The pond tries to shoot fish in a barrel, but finds the cost of cartridges prohibitive ...

(Above: a few samples of Rinehartiana doing the cartoon rounds. More Nicholson here, and John Kudelka's site is here).

It's like shooting fish in a barrel, but the rich do serve a purpose by providing great comedy material.

The super-rich, and particularly Gina Rinehart, are even better fun.

It was Ben Butler at Fairfax who picked up on Rinehart's latest comedy stylings, wherein she recommended - in a piece for Australian Resources and Investment (you have to register to access the purest comedy gold) - that average punters live within their budgets and stop taking overseas holidays, while warning against excessive household and government debt.

This at a time, as Butler noted in Don't overspend, Rinehart recommends, when she's on the Ten network board, and the wretched company is busy arranging really low rent debt - oh okay 20 cent shares in a "capital raising" - to try to halt its current slide into oblivion.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel, but what fun, and Ben - the pond's current favourite bearded business reporter - fired away with both barrels:

According to the nation's richest person, back in the day almost every Australian home "understood that you had to earn revenue before you could spend it". 
"Then you had to make choices: it might be nice to have overseas holidays, but maybe we should renovate the bathroom and/or kitchen, save for a granny flat, et cetera," Rinehart said in her regular column, published today. 
"Proper planning and allocation within the budget constraints had to occur. This may not be popular, but we need to get back to these basic understandings, and, very importantly for Australia, so do our overspending governments."

There's more by Ben - something about media types at Ten being flung on the scrap heap before Xmas - but thanks to Gina, the pond understands the solution to its current problems - a 20 cent share capital raising issue.

And it made for a splendid Fairfax splash, which you can find here in Colin Kruger's coverage of the highly dilutive offering, Fresh raising piles pressure on Ten board:

The pond should be shedding tears - it once tuned in regularly to Ten to watch The Simpsons, but that was long ago, before the show nuked the fridge - and now that it's the home to Andrew the Bolter Bolt,  it's hard to restrain a dance of glee on its corporate dance of doom.

Chasing a young, wired, hip demographic with an angry white male? Good luck with that ...

And then as a bonus, the pond stumbled on another site which sagely and cogently summarised some Rinehart advice on how to get wealthy.

Distilled down, there were five key points: inherit wealth; use every court in the land to keep your children's filthy paws off it; run a mega-million dollar campaign to protect your wealth; where possible, import cheap labour; and make sure to write a poem and inscribe it on a rock. As sure as the blarney stone gives you the gift of the gab, the poetic rock will see you filthy rich in short order.

Oh sure, it's shooting fish in a barrel, but a hat tip to Gina Rinehart's five easy steps to making more money for showing how to blaze away.

The underlying point of course is that being rich is a different country, and the filthy rich simply don't have a clue. They grow up surrounded by forelock tuggers, toadies, servants, pilot fish, and sycophants used to saying 'yes' while scoring some crumbs from the table.

It gives the rich an other-worldly, easy arrogance, and a born to rule mentality, and a conviction that they're always right.

Some with inherited wealth - like Rinehart in her mining business - make a go of it - and some make a right royal mess of it, as with Lachlan Murdoch and Rinehart in the media business.

Any which way, it's guaranteed comedy gold, especially when Gina gets to hang around with her mate Barnaby Joyce, thereby imagining that she's in touch with the people, when of course it's the business of the average larrikin punter to mock the rich because there's bugger all joy in a salaryman life.

What would we do without the rich?

There's Nathan Tinkler raising headlines every which way he goes, as in Tinkler a right wally when it comes to lying low, and Stadium debt action against Tinkler, and Receivers move to clip Tinkler's wings, and so on and so forth and many debt-laden etceteras.

Of course if you're an out of pocket sub-contractor with no easy way to get your money back, you might not be so keen on Tinkler's comedy stylings, but no doubt he can hand out a pamphlet of Gina's deep thoughts about debt to grieving punters.

And knock the pond over with a silver spoon, today in Taped call has mogul in sticky spot, the filthy rich Travers Duncan confessed he was a liar:

When it was put to Mr Duncan that he had either lied to the commission or he had lied to his friend Mr Kinghorn about having a mate in the department checking files for him, Mr Duncan chose the latter. When asked why he would lie to his friend and business partner in a private conversation, Mr Duncan replied, ''I have no explanation for it except folly.'' 
''I'm going to suggest you're lying to me and in fact what happened was you spoke to Ian Macdonald about this - do you accept that?'' Mr Watson asked. 
''No, I don't,'' Mr Duncan replied. 
Then came the bombshell that this conversation had been recorded on March 17 last year, about 10 days before the most recent state election.

Yep, good old Travers had been doing the dance with members of the then NSW Labor government - ah the mates and comrades again - in relation to mining licenses.

Talk about comedy stylings, though it does seem to put a new perspective, a different slant on Gina's pious blather about balancing household budgets and staying out of debt, or blaming Sydney's infrastructure for arriving late to an AGM.

Would slipping a fin to a government minister (five dollars in the old days, perhaps $500,000 would be better these days) be a better way to balance the budget and keep on getting filthy rich?

Yes the rich are a different country, as can be seen in Ken Auletta's story in The New Yorker, The Heiress (link offered by a kindly and thoughtful reader).

Yep, now that Lachlan and James have proven to be absolute duds, Elisabeth's star is on the rise, perhaps because when it came to shovelling shit on to television, Elisabeth has had absolutely no care, scruples or compunction (nor any concern about cashing out to dad).

Take a look at the current list of Shine Australia's productions, here, but only if you're feeling mentally tough and up to the job.

Shine was prepared to put together the most mealy mouthed low rent productions, like that tic tock Letters and Numbers show for pathetic, tragic, bottom-feeding SBS, until SBS turned so low rent, it axed the show, put it and the viewers out of their misery, and purchased the UK equivalent, Countdown, presumably on the basis that English migrants needed to feel at home in their new multi-cultural world.

Roll on NITV, which should never have been allowed to go off free to air (yes Stephen Conroy another barb coming your way).

Sadly, all this brooding about the rich doesn't leave much room for the lip-smacking comedy stylings of the idle pandering lickspittle lackeys at The Australian, but it has to be noted that Darren Davidson was in fine form in Gina's network exposure: shares down, and then some (behind the paywall so you won't be cruel to your dog).

First up he offered sympathy and applause:

Infrastructure bottlenecks and notorious inefficiencies. If Gina Rinehart wants to get Australia moving again, she can start in Sydney. 
 She arrived 45 minutes late to the Ten Network's annual general meeting yesterday thanks to congestion on Sydney's roads. There's a popular cause she could champion for the good burghers of Sydney: the traffic. 
 The Ten director and shareholder won a round of applause from some shareholders when she did eventually arrive at the Wesley Theatre in Sydney's CBD. 

If you're an average Sydney punter, try telling your boss you ran 45 minutes late because of the traffic. Good luck with that, and here's hoping a terrorist scare shut down the Harbour bridge.

And then it was a warm embrace with Lachlan, completely unlike the tone at Fairfax and Roger Corbett and his wretched performance, replete with blather about being a fair-minded observer from Davidson, and then this fair-minded observation about Lachy:

In the face of a series of critical comments, Mr Murdoch was confident, and often left the lectern and walked to the front of the stage to address shareholders, remaining cool and even swapping wry banter with shareholders on a day that was both personally and professionally challenging. 

There is no hiding from Ten's performance, but action was being taken, Mr Murdoch appeared to be telling shareholders with his frequent walkabouts.

Yep, Davidson's piece was right up there with an unctuous Uriah Heep, with a resolute Murdoch strutting the stage and never a mention once of that gadfly Stephen Mayne.

Of course you wouldn't be James Warburton for a shipload of green tea (CEO in firing line as Ten admits mistakes) and Gina is so on board with the new strategies that she's waiting until today to see if she'll join in the new fund raising, but it almost got poignant right at the end of Davidson's puff piece:

As for Mrs Rinehart, she followed up the recent launch of her new book, Northern Australia, and Then Some, with a comment yesterday about Ten's programming schedule. 
 When a shareholder appealed to the board to bring back Andrew Bolt's The Bolt Report, her eyes lit up and she said, in a soft voice: "Here, Here." 
 Ten will be hoping that she is similarly enthusiastic when she decides whether to take part in the capital raising today. 

Oh the pond's eyes went dewy with a soft "here", "here", because so long as the Bolter blights Sunday - instead of a rousing bout of Video Hits - so long will Ten be blighted by Lachlan Murdoch, Gina Rinehart and really stupid programming decisions that make hiring Paul Henry for breakfast seem like a stroke of telly genius.

But are things as glowing as Davidson portrayed? (He could always make a living doing paintings for chocolate boxes).

In Rinehart keeps Ten guessing over capital raising (behind the paywall so you won't kick the cat), this slipped out:

A shareholder attempted to ask Mrs Rinehart whether she had decided about participating in the capital raising. However, Mr Murdoch ruled the question out of order given her attendance at the meeting was as a director of Ten, not as a shareholder. 
Mrs Rinehart was observed asking Mr Murdoch for a private conversation after proceedings wrapped up, and they soon went to a private area to discuss the matter.

Then it was back to natter about Murdoch sharing the pain and the sympathy with small shareholders, and Ten and its Board doing its very best - keep the Bolter on the air! - and talk of a surer footing and yet again a mention of the deviant perversions of Nine and Seven, and once again not one mention of that persistent torment and gadfly Stephen Mayne.

But you will find him on PM where it's recorded that the AGM wasn't webcast and that the ABC wasn't allowed to record the meeting. (Shareholders slam Ten for $230 million share sale plan).

Oh yes, there's open democratic media for the rich, and then there's openly closed media for the rich ...

But at least in the pond's romp through the indulgent pages of the Oz business and media section this proposal caught the eye:

Yes and if you don't like a television network, don't watch it, and sucks boo to you, and nah nah, we don't really like you or want your business, and you can all get fucked, piss off if you've got a problem, we'll go our own way and do our own thing, because we're all right Jack... and remember, if you keep on about it, the African poor will always work for the smell of an oily rag ...

Amen, says the pond.

Consider it done and dusted Mr. Day, the pond has made it so ... because that's the sort of business plan and attitude the pond cherishes ...

And now it's all day rant o'clock time at the pond ...

(Above: ah memories. Bob Carr with his T-shirts and below that with Michael Costa. You can find more here at the  helpfully tagged National Library of Australia, which is slowly turning itself into an essential Australian digital treasure and resource).


It seems like it's the season, or perhaps it's merely the fashion, for apologies.

The latest to line up and bow in a Japanese way is the NSW Left of the Labor party, in the matter of Ian McDonald, currently embroiled and hopefully soon to be broiled:

Bows of apology tend to be deeper and last longer than other types of bow. They tend to occur with frequency during the apology, generally at about 45 degrees with the head lowered and lasting for at least the count of three, sometimes longer. The depth, frequency and duration of the bow increases with the sincerity of the apology and the severity of the offense. Occasionally, in the case of apology and begging, people crouch down like Sujud to show one's absolute submission or extreme regret. (wiki more here).

Unhappily, the pond is inclined to think that only a bit of Yubitsume, or finger shortening will do, since when dealing with gangsters, only a gangster apology will suffice.

But for what it's worth you can read the "formal apology" of the Left in Labor Left apologises over Macdonald.

It left the pond dissatisfied, because the apology only addresses Macdonald (known to the world as Sir Lunchalot), who was expelled from the faction in 2009, mainly on the basis that he'd betrayed the left by siding with the dominant right. Only now have they got around to apologising for his selection as a candidate.

In short, it's just another bout of navel-gazing regret.

How about a few more deep bows?

How about an apology for leaving NSW infrastructure in a complete mess?

How about an apology for a wasted decade of failed policy initiatives?

How about an apology for staging a panem et circenses Olympics while physically disadvantaged people had to waste the lifetime of the pond for access to Newtown railway station, presumably on the basis that such people didn't exist in Newtown, or that the lumping of a wheelchair up and down the steps would be jolly good for them? A sort of mini-Olympics ...

How about an apology for the leaders elevated and quickly dumped in the desperate fear and loathing designed to stay in power? (Oh yes there's a wiki to remind us of Bob Carr, Morris Iemma, Nathan Rees, and perhaps the most pathetic of all, Kristina Keneally).

How about an apology for issuing an apology in the name of the Left, while deploring factionalism and demanding change, when surely an indication of change would have been to sit down with the Right and devise a joint apology, which might have taken up the matter of Eddie Obeid?

How about announcing in the same joint apology that factionalism, and branch stacking and such like rorting of the Labor party were things of the past, and that this would be the last talk of Left and Right, and henceforth there'd only be talk of the NSW Labor party?

What, the factions still aren't talking and instead of acting in a united way, are still sulking,  and so one side issues an apology and the other doesn't?

Okay, how about an apology for the way the abysmal behaviour of the NSW Labor party now sees ensconced in power a deluded Premier who believes - and thus far hasn't recanted on his delusional belief - that the second airport for Sydney should be in Canberra, connected by a very fast train?

And because of the wayward ways of the NSW Labor party, this delusional man - who sounds like he's right up there with King George III - is able to serve at his leisure, while all factions of NSW Labor can do is run about indulging in breast-beating, donning sackcloth and ashes and still sounding like right royal cackling geese.

Phew, who on earth knows where that came from, but remember this is a blog designed purely for therapy, and when contemplating the NSW Labor party, the pond is in need of constant expensive therapy.

Okay, Sydney has been this way since the Rum rebellion, and issuing an apology might be perceived as a start, but when you can't even get the left and the right to issue an apology together, well oi vey is all the pond can say in very best Zero Mostel Fiddler on the Roof accent ...

Happily, this little ouburst leaves little time to deal with the commentariat, which is just as well, because the pond immediately regretted mentioning His Statistical Saltiness Bernard Salt a few days ago, and don't you know it, right on cue HSS has delivered an astonishing pile of empty-headed waffle and posturing for the lizard Oz, under the header In brave new world, latte line cuts the ideological divide (behind the paywall so you never have to worry about it).

In it, HSS reveals the breathtaking insight that Toowomba is different to Hobart in relation to some demographic and other matters, and if you want more profound revelations like that for your business, why don't you hand over a wheelbarrow of cash to KPMG?

It all builds to this remarkable conclusion:

One of the most powerful forces shaping where we live and perhaps even how we vote is the way young people see the world and their future.

Fancy that. And here the pond was, thinking that it was the meek or the gentle or the geek who will inherit the earth.

Somehow HSS manages to get this insight tangled up with blather about a latte line, a bit like Darwin souls yabbering about the Berrimah Line, and it reminded the pond that you need to order a double shot to get a half-way decent coffee, even in New York, which is more useful information than you will find in a double shot of His Statistical Saltiness.

And now enough, it's time for a little political humour by that great comedy stylist, that happy hearted hoofer, that pugilistic punter, that bumbling bumpkin banterer, the one and only Barnaby Joyce, or Barn door barmy Barners, as he's known to his barnyard chums.

It got First Dog involved in an angry rant o'clock, much like the pond's rant o'clock, which usually rings like a Chinese alarm clock all day long:

Yep, it got the twitterati going:

And so First Dog wrapped it up thusly:

Now the pond has only one caveat, and that's First Dog's insistence that Barners should be portrayed as a non-gender specific pumpkin scone.

As everyone knows, pumpkin scones are a fiendish Queensland stupidity - think Flo and Jo - and while Barners has shifted north, at heart he's a stout Tamworth lad, and so he should be portrayed as a non-gender specific choko scone (or at a stretch a butternut squash scone, with a few pumpkin seeds thrown in for a truly nutty flavour).

Never heard of them? Stay ignorant and wise. Hopefully you know even less about NSW Labor.

More First Dog here, and never mind the Walkley, still the best reason to get behind the Crikey paywall (which is more than can be said for paying to read His Statistical Saltiness).

And so the pond takes a visit to topsy turvy land for the umpteenth time ...

(Above: the pond in topsy turvy land, and ready for a visit to Dame Slap's school).


What happens when you're late to the feast?

Why you just start picking at the carcass, confiscate the left overs and keep on going, and so it is with Janet "Dame Slap" Albrechtsen, who in today's Australian, keeps the flame alive about that devious, cunning vixen Julia Gillard, in Nixon rule the danger to tricky Julia (behind the paywall for your mental health).

Yep, when all else fails, drag the tricky Dick metaphor out of the cupboard, dust off the moths, and charge on:

As 2012 wraps up, the Prime Minister has proven a far better politician than she ever was a lawyer. Poll position up. Opposition Leader neutered by flimsy charges of sexism. Press gallery journalists tamed into wide-eyed obeisance, interested more in the PM's bluster than in details of a reprehensible union scandal. Clever.

Clever.

The rest of the crusading rag seems to have decided to give Gillard bashing a rest for a day. Besides, there's a new squirrel in town to take up the top of the digital page:

Union and Labor party bashing! Could it get any better? Squirrel!

Meanwhile Eric Lobbecke contributes a splendid cartoon splash to help Dame Slap along:

The pond wonders whether Eric ever looks in the mirror, but it's probably fair to say that a day job is better than a night job, especially if it involves shelf-stacking in a supermarket while dreaming of the mega comic that will take Hollywood by storm.

Meanwhile, thanks to Dame Slap, we learn that Julia Gillard has it all over John Howard when it comes to pure political cunning, but  that the knavery, the tricky Dick tricky business will catch up with her.

Just as with Nixon, Gillard risks being condemned in the court of public opinion more for a cover-up - if that is what transpires - than any original misdemeanor. And that is not so clever.

Yes if that's what transpires, or perhaps expires, it won't be John Howard clever, it'll be Nixon dumb, because actually Gillard is completely dumb, in the way we expect of red-headed foxes when negotiating with smooth blonde turtles like Albrechtsen.

And just for a minute we had you fooled and there you were thinking she was more clever and cunning than John Howard, right up there with the supreme Master tricky Dick himself.

And it's about this point in the read when the gullible reader realises that Albrechtsen hasn't a jot or a tittle of anything new to say, just a re-hash, all over again, of the usual stuff the rag has been running for what feels like an eternity. The Nixon tag is just a ruse, a bit like tomato sauce, to make the re-heated hash seem more palatable.

And what makes it even worse is that it's full of caveats, as in the very last sentence:

If the Nixon rule applies, it may be that any cover-up by Gillard as a politician will cause her more damage than her imprudent behaviour as a lawyer.

If ... it may be ... yadda legalistic yadda ...

If the Nixon rule applies, it is certain that before scribbling another jot or tittle about Gillard, Janet Albrechtsen should pray for a Deep Throat because braying like a part of the Oz's donkey herd will cause her more damage as a columnist than whatever she might have managed as a lawyer.

Oops, sorry ... if it may be, if that is what transpires ... or expires, as the case may be ...

The rest is a standard bit of standard '4 be 2' bout of Gillard bashing. What will the commentariat do when she's gone?

It seems the shameless harridan has accused poor innocent hapless Tony Abbott of sexism on the thinnest of grounds, and you can join 2,157,122 viewers - and rising - of YouTube here in remembering just how cruel red-heads can be to dumb beasts going about their ritual negativity on a daily Noh basis.

Enough of Dame Slap, who is sounding a little tired and off her oats. What we need is another dose of Lord Monckton and a United Nations' conspiracy to introduce world government via climate change! It's the least we could expect in the run up to December 21 ...

But when we turn to Andrew the Bolter Bolt for a little fresh meat at the feast, what do we get?

Recycled Janet Albrechtsen under the header of The complete certainty of a dangerously poor PM.

Slabs of Dame Slap left-overs cut and pasted by a lazy wretch too tired to scribble his own abuse ... even with Tricky David Cameron standing by as a perfectly apt metaphor!

And if that isn't enough, just below that bit of cut and paste, there's another chunk-sized slab of Paul Kelly taking a swipe at Gillard and the NDIS, recycled by the Bolter, fresh from the News Corp bain-marie under the header Gillard's biggest promise of all.

On any given day, you can usually find some scribe at News Corp talking about group think and the  herd mentality, seemingly unaware that the poor dears are just a herd of startled, fearful gazelles in the biggest echo chamber of all.

We were off to the Bolter to get some fresh climate science denialism - there's been much alarming talk in the press of late that he might have got the science wrong - but instead we learn that if you spend days at the football with the partner of the PM, as a journalist, you must declare an immediate conflict of interest (A question of partiality).

Immediately forgetting the primary purpose of the visit, the pond rushed off to David Penberthy's last contribution to The Punch, it's here -  In 2013, NSW Labor's stench will eclipse Baillieu's sloth - and also hunted high and low through his Punch bio, expecting to find a little note saying don't trust a word Penbo says, because he's engaged to Kate Ellis (Power couple: Ellis and Penberthy to wed).

For a moment the pond thought that it was being as childish, petulant and generally grinchy as the Bolter, but that's when the penny dropped.

There's simply no problem with having a fuck and pillow talk, it's going to the footy with a mate that's the criminal offence! That's a real question of partiality ... with the entire concept of mateship under threat by a journalist being matey with a hairdresser. At the bloody footy! Oh the shame of it ...

Meanwhile, it took more scrolling to find the Bolter delivering the good news on climate science, as explained in Fearmongers' shame: reader fears warming will kill their children:

It is grotesque, how Labor’s scare-mongering has so terrified so many people. Consider the following facts: the world hasn’t warmed in 16 years, the carbon tax would make at very most about 0.0038 degrees difference in a century, and modest warming could even leave us better off. Consider also man’s astonishing ability to adapt, and the rapid progress in wealth, health and technology.

Indeed. It's extraordinary that right up to this point in time the pond had failed to realise that Ban Ki-Moon is a member of the Australian Labor party (Extreme weather is new normal, U.N.'s Ban tells climate talks), but of course it fits, because the Labor party is only using climate science to join up Australia to a world socialist government.

One reader boldly noted that Tony Abbott and the Liberal party also ostensibly accepted the current climate science conclusions, and had plans to deal with it, but naturally the silly wretch was immediately shouted down by the kool aid drinkers.

As for the Bolter's science, it reminded the pond of a neat little piece called Straw man science: keeping climate simple, well worth a cleansing read after you've spent a little time with that Bolter straw man.

And the Bolter's mention that global warming stopped 16 years ago, it reminded the pond of David Rose of the Daily Mail, and this little note on the way Rose had been a champion cherry picker, Temperature "analysis" by David Rose doesn't smell so sweet.

But up against grotesque talk of the grotesque Labor party and their fear-mongering ways, what sort of reasoned logic would cut the mustard against a man who is in reality doing the very thing he accuses Labor politicians of doing - politicising the science, and playing both sides of the rhetorical game.

So climate science isn't happening - the world has stopped warming, but if it is happening, warming will leave us better off. And besides humanity is astonishing clever and adaptable, unless you happen to be Julia Gillard, Richard Nixon or work for News Ltd.

And if you believe any of that, we have a bulk deal on kool aid you'll find hard to refuse.

You can't argue with a dolt or a Bolt, but it reminds the pond yet again, how wonderful it is to see group think, and the herd mentality in action on a daily basis in the wondrous world of News Corp.

Is it any wonder the pond cracked a red to celebrate the death of yet another avenue for misinformation (Murdoch iPad experiment to be switched off)

And so to a koan:

LNG halves carbon emissions
So stop wasting billions
On windmills now!
On climate change,
China is the whole game.

Thanks Rupert ... and we'll keep shipping that coal, while your minions continue your work and your vision ...

And so it's back to self-abuse with Gerard Henderson ...

(Above: you can always find more Steve Bell here).

Not having read Gerard Henderson for a couple of weeks is a bit like an Emo giving up self-harm, or a fourteen year old boy giving up self-abuse, or a cigarette smoker tossing away the fags, or a chocolate eater abandoning the lower forms compound knavery, or perhaps simply giving up banging one's head on the floor like a spoiled terrible two.

Or so the pond is told, not having done all these things, but being Henderson-less does lead to a little gaiety and vitality, and perhaps a bold careless reckless derring do and light-headed sense of adventure.

What, take another puff, eat another wretched chocolate bar? Where'd be the harm? It's only one column, and so the wayward foolish pond clicked on UN vote unlikely to help Labor.

And then immediately regretted the folly.

First up there was this wonderful, astonishing bit of pedantry and obfuscation:

On Meet the Press on Sunday, presenter Paul Bongiorno put it to the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, that the “Israel lobby and the opposition are very unhappy you were rolled on Australia's vote in the United Nations giving the Palestinian Authority observer status”. 
The fact is that there are no Israelis in Australia who lobby for Israel. Presumably, what Bongiorno intended to say was that there are Jewish Australians who support Israel. 

Even on the most asinine level of pedantry, this surely takes the cake, since Henderson thereby manages to discount the Israeli ambassador and staff, and while we may count the Israel embassy as an Israeli home away from home, that plucky adventurer and his crew do on occasion step out the front door, on to Australian soil and lobby for Israel.

And was it only a few days ago that the ABC ran a puff piece about Aussie Zionists training to fight for Israel? And 'making Aliyah'...

Still, it's likely that actual military activity and dying for Israel - more than 400 have done it in the past four years according to the story - isn't actual lobbying in the Hendersonian sense of sitting in an armchair at the Sydney Institute making pronouncements on the virtues of the Vietnam war.

But it does allow for a follow-up bit of petty-minded yah yah sucks boo to you logic:

However, if it is proper to use the term “Israel lobby” then, presumably, it should be legitimate to refer to an entity called the “Lebanon lobby”. This would cover Australians of Muslim Lebanese background who are highly critical of Israel.

Ah those bloody Lebanese Muslims, bane of Hendersonian nirvana, perhaps worse than ABC or Fairfax types, and there they are lobbying for Lebanon, which is exactly the same as lobbying for Palestine, and perhaps Egypt and certainly Iran and maybe Iraq, because the fact is, they're all Arabs and they're all in it together, and on a dark night no one can tell them apart, even if some of them pretend to be Christian or Maronite.

And that's just a taster for the spectacular logic flip-flop towards the end of the piece:

Some voters, including Muslims, are attracted by Abbott's social conservatism. The fact that he is married with adult children is not a minus. Also social conservatives of all faiths – Christian, Hindus and Muslims alike – tend to support the Coalition's opposition to same sex marriage.

Yes, when it comes to bloody-minded prejudices, Henderson, Abbott and the bloody Islamics are at one. It seems those bloody Lebanese Muslims aren't so bad after all, when they're sticking it to gays and supporting a married man, unlike that sterile atheist hussy currently lodging in the lodge. Peace out ...

The point of course is that Henderson wants to spend an entire piece refracting western Sydney and its political allegiances through the conflict in the middle east - the dire implications for Labor, the oh so brief rightness of Gillard, the wrongness of the rest of the Labor party, the wrongness of the media and the Palestinian push, and the rightness and joyousness of being Abbott and Henderson.

And so we come to the head counting:

In recent times it has been fashionable for critics of Israel – on both the left and the right – to refer to the Jewish vote. In fact, the total number of Jews in Australia would not exceed 130,000. According to my contacts in the Muslim community, the total number of Muslim Lebanese in Australia is more than 400,000. In other words, the political weight of the Australians of Muslim Lebanese background far exceeds that of Jewish Australians. Then there are other Muslim minorities in addition to other Arab groupings.

Uh huh. Which perhaps explains why The Australian Jewish News started off a June 2012 story here in this fashion:

The official Jewish population of Australia has increased by 9.58 per cent in five years to 97,335 people, according to the latest census figures.

And why Bernard Salt - yes the pond is reduced to saltiness - using the same figures on July 5, 2012 in a story here, paywall limited, wrote:

The largest single "Muslim" ethnicity in Australia is the Lebanese community, which numbers 76,000. The issue with the Muslim community, as indeed it is with most non-Christian minorities, is that they cluster in Sydney and Melbourne, giving the impression they are far more numerous. The recent census shows there are in fact more Americans (77,000) living in Australia than Lebanese. But because Americans spread themselves throughout, and intermingle with the Australian-born population, the scale of their representation is far less apparent.

Who knows who Henderson's contacts in the Muslim community might be, but it seems they're as woefully ignorant as Henderson himself.

Now of course you can get into semantics about whether being born in Lebanon is the criterion, or being born in Australia of Lebanese parents will suffice, or feeling Lebanese on any given day depending which way the wind blows might actually be enough, or noting that certain items in the Census aren't obligatory, or that maybe His Statistical Saltiness is wrong, since in 2006, the census recorded 86,599 Lebanese-born people in Australia, and maybe some have been forced to go underground by Gerard Henderson's routine tirades against Lebanese Muslims and the way they're ruining western Sydney ...

But in any case the thing about playing with statistics is that it's a bit like playing with matches, and you never know where it might end.

You might even end up on Chris Bowen's site here:

'There are more than 200 000 Australians of Lebanese descent according to the 2011 Census and my visit will provide an opportunity to broadly discuss Australia's migration and temporary visa programs.'

Uh huh. So let's be kind, and say that Henderson and his Muslim contacts - would any Muslim contact Henderson? - only got it wrong by about 100%.

Now where were we, apart from loading up the data?

Well of course it's a simple case of Israel and Tony Abbott and Gerard Henderson right, and everybody else wrong, and then - having spent an entire column weighing up the domestic implications of taking a stance on middle eastern issues - coming to this astonishing conclusion:

... domestic politics is not a proper guide to foreign policy. 

The charge of course is that the recent overturning of Gillard on the Middle East was merely done with an eye to the Muslim vote in the west and south-west of Sydney, which won't in any case do the Labor party any good, since the west of Sydney hates the Labor party and loves Tony Abbott, yes even the Islamics, while everybody since Ben Chifley and Bert Evatt has been on board with Israel. And you know, once you're on a good thing, like Mortein, you must stick to it for ever and ever and ever, or at least until the twelfth of never ...

This is of course because Henderson can never lift himself above the gutter of votes and winning power - rather like Mr. Positivity himself - and consider some of the principles involved in the issue, or perhaps wonder why he struggled to come up with a few more names than the predictable USA, Canada and the Czech Republic, when in reality the vote on allowing the Palestinians to become a mini-Vatican was a comprehensive 138 to nine, with 41 countries abstaining, or thereabouts, since once again the figures depend on what you read.

And the response of the rabid right-wing Israeli government currently fear-mongering in a bid to get home in the January elections?

That's right, petulantly announcing a new bout of settlement building, which saw the UK, France, Sweden, Spain and Denmark summon ambassadors to express a view, and even the United States forced to take a negative tone.

The reality is that the Netanyahu government has no interest in negotiations, discussions, or a resolution by way of two states or any other solution which would impede its ongoing expansion, and the fear-mongering which will help it gain a coalition majority in the next parliament.

It has its own handy private ghetto, on which it can conduct raids, and which truth to tell is generally impotent, stomping up and down with a few rockets like a Monty Python black knight, and it comes complete with east German style wall, is a way to maintain the fear, while allowing Israel to expand into areas in a way which ensures East Jerusalem can never become the capital of Palestine. (And yes they even got down to doing a calorie count for their ghetto dwellers, as was revealed in a court case back in 2010, here).

Taking a view on this, on the intractability of both sides, most notably and equally Hamas, which does its best to maintain an extremism up there with Netanyahu, and which needs extremism from him to maintain their own extremism, helps explain why it is possible to take a principled step in relation to foreign policy - abstaining from supporting a rabid right wing government - without the cynical necessity of considering domestic politics.

But you can't expect to read about anything like this in the routine baying of Israel good, and Lebanese Muslims problematic, to be found in your standard, blinkered, cloistered, closeted Gerard Henderson column ...

So if you'll forgive the pond, it's time to get back to some of that compound chocolate, and some medicinal rum, and a bit of EMO self-harm, though it has to be said that imitating a petulant fourteen year old boy like Gerard Henderson remains beyond the pale ...

(Below: and now because thinking about the middle east gets the pond depressed, and because thinking about Gerard Henderson requires no thinking at all, and because a reader kindly sent in a photobombing by a squirrel, and because we've returned from Central Park with a squirrel mania, here's something to lighten the day. The pond is assured it's not a photoshop job, but where would the world be without social media? Is it the ultimate solution to everything?Will someone photobomb Gerard Henderson? Oh please make it so ...)

Away with the pixies, the Murdoch press, Paul Sheehan and the squirrels ...

(Above: the Sofitel in New York, snap by the pond to give it a film noir Godardian feel).


The news that Dominique Strauss-Kahn might - or might not - have negotiated a settlement in relation to what allegedly happened at the Sofitel in New York reminded the pond that it recently spent a few nights in that notorious tower of Babylon.

The hotel - only an Australian would mistake it for a pub - had, for a few months, achieved an almost mythical notoriety in the pond's mind, but turned out to be a fair average run down somewhat small part of a French hotel chain, full of French speakers going about their business (in much the same way as you can find Century 21 full of Russian and central European speakers, or Qantas still full of harsh consonants and nasal, elongated vowels).

And in much the same way, Strauss-Kahn's alleged settlement immediately turned into a media squabble.

The initial report in Le Monde turned into flat-out dissent, with reports like Strauss-Kahn Discussed Settling Suit, His Lawyers say, indicating that talk of a $6 million settlement was flatly false,  at least according to his lawyers. This was in stark contrast to Fairfax's Strauss-Kahn to pay hotel maid $6m. which ran with the original angle, which stood in stark contrast to the BBC's Strauss-Kahn lawyers deny $6m deal with hotel maid.

Without wishing to sound like a post-modernist reflexive relativist, who knows what the hell is actually going on.

Naturally the pond had sternly resisted the temptation to molest the bellhop, but it's fair to say that the media can never resist molesting the truth, running with whatever angle is currently to hand.

And it's also a reminder why you won't find any reports in the Murdoch press about Tony Abbott's very own slush fund.

After all, it was long ago, and directed at Pauline Hanson, and who cares about her or the white-eating of her political career (only those forced to watch her dance might sense the injustice of things, and which saw her snatched from politics so she might become a telly celebrity).

That's why Margo Kingston's Tony Abbott and his slushy character question passed almost unnoticed, though it did get picked up and given a short run by Michelle Grattan in Abbott has his own slushy history.

Now if you wanted to blacken Abbott's character, you could spend days and days brooding about Abbott's gutter tactics and covert activities, that's if you happened to be the Murdoch press in white knight crusading mood, especially given the consequences of his deeds:

In 1998, he was collecting financial backing for his crusade to encourage legal action against Pauline Hanson. She was later jailed over a technical breach of the electoral law, something even many of her political enemies deplored. 

Abbott was devious, lied, misled people and indulged in what Grattan calls Jesuitical flourishes:

In a 2003 interview with Kerry O'Brien, Abbott was confronted with a 1998 untruth, when he had told Tony Jones that he had not promised Sharples any money. His rationalisation was Jesuitical. ''There is a difference between telling someone he won't be out of pocket and telling someone that you're going to have to pay him money''. In an earlier newspaper interview. Abbott had said: ''Misleading the ABC is not quite the same as misleading the Parliament.''

Mislead is a polite word for lying.

And there's an obvious moral:

Should we be surprised that Abbott calls on the PM to tell all, but was reticent himself? Not really. It's that old story of the boot being on the other foot. 

Yep, hypocrisy rules, and Mr. Positively Contemptible won't have to endure an exhaustive and exhausting trawling through this affair, because it's done and dusted, and there will be no wonderings about his suitability for high office, or his ethics, or his gutter-trawling ways when he was an attack dog, because in the end it was only Pauline Hanson that got jailed, thereby saving the world from watching her dance even earlier than her eventual apocalyptic outings.

It is however a reason why the pond reserves a special contempt for the righteous indignation of the Murdoch hacks, who keep the flame alive today by calling on the contemptible Michael Costa yet again:

Which is of course a complete non-story, right up there with the pond calling on Tony Abbott to co-operate with any police inquiry into the jailing of Pauline Hanson affair. Here's hoping everybody in the NSW Labor party helps the police with their inquiries into the totally contemptible and corrupt way the NSW Labor party ran NSW into the ground ...

And so to a different squirrel - oh yes the pond had a fine time going around the parks of New York shouting "squirrel" in Jon Stewart style (and if you don't understand squirrels and the media, there's a bit about it here) - and the squirrel is of course Paul Sheehan, because today is generally grumpy Sheehan squirrel day.

And the only astonishing news contained within Divided advocates huff and puff as Labor scorns small business is that Phillip Coorey is leaving the rag, while they continue to pay Sheehan for a bi-weekly dose of his magic water bile.

It's amazing, part of the general death wish of the rag as it spirals down into a digital presence and a much reduced brand, and all the more remarkable because today's subject for Sheehan is small business, wherein it becomes immediately patently and obviously clear that Sheehan doesn't have the first clue about the most immediate concerns of small business.

Disclaimer: the pond is involved in small business, and so is the partner of the pond.

Just a sample, as Sheehan goes about the business of fudging and providing a smoke-screen for the way the big business tobacco lobby has taken to using small business institutions to protest the new cigarette packaging legislation, before getting on to his own list of complaints, in a style which more and more resembles Akker Dakker's relentless assembling of lists of gripes, moans and hysterical complaints:

Intimidation: the Gillard government's dismantling of the building industry watchdog has led to a predictable rise in union lawlessness in the industry. 

The building industry is now small business?

Then we're all doomed, we're all fucked.

Oh sure there are contractors and sub-contractors and small business components, but in the end Grollo and Grocon v. the unions is the big end of town, just as Lend Lease v. unions and toppling cranes and occ health and safety is also the big end of town.

It's sloppy writing, sloppy thinking, pure and simple, all because Sheehan wants to embark on one of his typical rants about the Gillard government and how it's responsible for everything wrong in the world or perhaps the known universe - from the carbon tax and energy pricing, without mention of the role state governments play, through to the splendid joys of outsourcing and red tape, again without mention of councils or state governments, and on to the wonders of piece workers being denied tax cuts because they're not incorporated, when really it only takes a hundred bucks to yank a company off the shelf and look as if you're serious about being a small business.

Truth to tell, any Sheehan column could just say I can't stand the Gillard government, please vote for Tony Abbott, and peace and joy will  erupt throughout the world, and hours of wasted reading or brooding about what's big and small business and what might be a more complex and insightful world view wouldn't be wasted.

Truth to tell, if there was any justice in the world, they'd do a Phillip Coorey on Sheehan, outsource immediately and turn him into a small business, and within thirty days, he'd have more to occupy his mind than whinging and moaning and carrying on about the federal government.

Like where his next customer, client, dollar or dime was coming from, and how having made them content, he might score another customer, client, dollar or dime ...

But today Paul Sheehan is small beer, as the Daily Terror embarks on yet another shameless bout of Hansonism:

Asylum seekers need a firm lesson, the rag's editorial opines, but dammit, it's actually the rag that needs a damned good whipping.

No links, the pond is trying to avoid linking to egg-beaters (you can get them cheap just by googling egg-beater + sale).

Don't they realise Tony Abbott was involved in getting their heroine Pauline sent down?

Are they going to embark on a campaign against this hypocrite, who helped save the country from Hansonism and make it safer for boat people?

Swear to the long absent lord, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel ...

Roll on December 21 ...

Squirrel! Take it away Jon Stewart:

How everything's stayed the same for fifty years or more ...

(Above: from The Guardian back in 2010, always a grand home for cartoons).

While junketing abroad, the pond was frequently trapped in transit lounges with English people and English newspapers, but thank the long absent lord, the suffering didn't extend to eating British Airways' food.

The heat's subsidised since, but at the time there was much talk of disestablishing the Church of England after its recent decision in relation to female bishops.

The most recent outing in relation to the scandal came in The Guardian with Church of England urged urgently to revive female bishops plan, but back in the pond's transit days, it was pieces like Suzanne Moore's The Church of England can no longer continue as an arm of the state that caught the eye in genuine hard copy newsprint:

Up until now I cannot say I have been overly concerned with female vicars. That one in Dibley seems fun but mostly I am with Bill Hicks: "Women priests. Great, great. Now there's priests of both sexes I don't listen to." I don't believe or even pretend to believe in order to get my kids into the right schools. 

Indeed. The pond doesn't even pretend to believe while shopping at opportunity shops.

At the heart of the church is a steely core of evangelicals who have far more say than they should. The provisional wing of the CofE is as fundamentalist as they come: the one thing that all fundamentalisms share is the need to keep women in their place.

She must have met a Sydney Anglican!

The nonsense of course in the UK, is that - having long ago accepted females into the church workplace as vicars, ministers, call them what you will - the notion of precluding them from higher positions such as a bishop is no longer a theological matter, it's merely a workplace dispute about senior management, discrimination, power-mongering, biblical glass ceilings and such like, as noted by Andrew Brown in Women bishops debate was a long and boring suicide note, The debate that ended with the church voting against women bishops was a ghastly mix of tedium and bad faith:

How did we get here? There have been women priests in the Church of England for nearly 20 years. The vast and settled majority of opinion among churchgoers is in their favour. And to have women priests barred from promotion to bishop is naked and indefensible discrimination.

The ruckus certainly got the joint jumping. There was Catherine Bennett scribbling furiously No to women bishops? It's high time the Church of England was taught a lesson. And The Guardian felt free to editorialise on Female bishops: embarrassing bodies.

Even The Times got caught up in the disestablishing mood - though there's no point trying to link to that invisible fortress - with a few of their scribes joining with Lizzy Davies in asking questions like  Female bishops and the Church of England: what happens next? Why doesn't equalities legislation cover the church, and could the vote lead to disestablishment?

For years disestablishmentarianism was the pond's favourite word, unless you count transubstantiation, or a chance to beat dissidents, fools and conservatives by deploying the even longer word Antidisestablishmentarianism to berate them for their "government-servile money lenders in the temples and bishops in the parliament" ways.

It was of course celebrated by Duke Ellington in his song:

You never want to be coddled, 
You never want to be kissed, 
You're just an old ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISMIST! 
When I come close when we're dancing, 
I get a slap on the wrist, 
Don't be an old ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISMIST! 
You've got no use for moonlight, 
You'd turn your back on a star! 
Your heart is bent and you're against 
The state of things as they are! 
When you're a hundred years older, maybe you'll want what you've missed, 
Don't be an old ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISMIST!

The Duke didn't put it high on his playlist (why not try Such Sweet Thunder instead?) but even Black Adder had a go at it (YouTube here), and frankly it still is dear to the heart, especially as long ago Australia disestablished the Sydney Anglicans, and now all they've got is a waning loyalty to a foreign Queen.

It was of course at one time hailed as the longest word in English, but these days you have to hedge your bets and describe it as the longest non-coined and non-technical word (and even then wiki is still demanding a citation here).

Whatever, you have to think it's an admirable way to avoid discussing the Sydney Anglicans, and when the moment arrives, what do we find?

(click to enlarge, no links, screen cap only).

Dear sweet absent lord, the online joint has had a complete makeover, a huge dose of digital plastic surgery, proving that fundies and conservatives understand that you need to put on your very best lipstick, eye-liner and slick shots of your fearless leaders, if you want to to put your best high-heeled foot forward with the public. 

A bit like any harlot or painted Jezebel. Truly, vanity, vanity, all is vanity saith the preachy pond.

But hark, what's that poignant, relevant, right here, right now touch up in the top right hand corner ...

A lot can change in 50 years. In 1962 ... Of the monarch, the Prime Minister, the Governor-General and the NSW Premiere, only the monarch was female.

Of course a lot can't change in 50 years when you take Adam and Eve as your guide to male and female relationships, and isn't it quaint, isn't it weird, to see the Anglicans getting nostalgic about how this fast-paced unsettling world has moved on and dared to put women in positions of power. Shocking!

Yep, the new lip glossed site is about as trendy as a mugwump in a swamp.

But what splendid news that Mark Thompson is to head Moore College, ensuring that the tradition of rabid fundamentalism is maintained. 

Keen followers of the Sydney Anglicans will recall Thompson asking a series of searching questions of the AOC in relation to the ongoing need for the repression of women in the church, since after all, everything is still Eve's fault (unless of course it's the fault of teh gayz). 

Here's a few of them, you can find the rest here:

• Will you have the courage to stand up to Ms Jefferts Schori and her companions in The Episcopal Church as they seek to impose their revisionist agenda on the rest of the Anglican Communion? 
• Will you have the courage to remove from office Canon Kenneth Kearon and the others in the Anglican Communion Office who have manipulated the ACC agenda over the past decade in extraordinarily unhelpful ways? 
• Will you have the courage to challenge the British government over its social engineering agenda, including the promotion of the legitimacy of homosexual behaviour? 
• Will you have the courage to stand with those faithful Christians and Christian congregations in other jurisdictions who are being persecuted because they want to stand with the teaching of Scripture against the revisionist proposals of denominational officials (The Tron, Glasgow in the Church of Scotland and St Johns Shaugnessy in the Church of Canada come to mind, but there are many others)? 
• Will you have the courage to reform the structures of the Church of England to enable it to focus on winning the nation for Christ? 
• Will you have the courage to break ranks with the other bishops of the Church of England if fidelity to the teaching of Scripture demands it? 
• Will you have the courage to insist upon genuine, effective and permanent protection for those faithful Christian men and women in the Church of England who in good conscience cannot accept the oversight of a woman bishop? 
• Will you have the courage to withhold an invitation to the next Lambeth Conference (2018) from those bishops who have denied the faith in word and action and persecuted the faithful who have opposed their agenda? 
• Will you have the courage to refuse ordination to those who by word or lifestyle deny the teaching of Scripture? 

And so on and so forth and etc. Thompson might look mild-mannered, but it's the usual rampantly punitive, fundamentalist, reactionary, exclusionary and savage stuff. There's not much love in those questions, but plenty of righteous hostility, anger, fear and disdain.

About the only question that went missing was this one:

• Will you maintain the proud Anglican tradition of misogyny and homophobia, and make sure that women and gays know their place in the world, underneath the iron heel of their menfolk?

Oops, that didn't come out right did it? Is the pond as fixated on stereotypical tops and bottoms as the average angry Anglican seems to be? 

And what about the men in the High Anglican Church who still love to dress in frocks?

• Will you maintain the right of high Anglicans to dress in frocks, and nice hats, while never questioning whether this is stretching gender boundaries?

Never mind, that barely leaves time to catch up on the doings of the Catholic Church, and as already noted, the Pellists have had a hard time of it recently, what with Cardinal Pell being accused of a "sociopathic lack of empathy" and a senior woman in the Catholic church telling the bishops it was Time for Bishops to step back, and Fairfax tracking down a dodgy priest who headed off to the foothills of the Owen Stanley Ranges to play a continuing role in the church. (Priest accused of sexual abuse has live-in boy helper, forced video at end of link).

It's taken the Pellists a long time to realise that Pell is an embarrassment, sideline him, and set up a ten member committee, including laypeople, to deal with the recently announced Royal Commission (Bishops strike conciliatory note on RC).

Meanwhile, what blather can you find scribbled by Pell for the Sunday Terror?

The Greek word for "gospel" means good news, an important announcement. It is God's word for us, which we share with other Christians.
This tradition develops over the centuries, but we find no doctrinal ruptures or somersaults. It works because it is true and this becomes more apparent as the wages of sin increase around us.
 Christianity brings every type of person a sense of purpose, peace and forgiveness. This is the same old message which has survived for 2000 years.

Yep, the same old same old.

Try telling that to the children who were wounded and maimed while within the maw, the clutching puncturing grasp of the Catholic church ...

All this is astonishing when it's not pitiful.

Sometimes the pond likes to imagine that it remains amongst the few genuine followers of Christ's humanist, socialist message. If only he'd return so we could embark on a righteous crusade, selling off the riches of Rome, forcing the Pope out of his frocks and into public service, and kicking the Anglican bishops out of their sinecures and their false pieties about the common lot of humanity, and made to acknowledge that women and gays are people too ...

What on earth would he make of the humbug of Xmas, and the humbuggery of church leaders?

The pond reckons Christ would be up for it, what with the view he took of the filthy rich and the arrogantly powerful and the exploitative money lenders, and with his yarns about nice hookers and good samaritans and his blessing of the meek and the poor and the cheese-makers. What a fine time it would be ...

Okay, okay, he and the other two in the trinity have gone missing for millennia despite the yearnings of the millenarians, so here's a few shekels for the "tell her she's dreaming and St. Paul and Adam and Eve rule the roost" jar ...

(Below: and a few more).

Now let us talk of self-righteous, furious, aggressive, fierce, unrestrained feminists unleashing their sharp-ground tongues ...

(Above: oh look, it's a crane wreck, and so on to the train wreck called the Murdoch media).

The thing that astonishes the pond, on a too brief retreat into exile, is how repetitious, narrow-minded, one-track, prejudiced and relentless the commentariat is in its daily outings.

This really shouldn't come as a surprise - Fox News in the United States is every bit the propaganda machine it's portrayed, an engine which would draw a sharp intake of breath and a gaze of admiring awe from an early master like Joseph Goebbels and his Volksempfänger program.

Oh okay, the pond is spending up big on the Godwin's Law swear jar but it's worth it, worth every nickel and dime. (And here, let's pause to honour Senator Stephen Conroy for his own valiant attempt to remove assorted shortwave bands from the intertubes. There, another dollar in the swear jar and worth it, worth double I tells ya).

It's astonishing that some scribblers can get up and repeat the same inane thoughts day in, day out, and expect them to be taken as more than a part of the piffle and gibberish that forms a cloud over the burdens of daily lives.

Then again it's always struck the pond as overwhelmingly strange and mysterious - as wondrous as transubstantiation - that Cardinal George Pell should wake up in the morning believing in all sorts of miracles, water into wine, wine into blood, wafers into flesh, rising from the dead, virgin births, yadda yadda, and by afternoon imagine himself transformed into a climate scientist. Now there's a transubstantiation for you ...

But back to the point, which is today's effort by Paul Kelly, a man who somehow imagines himself as an independent thinker, but who has turned himself into a clown, a drone and an unimaginably tedious bore, right up there with Phillip Adams (who naturally also graces that home of drones and bores, The Australian while peddling his Xmas book on the supposedly commercial-free ABC).

Here's how Kelly begins his effort Finally, the real Julia (placed behind the paywall so you really don't have to give a flying fuck):

The final parliamentary week of 2012 was dominated by the stunning political persona of Julia Gillard - fierce, feminist and unrestrained - whose will-to-survival is Labor's last, best but highly dangerous hope. 
 The real Julia is unleashed in her self-righteous fury and calculated aggression. Her voice now bounces across the summer landscape invading homes, hotels and workplaces. Her arch opponent, Tony Abbott, is traduced as sexist, relentlessly negative and an agent of smear as the nation divides between those who applaud Julia and those appalled by her.

Yep, Julia Gillard is a bitch and a witch, and worse, self-righteous and furious and full of calculated, fierce, unrestrained aggression.

Kelly might imagine he's being balance - after all he claims Gillard is perhaps the best - but highly dangerous hope - for the Labor party, but he sets things right in the second par.

It's not even a dog or a wolf-whistle, it's like a pantheon of trumpets as he rolls his adjectives around the aggressive, righteous harpie.

Might Gillard plead provocation? Is being labelled a devious criminal who didn't just fuck and get involved with scumbags and fraudsters, but who did it knowingly and for personal profit a reason for getting a tad upset?

Of course not, she's just being an hysterical woman, feminist and fierce and all that other stuff we come to expect from harpies. And so the perfect routine is played out, right up there with the gotcha of Obama's birth.

Once you're judged guilty, there's no way out. Protest, and you're being self-righteous, aggressive and ... gasp ... feminist. Take it lying down, and watch the tanks run over you ...

You see, she's a veritable Medusa, look out for the snakes, and a worthy case study for Mr. Kelly's deep and probing psychological analysis:

Gillard has summoned up all the hostility and prejudice directed towards her and thrown it back in the face of her accusers with added venom. At the dispatch box her vituperation assumes a shocking, sharper edge precisely because she is a woman, yet it disappears when she momentarily falters in the chamber consumed by grief and compelled to reference the death of her father whom she loved deeply.  

Oh indeed, added venom from her sharpened shrewish tongue, and only women bleed, and thank you for that insight Alice Cooper.

While the media is obsessed about Abbott's less than complex character and personality it seems struck dumb by Gillard who, in her transformation as Prime Minister, is the much more challenging psychological and political study.

Struck dumb? Not Paul Kelly, he simply can't shut up, and neither can the rest of the commentariat at The Australian, always obsessed by the mystery that somehow a woman got to the top? What's the bet someone will write a line or two about her using her sex to attack her opponents?

Was it as recent as the 2010 campaign the public got confused between real and fake Julia? Gillard has resolved the confusion by the projection of a deeply polarising though tenacious persona, using her sex to attack her opponent, having to endure the humiliation of her past choice of male partners put on public display and recruiting a series of causes from disability to school education to entrench a true believer-caring identity. 

Yep, there you go.

Of course she's using her sex, because it's completely unimaginable that the less than complex Liberal party and The Australian would in any way turn the subject to the humiliating question of her past choice of male partners.

And at this moment might any woman in the vicinity raise a hand if they've enjoyed passing humiliation at the past choice of male partners ...

The biggest political story of 2012 is how Gillard turned weakness into strength. Facing a primary vote in the 28-30 per cent death zone, Gillard began to operate on the assumption she was strong, not weak. It was a psychological defiance of reality and became the year's great drama. 

Yes, just like a woman really, to defy reality, and produce tormented hysterical drama, and what's more she mutated from Medusa into Boudica (that's Boadicea for you old-fashioned Paul Kelly types):

The upshot is that she intimidated Kevin Rudd, abused Abbott as a misogynist, patronisingly told business it had nothing to complain about, loaded the budget with unfunded true-believer Labor policies and accused virtually anybody who raises the AWU slush fund affair of "sleaze and smear". 

To summarise: she's intimidating, abusive, patronising, biased, and an hysterical paranoid accuser of all and sundry who gloat over the way she got involved with the wrong man.

And as for Tony Abbott's sex life? Sssh, not a word, we've been through his dreams and hopes of a son, let's head back to the psycho-political drama, advanced relentlessly by that paranoid harpie:

The trap in this psycho-political drama is overreach. Has Gillard gone too far? Has she overreached on each front? Will her initial poll improvements disappear when reality strikes back? There is an irony in such questions because, of course, for the past six months Gillard has nailed Abbott for proven overreach in his exaggerations about the carbon tax, an overreach that damaged Abbott's credibility.

Reality strikes back? Is that a cryptic reference to Darth Vader, the empire, Chairman Rupert and The Australian striking back?

Oh dear, shocking. Quick, can someone get hold of Margie Abbott to trot back out and remind us that Tony Abbott is a reliable family man, unlike this atheist feminist fury who rolls together the worst of Medusa and Boudica.

There's reams and reams more of this tosh, as Kelly trawls through the tedious ins and outs of the affair, but he really does reach a charming non-sequitur which deserves to be mentioned:

Its declared purpose was to promote safer workplaces. However, at her August media conference, Gillard said she knew at the time of its creation the association's purpose was "to support the re-election of a team of union officials". 
 This, presumably, is why she later called it a "slush fund". What, therefore, does the re-election of union officials have It has been a very bad week for the Prime Minister and a good one for Carr and Shorten, two of the leading pretenders to her throne. to do with workplace safety?

Indeed, what do union officials have to do with anything, especially when only this morning if you venture into Broadway and its reduced two lanes, you might observe the splendid safety activities of Lend Lease and its topping crane (Lend Lease suffers second crane collapse in a month).

Yep, trust the company and the management for safety, which explains why Rupert Murdoch provides a safe haven for peddlers of tosh.

But wait, for those who like Oliver are holding out a plate and demanding more gruel, The Australian is full of it.

There's Hedley Thomas advising that a judicial inquiry into the affair could be short, sharp and inexpensive - even though the meandering Kelly acquitted her of illegality - and there's Peter van Onselen rabbiting on about damaged goods, and there's Dennis Shanahan doing his usual pompous conservative dance about a battle to the political death and there's Chris Kenny explaining - in a way only Chris Kenny could manage - that Labor won the media battle for the week, but completely failed to convince voters of the PM's honesty.

Naturally histrionics was the word that sprang immediately to Kelly's mind, as he reminded the world once again how the ABC was hopelessly skewed, which is surely much worse than The Australian being immaculately skewed.

You see, when the media embarks on an investigation of Gillard, it's being relentlessly balanced and dedicated and insightful and diligent - completely unlike the group think at the ABC - which explains how Kenny can detect that the attacks on Julie Bishop have been "confected".

The funniest thing? Kenny ends with talk of spin, as if somehow he's immune to it ...

And speaking of spin, there was of course Little Sir Echo, Christopher Pearson, assuring the world Bluster won't cover scandal.

Does Kenny ever feel a little unease knowing his column runs shoulder to shoulder with Pearson's lap doggery? Of course not, because when you're two peas in a pod, you're comfortable with the other peas.

Which  brings us back to where we started, which is to say, the mindless narrowness of the commentariat entrenched in The Australian. Ever since Pearson decided that Simon Crean would be a safe pair of hands for PM, the pond has reserved a particular contempt for his powers of prophecy and insight, so we can just resort to a summary of the adjectives, a treat usually reserved for the likes of the unreadable Akker Dakker:

Disaster at every turn ... dogs her ... near-death experience ... abandoned ... hysterical bellows by Labor ... fears festering in cabinet and caucus ... genuine transgression ... tumultuous week ... late-night machinations ... internal intrigues ... ethnically based branch-stacking ... Turkish Lebanese and other Muslim communities ....

And yes, now Bob Carr is one of two leading pretenders for Gillard's throne, the other being Bill Shorten. Let's record it for posterity:

It has been a very bad week for the Prime Minister and a good one for Carr and Shorten, two of the leading pretenders to the throne.

It's clever of course, the usual leadership stir Pearson has been conducting for years, but with two contenders so it's like a 50/50 prophecy.

Poor hapless Simon Crean ... if only he'd realised how fickle Pearson's powers of prophecy are.

Should Bob Carr take heart? Only if he's dreaming ...

And so we come to the end of a survey in which Chris Kenny did the usual Australian-style ABC bashing, and talked of group think and spin, without once mentioning the laundry cycle in which he's embedded.

It's Fox News all over again, full of sound and fury, and like the pompous psychologising of Paul Kelly, generally signifying nothing, or as they say in Tamworth, sweet bugger all ...

But you can bet one thing. Having turned up smoke and mirrors and still not being able to drum up a smoking gun, the next six months of the campaign will be a demand for an inquiry so it can finally be found.

And so to a rogue's gallery of spin and chatter, led by an "exclusive" offered up by one Michael Costa, who will fondly be remembered for his role in a NSW Labor party, a party which plunged the state into a misery of poor infrastructure, poor planning, poor policy and poor decisions that will see the state continue to suffer for decades.

Naturally he's "exclusively" demanding an inquiry, if you count being in bed with Tony Abbott some kind of exclusive.

Oh and as for that inquiry, isn't it rich, isn't it queer, is the pond losing its sense of timing at this time of year, that the "exclusive" righteous demand for an inquiry is coming from a man who learned the fine art of how to fiddle de dee, as you can remind yourself in How taxpayers pay minister's weekender mortgage, wherein Costa is called as country as a Leichhardt cappuccino when the real insult is to remind us that he was once the Transport Services Minister for NSW (or lack of transport services for NSW, as the case may be).

And now, trumpets please, blazoning, flourishing and flaunting, for the parade of rogues right up there with Aida. Over the top? Not when you want to live in a Murdoch opera of revenge on the feminists. Yes, yes, go ahead and count the women you see: