Oh FFS, just bloody well shut up ...

The fun continues at denialist headquarters.

The latest riff is the slap-down Dame Groan has delivered to jolly Joe.

Oh just shut up Joe.

This could become the pond gold standard response to any minister in the Abbott government who dares to speak about issues related to their portfolio.

"I'm turning the NBN into a bloody marvel of mixed technologies and useless connections".

Oh just shut up big Mal...

And so on and so forth.

"Look at me, I'm being a statesman".

Oh just shut up, lean Tony.

The problem of course is that the reptiles wasted a lot of energy and a lot of heat celebrating Joe's budget and explaining how it was just and right and proper and so and thus.

Remember the good old days? (click to slightly enlarge). Oh the reptiles were right at the head of the charge:

And the ersatz reptiles at Fairfax, the reptiles you have when you don't have a Murdoch reptile to hand, were also onside:

Now Dame Groan's telling us the budget was dodgy, a dog, full of highly suspect measures and not worth a cheroot to a slumming cigar smoker in need of a puff?

Why she's gone plumb crazy, or even worse, she's gone plumb Fairfax:

Oh it's great to see the Tories go at each other, and the reason for Dame Groan's revisionist tendencies is easy enough to understand.

It's actually got very little to do with the budget, wretched shambolic exercise in flim flam by the snake oil seller that it was, no, it's all to do with the events highlighted in Damien Murphy's Joe Hockey biography heats Canberra's winter hibernation (forced video at end of link)

In the latest account of the bio fallout - up there with the bio fallout in Contagion - Peter Credlin speaks above her pay grade as a king maker and PM caller, jolly Joe listens to Tony when he should have heeded his wife, big Mal is untrustworthy - who'd have guessed -  and jolly Joe fancies himself as Dirk Diggler:

King received the biggest laugh when noting that her book recorded Mr Hockey’s desire to enter hospital for stomach surgery under the pseudonym Dirk Diggler (the name of Mark Wahlberg’s porn star character in the 1997 film Boogie Nights). 
The doctors knew best, and he was admitted as Joe Little. 
‘‘And that’s unlikely to help negotiations with Jacqui Lambie,’’ Ms King said.

Oh dear. No wonder Dame Groan isn't amused. Somehow jolly Joe's managed to get himself compared to Mark Wahlberg ... and Jacqui Lambie:

Talk about a heavy hung penis fixation.

And now jolly Joe's going to leave his desire to become PM to destiny.

Just as well he's not leaving it to Dame Groan.

She's not happy, and it's not just the bulge in the underpants that's got her going:

The government, including Hockey in the important role as Treasurer, can be criticised for failing to make the public case for cutting government spending and altering the features of many entitle­ment programs. 
Perhaps Abbott and his colleagues were caught out by the re-run of the West Australian Senate election and the delay in releasing the National Commission of Audit report. 
In reality, there was an eerie ­silence from the government when it was first elected, when a compelling case for repairing the budget should have been made. 
My sense is that the public will wear a degree of short-term pain if the budgetary position is well explain­ed and the alternative is outlined (harsher adjustments down the track, an inability to respond to an economic downturn). 
The trouble is that the government has not really provided this exposition. 
We know (sic) learn from his newly released, authorised biography that Hockey suggested that the income tax levy on higher-­income earners should have been extended to a greater proportion of taxpayers. 
This is a little more than passing strange. 
Australia now has one of the highest marginal income tax rates among advanced countries and we know that high marginal income tax rates reduce work effort and labour-force participation. 
For all the carry-on about the impact of the (unaffordable and unjustifiable) paid parental leave scheme on women’s labour-force participation, why would Hockey support a policy that will drive down labour-force participation, as well as being antithetical (supposedly) to what the Liberal Party stands for? Sometimes it’s better simply to shut up.

Income tax? Et tu jolly Joe? The Tea Partiers now roam the jungle at night sniffing for your blood ...

Okay, the pond knows it's childish to chortle at these squabbling children, but the pond loves the sounds of playground feuds as a way of ushering in a new day.

It gives every hope that the country will move forward with all the sense of style and functionality this sign displayed when it did the Twitter rounds:

Another EXCLUSIVE day at climate denialist headquarters ...

It should be remembered that it was Graham Lloyd that earned yesterday's Press Council rebuke to the lizard Oz, a rebuke which naturally sent the Bolter into a frenzy:

In a September 16 article, since changed online but archived here on the Media Watch website (in pdf form), The Australian environment editor Graham Lloyd rehashed a British story published a week before the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC was released that claimed the report update would say the true figure of warming since 1951 had been 0.12 degrees Celsius per decade, and not the 0.2 degrees Celsius claimed in previous reports. 
 The Oz’s piece continued: “Last week, the IPCC was forced to deny it was locked in crisis talks as reports intensified that scientists were preparing to revise down the speed at which climate change is happening and its likely impact. 
 “It is believed the IPCC draft report will still conclude there is now greater confidence that climate change is real, humans are having a major impact and that the world will continue to warm catastrophically unless drastic action is taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The impacts would include big rises in the sea level, floods, droughts and the disappearance of the Arctic icecap. 
 “But claimed contradictions in the report have led to calls for the IPCC report process to be scrapped.” 
 These reports were wrong. The Daily Mail got its numbers wrong, and The Australian repeated the error, as Media Watch and The Guardian pointed out last year. The long-term trend in the IPCC report is 0.13 degrees of global warming a decade, and has been for some time — there was no retreat from higher figures.

That reminder courtesy of Crikey and 'Considerable concern': Oz in hot water over climate denial errors, though comically enough, in writing it, the Crikey scribbler committed a couple of basic howlers, confusing years with decades.

Still, Crikey provided a handy link to climate denialist central, and the offending Lloyd piece, which now appears in this form:

And so on. The pond reprinted that adjudication yesterday, but you can find it at the Press Council here.

Frankly, after that sort of smack down, the pond doesn't know how Lloyd manages to get out of bed and keep scribbling, or look at himself in the mirror.

The pond would be inclined to go hide in a room and stare at the ceiling, but hey, the force of the kool aid is strong in this one.

And so to today's effort, yet another attempt by Lloyd to evoke puzzles, concerns, pauses, mysteries, confusions, obfuscations and a failed science which can't account for a "pause" in global warming.

So what's the first bit of cheekiness?

Yep, there it is, it's lit up in bright red, with the claim that Lloyd, in writing Puzzle of deep ocean cooling (behind the paywall because you have to pay to read a failed environment editor), is somehow writing an EXCLUSIVE.

It is, in fact, just a beat up of a scientific paper, and climate denialist sites have already been over it like a rash.

There it was two days ago at the impressively titled The Global Warming Policy Foundation, "Restoring balance and trust to the climate debate", under the header Deep Oceans are Cooling Amidst A Sea of Modeling Uncertainty.

The take home message there?

So it remains unclear if and how Trenberth’s “missing heat” has sunk to the deep ocean. The depiction of a dramatic rise in deep ocean heat is highly questionable, even though alarmists have flaunted it as proof of CO2’s power. As Dr. Wunsch had warned earlier, “Convenient assumptions should not be turned prematurely into ‘facts,’ nor uncertainties and ambiguities suppressed.” … “Anyone can write a model: the challenge is to demonstrate its accuracy and precision… Otherwise, the scientific debate is controlled by the most articulate, colorful, or adamant players.” 
 To reiterate, “the uncertainties remain too large to rationalize e.g., the apparent “pause” in warming.”

It's the use of "alarmist" that gives the "balance and trust" game away. The takeaway message is pure denialist, and it's the routine use of "alarmist" which permits the pond to fling around cheerfully the word "denialist".

And Judith Curry was all over it three days ago, though the more canny Curry was more circumspect and questioning, in Are the deep oceans cooling?, ending with a slightly different bottom line:

All in all, I don’t see a very convincing case for deep ocean sequestration of heat.

But at least Curry provided a link to the original paper, available in pdf form and may be slow to load here, and readers will be amused to discover that the actual bottom line of the paper is a plea for more funding and more observations and more expenditure ... well amusing if you remember that the denialists routinely suggest that fat cat scientists are only after lavish grants designed to ensure they have a lifestyle up there with Bill Gates.

Never mind, the important thing to remember is that it isn't in any sense of the word an EXCLUSIVE.

Why that internationally renowned scientist, the Bolter, was also all over it three days ago, taking precious time away from bashing blacks and other pesky minorities, to scribble a definitive No, not enough ocean heat to explain that warming pause.

The world's leading climate scientist knows where to get his second hand science, and that's Jim Steele at Watts Up With That. (yes that was published back on July 21st, but hey exclusive is as exclusive does).

Well you can't expect the world's leading climate scientist to bother doing actual science, or even actual analysis, not when it's environmentally sensitive and thoughtful to recycle the thoughts of others ...

Now the scientists can argue amongst themselves - the pond doesn't pretend to be a player in that game - and the denialists can cheerfully jump to all the conclusions that they like - when confronted with unshakeable faith, that's like debating transubstantiation with a fundamentalist Mel Gibson - but the point about Lloyd is that what he's doing is worse than blogging.

Here's how it works. There is an amplifying circuit out in the ether which seizes on any scientific paper and immediately concludes that it's further evidence that global warming is a hoax, a conspiracy, a fraud, possibly involving the UN and its puppets, and possibly even a way to lead the planet by the nose to a world government ...

Lloyd routinely dips into this fuzzy, ideological amplification, and every so often surfaces with an EXCLUSIVE that's not, and it leads to the sort of simplifications and errors that the Press Council chivvied him for last time.

And because he's amplifying the denialists, it turns the allegedly mainstream media he's fronting into denialist central, home of rumours, uncertainties and confusions.

It's precisely the same strategy that was deployed by big tobacco for decades - you know Restoring balance and trust to the cigarette and tobacco debate - and it's symptomatic of the decline of the lizard Oz as a newspaper that in recent times it has taken to running faux statistics and alarmist nonsense from big tobacco, along with its cheerful propaganda for the big fossil fuel players.

Towards the end of his superficial coverage, Lloyd does try to cover himself from further PC complaints and adjudications:

Andy Hogg from ANU said while there was uncertainty about temperatures in the deep ocean, shallower regions were well understood, and the findings of the Wunsch paper were “consistent” with warming oceans. He said cooling of the deep ocean was not necessarily significant. “Most parts of the abyssal ocean take a very long time (centuries to millennia) to come into equilibrium with surface forcing,” he said. “So if cooling has occurred over large parts of the abyssal ocean, it is unrelated to global warming of the atmosphere over the last century.” 
He said there were key parts of the abyss, which had a closer connection with the surface. “The paper indicates that these regions have indeed been consistent with the expected heat uptake of the ocean in a warmer world,” Dr Hogg said.

But what Lloyd is really doing is "publishing the controversy", in which he explains that there are two contending balanced forces at play and in dispute, and each to be taken seriously as they debate such topics as global temperatures, "a key area of dispute between climate scientists and sceptics".

You might just as well end a story about god by noting that the creation of the earth is "a key area of dispute between Darwinists and creationists".

Never mind, devoted followers of the circus will remember that one of the scientists involved in the paper, Carl Wunsch of MIT, not so long ago, well at least in dinosaur terms, but back in 2007 featured in a scandal which erupted around his appearance in The Great Global Warming Swindle (for all those Greg Hunts who love to wiki).

Wunsch complained he was mislead and deceived about the nature of the show, and after his complaints his material was deleted from the international and DVD versions. Back then, Wunsch found himself writing climate change is:

... climate change is "real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component. But I have tried to stay out of the `climate wars' because all nuance tends to be lost, and the distinction between what we know firmly, as scientists, and what we suspect is happening, is so difficult to maintain in the presence of rhetorical excess." He further cautiously states that "The science of climate change remains incomplete. Some elements are so firmly based on well-understood principles, or for which the observational record is so clear, that most scientists would agree that they are almost surely true (adding CO2 to the atmosphere is dangerous; sea level will continue to rise, ...). Other elements remain more uncertain, but we as scientists in our roles as informed citizens believe society should be deeply concerned about their possibility: failure of US midwestern (sic) precipitation in 100 years in a mega-drought; melting of a large part of the Greenland ice sheet, among many other examples.

As for Patrick Heimbach? Well he's just as bad, publishing papers that take a look at Greenland and what might happen in future years, and yes, suggesting more funding is needed for more observations for a problem that will impact future generations (A look back and ahead at Greenland's changing climate).

But if you read Lloyd, all you get is a take home message is confusion and chaos, unanswered, perhaps unanswerable questions, hypotheses that need confirmation or refutation, negligible implications that might turn out to be massive, and a high stakes game being played with blank cards:

Professor Wunsch and Dr Heimbach say trends showed a warming in the upper ocean and a net cooling below 2000m. Below 3600m, the cooling is about 0.01C over 19 years. 
“As with many climate-­related records, the unanswerable question here is whether these changes are truly secular, and/or a response to anthropogenic forcing, or whether they are fragments of a general red noise behaviour,’’ the paper says. 
Some climate scientists claim the deep oceans are not significant because of the long time­frames over which temperature changes occur. 
Professor Wunsch and Dr Heimbach say shifts in deep ocean properties “may indeed be so slight that their neglect in discussions of heat uptake and sea level change is justified”. 
“The history of exploration suggests, however, that blank places on the map have either been assumed to be without any interesting features and dropped from further discussion, or at the other extreme filled with ‘dragons’ invoked to explain strange reports,” they say. 
The paper says that, given the combination of the high stakes for society in the accurate ­estimation of global heating rates and sea level rise, and the fundamental science questions of understanding of oceanic variability, direct confirmation or refutation of the existing hypothesis was essential.

Scientists full of saucy doubts, confusions and fears.

What to do, what to do?

Why read the Bolter, the world's greatest climate scientist, he'll sort things out ...

Just another day at the EXCLUSIVE headquarters of climate denialist central ...

(Below: and now for another great moment in science. You can find the story at Followup on the WSJ climate denial OpEd, and you can find the cartoon here, along with this:

Add caption

And so to the cartoon:

Oh okay you probably read Neutrino researchers admit Einstein was right, but here's a couple of XKCDs arising from the subject matter, and more of XKCD's cartoons here:

Meanwhile, at climate denial central headquarters ...

Uh huh. You can gratify the reptiles at climate denialist central with a click, if you head off to Press Council adjudication, but if you don't feel so inclined, here it is, as the reptiles cop a spanking with a warm lettuce leaf, months after it mattered, and months after they've maintained their denialist ways:

The following adjudication has been issued by the Australian Press Council. 
The Press Council has considered a complaint about a number of items published in The Australian in September 2013, a week before the release of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 
The first article, We got it wrong on warming, says IPCC, was on pages 1 and 6 on 16 September. It began: 
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment reportedly admits its computer drastically overestimated rising temperatures, and over the past 60 years the world has in fact been warming at half the rate claimed in the previous IPCC report in 2007. More importantly, according to reports in British and US media, the draft report appears to suggest global temperatures were less sensitive to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide than was previously thought. The 2007 assessment report said the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade, but according to Britain’s The Daily Mail the draft update report says the true figure since 1951 has been 0.12C”. 
An editorial headed The warm hard facts — Climate change should always be about the science was published on the following day. Amongst other things, it said: “Exaggerated, imprecise and even oxymoronic language pollutes the climate change debate”, and it emphasised the need to have regard to the facts of climate science, not simply “beliefs”. It accused specific people and organisations of inaccurate and unbalanced contributions which had generated undue alarm about climate change. It reiterated the key assertion in the previous article, saying: “Later this month, the next iteration of the IPCC’s climate assessment will revise downwards (by close to 50 per cent) warming trends”. 
The same issue included a letter to the editor from David Karoly, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Melbourne and a contributor to the IPCC report, which pointed out: 
“The observed rate of global average warming of surface air temperature over the past 60 years of 0.12C per decade is almost identical to the value reported in the IPCC report in 2007 of 0.13C per decade for the period 1956-2005”. 
The letter was placed fifth amongst six letters published on that day under the general heading Climate sceptics sense a modicum of vindication. The writers of the first four letters were highly critical of the IPCC, clearly having assumed that the newspaper’s original article was correct. 
Four days after the original article appeared, the online headline was changed to read Doubts over IPCC’s global warming rates. A brief “Clarification” was added, noting the article’s reference to a rate of 0.2C and stating: “In fact, the new rate of 0.12C every decade is almost the same as the IPCC’s 2007 figure of 0.13C every decade over the 50 years to 2005.” It also said: “The report was based on a British media article that has since been corrected”. It also acknowledged the original article erred in saying the IPCC conducted its own computer modelling, explaining: “That error was made in the production process”. 
Five days after the original article, a single paragraph headed “Correction” was published in the lower half of page 2 of the print version of The Weekend Australian. It provided the same information as the online “clarification”. 
Cameron Byers and others complained to the Council about the inaccuracy to which Prof Karoly had referred. They also said the original article was unfair and unbalanced because it included little comment from the IPCC and implied error and concealment by the IPCC (for example: “the IPCC was forced to deny it was locked in crisis talks”). 
Mr Byers said Prof Karoly’s letter should have been given more prominence and should have alerted the publication to the need to check carefully whether the claim in its original report was accurate before publishing an editorial which repeated the claim. He also said the online “clarification” should have been headed “Correction”, both it and the print correction should have been published much earlier, and the print correction should have been more prominent. 
The publication subsequently acknowledged to the Press Council that the headline and first sentence of the original article were incorrect, but it said that in all other respects the article was fair and balanced. It said the IPCC had been asked to comment but had declined to respond as the assertions were based on the alleged contents of a draft report which had not been completed or published. 
The publication said there was no reason for it to have suspected errors in the articles in The Mail on Sunday and noted that The Wall Street Journal had also published an article containing the same error. It also noted that on the day after the original article it reported that Australian climate scientists believed the alleged IPCC revision was consistent with its 2007 report. 
The publication acknowledged to the Council that Prof Karoly’s letter should have prompted it to investigate the matter and then publish the correction in the newspaper more promptly. It also acknowledged that the online “clarification” should perhaps have been called a “correction”, but it said the print correction on page 2 was adequate because that is where it traditionally places corrections. 
The Council has considered the complaint by reference to the following parts of its General Principles: “Publications should take reasonable steps to ensure reports are accurate, fair and balanced”; “relevant facts should not be misrepresented or suppressed”; and “Where it is established that a serious inaccuracy has been published, a publication should promptly correct the error, giving the correction due prominence”. 
The Council has concluded that the erroneous claim about the revised warming rate was very serious, given the importance of the issue and of the need for accuracy (both of which were emphasised in the editorial that repeated the claim without qualification). Although based on another publication’s report, the claim was unequivocally asserted in The Australian headline, We got it wrong on warming, says IPCC, which also implied the IPCC had acknowledged the alleged error. The impression that the claim was correct was reinforced by The Australian saying the IPCC had been “forced to deny” that it was in crisis talks. 
The Council considers that rigorous steps should have been taken before giving such forceful and prominent credence to The Mail on Sunday’s claim. Accordingly, the complaint on that ground is upheld. 
Given Professor Karoly’s expertise and the importance of the issue, his letter should have triggered a prompt and thorough investigation by the publication. Instead, the error was repeated in an editorial on the page opposite his letter. Moreover, his letter was published below other letters which assumed the original article was true and under a collective heading which reflected their views, rather than his correction. 
The Council considers that the gravity of the erroneous claim, and its repetition without qualification in the editorial, required a correction which was more substantial, and much more prominent, than a single paragraph in the lower half of page 2. The heading should also have given a brief indication of the subject matter, in order to help attract the attention of readers of the original article (and editorial) and thereby meet the Council’s long-standing requirement that a correction “has the effect, as far as possible, of neutralising any damage arising from” the original article. 
Accordingly, the complaints about the correction are upheld. 
The Council welcomes the acknowledgements of error and expressions of regret which the publication eventually made to it. But they should have been made very much earlier, and made directly to the publication’s readers in a frank and specific manner. It is a matter of considerable concern that this approach was not adopted. 
The Council emphasises that, of course, this adjudication neither endorses nor rejects any particular theories or predictions about global warming and related issues.

Uh huh.

And where was this on the digital page? Down in the middle. There was certainly no breast beating from the editorialist ...

It's just another day at denialist central ...

So where do the reptiles get their expert scientific advice?

Well of course in the Bolter they have one of the world's greatest climate scientists, when he has time to spare from bashing minorities that offend him.

And best of all, their owner, and keeper of the reptiles in the style they've become accustomed to, is also a top notch climate scientist, a repository of astonishing scientific wisdom and insights:

The apple and the knob polishers do the hagiographic hard yards this day, and by golly is jolly Joe a pile of work ...

It's busy days for the hagiographers and knob polishers, and the bouffant one is back to berate jolly Joe Hockey for his shocking ways ...

You see, a terrible question arises. Which knob to polish, which hagiography to write? Should it be the wise, stern Treasurer, who just wants to deliver a tough budget, one suited for these troubled times, and worshipped as a grand job well delivered, right up to recent times.

A brave tough man, loved by the markets and by the hard heads, but sadly opposed at every turn bya soft touch PM, the goose with not an economic bone in his addled brain ...

Or should the commentariat turn on jolly Joe and tear him limb from limb, and demand his sacking, or at least leave him howling in the wind, tearing at his sackcloth and ashes.

Better to throw out a useless bit of furniture than the jewel in the crown, the soft touch PM with not an economic bone in his addled brain.

Is it time for a book burning?

Heck, why not? Come on down bouffant one, and sock it to us with  Colleagues throw book at Hockey (behind the paywall, because book throwing, like book burning, doesn't come cheap).

The leitmotiv of Joe Hockey’s first months as Treasurer has ­become that of an aloof plutocrat puffing on a cigar, well-off, politic­ally distant from everyday life, ­indulgent and indulged. 
And that is just the view of some of his senior colleagues. 
His launch this morning of the authorised biography — Hockey: Not Your Average Joe — only confirms colleagues’ concerns and prejudices, reinforces the impression he is not concentrating on selling his first budget and gifts Labor more material to beat an already beaten government. 
That Hockey wanted an even tougher budget with even more pain not only hurts him and the “team” in the eyes of his cabinet colleagues, it is a clear inference that Tony Abbott was not up to the task. 
That Hockey will never again trust Malcolm Turnbull, in the words of his wife, Melissa Babbage, feeds division and rancour. 
And that Hockey has refused to resile or apologise for any of the revelations and ramifications so far damages Abbott’s authority and drags the PM’s targeted chief-of-staff, Peta Credlin, who says the Treasurer has his head above every other contender, further into a scarifying spotlight. 
The revelations in the book, by journalist Madonna King, are not in themselves career-ending or of the same quantum of revelations about Peter Costello’s views about John Howard and the leadership that sapped the Howard-Costello government for years and ended in tears. 
But, coming after a flawed political selling of a budget that had much to economically recommend it, some of Hockey’s cabinet colleagues see the Treasurer’s ratification of the book’s conclusions as a final act of self-indulgence and what must be the last act of indulgence from Abbott. 
That the budget has soured the Coalition’s public standing is an understatement, and that Hockey’s lack of preparation for the “end of the age of entitlement’’ was part of that souring is ­self-evident. What’s worse, with the revelations in a biography he authorised and is endorsing, Hockey is damaging Abbott’s authority just as it is recovering and seems not to fear having his chain yanked. 
In the smoking ruins of the budget sales job, not the budget ­itself, Hockey has made life more difficult for Abbott, drawn Credlin further into dangerous cabinet infighting and created sympathy for Turnbull, who is seen as being ostracised for lesser crimes. 
Hockey can’t help being well off nor should he be punished for it — after all, Kevin Rudd and Turnbull faced each other as ­millionaires — but tempting fate by smoking a fat cigar while inflicting budget pain on unemployed youth or talking about his 200ha cattle property while discussing drought relief are not the acts of a wise and empathetic character. 
Yesterday, despite the undercurrents among his colleagues and a growing scrutiny Hockey, in New Zealand and fresh back from a holiday in Fiji, did nothing to dampen the growing angst. 
Labor’s Chris Bowen didn’t miss the chance. 
Just as the government in general, and Abbott in particular, are preparing to take advantage of the passage of the carbon tax repeal bill and rest the budget debate, Hockey has opened unnecessary wounds and made much of the debate about him.

It has to be said that the pond just loves the smell of napalm and squabbling Tories in the morning.

Sadly, the pond has to agree with Dennis Shanahan - now there's a first - and Joe Hockey's book-throwing colleagues.

The time has come to sack Joe Hockey forthwith, and send him to the back bench at once. And since Hockey didn't act alone, but smoked his indulgent cigar with Mathias Cormann, the Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator must also be immediately benched.

But let's not stop there. Someone appointed these clowns to the two most important economic positions in the federal political landscape, and whoever that was should also be immediately retired from active duty, and a cabinet reshuffle promptly organised.

The pond has many solutions to hand. Bronnie Bishop should be dragooned from her speaker's job - which she's handled with tremendous skill and astonishing impartiality - and forthwith made PM, just to prove the Liberals can empower women.

And who better than the poodle Pyne as Treasurer? After all, he appointed a strap and cane lover to enquire into education, and how better to bring the economy into good shape than six of the best on each hand, and the sweet smell of leather and fear as the cracking strap caresses the firm bottoms of young boys?

Oops, the pond got a little carried away there. Is there incipient Toryism in the pond?

But wait there's more treats. You see, if you happened to look up the bouffant one, here's what you got:

Strange, but thank you Google, for this splendid juxtaposition.

You see, if you clicked on the demonic, glowering shape of Rupert Murdoch - and who could resist? - you were immediately transported, courtesy the magic carpet of links, to Laura Tingle's piece for the AFR, Tony Abbott brief Rupert Murdoch on paid parental leave.

And suddenly it becomes painfully clear why the hagiographers and knob polishers were upset with jolly Joe Hockey:

Tony Abbott gave media proprietor Rupert Murdoch a detailed briefing on his controversial $5.5 billion paid parental leave scheme before he announced it without consulting his shadow cabinet or MPs. 
The revelation about the scheme – which continues to be a contentious issue within the Coalition and between the government and the business community – is in a new biography of Treasurer Joe Hockey. In the book, Mr Hockey claims Mr Abbott only made a vague reference to the plan to him before it was announced in opposition. 
Madonna King, the author of Hockey: Not Your Average Joe, writes neither the Coalition party room nor the businesses who would pay a levy to fund the expensive scheme were consulted before it was announced in 2010. But Mr Abbott “conferred with one leading business figure, the media proprietor Rupert Murdoch, who had been in Australia the month before”. 
The book says Mr Abbott, a former Murdoch employee and then the new leader of the Liberal Party, “like many before him, had dinner with Murdoch, where he gave the media mogul a full rundown on the scheme – ­supplying enough detail for Murdoch to later have his Australian-based editors briefed on Abbott’s plan, which [Murdoch] considered a visionary approach to dealing with a real problem in his workforce”. 
“They were encouraged to support it, notwithstanding that it represented a tax impost and was skewed to be of most benefit to parents outside their middle-Australian readership,” the book says. 
“This fact was unknown to members in the party room, who condemned Abbott’s solo policymaking on such a fundamental issue.”

Throw the book at him! Burn the book!  Form a circle and chant! Kill the best! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!

Oh dear too much time amongst the Tories or perhaps spent reading Golding's Lord of the Flies, a splendid guide to Tory politics.

Tingle has more, about the irked and offended Hockey, and the roughshod riding Abbott and agitated big business, and isolated Joe Hockey, and un-costed proposals and a government seething with tension and in total policy disarray, but you can read the rest at your leisure and your pleasure.

But it helps why the Abbott knob polishers are so agitated and will continue to be agitated.

The reptiles at the lizard Oz did the best they could, and set two of their best, most hagiographic knob polishers to work:

Oh sure, the image of Abbott as a kind of robot with a strategic map implanted in his head conjured up some wonderful images:

But it was all too little too late.

The pond still felt a curious tingle running up the leg ...

The book discusses two contentious policy issues – the Green Army and the paid parental leave scheme – which it asserts involved Mr Abbott making significant policy announcements without discussing them at all, or at least in any detail, with his shadow treasurer.

Uh huh.

Sheesh, despite the very best endeavours of the knob polishers, it's all falling apart as the knobs send missives to each other, and books out into the world et cetera, et cetera...

(Below: as always, David Rowe has a brilliant abridgement of the book, which has saved the pond the trouble of reading it, and more brilliant Rowe here, the best reason for the AFR to continue to exist, even allowing for the tingle Laura Tingle can produce)

How is this columnist still a columnist and this thing still a thing?

Once again Paul "magic water man" Sheehan demonstrates himself to be a thoroughly stupid man, incapable of holding together a coherent approach over more than a couple of days.

Was it only on Monday that he was scribbling Time for Ukraine to divide?

Yes, it was, and here was Sheehan's epic conclusion:

The deeper reality is that Ukraine is now two nations in everything but law. It can be split via plebiscite. On the western side is a de facto sovereign state, Ukraine, which is aligned with the European Community and could quickly be invited to membership. On the eastern side is the autonomous region of Donetsk, which could become sovereign or be absorbed into Russia as an autonomous department. Ukraine’s river system even provides natural borders. 
As for the detail of where a new border between Ukraine and Donetsk would run, that should be decided by the people, by plebiscite. Better a formal division than more blood, blackmail and disaster.

The deeper reality of this bout of Neville Chamberlain fever was that it was already a deal done:

The people have already spoken. The splintering of Ukraine began to take a formal shape in the presidential election of 2010 when Viktor Yanukovych, a Russian-speaking former governor of the Donetsk Oblast province, defeated Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. She is a Ukraine nationalist who became internationally famous for her distinctive golden braids and for her advocacy of Ukraine joining the European Community and ending Russia’s control over the country. 
The 2010 vote divided almost perfectly along ethnic lines. The greatest support for Yanukovych came from the regions in the east with Russian-speaking majorities, and the greatest support for Tymoshenko came from the Ukrainian-speaking west.

Uh huh. So let's do a fast forward to yesterday's epic follow-up, MH17: Vladimir Putin will lose Ukraine through stupidity.

It turns out that the plebiscite was just a cunning ploy, a calling of the bluff, a high stakes poker game with Putin the certain loser:

On Monday I suggested Ukraine should hold a plebiscite on separation, to allow the country to shed Russian influence by allowing any region contiguous with Russia to vote to return to Russia if it wished. A plebiscite would be an aggressive form of democracy. It would call Putin’s bluff. 
Based on the events of the past week, Russia would be fortunate to harvest a small rump of Ukraine. The rest of the country, most of it, would reject Russia. And Putin would have lost Ukraine.

No need now to talk of a sovereign autonomous region of Donetsk. Thanks to Sheehan's cleverness, all Putin would score was a rump steak.

There are any number of things to be said about this peculiar form of stupidity, but the first should surely be a sigh of relief that Sheehan is simply a hapless member of the commentariat, and has absolutely no capacity to implement a plebiscite or influence others in this direction.

Having thrown up his hands in quisling/Chamberlain despair on Monday, suddenly on a Wednesday he's triumphant and imagining all sorts of defeats for Putin:

The mind-boggling stupidity of the armed masked men at the crash site of the Malaysia Airlines plane, and their blatantly lying superiors, has changed the equation in Ukraine and Europe. The murder of 298 civilians by Russian-backed criminals is creating positives out of a disastrous negative. 
Those positives can prove significant. So significant that, after the criminal investigation of the destruction of flight MH17 is completed, Russia can lose its right to host the 2018 football World Cup. Not all sanctions involve trade. Shunning has its place. During the World Cup final in Rio de Janeiro, Russian President Vladimir Putin sat next to the President of Brazil and the president of FIFA. If Russia is found to have sponsored terrorism, then sought to cover up a mass murder, many nations will not want to see Russia and Putin rewarded with the world’s most-watched sporting event. 
The imperial meddling of Putin will be tainted for years to come by this incident. Ukrainians have been galvanised. They have witnessed the murder of innocents, the appalling conduct of separatists at the crash scene and the implausible denials by Russian puppets, notably Alexander Borodai, the self-styled prime minister of the Donetsk people's republic. Faced with overwhelming evidence of self-incrimination, Borodai said: “It is very simple to disprove it. All of the information that comes through the internet is practically all lies.” 
This tactic of brazen blanket denial actually works in Russia, where the state media has been whitewashing reality and shunting blame onto the Ukrainian government. Putin remains popular as a Russian nationalist standing up to the West.

Yes, and he was so successful in Sheehan's eyes that on the Monday the benighted one was prepared to hand over a large slab of the Ukraine, using rivers as borders and whatever other fiddle faddle was necessary to determine the two new states.

There was no talk then of rumps. Now the arising rump is presumably so small it would have to be swallowed back into Russia since it wouldn't have sufficient size to warrant a separate existence.

This is the sort of mindless divvying up of countries that the British once indulged in when they held the reins of empire, and lordy, lordy, didn't they fuck up huge rumps of the world in the process. Want to sort out India and Pakistan? Would you like squillions of murders with that?

The end result? After reeling away from these two efforts, the impression is that Sheehan re-read his first column and started back, saying 'Holy shit, did I write that gibberish?' and so felt the need to write new gibberish to set the first one right.

There seems to be only one final question.

No, it's not why does Sheehan exist, since he's perfectly entitled to go on wasting oxygen as he pleases.

More to the point, why does he bother to produce two columns in such quick succession which show him to be inordinately stupid? And perhaps there are a couple of minor sub-set questions that flow from that one.

Why does Fairfax continue to publish him? And even more mysterious, why do readers bother to read him?

Aha you say, but the pond read him. What's the answer then?

Well the pond has a simple explanation. Reading Sheehan has all the charm and fascination of watching an intellectual train wreck done in slow motion, with elaborate CGIs and handsome special effects and useless words that flow to the sea like heavy metals and mercury.

Like many movies, the verbal action is completely unrelated to the real world or to practical solutions, and therefore has all the magical qualities of a Disney fairy tale ...

When the pond wants a serious discussion of Ukraine, Europe, the EU and the whole damn thing, there are a thousand intelligent and informed commentators out there to help.

When the pond wants to meet a toffee apple having a discussion with some fairy floss about the nature of waffles and waffling, whey then Sheehan is the Man ...

And now the pond realises that the pond has completely failed to acknowledge a hugely important event unfolding in Scotland.

What that country needs is a plebiscite, organised by Paul Sheehan, so it needn't experience the odium of belonging to the Commonwealth.

And so suffer John Oliver poking fun at the thistle and the long suffering Queen and the medal count and other things, as he does on YouTube here.

The pond was shattered to discover that cricket had declined to be a part of the next earth shattering event, thereby allowing a sport the pond doesn't watch to join in a sporting spectacle the pond doesn't watch.

But at least the spectacle provides another conundrum, up there with why a columnist like Paul Sheehan is a columnist and that is, why is this thing still a thing:

Meanwhile, over at denialist central, the UN and shearing the sheep is all the go ...

Oh yes, the good old days at the lizard Oz. Back on the 20th October 2012 there was a page given over to Letters: On the world stage, with bonus cartoon and dismissive remarks of this kind:

Yes, the reptiles always edit their letters page to make sure the political agenda of the paper is maintained. Not much point carrying on a crusade if you give too much space to dissidents. Onwards crusading readers ...

So how's it going in denialist central? How are the reptiles travelling?

Into the time machine. Fast forward.

Hey, the reptiles are all over that statesman Tony Abbott, and Julie Bishop as she struts her stuff in New York.

How lucky we are to have a seat on the UN Security Council. What an opportunity to put Russia and Putin in their place.

Remember this?

Mr Abbott said Australia's pursuit of the temporary seat was a waste of money and had distorted the nation's foreign policy priorities. 
 “All other things being equal, yes, better we are on the Security Council than off it. “But it was never worth the $40 million-plus that this government has spent just to win a bronze medal at the United Nations. 
 “And the problem with this whole Security Council bid is that it has cost money; worse it has distorted our priorities over so many years as so much time and effort goes into this, and not into managing the relationships which are absolutely vital to our future.” (denialist central here on 24th September 24 2012, behind the paywall because you have to pay to remember the past)

On and on he wabbotted:

The Opposition Leader today accused Ms Gillard of “swanning around New York”, pursuing a seat on the UN Security Council, when she should be closer to home dealing with the critical issue of unauthorised boat arrivals. 
 “She should be in Jakarta, not in New York, because that is where Australia's national interest is most at stake right now,” Mr Abbott told Sydney radio station 2GB. 
 “Rather than talking to African countries trying to drum up the numbers to get us a temporary seat on the UN Security Council, she should be in Jakarta talking to President Yudhoyono about how we can cooperate better with the Indonesians to stop this flow which is putting our border protection hopelessly under the pump.”


And now Abbott and Bishop strut about making the most of the Security Council position.

Oh there's rich ironies in politics no doubt about it, and so much room for hypocrisy.

Michael Gawenda, more polite than the pond, tried to point this out in a genteel way in Searching for the 'real' Tony Abbott  in the Business Spectator (may be paywall limited, can be googled):

It may be unseemly to point out that the Coalition was opposed to the efforts of Kevin Rudd and his government to win a place for Australia on the Security Council because, they argued, a place on the Security Council would not give Australia any greater influence in international affairs. The whole exercise, it was argued, was a distraction and a waste of time.  
The fact is though, that had Australia not had a seat on the Security Council, Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop could not have played the decisive role they have played in this terrible tragedy and its aftermath. 
 It is with some reluctance that I point this out. But the question no doubt in the minds of most political journalists and commentators, not to mention politicians of all parties, is this: when is the right time to make calculations about the impact in terms of domestic politics of Tony Abbott’s performance, given that the sorrow and anger of so many lives lost is still so fresh and raw? 
Some in the media have already started to make these calculations, at least in terms of what lessons Tony Abbott should learn from the way he has handled this difficult time. Some of his supporters in the media have argued that what Tony Abbott should learn from the last few difficult days is that he has been too controlled, too wary of being himself, too wooden, too contrived, during this first period of his prime ministership. 
 “Fearing the stereotypical criticism of being aggressive and out of control, Abbott started as prime minister too cautiously and appeared anodyne and weak,” wrote one Denis Shanahan in The Australian on Tuesday. 
 “While the MH17 incident has been an unwelcome test, it has displayed the best aspects of Abbott’s strength of character as a leader, a human and a parent.” In other words, Tony Abbott has not been the ‘real’ Tony Abbott until the last few days, though according to Shanahan, the real Tony Abbott was starting to emerge last week when, for instance, Abbott spent extra hours on a plane with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe instead of ‘grandstanding’ in Canberra during the carbon tax debate in the Senate. 
Now, we have heard this before, have we not, about another prime minister? Who can forget the seemingly endless talk, about who was the ‘real’ Julia Gillard and why it was that the real Julia Gillard -- who was supposedly passionate, warm, funny and feisty -- couldn’t free herself from her self-imposed wooden and boring prime ministerial persona? 

And so on. With a cruel punchline:

It is too early to begin to know whether these past few days will one day be seen, as some commentators and supporters of Tony Abbott hope, as the time when the ‘real’ Tony Abbott emerged. Chances are, however, that the search for the ‘real’ Tony Abbott will be as unproductive as was the search for the ‘real’ Julia Gillard.

Indeed. And now the pond looks forward to Abbott shaking the paw of Vlad Putin in Brisbane, as jolly Joe Hockey wants ...

Meanwhile, there's one other bit of business arising from reading denialist central today.

Yes, it's a long standing, exceedingly boring bit of business, which sees the reptiles recycle and put a fickle gold bar on the Lomborgian rhetoric splashed in the rotating digital splash of doom:

Yes, the reptiles want you to fork over a gold bar, to pay to access the usual Lomborg climate denialism, routinely ignored by other publications, but reliably recycled by climate denialist central.

You can get a whiff of the usual Lomborgian chaff if you reward the reptiles with a click:

But as always, you can find Lomborg at his own Lomborg denialist headquarters.

Yes, there it is, the very same piece, published back on the 16th July, and belatedly recycled down under seven days later on the 23rd, stale and with a price tag attached.

No need to provide a link to the Oz. You can find the the Lomborg piece, for free, no gold bar attached, under the header Winds of Vanity.

And as a bonus - if you can consider it a bonus - Lomborg's denialist site manages to rustle up an image of Lomborg, which is more than the reptiles can be bothered doing, not when """ will serve:

Why do the reptiles do it?

Well it's denialist central, and every so often they feel the need to dogwhistle and feed the denialist flock of sheep, and if they can get the bleating mugs to pay for what is offered for free elsewhere, so much the better.

It seems you can still make an indecent living shearing the sheep, while sending the planet down the drain. Talk about a Murdochian win win ...

(Below: more Wilcox here)

Jolly Joe, more flubber than steel?

The Fin was all over jolly Joe this morning, as he plays the man of steel.

Clearly jolly Joe is suffering from relevancy deprivation syndrome.

So he set another hare loose. courtesy a word in Sky's mike:

Naturally everyone picked it up and ran with it. From the Graudian to SBS, via the Daily Terror and others (click below to enlarge if interested, though many will find that thought inexplicable). 

But here's the nub of it, courtesy the Graudian account:

"The Russians have said they will cooperate with all this – let's find out if they are fair dinkum or not," Hockey told Sky News while on an official visit to New Zealand. 

He said he hoped Russia would still attend G20 meetings, culminating with the expected visit of the president, Vladimir Putin, in November. "Rarely are great things achieved by excluding people from the conversation," he said. Ultimately, the decision about Russia's attendance rested with G20 members, not just Australia, he said. 

Hockey later clarified his remarks, saying they should not be taken as support for Russia's attendance at the Brisbane summit. His position was consistent with that of prime minister, Tony Abbott, a spokeswoman for the treasurer told AAP. 

On Tuesday Abbott said it was too early for any decision to be made about denying Russia a place at the G20 event.

Uh huh. Fair dinkum.

So jolly Joe hoped that Russia would attend the G20, but that shouldn't be taken as hoping Russia will attend the G20 in Brisbane. 

And while Tony Abbott says it's too early to talk about denying Russia a place in Brisbane, Joe Hockey thinks it isn't too early to talk about how he's hoping Vlad 'the impaler' Putin will attend, unless he doesn't, because perhaps jolly Joe isn't really hoping they'll attend the Brisbane summit, but maybe just G20s somewhere, sometime in the somehow future.

In any case, this is entirely consistent with Tony Abbott, because as everyone knows, Tony Abbott is notoriously inconsistent.

Uh huh. The pond is glad that one's cleared up ...

A man of steel? A tough, hard man of the kind needed right now?

Or an attention deprived, gibbering, cigar-puffing, contradictory idiot who does his best to help Abbott look and sound like a statesman?

Okay, there you go, there below is how the faithful flocked to reproduce jolly Joe's wise words, about as clear as the Delphic Oracle advising that one way or another, a great empire will fall. 

If you ask the pond, the economy might stand a better chance if we all started ferreting through the chicken entrails and aimed for a giblet-led recovery ...