Peter Hartcher, former Chairman Rudd's underpants, and we're not here to write, we're here to go mad ...

Today is tabloid day in Sydney, when the Sydney Morning Herald puts down its thin chipboard veneer of respectability and turns into the sluttish Sun-Herald, out on the real estate and eastern suburbs social circuits for a glad-handing good time.

The only time I actually get to see the Sunday rags involves a trip to the car wash, which is to say rarely, but still the whinging, whining splash on today's digital edition, brooding about Australia's soccer campaign (above), swept me right back to the nineteen fifties and the cicadas chirping and the paper boy throwing some extremely useful bird cage lining over the fence before we all raced off to buy lollies.

It was the devious Dutch wot done us in with their dour peppermint scoffing hot chocolate loving ways (and don't get me started on the wicked weed and the loose attitude to sex and Dutch situation comedies, a most paradoxical and peculiar notion) ...

Oh yes, Australia hurrah. damn them furriners.

Never mind, I was reminded of why we're here while reading Rivka Galchen in Harper's on Robert Walser, a novelist who retired from scribbling to spend the last years of his life in insane asylums, and his most famous quote inside the loony bin:

I'm not here to write. I'm here to be mad.

Indeed. We're here to be mad. (And sorry it's behind the Harper's paywall, here, as is Christopher Ketham's very funny portrait of the New York state senate, its total corruption and impotence, in The Albany Handshake, which suddenly makes you realise that there are other models for NSW state Labor around the world).

But speaking of madness, that naturally leads us to Mark Latham, who thankfully is also locked up behind a paywall, and whom I only get to read when that bizarre contradiction, a business person who catches trains, leaves a copy of the Australian Financial Review on a train seat because the dross is too heavy to carry around.

Or when The Australian, bitchy as ever, quotes him, as in A source who kept The SMH on message:

A defining feature of Rudd's prime ministership was his constant briefing of Hartcher on the behind-the-scenes processes behind big decisions, invariably to glorify his own contribution. As one caucus wag told me earlier this year, "Kevin doesn't change his underpants these days without telling Hartcher about it." It would have been obvious to his colleagues (Gillard in particular) that the Herald's story came from the PM's office, a stunning valedictory to Rudd's misreading of his colleagues and his ineptitude as a caucus tactician.

Which brings us to the strange case of Peter Hartcher, and his clear emotional involvement in the decline and fall of former Chairman Rudd, and his clear disdain for Julia Gillard.

I must say I almost bit through my toast and ruined my bite when I read this little offering:

She's a first-class political talent, as smart as any man ...

Why Peter, that's downright noble of you, to acknowledge in certain rare unlikely and imponderable circumstances, a woman can be as smart as any man. Hartcher compounds his folly by rounding out his par thus:

She's a first-class political talent, as smart as any man, as tough as any man, as able as any man. But is that cause enough to cancel out a prime minister's popular mandate?

Clearly all the coaching about the best colour of underdaks to wear left a lasting emotional impression. Popular mandate? Remember that remark ...

Come on down Henry Higgins, your spiritual mentoring for men continues to resonate down the centuries.

You can read all that and more in Julia Keneally? PM must avoid being factional puppet, Hartcher's offering a couple of days ago.

But if you read Hartcher over the last week - yes, I know, why would you bother, but remember we're not here to write, we're here to be mad - you can find the same kind of skew that would make most punters want to put a beer mat under the legs of the billiard table to fix the balance.

The short way to do this is to use the Herald's convenient listing of opinion pieces under his name, Peter Hartcher, and then immerse yourself in such offerings as If in doubt throw another leader on the barbie, or How Abbott found an unexpected ally over climate change in the Gang of Four.

In the first column, Hartcher embarks on the bizarre thesis that Labor had just wasted a prime minister, "in every sense", using up a perfectly electable leader prematurely. To go with this imponderable line, you perhaps must first be able to advise on which underpants to wear, before advising the wearer to get out in the ring, and moida da bum, knock him out in the first, and other such delusionary warnings offered to pugilists before they find themselves flat on their pants with a broken nose in the fifteenth round.

If Gillard had stayed firm in her resolve to pace herself, Rudd would still be prime minister. But she changed her mind on Wednesday and Rudd was history. What a waste.

Spare me days and knock me down with a feather. Former Chairman Rudd as a waste? Get out those political commentary and real estate pages, I have a cockatoo cage to line ...

In his second column, Hartcher explains how the demonic redhead ran former Chairman Rudd and his wonderful climate change policy off the rails, and thereby ruined the government, proving yet again that colorful pink underpants are simply no match for a woman on the march, seeing as how Rudd must have rolled over and just muttered "yes, Julia, whatever you say dear" before killing off his moral mission for our lifetime:

Although she had her factional origins in the Left of the Labor Party, Ms Gillard is a pragmatic politician who is prepared to abandon progressive policies.

You see, it's all her fault, and she's not an idealist, a romantic, and a wearer of underpants like the former Chairman, though grudgingly it has to be admitted she's as smart as any man. Perhaps even smarter ... in the sense that only a redhead knows how to be a super bitch.

But let's get back to the main game, and hubris, because you see it seems that Peter Hartcher himself, and not the red head, was the trigger that fired the bullet that brought the PM down, and he explained everything yesterday in Dark clouds that spelt doom for a prime minister.

Running through the plot and the cabal of plotters determined to bring the Ruddster down, Hartcher arrives at a climactic moment:

Unexpectedly, the plotters found a potential trigger on the front-page of the Herald on Wednesday. With my colleague Phillip Coorey, I wrote a report disclosing Alister Jordan's soundings of caucus support for the PM. It said: "Mr Jordan's soundings, conducted in the past month with Mr Rudd's knowledge, reveal three key aspects of the prime minister's position.

"First, he is deeply concerned about the security of his grip on the prime ministership. Second, he does not necessarily fully trust the public assurances of his deputy, Gillard, that she is not interested in the leadership. And third, he does still enjoy solid support in the caucus."

The Right faction leaders seized on this.

So there you have it. The rest, as we say, pausing solemnly to take in a deep breath, and consider the imponderable momentousness of the occasion, is history.

Drawing himself up to his full forlorn height, and never mind that in the very same article, Hartcher identifies a variety of right wing plotters including Bill Shorten in Melbourne, Gary Gray in WA and Don Farrell in SA, he delivers this withering conclusion:

Sussex Street has done this before, to premiers and even opposition leaders.

But this is a new development. The prime ministership has become the plaything of a handful of power brokers whose names are almost completely unknown to the Australian people.

Today's Nielsen poll puts Labor in a commanding position. The challenge has been validated with the only vindication that the machine men care about. Sussex Street has arrived in Canberra.

Yes folks, it's the full blown delusional Sydney-centric "we're the centre of the known universe" mentality at work, and yet another chance for all those living outside Rome to marvel at the ways of those perfidious eastern staters. You see, Sussex street isn't just a street in Sydney, it's a state of mind, and it embraces the whole of Australia ...

Meanwhile, if you have a moment or two, you can track how Hartcher changed his crooning. Remember that mystery phrase about popular mandate?

Well, here is Hartcher back in early June in Rudd's showdown at the Last Chance Saloon:

The voters have issued their death threat. Rudd has just months in which to persuade the electorate to give him another chance.

Silly goose. We know now being in the eye of the storm what he meant to say was that Chairman Rudd had just weeks, perhaps only days in which to persuade his colleagues to give him another chance.

Ah well, it's sunny but chilly in Sydney, the world has been shaken, not stirred, and no doubt former chairman Rudd will still be seeking counsel on what underpants to wear.

But perhaps Hartcher should brood a second or two about donning wax wings and getting too near the sun king when it comes to writing decent, thoughtful, and insightful columns about politics, ones where the seams are hidden, and the incoherence and contradictions don't show up like flecks of dandruff on a black suit worn to a political funeral ...

(Below: he shoots, he scores. Must be Dutch? No amazingly it's from the New Zealand Railways Magazine, volume 5, issue 2, June 2, 1930, entitled "Through the scullery window" and found here. Don't ask me how I got there, just celebrate the wonders of the full to overflowing intertubes).

And now a special song for Peter Hartcher, so he can sing along with the impeccable Rex Harrison, the link for which will last as long as YouTube allows:

Miranda Devine, Tony Abbott, uglification, derision and fainting in coils ...

Percy Grainger was as mad as a march hare, and a trifle eccentric as well.

Still, last night listening to the Sydney Symphony in full flight in the orgiastic fanfare that rounds up his proto-ballet music The Warriors, I had a sneaking regret that no one asked Percy to write a national anthem, instead of the dirge we currently use. Throw a daub of blood on a sprig of wattle, replace the Union Jack in the corner of the flag with a whip, and Percy's your uncle, a cultural makeover.

By warriors, Percy meant "lazy, pleasure-loving, self-indulgent men and women who would sooner fight for a living than work for a living."

Which immediately reminded me of the commentariat and the punditocracy, who spend their time busy decrying chattering elites, while scribbling on like the chattering well paid elites they are. They infest the eastern and northern suburbs, they carry on like toffs, and no doubt more than a few have a sneaking regard for coffee and good wine (let's not forget how John Howard stormed his way through a more than decent cellar while in power as a most excellent role model).

They rabbit on about ordinary Australians, but they're ponces, likely as not never killed a lamb or gutted a rabbit, or done an honest day's work in their lives, as opposed to preening in the opinion pages, or carving out sinecures in the private sector.

And all they offer, rather than work for a living, is an opinion. Some who offer these opinions are lawyer trained - say no more - but most of them have the education, skills and intelligence of a mock turtle, trained in reeling and writhing, and the different branches of arithmetic, which is to say ambition, distraction, uglification and derision.

Yep, opinion as a form of derision. Well everyone's got an opinion, and most opinions are worth the opinions to be found here on the pond, which is to say three fifths of fuck all.

Which naturally brings us to Miranda the Devine this fine Saturday morning, and Grisly thud of kneecapped Rudd.

The ever faithful Devine lathers up shock, horror and indignation in fine style, as she whips herself into a frenzy. It's a pity Percy isn't around to give her a good birching, though truth to tell Percy is more likely to have preferred the Devine doing the birching.

Not to worry, the Devine takes to the party line like an apparatchik doing a dance for Stalin:

... it is overlaid with a sickening sense that something very wrong has happened, that an elected first-term prime minister has been treated shamefully, assassinated by a cabal of unionists and ALP machine men, using media leaks to accelerate a murderous frenzy that may in years to come be seen as a colossal mistake.

Of course Tony Abbott only the night before tried this line and made a real goose of himself with Kerry O'Brien:

TONY ABBOTT, OPPOSITION LEADER: No, Kerry - for two reasons. First of all, I became leader because of a policy difference, and second, there is no equivalent on our side of politics of the Sussex Street death squads which are now stalking the Labor Party.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Death squads. Execution, death squads, Stalinist knocks at the door.

TONY ABBOTT: Kerry, they execute leaders who they don't like.

Naturally O'Brien went on to ask Abbott about Malcolm Turnbull, which quietened down the rhetorical stupidities a little, and then caught Abbott out in a lie as he admitted he had in fact prattled on about a glorious victory:

KERRY O'BRIEN: But you did say that. So you're confirming that you did say those words: "Victory is within our grasp. We are within reach of a famous victory."

TONY ABBOTT: There is no doubt we must have been within reach of a famous victory, otherwise the Labor Party would not have dumped their leader in a fit of panic about its prospects.

Put it another way, once again we're within the prospect of a famous lie. O'Brien spent the entire interview mocking Abbott, in a way sure to send the Ultimo haters in a frenzy, but reminding us once again that Abbott should simply avoid exposing himself on the 7.30 Report and stick to exposing himself in his biking and his budgie smugglers (transcript here of Abbott on his new opponent).

Is it any wonder that we get this news from the polls, Gillard saves Labor? Why I reckon a mock turtle makes more coherent sense than Abbott, and now - since Gillard affirmed rather than swore on a bible and lives in sin - he's the only Christian peddling his nonsense front and centre.

Meanwhile, the Devine gets terribly excited about the accidental leader Abbott claiming a scalp, when in reality the robber mining barons can claim their fair share of credit. But it's when she gets to the crocodile tears about ex-Chairman Rudd that the spectacle and the strong whiff of hypocrisy gets sickening:

For all Kevin Rudd's annoying quirks and policy failures, voters didn't hate him. And they are not happy at being cheated out of the right to vote out - or not - the man they voted in, judging by hundreds of grassroots comments posted on the Labor Party website.

Yes the Devine couldn't talk this kind of tosh directly herself - it would then shift from sickening to revolting - so she resorts to quoting comments on the website.

What other move? Well of course wheel in those trainwrecks Mark Latham and Morris Iemma, and blame it all on Mark Arbib, when as noted by others if Malcolm Fraser is wheeled out as an old fashioned wet squatter, it's suddenly no fair and out of bounds.

In the end, the Devine can't help herself:

In the end, perhaps, we should be thankful for the naked demonstration of power for its own sake we have seen exercised this week by the faceless and not so faceless handful of men who provoked their party to dispatch a first-term prime minister, like it was just another game.

Ah yes, the faceless men riff. Except of course if you spend a par demonising and explaining how it's all Mark Arbib's fault (forgetting that the Victorian right and Bill Shorten had a hand in the pudding, if not a fist), you can hardly talk about the faceless men.

And then of course there's the athletic flexibility required to explain why you're appalled at the demise and departure of former Chairman Rudd, when you've spent years bemoaning his style and denigrating his track record and his legislative activities.

The Devine doesn't bother about that kind of nuance. She just reflexively slips in the slipper in her usual way:

And we should be thankful for the many failings of the Rudd government over such a short time. They have demonstrated spectacularly, in the home insulation debacle, in the sinful waste of Building the Education Revolution, in the farce of the ETS, in the risky and ill-considered resources tax, how useless and incompetent big, bureaucratic government really is.

So given this litany of sins, aren't you glad to see him go? No, no, blubbers the mock turtle, it's a tragic day for democracy as the Sussex street death squads roam the streets.

So we should be thankful for fuck ups!? Yes, yes, the more fuck ups, the more apparent it is as to why Australians are grieving the death of democracy, and alarmed by the Stalinist death squads stalking the streets.

Is that why we should read the Devine? We should be thankful for her fucked up logic traps?

Never mind. There's more to life than the Devine. Last night the Sydney Symphony were in fine fettle, and knocked over not only the Grainger, but Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, with his great wellings and lush sounds reminding me of just how much Hollywood composers borrowed from this work in particular and Ravel in general. I wasn't so convinced by Schubert's Unfinished being on the program when the other two made Stravinsky or a bit of Bartok seem more like what was needed, and it was treated a little staidly, but after it was over, things erupted.

Like Ravel, Grainger is a miniaturist, and even though a world citizen with neurotic Nordic tendencies, he's also Australia's very own sado masochist with a mother complex, and well worth a moment of your time, with the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne here, his own wiki as a good starting point here, and his biography by John Bird well worth the read (a pity the same can't be said about the Australian feature film Passion based on his life).

And I guess it's a month late, but the world recently lost someone who helped change my life, which is to say Martin Gardner. I wore out his copy of the annotated Alice and had to buy another one, so beguiling was he as a guide to the fertile philosophical musings of Lewis Carroll, which some think a children's book but others know is as close to surrealism, zen Buddhism and the meaning of life as anyone got during the Victorian era in England. You can catch his NY Times obituary here, Martin Gardner, Puzzler and Polymath, Dies at 95.

At least Gardner was honest in saying he played all the time and was fortunate enough to get paid for it. If only the average elitist member of the chattering commentariat class had that kind of honesty. And so to a reading of Alice, in memory of Gardiner and with thanks to the SSO for another good night of music, and no thanks to the Devine for her total uselessness and lack of expertise at fainting in coils.

“I never heard of ’Uglification,’” Alice ventured to say. “What is it?”

The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. “Never heard of uglifying!” it exclaimed. “You know what to beautify is, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said Alice doubtfully: “it means—to—make—anything—prettier.”

“Well, then,” the Gryphon went on, “if you don’t know what to uglify is, you are a simpleton.”

Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it: so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said, “What else had you to learn?”

“Well, there was Mystery,” the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers—"Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling—the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: he taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.”

“What was that like?” said Alice.

“Well, I can’t show it you, myself,” the Mock Turtle said: “I’m too stiff. And the Gryphon never learned it.”

(Below: enough already with the mock turtle tears).

Jonathan Leake, the environment, Amazongate, Deltoid, and the whole damn bestiary of Murdochian monstrosities ...

(Above: the source of many leaks).

There's nothing wrong with a little eel bashing - reminds me I must have some unagi on the way to the Sydney Symphony tonight - go Ravel - indelicate sounds of imitation Homer Simpson slobbering - and there's even less wrong with bashing the slippery slithy toves at The Australian. Too much bloody mimsy.

Come to think of it, we could make it a national sport. Do a little bit for your country and bash the Oz, oi, oi, oi.

Un until now, Jonathan Leake was one of those names that flashed past in a blur when I tried to read The Australian on environmental issues.

Yes, yes, I know, that's a contradiction. Like eels needing bicycles.

Now I discover that if you google up his name, you could easily go goggle eyed.

Here he is January 18, 2010, in The Oz, with Chris Hastings, explaining United Nations' blunder on glaciers exposed. In it reveals how the UN peak body on climate change has been dealt another humiliating blow to its credibility.

Here he is on January 25, 2010, all on his own, with United Nations caught out again on climate claims, wherein he explains how the IPCC relied on weak evidence and ignored warnings.

Next up, we flash back to January 11th, 2010, with Sea-level theory cuts no ice, wherein climate science faces a major new controversy after Britain's Met Office "denounced" research from the Copenhagen summit regarding sea levels ...

Beginning to get the picture?

But then you might happen to come to More flaws emerge in climate alarms, dated February 1, 2010, and click through ... to get a 404.

Happily if you look here, you can find a reprint, together with its opening par:

A startling report by the UN climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had no scientific expertise.

Perhaps what he meant to say was that his report was based on an unsubstantiated claim by a Murdoch hack.

Of course finding out all this by googling Leake's name turned out to be tremendously harmful, I now realise, thanks to Jonathan Leake and Richard Woods' tremendously useful report Hidden harm of Google searches:

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate a similar amount of carbon dioxide to boiling the kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

While millions of people tap into Google without a thought for the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of carbon dioxide. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g.

Yes, using the services of the arch-enemy of Chairman Rupert is a hideous way of trashing the planet.

But, you ask - it turns out readers are always asking helpful questions to allow helpful answers - how did I get start on this journey of discovery, which allowed me to discover that using Google is a sure way to trash the planet in epic fashion? (Much worse than a cup of tea, or even an Al Gore mansion, or perhaps an around the world air ticket ...)

Well you see, I made the mistake of reading Andrew Crook in Crikey, explaining that Leake had got the bit about the Amazon rainforests totally wrong, and it was now being talked about in hushed terms as "Amazongate".

You can read all about it here in Silence from media on IPCC apology, and the way the local Oz media jumped on the Leake bandwagon - naturally the Dolt was at the head of the pack - but so far have maintained a discreet silence about getting off it - all except the source of the story, the Sunday Times, which provided an apology, which now of course is hidden behind a registration wall!

So you have to head off to to get an open source coverage of the correction/apology, courtesy of The Guardian, and Roy Greenslade: Sunday Times apologises for false climate story in a 'correction'.

Well the good news is that Leake is now safely sheltering behind Chairman Rupert's paywall, out of harm's way and my eyesight, and I guess if you're adult enough to pay for porn, I suppose you're also adult enough to pay for tripe.

Meanwhile, if you want some amusing reading, head off to Deltoid, here, to see the list of bludgers and no hopers who traded off on Leake's story. I rather like Deltoid's nickname for the scandal more than Amazongate.

Leakegate.

Seeing as how every second story on the environment turns into a gate, like email-gate, it's good to see that a "gate" can still go around one more time.

But then if you search the Deltoid site, you discover that Leakegate isn't just one fuck up, it's a way of life. You could frolic for hours through the varying aspects of Leakegate in all its infinite shades and hues, as applied to various deceptive, misleading or simply wrong stories about the environment.

Yes there's hours of fun to be had, and plenty of disinformation and ignorance to be had on the full to overflowing intertubes, but why does the mainstream have to be front and centre leading the charge? Because you see, The Oz, in its relentless search for disinformation, has faithfully reprinted much of Leake's work, but when it comes to disavowing it, seems slow to move, as Crikey has pointed out.

Meanwhile, as a result, I'm terribly worried about The Times paywall.

You see, if you head off there, you get an invitation to log in or register for a free preview, but you have no idea of what's inside, because Chairman Rupert has blocked Google from allowing its articles to appear in search engines (here).

Meanwhile, The Australian is cheerfully breaching the paywall, by publishing such learned treatises from The Times as this one by Ross Clark, Why are the nuts on Knut's case?, which popped up today in the rag.

What's Chairman Rupert going to do about this kind of treachery?

More to the point perhaps, is what is he going to do about a writer who thinks it's ever so engaging to start off a piece saying I am no expert in ursine psychology, and immediately purports to have an expert understanding of ursine psychology, and the joyful pleasures of animals locked in zoos.

But it did give me an idea for a solution. Can someone please lock Ross Clark up in a zoo for a year so that we can have the pleasure of developing expertise in Clarkian psychology? Then we can scribble sentences like this:

OK, Clark is an oddity with no chance of survival if he were released into the wild. But so what? It doesn't make it cruel, because he is never going to be released.

Or how about this on the benefits of zoos for Murdoch hacks?

Far from degenerating into lunacy, many journalists live healthier and far longer lives than they would otherwise have done. And of course zoos save whole tribes of journalists; if there had been zoos to take in the last breeding pairs of scribblers for Adelaide's The News we would still have the species now.

Far from denouncing zoos, we should be valuing them as little pockets of civilisation where Murdoch hacks can thrive even if they begin to fail in the hell hole that is the wild.

Come to think of it, this could be the entire solution for Leake, the environment, and The Australian. Lock the entire menagerie in zoos all over the world, so people can come and poke and prod and marvel at the beasts within ...

Why it'd be even better than a paywall, and well worth the expense ...

At which point, surely it's time to celebrate Jorge Luis Borges Book of Imaginary Beings, and also T. H. White's The Book of Beasts, which you can find here and in Google books here.

Here's a dragon and a viper worthy of a medievalist or a Murdochian bestiary.

Julia Gillard, and a roll call of Oz pundits chattering away into their coffee ...

Naturally the chattering classes and the punditocracy are in the middle of a field day, and as always, we turned to The Australian for a guide to all the fair and balanced opinions doing the rounds.

Where better to start than with Dennis Shanahan, and Puppet tag and past errors loom for leader.

By golly, the puppet tag for Julia Gillard was fast out of the gate. And it turns out that everything that went wrong when Chairman Rudd was in charge wasn't his fault - Julia Gillard was the master tactician in the cabinet gang of four, her spirit infusing every mistake and error, as the puppet chairman did her bidding. And yes by golly, it wasn't long before the "faceless men" line also gets a trot, more like a canter, even though last night I swear I distinctly saw Bill Shorten on the mobile organising the charge.

The idea of "faceless men" deciding the Labor leadership is a powerful and damaging image and the Opposition Leader pounced on it yesterday to paint Gillard as a captive of factional warlords and union bosses.

Indeed. The faceless men of Labor parliamentary performers. No doubt thanks to the lack of coverage by The Australian. Well there are many things you might say about Bill Shorten, his conduct as a minister, his marriage, his way with relationships, and his height, but faceless? Is he trying out to replace Nicholas Cage in the sequel to Face/Off? And ditto the rest of the rat pack on their mobile phones ...

Is it just by chance that Tony Abbott is on radio this very minute talking of faceless men and political patronage? One thing you have to say with respect - as an echo machine, Dennis Shanahan makes the perfect bit of mountain rock.

Hey ho, nonny no, on we go, and lordy, I see that they've wheeled out Janet Albrechtsen for a special edition OK, let's take a reality check.

Okay, let's take a reality check. What do you expect Albrechtsen to say, apart from bitch and moan and whine? While lading in the standard cliched talking points, perhaps over a coffee in a quiet up market inner urban retreat?

Here again we have a lesson about the disconnect between the so-called progressive class and the rest of Australia. While the former will love Gillard for the gender factor, outside the cafes of Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney, gender may not be an ace card.

Yep, it's an elitist, a lawyer no less, lecturing the elite about their elitism in an elite way in an ostensibly elitist "leading the way on the national debate" rag not worthy of fish and chips.

Albrechtsen is quick to add to Shanahan's strategies for attack dog Abbott. As well as Gillard being one of the gang of four, with all the errors and mistakes that involves, she was also part of the Mark Latham fiasco.

Here, the crosses against Gillard start to mount up. Gillard, as deputy prime minister and a member of Rudd's gang of four, played a central role in the Rudd fiasco. While, she has acknowledged the mistakes, there's no getting away from the fact she is part of the overspending incompetence of the school buildings program, the debacle of the delay of the emissions trading system and the mining tax miscalculation.

And so on and so forth. Albrechtsen allows Gillard's mother a gin and tonic in celebration - why she even permits Gillard to have a gin and tonic or a beer - but never a latte, heaven's to betsy, never a latte - but the claws are out. They're called "cold, hard policy outcomes" but let's just cut to the chase and call them claws.

Who's next? Why lordy lordy there's Arthur Sinodinos, as fair and balanced a worker for John Howard as can be found, and he offers up Can Labor's tigress change her stripes?

Indoodie. Can pundit leopards change their spots, can zebras lose their cross hatching, and can the chattering commentariat class ever exhaust the meaningless, implicitly demeaning, metaphor?

Sinodinos distinguishes himself by breaching Godwin's law, in as exemplary a fashion as can be imagined:

Labor powerbrokers saw the polls and blinked. It became save-the-furniture time. Imagine this lot running Britain in 1940, when Adolf Hitler looked unstoppable. Gillard will now rise or fall according to the polls.

Dearie me, did Sinodinos even bother to check that it was Neville Chamberlain, a conservative politician, who ran Britian during the "phoney war" stage, and as late as April 1940, after putting together a war cabinet, enjoyed ratings of almost 60%? It was only in May 1940 that Chamberlain left the stage, but let's be fair in our analogies - when it was save the furniture time, and Adolf Hitler looked unstoppable, it was a conservative that had to be toppled.

Meanwhile, Sinodinos handily outlines an attack strategy for Tony Abbott to pursue. So much free advice for Liberal party tacticians in the pages of The Australian, along with the thought that Tony Abbott will offer more "light and shade". Dearie me, is that code for heaven and hell?

Turn to Niki Savva, and you get Red Maggie's rise raises great expectations.

Uh huh. You know on the pond we often make jokes about things like hairdos. Like calling the presenter of the 7.30 Report a carrot top. It's a simple minded thing, the kind of juvenile humour you expect from a simple minded blogger addicted to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. No harm is intended, but also surely no insight is expected from such stupidities. Certainly it's not the level of opinion-making you'd expect from the Oz punditocracy.

Tough, charismatic, articulate, ruthless, razor sharp in tongue and mind, undoubtedly effective. And to top it all off, an immaculate hairdo. Red Maggie.

Can I just do a Jon Stewart double beat here right now? Can you see the way he looks at the camera like a mournful puppy as the words Red Maggie appear on the screen next to him? Along with a picture of a red and white magpie?

Go on Nikki, hit us with another insight, preferably feminist:

Gillard will disband the kitchen cabinet. She's not very comfortable in kitchens anyway.

Calling Jon Stewart. Come on down ...

Moving right along, why here's The Australian's editorial column Julia Gillard's job is to rebuild Labor:

The Prime Minister must return the party to the Centre

Oh yes, the dangerous extremist socialist radical communist Chairman Rudd had swung the party out to the extreme left, what with his mingling with conservative Christians, and offering up the agrarian nationalists a broadband network which will roll out in country areas first, and planning a gigantic filter to keep the children safe, and refusing to outbid Tony Abbott in how much he would pay stay at home moms ...

Hey, hang on, that sounds like he was pursuing some kind of insidious radical right wing agenda ...

But if Gillard returns the party to The Australian's centre, won't that be a centre somewhere to the right of Ghengis Khan? Out in the dead heart, where if a bleeding dole bludging boat person asks for a drink of water, they'll be kicked in the shins for being lazy and scruffy and ... threatening ...

Oh dear, I can see that I'm not one of those ordinary Australians who scribble for and buy the rag - circulation for the weekend edition around the 300,000 mark (here), weekdays hovering around the 130,000 mark (here) - and am utterly like the other 20 million dinkum Aussies who couldn't give a toss what's written in the rag and would rather spend their hard cash on a useful box of tissues.

No, I guess I'm one of those progressive out of touch with the vast majority of the electorate - unlike The Australian's rampant circulation figures - contaminated by moral opportunism and only too ready to allege that anyone who doesn't agree with me must be morally corrupt.

Yep, it's another day in The Australian's alternative universe. What a pity so few Australians bother to fork out hard cash to take a holiday in that universe.

You buy The Australian? Really?

Please explain. When did you stop asking questions?

Be warned. The advertisement below is about as hard core and sickening pornography as you might be confronted with anywhere in the known universe, so outrageously shocking and yet so insidiously twee, you might well be forced to rush, barfing as you run, out into the corridor, startling the public servants around you as they suckle on the teat of the taxpayer.

Alternatively you could resolve to take out a fatwah on Phillip Adams ...

Tory Maguire, Afghanistan, and make sure you know you'll win before you do anything ...

(Above: how to win a war. Go showbiz, and make sure you're on the same page as Gaga as she shows how to handle weaponry).

Speaking of people rushing late to the scene of an accident and wondering what it's all about, look no further than Tory Maguire and her column Is the Afghan war in the hands of cowboys?

As she meanders down to the end of the piece, Maguire lands on this penetrating thought:

What would be excellent would be if we got to hear McCrystal’s assessment of the mission. Not in a coded jibe at his boss in Rolling Stone, but in a clear and concise manner.

Not much point in that, since the rooster McCrystal is now a feather duster, of use only in dusting off his chair for General David Petraeus. (Generals Change But Strategy Doesn't In Afghanistan).

Not that the plaintive Maguire couldn't have found out plenty about McCrystal's thinking if she'd simply bothered to consult the full to overflowing intertubes.

But then the level of fatuity in Maguire's piece might have dropped. Here she is opening up her observations:

Much is being read into a couple of lines in the feature piece, in which McChrystal and his staff made some seemingly benign but inappropriate comments about the President and his Vice President Joe Biden.

Seemingly benign? In the sense of a kind and gentle disposition? Or in the way of showing gentleness and mildness? Or perhaps in the meaning tending to exert a beneficial, or even a favourable influence? Or perhaps in the way of having little or no detrimental effect, harmless?

Well bite me on the bum, or should that be get bitten Tory. It seems you're unprepared, and quite frankly we're disappointed in you. Reading you - well that time is painful, as it seems we're selling an unsellable position. We like to think of you as a wounded animal, at least when we're not feeling betrayed. There's no doubt about it, you're as silly as those wimps in the White House.

And so on and so on. And sure a lot of the quotes are from unnamed advisors around McChrystal, and only a few are directly from McChrystal, but when you get too close to the media sun, expect the wax on the wings to melt a little.

When Harry S. Truman clipped the wings of General Douglas MacArthur and ordered him back home, it caused him a lot of flack and produced the usual calls for impeachment, but thank the lord MacArthur never had a chance to bring on a third world war and sort out the Communists there and then.

Meanwhile, Maguire gets herself caught in a logic trap:

The author of the piece, Michael Hastings, says McChrystal and his team were sending a message to Obama that “there are serious sceptics [about the war] in the highest levels of his staff”.

If that’s true, we deserve to know what has prompted that scepticism.

Um, so the President wants a serious sceptic to run his war in Afghanistan? Well that'd be a first.

And why might some of the people on McChrystal's staff be sceptical?

Lordy who could work that one out. It's really tough. Perhaps it's because the war's gone so swimmingly well these past nine years? As it did for the Russians before the Americans? And for the British before the Russians?

Roll me downhill and beat me with a feather, we must be in company with one of the pundits from The Punch, Australia's most retrograde conversation.

Maguire ends her plaintive whine with this plaintive plea:

The Australian Diggers already there, and the ones that may end up joining them, deserve to know they’re not fighting a losing battle.

Roll that one around in your head for awhile. The diggers, it seems, stout hearted and all, should only head off to war if they know they're not fighting in a losing battle.

Damn, if only we knew we were going to lose in Vietnam, we wouldn't have bothered going. As for the Korean war ... still not settled ... should we have shown up for a stalemate? Is a draw in chess just as bad as fighting a losing battle?

The not so hidden element in all this is of course the Australia-United States alliance. So long as the USA retains an interest in the balancing act between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, and keeps its army on the ground in country, Australia will tag along, never mind the potential futility of the exercise.

The Labor party could no more tarnish the alliance than Tony Abbott, and if either faltered, then the other side would seize on it, and run the betrayal to ground like a fox given a touch up by a pack of scent hounds. It was part of John Howard's cunning to do a tour of Iraq with minimal casualties, and now with a few Australian deaths in Afghanistan, the punditocracy are just starting to wake up to the news that there's a real war happening, and people are killed, and now it's not just people at wedding parties and funerals being taken out by Predators ...

So what on earth are we to make of this insight, as reported in the Herald's piece on Hastings?

Mr Obama named General McChrystal as commander in May 2009 to bring a fresh approach to the struggling Afghan campaign, but Hastings said the relationship "has been strained from the beginning".

"I think the frustration is that the President really believes in the mission in Afghanistan. That, I think, is at the root of the problem," he told NBC.

The root of the problem is that Obama believes in the mission in Afghanistan? And accordingly sacks a general who doesn't?

Pass me the kool aid, I need a deep hearty swig.

You see, in the old days, if the military had expressed this kind of white feather shirking attitude, the Republicans would have flailed them alive. But now Obama's a problem because he's drunk the George Bush kool aid and believes that there's a job to be done in Afghanistan?

Well, here at the pond we understand the importance of the mission.

The supply lines for the opium and heroin trade have to be kept open, and corrupt warlords supported, chief amongst them Karzai, while all the time blathering about democracy, as if democracy was remotely the name of the game, and if that's not important enough, the recently re-floated, if aged news that Afghanistan has mineral wealth will have to do as an explanation of why the course must be stayed ...

Meanwhile, General McChyrstal will long be remembered for his epic war with PowerPoint ... (We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint).

Now there's the way to win a war ...

Chairman Rudd, Julia Gillard, and coming up behind Miranda the Devine and Gen Y ...

Everybody at the pond is terribly excited by all the squawking and the polling and the balloting.

It seems that we totally missed the feminist point of Janet Albrechtsen's column If Only Pollies had Maggie's backbone:

... let's be blunt. It's not at all clear that political leaders today, most of them men, have Thatcher's balls when it comes to transforming their sclerotic economies.

This carefully encrypted message, which probably required decryption using an Enigma machine, is no doubt what inspired Julia Gillard to make her lunge at Chairman Rudd. The heavily ballsed Gillard clearly aspires to emulate Maggie Thatcher, and the covert, coded message of support from Albrechtsen no doubt gave her supreme comfort.

Janet Albrechtsen, a rallying point for redheaded Labor politicians, a feminist at the redoubt. Who'da thunk it? Just remember you read it here first at the pond.

Meanwhile, Peter van Onselen's column Julia may have missed the bus last night also shared the front page with the Oz's brand new rotating whirlygig roundabout of images and stories, naturally featuring Chairman Rudd and putatitve Chairwoman Gillard:

That's what happens when you refresh some parts of the front digital page, and not others, and leave poor old Peter dangling under the masthead, and oh the dangerous art of casting the runes of political prophecy:

... if Labor loses the next election and this government becomes a oncer, the caucus meeting will be remembered as the moment when Labor MPs squibbed on their duty to themselves, and Julia Gillard cast herself as a wimp who might never become prime minister, as someone unwilling to strike even when it was in her and her party's best interests to do so ...

...By not challenging, Gillard has chosen what appears to be the risk-free approach, but she must be nervous about Rudd's capacity to do what's necessary to retain Labor's slender nine-seat margin. If he can't and Labor is thrust back into opposition after one term, Rudd's name will be mud inside the wider labour movement. But Gillard also will find it difficult to retain her credibility.

Sure, he gave himself a little out in his last sentence - hoping that Gillard would become the first opposition leader to go on to become prime minister, or some such nonsense - but it's one reason why here at the pond, we very rarely give in to the temptation to utter predictions, prophesies, prognostications or pronouncements.

Only a day old, the digital ink barely dry on the iPad, the papers still waiting to be turned into wrapping for fish and chips, and the world's moved on.

But as always the pundits scribble and scribble, and never mind what happened yesterday, but always look to tomorrow with fresh hope and certitude. Why am I reminded of the English Edwardians, enjoying the first decade of the new century, only to discover that all that industriousness and peaceful English déjeuner sur l'herbe led directly to World War I.

Was it only a few days ago that the fatuous Henry Ergas famously and fatuously quoted A statesmen, Bismarck famously observed, is a politician who thinks of his grandchildren. (here).

Was this merely a reference to the path trodden by Bismarck as he sired three children who sired an abundance of children ready, along with a unified Germany, to participate in the first and even the second world wars, or simply a snide Bill Heffernan style Delpic oracle style anticipation of Julia Gillard coming to power? Hey Bill, feeling knackered today?

Ah well, we've long dreamed of the day that Australia might have a female Prime Minister, and now here it is. We wish we could say we'd been up all night personning the phone for Chairman Rudd, getting the numbers up, but truth to tell, it was all those door stoppers outside the church and hanging around with the Jim Wallace ACL crowd that did him in for us a long time ago.

Here at the pond we like our politicians lightly buttered with a delicate hint of secularism and a spicy robust refusal to cater to the religious crowd.

But stay, the result still hovers in the air, and meantime, we've got other fish to fry, poor hapless columnists who filed their copy early, and so couldn't join in the squawking.

Yes come on down Miranda the Devine, with Flirty old men need to back off. What's this? The Devine has gone feminist. The centre won't hold, the world is turned topsy turvy, everything is upside down. Chairman Rudd gone south, and the Devine bashing men, the days of talk of hapless men and wifely duties seemingly long in the distant past (but still available here under the header Wifely duties spark firestorm after therapist's book, in which the Devine naturally took the most recalcitrant position possible).

But there the Devine is, bashing up Mack McInnes, one time David Jones' CEO, as being in the last cohort of dinosaur males, and celebrating the strength and resilience of Gen Y women, when once she would have dismissed them as screen deadened and brain dead Gen Y, synapses snapped, and long ago ruined by computer games and all the screens in the house.

In her usual inimitable remarkable way, the Devine gets it wrong by making it a generational issue, clearly disturbed by her own personal experiences, and she wraps it up with these two pars:

Some of the world's most charming people are men who love women too much. They might not make the greatest husbands, but many women enjoy their attention, so we shouldn't be out to stigmatise energetic heterosexuality.

But after years of getting away with being sleazy, men over 40 are going to have to get used to keeping their hands (and bellies) to themselves around young women.

Indeed. Let's not stigmatise energetic heterosexuality, and let's not stigmatise energetic homosexuality. But let's just do a little editorial job on the Devine's last lines:

Sleazy men are going to have to get used to keeping their hands (and bellies) to themselves around indifferent women.

Sure, it lacks punch, sure it lacks oomph, sure it lacks a thesis, sure it's a statement of the bleeding obvious. But that's what makes the Devine's musings so astute. Wrapping up the banal and the obvious in some kind of generational conflict to add spice to the verbiage.

You see, it's not just a question of caricatured older generation vs younger generation, or stereotypical older males harassing sweet younger things. It's not just older men in positions of power, though sometimes they're the worst offenders, but anyone in a power situation who choses to exercise that power in a sexual way on an unwilling recipient ... or anyone simply harassing anyone else ... and a Gen Y man or woman can do that to another Gen Y woman or man.

And by the way, can someone please explain to the Devine that her current infatuation with Gen Y is as repugnant and repellent as her past infatuation with Susan Greenfield's considered analysis that they were brain dead? She's showing all the signs of inter-generational Stockholm syndrome ...

Don't believe me?

Julia, Julia! Come quick. Look at what Miranda the Devine wrote, you tell her Julia!

Oh yes Australia's first female Governor General swearing in Australia's first female Prime Minister. Now that'll be a sight to see ...

(Below: meanwhile Miranda the Devine, accompanied by the purifying power of bottled water shipped in at vast expense).

Janet Albrechtsen, Margaret Thatcher, fat cats and wretched fashions ...

(Above: no, please, we don't want candy. Thanks to Janet Albrechtsen, we're on an abstemious ascetic anti-eighties diet).

Every so often, a header catches the eye at the pond.

Like Shaun Carney's Amid the poll frenzy, a nation yearns for inspired leadership.

Read down through the standard reading of the runes, aka poll gazing and poll divining, and you come to a rhetorical flourish at the end of the piece. Speaking of opinion poll releases, and the loud, often empty and irrational media buzz that accompanies them - a buzz to which he contributes - Carney concludes:

But if you fail, (to shut out the buzz) take heart from the fact that it will all come to an end, on election day, when there will be only one reality: the official result. Meanwhile, a nation quietly yearns for genuine, inspired political leadership.

Yep, somehow Carney can manage to discern the quiet yearning of the nation. Is it in the air? Did he need a divining rod? Can you find it as easily as the way the rod twitches in the presence of water underground.

Who's to know? Could the nation be quietly yearning for political commentators to just shut up and crawl into a nearby fox hole? Could the nation be quietly yearning for sporting success, instead of fielding the current crop of losers? Could the nation be quietly yearning for the end of winter and the return of a nice globally warmed hot summer?

Well it almost goes without saying that Janet Albrechtsen knows what the nation wants, or at least needs, and that's Margaret Thatcher.

If only pollies had Maggie's backbone, she muses, then immediately spoils the message with distracting details:

Excellent idea. Time travel, that is. Given the fiscal problems facing European economies, reliving the 80s era of Duran Duran, MTV, frizzy hair, high-waisted jeans and Margaret Thatcher makes eminent sense right now.

Dearie me, Margaret Thatcher as the Duran Duran, MTV, frizzy hair and high waisted jeans of politics?

Nope, it's all about that quiet yearning for leadership:

Instead of slaying the former British prime minister, today's politicians should reacquaint themselves with her backbone. Actually, let's be blunt. It's not at all clear that political leaders today, most of them men, have Thatcher's balls when it comes to transforming their sclerotic economies.

Funnily enough, Albrechtsen's column is all about the need for financial rigour and for living within our means and fiscal rectitude, and severe budgeting, and austerity that would make a Puritan shrink in fear and the Amish mourn the lack of fun in the world.

As usual, instead of worrying about billionaire miners, and the fat cats of the eastern suburbs, and the fancy expenditure of well-heeled Murdoch columnists, Albrechtsen knows where to find the extravagance. You've guessed it. Public servants!

The delusion of public servants continues and the broader public has yet to accept a more fiscally sustainable role for government.

Instead, talk of austerity is met with knee-jerk opposition. Each time the catchcry from public servants is the same. They scream about attacks against their rights, against their salaries, welfare and public services. They scream about their innocence, pronounce that "public servants didn't create the crisis" and point the finger at greedy banks. It's true that banks made plenty of mistakes. But instead of looking only at Wall Street excess and drafting up Robin Hood taxes, it's time to talk about government excess, too.

Uh huh. That'd be right. You might have missed the loud disclaimer attached to the column indicating Albrecthsen's deep and abiding interest in banking. You see, Albrechtsen is married to John O'Sullivan, one time senior Freehills partner. Here's The Age, back in 2005, in Critical voice gets keys to citadel:

After 25 years with Freehills, in October 2003 O'Sullivan was appointed the general counsel of the Commonwealth Bank, where he advises chief executive David Murray and the board on legal matters and heads the bank's legal team.

Reportedly one of the highest-paid lawyers in the country - he has a remuneration package worth $700,000 a year plus various other sweeteners, including shares worth about $1 million and a $400,000 signing-on fee - O'Sullivan, 50, is also well connected in Canberra, having led the Commonwealth's legal team for the sale of the first two public offerings in Telstra, and the $5 billion sale of Sydney Airport.

Now in polite company, it's never done to draw attention to personal circumstances in an argument. Generic references to fat cat public services, and broad rhetorical flourishes about greedy excess are considered fair game, but you never play the person, not even if they pocket a nice little earner.

Who knows how much Albrechtsen gets paid? Let's just say it isn't likely to be a humble pension.

You see, it it's a bit like all those infamous references to dole bludgers and ne'er do wells making out like bandits and living grand life styles on a couple of hundred bucks a week. All this talk by fat cats of other fat cats making out like bandits is just so much whimsical grand standing, as is the harsh rhetoric for all of us to draw in our belts, live within our means, suffer on a pittance and so on and so forth. All except the rich.

Yet in terms of societal value, what on earth is the value of a Janet Albrechtsen column to the world, apart from the outrage and comments it provokes, and the frenzied hits that drive the punters to the associated advertisements?

This week it's a round robin header featuring bankers v. lawyers v. public servants, with Janet Albrechtsen performing the smack downs, and some yearning for Thatcher, and that's it? Why there's more value in the work of a garbage collector being paid fuck all by the local council.

It's okay, I suppose, if you read this kind of nonsense for fun, and remember that it was a poll tax that did Margaret Thatcher down - a tax in which property tax rates were made uniform, with the same amount charged to every individual resident, and a residential head tax. We tend to forget the dying days of the Thatcher regime, as proponents celebrate the mythology of Thatcherism:

Thatcher's system of local taxation was among the most unpopular policies of her premiership with working class and poorer citizens unable to pay the new tax and some being sent to Prison for non payment. The central Government capped rates resulting in charges of partisanship and the alienation of small-government Conservatives. The Prime Minister's popularity declined in 1989 as she continued to refuse to compromise on the tax. Unrest mounted and ordinary British people young and old took to the streets to demonstrate, the demonstrators were met with horse mounted Police in riot gear and demonstration turned to riots at Trafalgar Square, London, on 31 March 1990; more than 100,000 protesters attended and more than 400 people were arrested. (here).

In a chequered career, one of my jobs involved explaining to hapless workers why the cupboard was bare, the kitty empty, and why they needed to work for the smell of an oily rag in an abstemious fashion for the good of the company and thereby the good of the country.

Well it was a job, and someone had to do it, and you can rely on fat cat commentariat columnists to do the same kind of line in their line of work:

For years, European governments lauded their socially progressive model. Translated into English that model means workers retiring too early, public servants being paid too much, overly generous pensions and inflexible labour laws.

For years, economic rationalists warned that the bill would eventually cripple Europe. That bill has arrived and the grand total is a sovereign debt crisis highlighting a harsh reality: there is no human right to high salaries and cosy conditions that leave countries on the brink of bankruptcy.

Um, so instead of starting with public servants, can we start with the fat cat bankers and the lawyers, and perhaps above all the excessive fees charged by commentariat columnists to upload drivel into their columns?

How about fat cat miners? Surely we can start with them, as they make out like bandits plundering one off Australian resources?

No, no, you goose, the miners are on a sacred mission to generate wealth for billionaires, so that they can afford the time to riot in the streets, and a driver to get their Bentley to the appointed place for the rioting:

Australia has its own problems with government excess. Whether it's sovereign debt or sovereign risk, the problem is the same poor government policy. The Rudd government's path to deficit reduction is as poor as it gets: nationalise 40 per cent of mining losses and slap a prohibitive tax on an industry that drives Australia's economic prosperity. It fits a pattern of Rudd-style excess, an old-fashioned, big spending, redistributive, interventionist government. On Monday, an Associated Press headline said it all: "Canada's economy is suddenly the envy of the world". Australia used to attract headlines like that.

And so there we have it. Unendurable yearning for a time when the British rioted in the streets, as a way of showing how individuals should do more:

Yes, by all means travel back in time. Thatcher circa 1980s. Kenneth Baker, a former Thatcher minister, summed up his boss as driven more by good instincts than ideology. She understood that the state should do less and the individual should do more. The state should spend less so that the individual could spend more. And the state should own less so that the individual could own more. When the unions flexed their muscle, she didn't flinch.

Really? Must we really travel back in time to those hideous times?

... a time when British bands such as Haircut 100 and Bow Wow Wow - decked out in op-shop bricolage with rags in their side-swept 'dos - ruled the waves ... The '80s - a decade that also gave us fingerless gloves, tangerine eyeshadow, "Lady Di" frilly blouses, naff "Choose Life" T-shirts and power-suited babes - is having a revival ... (here).

Oh god, Margaret Thatcher and hideous fashions. Is this why Janet Albrechtsen exists? To remind us of the worst of humanity? It is, it is ...

Recall what Thatcher told the Conservative Party conference on October 10, 1980, as pressure mounted for her to soften her resolve for reform. "For those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase the U-turn, I have only one thing to say. You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning." Thirty years later, with unions primed for battle, name just one political leader with that kind of political courage. Depressing, isn't it.

Depressing, isn't it? Luckily when it comes to yearning for a mythological past, this lady's not for turning ...

The Australian, firmly steering the ship of state to the right in a hard circle ...

There's a theory that in the future, news will be free, and the only value to be found in newspapers online will be the 'value-add' of their pundits and commentators.

As a theory it didn't hold much water when the New York Times tried to charge for the content of its chattering commentariat class. Spring for a David Brooks opinion? Why not try to sell me a cilice instead?

But it does raise the question as to what punters will be springing for when The Australian elevates its slow to arrive paywall around its precious must have content.

Today's as good a day as any to take a look at the wares on offer, and you have to wonder whether you might not be better off just getting a feed from the Liberal party's media centre.

There's Niki Savva launching into Chairman Rudd with Nobody laughs when PM jokes about revenge, wherein she discovers that politicians and big business know how to deliver coathangers, and then Michael Stutchbury announces in No pay equity in mining boom that Julia Gillard's move to reduce the gender gap is bad for the economy. After all, let's face it, any attempt to reduce the gender gap is just the bitching of the "new industrial feminists".

Well I suppose that makes a difference to the bitching of agrarian feminists and pre-industrial and luddite and syndico-anarchist feminists.

Everything is grand in the job world for women, especially for teachers and nurses, which Stutchbury explains, are "caring" professions. Yep, you send your kids off to school, not for an education but for a kind of extended, albeit expensive, day care.

We could go on for hours dissecting and nitpicking the rampant chauvinism - in its modern sexist sense - embedded in the musings of Stutchbury, but time waits for no scribbling man, and away we must rush to Malcolm Colless's Liberal hardheads thrash out strategy, wherein Colless acts as a cheerleader for coalition tacticians.

But if you spend too much time brooding about Colless urging strict party discipline as an essential requirement for defeating the Ruddster - do they pay him for his coaching rather than his scribbling skills? - then you'll miss some quality time with the resident war mongers, as Greg Sheridan charts a Long road ahead to win the war. That's right, we haven't been in Afghanistan nearly long enough yet to secure the supply lines for the opium and heroin trade.

Meanwhile, Amanda Hodge is determined to pump up the volume in Our small yet critical presence, where the Aussies, oi, oi, oi, are making all the difference in Afghanistan.

But wait, if you brood too long about the jolly successful campaign in Afghanistan, then you might not have time for Peter van Onselen's Julia needs to act to save the party, written with the kind of rhetorical flourish we usually associate with Chicken Little announcing that the sky is falling down. It seems Julia is defying the will of the people, who somehow miraculously have channeled their entire being and thinking into that mighty vessel van Onselen. Well I guess it beats attending a spiritualist seance to find out about political directions and imperatives.

But wait, I know you always demand an extra set of steak knives when reading opinion pieces, and of course there's more as Dennis Shanahan offers up a firm, incisive ALP living on false hopes, in much the same way as Shanahan himself can only read the runes, or decipher the I Ching in one myopic way.

It's almost a relief to get to PM flaunts his linguistic flair for a joke about shit storms and Chinese tones.

Meanwhile, if you happened to be an ultra masochist, you could drop in on the editorials, where the advice to People in glass houses ... is that they should stop stop throwing rocks at billionaire miners, because they're fragile possums, poor things, along with the news in Kevin can't see we've changed that the Labor party is working off an outdated template of Australia, as opposed to John Howard, who worked off the brand spanking new modern template of a nineteen fifties suburban picket fence.

It would be tempting to have purchased the paper, if only so it could be flung aside, while muttering "drivel, so much drivel sir, of a right wing kind."

Ironically the only column of interest is one penned by John Mendoza, Mental health lacks cash, echoed in a righteous editorial This cry for help must be heard, as the Labor government pursues the kind of mental health free market approach enshrined by John Howard and TonyAbbott.

The irony? The only time The Australian can countenance talk of socialist medicine and public expenditure on health is when it can be used as a baseball bat on the federal government.

Bring on the paywall. Is it any wonder a small dedicated sensible minority pay for The New York Review of Books, and watch Jon Stewart for free?

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, get me to read eight columns in The Australian, what exactly did you put in that fucking moonshine juice? Or am I a fucking idiot?

And now since it's too tiring to contemplate the existence of The Australian, here's Jon Stewart for some light relief, and while I won't do a spoiler about the punch line, it has something to do with health!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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Gerard Henderson, Tony Abbott, Chairman Rudd and a heavenly host of sneering secularists ...

(Above: Tony Abbott in earlier days at St Patrick's Seminary Manly, a building that's now gone secular and has hosted fiendish secularist events!)

Every morning, I get up, look into the mirror and put on a sneer.

I think I'm getting the hang of it, the scornful facial expression characterised by a slight raising of one corner of the upper lip. Derisive, contemptuous sneer in place, I'm ready to face the world, but not of course before settling down to an inner west latte, which sometimes puts a nice streak across the sneer.

Later in the day, I'll sip on a wine - chardonnay is obligatory, but a subtle deviance to an NZ sav blanc expresses a suitable sneering hostility to Australia and all it stands for (as does cheering NZ on in the World Cup).

Some days I might prefer a martini, shaken but not stirred ... oops, that puts me in the wrong genre. Can't do the spy stereotype when we're busy doing the inner west secularist routine ...

Yes, brothers and sisters, what else could have caused this sneering outburst of sniggering sneering cynicism than reading the pious, wide eyed, innocent pearly gates true believing scribbling of arch ponce and prattling Polonius Gerard Henderson? As in Here God is anything but dead:

Among the inner-city types who frequent taxpayer subsidised literary festivals, what Michael Burleigh has called sneering secularism is all the rage. Witness the recent successful tours to Australia of such proselytising atheists as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

The teachings of Dawkins and Hitchens seem to have enthused secular flocks in Ultimo or Melbourne's Brunswick.

But not so much in the outer suburbs and regional centres where God is anything but dead.

Uh huh. Here we go again. But hang on, who scribbled this nonsense?

Religion in Australia has invariably been a private affair, as befits an officially secular society. Some prime ministers have been believers but none projected their religious views on to society in general.

The list includes the Catholics Jim Scullin and Joseph Lyons and such Protestants as Stanley Melbourne Bruce and Robert Menzies.

Yes, it's the same goose. You see, Australia is officially secular, which, you would think, makes the entire country, its officialdom and bumbling bureaucrats, part of a sneeringly secular society, where none dare project their religious views on society in general.

That's why the Lord's Prayer isn't read out at the start of Parliament each day! That's how proudly and officially secular this country is! But do they have to start with a Rolf Harris wobble board song? Surely patriotism can only go so far ...

But in his hatred of inner city types - is that what happens when watching trendies sip lattes from your inner city office? - and his love of Penrith - we hear he's certain to shift there in the next decade or three - Henderson never worries about logic.

He is, in his own reflexive way, as ignorant and as reflexively reactive as a redneck confronted by a flock of hippies.

Because you see, having peddled the official line about a secular society, he then goes on to trumpet - with a peculiar elephantine trumpeting - the joys and virtues of politicians from both sides of the house pandering to Christians:

The Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader spoke and answered questions about the values that should define Australia after the election. The function was webcast to thousands of Christians at hundreds of churches.

Rudd and Abbott are both busy. They would not give up this amount of time if they did not believe the audience was important or if they felt uncomfortable talking as Christians to other Christians.

Naturally when I put on my secularist sneer for the day, I feel deeply uncomfortable talking to Christians. Whenever I go in to my local op shop and talk with the minister personning the shop, he sometimes looks at me oddly, perhaps wondering about my sneer. I explain that I'm deeply uncomfortable talking to him, seeing as how Australia is officially secular and he represents everything that's wrong with the country, seeing as how he undermines its secular status on a daily basis. Is that why he won't knock ten per cent off the knickknacks on offer?

Meantime, as you'd expect from our prattling Polonius, Henderson is off playing at history, in this case the religious history of chairman Rudd. Eek, he doesn't seem to find it noteworthy that the Marist Brother's College in which the good chairman was a boarder is the inner west suburb of Ashgrove. At last the mystery of Rudd's inner west tendencies is explained. He's just posing at religion ...

One thing's certain. When Henderson writes about religion, his sniffy snooting prancing about becomes distinctly uncomfortable. If you refract everything through politics and ideology, theology is a minefield. Scribbling about the chairman's love of German Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Henderson offers up this:

... Bonhoeffer supported the laudable move to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Moreover, the Lutheran pastor was a fervent opponent of abortion.

Yes, and Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. As a couple of non sequiturs of the more meaningless kind, ain't they grand.

Henderson plays a similar hand with Abbott:

Abbott was brought up a Catholic. As the Opposition Leader makes it clear in his book Battlelines, he regards himself as an imperfect Catholic.

This is not an unusual position for a member of a faith which regards sin as a manifestation of The Fall of mankind and believes in confession (or reconciliation) leading to eventual redemption. In this sense, all Catholics - including the Pope himself - are imperfect. It's just some are more imperfect than others.

Oh amen to that brother. And hallelujah to Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden and the apple and snakes and tricky women and the whole damn thing ...

But you see this is also part of Henderson's bizarre attempt to extricate the politicians from the Christian vote trolling they indulged in last night, in a trend begun by Howard and Costello, and now continuing on to the tune of the Christian lobby:

In Battlelines, Abbott described the Catholic political activist B.A. Santamaria as his mentor. Yet Santamaria had little time for the Liberal Party and declined to support Abbott's decision to contest preselection in 1994. What's more, Abbott has little of his mentor's zeal. Like the Prime Minister, Abbott is a pragmatic politician.

Oh yes, the makeover continues. It seems Mr. Abbott no longer sneaks in the back door to a briefing from the Pellites and then can't even recall doing the meeting. No zealot him, just a pragmatic politician ... with a series of conservative Catholic stances ... ready to hang out with the Jim Wallace crowd, even if a lot of fundie proddies would think him a heretic worshipping at the whore of Babylon, and destined for an eternity of hell ...

Oh ain't religion grand in its own infinitely forgiving way ...

But hey, forget all that stuff about pragmatic politicians. Henderson's just remembered why it's okay to be religious conviction politician, even if it's Rudd who does the church door stoppers and Abbott who's trying to shake off the Catholic past he used to drape around his neck, and preen and parade about as he promenaded through policy issues:

There is little doubt Rudd's ability to present himself as an economic and social conservative in the lead-up to the 2007 election helped Labor to its stunning victory. This time around, the Coalition has a leader who is just as prepared to proclaim his faith in public as Rudd, even if, unlike the prime minister, he does not do media doorstops outside his local church on Sundays. The sneering secularists like to dismiss believers as idiots or worse. Yet Rudd and Abbott are among the most formally qualified politicians to hold leadership positions in Australia.

You see, all is forgiven, because they're shoving it to the sneering secularists, and both are primed to hold leadership positions in Australia. And if you think nobody likes them, be prepared for a surprise:

It is fashionable for members of the press gallery to refer to the unpopularity of the leaders of Labor and the Coalition. But both have an approval rating of about 40 per cent, which suggests most Australians are satisfied with the leaders of their party of choice.

Yes indeed, and it's only in cloud cuckoo land that we'd expect popularity figures to suggest actual popularity. Because unpopularity is, if you think about it, a kind of popularity, because after all it's not so much avoiding an F, or getting over the 50% mark, so much as avoiding a 30% popularity figure which might suggest 70% unpopularity, as opposed to say 60% unpopularity.

Hmm, must present this as argument to teacher as to why 40% is in fact a decent pass, and I'm now entitled to a High Distinction. At last, I'll get to pass maths! Thanks Hendo.

And now back to Hendo's deep cogitations. You know, I bet the prissy poncy prattler hates being called Hendo:

Political parties take believers seriously for a number of reasons - including the fact that most politicians have a better idea of what makes Australians tick than those members of the intelligentsia who deride all belief systems apart from their own secular ideologies.

Yes, there's nothing like a pretentious conservative git working out of Phillip street in the heart of Sydney to explain to the great unwashed what makes Australians tick, a prattling member of the intelligentsia of a conservative kind, running the Sydney Institute and hanging out with the toffs.

Oh dear, is it time to put on my sneering secularist face. Wait, wait, it's hard with a face convulsed with chuckles. Stop it, stop it, stop cracking the jokes Hendo, it's getting too hard to sneer ...

But at least you get one thing right. There can only ever be imperfect commentariat commentators in the world, and you surely know how to show off your imperfections, your irrational hatred and your sneering derision for all those who have belief systems apart from your own truly strange ideology ...

(Below: underneath the arches).

Why that image reminds me of a favourite song of my grandmother, who gasp, lived in a regional centre! Oh granny, pause while I put on my sneering face so I can sneer at you:

Underneath the Arches
I dream my dreams away.
Underneath the arches,
On cobblestones I lay.
Ev'ry night you'll find me,
Tired out and worn.
Happy when the daylight comes creeping,
Heralding the dawn.

Sleeping when it's raining,
And sleeping when it's fine,
I hear the trains rattling by above.
Pavement is my pillow,
No matter where I stray.
Underneath the Arches
I dream my dreams away.