The commentariat, and beware creeping socialism or possibly the Under Toad ...

(Above: click to enlarge, any brain damage the responsibility of the clicker).

So many distressing things in the news of late.

There was BHP making a cool $22.5 billion profit in a year, around half the cost of the NBN, (a project designed to have a lifespan a little longer than a year), as a way of proving once and for all to all those leftie greens out there that the mining industry is having the most miserable time, with the suffering beyond the imagining of these pitiful unempathetic wankers. Roll back the mining tax, roll it back now.

Naturally The Australian came out with the correct spin for such a dire situation, as Matt Chambers produced Sting in BHP's $23bn record


Yep, Chambers delivered a blunt warning - much more effective than a sharp warning - that rising wages are fuelling inflation, proving once again that when examining the entrails, always look for the bad news as a way of distracting from the gigantic, ginormous size of the profit.

Indeed where would we all be without Harry Potter's magic cloak of invisibility and dire warnings that rising wages are fuelling inflation and could hold back an economy already suffering from falling productivity.

Oh it takes a special skill to produce doom and gloom, and urge the hamsters back in to their cages to increase productivity in the dire circumstance of a record profit.

Then there came a most dreadful thought, inspired by Bernard Keane's musings in Shadows of '75 creep across the political landscape.

As we all know, Malcolm Fraser, suffused with guilt over the way he seized power, in time came to be the most insufferable bore of any retired PM, full of sanctimonious righteousness and sounding like a pompous member of the landed gentry any time an issue crossed his path.

Even when he was right, it was easy to maintain the rage. If there was a cause worthy of guilt, you could find Fraser hovering like the ghost in Hamlet, or Banquo looking to join the evening meal ...

Could it be that Tony Abbott, after his recent displays of insufferable boorishness, attains power, turns out to be an extremely indifferent PM, much like Fraser, and then spends his latter years boring us to death with his Macbeth-like guilt for the way he seized the throne, scored the precioussss, and then didn't have a clue what to do with it?

Well stranger things have happened to Catholics who pretend to have a conscience. It's fair to say the average rugby league thug would shrink from the thuggee behaviour currently on view in the Liberal party, and possibly would have more nuanced plays in mind than Abbott, who can only think of coat hangers and knee caps and fingers up the bum (there, and you said we know nothing of sport).

Why it's sent poor old Malcolm Farr, token centrist at the gin-sozzled Punch, into a tizz in Scent of an election fuels Tony's faux outrage.

But enough of this. Today we announce a serious problem confronting the commentariat, the Murdoch press, and the world at large.

Creeping socialism!

This needs to be rooted out and expunged before the creeping socialists ruin record profits with high wages and falling productivity and declining profits, and it needs to start now, and our first port of call is the anonymous editorialist at The Australian as he or she scribbles Grounding a Qantas takeover.

The anon edit is alarmed at the prospect of normal capitalists going about their duties, performing a private equity takeover and degutting Qantas, the national airline which happens to be a private airline but somehow still gets called a national airline.

Where's Mitt Romney when we need him in the antipodes? Why he'd have it gutted and jobs cast to the four winds in a trice.

So we have a first class example of agrarian socialism:

Whatever undertakings might be made during a takeover bid, the inevitable asset stripping and scaling down of less-profitable arms of the airline would leave many Australians in regional and rural areas without comprehensive services.

As any decent member of the commentariat would know, the correct answer is 'well let them walk.'

Or if Brendan ' if you don't like the Murdoch press, start your own newspaper' O'Neill were writing the piece, the correct answer would be well let them start their own regional airline - or perhaps revive East-West Airlines, that noble business once based in Tamworth the heart of western civilisation (and they still have a pretty good pilot school at the 'drome).

But it gets worse, as the nutty anon edit preaches even more heresy of a fruity socialist kind:

... private equity firms have little interest in the core businesses of the companies they take over. It was no surprise, for example, that those who bought the Nine Network sacrificed the quality current affairs program Sunday and The Bulletin magazine. Unlike traditional capitalists who took risks in the marketplace to build long-term wealth by producing goods and services and paid dividends to shareholders, private equity mavens tend to be risk-averse and more interested in applying sophisticated accounting techniques to grab quick profits.

Oh dear, how dire and dreadful. Traditional wealth-nurturing capitalists versus parvenu johnny come lately nouveau riche capitalists. A distinction worthy of Trotsky warning us against capitalist profit-takers.

Perhaps Qantas should revert to government ownership?

Qantas has benefitted exponentially from its privatisation.

Yes, yes, that would be a step too far for creeping socialists. Must be canny in our creep.

So what to do? Perhaps call on the government?

Any significant ownership change, however, must be subject to a strict national interest test.

Yes, yes, let's call on the government to act.

Creeping socialism with agrarian socialist tendencies, and accompanying hypocritical cant:

The Australian supports the free market and believes that, generally, takeovers are not the business of government.

Talk about having your free market cake made out of socialist eggs and flour ... along with a hearty vote of confidence in Alan Joyce's "good management". By golly, that Barnaby Joyce is an inspiration to all.

Now how long before The Australian joins in the cry to make vegemite Australian-owned so we can all sleep soundly at night?

Meanwhile, there are other examples of creeping socialism, as Miranda the Devine pitches a product in Pouring cold water on a red-hot issue. It seems a mob called FireWatch have the perfect technology to reduce bushfires ... and even though some tests of the product didn't go so well - they were set up to be a flop, according to the owners - all it would take is for the government to drop a cool $300 million on a FireWatch network and all will be well. Well sort of well, because results comparable to Germany can't be guaranteed.

Yep, once again, it's all down to the government.

The answer lies not in the soil but in the federal government dropping a cool 300 mill all on Miranda's word - bugger the trials, let's have another one - and it leads that eminent socialist Miranda the Devine to ask Has Australia gone mad?

Well with so many covert and overt socialists in the Murdoch press, there can be only one answer. Yes Australia has gone mad, and creeping socialism is to blame ...

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Farrelly has only just realised that she's in love with Penny Wong and that Miranda the Devine writes repressive gibberish, as revealed in Let's shoot straight on gay marriage:

Never mind that we don't yet have a demographic breakdown on the London rioters, or that same-sex marriage is not actually legal in Britain, or that legalising gay marriage is unlikely to increase the incidence of fatherless families, or that fatherlessness by itself has never been shown to cause ''Hobbesian chaos''.

Never mind that Spain has legal same-sex marriage, and no such riots. Never mind that polygamy was standard Old Testament practice, that the church is demonstrably rife with paedophilia or that Jesus had two fathers. Never mind the sheer illogic of arguing that straight people must be married in order to nurture children but gay people, even when procreating, must not.

Hah! As if logic has anything to do with it!

For me, the question is this. Why do people feel this need to run my life, as well as theirs? Why do they feel dissent as a form of attack? The answer is not God, per se, or even belief. It's this sense of chosenness.

It seems reasonable to me to fight for the right to run your life your way; to marry and procreate and worship by your own lights. But it is entirely unreasonable, absent some genuine threat to social order, to force these values on others.

What's this? Liberal values with a small 'l', quite possibly verging on the libertarian?

Well the socialists in the Murdoch commentariat will have a thing or two to say about that ...

After all, we need rules:

Hang on, hang on. These rules are too simple. Let's sex them up a little. For starters:

No animal shall drink alcohol TO EXCESS
No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets
No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE

Four legs good, two legs BETTER! Four legs good, two legs BETTER! Four legs good, two legs BETTER!

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

The government shall do nothing except when the commentariat demands it do something.

The government is to blame for everything, especially when it does something in response to the commentariat, who demand it do nothing, except when it should do something.

Capitalism is good, except when it is bad.

The NBN is outrageously expensive, but BHP is just making a living.

Agrarian socialism is true and just, except when it is wrong, but it is right when Miranda the Devine and Barnaby Joyce say it is ...

Oh yes, and great profits mean any mining tax is bad ...

And a huge profit shouldn't mean the hamsters/rats/squirrels get more than a half hour break from their work in the cage ...

Meanwhile, for those who came in late, and were puzzled by the reference to the Under Toad in the header, let John Irving explain:

In The World According to Garp there is a summer scene by the ocean, an episode wherein little Walt, so very young and vulnerable, is repeatedly warned by his parents to beware of the undertow along a stretch of dangerous shore. The undertow, they remind him, is very wicked today. Look out for the undertow. One morning they spot their small son alone on the beach, staring intently at the incoming waves. When asked what he's doing, he says, "I'm trying to see the Under Toad." All along he had mistaken the correct word and mythicized the fear it signaled into a creature of invisible but monstrous being. And Walt is right. Arising as if from the sea, the Under Toad squats upon the world's rim, bloated and watchful, the sign of a new star under whose baleful dispensation life must hence-forth proceed. (here)

For Under Toad, insert creeping socialism.

Put it another way:

Golly, the Devine is right, the whole world, and the pond along with it, has gone mad, and creeping socialism, or perhaps toads, the cause of it all ... and it's still only Thursday!

Janet Albrechtsen, and Qantas not the airline it once was ...

(Above: oh yes, hit me with another chocolate chip cookie, or perhaps some more of those cheesy cheese bites).

Only Wednesday, and yet it's hard to work out what was the more astonishing sight.

There's poor Brendan O'Neill shocked and appalled to discover that the UK Girl Guides have discovered there's more than one god in the world.

Silly Girl Guides, when we all know that there's only one god, and if you don't eat your spaghetti, she's a most vengeful deity. Or perhaps at long last the Catholic and Anglican conceptions of god have come into some kind of cohesive theological shape and battered the other aspirational gods of the Islamics, the Hindus and the Calathumpians into submission. (Where would we be without the comedy stylings of Brendan O'Neill at Counterpoint?)

It must be roughly equivalent to Bob Katter discovering that he has a gay brother, and now the commentariat are making hay, as in No gays Bob? Try closer to home (warning, forced video at end of link). The thought of having Katter as family automatically gives Carl Katter the sympathy vote, as it's always hard to talk sense, humanity, marriage or common bonds to a cut snake ...

And now, heaven forfend, Bob Katter is in the wars with Janet Albrechtsen, as she muses about the fate of Qantas in Sky's the limit for demanding Qantas workers:

Then Katter played the parochial card, arguing for new legislative restrictions on Qantas and pointing the finger at the "people from overseas" such as "Mr Cleverness" at Qantas (Joyce is Irish-born) and Gail Kelly (who hails from South Africa) at Westpac.

God forbid, Senator, that we should encourage the movement of people and trade in the 21st century.

Uh huh. God forbid, except perhaps we should discourage the movement of boat people showing entrepreneurial initiative trying to get to the lucky country ... If you can't afford a ticket on Qantas, you're simply not welcome!

For the rest of Albrechtsen's piece, she resorts to the Qantas management line, and indulges in a riot of union and worker bashing. Typical line? "... don't fall for the unions' wicked use of emotional tricks."

Naturally this is an excuse for Albrechtsen to trot out all sorts of tired, wicked management tricks, and forces the pond into a personal anecdote, as recently we had the increasingly rare pleasure of sampling the services of Qantas, not the airline it once was. Ah the joy of the fumes on an aged 767 ...

Lord knows, the captain tried hard, assuring us all he was a better pilot than he was a comedian, but then he made a fatal mistake. He also assured us that, with an ounce of luck, he'd get us to the gate on time, or maybe with a smidgin more luck, a little ahead of time.

We arrived an hour late, and the captain heaped the blame not on the fog that had disrupted Melbourne airport, but on a Singapore Airlines flight ahead of us that was taking a little time to land safely (perhaps they should have diverted to Avalon, so we could show those Asiatics how to do a rushed cowboy landing).

It was a Katterish performance in relation to a foreign airline that these days provides a better service, and which along with Virgin is now the preferred supplier of the pond's travel requirements.

Oh and a bag was lost - probably the Melbourne fog, and its late delivery to various addresses entertained us until we decided to collect it at the airport - and the flight back was also late, without the excuse of fog or Singapore Airlines ...

Not the airline it once was, but somehow it's all the fault of the surly workers, as opposed to the surly management.

Here's Albrechtsen lining up to blame the workers for the demise of Ansett, and preemptively blaming the workers for the decline and fall of Qantas, as if Geoff Dixon and Alan Joyce have had nothing to do with it:

Bring it on. For too long, unions at Qantas have got their way. If this is the modern face of the union movement, then unions have not yet secured a sensible, responsible place for themselves in the 21st-century workplace.

They have learned nothing from Ansett's demise 10 years ago, after years of union-dominated cost structures. And they have learned nothing from the broader union movement's diminishing membership.

In a case of industrial deja vu, get ready too for all sorts of claims thrown at the flying kangaroo, most of them highly emotional and economically irrational and some of them downright misleading and reckless.

Speaking of downright misleading and reckless, amazingly, Albrechtsen doesn't blame the carbon tax for the proposed staff cuts. Perhaps she doesn't want to get into bed with the highly emotional and economically irrational Tony Abbott, but it's also clear she doesn't have much of a clue about commercial airline operations.

Oh sure, she knows how to write about "commercially illiterate unions that want to stop Qantas from innovating and expanding", and "cheap emotion", clearly different to dear emotion, and unions unencumbered by logic, and the emotive "our flying kangaroo", and economic lunacy, and pilots' greedy demands, and the highfalutin' label of an association, deployed not just by the evil pilots but by the engineers, and "arrant nonsense" and so forth and etc ...

But if you want an alternative view, why not try one of my favourite blogs, by Ben Sandilands, which has of late been running hot with talk of Qantas.

Here's a few stories for starters, with the headers giving a fair clue to the content: Qantas hit by claims of dishonest accounting, failed management and another takeover bid, which it denies.

Forensic study of Qantas accounts undermines the company line about international losses.

How Qantas has butchered London flights.

Sandilands is prepared to look at all kinds of angles (Media coverage of Jetstar in Japan, OMG!) and isn't afraid of a little pilot and sheltered government Air Canada bashing (Emirates video: A study in media hysterics), and truly it would be a treat to see him tear strips off the fatuous Albrechtsen, who ends her piece thusly:

The same ill-conceived brand of Katter economics once argued in favour of so-called "national champions" to justify governments running airlines and taxpayers picking up the tab. It failed dismally: governments have no idea how to run efficient businesses.

Nor, it has to be said, did the management of Ansett, Compass (ah the glory days) and Tiger.

Oh okay Tiger is just Singapore Airlines in disguise, which is just Temasek Holdings in disguise, which is just the Singapore government in disguise, which is a vast relief and explains exactly why Singapore Airlines currently runs such an efficient business. It's because governments have no idea how to run efficient businesses ...

Meanwhile, you don't have to spend long in the world of Air Crash Investigations to realise that safety and efficiency are not always compatible in the world of number crunching, so that the things that Qantas traded on - safety and quality - have slipped in recent years. I mean, to get into bed with American Airlines and BA! What next? Air France?

But back to Albrechtsen:

Even dumber in economic terms is the prospect of fencing in Qantas with new demands to stop the airline growing its business overseas. As the experts will tell you, that's a sure way to turn a national carrier into a national basket case.

And there's the rub. In the international market place, the concept of a national carrier is now verging on the meaningless. It's no longer possible for Qantas to trade off on its iconic status as an Australian airline, and it's no longer enough for the company to fudge its accounts, downgrade its longhaul service and capacity, and chase the chimera of the Asian market, up against competitors with serious cash (AirAsia stuns with 200 plane order).

At that point, you're better off reading Sandilands rather than Albrechtsen:

In the days after the phase one announcement Joyce gave interviews in which he claimed the Asia based premium carrier, using A320s for short to medium haul routes, would feature lie flat beds in first class, to the disbelief of those who heard him.

There are many things that need to be examined in Qantas without delay, as the long haul operation loses more customers, and the group in general seems to be losing its mind.

And if you don't know why the people around Joyce listened with disbelief to idle chatter of lie flat beds in short and medium haul routes, you're about ready to appoint Janet Albrechtsen as your new company director with a fresh vision, which consists of union and worker bashing.

Good luck with that, and good luck to the flying kangaroo, and Singapore noodles and Hainanese chicken rice, here we come ...

(Below: a few old Qantas cartoons, with more Nicholson here).

Gerard Henderson, and a host of commentariat victims contend for funniest routine of the week ...

(Above: the pond remembering the glory days of Alan Jones).

It's always a laugh a minute out there with the commentariat, and perhaps the funniest routine heard this week was Janet Albrechtsen explaining in sombre tone how she'd been a victim of the Oslo affair, along with a number of other victims.

It was a cue of course for Dame Slap to go on and abuse all and sundry in the PC brigade for claiming victimhood status - and if you want more comedy stylings from Albrechtsen, you can always rely on Counterpoint. Happily, Albrechtsen was particularly exercised about Dame Slap's name being turned into Dame Snap in later versions of Enid Blyton books, and so we can go on referring to her as snappy Dame Slap.

The very same show saw Brendan O'Neill claiming victim status for king/queen, god and country, while a funny old kraut with a Dr. Strangelove accent claimed huge victimhood status for himself in Germany.

What's that you say? An unfortunate way to describe my genetic kith and kin on the German side of the family?

Not really, because a funny woodchuck moosehead Canuck academic lawyer up the front of the show established that ethnic jokes were perhaps the best way to establish that a person is correctly non-PC, and the last thing the pond wants is that anyone think it's somehow PC. After all, if Brendan O'Neill thinks it's fair and right and just and shows proper perspective to call him a faggot, who are we to argue with him? We now routinely think of him as a bundle of sticks suitable for burning ...

You might argue that the funniest sight was in reality the parrot, aka Alan Jones, bleating away at the truckie rally about the "most disgraceful thing that has ever been done to democracy" (sobbing into his mike about the size of the truckie crowd), or you might lead with Bronwyn Bishop moaning how the federal government wasn't legitimate, perhaps as a prelude for Gaddafi-overthrowing fervour from the miniscule herd of truckies, as others have done (Truckie sooks vs Libyans with real problems).

Truth to tell, you might have an argument, except that would clearly establish you as a signed up member of the PC brigade, anxious to do your worst with those hapless victims, Jones and his wannabe couldabeen monster convoy.

But soft, this is leading us into dangerous turf and anyhoo, today isn't Albrechtsen day, it belongs to that other hapless victim of the PC crowd, the noble Gerard Henderson, and he's in fine form in Road to ruin for traditional Labor, and yes, he's overwhelmed by the sight of all those proud dinkum truckies on the road.

As for the tragic, tawdry size of the protest? Don't you worry about that:

What was striking about the "Convoy of No Confidence" that rolled into Canberra yesterday was how many protesters looked like one-time traditional Labor voters. Not many employees or independent contractors can find the time or the money to travel to Canberra for a demonstration and the turnout was not large.

Yes, everybody would have been there, except they couldn't afford to be there, meaning that the bunch who did turn out must either be (a) well-heeled, in which case why all the whining and the whingeing and the moaning, or (b) rent a crowd agitators of the kind that routinely attend political demonstrations, or (c) backed by powerful forces intent on fomenting a gigantic international conspiracy, except these powerful forces couldn't organise a rally of Volvos (oh sorry enough with the ethnic jokes).

And don't you worry about the erratic, eccentric agenda on view either:

On ABC radio yesterday, Deborah Cameron described the convoy as "anti-everything". This misses the point. Sure, elements of the convoy oppose the carbon tax and/or the ban on live cattle exports and/or the proposed restrictions on gambling in licensed clubs and/or same sex marriage. But what united the convoy is that - to a man and woman - all the protesters want an election. Now.

Uh huh. Weird, because (a) Gerard Henderson continues to listen to Deborah Cameron on 702 at imminent risk to his health and sanity, and (b) somehow Gerard Henderson thinks a thousand or so plus people, including Gerard Henderson, Alan Jones and Tony Abbott wanting an election is enough to move the world and (c) somehow the convoy had more than a snowball's chance in hell of achieving said outcome.

Still, you have to marvel at the logic.

Some of the convoy leaders do not understand that the constitutional requirements of a double dissolution have not been met. Yet the conditions do exist whereby the Prime Minister could advise the Governor-General that a normal election should be held.

Yes, yes, silly truckies, not understanding constitutional law like benign condescending Uncle Gerard, when it's simple really.

Julia Gillard can just race off to the GeeGee, hand over the keys to the Lodge and bung on a do.

And they say the commentariat isn't in to the tooth fairy, the easter bunny and father xmas.

Oh dear, speaking of cliched stereotypes, you know where that sort of idle chit chat puts the pond. Yep, amongst the inner city 'leet:

Inner-city types, including some conservatives, tend to favour same-sex marriage and quite a few commentators are quick to sneer at Christians who regard marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Eek, at one with the evil latte sipping, chardonnay swallowing, possibly cardigan wearing, certainly ABC listening Deborah Camerons of the world. Quick, what will make it right?

But talk to some Labor MPs in suburban seats and they will recount, in confidence, how many Muslims and Hindus are offended by the concept.

Oh thank the lord, the fundamentalist Islamics and Hindus are at one with the Xians and all's well in the world. Thank the lord we can now forget the Huntington thesis so movingly propounded by Henderson:

In his 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, Huntington wrote: "The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power." (Militant Islam an enemy of the West - and Muslims).

Yes, it's time for a united fundamentalist fight for civilisation, which will see the overthrow of the illegitimate government of Australia, the cardigan wearers at the ABC, and the immediate despatch of inner city types to rural gulags where they can, Pol Pot style, learn the wisdom of the peasantry and serve out useful lives preparing pigs for consumption at the Australian and Melbourne clubs ...

The rest of Henderson's column peters out, in a standard rant against the carbon tax, which shows he's learned his lines well from his master, but not much else. Even his berating of the truckies as crude and unsophisticated swill doing the bidding of the ring masters has a hollow ring:

The protesters in the Canberra convoy may not be sophisticated in many ways.

But they do know that, in the present economic situation with the prospect of increasing unemployment, the introduction of a carbon tax doesn't make sense.

Yes, the truckies - and Henderson - know much more than the management of BlueScope Steel, whose management in the past has been highly critical of the carbon tax - yet somehow managed to scribble in their tax release:

Mr O’Malley said the Company is experiencing an unprecedented combination of economic challenges in the form of a record high Australian dollar, low steel prices and high raw material costs and these challenges are compounded by low domestic steel demand in the wake of the GFC.

“This is evidenced by the $487 million underlying EBIT loss experienced in FY2011 on our export sales. The economic conditions for export steelmaking from Australia appear unlikely to become favourable in the foreseeable future and our continued exposure to this market is clearly unsustainable. Our decision is a direct response to the economic factors affecting our business and is not related to the Federal Government’s proposed carbon tax.” (here).

Dammit. Here let me fix that press release. The Federal Government's proposed carbon tax is directly related to the decline and fall of everything in western civilisation, as well as all price increases, the strength of the Australian dollar, the decline of the manufacturing industry, rampant unemployment, and shortly the sky falling in.

There, that's better.

But then Henderson is tremendously sophisticated in his own guileless unsophisticated way, and an ability to ignore actual remarks by actual businesses is an important part of that sophistication.

Still, the end result is a good one so early in the week.

Now the pond can now reel away from Henderson chanting 'What do we want? Islamic law and a new election. And when do we want it? Now'!

It's the new theme song for pondies and unsophisticated truckies agitated by the prospect of gay marriage, the evil rule of Gillard in a country doing it exceptionally tough - way worse than Afghanistan - and where hapless members of the commentariat are routinely pilloried and persecuted and made victims by evil PC types ...

Oh lordy what a cruel country it is. Quick, beam me up Scotty, it's time to relax in Libya.

Come to think of it, Libya doesn't have the parrot squawking 24/7 ... do they know how lucky they are?

Oh and for the funniest routine so early in the week?

Sorry, we don't have the heart to take it away from Dame Slap. Sure the photo finish showed the parrot winning by a beak from Henderson but the judge's decision is final, and another example of how these hapless victims are persecuted by the ABC and inner city latte sippers the world over ...

(Below: the Factbricator™ has now been road-tested by Janet Albrechtsen, Gerard Henderson and the pond, and we all swear by it. Affidavits are freely available at the affidavit storage unit in Belconnen, a little known federal government service we all swear by ... Click to enlarge, or visit First Dog here for your own copy)

Ross Cameron, and if you want to lose a shirt, then become a mug punter follower of Cameron's tips ...

(Above: a glum Monday, and returning to reading the commentariat feels vaguely like being stranded on a desert island).

The gloating has begun, and the Fairfax wolves have begun to lick their lips, smack their chops, drool in an unseemly way, drivel, dribble, slobber, and otherwise display symptoms of ptyalism, which is to say an produce an excess of saliva.

Naturally Generally Grumpy Paul Sheehan is hard out of the blocks with Thomson saga sinks Labor into the abyss, which pretty much recycles all that is known of the Thomson saga, and therefore can be excised on the grounds of repetitive tedium, until the entire piece builds to a tumultuous, climatic piece of speculation:

All these issues weave into a single defining and unanswered question: has Thomson been caught out in multiple lies? On this thread hangs the Gillard government.

Indeed. And all the musical notes might build into a single unanswered question, at least if you happen to have composer Charles Ives composing the work The Unanswered Question in 1906.

But just as a trumpet repeats the external question of existence, only to be extinguished by silence, we must ask whether there's anything to be gained from reading Sheehan, or might we be better off with an extended silence.

A more astute single defining and answered question would be to note that Thomson has been caught out, and the real question is whether he can be nailed by the Liberal party, or other forces of a more legitimate kind.

As Rupert and James Murdoch and Bill Clinton can freely advise, the cover up is always more problematic than any initial perception of misdeeds ... though perhaps to conflate oral sex and the use of prostitutes providing legal services with the activities of the Murdoch press in the UK is to do a dis-service to sex workers and the ways of carefully selective wowsers ... (no, there'll be no cheap jibes about shop lifting and assault on the pond, not when we can all do the timewarp and the hokey pokey on YouTube. Any minor sin can surely be forgiven for such a divine sense of rhythm).

Meanwhile, it's heart-warming to see that hypocrite from Parramatta, Ross Cameron, joining the Christopher Pearson brigade by running the line that the bookies are hot to trot for Simon Crean.

Yep, if you want a far-fetched, rich, indulgent fantasy life, it's all there in Crean for PM? Why the bookies think it's not so far-fetched, and as mischief-making and as meaningless a form of gibberish as you can usually only find when you read Labor party types speculating about the internal politics and leadership of the Liberal party.

Perhaps the funniest line in the entire piece is this one:

According to sources in the private sector, the ALP's NSW secretary, Sam Dastyari, says privately that federal Labor is headed for a rout of NSW proportions.

Uh huh That'd be the private sources in the private sector talking privately about the private words of the ever so private Sam, revealing what any dunderhead might opine on the basis of the last month or two of federal polling.

When you get to this level of stupidity, you know you're in the safe, caring hands of Ross Cameron.

Naturally the slobber of saliva is all over Cameron's face, with the Labor party insolvent (never mind that the Liberal party is also short of funds), a galactic wipe out impending at the polls, and so talk must turn to a new leader to replace Gillard, and naturally Cameron puts Crean - the self-effacing dodo and alleged minister of the y'arts and the regions - at the head of the pack:

The question then arises, who should the replacement be? Simon Crean, Stephen Smith, Greg Combet and Bill Shorten - in roughly that order - are regarded as offering the best chance to exorcise the spectres haunting Gillard, with Wayne Swan too deeply implicated in the present regime and a Kevin Rudd return considered ''just too weird''.

Cameron then spends the rest of the time considering the opposition to Crean, running through Shorten, Combet and Smith like a pack of salts, before giving it all up as too hard, and settling on Simon Crean as the bookies' choice:

If someone is going to accept this mission, they will need to be at the tail-end of a political career in which this kamikaze act would be an honourable exit. Stephen Smith is regarded as a serious political professional with genuine mainstream Labor convictions. But Simon Crean has firmed in the betting from $110 to $10 since mid-July and shapes as the most likely consensus candidate. Like a nightwatchmen being sent in to bat in fading light, he can be sacrificed, leaving the future stars in the locker room and limiting the risk of a complete rout.

Uh huh. An even more stupid cricketing metaphor as an added bonus to the punter follies.

Naturally we headed off to Centrebet to check out the real odds, and the last update we could find was to hand on 4th August, 2011, under the header Smith surge to lead Labor!, and here were the odds:

ALP LEADER NEXT FEDERAL ELECTION

$1.70 Julia Gillard (out from $1.65)

$4.50 Bill Shorten (out from $4.40)

$7.50 Any Other

$8.00 Stephen Smith (in from $10.00)

$8.50 Greg Combet (out from $7.50)

$10.00 Kevin Rudd

$17.00 Chris Bowen

$41.00 bar

Yes, I know, I know, I too was wondering what happened to that hot bookie tip Simon Crean. Maybe he's racing up on the outside along the rails so he can win by a canter by a short head ... provided Cameron provides the short head. Go Bess:

More than a dozen horses went out, and when the starter said “Off!” didn’t they go! Our eyes at once followed Bess. Dave was at her right from the jump — the very opposite to what Dad had told him. In the first furlong she put fully twenty yards of daylight between herself and the field — she came after the field. At the back of the course you could see the whole of Kyle’s selection and two of Jerry Keefe’s hay-stacks between her and the others. We didn’t follow her any further. (On Our Selection, here).

Over at another site, we picked up this handy chart, and if you're feeling like a bet, you might like to click on it to enlarge.

Uh huh. Suffice to say that all punters are mugs, but you'd have to be a truly extraordinary mug to mount a punt by paying attention to the blatherings of Ross Cameron.

Well after his routine bit of nonsense and mischief-making, Cameron reserves his last par for a final smacking of the lips:

The Prime Minister remains remarkably poised and appears to have stemmed the bleeding in the past two Newspolls but it's going to take a superhero feat, and each day she wakes in fear of the conversation with trusted colleagues that begins: ''Prime Minister … Julia … we need to talk.'

Uh huh. Well Cameron would know all about that feeling, since he had a conversation with the electorate that ended dear MP Ross, we need to have a talk. Oh on second thoughts just get lost, and take your pious hypocritical blathering about family life with you.

Now all we're waiting for is a conversation with a trusted Fairfax editor, which begins Dear Mr. Cameron we don't need to talk any more, and we certainly don't need to read your columns ... the punters outside just lost their shirts punting on one of your tips, and they're as mad as hell and wanting their money back ...

(Below: punting Ross Cameron and Christopher Peason style, courtesy First Dog. More First Dog here).

The pond retreats to Melbourne, besieged by Pell's burning bushes and the Sydney Calvinist Anglicans in full party sunnies and surf mode ...

(Above: now there's a burning bush. And no cheap ancient jokes, puh-lease).

The pond is off to Melbourne for the weekend, meaning intrepid voyagers and occasional readers will have the direct undiluted pleasure of the commentariat without any bonus commentary.

Alternatively, if you simply stop hitting your head with this kind of verbal hammer, you too might have a weekend full of relaxed leisure, pleasure and joy ... or perhaps have a series of bog Irish arguments around the kitchen table about the renewed role the DLP can play in Catholic political life ... or perhaps a few drinks celebrating the crucial role of the Irish in growing potatoes in Victoria.

Whatever your choice, you can always catch up with the week old thoughts of Cardinal Pell for the Sunday Terror, faithfully recycled at the Sydney Catholic site, and yes, it seems, according to God in Egypt, that while Cardinal Pell is a fully fledged climate science denialist - global warming, acidification of oceans, say what? - he's a firm believer in burning bushes:

Why did the one true God choose to reveal himself to Moses through the burning bush on this ugly and remote mountain?

While Elijah also found God in the gentle breeze, not the earthquake or tumult, on this mountain, God's choice of locale is still a mystery.

Indeed. How Pell can blather on about burning bushes, right out of the old testament, and at the same time conduct a war on the head of the Bureau of Meteorology (Pell row with climate scientist heats up), must remain a mystery.

It goes to show the power of literalism remains strong in the church, and anyone can be up for a good miracle from the old testament, whether Noah's ark or a burning bush.

Next thing you know Pell will be explaining how cannibalism is okay if it's just the actual body and blood of Christ ...

Meanwhile, over at the Sydney Anglicans, Phillip Jensen seems to be anticipating the census results and down-sizing its meaning, in The Heart of Growing Christianity:

The world takes a census, of our numbers, size and influence but it does not know what it is counting. For the institutional size of a Christian denomination or church tells you little about its growth or impact. We will not have greater effect in Australia by being in a bigger organization, but by being a more Christian one.

Yes indeed, a smaller organisation is by far the better way to go, as shown by the Communist party faithful in the antipodes. They've always followed the line that to have a greater effect in Australia, they don't need to be a bigger organisation, just one that gets rid of all the splitters, recalcitrants and heretics, so that what's left can be ever more purely Communist.

We look forward to the continuing downsizing of the Anglican church in Sydney.

Our thinking must be his thinking – of going into the world to voluntarily lay down our lives for the salvation of others.

Does this mean I can call on a Sydney Anglican to attend the family reunion in place of myself?

Uh huh. Thought not. The risk factor is too great ...

Come to think of it, I can't recollect any Sydney Anglican recently voluntarily laying down their lives for the salvation of others - the streets of Sydney are conspicuously absent of Anglican corpses - but I guess it's any rhetorical flourish in a storm.

And with that we wish you a happy weekend, full in the Sydney Anglican way of sunnies and surf.

If male, likely as not there'll be chicks under your arm every which way, and if female, a handsome sunny-wearing stud with a suitably Christian demeanour.

Oh yes, Sydney, where even the Cavlinist Anglicans are sensual hedonists, it's time to retreat to the chastity and purity of Melbourne ...

(Below: no link, just a screen cap to evoke how you can best lay down your life for the salvation of others, Sydney Calvinist Anglican style. Oh it's lascivious fun for all ... and apologies to the models if indeed they aren't Calvinists or Anglicans).

David Penberthy, and the answer lies in the fluoride in the water ...

(Above: quick, rush off to get your free copy explaining how the Queen and Adolf Hitler are Darwin cultist greenie soul mates, here).

It's the proud boast of the pond that it's never belonged to any political party, not even in student days, and it's never followed any ideology or theology, not once it escaped the enforced indoctrination of the Catholic church in childhood.

This immediately raises the hackles of true believers, zealots and ratbags fuelled by causes and beliefs, who insist on dividing the world into left and right, right and wrong, and the big end of the egg versus the little end of the egg (oh Jonathan Swift, how you ruined the pond).

The trouble of course with being in the middle and getting carried along by the flow of life is that it's dull. It lacks the apocalypse, the catastrophic, and an assorted bundle of conspiracies designed to spice up the daily routines.

Catastrophe comes along soon enough - one day or another, one way or another, we all die, and the middle is really hard to find in a war zone.

Catastrophists come in all shapes and sizes.

A couple of nights ago you could listen to Phillip Adams, who made his fortune out of advertising, who has spent a fortune collecting Egyptian relics, and who according to his own admissions spends a fortune in petrol travelling between farm and studio, deploring the effects and impact of consumerism, and looking forward to the great disruption that's about to descend upon the earth (The Great Disruption, in company with catastrophist Paul Gilding).

And catastrophe and conspiracy are the friends of the lower form of political life, with paranoia used as a way to herd the sheep.

Point this out and you're likely to get into trouble, as David Penberthy is likely to find with his fine piece of trolling for the gin-soaked The Punch, Tony's flawed friendship with the freaks and flat-earthers.

Trolling? Well you see the readership of The Punch, judging by its comments section, is actually made up of freaks and flat-earthers, so Penberthy is poking a stick at the regular readership.

And he pokes the stick in hearty style as he looks at the people who turned up to the Canberra rally, and notes that along with the salt of the earth:

Many of them were also barking mad.

Not just a little bit wacky, but card-carrying, rolled-gold, fully paid-up fruitcakes who may well have thought they were being followed to the protest by black United Nations helicopters. Maybe they were. Hmm. Cue the theme from The Twilight Zone.

Indeed. Well we'll accept for the moment the use of "rolled gold", which is an inferior form of gold you can read about in Gold filled jewelry, and shouldn't be confused with good quality gold, where the better the carat the better the gold (waiter, bring me some of that 24 carat stuff).

In any case the pond would prefer to think of diamonds (yes, it's not just blondes who think of diamonds), or perhaps fruitcakes of the first water:

The first water in Diamonds means the greatest purity and perfection of their complexion, which ought to be that of the clearest drop of water. When Diamonds fall short of this perfection, they are said to be of the second or third water, &c. till the stone may be properly called a coloured one. (here).

So who were the fruitcakes of the first water attending the rally, and the placards they carried?

But also this: “Only LaRouche’s Homeowners and Bank Protection Bill can save Australia: Act Now!”, Lyndon La Rouche being an anti-semitic conspiracy theorist in the US who holds that Israelite usurers have enslaved the world.

Ah, Lyndon LaRouche and his intrepid band of true believers. You could spend a lifetime - if you had a lifetime to waste - studying the deeper eccentricities of LaRouche, and somehow the cult has extended to the antipodes in the form of the Citizens Electoral Council.

It's easy to tell his followers are mad because every so often - like Mormon missionaries tackling the worst of the heathen cannibals - you can find them setting up a card table in King Street, Newtown to sell their gibberish to the trendies, the hippies, the vegans, the tattooed and the anarchists.

It must be some rite of passage. Ah yes comrade, we got into King street and told those greenie vegans they're soul mates with Adolf Hitler and the Queen of England, and explained how Charles Darwin is a fraud and ...

The pond has a ready explanation of how this cult took hold in Australia. It started just after they put flouride in the water!

But back to Penbo and Abbott, and Penberthy's final point:

... this is the baffling thing about Abbott’s conduct.

He has at his disposal the most extraordinarily rich seam of mainstream discontent over Gillard’s performance, yet he has thrown in his lot with the freaks, fascists and flat-earthers who think Ju-Liar is Bob Brown’s Bitch and should be burned at the stake. Some have accused Abbott of a lapse of judgment. Perhaps he has no judgment on this issue at all, happy as he is to associate with people who regard scientists as evil, and believe invisible international forces have enslaved our nation. As things stand we are set to get rid of a government which has opened itself up to ratty left-wing influence for one which is in bed with the ratty right.

Naturally the fruitloops and fruitcakes at The Punch were outraged. LaRouche somewhere out of the mainstream, Pauline Hanson not still at the centre of politics, except when turning up to a Tony Abbott addressed rally?

Naturally they managed to skew their comments in to a comfortable divide they could handle:

How dare you call hard working aussies freaks. I know a few of these people who went to the rally. They are your every day working class citizens. Your column is sickening. Typical Labor supporter. You don’t agree with them so you just sledge them.

...go back to your labor paymasters and tell them they’re gone mate
can’t wait for the next election to see your smug smile wiped off your face pal.

Penbo, from the way your article is phrased it is obvious that you are a Labor supporter, perhaps you should have declared this in the caveats.

And so on and so forth, except for the odd comment that the silent majority might have been absent from the rally because they couldn't afford to take a day off work (no, I wasn't at the rally, not even for sociological reasons).

Perhaps the most comical thing? The notion that David Penberthy is a died in the wool Labor party supporter ...

But here's the thing. Exactly why would Tony Abbott be comfortable about getting into bed with the ratty batty right?

Well if you look at the commentariat in the Murdoch press, they're quite happy to be associate with people who believe scientists are involved in an international conspiracy in relation to climate change.

Cue Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt, Janet Albrechtsen, Piers Akerman, Miranda Devine, The Australian, the tabloids, and that legendary tourer of the antipodes Lord Monckton (the lord that's not a house of lords lord). Happily Monckton is rolled gold of the first water, what with his disdain for climate science and his fervent evocations of international conspiracies, and at one point or another, he and his chums have all collared praise from various Murdoch publications.

The Murdoch press is in fact a haven for the ratty ratbag fruitcake right, and it's got worse these past few years as the Liberal party feel robbed of its birthright to rule and feather bed for its mates, and Tony Abbott yearns for his preciousss ...

The baying from the bleachers has been relentless, and immoderate and nowhere near the middle, and that's part of the reason why Abbott feels empowered to play the demagogue.

And at the heart of it? The denial and traducing of climate change science with the Murdoch press front and centre, and Tony Abbott diligently following from the rear, such that Deltoid now can now boast of having reached The Australian's War on Science 68: getting your science from a chain email.

68! And that's not counting all the bits time and chance have made him overlook.

If you want to see why the world is genuinely fucked, try reading number 68, Jane Fraser's Plainly Jane These Earthly matters, and then put it up against its dissing by Deltoid.

Before she rounds up her piece by worrying about being hit by a cyclist, Fraser does the usual 'I can see the horizon, the horizon isn't curved, therefore the earth must be flat' personal experience routine:

Fraser also has this argument against global warming:

I am not a fan of the idea of global warming, especially after this Sydney winter. It has been the coldest I can remember.

To which Deltoid responded:

Not only is she confusing weather with climate, she's wrong about the weather. June, July and August have all been warmer than the average for the past 30 years.

Aye indeed, shiver me timbers and the blasted parrots came early to feast on the confused flowering cherry this year.

Dearie me, must go and have another drink of fluoride ...

So where does this leave us?

Well of course in due course, if Craig Thomson has anything to do with it, we'll end up with a fearless new leader, quite happy to bay at the moon and the LaRouchians.

Not that there's anything wrong with consorting with hookers, though it might be construed as unseemly for a politician. As the Murdochs are finding with the NOTW scandal, it's the cover up that really counts.

But let's say they manage to ping Thomson, and Abbott gets hold of his preciousss.

Will he straighten up, and turn to the middle, and prove competent?

Well his time as Health Minister for the Howard government was singularly inept, and he remains best remembered for his role as a parliamentary attack dog, a bull pit hound of the feral kind. A role he continues today, absent of any genuine policies, and with a very mixed bunch behind him, content to let him savage the government.

The upside? Well we won't have to endure speculation by Christopher Pearson about Simon Crean becoming PM, or his further explanations of how climate science is wrong.

Instead we'll have the bizarre sight of Tony Abbott proposing to institute a Marxist Leninist solution to the problem.

Oh and if you think this might be a catastrophe, and that the minions of Murdoch, David Penberthy included, can take a fair share of the blame, never mind, we have the perfect solution. Indeed it might be the only solution, and yours for a mere ten smackeroos:

What's that? You believed me?

Hmm, can I interest you in a course of fluoride tablets? You get whiter, stronger teeth, and a ten point increase in your IQ ...

What's that, you've been reading up on fluoride and discovered it's part of a vast conspiracy?

Oops, sorry, how about I send a comment in to The Punch, warning the people ...

Rupert Murdoch, and warm and safe in the arms of the commentariat at the Oz ...

(Above: those letters. Click to enlarge, but sorry the resolution's still not the best).

Naturally we rushed off to The Australian to get a detailed insight into the latest pickle Chairman Rupert and son James have landed themselves in.

After all, with the London rioters now in the courts, it's time to check up on the activities of other criminals, and the revelation of that redacted letter by former NOTW royal editor and convicted phone tapper Clive Goodman has rocketed around the intertubes, all the way from The Independent with Phone-Hacking: The Smoking Gun to the Financial Review, which seems to be peeping out from its paywall, and allowing access to Lawyers turn on Murdochs, with handy 'explosive' correspondence attached.

Of course for anybody who's ever sat in on an editorial meeting, the idea that a hot story, perhaps a front page lead, could be trotted out, without anyone telling the editor about the source, the legal position, and the chance the paper might have its socks sued off, is a cuckoo cloud notion.

The first question always asked, Larry Olivier style as he prepared to burrow into Dustin Hoffman's tooth, is "Is it safe?" or perhaps "Can we get away with it?" or perhaps "Just how far can we push it? Make sure the lawyers look it over ..."

Just as the chance that the accounts department would process a claim for hundreds or thousands of dollars (or pounds, as the case may be) - without the powers that be signing off on it - is off in pixie land. Try getting a cab fare approved for a story without having a bloody good reason why you shouldn't have caught the bus (freelancers, catch that bike, sharpen those thighs) ...

It was always a cover-up, and the only question was whether there was a way to unveil the smoking gun, draw back the veil on the "I know nothing" culture, whether by way of hard evidence, or by way of disgruntled individuals who suddenly discovered they'd been cut out of the Murdoch empire's pre-emptive compensatory activities designed to ensure silence.

So the chase resumes, and now it's a matter of seeing how far the investigations can take the story up the food chain. Perhaps it will go all the way to the top, or perhaps the fortifications will hold.

Never mind, the hunt's the thing, and no pity for any stray fox caught in the hound's sharp teeth ...

Meanwhile, for dedicated conspiracy theorists, there's much reading. Try A life unravelled ... whistleblower who incurred wrath of the Murdoch empire for a truly seamy story that's been bubbling along for some time.

Lordy, even the Christian Brothers are on the move, as noted in Pressure mounts on Rupert Murdoch, burbling on about social responsibility and ethical investments, and urging chairman Rupert to be replaced as chairman ...

The best defence to date? It seems that chairman Rupert might be "confused", as explained in Murdoch's evidence 'confused', say lawyers (warning - forced advertisement and video at other end of link. Click on at your five second peril).

Yep, the chairman of a multi-billion dollar empire is "confused" ...

While the London riots provided a little breathing space, you can now look around and see almost every rag providing coverage of David Cameron's "catastrophic" judgement in hiring Andy Coulson, along with extensive discussions of the smoking gun provided by Clive Goodman and others.

The conspiracy is now set for a long life, and sure to provide much pleasant reading about an organisation which likes to be pious about criminals in the streets but hasn't done much except attempt various cover-ups of the criminality within the company ...

So what do we get today in that fearless organ of truth The Australian?

Well they do cover the saga, by letting a short story from The Times escape the paywall, Sacked phone hacker Clive Goodman claims secret deal with News betrayed, and dishing up an AP piece James Murdoch set for recall by Commons over phone-hacking scandal.

But in the opinion pages, it's business as usual. There's the reprehensible Gary Johns rabbiting on in the usual way in Convoy a revolt of working people, which is so predictable I have to confess that I nodded off as Johns stroked the rage, fuelled the anger, pretended he was down wit' the tea partiers, and might by end of week, have decided to get a tattoo or three, and forsaken the razor, in his bid to prove he too was a working class hero.

Yep, it's the usual crap about the dangers of "inner-city elegance" and the carbon tax, though not a peep or a murmur about Tony Abbott's direct Marxist-Leninist policy alternative.

When will twits like Johns - a one time professional politician, now academic and full time 'paid for wanking' columnist who's quite possibly spent a fair amount of his working life in suits - stop pretending that they're down on inner-city elegance, and just a tattoo short of being a member of the inelegant lumpenproletariat? And at one with the rough hewn dinkum workers, like Angry Anderson and Pauline Hanson?

Can I still keep my parliamentary super?

Then there's a standard bit of ABC bashing, courtesy of Judith Sloan in Their ABC is just ungovernable, to which all one can say is amen and thank the lord that the ABC couldn't be governed by the likes of Sloan, or else it would have turned into a carbon copy of the beehive publications produced by the minions for Murdoch.

If you ever travel in the wasteland of the United States and try to find an alternative voice, away from the commercial jungle, pity the fate of PBS and NPR, and remember that this is the world the Sloans and the minions would like to visit on the antipodes.

Oh and then there's Greg Sheridan sucking up to that 'authentic liberal voice on China', Christopher Pyne, in Kowtowing to the Chinese on human rights won't earn their respect.

Sheridan is in a rhapsody over the mincing poodle's speech:

The things to like about it were its intellectual rigour and self-confidence, its balance and boldness, its prudence and realism and its robust sense of liberal political values.

Apparently, reading Pyne is roughly equivalent to sipping from the fountain of youth.

Amongst the many flaws of the deviant Chinese government, it seems that it scuppered an agreement on climate change at Copenhagen.

Say what?

Shouldn't we all be grateful - at least if you read the commentariat in the Oz - that they thereby prevented the UN from embarking on a vast international conspiracy with seat-warming, grant-devouring scientists to take over the world, destroy Australia's independence, and turn us all into slaves of the black helicopter ... and for what? A phantasmic, foolish chimera known as climate science!

Which hapless Tony Abbott intends spending billions to fix, or so he says this week. Cue Gary Johns and an angry convoy of revolting people? In your dreams ...

Yep, it'll be up to Tony Abbott to tame the Chinese dragon and solve the problems posed by climate change, by pouring billions down the big business collective throat..

Well done Christopher Pyne, and a hat tip to Greg Sheridan for getting with the program!

Sorry, sometimes reading the welter of confused messages emanating from the commentariat in The Australian makes head hurt.

Hey ho and on we go, and while there's plenty more, let's just be content with visiting the anonymous editorialist at the lizard Oz, and their So much for greening with gas.

Senator Brown and his colleagues have leapt on the anti-gas wagon under cover of support for farmers and rural communities unhappy about the encroachment of coal-seam gas exploration into settled agricultural areas. There are valid questions to be asked about the balance Australia should strike between food and gas production, but the opportunistic assault on gas by the Greens suggests they are less interested in good national land management than in pursuing their own narrow agendas.

Uh huh. The greens are opportunist, unlike the mining companies and state governments content to let the coal seamers run riot.

Sure there are valid questions to be asked, but The Australian's certainly not going to be the one to ask them in an editorial, not while there's a chance to put the boot into the Greens.

Here's hoping that a mining company discovers a rich source of coal-seam gas below Holt street in Surry Hills and gives the whole area a damned good fracking ...

Frack away me hearties, frack 'em high and frack 'em low ...

Meanwhile, if you've reached this point, perhaps you've forgotten all about chairman Rupert and his troubles, and surely that's the whole idea.

See no evil, report as little evil as possible, speak no commentary on evil, except the London rioters and their riotous ways, turn up the heat on the usual suspects - Greenies, elegant inner urban dwellers, the ABC - and all will be well in the world ...

(Below: a few more additions to our collection of Chairman Rupert memorabilia. We've been assured our collection will grow in value as it ages).

Miranda Devine redux, and once more the determined controversialist strikes again ...

(Above: ah hits and memories, and what better way to start off a look at Miranda the Devine's mock outrage, for having dished it out. Now she somehow thinks it's offensive to get it back. Need we add Lesson in life?)

The shameless never have any shame, and Miranda the Devine is perhaps the most shameless of all.

After all, when she hacked out The problem of a fatherless society, she knew she was trolling for trade, and last score we noted, she'd chalked up 439 comments. Bingo. Up there with the biggies.

Sure it was a mendacious pile of offensive tripe, but that doesn't really matter with the commentariat. If you're an attention seeker, the idea is to get attention ...

It's when you start going back to the same well that the contrivance starts to show, and the whimpering pathetic tragi-comedy that is Jack-Boot Left Gives Dads A Kicking shows the Devine wants another round of abuse.

For a start, no one, whether jack booted or not in the fashionable Prince Willy style, gave dads a kicking. They gave the Devine a well-deserved kicking.

Now for the whimpering:

The reaction to my column last week pointing out the perils of a fatherless society is a case study in how intimidation, vilification, distortion and outright lies are being used in an attempt to silence unfashionable opinions.

Um actually apart from indignant single mothers who felt they'd copped some undeserved abuse from the Devine, the main point was how unseemly it was for her to conflate Penny Wong and gay marriage into a column allegedly about the causes of the London riots.

These are the tactics of a new “politically correct McCarthyism”. In this case gay marriage was the sacred cow that so unhinged people.

Uh huh. Never mind that McCarthyism was the work of the extreme right, and come to think of it, if Miranda the Devine had been around in the fifties, she probably would have shared more than an idea or three and an ideology or two with good old Joe.

Nope, it's the Devine's idea of being tolerant and respectful, in the usual Godwin's Law way of referring to PC jackbooted ratbag Nazi swine.

You see, as always, and as you expect of a clever troll, the Devine seeded caveats and modifiers into her bit of trolling. It's always best to do this, so you can then exclaim in shock and horror,

"no, that's not what I meant, not at all."

The column was respectful of Finance Minister Penny Wong and her female partner, who is expecting a baby, and stated that “love conquers all”, but its assertion that fathers are in general better for children, was beyond the pale for some.

I wrote that Wong and her partner will no doubt be “fine mothers” providing their baby with “a stable, loving upbringing, despite not having a father in the home. Individually, these things work themselves out. Allowances are made, extra effort applied. Love conquers all.”

There, she's ever so nice, so respectful, and if you believe that, please take me to the last shower you came down on to planet earth.

You'd hardly think she'd gone on a feral rant about heterosexual marriage, gays, gay marriage the London riots, fatherless children, Bert and Ernie getting hitched, the burning streets of London as the manifestation of a fatherless society, feral rats causing mayhem and torching buildings, Hobbesian social chaos for the children of the underclasses, and oh yes, that nice Penny Wong and her partner having a child in a fatherless relationship sure to doom it to a life as a London street rioter and feral rat ... without having a little conflation in mind.

Not so, says the Devine, wash out my mouth with soap:

It is hard not to draw the conclusion that some denizens of social media are cerebrally challenged. Were they too lazy to read the original column, or do they lack comprehension skills? Are they so entrenched in their own beliefs they can’t tolerate another point of view? Are they paranoid? Or are they just dishonest?

There is of course another option, one that is slowly dawning on me. The Devine is actually too stupid to understand the writing she has writ, and the implications of the conflated connections she has made.

Either she's dumb, or she just loves to be the well-paid trolling controversialist. Second thoughts scrub that thesis. We'll settle for provocative trolling controversialist. After all, she's been doing it for years ...

The poor hapless Devine is naturally devastated by the mis-understandings and the mis-interpretations, and the awful vilification offered up to her. And naturally she has an extremely sedate, pious, turn the other cheek, exemplary response:

A cursory glance at these rage-flecked responses offers an insight into the illiberal mindset of those who pretend to demand tolerance.

Or rather ram it down our throats. This is not tolerance but jackboot totalitarianism, the tyranny of the minority.

Yes, fuck off you Nazis, you jackbooted thugs - not, you understand, that the Devine is intolerant of you, but rather simply intolerant of your fascist jackbooted intolerance.

Jackie Stricker, the partner of Dr Kerryn Phelps, wrote a letter to this newspaper calling for me to receive “urgent counselling” and saying my columns shouldn’t be published. That’s right. Let’s censor unfashionable mainstream opinions.

There was of course a much more sensible option. Simply not to publish Jackie Stricker's letter, and so spare the indignant Devine the sense of being at one and the same time, both unfashionable and mainstream. After all, we should censor unfashionable minority opinions that happen to think the Devine is a gherkin of the first water.

This is of course in complete contrast to being totally fashionable and in a minority, or perhaps fashionably mainstream.

Naturally the Devine is also upset by the likes of that rage-flecked John Birmingham, and the rage-flecked Brian Greig, but she finds consolation in the words of David Cameron, and the Daily Express, and British think tank Civitas, and then doubles down on the bet.

In the middle of the furore came an email from a friend who grew up in public housing in western Sydney and has spent much of his career trying to right the problems he saw there: “Anyone who thinks a cadre of fatherless children is good for society has never set foot in a public housing estate.”

And indeed the statistical data that the Devine has prepared on the thousand or so fatherless children already charged with rioting is impressive.

Oops. Printer's error. Insert here the sound of crickets.

To use the Devine's own phrase, the ultimate straw man, it wasn't her off the cuff rabbiting on about the fatherless society, or that ultimate straw man the good father that saved all, that got many people going.

The reason many people took objection to her column was the specious, irrelevant, offensive conflation of the London riots with Penny Wong, a couple of lesbians having a kid, and gay marriage in general, and her trashing of single mothers, without anything meaningful by way of data or research to back up her idle prejudiced, biased speculations.

But then the Devine is utterly shameless, and shifts ground like a chimera so she can come to a trumpeting final par:

Pointing out that fathers are important is not homophobic.

No, but linking Penny Wong and gay marriage to the fatherless society that allegedly - in the Devine's mind - caused the London riot, is quintessentially homophobic, especially as the evidence suggests that the rioters in the streets were largely the product of heterosexual relationships, and any blather about the slow motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of the UK in the past few generations should have been tagged to heterosexuals.

Consistency and coherence wouldn't have made that analysis correct, but it least it would have ameliorated the Devine's silliness. Sadly, in her determination to pin the riots on the fatherless society, the Devine has forgotten that the major cause, as determined by the consensus of the commentariat is ... drum roll please ... the welfare state.

And then comes another mea culpa:

Nor is it an indictment on individual single mothers, many of whom do a heroic job.

Yep, the Devine really pissed off a number of indignant single mothers, doing their best in difficult circumstances, and suddenly finding their form of family as the root cause of the London riots.

But to pretend that a fatherless society is not a disaster doesn’t delete the truth.

Nor does pretending that somehow linking Wong and gay marriage and the London riots isn't an offensive, insulting kind of conflation designed to generate heat and hits and comments but absolutely nothing by way of light of insight.

My partner always says "How can you read that dreadful woman?" but I have to say a Devine column provides the same kind of fascinated horror as a traffic accident or perhaps an hour long Air Traffic Investigation show. And that's why she keeps on getting published.

It's like contemplating a train wreck, what with the hostility, the barely repressed rage, the anger, fear and loathing. And she calls herself a Christian. Oh wait, she actually calls herself a Catholic. Now things, and all that patriarchy worship, are getting a little clearer ...

Okay, you say, but I'm not really interested in train wrecks or the pornography of stupidity or the rantings of a Catholic conservative, I'd like an intelligent insight into English social history and rioting.

Well you have to endure the insufferable, interrupting, talking over and through his guests, anecdotally self-indulgent Phillip Adams, but why not have a listen to the genial Donald Thomas take a tour through British criminality, putting the recent riots into a historical context in the process (History of rioting in Britain).

It's only twenty four minutes of your life, whereas reading the Devine might make you feel that you've just lost twenty four years ...

Oh this provides a chance to throw in a splendid meme has been doing the rounds lately:

Your boy has just got his HSC, and yet he has no cultural interests. He despises classical music, never reads a serious book, and seldom uses a word beyond the range of a six-year old child. And he has no manners….this generation of teenagers is inferior in almost every respect to the generation of, say, the 1930s. (William F. Broderick, “The Ugly Teenager”, The Age, 7/2/1976)

Yep, that'd be the generation that marched off to war in 1939, humming along to Herbert von Karajan conducting Beethoven, perhaps with a copy of Goethe under the arm.

So it goes.

It's a funny old world, and lordy you only have to read the cataclysmic catastrophic jackboot-foaming and frothing Devine to realise it ...

(Below: the twittering Devine, dribbling drivel in the tweet wars.

Miranda of course does actual debate, which doesn't involve name-calling, because how can calling out the vile vilifications, and distortions, and outright lies of the politically correct McCarthyites, full of performance rage from the entrenched, intolerant, cerebrally challenged, paranoid, dishonest, lacking in comprehension skills, jackbooted, abusive thugs on the left be interpreted as name-calling?

Seeing as how these illiberal rage-flecked leftist ratbags ram their jackbooted totalitarian thuggery down the throat of the innocent Devine (not one speck of carbon on her pure soul) and the unfashionable mainstream (and just what is wrong with ugg boots?).

Stop your intemperate thuggish foot-stomping ways at once so we can have a respectful, calm, loving debate about how truly fucked you are, you totalitarian, censoring, McCarthyite left wingers, and join Joe McCarthy in loathing commie lefties...

Oh yes, the word surely is dribbling drivel, or is that a drivel of dribble?)