by that small billy goat buttism that turned up at the start of the last par: "Certainly, difficulties remain at all levels of the party in Western Australia and Victoria and within the party machine in Queensland and NSW."

Presumably that means that the Vandemonians and the croweaters are in spiffing shape, a huge chunk of the country heading in the right direction... as for the other states, piffle, mere flesh wounds, perhaps an arm or a leg lost, but ready for work the next day.

Leaving aside the light at the end of the Polonial tunnel, and the many thought crimes of the cardigan wearers, the pond turned to the Angelic one for news of the Catholic church breeding program ...

So she's been scribbling for 25 years, thanks to a plumb job, so that the Shanahans might indulge in a little nepotism, and all the pond gets is a cartoon?

There's a lot of people, let alone women, who wouldn't mind a little pin money, though some might shy from scribbling for Moloch ...

But the Angelic one has always had a prolific breeder's sense of entitlement ...

Yeah, it's so much easier taking cash in the paw from Moloch so you can scribble in defence of the Catholic church's ponzi scheme to get new recruits ...

The pond regrets wasting the last TT when it would have been a handy guide for future topics for the Angelic one to explore... you know, lie back and think of god and god, aka the Mango Mussolini ...

And so to the last gobbet, heralding all that's best about a turn to The Handmaid's Tale ... barefoot and pregnant and in a 1950s Catholic kitchen ...

Always with the boasting about the breeding, but what's remarkable is the tone: the querulousness, the sense of bitterness and grievance, with occasional flashes of anger and disapproval. You might think a life of satisfactory breeding would lead to contentment, but what's remarkable is the chip on the shoulder surliness and resentment ...

And having remarked on the remarkable whining tone, that meant it was time for the pond to move on to its pièce de résistance for this day's meditation ... and once again it's the Everest known as "Ned", held over because of the nuking of the country to save the planet ...

The pond confesses it will be interrupting "Ned" regularly with cartoons and as he mentioned the SOTU, the pond thought it might begin with the infallible Rowe ...

What a splendid vision, but don't expect "Ned" to cope ...

Here it's possible to see "Ned" trying to talk himself into the correct Faux Noise mindset, helped along by a snap of that demonic child of Satan ...

It's true, who wouldn't want a United States carved in the image of the wild west and the roaring '20s?

Yet as he goes along, "Ned's" Chicken Little tendencies come into play, as they always do, with a cluck here and a cluck there, and an abundance of both siderism worthy of an NY Times poll ...

A pivot? But the great GOP, and the greatest in the GOP, have endorsed the tangerine wannabe tyrant ...

Who could quibble at the tortoise's astonishing contributions?

With a record like that, of course "Ned" was going to do his best to cope with what Faux Noise has bequeathed to the country ... and the world.

Dying? Why the country has never been more alive ...

At this point the reptiles slipped in a snap of a meditative Haley, perhaps thinking about her loss...

...or perhaps she was brooding about SCOTUS crushing a dream ...

Whatever, as the pond eventually gets back to "Ned", please note how he's managed to regurgitate a number of mango Mussolini talking points without even bothering to interpolate a note regarding the rhetoric ...

In the end, you see, it's nothing to do with Faux Noise or the GOP or the MAGA cult, which boasts the likes of Dame Slap as a cap-wearing member. It's all the fault of Joe Biden ...

Look, if the pond constructed a poll with the right set of questions and the right set of respondents, and asked "do you think nattering 'Ned', verging on senility and with a tendency to humbug, should keep scribbling for the lizard Oz?', the pond thinks it could get the right answer, and then "Ned"might find himself in the same position as the GOP ...

There are two things deeply weird about the United States. The first is the relentless ongoing cycle of primaries, elections and the non-stop never ending election cycle, which keeps political junkies and the media happy, and the rest of the country either alienated, or bored and off doing their own thing.

The second is the deeply weird obsession with polling, which routinely fails the test...

More at Fortune here ...

...It is these methodological shortcomings and constraints which should draw greater attention rather than the breathless horse-race coverage based on who is up and who is down in the most recent polls across media.

As Jim Fallows notes, “if any professionals were as off base, as consistently, as political “experts” are, we’d look for someone else to do those jobs.”

Predictive political polling is helpful–as long as we bear in mind its constraints and limitations. There are enough known unknowns inherent to political polling methods, not to mention any unknown unknowns, which relegate them to more of an art than a science.

Without contrition, Nate Silver, one of the prominent pollster pundits who got it wrong was back at it this weekend, offering predictions on the Georgia U.S. Senate sweepstakes. The only lesson for pollsters seems to be: If you can’t predict accurately, predict often.

If you don't have a clue, just be a neighing "Ned", repeating often ...

Perhaps there's a different explanation ...

But enough of battered county syndrome, by this time the pond was deep in battered "Ned" syndrome ...

Inevitably "Ned" turned to talk of the border, and that's surely been a major success, because these days bipartisan is just an empty word ...

Sadly the bipartisan border folly was tossed aside in "Ned's" final gobbet, though frabjous joy, with the Everest once again climbed (the pond is beginning to feel more like a sherpa than your average tourist climber) ...

"Let's hope it is the least of the worst scenarios"?

What on earth does that mean? You get to the top of the summit and all you get is a cryptic message much like the jokes you find in Xmas crackers. Or a Zen koan you have to ponder for hours without ever reaching enlightenment.

Is "Ned" suggesting that the Donald is the least of the worst scenarios? 

Or is he a closeted Biden supporter, too gutless to come out and across the Faux Noise Murdochian line?

Who knows, but what a useless tool he is, what a fraud and a sham, what a pompous, portentous, pontificating humbug ... (has the pond said that very many times? The pond thinks it might be very, very many times).

Not to worry, the climbing's done and dusted, and thanks to the cartoons noted during the climb, the pond has managed to look away ...

.

.. but it seems that walls are the theme for the day ...