And now the straw clutcher clutches at berries ...

(Above: and more David Rowe here).

It was everything every sensible reptile had a right to fear.

The fiendish, gloating Fairfaxians on the long march, gloating like a bunch of Fu Manchus.

There were the eastern suburbs chardonnay latte socialist set getting their pearls into a twist:

And look, there was Peter Hartcher bleating about the wonders of big Mal:

Oh it was full of cheap shots, low blows and haymakers about a punch-drunk pugilist:

And how did Hartcher end up? That somehow Abbott preferred to be a boof head basher of women, because that's what Abbott's always done to women in public office, and in the process he'd managed to miss the bleeding obvious, politically advantageous point to be made:

Abbott missed it because he is too busy with the politics of protecting his position, shoring up the right wing of his party, his Praetorian guard against the horde of angry Liberal backbenchers who want to remove him. 
As he was when he criticised Muslim leaders for failing to denounce the so-called Islamic State. Yet these leaders are the same people that the former head of ASIO, David Irvine, saluted: "We should thank them and continue to work with them," he said. 
In contrast to Abbott, Turnbull said in September that people who attack the Muslim community were dividing the country and "are doing the terrorists' work". 
So long as Abbott is preoccupied with appealing to the 30 per cent of the voters who live on the conservative side of the Liberal party, he will continue to antagonise the other 70 per cent of the country. It's about the shortest of short-term survival. It's no way to win an election. It's no way to run a country.

And then there were the latte sipping socialists sitting by the muddy Yarra:

And there was an editorial no less, a thundering that the attack on Triggs was an Abbott stitch-up.

The government's complaints are concocted nonsense. In any other context, such slippages would be excused once clarified. This government, though, whips them into a conspiracy of mock-horror proportions then tries to induce her to quit. All the while, the commission's report is shoved aside. Indeed, the chairman of the Senate committee, Liberal Senator Ian Macdonald, contemptuously declared he has not, and will not, read the report – an appalling abrogation of his responsibilities. Rarely has a federal government engaged in such a vicious, politicised campaign to demolish the integrity and professionalism of a statutory officer. The Prime Minister's enthusiastic participation in this tawdry episode greatly diminishes the standing of his office. 
Senator Brandis says he wants the Human Rights Commission to focus on "projects that actually mean something to the mainstream of Australian people [and] will make a material difference to their lives". His proposal highlights how fundamentally out of touch this government is with issues of human rights, because it is not mainstream Australians who are at risk. It is those at the margins who cannot speak for themselves, the young and disadvantaged, minorities and non-Australians (such as asylum seekers), who most need their human rights secured.

And so on and on. The pond was sickened to the core at the way the insolent chardonnay swillers could now, so cheekily, so insouciantly, flip the finger at the fearless leader, who was only doing what he always did ... take a woman up a dark alley and give her what for ...

Of course there's always Paul "the magic water man" Sheehan trying to person a lonely, defiant rabid right wing outpost, willingly giving up his chocolate and sourdough time - is there no sacrifice the magic water man won't make to join in the bashing? - but surely things would be different in reptile Murdoch la la land>

And naturally the pond can always rely on the Bolter, ever ready to bash up women and Islamics. Oh his fealty to his lord sometimes brings tears of joy to the pond's eyes, to see such servile, abject abasement. Such relentless forelock tugging, it sometimes reminds the pond of other male activities ...

No, no, that's the easy path, the feral ratbag right wing commentariat, the 0.3% of the 30%. What about the broadsheets?

Oh dear:

Well there's nothing to see in the bouffant one's piece, and everybody knows that van Onselen is now a certifiably crazy left wing ratbag - he's an academic don't you know.

But there seemed to be a weary resignation at the heart of the bouffant one. He didn't attempt any knob polishing, and he spent an unseemly amount of time quoting zinger Bill  talking about a bully pulpit, not a pulpit for bullies. After all, what sort of loon would talk about beltway politics, as if suddenly Northbourne Avenue had been airlifted to Washington DC?

The bouffant one seemed withdrawn and sullen,  attempting just to report the fight, but the way the aged, tired knob polisher did the job, it seemed that zinger Bill had outpointed the pugnacious, punk-drunk, boofhead ,pile-driving pugilist ...

Then there was this, as cheeky as you like, and outside the usual whirling digital splash of doom, as bold as brass amongst the most treasured news stories of the digital day:

 Oh dear.

More big Mal from the cawing Crowe, while Savva, it seems, is still on her one woman crusade against Credlin.

This time she reached back deep into the gossip rubbish bin to recycle another negative story:

And so on:

The trouble of course, is that Abbott now folds on Credlin, he may as well go with her, and take jolly Joe with them as they head off over the horizon.

To sack her would be seen as the ultimate act of weakness, the rope a dope actually a dope on the rope and ready for a knockout blow.

As a result, Abbott is now between a rock and a hard place, and each time he attempts to be the hard man - because that's all he knows - he outrages the other 70% who wouldn't mind a little more policy, and a lot less of the bullying, the anger, the hostility, and the desperate shoring up of the bunker's walls ...

None of it is new. This just in from the pond, as seen in the Sydney Morning Herald, 14th November 1969:

It took Gorton a lot longer to fall than it's likely it will take Abbott, but what fun the death spiral in the sky makes for lovers of rocketry ...

Meanwhile, the pond has to admire the excellent work of the key tabloids. Desperate to ignore all the fuss, they've tried to whip up an alternative form of hysteria:

Of course all this does is remind punters of the fatuous stupidity of Tony Abbott insisting that the bottom line was that companies shouldn't poison their customers, as a way of getting the government out of doing anything about it - a position so fatuously stupid that even Barners himself felt the need to suggest that improved food labelling laws might be useful.

How did Abbott respond to the situation? With mealy mouthed fudges, and free enterprise alarmism:

...Mr Abbott said the government must apply “careful judgment” about imposing any new regulation on business, lest it drive up prices.  
“What happens is from week to week the composition can change because at different times of the year things are available in Australia (and) at other times they’re only available from overseas. 
“If we’re going to have constant supply of the kind of things we need, the composition of the product might change on a batch by batch basis. 
“Yes government has a role but business has a role too because the last thing we want to do is load on so much more regulation, so many more criteria that the price goes through the roof.” (behind the lizard Oz paywall, but you know how to google like Greg Hunt).

Uh huh. Gibberish of course, as if packaged and tinned food doesn't already contain labelling ... fudged, deceptive, meaningless labelling, but labelling all the same. And thus far, thanks to the duopoly supermarkets prices haven't gone through the roof, though the same can't be said for some suppliers who've been forced to go through the floor:

So what do you know? 

This very day, Abbott has folded, and acknowledged that there will be changes to labelling laws. While in the same breath explaining how the new regulations will be part of the government's regulation reduction program ...

There's the quintessential problem of a stupid man who can't recognise the politics of politics. It takes an enormous stupidity to be second guessed by Barners and the National party and Murdoch tabloids ... but Abbott has managed  it ...

And now the pond would like to close in a parochial note, thanks to the Fairfaxians and Roads Minister Duncan Gay predicts Newtown 'nirvana' if third stage of WestConnex is built (with forced video).

Can the pond just politely observe that Duncan Gay is a fuckwit?

The pond has observed councils destroy the shopping strips in Norton Street Leichhardt and comprehensively devastate Glebe Point Road, to the point where it took years to stage a mild recovery.

The state government is now intending to pour a flood of traffic into Newtown, with nowhere to go except join the Newtown crawl during peak hours, which will no doubt in due course see King street turned into a kind of inner west Victoria Road. The clearway will be extended, the shops will wither, the pedestrians will go elsewhere. Even now the pond has to admire the foolhardy hardiness of the young who dare to sit in open windows listening to the roar, and inhaling the smell of the traffic ...

The fuckwitted Gay, who really doesn't have a clue, outdid Chris Bowen, and that's saying something when it comes to figures:

In the interview, which aired on Tuesday night, Mr Gay could not tell Channel 7's Lee Jeloscek how many cars were expected to use the WestConnex, how many cars used the existing M4 and M5 motorways, and how many exhaust stacks would be needed for the project. 
"I don't feel that hot about getting one wrong," Mr Gay said, at a press conference in which the Baird government promised an extra $300 million over 10 years for road improvements in southern Sydney. 
"No one is caning me worse than I'm caning myself on that because I missed an opportunity to put a message out," he said.

Yes nobody briefed the goose, or the goose couldn't remember its lines, because after all the only job description known in the state by both major parties is "hand over huge sums of money to developers", preferably on useless projects like cross city tunnels and hugely expensive rail lines to the airport, so that the developers can make out like bandits, then socialise the losses ...

Ah well, never mind, the pond has a great idea. Let's just legislate to make it illegal for anyone under 22 to own or drive a motor car.

After all, if they can't be trusted with government assistance money, which should be handed over to their parents, why should we trust them with a vehicle?

Sometimes the stupidity is so thick in the air, the pond finds it hard to breathe ...

Maybe it's in anticipation of the new smokestacks, or  maybe it's just the avgas and burnt black carbon from the aeroplanes passing overhead, but deep down the pond suspects the main source is the political class, now reduced to three word slogan stupidities ...

And now just for a variation, a few Dysons, and more Dyson here:

In which the pond roams from bludger tests to Dame Slap in paranoid hysteria mode to modern medievalists ...

The Currish Snail notes today that it has an EXCLUSIVE that dunces are teaching your children.

Naturally the pond has its own exclusive, which is that fuckwits are writing your Murdoch papers.

Take a look at that the tired rhetoric and profound stupidity embedded in that giant headline, Bludger Test, and the get-tough plan to force slackers to work.

It's as if the Four Corners report into the rampant corruption in the jobs game, which aired only a few days ago,  had never happened, yet there it is in the transcript here:

There's a lot more in the Four Corners report of course, but what bit of that 780,000 unemployed competing for only 150,000 job vacancies don't the fuckwits at the Currish Snail understand?

Does anyone imagine that the federal government is suddenly going to produce a zero unemployment rate, when in fact the unemployment rate has been inching up the other way?

The pond has been waiting for some response to the Four Corners' report on the endemic corruption within the system, another classic example of what happens to a reduced number of uninterested public servants delegated to supervise a rampantly out of control private sector, but as usual, there hasn't been a cheep or a beep ... just more blather about the benefits of deregulation and the private sector.

Along with more useless rhetoric about dole bludgers, the sort of myopic logic that would propose that the unemployed starve on the streets for six months because that's what they deserve ...

Enough. All the pond wishes on the Murdochians is that they experience treatment by a jobs agency at least once in their lives before ending up under the light rail overpass in Wentworth Park ... (though the pond does admire the way those homeless folk have shown initiative in making a tent city for themselves).

But enough already. The pond has some important points to make.

Firstly let it be known the pond never reads any reports which it clearly recognises are partisan.

There's something in the way the molecules in the report vibrate that immediately lets the pond know that the report is hopelessly corrupt. Call it an Ian McDonald 'magic crystals' awareness if you will ...

Secondly, when the pond makes an inducement, it is not an inducement, it is an offer. Which is not to say that it's really an offer, it's an approach.

The pond only does this when it has totally lost confidence in a person, but yet retains full confidence in that person and their ability to do a job. Call this a Walt Whitman-esque, or if you will George Brandis-esque capacity to contain infinite multitudes of enormous stupidities ...

Naturally the cartoonists were having a field day, and the pond was torn between the two Davids, with David Rowe in good form (and more Rowe here):

Of course being Brandis book ends is a worthy alternative career - what an inducement to serving the country in a noble career - but in the end, the pond had to go with the other David, the unholy Pope (and more Pope here).

You see, the pond had never thought of Brandis as a Bond villain before, but it surely fits. The egotism, the pomposity, the sneer.

Get make up to add a scar, throw in a cat and a decent frock, take away the four eyes look, and it could work:

Okay George, let's lose the glasses, and try on a real Donald Pleasance sneer:

By golly, that's real Stanislavsky stuff George.

Never mind, the folly produced the usual sort of headlines the pond has begun to associate with this ship of fools:

Sadly, the pond's duty is to ignore the fun, and instead go on the lonely beat of the reptile watch.

And today the news is that this is Wednesday, which makes it Dame Slap day, and while she delivers a splendid slapping of greenies, she has been slow to catch up.

She's still banging on about security, which is so yesterday, because bashing dole bludgers is so now ...

She's also banging on about the greenies in a way which reminds the pond that Godwin's Law is there to be broken, since the good Dame manages to sound like the sort of crypto-fascist apologists that paved the way for Hitler's secret police and the East German stasi and Stalin's KGB and what at heart still remains Maoist China when it comes to the way they run the internet ...

Let's cut to the end of her discourse, which holds up metadata as the solution to all weevils:

Let's count a few of the errors.

In fact Monis didn't walk into a cafe in Martin Place with a Daesh flag (the pond never recognises IS). 

It was widely reported at the time that he asked for a Daesh flag, and Sydney Muslims were asked to find one. (at Fairfax here).

That's what happens when you get into frothing and foaming and hysteria mode, and try to make over a crazy person into a Daesh warrior. You trip over the details.

Like that line about metadata foiling an attack on Sydney army barracks.

If you read the account of the trial, here's what you'll find:

Fattal was covertly videoed walking along the perimeter fence at the army base in what the jury, based on their verdict, believed was in preparation for an attack. The jury found them guilty following a trial lasting more than five months in which multiple listening devices were played outlining their plan and detailing their extreme religious and political views...

...On resuming her sentence, which lasted almost two hours, the judge described their crimes as "anticipatory offences" which were stopped by law enforcement authorities before they were carried out, only after undercover police successfully infiltrated the group.

In short, the pond's favourite methods of investigating teh crazies ... surveillance, use of video and other listening devices, and infiltration of the group ...

What about that beheading plot? (at the ABC here)?

The court was told the charges against Azari stemmed from a single phone call intercepted earlier this week and police made their move this morning to disrupt a group of mostly Afghan Australians 48 hours after that phone call, concerned at how close it was to going ahead.

A good old fashioned phone intercept!

What about that planned attack on the electricity grid?

Well that was back in October 2003, and the pond bets that metadata had bugger all to do with it, up against the actual physical evidence that architect Faheem Halid Lodhi assembled for the cops (at Fairfax here):

As evidence Lodhi was planning the attack, the prosecution relied on several documents seized during ASIO raids in October, 2003, at the Lakemba home where Lodhi lived with his wife, Aysha Hamedd, and from his desk at his workplace in the city. 
They included a so-called "terror manual", a 15-page, handwritten document in Lodhi's native Urdu language with numerous recipes for explosives and poisons that he had obtained from the internet. Lodhi said he was just curious and had paid little attention to it. 
The prosecution also produced a list of chemical prices Lodhi had sought, maps of the national electricity grid he had bought and aerial photographs he downloaded from the internet of three Sydney defence sites, Holsworthy Army Base, Victoria Barracks and HMAS Penguin at Mosman. Police also seized DVDs and CDs of jihadist doctrine and terror training. 
The prosecution also alleged that Lodhi was in close contact with French terror suspect Willy Brigitte while the latter was in Sydney and had used a false name to open a mobile phone account to call Brigitte.

What about the MCG plot, where a bunch of inept crazies decided they'd do a sequel to Black Sunday?

Well there were ironies there when it became clear that two cells were working together (at the ABC here):

An off-duty officer came across Abdul Hasan at a Sydney hardware store as he ordered acetone and methylated spirits.

As for Operation Pendennis?

Professor Barton says building positive social networks and bridges is now a key focus of government agencies and police. 
"This Operation Pendennis we're discussing here today ... [was] only possible because of community tip-offs and that's a promising thing in itself," he said. 
"But it also speaks to the extent to which extremists like Benbrika struggle to find acceptance among Muslim communities in Australia and how difficult it was for them to put together a small motley crew.

That'd be the Muslim communities the barking mad Abbott government has managed to alienate profoundly, ably assisted by the barking mad commentariat right wing loonies ...

By the way, all this talk of plots reminds the pond of this excellent headline:

Yes, the pond hears transcripts routinely ...

Are there any more ironies? Well yes, that Dame Slap should call for sensible debate, in a column filled with misrepresentations, inaccuracies and hysteria. This is what she started out with:

In late 2003, when releasing a British discussion paper about where to draw the line between liberty and security after the September 11 terrorist attacks, then British home secretary David Blunkett said: “I am the custodian of civil liberties, but I do not own them.” Blunkett said the question of how best to balance civil liberties against the increased need for security was, ultimately, a matter for the people. 
In other words, citizens must be part of the critical debate about how to protect society from the threat of terrorism. While the Tony Abbott’s national security statement on Monday morning was short on details, it kicked off an overdue debate about where to draw the line between liberty and security. Sensible, thoughtful reaction will signal our maturity in a world where, as the Prime Minister said, “The terrorist threat is rising at home and abroad, and it’s becoming harder to combat.”

What followed was a stream of incoherent rhetorical abuse of greenies and Christine Milne and Scott Ludlum, and an abundance of lickspittle servile praise of Tony Abbott.

It's come to a pretty pass when the devotees of softening 18C now go around berating greenies for daring to propose that civil liberties should only be given up for the clearest of reasons, and backed by evidence rather than rhetoric.

Even worse, all this talk of metadata as a panacea and a cure-all is likely to distract from more conventional but effective policing methods - which can be as wide ranging as an off-duty cop noticing something funny going down to an old fashioned phone tap.

Does Dame Slap understand the difference between metadata and a phone tap?

It's all a bit like the attempt to ban hate speech, when we might be better off having the crazies out and about, making it clear exactly who they are, and therefore who are worth observing.

Now the pond knows that Dame Slap is a little addled and soft-headed. How else to explain the way she accepted Lord Monckton's talk of climate science as a way for the UN to advance world government?

But surely she should avoid suggesting a sensible debate when all she's got to offer is paranoid hysteria ...

As for the pond, like many others, we want to be able to walk down the street without being troubled by fundamentalist religious loons of any kind. Generally, in return, the pond attempts to leave the religious loons alone, though the temptation to lash out at the scientology school up the road, or the crazy Anglicans currently turning Moore Theological College into some kind of urban blight angry Anglican Taj Mahal is strong. The pond also tries to hold a tongue when Islamic cultists stop pedestrians and attempt to beguile them into fairy land, while the pond sometimes asks to be put on leash when walking past the 'speaking on tongues' mob that infests the Newtown community centre on a Sunday.

Sadly it's not likely that barking mad fundamentalist religious loons are going away any time soon, but equally sadly, Dame Slap in her paranoid greenie bashing rant provided not one solid detail as to how metadata would save the day.

Sensible debate? In Murdoch la la land? You must be kidding ...

And finally the pond would like to pay tribute to Guy Rundle in Crikey yesterday, scribbling "we are watching the throes of a dying government, and it is so good" (behind the paywall).

First this sentence is surely a winner:

Yes, what is it about the deadbeat-teenage-dad-Oxford-blue-failed priest-mediaevalist-who-lives-in-the-police-college that could possibly have suggested difficulties in adjusting to changing realities?

Though he did leave out monarchist Sir Duke and a few other bits of teh crazy ...

And then Rundle proved that the pond wasn't alone. Others trudged the lonely, bizarre beat of the crazed right wing columnist:

Of course there's a schadenfreude embedded in all this, in the form of Zinger Bill. What a price to pay ... but at least the pond feels others are trapped in Edward Hoppper's nighthawks diner ...

There they laugh together over a late night drink at front pages like the one for today's lizard Oz:

Fairer, simpler and sustainable?

So that's the new genteel set of code words for the BLUDGER TEST!!!!

That's the rhetoric, with "Fairness" the cry.

And they expect mug punters to swallow that crap?

Which just leaves time to celebrate the situation in NSW, where Mike Baird is proposing to de-gut the inner west, so that people can drive cars from one gigantic snarl to another, transforming the inner city into one gigantic slow moving car park, so that in the end the city will function in the way LA does, which is to say, not at all.

Yes, even the tar and cement infrastructure man - why have a community when you can have roads - is now a little afraid of the bogeyman (and more Moir here).

Another day, another set of storms in tea cups ... such are the days of our reptile lives ...

What's the pond to do, in these troubled times, as the sand runs through the hour glass, and we go about our troubled lives?

The reptiles at the lizard Oz are so desperate to get their version of the story noticed that they've put Tony Abbott, Liberal Party, urged to act on Peta Credlin outside the paywall.

But then it's not an EXCLUSIVE - everyone and his dog seemed to cop the leak - and since the story features that grey paranoid ABC basher, Richard Alston, it seems only fair to link to the ABC's Leaked emails from Liberal Party federal treasurer Philip Higginson address 'conflict of interest' posed by Loughnane and Credlin marriage.

Phew, that's a whopper of a headline, which sort of tells the whole story but for a little Days of our Lives filigree:

"How this party ever let a husband and wife team into those two key roles where collegiate competitive tension is mandatory and private consultations between colleagues to see that each side is served well is a complete mystery," the letter said.
"The persons in our party's history that allowed it to occur should hang their heads in collective shame.
"The federal director has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the organisation at all times, repeat, at all times.
"How can this possibly happen when the COS [chief of staff] to the PM is his wife?
"It immediately brings about the cessation of open communication to the federal director, contributes to wooden and unreliable communication, and a reluctance towards open and trusting lines of communication and, dare I say it, retribution. 
"In corporate Australia the chairman of the board would never allow his EA [executive assistant] to be wife of the managing director, or the managing director would never allow his EA to be the wife of the chairman."

And so on. With the scribbler then immediately fleeing the country to avoid any questions, while resigning.

Such are the marital days of our lives.

What a storm in a tea cup ...

How can this be, with all the good work and the hard yards done?

Yes, there you go. Once again Tamworth wisdom comes to the surface.

Shove a stick into an ants' nest, and you're sure to get a lot of agitation and unhappiness, and our fearless leader has managed to alienate the very community he most needs help from, at least if you read the Graudian's Muslim leaders outraged by Tony Abbott's chiding over extremism.

So unfair. All this talk of living in a cocoon, and scapegoating, and promoting hatred and inflaming racism, and dog-whistling and not being helpful but being divisive.

I mean that's the Bolter's and Tony's entire point. It's all their fault.

And then a woman has to be sent in to tidy up the kitchen:

The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, stepped back from Abbott’s statements in question time on Monday. 
“I want to applaud members of our Muslim community here in Australia who are taking a stand against extremism and working with the government, with mosques and community groups to keep our people safe,” Bishop said.

Oh Magoo, you've done it again.

Why even the cartoonists are full of jibes (and more Pope here):

Thank the long absent lord there are still a few who can maintain the faith.

Come on down Daily Terror, give us all hope:

Oh yes, he's still a contender, he's still in the ring. Zinger Bill is down on the canvas. Come on reptiles, give us a 'sock it to me' lizard Oz front page:

But hang on, hang on, is that the bromancer featured on the front page?

Thank the long absent lord, there's a guaranteed bit of servile lick-spittling for all the initiatives designed to promote an alienated, embittered Muslim community.

Come on down bromancer, confirm the glory and the secureness of the security:

Oh dear, that didn't go quite as the pond expected.

A big mistake? Messy in practice?

But wasn't the entire point just to lather up paranoid hysteria in a fine frothing and foaming? Is there any point actually looking at the details?

Oh dear, and Terror Tsar sounded so good, so fine, such a lovely sound bite.

Never mind, what news from the Fairfaxians?

Not more rats in the ranks!

Two backbench MPs who supported the spill said that while the first challenge had come from backbenchers who were now largely silent, disquiet had now moved to the ministry. 
"This has moved above my pay grade," one said.

Of course the pond is aware where all this mischief-making is coming from.

Sure, you might think it springs from the reptiles of Oz as much as the Fairfaxians, at least in recent weeks, but thanks to the Caterists, the pond understands that the thinking of Victorians runs deep.

It's genetic, it's in the DNA, it's here and now.

So if it please the chair, can we now move to the comedy item for the day? It's lengthy and tedious, and coming right after people got poisoned by food all around Australia, it's emphasis on the benefits of de-regulation might seem bizarre - like a bubble headed booby in a self-congratulatory echo chamber - but dedicated observers of bears with little brains will find it delicious. A bit like a mix of frozen berries from China.

At last, thanks to the lizards of Oz, and the Caterists, the pond can proudly present the source of the culture wars:

Yes, keep on shipping those berries. What need of regulation?

As everybody knows, it's the responsibility of businesses not to poison their customers. What's the point of labelling to describe accurately the contents of bags of food? Who cares where they come from? After all, Chinese hygiene standards are good enough for them, so they're good enough for here.

As for finance, who cares about a few victims of banks? What's the point of regulation if it's designed to prevent banks from making out like bandits? All you get then is a tedious blame game and epic kinds of cover ups. How does that help business or customers?

All this recent talk of the NBA and the CBA? Is it really necessary? Is it useful? Can't we just have cheaper choice and reduced costs, so that the banks can quietly go about the business of plucking the chooks quietly and in private?

Outrageous stuff. Just look at Fairfax, doing a David Syme in Calls for wider inquiry into financial planning industry (with forced video).

What this country needs to get back into shape is a decent Enron or two, ripping off pensioners and helping out the rich!

Why the pond is immediately proposing to dismantle the entire police and security forces at work in this country! There's simply too much regulation, and it restricts the pond's personal choice to buy explosives ...

Do go on, Caterists, do go on. And remember it's not just the Fairfaxians, it's those filthy perverted types at the ABC:

Now is there any irony in all this? Apart from a minister in the federal government explaining how he wants to do less, at a time when the government is cranking up to do much more ...

Yes, the blather comes at the time the fearless leader is proposing a new age of paternalism in relationship to security,  with all sorts of regulations and state interference, and circumvention of freedoms and the right to free speech.

Even the Bolter - busy as usual with his work as the world's best climate scientist, and hard pressed daily denouncing the rat fink media for its undermining of Tony Abbott - paused to observe a few problems:

Oh yes, what fun to be reporting the Bolter yet again for being a preacher of hate, or if you will, a hate preacher.

But back to the Caterists, because the whole point of this tedious recycling of half-baked Tea Party ideas at last becomes clear:

Yes, there you go, it's the Caterists giving a harmless back rub, a tummy scratch to that eternal doofus Greg Melleuish, so that a line can be drawn from David Syme to Jon Faine, and never mind that the pond knows for an historical fact that a direct line can be drawn from Genghis Khan to Nick Cater and Greg Mellleuish ...

Now is there any other irony to be found?

Well the pond is sure there are squillions, not the least that Menzies himself was a devoted nation builder, dedicated to such socialistic enterprises as the Snowy Mountains scheme.

But in the process of googling the Caterist piece, which came with the header, No end to the age of paternalism, the pond came across this clarion call:

Eek, a new paternalism! And it worked out so well too ...

And there you have it.

A direct line from David Syme to Tony Abbott.

Well worth another tome from a historian, except if it comes from that tedious cultural warrior, Greg Melleuish. There's only so much nonsense to be endured during the days of our lives ...

Well if you've made it this far, give yourself a matehood, or appoint yourself a Sir Duke. Such things take a lot of hard work and hard planning and doing the hard yards:

But enough of the Graudian and Erica, here, it's time for a cartoon, but there needs to be a little spadework first.

You see the wags have been having great fun with the fearless leader's six flag salute, sure in the knowledge that this kind of half-baked, half-arsed flag waving is deeply American, and that patriotism is the first refuge of the scoundrel, as recorded in Prime Minister announces changes to terror laws, brings six flags to press conference:

Okay that's an enhanced photo, but it reminded the pond that back in the old days, flag waving was regarded with deep suspicion, as the behaviour of wankers and poseurs.

Naturally all the joking about the flag strutter sent the Bolter into a frenzy:

But once upon a time, neither side of the house indulged in this sort of Cronulla beach riot flag waving nonsense. Perhaps it was being made to salute the flag and honour the school and all that sort of carry on first thing in the morning that led to a healthy cynicism and disrespect.

And now David Rowe has revealed the true point of the flags.

They weren't there for faux, cynical patriotic jingoist purposes, they were there to hide all sorts of rats and mice, lurking as if they're hiding behind the arras in Hamlet, waiting to be stabbed, or to do a little stabbing...

Such is the days of our lives ...  and as usual more Rowe here.

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The reptiles of Oz, spreading the fog down under ...

This just in.

The pond is pleased to announce an Andrew Bolt exclusive, as the Bolter dishes out the dirt to proponents of an even more stringent 18C

Golly, that means Cardinal Pell might not be allowed back into the country. As for those mad angry Sydney Anglicans and the Hillsong crowd ...

(That in a story here at Fairfax, with bonus forced video).

The Bolter's outraged response follows forthwith:











In other news today, the reptiles at the lizard Oz maintained the war on science, and Media Watch, and were so desperate that the world be allowed to see them in action, that they put the story outside the paywall, under the header Legal move threatened over Media Watch report, prepared by a young puppy, Simon King, who claims to be a senior reporter.

You know young Simon's really working the beat with his opening remark Acoustic expert Steven Cooper is considering launching legal action ...

Indeed, and the pond is considering whether to have a cup of tea, or perhaps a coffee, or perhaps a biscuit, or perhaps going for a walk, but things get even more curious when the talk turns to a pending legal action, as pending simply doesn't have the same meaning as considering.

Thereafter, the very long and wonderfully defensive piece is just another stroll down the usual anti-science corridors wherein many reptiles can be found clustered, diligently beavering away, this time with young Simon dragged in to defend the indefensible Graham Lloyd.

Naturally the man at the centre of the storm believes Lloyd is the best journalist writing about wind turbines in Australia.

Other journalists, it seems, have cultivated a sense of shame.

And this yet again:

Media Watch’s blatant misrepresentation of Mr Cooper is one of the key reasons for his letter ­demanding a retraction and ­pending legal action.

So is it pending, young Simon, with the lawyers right now heading across town to file, or is he simply considering?

And how about this?

Media Watch’s first “expert” was the head of medicine at Adelaide University, Professor Gary Wittert, who said: “The way The Australian reported this study was really the antithesis of good science reporting. I think a newspaper like The Australian should know better.”

Yes, what would the head of medicine at a leading Australian university know about science? How dare he call himself an "expert".

In fact, the pond is so outraged, it wonders why the reptiles didn't emphasise it a little more - bloody "" expert"", lah di dah, fancy pants doctor. What do you know about anything up against the astonishing power of reptile insight?

Why the outrageous so called ""expert"" has dared to contradict the reptile's preferred expert in actual court cases.

Naturally young Simon - who has astonishing qualifications in acoustic and medical training - is ready to point out the many errors of those who lack these basic, but essential skills.

And then there's that bloody ""expert"" Simon Chapman, who keeps on yabbering on about public health as if he's had something to do with public health ...

On and on young Simon rambles, smoting enemies, citing enthusiastic supporters, and at the end of it all, the pond came away thinking, now there's a young whip snorter who's doing his level best. Let's hope he gets a leg up into the reptile pantheon, or at least a statue in the hall of scientific fame ...

By coincidence, a reader drew attention to the March edition of the National Geographic:

You can read Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science here (with pop up encouraging registration).

It starts off with the fluoridation mob and General Ripper - how the pond loves that scene - and then goes on to explore all kinds of saucy doubts and fears.

The pond particularly liked these two pars:

Lancet published a study in 1998 linking a common vaccine to autism. The journal later retracted the study, which was thoroughly discredited. But the notion of a vaccine-autism connection has been endorsed by celebrities and reinforced through the usual Internet filters. (Anti-vaccine activist and actress Jenny McCarthy famously said on the Oprah Winfrey Show, “The University of Google is where I got my degree from.”) 
In the climate debate the consequences of doubt are likely global and enduring. In the U.S., climate change skeptics have achieved their fundamental goal of halting legislative action to combat global warming. They haven’t had to win the debate on the merits; they’ve merely had to fog the room enough to keep laws governing greenhouse gas emissions from being enacted.

The reptiles of Oz, Spreading the fog down under ...

And sorry, it seems that earlier there was a glitch in the pond's report on the Bolter's firm stand against Tony Abbott.

So the pond is proud to present the Bolter standing firm, standing tall:

Oh okay, it's a little old, but let's see how he wriggles on this hook ... so far, not a bite ... but what's the bet a clamp down on some people daring to exercise free speech - the vile Islamic hordes - will seem like a jolly good idea. Every day, a new siren song to do the dance with Godwin's Law ...

Talk about about a feast of fairy floss, sherbet and Greg Sheridan ...

(Above: Rowe doing way better than Lyons, and more Rowe here).

Life is, as the pond has come to understand over the years, rarely a box of chocolates.

It's more like a box of disappointments, big and small, and in various colours and tastes. Like fairy floss. You think you're getting substance, because it's big and pink and fluffy, but all you're getting is sugar and the fast track to diabetes ...

So it is today. Predictably almost all the rags that unfairly still kill off trees, are full of tabloid terror, sheep falling into line, beating the drum for state action and repression across the board, as they try to guess the words of the gauleiter, boldly and bravely using terror and fear to shore up his regime ...

Ah Godwin's Law, so tempting and yet so far away, and so few voices noting saucy doubts and fears about the way a man who hid in plain sight now being used for all sorts of demonising and all kinds of government interference, from Tsars to metadata. Where are your 18C warriors now? Long gone ...

But there was supposed to be a ray of hope, as this day, the reptiles boldly stepped into the Prime Ministerial bunker.

What a bust.

Oh sure the Indonesians had set the pace, and sure it had shown how the master international statesman's soothing words had achieved a negotiating masterstroke when it came to saving a couple of Australians from state murder:

But in the end, that's just a jumped up bunch of nationalists defending state murder, using Abbott as a distraction for said state murder. Maybe the Brazilians do it with more class, but Indonesians bemoaning Abbott makes the pond wonder what they'd be doing if they actually lived in country and had to endure the fearless leader up close ...

As for the conclusion to the bunker yarn? There it is, lurking at the bottom of the page:

But the end result is that John Lyons went into the lion's den, descended into the bunker, and came away with nothing.

Oh sure,  in the digital edition, they put it top of the page, above the news of Tsars and asbestos:

Asbestos? Why surely that's just the price of de-regulation and more efficient trade? Where's the harm  if a few die, if the rest can save a penny or two?

But the bottom line for our brave Lyons down in the bunker?

Talk about a story ending not with a bang, but a leak-free whimper.

Lyons spends a lot of time stomping over old ground, with the odd huff or puff, to emerge with the "news" that Credlin isn't proposing to resign any time soon.

There was some familiar stuff about Credlin being responsible for damaging leaks against Ministers and MPs, but no evidence, and endless talk of the bunker, as if most of the offices in the hopeless interior of the underground parliament don't look and feel like bunkers, and somehow it was only Credlin who ended up with an Adolf-like abode.

Even the Marie Claire Credlin IVF story gets a re-tread, to no particular point, and Credlin is given the credit for helping launch the 'ban the burka in parliament' campaign, as if those momumental twits, George Christensen and Bronnie B., needed any help in producing their epic prat fall ...

Then Brian Loughnane is invited to share his wife's shame:

That's just common gossip, and the following line from "one minister" - that Abbott holds on to Credlin for reasons no one understands and that he should get rid of her - immediately dissolves into an extended character reference for Abbott from military transsexual Catherine McGregor.

How pitiful did it get? Well at the end, the glorious rocket that was supposed to be Lyons ended up sputtering these lines in the mud:

That's it? A personal anecdote from a long in the tooth speech given back in August of last year?

There's just as much vapour ware in Lyons' accompanying story, which once again, under the header The lady's not for turning: Peta Credlin vows to stay put, explains that Credlin's not proposing to resign any time soon.

Lyons only seems to have learned the one line ...

Other than that, what's he got?

Diddly squat, except the same old beefs recycled yet again:

On the one hand, on the other ... yadda yadda ...

Talk about a story with all the depth and zing as a sip on sherbet ...

To keep the spirits up, the pond had to resort to an old favourite, Greg "the bromancer" Sheridan, in fine uxorious form this morning, and presented in tandem with Lyons' feeble attempt at bunker busting.

This was a rich, heady, intoxicating brew, demonstrating that the reptiles were back to their kool aid best, the momentary lapse of Lyons forgotten and forgiven, and also, as a bonus, fully explained away:

Intellectually ahead of the game to propose a unilateral military post-colonial adventure in Iraq!!

Now that's cooking with CSG, and what's even more remarkable is that apparently, chairman Rudd has been so forgiven his many follies,  he can now be trotted out as a figure worthy of emulation by chairman Abbott ...

And really sending in the troops, possibly with a gunboat and a big stick, is nothing more than chairman Bob having a chat about having a chat with Saddam.

Then it's on to the tabloid hysteria which will keep welling up for the rest of the day:

Why yes, Daesh controls an area, largely sand and desert, and heavily depopulated, about the godforsaken size of Tasmania by two.

Can anybody remember the days of the axis of weevils, and the existential threat that North Korea and Iran posed?

But there you go, what was presented as a foolish bit of quixotic dreaming, a Churchill down under with delusions of grandeur, is now re-made and dressed up as a thoughtful Churchill busy planning his Gallipoli campaign ... grappling with all the possibilities and as full as a goog with his nation's strategic interests ...

Most normal people couldn't make this sort of stuff up, which is why the pond is eternally grateful that "the bromancer" is there to do it for us ...

What else? Well good old desiccated coconut is on hand to demonise Muslim communities:

And the pond commends Stephanie Forrest for boldly pointing out how outrageous it is that students' attention should be drawn to Amnesty International, a television commercial for Jeeps, and Paul Keating's Redfern address.

Shocking, outrageous stuff.

The pond has only a couple of quibbles. In her quest for good English, Forrest resorts to this sort of stuff:

And so, there we have it.

This is the sort of literary crutch routinely wheeled out by desperate bloggers seeking to fill up space at a penny a word. You know, "lordy lordy, lah di dah, and so, there we have it."

The pond, for its sins, does it most days, but then these are desperate times.

Cheap, wretched scribbling, not worth a ha'penny when you think for a nanosecond about it.

And the same applies to:

Let's hope not, anyway.

As the pond's old English teacher used to say, what's the work "anyway" is doing in that sentence? That's sloppy, lazy scribbling, he'd say, noting that the sentence did exactly the same work if it stopped at Let's hope not.

The anyway is just another variation on the "like" that "you know, like bedevils, like young folk".

Forrest has foolishly paid a word to do overtime, and she's done a Humpty Dumpty.

Anyhoo, the pond prefers anyhoo because that really irritates ponces ... so anyhoo, let's move along, with hope in our hearts.

As for Ms Forrest's final up itself sentence?

The fewer kids there are studying "trash" in their English classes, the better. 

She then grandly signs herself off as a research scholar in the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program, as grand a bit of self-aggrandising gibberish as you could find at the IPA.

It's always been thus, the campaign against trash.

The pond remembers the campaign against Edith Blyton as trash (yet still retains affection for the books, racist and sexist and all, that gave Dame Slap her name), and the campaign against Agatha Christie and all the other mystery writers as trash beyond the pale, along with trashy Raymond Chandler and all the other trashy hard-boiled detective writers like Horace McCoy, and the campaign against all the trashy writers dreaming in science fiction of impossible futures and alternate 'what if' worlds.

The pond can still recall being sneered at for reading Asimov, and since then has had to endure fifty years of pulp robot movies ripping off his three laws ...

And let's not get into Fleetway magazines like Jack and Jill, and goody goody gumdrops Harold Hare:

What a surreal, anarchist, epistemological hare he was ...

The pond has always had a soft spot for trash.

How could it be otherwise, if you treasured movie matinees, and then moved on to bad movies and bad television?

No doubt Ms Forrest thinks she's helping make the world a better place, and maybe she is, at least for people with cucumbers stuck up their bums ...

Oh and speaking of people with cucumbers stuck up their bums, there's a special treat for anyone who reads Paul 'the magic water man' Sheehan this morning.

He's waxing lyrical about chocolate ... here ... so the next time you read him rabbiting on about dangerous elites and his solidarity with common folk, you can recall that he did the same about ten buck a loaf sourdough bread, and remember him as the eternal eastern suburbs wanker he is ...

Sheesh, by now it's way beyond time for a cartoon ... and it seems that Cathy Wilcox has been channeling John Lyons (and more Wilcox here):