In which Polonius and the Ughmann provide meditative Sunday distractions as the pond heads south to be with the leftist sparrows...

 

The pond's meditative Sunday is usually the day to take it easy with reliable reptile regulars, and enjoy a few 'toons, but this day the pond is also heading down to the deep south, to be surrounded by stubborn, wilful, obdurate socialists dressed in black.

The world-famous puppy killer is aware of the problem ...

Before we start: Maybe we’ll wake up on Monday and everything will be exactly the same. But maybe it won’t. Maybe things will have changed. Either for the worse—or for the better.
Let’s set the table with something Secretary Kristi Noem said yesterday in California:
"We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city."
The “we” in that statement is the federal government and its military. The “burdensome leadership” is the duly elected governor of the state of California and mayor of the city of Los Angeles.
An agent of the federal government declared her intention to “liberate” the people of California from their elected leaders. (Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark, paywall)

The reptiles feel the urgent need to liberate those deep fried deep state southerners, with their perverse and perfidious refusal to be liberated.

The pond will do its best to help out, but how do you deprogram people deep in a cult? Only the reptiles know...

And so to poor prattling Polonius, still tragically billing himself as Media Watch Dog Columnist.

How epically sad it all is, and notjust because he's a furry imagining he's a hound, but because that badge hints at all the resentment and bile directed at the ABC, those bloody cardigan wearers who never gave him respect or a home... or his rightful place hosting that false copycat impostor, Media Watch.

Polonius coulda, shoulda, woulda been the last conservative, but then there were none, and so, for the two zillionth time, he bemoaned in treasured cliché speak form by deploying his keyboard short cut to produce his favoured meme, The ABC is a conservative-free zone ...

The man is a walking, talking, scribbling cliché, who deserves to be put down in the way that Q+A mercifully was freed from its time on earth.

Droning on in away even Shakspere couldn't satirise, and well into his dotage, replete with mindless repetitions, Polonius produced his imitation of the Ancient Mariner, stopping a few in the hive mind to shout at them  ...

The header, announcing for the two zillionth time, Room for cliches, not discussion, as ABC dumps Q+A, The ABC is a conservative-free zone without one political conservative as a presenter, producer or editor for any of its main TV, radio or online news and current affairs outlets. How boring is that?

The caption celebrating the awesome collage was devoid of human names, suggesting AI had done the deed, On Wednesday, the ABC announced the demise of Q+A.

There was also the monotonous direction, perhaps best delivered in a HAL voice, This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The pond has no dog in the Polonial dog fight, because the pond can proudly boast that it never watched a single Q+A episode in its entirety in the entire history of the show.

The few excerpts the pond watched were brief, because the entire point was to be a gabfest designed to generate heat rather than light or insight, with far too many reptiles from the lizard Oz given a place in this conservative-free broadcast... (that's called sarcasm, too blunt for irony).

Polonius was perhaps most embittered because it was yet another cardigan-wearing outing where he, dour of presence and tedious of pedantic speech, was incapable of shining...

One of the most overused words in modern parlance is “excited”. So it came as no surprise when ABC news director Justin Stevens said he was “excited about being able to produce additional high-impact, premium news documentary programs to complement the ABC’s strong factual slate”. There is no doubt, as ABC chair Kim Williams has pointed out since he took up the position in March 2024, that the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster has performed poorly in this area over the years – with a few notable exceptions.
However, the promised advent of documentaries should not hide the fact that ABC TV has an appalling record with respect to news and current affairs over the past couple of decades. In succession, such one-time key programs as Lateline, The Drum and now Q+A have been junked. And replaced by … nothing much really.
On Wednesday, the ABC announced the demise of Q+A. Stevens declared: “We’re very proud of Q+A’s great achievements over the years. The team has done a terrific job, including a strong performance during the federal election campaign. Discontinuing the program at this point is no reflection on anyone on the show.”
Which raises the question: If Q+A was so successful, why drop it? Especially since whatever the program’s faults, it improved somewhat since it resumed in February. According to Stevens, “the world has changed” and “it’s time to rethink how audiences want to interact and to evolve how we can engage with the public to include as many Australians as possible in national conversations”.

Why drop it? 

Sometimes you have to turn puppy killer, and put an old dog down... and then with complete perversity, the reptiles decided to celebrate with A look back at Greg Sheridan’s most memorable Q+A moments — sharp debates, unexpected humour, and 21 appearances that made him one of the show’s most distinctive voices.

Say what? There's never been a conservative on the ABC, never ever, Polonius has been saying it for decades, and so it must be true ...

Talk about incest, talk about bum sniffers up each other's bums (not that there's anything wrong with that, it's more the time and the place) ...

What a grumpy, miserable old sod he is ...

Groan. The word “conversation” is as much a one-word cliche as “excited”. According to Stevens, during the federal election campaign, ABC Your Say received almost 30,000 online submissions, plus hundreds of calls on ABC Radio. Well done, and so on. But the ABC reporting the views of ABC watchers/listeners/readers does not news and current affairs make. Australians, young and old, tell me they do not watch the ABC because it is just boring. Former John Howard staffer Grahame Morris used to describe the ABC as “our political enemies talking to our political friends”. Today he might say the ABC is “our political enemies talking to our political enemies”.
The ABC is a conservative-free zone without one political conservative as a presenter, producer or editor for any of its main TV, radio or online news and current affairs outlets. How boring is that? ABC management and many senior journalists deny this. But no one in management or staff has been able to name a conservative in this context. That’s why the ABC has lost so many of its one-time conservative audience. Where does ABC management believe subscription TV network Sky News got much of its audience from?
As to the young, with all the news and current affairs open to them on social media, the more boring the ABC becomes, the less appeal it will have to younger audiences. As documented in my Media Watch Dog blog, the ABC recycles its on-air comedians – which, with some exceptions, are not funny – until they reach middle age. For the most part, younger comedians do not get a gig – especially if they have any conservative views.
The central problem with the ABC is the lack of viewpoint diversity – a term that seems to have been popularised by former National Public Radio senior business editor Uri Berliner. Formerly a left-liberal in the American sense of the term, he wrote in April last year that the left-of-centre NPR no longer has “an audience that reflects America”. Berliner soon departed NPR.

What's funny about this? 

It's the lack of introspection when a bit of navel-gazing might have been useful ...

...more than half of Australians aged 75+ (52%) read a print newspaper in the previous week, this compares to 7% of 18–24-year-olds. Similarly, older Australians were more likely to watch news on the TV, with 90% of those aged 75+ using a TV source in the past week, compared to 30% of 18–24-year-olds.(ACMA pdf)

And yet still they persist, still merrily printing away and preaching to an ever-shrinking hive mind ...

Even worse...

Australian adults use a variety of news sources, but ABC is a key provider of news across multiple online, audio and TV sources. Of those who accessed news via a specific channel, ABC was the prominent provider for online news websites (55%), FTA TV (56%), FTA catch-up (54%), radio (25%) and podcasts (31%

Bizarrely, the reptiles dragged in the dog botherer to mourn the show's loss, Sky News host Chris Kenny has reacted to the news of Australia’s national broadcaster axing its long-running program Q+A. The ABC is set to pull its flagship current affairs program Q+A just days after it was announced it would be taking a break over winter. Mr Kenny labelled the program’s cancellation as “a pity” and has called for the ABC to find a replacement program with “differing points of view”.

There he is, all smug and preening and puffed up with self-importance, gesticulating away, apparently unaware that Polonius has pronounced the ABC entirely devoid of differing points of view, while pathetically trying to pump up the volume for Sky Noise Down Under ...

There is more viewpoint diversity on Sky News than there is on the ABC. 

For some bizarre reason, the pond was reminded of Faux Noise, which always has a token liberal to hand, all the better to allow the state propaganda media company to do its real work... lying ...

“It’s not often that you get to see the propaganda forming in real time,” the Deadline: White House anchor said, noting that video of Padilla’s encounter with Noem had been circulating before Noem’s 3:30 p.m. interview on The Story With Martha MacCallum.
“And the video shows Senator Alex Padilla saying, quote, ‘I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I’m Senator Alex Padilla.’ I don’t know who interviewed Kristi Noem, but Kristi Noem tells this lie, quote, ‘He didn’t identify himself,’” Wallace said.
“The lie isn’t corrected. So now millions of people—that network has a huge audience—heard that lie,” she went on.
MacCallum’s weekday show averaged just over 1.8 million total viewers last month, according to Adweek.
Wallace turned to former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes, asking, “What is the role of propaganda and unchecked, uncorrected lies in the media in an autocratic lunge?”
Rhodes compared Fox to Russian state television.
“In Russia, what you have if you watch television, all you see is an alternative reality that is not reality. It is the reality that the regime wants you to think is reality,” he said. “That is what Fox News is. It is no different than the state media that we see in places like Russia.”
Just two days ago, Fox News was caught deceptively editing a video on Jesse Watters Primetime in order to make Donald Trump look good at the expense of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
While Fox’s MacCallum didn’t push back on Noem’s comments, others in the press quickly called out Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin for trying out the same narrative.
“As you can see in the video, Sen. Padilla clearly identifies himself,” CNN anchor Abby Phillip wrote on X. “DHS still wrote this post falsely claiming that he did not.” (archive link)

Liars, liars, pants always on fire, but do go on trying to pretend the lizard Oz and Sky after dark are anything other than State Opposition Media, with the odd bit of token window dressing provided they sang from the right song sheet ...

Last Wednesday, Cameron Milner, a chief of staff to one-time Labor leader Bill Shorten of the ALP Right faction, had this to say about the ABC on Sky News’ The Bolt Report: “Look, you know, anything after the Antiques Roadshow on the ABC is leftie-witching hour these days. Q+A was just one of a long list of programs which taxpayers pay for lefties to take the megaphone and shout back at us.”

Oh just fuck off, but you must appreciate the irony that your bullshit produced a Polonial trilling of which Mr Pooter would have been proud,  though Mr Pooter preferred "Indeed" to "Quite so"...

January 22.—I don’t generally lose my temper with servants; but I had to speak to Sarah rather sharply about a careless habit she has recently contracted of shaking the table-cloth, after removing the breakfast things, in a manner which causes all the crumbs to fall on the carpet, eventually to be trodden in. Sarah answered very rudely: “Oh, you are always complaining.” I replied: “Indeed, I am not. I spoke to you last week about walking all over the drawing-room carpet with a piece of yellow soap on the heel of your boot.” She said: “And you’re always grumbling about your breakfast.” I said: “No, I am not; but I feel perfectly justified in complaining that I never can get a hard-boiled egg. The moment I crack the shell it spurts all over the plate, and I have spoken to you at least fifty times about it.” She began to cry and make a scene; but fortunately my ’bus came by, so I had a good excuse for leaving her. Gowing left a message in the evening, that we were not to forget next Saturday. Carrie amusingly said: “As he has never asked any friends before, we are not likely to forget it.”

Indeed, indeed, those bloody eggs ...

Indeed, indeed, and quite so too ...

Quite so. Milner understands ABC journalists tend to fang both the Coalition and the Labor Party – from a left-wing perspective. The Labor Left, the Greens and the independent teals invariably receive a soft run. The teals in particular get much more coverage than their minority status in the House of Representatives warrants. Their support base is well-off tertiary-educated leftist types of the kind who love the ABC.
On Sky News on Wednesday, presenter Chris Kenny commented that after a significant absence, in June 2022 he was invited on Q+A to discuss the voice. It turned out there were six panellists, himself included, with Stan Grant as presenter. All seven supported the voice. Kenny said on air he “would have liked to have seen a little more of it (diversity) here”. Grant said, “Well, we’ll try better next time”. Whatever the merit of the Yes case, the ABC should have been able to accommodate three considered No advocates. Individually, the seven were interesting. However, with everyone essentially agreeing with everyone else, it was a boring outcome.
Q+A is dead. It was modelled on the BBC’s Question Time, which began in 1979 and is extant. The BBC is rife with left-wing types but is more pluralistic than its Australian equivalent. Q+A invariably had one political conservative facing a panel of four left-of-centre types and an invariably left-of-centre presenter. Some conservatives declined invitations, believing they would not get a fair hearing and/or would be mocked by the left-wing audience. For the most part, however, conservatives were not invited; many have been effectively cancelled and no longer receive invitations from the ABC.
And so it has come to pass that, following viewer resistance, the ABC no longer has an evening current affairs program focused on discussion. Lateline died in 2017. The Drum was put down in 2023. And now Q+A is beyond rigor mortis. Until ABC management prevails over the ABC staff collective (or soviet), expect more of the same – despite the promise of future excitement.

Dear sweet long absent lord, he's such a twee complete dork, blathering about the soviets, while buried deep in the reptile hive mind, so deep no light escapes...

And so to pause to celebrate the recent disturbances ...

And so to the bonus, with the splendid news that the Ughmann isn't just an expert climate science denialist, he's also a defence expert, ready to pinch hit for the bromancer ...

Straight up the pond had a problem with that header: Anthony Albanese’s ‘doublespeak’ no substitute for straight talk on defence, There are good reasons why Canberra should differ with Washington, but with a president as mercurial and transactional as Trump, this is a highwire act for Anthony Albanese.

Mercurial? Surely not...he just loves clowns in circuses and big parades ...

Well it was more amusing than that bog standard caption for that bog standard snap: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addresses the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra.Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

There was also the usual meaningless advice on how to click heels thrice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version,Take me there

The Ughmann was, as he always is, tiresomely indignant:

The subtext of Anthony Albanese’s speech to the National Press Club could not have been louder if he had screamed it from the podium: the biggest threat to Australia is the contagion of American ideas. It was summed up in this sentence: “Australians voted against importing conflicts and ideologies that have no basis in our national culture or character.”
Importing what conflicts and ideologies? From where? The religious hatred Iran and its proxies mobilise across the Middle East and export here? The tyrannical ideologies that China and Russia want to normalise and impose on this nation and the world?
No. This statement was aimed squarely at the ideas the Prime Minister says Australians rejected at the election, the ones the Coalition stands accused of smuggling in from the US: culture wars and small government.
“Australians voted against mass sackings in the public service and the damage that would do to our social safety net,” Albanese said. Here you are invited to conjure a crazy billionaire running amok with a chainsaw in Centrelink. This is apparently what the Coalition intended with its modest, botched, proposal that the number of federal public servants should be reduced through natural attrition and that the rest should be required to work from work.
Labor successfully poisoned this well by broadening the threat from federal employees to the entire workforce.

The reptiles decided to slip in the Bolter, still keen to have a war with China by Xmas, Sky News host Andrew Bolt discusses how Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cannot say he saw any potential “threat” from China at the National Press Club. “You heard the prime minister talking up how he is fighting this supposed global warming menace,” Mr Bolt said. “But when it came to confronting the very real menace of the Chinese communist dictatorship, suddenly he could not say he saw any threat at all.”

The pond was still somewhere back with all the running amok, the hacking and the burning, what with this promising to be a tremendous success ....

But the pond digresses ...

“Australians overwhelmingly rejected policies designed to drive down wages, undermine job security and take flexibility away from working families,” Albanese said.
Typically, the Coalition reacted like a kangaroo caught in the headlights of a road train. In the end, the only trace of the policy was a bloody smear on the tarmac and flyblown meat on the bull bar. The result? Everyone in politics now apparently agrees the federal public service carries no fat and the highest-paid bureaucrats on earth should never be pressed to ply their trade from the vast, expensive, purpose-built empty offices that litter Canberra.
Seriously, if the Liberal Party cannot campaign for smaller government at future elections, then maybe it is time to fold the tent.
But I digress.

So he can digress? 

Well so can the pond, to celebrate another folly on full view this past week...

Do carry on ...

Albanese’s theme was clear: Labor saved Australia from becoming a colonial outpost of Trumpian America. Albanese knows there are rich political fields to be ploughed here and all available evidence supports him.
An extract from the latest Lowy Institute Poll records Australians’ trust in the US fell by 20 points in a year, “with only 36 per cent of the public expressing any level of trust, a new low in two decades of Lowy Institute polling. Almost two-thirds of the public (64 per cent) say they hold ‘not very much’ trust (32 per cent) or no trust ‘at all’ (32 per cent) in the United States to act responsibly.”
This is an astounding vote of no confidence in our major ally, and the fault lies entirely with Donald Trump. But what is intriguing are the signals that Labor sees enduring opportunity in highlighting differences with the US for domestic political profit.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap of a villainess, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Picture: NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

That set the Ughmann off ...

When challenged by the US Defence Secretary to lift defence spending, Albanese channelled his inner John Howard: “We’ll determine our defence policy.” When Australia joined four other nations in sanctioning two Israeli ministers for “inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank”, the Prime Minister described the furious response from Washington and Israel as “predictable, frankly”. In announcing the sanctions Foreign Minister Penny Wong made the perfectly reasonable observation that Australia and the US did not always walk in lock-step.
“The alliance is an alliance that is strong and that has stood the test of time through administrations and prime ministers, governments of different political persuasions,” she said. “From time to time we have differences of views.”
There are good reasons Canberra should differ with Washington, but with a president as mercurial and transactional as Trump this is a highwire act.
There is also a hazard in dog-whistling disdain for the US President while downplaying the real and present danger posed by China’s Xi Jinping.

Sorry, defence is entirely under control ...

Oh it's a big beautiful golden drone beneath the golden dome ...

Observers in Washington might have noted the tone Albanese adopted when asked whether he thought China was a national security threat. “I think that our engagement with the region and the world needs to be diplomatic, needs to be mature and needs to avoid the, you know, attempts to simplify what are a complex set of relationships,” Albanese said.
Here the Prime Minister was at pains to de-escalate language, refusing to endorse the word “threat” when discussing Beijing. He turns strategic competition into constructive engagement, the opposite of the tone he applies to American populist ideological contagion. This jars with the 2023 Defence Strategic Review his government commissioned and endorsed. It clearly defines China as a threat and it is driving the government’s claimed step-up in military spending.
Six days before the prime ministerial address, Australia’s Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral David Johnston, hammered the point home. “Perhaps finally we are having to reconsider Australia as a homeland from which we will conduct combat operations,” Johnston said.

The reptiles offered a snap of a man with a lot of scrambled egg on his arms, Australia’s Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral David Johnston. Picture: Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)

Speaking of China, surely it's all under control ... helped by incredible military manoeuvres designed to quash the odd dissident ...

The pond realises that the Ughmann is trying to be serious, but that doesn't mean he should be taken seriously ...

It’s a fair bet the defence chief was not talking about manning the domestic barricades against the US. In every conversation about defence the subtext always screams China. So the distance between this statement and the Prime Minister’s happy talk is the gap between a loaded gun and a diplomatic cable. And, in passing, if we are to be consistent about sanctioning governments for mistreating Muslims, when will Canberra target Chinese ministers for the state-sponsored terror campaign against the Uighurs? The parliaments of Canada and Britain call it genocide. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights calls it a possible crime against humanity.
Canberra chides Washington, soothes Beijing and hopes America will cover the yawning gap between our rhetoric and our defences. This Janus-faced divide could become awkward as Albanese tries to arrange his first meeting with Trump. It will be an interesting week.
Right now Australia cannot defend itself without American support. The Lowy poll shows the public still appreciates that. So does Albanese, which is why he and his ministers stress the enduring value of the alliance. But alliances come with costs as well as benefits, so it is time we faced some tough choices. Canberra words and deeds need to be brought back into alignment. If the Albanese government truly believes China is not a threat and finds the American alliance politically uncomfortable, it can abandon costly nuclear-powered submarines, spend the money on welfare and distance itself from Washington.
If it thinks China is a threat and America is a worry, it should be preparing for the worst and pumping money into defence based on Australia’s needs, not Trump’s demands. That has to begin with the Prime Minister levelling with the Australian people and echoing the urgency of the language of his defence force chief. This means annoying Beijing.

Say what? Roam the streets with contending flags?

Eventually the Ughmann sputtered out ...

At present Labor is doing neither. It talks up defence as capability shrinks while gambling that America will rescue us. That is no longer a safe bet.
Right now we are speaking softly out both sides of our mouth and carrying a very small stick. We may soon discover that doublespeak is no substitute for straight talk and hard power.

How the reptiles love that word "hard" ...though in the pond's experience "straight" and "hard" rarely go together ...

And so to close, and what better way than to celebrate a most excellent Hydeing dished out to Uncle Leon ...So social media has broken even Elon Musk. I’m forced to ask: U OK hun?

It was delicious from go ...

Did you see Elon Musk apologise for some tweets this week? (Please don’t be naff and call them “X posts”.) Like me, you will be so embarrassed for Earth’s primo edgelord that he feels pressed into doing something so excruciatingly conventional. This is worse than when Kate Moss was scapegoated into rehab.
Imagine owning the world’s premier shitposting platform – in fact, having spent $44bn (£32bn) on it, specifically so that your magic mirror would tell you each day that you were the fairest shitposter of all – and then shuffling sheepishly on to your own pixels to mumble something about having gone “too far” with your hurty words. Buck up, sadsack – honestly.
We’ll come in a minute to how this hilariously preposterous spectacle should surely mark the absurdist endpoint of humankind’s intensely brief, intensely passionate, and intensely destructive relationship with social media. But first, a recap. Elon’s apology, of course, related to last week’s spectacular online beef that he’d started with US president Donald Trump over the latter’s OBBB. (Sounds like a specialist Pornhub search term; actually stands for One Big Beautiful Bill.) Amusingly, the two men were not able to directly confront each other, each feeling that they could only engage on their own platforms – X in Musk’s case, Truth Social in Trump’s. Going forward, we surely need some proxy platforms these two superpowers can fight on, like the proxy war countries of the cold war. Maybe Threads and Bluesky could play the role of Vietnam and Nicaragua?...

... to whoa ...

...He loved Twitter so much he bought the company – for a price that was the sort of joke someone might make on Twitter – and it actually seemed to get him what he wanted for a time: a president who was buddies with him, a more-than-fair wind for all his government contracts, and every one of his posts liked by bazillions of followers who absolutely weren’t mostly bots. It might have lost money in and of itself, but seemed like a super-successful and lucrative political project when considered in the round, given his other business interests.
But this is what spending too much time on social media does to you! It makes you feel like you’re being productive, and important, and “not complicit” in whatever you’ve just farted out a couple of hundred characters on. But – and spoiler alert for anyone still unaware of the import of watching Musk deliver his equivalent of the Notes app apology meme – this is all an illusion. Spending lots of time and energy on social media platforms simply means you work for the guys who own them. For free.
Whether this week’s cautionary tale starring one of those very guys will shake humanity out of its potentially fatal attention spiral is, regrettably, doubtful in the extreme. But after watching Musk act like someone tearfully trying to de-cancel themself, no one can say the message of the spectacle was anything less than sledgehammer: delete your account, sir.

The pond topped that off with a serve of Ellie Violet Bramley's What Elon Musk wore to the White House foreshadowed his downfall ...

...what Cummings and Musk share in sartorial disorder, they also share in political trajectories. Scruffy Icaruses who flew too close to the sun; their clothes a foreshadowing of their fall. Trump might talk about draining the swamp, but his Brioni suits are very much swamp-coded – plus, while Johnson might have had strategically unruly hair and ill-fitting suits as crumpled as a chip wrapper, suits they still were.
Ultimately, nobody likes a bragger. Because dressing in a way in which your privilege is omnipresent if not outright stated, is a surefire way to piss people off. Not least Trump, who noted that Musk had “some very brilliant young people working for him that dress much worse than him, actually”, in an interview on Fox in February.
“The contrast between Musk’s garb and Trump’s cabinet,” according to Freedland, “made them look and seem inferior: servants of the president rather than his equal. It was one more reason why more than a few in Trumpworld are glad to see the (poorly tailored) back of Elon Musk.”

And so on, because there's a lot to say about Leon's dress sense, but now to celebrate his passing with a few farewell 'toons, with Elon reduced to the supporting role of the fog of war, bigly fugly fog  ....