Speaking of nags and the knackery ...

(Above: Chris Uhlmann, with bonus smirk).

The amazing thing about headless chooks is the way they manage to squawk in unison.

Here's Christopher Pearson, arriving a little belatedly at the headless chook celebration:

The average muppet has more imagination than the braying jackals down at the commentariat swampland called The Australian.

Such uxorious indulgence, as on and on the idle chatter about class warfare proceeds apace. Who knows? Perhaps Australia is in the last days before an October revolution.

There are of course other ways to read the rhetoric:

Tony Abbott's budget reply was entirely rhetorical - when Julia Gillard told the Coalition leader he should leave the north shore and get out into the real world he thundered she was deliberately and ignobly igniting a ''class war''.
Her warfare apparently didn't extend to the budget's actual policies, which almost without exception he said he would support. (Policy the first casualty in pollies' phoney war).

Yep, class warfare. The newest way to describe bribing the family voter and who can do it best and biggest while maintaining a surplus in the budget, and a deficit in the noggin ...

Meanwhile, what fun to see Paul Keating hand out a ticking off to Chris Uhlmann as he banged away at The Drum in Uhlmann impertinent, off point.

It's not a new insight but it was said with style:

His technique is to have the pap set question to hand. And as the interviewee responds, he speaks over the top of them to demonstrate an aggressive credential. This is broadly to conceal the fact that he is unable to follow an answer in a discursive way - to grow the conversation in a manner that is both informative and elucidatory.

The whole tone is invariably accusatory – a tabloid device for putting the interviewee on the back foot; notwithstanding the worth or conscientiousness of their responses.

Indeed. But the pond isn't as subtle or as nuanced as Mr. Keating.

Surely Chris Uhlmann is the most inept, useless, hapless, worthless host ever to grace the 7.30 timeslot/report (and equivalent shows) since the format first took shape back in the days when the pond watched black and white television.

Without Leigh Sales to fall back on, Uhlmann is exposed, and there's nowhere to hide.

Keating ended with a flourish:

My criticism of Uhlmann is not that of bias, but of competence. His apologists say he is learning on the job. But what is the route to accomplishment when the technique is formulaic - limited to loaded set questions invariably posed in an accusatory tone?

Indeed. The pond never watchers Uhlmann these days or the show or the ABC for that matter. At the first sighting of Uhlmann there are shrieks and howls of "turn that boring as batshit inept bungling bludger off. Why can't we watch the nth repeat of Get Smart?"

But even funnier was the riposte from Bruce Belsham below the Keating piece. Belsham dresses up and parades himself as the current Head ABC Current Affairs:

Paul Keating's attack on Chris Uhlmann's interview of a fellow Labor Prime Minister demonstrates an understandable tribal loyalty.

That's by way of making the point:

Bruce Belsham's defence of Chris Uhlmann's pathetic interview of a Prime Minister demonstrates an understandable tribal loyalty.

And then does the tribally loyal Belsham do, but draw himself up on his high horse or his high heels or whatever?

Keating sent it unsolicited to The Drum and we published it because this site has a culture of open and robust debate. But it cannot pass without comment. It is a personal and unreasonable assault on one of this country's best political journalists and interviewers.

Here's the thing Bruce. If it's a personal and unreasonable assault, why did you run it? Can't resist those hits eh ...

But please at least cut the sanctimonious, righteous nonsense about a culture of open and robust debate. As soon as Keating says boo to a goose, there you are running about, squawking and clucking about someone taking a view.

Well, you can run all the crap about tribal loyalty and Labor-ites in it together, but you can't run that line on the pond.

Indeed, the sooner that Craig Thomson shuffles off into the darkness, the sooner we'll be spared reading the high comedy stylings of Kate McClymont's Thomson's alternative reality didn't fit the facts, a juxtaposing of the real world and Thomson's "parallel universe" of Craigisms.

Let's not hide behind ideological defences, or suggestions of bias and oh Keating's just being Keating, he would say that.

The pond owes no loyalty to a fellow Labor prime minister or to the Labor party in general, but switched off the interview before it got half way in. Way too much suffering ...

By the standard of an average viewer with a high boredom level, Uhlmann is hopeless, woeful and offensive.

The pond never thought it would yearn for the days of the incisive questioning of the carrot top, but by golly each time Uhlmann bobs up, it's there in spades.

Even worse, Leigh Sales is not scheduled to return until "later in the year" (well that's what it says on the 7.30 site).

Not to worry, even if she comes back, the habit of taking in the ABC news, followed by a half hour of current affairs, is long gone.

Instead of the ambulance chasing up the front of the news, followed by a dash of world news, silly charts and graphs from Alan Kohler, and a medical report from Sophie Scott, it's simpler to watch SBS recycling Al Jazeera.

What do you know there's an actual world out there, and things are happening in it. Oh okay there's the soccer news to suffer at the end, but all that means is there's a chance to switch back and catch up on the weather.

Next a little bit of Colbert, a little bit of Jon Stewart, and then it's off to enjoy other activities outside the enclosed, constricted world of the ABC.

Typically, the Belsham defence focussed on the content:

Uhlmann's interview with the Prime Minister canvassed the decisions made by her government to achieve a forecast budget surplus. He asked questions in the public mind - questions about savings made by breaking or shifting previous promises on business tax cuts, defence and foreign aid. He asked reasonably whether broken promises reflect on the credibility of the government and on its forecast.

Actually Uhlmann's line of questioning made him sound like an escapee or a refugee from The Australian.

Have you ever thought of getting Christopher Pearson to host the show?

When it's not publishing IPA propaganda on The Drum, these days ABC current affairs seems to get its content and its marching orders from Chris Mitchell.

And then Belsham delivered the whammy that left the pond throwing jaffas at the telly:

Chris's tone throughout was respectful but probing, the appropriate tone for a political interviewer doing what political interviewers have always done – acting devil's advocate for a public seeking to better understand its leaders. I've been around long enough to remember Prime Ministers and their acolytes levelling similar charges of impertinence against ABC political anchors, from Richard Carleton to Kerry O'Brien. Chris Uhlmann, widely respected in Canberra and amongst his colleagues as a decent, intelligent and no-nonsense journalist, continues a fine tradition.

Oh pull the other one. Devil's advocate? Is that the same as reading the headlines in The Australian, and putting them into the form of a question?

What this says about Belsham is that he doesn't have the first clue. To put Uhlmann in the same couple of sentences as Richard Carleton and Kerry O'Brien is an indecent, unintelligent, nonsensical bit of gibberish, evoking the way that a fine tradition of quality interviewers and interviewing now lies broken and busted, and instead we have Uhlmann beavering away at the heart of ABC current affairs.

Instead of mounting this kind of feeble defence of Uhlmann, why not move on? Get Sales back as quickly as possible, and get some added muscle in the interview department. Keep Uhlmann as a Canberra specialist if you must, but rope in someone else to add a little ballast and depth and sense of style. If all that's required is aggression and snarl, the commercial broadcasters supply it in spades.

It's not about offending Labor politicians or Liberals or even Barnaby Joyce for that matter, it's about offending your viewers ...

Have you got something against a cup of tea, lamingtons and scones and a thoughtful discussion? The tone of the ABC is now being set by Q&A, and what a woeful tone it is ...

Don't believe the pond? Take a look around the social media world at the response to Uhlmann's lack of style. The only positive thing that could be culled from the experience is the notion that Uhlmann irritates some viewers so much that they watch him in the same way they'd watch a train wreck unfold ...

It must be hard for Uhlmann. His little Twitter outburst last March seemed to show he was feeling under the hammer:

The 7.30 host last night took to his twitter account in a way that the rest of us can only conclude indicated he was more than a bit tired and emotional.
The series of late night tweets included the topics of animal love, opening bottles of wine in the dark and the ABC's ability to pay its power bills.
Ulhmann also commented on the controversy involving former News International head Rebekah Brooks tweeting: “Speaking of horses. I see Rupert Murdoch has leapt to Rebecca Brooks defence. Saved a nag from the knackers.” (here)

Speaking of horses, how nice of Bruce Belsham to leap to Chris Uhlmann's defence. Saved a hay-muncher from the knackery one more time.

Christopher Pearson anyone?

We keed, we keed ...

(Below: memories, memories, but who's that man in the inset?)

Put on those knuckle-dusters and get those knuckles low to the ground, it's class warfare time ...

(Above: click to enlarge, more astonishingly vulgar artworks here).

Nǐ hǎo, Ohaiyou Gozaimasu, An nyoung ha se yo, and Apa kabar? chattering classes.

Consider yourself exposed to an Asian language.

Further lessons will continue once funding dropped by the Howard government is fully restored by worshippers of the Howard government.

Moving right along, Stephen Colbert delivered a great smack-down of alleged artist and conservative favourite Jon McNaughton last night - you can see it here if you haven't spoofed the Comedy Central site - and that led to the pond enjoying a few even funnier moments on McNaughton's site - before it crashed, perhaps under the weight of a Colbert bump.

So long as the United States lives, ineffable vulgarity and the chocolate box will also live, with handy explanations:

I would like to take a minute to explain some of the points of confusion for those who wish to interpret my picture.

1. Each figure including Christ represents a symbol. Everything about the painting is symbolic.

Wow. Symbolic. Do go on:

I don't pretend to know what Christ looks like. As I stated in my interview, I wanted to create an image that would instantly be recognizable as Jesus. I am not painting an anthropological Jesus. Nobody would recognize him if I painted him that way.

Indeed. Turns out Jesus looks like he was born, bred and lives in Hermann, Missouri. Talk about symbolism.

At this point, the pond was rolling around on the floor, marvelling at the way Colbert knows exactly how to evoke the surreal sense that America is completely weird.

You can get the same feeling living in Australia. Casual readers might remember how the lizard Oz has been banging on about 'class warfare' the past few days.

It seems that Tony Abbott was at one with the message, and on song, at least if you take The Age as a guide in Abbott accuses government of playing class war card:

And the Daily Terror got the same message as the lead message:

And the HUN also led with "class war".

So how did The Australian open up with the story?

Oh come on myrmidon Murdochians, maintain the rage. Fair dibs.

Was it a bit too close to the bone to see the parrot squawking the company line? It takes two to have a class war. What's this jibber jabber about hard work? How about a re-run of a hammer and a sickle on the front page? Have you thought about putting Tony Abbott on a shining white pony in full medieval body armour, with the cross of St. George on his shield, and a valiant lance ready to slay the socialist dragon?

Eek, the Stalinists are at the gate, quick save the fair maiden ....

Was that why you allowed a story about Gillard's class war to lurk outside the paywall in Gillard ups ante in class war fight?

Julia Gillard has ramped up her class war rhetoric, branding Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party as servants of the nation's rich.

But, but, but, billy goat butt, it was Tony Abbott who ramped up the class war rhetoric, following The Australian's speechwriting course 101.

Truly, as Jon McNaughton is to art, so The Australian is to journalism. What a pity there's no decent Colbert on the ground to celebrate its surreal brand of special pleading.

Moving along, what other Jon McNaughton journalism can we discover this fine Friday?

Well there's always David Penberthy chattering away like a fully paid up member of the chattering classes in Class war: sounds crazy but it just might work, but all that proves is that around the water cooler in Murdoch la la land, all they can handle these days is a two word slogan.

And surely it leads to arrant stupidity and gibberish:

Class war is obviously kind of stupid, especially in a country where, unlike the UK, people do not really identify themselves in the context of political class.

Political class? Waiter, I want the some of the sociology he's been drinking.

Class: a social stratum whose members share certain economic, social or cultural characteristics (here).

It seems discussing class is beyond the paygrade of the average Murdoch hack. Quick, bring back that hammer and sickle, and paint the slogan "political class warfare" on it.

Come on Daily Terror, step up to the plate, show how it's done. What's your lead today?

Oh ye ancient cats and dogs, the hardships, the suffering and the sacrifices to make it to the north shore, only to be caught up in a bitter, ugly, vicious, savage class war, courtesy of the Daily Terror and the Murdoch hacks enraptured at their latest bit of group think.

Naturally the Terror couldn't resist rolling that old Melbourne v. Sydney rivalry schtick into its pained editorial Flawed, divisive attack belittles PM:

... a greater awareness of Sydney is clearly required. Perhaps Ms Gillard could ask her prime ministerial limousine driver to take her for a tour the next time she stays at Kirribilli House, on Sydney's lower north shore.

Hah, hah, that'll learn ya, red-headed bogan from Melbourne's Altona ...

Not that we're into class warfare when simple misogyny and abuse of red-heads will do.

It is at this point dear reader that we really should stop. Just in reading this coverage of Murdoch hackery, you might well have lost ten I.Q. points, and be already ferreting in the cupboard for a pitchfork and a flame stick so you can join in the political class warfare.

After all, someone has to defend the billionaires of Australia, and we can't just leave it to the Murdoch press ...

By the end of it all, the pond was absolutely yearning for Colbert to do a quick tour down under so he could decode the Murdoch press in the way he decoded the nuance, metaphor and subtlety in Jon McNaughton's painting of President Obama holding a copy of the US constitution going up in flames:

COLBERT: There's the President, pointing to the Constitution that he has set on fire. It could mean anything. As the artist says "I like to use metaphor and multiple levels of meaning." It's complicated, so let me explicate the painting's message on multiple metaphorical levels.

Barack Obama represents, President Obama. And the burning Constitution represents, the Constitution on fire. I didn't get it at first either. I'm just glad the art world finally has a great conservative master to balance out all the liberal hacks.

Yes, that's just what we need to explain the political class warfare going on down under ... Murdoch's conservative master-minds balancing out all those envious liberal latte-sipping elitists lurking on the north shore.

Who'd have thunk that Palm Beach is more Penrith than Penrith?

(Below: the pond is in a Friday celebratory mood, so here's some more great art from the United States. Look it can also be a jigsaw puzzle, and there's lots more here. Everybody sing along:

Wide eyes,
Burning like fire.
Wide eyes,
How can you close and fail?
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale?
Wide eyes.

Answer: political class warfare).

Wherein the pond drifts from talk of class warfare to thoughts of Tony Abbott in the nude ...

(Above: The Australian deep in class warfare, with Bill Leak rapidly turning into its resident Patrick Cook, an object of pity and concern).

Here's hoping the stench emanating from the Leveson enquiry keeps floating around the world.

Next up is Andy Coulson, already creating dismay and confusion for David Cameron, as you can read in Andy Coulson is likely to have attended sensitive meetings, No 10 admits. And waiting in the wings is Rebekah Brooks, texting friend of Cameron (here).

At some point, and likely sooner than later, it will occur to functional News Corp business people that nirvana - in the form of pay and cable TV - has been lost, at the expense of keeping and propping up newspapers at a time when physical newspapers are dying, all in the name of sustaining Chairman Rupert in the business of power and influence.

The current jump in quarterly profits (here) is due to improved earnings from cable TV and films rather than newspapers, but just when it was within grasp, the chance to really turn into a cable powerhouse in the UK with BSkyB was pissed against the wall.

Perhaps at some point the attention of institutional shareholders will turn to the antipodes and the bloated (profitless, loss-making) hysterical right wing activities of The Australian, and the bean counters will begin to wonder what's the point of alienating a sizeable slab of the readership when they should be focussed on future trends, and making money out of cable.

Which is a roundabout way of noting that the lizard Oz is at it again today, running the class warfare routine:

Truly The Australian has jumped the ideological shark, and landed in a theological neverland. Pay to read this sort of tosh? Do you get an enema as a bonus?

The other angle doing the rounds amongst the myrmidons of Murdoch is that the Welfare budget is costing $5000 a head (sure you could pay to read it at the HUN, but why not read it for free at the Daily Terror?)

What a pity that the Murdoch press only seems to have discovered a bias towards families now, as opposed to the Howard years, and as opposed to the promises of family Nirvana in the coming Abbott years ...

It is of course part of a frenzied group think Murdochian assault on the budget, which is unprecedented for such an obvious bit of pork-barreling of the Howard kind (trust the pond, it's been out of pork and barrel in the entirety of the Howard, Rudd and Gillard years).

Which brings us back to the Leveson inquiry as the best hope for the Australian media. If there's a cleansing in Britain, at some point a few of the suds will drop into Australia, and perhaps moderate this oligopolistic print media hell.

Meanwhile, for devotees of the Liberal party, the Kroger fun continues, with Furious Costello denies seat bid. Who knows if the smirk wanted to become the Komeback Kid, but what fun to see that he and Michael Kroger are going at it head-on. If Costello keeps going on this way, he could become notorious as not just a one-time loser who lacked the pluck, but a triple- or quadruple-time loser.

It's much more fun than reading Paul Sheehan, yet again putting in the boot to Craig Thomson in Thomson charade still going as the players await a final curtain.

Sheehan is in a fine righteous fury, but Thomson is a dead unionist walking, a man without class and without style, and all that's left to him is to hang around like a bad smell providing raggedy ann fun for conservative pit bull warriors like Sheehan, pumped up high on magic water and the smell of sourdough.

But is it possible to imagine Sheehan unleashing the same level of frothing and foaming righteousness on Christopher Pyne and Mal Brough?

Is that the sound of silence in the forest?

Deep into autumn
and this caterpillar
still not a butterfly (more Basho here).

Probably not, but if you want sordid grubbiness, now with bonus homophobic comments below the fold, you can't look past the muck-racking of Vex News as it does over James Ashby.

This must be part of the lowering standards of discourse on the intertubes, in contrast to the elevated standards of discourse provided by the myrmidon Murdochians in the feral HUN, daily Terror and class warfare lizard Oz (never ever enter the cesspit of comments below the fold in Piers Akerman's, Tim Blair's and the Bolter's blogs unless you want to emerge with your hair turned white through shock and horror).

What else? Well casual readers will recall that hapless desiccated coconut Gerard Henderson was recently quite distraught that an erect Tony Abbott had been shown in a cartoon .... in budgie smugglers, as he explained at length in Sexist abuse of PM fits a general deterioration in political discourse - the deterioration in discourse of course being the fault of the ABC and the internet, and certainly not the ranting ratbags raving about class warfare in Murdoch land.

But eek, what's this we see this morning? David Rowe has stripped Abbott of his budgie smugglers and dared to present him starkers ... in a ... cartoon?

Now will Henderson write a lengthy assault on Rowe and will Fairfax publish it? Or is he just happy to go on being a goose about cartoonists?

You know, cartoonists who are witty and clever and never mind breaching Godwin's Law, Stalinist sub-section. Come on down Bill Leak:

Never mind, Patrick Cook needs a friend, and we await the next day's live blogging of the Leveson inquiry at The Guardian here.

With a bit of luck, it might produce another bout of paranoid defensiveness right up there with this recent flurry of floozies at the lizard Oz:

"Exclusive"? Get your paranoia and Murdoch worship here is an "exclusive" worth a gold bar?

No links, it's a screen cap, but in any case would you want to spend money to help sustain the current level of anal retentiveness and paranoia that's alive and well at Hearst castle?

Take it away Rowe, always a bright moment in any dull Murdochian day, and you can find more Rowe here for your pleasure.

And just think, by looking you'll be shocking Gerard Henderson and lowering the tone of the discourse.

Unlike Rupert Murdoch's minions, fighting valiantly against rampant Stalinism ...

Adopting the spirit of Chairman Mao, let us eliminate the impact of climate change with the help of Chairman Berg ...

(Above: eliminating the last sparrow. Click to enlarge. And a few more posters here and here).

To paraphrase a wag joking about his cock, the pond would rather get its tits caught in a revolving door than debate climate change with representatives of the IPA.

Some keep trying. The Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, for example, has prepared answers to Plimer's 101 climate questions, designed for students seeking to get expelled from schools for climate denialiam, and thoughtfully circulated to schools by the IPA.

You can a copy of the pdf here, or read more of the IPA's disingenuous claptrap at Crikey's report on the fuss here. Yep, it's the same old 'print the controversy' routine:

“School kids are being indoctrinated by teachers every day. There should be two sides to the story and the science is far from settled.”

You know. School kids are being indoctrinated by teachers every day. There should be two sides to intelligent design, creationism, the intimate relationship between dinosaurs and Raquel Welch, and the science is far from settled ... especially as somehow Ringo Starr also turned up amongst the dinosaurs.

So if teachers are indoctrinating kids, what's the IPA doing? Cult busting? Or treating science as a kind of counter-indoctrination process? Forget the actual science, let's just get on with showing how the theory of evolution makes a monkey's uncle of you, and tobacco smoke is perfectly harmless.

Which is, in a way, the entire dissembling point. It's treating the science as a kind of political ideological process, right up there with the loonatic thinking of extremists who have the barest nodding acquaintance with scientific methodologies. (And speaking of extremists what fun you can have with the Heartland Institute and Anders Breivik here).

There's no better example of this sophistry, than the devious rhetorical tricks practised by arch-sophist Chris Berg, yet again given a platform to bang his drum at the ABC with We can't stop climate change - it's time to adapt.

sophistry (ˈsɒfɪstrɪ)
— n , pl -ries
1. a. a method of argument that is seemingly plausible though actually invalid and misleading
b. the art of using such arguments
2. subtle but unsound or fallacious reasoning
3. an instance of this; sophism (here)

So let's cut to the sophist chase, because Berg's solution is to waltz pass the science altogether:

... emphasising adaptive capacity and resilience is a good thing, regardless of whether climate change is a naturally occurring phenomenon or the result of human recklessness. Wilby and Dessai call adaptation measures "no-regret" or "low-regret". The PC calls them "win-win".

Hang on, hang on, let's just back that one up a little.

We should be making adaptive adjustments to the significant impacts of climate change, even though in another breath the IPA is handing out to schools a book by Plimer that contends climate change science is a fraud, a mirage and a fiction.

And it doesn't matter whether it's a naturally occurring phenomenon or the result of human recklessness? The science doesn't matter but we should do something?

Ouch. There goes the tits in that revolving door again.

There's a problem, but there's not a problem, and we should do something even if we need to do nothing? Because that's a win-win?

Suddenly we're in to risk management, a position and an attitude routinely decried by the IPA?

Lordy, lordy was it only a few weeks ago that Berg was advising WSJ readers that:

All too often, once government takes over, what was private risk management becomes regulatory compliance.

Not to worry, he's still beating the same drum:

As the PC says, regulations can make the economy inflexible. They make it harder for us to adapt to change. After all, individual regulations are written with certain circumstances in mind. When those circumstances change (as they would in a world with a shifting climate) the existing stock of regulations can add friction to adaptive action.

Uh huh. That'd be the adaptive action to a non-existent problem, produced by the private sector without reference to bumbling restrictive government, outdated regulations or actual science.

You can see where this is all heading. This bizarre form of risk management involves abandoning any idea of mitigation, and certainly any idea of regulation, and on we plough with not a care in the world about the lifeboats on the Titanic or the iceberg up ahead, because we'll suddenly be infinitely inflexible in a deregulated way (and of course the IPA's client base can go on pillaging and looting in the usual way).

Yes, in a vision as grand as chairman Mao's desire to use local initiatives and communities to combat the four pests - who can forget Mao's valiant bid to exterminate mosquitoes, flies, rats and sparrows in his four pests campaign - Berg envisions a bottom up strategy to solve any minor problems with the climate or the world:

Rather than focusing on a single, over-arching, world-historical goal (achieved through unprecedented consensus and political action at the national and international level), adaptation focuses on process, institutions, and diversity. It asks: what makes communities most flexible, resilient, and responsive to environmental change? It's about developing strategies to deal with uncertainty, not politics to achieve global reform.

Yes indeed. Now you might think that it might be handy at a societal level to tackle some of the implications of climate change, but really, there's nothing a government can do that a sturdy band of individuals working at the local level can't manage:

... a bottom-up approach focuses on how communities adapt to local pressures, not global ones. After all, it isn't the United Nations that will adapt to climate change. It is individuals. This approach is less flashy, but then, why should climate policy be flashy?

Yes, that's a great idea for the people of Bangladesh. All they need to do in the next flood is invite some Australian specialists over to develop an Australian crawl which will see them reach higher ground in licketty-split time.

Surely individuals can also play a huge role in combatting the acidification of the oceans. On an individual level, the pond proposes that seaside communities pour a little sodium hydroxide into the ocean on a daily basis. Now sure it won't look flashy, but why should climate policy be flashy, or even sane, or sensible?

There's nothing like a little Drano to sort out the oceans and make the sea water safe for crustaceans.

Oh the chairman Mao dream is alive, and not just in Portland, but in the IPA ...

Now you could go on endlessly making suggestions where a little local initiative could change the world, not in a flashy way, but who needs to be flashy. Plant a tree in your backyard, and that will certainly balance the butchering of rain forests around the world ...

Why you could have your own private Amazon in Adelaide.

It reminds the pond how successful the campaign was to stop fluorocarbons ruining the ozone layer ... simply because people refused to use their fridges. Nothing to do with governments or regulations or unseemly bannings or international action. It was people power.

What's that you say? Without the sparrows there was a plague of locusts, helping to kill off the thirty million who died in the great famine arising from Mao's peculiar idea of how to improve agriculture? (here).

You think the pond should retreat a little from the proposal to build sea walls out of the bones of climate science deniers?

Steady, individual action isn't for the weak or the faint-hearted:

... the arrogance now rests with those who still believe they can coordinate massive, immediate global political action towards a single goal.
It is, surely, time to face up to the demands of adaptation.

Uh huh, that arrogance is completely unlike the delusional Berg insistence that a little local individual action will sort things out. At last a use for Tony Abbott's 15,000 strong green army.

And would said arrogance have anything to do with the need for the IPA's client base to go about its plundering business as usual? Fortified by the bizarre notion that we must now as individuals adapt to climate change, even though it isn't happening, as any reader of Plimer's 101 questions can tell you?

Now here's a more interesting question.

Who's the bigger fool? Chris Berg for scribbling this tosh and expecting people to swallow it?

Or the pond for reading it, and once again getting tits squashed in revolving door?

Yep, if it's up to individual action on a global level, while the IPA's clients go on making out like bandits, the world is fucked ... but is it an insight to say it, or just another day on the pond with the loons?

The point of course is that science matters. If climate science is accepted (let's leave belief to the church), then it has implications, which can't be swept under the carpet with a "doesn't matter, who cares" shrug of the shoulders. It does matter how and why the climate is changing, and to what extent, because embedded within that knowledge are the policy responses that could or should be deployed.

Berg should give up sophistry and try a little science. He might then have the first clue about the policy implications of the science.

Is it a fair guess that there are plenty of other punters who, like the pond, get sucked into reading this sort of drivel, as opposed to thinking intelligently about issues like climate change, or how to make sure there are enough lifeboats on the Titanic?

Once again, Chris Berg spreads the fog of confusion. He should have got a job with Robert McNamara, because the fog of war would have been a lay down misere ...

(Below: working diligently together with Chairman Berg and the IPA to seek new ways forward).

From a wild Pellist to where the interesting wild things are ...

(Above: a short joke. Time for a take-down notice to YouTube? But if the link disappears, the joke won't).

It will be recalled that, according to the chattering classes, Cardinal Pell won the debate against evil angry atheist Richard Dawkins.

Typically, that idle chatterer and common town gossip, Andrew Bolt, awarded the points to Pell in A Point to Pell UPDATE Four and a half, actually.

And that lounging layabout at the lizard Oz, Greg Sheridan, was enraptured. You'll need to google the following to breach the paywall and bathe once again in the banality of his piece Pell's Performance was a revelation:

There were times in Monday night's great debate on the ABC's Q&A between Catholic Cardinal George Pell and militant atheist Richard Dawkins when you felt the boxing authorities would step in and call a halt to the bout.

It makes it all the funnier then, that as a result of Pell v. Dawkins, we now have Pell v. Deveny and Twitter, and lawyers at ten paces, as picked up by Crikey in Devamation: George Pell pursues legal action over a Deveny tweet, and then followed up by Fairfax in Pell's threat to sue Twitter highlights law's use-by date.

It seems winners aren't grinners, and now it turns out that a quarter of the Irish priesthood is revolting. And why wouldn't they be, when you can read stories like McGuinness: Vatican failed sex abuse victims:

Commenting on recent action taken by the Church to censure outspoken liberal clerics, among them the high-profile Co Fermanagh author and journalist Fr Brian D’Arcy, Mr McGuinness accused the Church of trying to silence progressive priests and deflect attention away from Church failings.

The pond fondly remembers the days that revolting Irish priests were in plague proportions downunder, teaching the pond theological niceties, but it seems boy troubles, cover-ups and regressive conservatism have wounded the Irish church irredeemably.

And now Pell wonders why his stumble got a cynical laugh, and the lawyers are his first resort ...

If that's winning, perhaps the Cardinal should follow the pond in a bout of stylish losing ...

But at least it helps turn the pond into a budget-free zone.

Each day there's a federal event, the chattering classes wheel and turn in unison like a clattering, squawking flock of parrots, and it's even funnier when these paid-up, professional chatterers label a brief bit water-cooler chatter as the doings of the inner west cafe latte set. Yes, look in the mirror you mrymidon Murdochians ... the chattering classes is you ...

In the good old days, a conversation about the budget would revolve around the price of cigarettes, beer and petrol.

These days we get much more sophisticated, nuanced coverage:

Poor hapless rich. Smashed to a pulp in the downunder gulag. Thanks Matthew for the heads up. The next time the pond passes a forlorn billionaire in King street, Newtown, a dime will go into their out-strethed paw.

Promise. Oh those heartful, soulful, doleful, woeful, smashed and ruined eyes eyes, it's heart-breaking, gut-wrenching ...

Oh yes, it's class warfare day at the lizard Oz. Let the always reliable Dennis Shanahan expose the full, shocking, extent of the breach of faith:

Last night Swan redistributed the fruits of capitalism and those billionaire miners to make Australia a fair-go society and make amends to the low-income earners, families and pensioners who have felt the Gillard government didn't care or didn't understand about the pressures of rising costs of living. (Google the text to read the rest).

Disgraceful, outrageous class warfare.

But enough already.

The story that really caught the pond's budget-free zone eye involved Monica Attard and the Global Mail, first given an outing in Crikey (the latest Atttard out as Global Mail editor amid crisis talks), and then in the usual way turned up today in Fairfax as Editor leaves independent online magazine after power struggle.

Sad really, but where to start with a noob 0.95 beta web effort?

Perhaps with the antiquarian name, with its echo of the very successful online Daily Mail brand? Or even worse The Globe and Mail, a Canadian brand which isn't global but which also echoes the days of post and telegraph in its header. Canadians!? Do't they have a common loon on their loonie?

But there was an even more pressing problem. There's a good chance that if you head off to the site with the wrong browser or without tablet functionality, the site simply won't work to its full potential. They seem to have done some hasty patching since the pond last visited, and now it's possible to scroll, but it still scrolls left to right in a counter-intuitive way.

Someone back in the day let the design team have their head without thinking of the first rule in a content site - it's the content, stupid, not the design.

It's also the functionality, and if there are people still stupid enough to use IE (not the pond) or are trapped on a Mac (the pond), make it so for them.

There are billions of pages out there, and the lack of stickiness and the stench of irrelevance now hangs heavy around the neck of the Global Mail.

And what's this? A black splash for the site's name? Is there a funeral going on?

Time for a very quick and much more extensive re-think before a re-launch if they want to get a firm foothold in the conversation ...

The absent lord knows, any voice that's not a mrymidon Murdochian voice is needed, and it needn't be as gross as The Punch, or that even more offensive Punch clone, The Drum, but why oh why if they wanted to be Pro Publica, couldn't they have ripped off that site's more sprightly and clean design, and got on with the content ...

And speaking of funerals, there's just time to honour yet another reason the pond went surreal and proud of it, thanks to the likes of Lewis Carroll and Maurice Sendak ...

Between giving the world a budget or a book for children of all ages, please think of the children ...

A Bertie Beetle guide to politicians and policies and perhaps bad teeth ...

(Above: more Nicholson here).

There's stupidity, rampant stupidity, and then there's politicians.

Once you back a politician into a corner, the sensible ones will try to find a way out.

And then there's the stubborn, mule for a brain ones. Like Barry O'Farrell, who persists in the delusion that because (a) it was an election promise and (b) he's seen fairies at the bottom of the garden, Sydney's need for a second airport will be best serviced by a VFT train out of Canberra.

If he feels that so strongly, why doesn't he move to Canberra and save himself the cost of the train fare ...

Much as the pond loves VFTs and trains in general - Japan, oh Japan, what a train spotting country you are - the notion that Canberra airport can do the job is ... well, it's beyond delusional, it's completely unsustainable in terms of strategic thinking and infrastructure and immediate growth.

It puts the notion of a second, relevant and useful airport back into the too hard basket for an eternity. Especially when they can't even organise a railway to Sydney's north-west ... and if you're lucky you might get above 80k an hour on the current Sydney-Melbourne line between Junee and Goulburn.

And then there's the federal government, now determined to mount a detailed investigation into the suitability of Wilton. Whereby every NIMBYist available will hover into view and explain how it's utterly impossible, while Badgerys Creek, which had all the reviews imaginable done years ago will keep mouldering in the sun ... because the NIMBYists have done it down.

Is there a politician who can grasp the nettle? Not on your nelly.

And so in one microcosmic abject way, you get a complete picture of the stultifying incompetence of the federal system, the delusional ways of parochial politicians, and the complete inability of the Australian system to actually craft plans that transcend the four year election cycle group think. If it wasn't so tragic, it would be pathetic.

Memo to self: must stop reading stories like Wilton on agenda as Sydney's second airport, starting to sound like Gerard Henderson scribbling about the ABC.

It's like listening to loons talk about the virtues of copper when they clearly haven't understood anything about the virtues of fibre, and when they should be off reading FTTN a huge "mistake", says ex-BT CTO.

Meanwhile, the British conservative government is off with the pixies as it struggles to stay ahead of the "superfast" broadband game (Government broadband plans face £1bn funding shortfall). And the Chinese government are hooking everything in sight up with fibre, while censoring everything in sight ...

Oh dear absent lord, back on the FTTN thing. Settle, settle.

Nothing will fix the loonacy, must just enjoy splashing about in the pond's chilly waters.

Meanwhile, it's good to see that one journalist is keeping the flame alive in the Mal Brough affair, with Phillip Coorey scribbling Joyce takes Brough to task over meeting with Slipper's accuser.

The pond makes no secret of disliking Brough, ever since he tried to cover himself in glory with the inept invasion of the Northern Territory.

In a decent world, his inept behaviour in relation the Peter Slipper matter would see him denied Liberal pre-selection. Whatever the truth of the matter, his response was wrong, and any advice he offered deeply compromised, inevitably flawed, complicating rather than helping. But who said this was a a decent, sensible world?

According to Coorey's story, Barners and the pond are at one, like minds, kissing cousins.

Barners? Eek ...

But it seems in this matter at least, you can take Barners and the pond out of Tamworth, but you can't take Tamworth common sense out of either of us:

Senator Joyce said Mr Brough, a fellow member of the Liberal National Party, should have twigged when Mr Ashby came to him that it would be improper to help him given Mr Brough was seeking to unseat Mr Slipper to re-enter federal Parliament.

Oh yes Barners, yes.

Senator Joyce said once Mr Brough did decide to get involved, he should also have spoken with Mr Slipper to hear his version of events.
''If you are going to play marriage guidance counsellor, you've got to hear both sides of the story,'' he told the Herald.

Oh well, half right. To have played marriage guidance counsellor with Slipper and Brough would have been more than silly, it would have been downright stupid. Quite possibly dangerous.

Perhaps it was a rhetorical point. Barners of course is exceptionally skilled as a counsellor. Who can forget his sturdy, stern advice to the children of Gina Rinehart to take their cod liver oil as prescribed by mamma bear and all would be well?

In Canberra, Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce and the NSW Liberal MP Alby Schultz faced questions about why they had written to John Hancock, Bianca Rinehart and Hope Rinehart Welker, urging them to drop the court action.
''I think he really does need to answer: 'Why would he involve himself in a personal family business?','' independent MP Tony Windsor said of Senator Joyce.
''Is he in the business of writing to everybody who has children who might be in some sort of dispute with their parents?'' (Mother's actions put gun to our heads over trust, say Rinehart children)

Hmmm, did Barners seek the children's side of things along with the mother's?

Truth to tell, given the pond's line of business - political loonacy and the loonatic commentariat attached thereto - the arrival of the Abbott years is being awaited with a slavering, almost breathless frothing and foaming anticipation.

The Labor party has been inept, but a swag of contending Liberals and Nationals will be something to see.

Tony Abbott has stayed out of the limelight these last few days to avoid talking about Mal Brough, but in the end, the ongoing civil action will see the matter return to the spotlight, and with it more gossip and insights into what went down, and why Brough so singularly failed to understand the concept of conflict of interest.

Abbott's lucky that the Craig Thomson affair has been festering for years, and should have been nipped in the bud years ago. Talk about inept ...

But back to the Liberals and the talk of more blood letting, with Helen Kroger being stripped of chief whip status in the Senate under cover of the landing of the federal budget, thanks to Senator Eric Abetz.

Et tu Eric?

Was it only yesterday that Katharine Murphy was reporting Libs rejoice: the Kroger era is over, and just as the head-kicking Bamboo general marches off into the sunset, so it seems must his first wife, as she gets demoted to third in the Victorian senate ticket, and Eric the enabler whips her out of the way ...

Oh it's a long way from the glory days and 2003 stories about how Helen Kroger was Breathing life into a tired and battered party.

Yep, with Barry O'Farrell arranging VFTs from Canberra and Mal Brough on hand to invade Tasmania, and ritual blood-letting and butchery of an almost halal kind whipping through the Liberal corridors of power, the Abbott years promise endless entertainment, and the bizarre sight of the commentariat pretending all's well and everything's for the best in the best of worlds ... because they got what they dared to wish for.

Could the pond just offer the Liberals and Mr. Abbott one tip? Seeing as how Europe and the markets are about to enter another period of dangerous instability, it might actually pay to let the Labor party and the minority government totter along for the next year. The greed for power is all too reminiscent of Malcolm Fraser's unseemly lust, and where did that get him? Or the country?

If Labor expires early, it will be an unholy mess. If the government runs its course, it'll be the best, perhaps the only way to hide the misdeeds of the inept clowns in your party and allow you to blame Labor for everything that goes wrong on your watch ... for at least the first two years ...

Because even before you've got into actual power, the circling and the back-stabbing and the panem et circenses have already begun.

First up? Well surely today, there's Kroger v. Abetz, but we most want to see Barners v. Mal Brough, doing family counselling and pig wrasslin' Tamworth style ... (the pond would talk about wrasslin' pigs if it weren't for the fact that the pig won).

Why we'd even pay for the relatives to catch a plane from Melbourne to Sydney which could land in Canberra, and then they could catch the VFT to Sydney to see that high class sort of wrasslin' go down ...

(Below: Barry O'Farrell present Julia Gillard with a Bertie Beetle bag while talking of rail funding here ...

And what do you get in a Bertie Beetle bag? A second airport for Sydney? A very fast train to Canberra? How about some kit kats, redskin sticks, milko sticks, and a water pistol or a basketball? Yep, that's your lot, now bugger off and give the pond a little peace).

In which the pond conflates fish and bicycles, Kevin Andrews and Gerard Henderson ...

(Above: more about Kevin Andrews than you needed to know).


So there's Kevin Andrews in The formula for a happy marriage, sort of .. using bodgy, dodgy manipulations of statistical data to suggest that there's a man shortage, and people are delaying getting married.

At the same time, the Catholic church used the same bodgy dodgy statistics (any male earning under 60k a year need not apply for matrimonial hand) to ring the warning bell:

Women should marry earlier and not be too picky to avoid an Aussie man drought, the Catholic Church has warned...
"Are women getting too choosy? I'd say yes," Fr Kerin, speaking on behalf of the archdiocese, said. (here).

Quelle surprise. The ponzi scheme that requires breeding as a membership activity must be suffering.

And does it come as a surprise to learn that Kevin Andrews has been a member of the Catholic Pontifical Council for the Laity, and an Adjunct Lecturer in Politics and in Marriage Education in the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne? (or so his wiki says here). Yes, you have to take a stern view on the evil activities of the likes of Disney and Time Warner in Andrews' strange world.

But hang on, according to the association of Irish priests (here), there's a simple solution to the man drought. Get rid of celibacy in the church, let priests marry, and there's an end of the shortage.

What's that you say? The average priest is in short supply, is zooming past the age of sixty, and doesn't have two shekels to rub together?

Never mind. Perhaps women can turn towards the union movement? What's that you say? Utterly useless unionists prefer to use their members' money on escort services?

Ah well, thank the absent lord, that after a ride on a bicycle, a sensible woman can settle down to a decent meal of fish rather than stand by men who love to star in films with titles like Beyond the ultra-brazen shameless valley of the credit-card pounders.

So there you are: stuck between a flood of Andrews' fundamentalists and the likes of Craig Thomson, who are you going to turn to?

Well of course it's prattling Polonius day, and there's Gerard Henderson delivering the usual guff in Sexist abuse of PM fits a general deterioration in political discourse.

It's a fascinating, compelling insight into the thoughts of a completely humourless man, worthy of a film by Russ Meyer.

This week Henderson turns to an examination of misogyny in the media in relation to Julia Gillard. Now first of all it's necessary to understand that misogyny is in no way related to there being a man shortage, and women simply being too fussy and too picky when it comes to getting married. After all there's the inspirational example of Catholic Newt Gingrich to show how marriage is for everyone, and can be tried any number of times ...

No that sort of talk would be deflection, and Henderson will hear no deflection. Gillard, it turns out, is a shocking prime minister, full of broken promises, and a carbon tax, and sex has got nothing to do with it.

Instead ... drum roll and trumpet blast, and let the clouds part and the heavens and the earth move ... it's all the fault of the ABC. Or perhaps the internet. Or both ...

You see awhile ago Wendy Harmer compiled for Hoopla a list of the top ten barbs directed at Julia Gillard, in Julia Gillard's Ugly Top 10. Naturally Bill Heffernan was there, but so was Anita Quigley from the Terror, Sophie Mirabella, George Brandis, Janet Albrechtsen, Mark Latham, Germaine Greer, Grahame Morris and Kevin Rudd as a bonus in eleventh position.

Shamefully, when she talked about the list on ABC radio with Jonathan Green, Harmer only mentioned the right wing loons, and failed to mention Latham and Greer, or Bob Ellis.

And there you see, is the opportunity for Henderson to apply misdirection:

Harmer's thesis turned on an implied suggestion of rampant sexism. Green opined that "there's maybe not sexism so much as misogyny". Maybe. What is more likely is that the criticisms of Gillard merely reflect a deterioration in the political debate, in Australia and elsewhere, which demonstrates the bad manners of the internet age.
Green should be the last to lecture about bad language, or indeed, misogyny...

Oh well played sir. Enough of the jibber jabber about Gillard, now's the time to whinge, and mope and moan about the internet, The Drum, Marieke Hardy calling Christopher Pyne a douchebag when it's more factually correct to call him a simpering liar, and Bob Ellis bagging Jillian Skinner.

And then, after a grudging admission that maybe some people - chiefly it seems Germaine Greer, rather than conservatives and hackers for Murdoch - are playing the woman rather than the ball, there's the return to the chip on the shoulder stuff:

Sure Gillard is, at times, the victim of misogyny. But Tony Abbott is, at times, the victim of anti-Catholic sectarianism along with personal mockery for his sporting attire. Last week, for example, The Age ran a cartoon by Dan Boermans of an erect Abbott clad in budgie smugglers, having his confession heard by an excited and perspiring Catholic priest. Enough said.

Actually when you take a look at the cartoon, you wonder what Henderson is on:

(More at Dan Boermans' site here).

Why call Abbott erect? Well hung perhaps, but hardly erect. Surely the portrait of the razor teeth is the most offensive aspect of the caricature? And what makes Henderson think the pock-marked priest is excited and perspiring? Projection?

Now the pond has always been adept at post-semiotic deconstructural decoding of signs and meaning, but surely the point about cartooning is that it has long been exempt in terms of commentary, with a spirit of 'whatever shakes your boat to make a point' allowed.

It reminds the pond of a favourite Low cartoon about Billy Hughes at the height of the conscription campaign in 1916:

(click to enlarge, more about the Billiwog book here - they started making billiwogs).

It turns out then that Boermans' cartoon is just a fair average example of a kind of cartooning discourse that has been going on in the country since the nineteenth century, and in Britain since the glory days of William Hogarth.

The notion that there has been a recent decline in discourse because of the ABC, The Drum, Jonathan Green, and the internet - as opposed to some long forgotten golden age of civility - is pure, undiluted fantasy.

What Henderson is doing is an exercise in deflection and equivalence. Bob Ellis is naughty, Mark Scott defends the indefensible Ellis (and in private correspondence, what's more, in an actual letter to the prim and prissy Henderson), QED let the Murdoch hacks and Alan Jones flay Julia Gillard alive: The episode suggests that, to the likes of Green, misogyny is in the (political) eye of the beholder.

Who would have thought that Henderson is a relativist French existentialist, and so long as ratbags like Ellis can go on being ratbags, why then where's the problem with Alan Jones?

And Henderson himself finds deflection incredibly useful. Here's how it's done:

Labor's problems under Gillard primarily stem from the broken promise that led to the carbon tax. Rightly or wrongly, many voters in the suburbs and regional centres associate the Prime Minister with rising power bills.

Rightly or wrongly? That's right, it's not Henderson's business to disabuse voters, or advise them of the truth of the matter, or explain how power bills have thus far risen without benefit of a carbon tax, but with full benefit of incompetent state governments managing a half-arsed privatisation and infrastructure adjustment, compounded by costs arising from bushfires, etc etc. And the other part of the problem has been woefully inept renewable energy programs where state governments have tried to pick winners ... (Australians pay highest power prices) ... a process that is likely to continue under Abbott's half-baked energy and climate change policies.

And then Henderson has the cheek to quote Kristina Keneally, head of an utterly failed NSW state Labor government, who had the cheek to offer the Federal government advice. With geese like this as friends, who needs enemies?

By the end of it all, the pond began to wonder whether Henderson understood that it was in fact him and his scribbling that led to a complete deterioration in public discourse. It's simply impossible to read one of his pieces without steam, and rage and foaming incoherence, and then a shouting of bollocks, and perhaps - in a moment of complete incivility - you total abject dickhead.

But of course that's why he writes ... to provoke and enrage. He's just a political cartoonist who uses words - he would have been at home in the eighteenth century inflicting scars on the cheek in ever so refined passive aggressive way - and here he is, always banging on about the ABC, and never ever banging on about Murdoch and his commentariat hacks, or shock jock radio, or commercial television ... likely because he can't stand the advertisement. There's only so much a free market possum can bear ...

And getting his insights and his facts wrong as he acts as a mule for conservative causes and conservative insights and the Catholic church.

Waiter, bring me my bicycle, I've done with the fish and the flatheads for the day ...

(Below: but here's another David Low before I go).

Henny Penny and the machines that gp ping ...

In the pond's absence, the Heartland Institute has been in exceptionally fine form.

Naturally there were visual responses to its quickly withdrawn, wonderfully inept billboard display:

The pond is ill-equipped for photoshop fun, but yearned to juxtapose an image of Hitler with "Hitler believed in gravity and rocketry, do you still think you can fly to the moon?" or perhaps Stalin juxtaposed against "Stalin believed in nuclear fission. Do you really think that nuklear bermb will go off?"

Sorry, no idea how bumbling Inspector Clouseau got into a bumbling Heartland routine. The amazing thing is that anyone takes the place seriously, but it is serious enough, in the way it represents the slide of certain parts of the United States into illogical primitivism, superstition and ignorance. A bit like a mrymidon Murdoch blogger - both Tim Blair and the Bolter have shown a taste for Heartland propaganda.

The pond has in recent times been in the company of many machines that go ping, and people who think the pings make perfect sense.

There has been an explosion in ping insights since the old days, and it reminded the pond of Arthur C. Clarke's thee laws, which turned up on the box last night (ah the joy of the box and raspberry jelly):

• When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
• The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (wiki here)

Perhaps for Heartland, the third law could be varied: Any sufficiently backward advertising campaign is indistinguishable from ineffable stupidity.

These days when you enter the system, it is de rigeur that the surgeon lists the odds. 2,000 to 1 that something major will go wrong, 200 to 1 that in the process an infection will occur, and so on. It reminded the pond that thousands of scientists thought there was a ninety per cent chance that climate science was right, and so the main argument was now the degree and the odds in relation to how much the planet was fucked.

It brought back to mind that glorious moment when Sir Paul Nurse used a medical analogy to take down hapless James Delingpole - you can read about it here and YouTube the moment here.

So any final word from the Heartland?

... the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen. (here)

Between a decent surgeon and the Heartland Institute, the pond will settle for the surgeon every time.

Meanwhile, what's new? Turns out absolutely nothing.

There's Paul Sheehan doing his usual Chicken Little routine, Swan's song of praise to be lost amid all the clucking, and without a shred of irony as Fairfax's chief dumb cluck embarks on an orgy of clucking and doom-saying and neigh-saying, using chicken metaphors at every turn. He surely needs a dose of magic water to settle himself down ...

As usual, there's a wiki that describes Sheehan syndrome - or catastrophist dumb cluck disease - and you can find it here:

The names of the main characters in the fable - Chicken Little/Chicken Licken and Henny Penny - and the fable's central phrase - The sky is falling! - have been applied to people accused of being unreasonably afraid, or those trying to incite an unreasonable fear in those around them. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary records the first application of the name Chicken Little to 'one who warns of or predicts calamity, especially without justification’ as dating from 1895, although idiomatic use of the name significantly predates that attestation. Because of this association, the tale has became politicised.
Fear mongering - whether justified or not - can sometimes elicit a societal response called Chicken Little syndrome, described as "inferring catastrophic conclusions possibly resulting in paralysis". It has also been defined as "a sense of despair or passivity which blocks the audience from actions". The term began appearing in the 1950s and the phenomenon has been noted in many different societal contexts.

Henny Penny Sheehan. Now there's a nick to be proud of ...

Meanwhile, it was almost inevitable that that twittering twit Bob Carr could snatch a stylish response and turn it into a muddy tweet. It's impossible to keep NSW Labor out of the gutter especially when they see the likes of Christopher Pyne and Mal Brough having such fun.

You have to read Phillip Coorey Concealment hurts Coalition's clout to discover the obvious line of attack:

Meeting Ashby once was OK but after that, Brough should have referred him immediately to somebody who had no interest in seeing Slipper harmed politically, regardless of whether he felt Ashby's grievances were genuine.
Instead he met him two more times.

Why tweet about Ashby when there's a low-hanging Brough?

... on Friday when reporters starting hearing the opposite from Liberal National Party sources, Brough changed his tune.
He refused to return calls from the Herald and other papers - in two known cases he just hung up - and instead opted for a tell-all interview with The Australian, complete with a front page picture of himself at home with his wife, Sue.
As one Coalition MP said yesterday: ''A sure sign you're in the shit.''

So Carr offers Pyne and Brough a convenient distraction with a kabuki tweet. Well-played Mr. Carr, you've allowed the preposterous lying Pyne the opportunity to sound like a pompous righteous sanctimonious git chattering on about lack of judgment ... as if being caught out lying, prevaricating, dissembling, what you will, didn't involve a lack of judgment.

Still, you have to admire the efforts of the mrymidon Murdochians in helping Mal Brough out.

Now we just have to wait for a devastating assessment of Brough's activities, on a par with David Penberthy's demolition of Peter Slipper back in April under the header The rorting oddball Labor should have avoided.

What's that Henny Penny? All you can hear is the sounds of machines that go ping?

Must be another News Ltd. contribution to climate science...

(Below: Henny Penny, a true believer back in 1916, when they had the war to end all war, excluding all the wars that were to follow).

And so to some thoughts on raspberry jelly and gluggy hospital porridge ...

(Above: French hospital food. Wouldn't you know it, there's a tumblr dedicated to the subject of hospital food).

At the moment the pond is fully occupied preparing a far-reaching treatise on hospital food.

The blandness is intoxicating. Who knew that sugar was a health food as presented in raspberry jelly with shards of desiccated fruit, the flavour on the back palate redolent of nineteen fifties oak? Who knew that garlic and chilli were dangerous additives that threatened the stability of Bob Menzies' government and the survival of patients' stomachs?

It seems there are two messages embedded in the jelly. If you don't get better, get well right this moment and leave hospital at once, we will kill you with blandness.

But if you happen to stay, because you happen to be malfunctioning, we will whisk you back to a time when all you needed was limp veggies and a little meat, and flavour was a dirty, filthy European word. Ever wondered what hospital food in France tasted like? Or Mexico?

Never mind, may the long absent lord bless the good and kindly folk of Royal Prince Alfred, and long may a public hospital system continue, whatever the flaws and the garlic-laden jibes (but how sweet that first hit of Thai tasted).

It will be awhile before the pond returns on a daily basis, and in the meantime much has been missed.

At last - in the form of Clive Palmer - the antipodes has its very own billionaire Donald Trump buffoon to do comedy routines and enliven the public debate. The pond earnestly commends a hair job to Mr. Palmer so he can achieve the gravitas of the Donald, or at least Shane Warne. If the Ten network needs a way out of its ratings hole ...

But the real opportunity missed was the chance to call that prissy poodle Christopher Pyne a liar. Which is to say a man who's told a fib, a purveyor of a porkie. Lie:

1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.
2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.

As Quintillian once said, a liar should have a good memory.

Why do politicians do it? Bill Clinton was perhaps the most egregious example, with his 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman' routine, which has curiously led to a generation of young Americans thinking that fellatio isn't sexual relations.

If you reel away from a politician with a mouthful of warm semen, do you think it's not a sexual relation? Is it actually no different to eating hospital porridge? (The pond couldn't pick the difference, it's true).

Of course Bill really got into trouble with the lie about the lie, persecuted by the likes of arch-hypocrite and liar Newt Gingrich. So it goes in the United States, where lying is a highly esteemed art form ...

But back to the liar Pyne. Why did he do it? Well clearly he hoped, expected, that the email that proved the lie wouldn't turn up in the public domain, thereby allowing the pond to call him a liar without fear of defamation ... because he told a lie.

But Mal Brough is even worse. Here's the man contending for Peter Slipper's seat turning up and offering help and counselling not just once but three times, with his wife as an allegedly independent witness. His wife!

He could have said first up 'look I'm clearly conflicted, this will not help you - and incidentally it will not help me', but he went back to the well at least two more times ... with a witness.

Now Brough can take full credit for the failed, inept invasion of the Northern Territory as a cynical pre-election ploy - as if the Howard government hadn't had a decade to implement better policies - and it's to the Labor party's shame it continued the folly.

But amazingly these days, Brough is being touted as a senior Liberal with leadership abilities.

In the old days, a genuine leader knew style, and when it was right to step outside the tent for a little while.

And that's the problem. A little discretion, a little style, and the matters involving Mr. Slipper and Mr. Ashby could have been dealt with in appropriate forums using appropriate methods, with both parties given appropriate - and neutral - support.

Instead we have the spectacle of Mr. Pyne lying, and Mr. Brough acting yet again as a sanctimonious, righteous goose, with obvious political venality dressed up as humanitarian concern, and a mission for justice.

And for what? Only out of concern for Mr. Ashby and his complaints?

Not even a hint of a grubby desire to get down in the gutter and out-slipper Slipper?

And so we once again have the sorry spectacle of Tony Abbott being economical with the truth, or perhaps more accurately economical with words, because of his slip-sliding underlings and their slippery ways, and so the wondrous canard of 'specific' knowledge ...

And for what? It's obvious that the coalition will form the next government. They have the chance to bring some dignity and some decent policies to the table, and instead they're bringing a liar and a goose ...

Here's the lie:

Mr Pyne last night told The Australian: "I did not email Mr Ashby after March 19th. I've never had any contact of any nature with James Ashby in relation to the Federal Court action." (May 4th 2012, no link, there's a paywall, don't ya know)

And then to the various backdowns, equivocations, and amendments to the lie as outlined in Pyne email surfaces as 'cover-up' claims persist.

As for the sanctimonious Brough, clutching his wife like an icon, does it get more oily than this?

Despite initially being "suspicious", Mr Brough met the parliamentary adviser on three occasions in March and April - each time advising him he "needed to sit down with a lawyer". (May 5th 2012, uh oh paywall blues again).

Three times to tell a man he'd better get a lawyer, get a real good one? You can get that level of advice by listening to a good pop song ... once.

What a pity there's no really good pop song called 'I'm conflicted, get me out of here'.

Sadly the Labor party has been down in the gutter with Craig Thomson for way too long, and it's lowered the tone of the government at every turn. But the opposition keeps on showing the same devious intent and unhealthy lust for power that undid Malcolm Turnbull in his fatal miscalculation over Gordon Gretch ...

Will anyone show any class or will the relentless drift to the US political style continue apace?

Well I guess it keeps the likes of Vex News in the business of idle speculation.

Not to worry. Enough one-fingered typing. Time for a serve of hospital porridge. Add a little milk and you'd swear it tastes just the same as the sleazy slush served up by Australian politicians ...

Suddenly hospital food and a decent public health care system doesn't seem so bad. At least until jolly Joe gets his paws on it ...

Stay bright and cheerful, and thanks for the kind notes. So many loons, and so little time as the sand rushes through the hour glass ...

(Below: Mal Brough with independent witness).