So much spam ... or is it sand?

First a reading to set the mood:

'Tweedledum and Tweedledee 
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee 
Had spoiled his nice new rattle. 
Just then flew down a monstrous crow, 
As black as a tar-barrel; 
Which frightened both the heroes so, 
They quite forgot their quarrel.' 

Quite so.

Every so often the pond thinks it's about time to get rid of the antiquated copper-based landline, which these days is only disturbed by spam calls.

Recently the answering machine took a call from 'Albo' "the minister for useless reports on VFT and second airports" Albanese's office.

It was lucky for the caller that the pond was out and about at Verdi's Requiem (which you can hear live this coming Saturday night on ABC FM, and well worth the listen too), or the poor bugger could have been in for a verbal assault that lasted for hours.

Then there was a call from Citibank about an urgent account matter that had to be resolved that very day. No it wasn't a marketing call, it was an urgent account matter, the accented Indian gravely explained.

It turned out in the usual way that it was Citibank proposing that we could propose that Citibank could propose to raise our credit card limits, and never mind that we had never given the slightest indication that we were in need of raising our credit card limits.

It was of course a way for Citibank to get around recent legislation designed to prevent banks harassing their customers. And to the pond, it felt like a conversation conducted in a fraudulent, misleading and deceptive manner. (No, the credit card limit wasn't raised, yes having any connection whatsoever with Citibank and its cunning, misleading and deceptive lawyers is under active review).

But this is just one example of a spam-rich life.

The post box is routinely filled with spam by Australia Post, as is the home letter box, and as for email ... (no, Parker Orings, your product will never be mentioned on the pond).

The pond deals with the harassment in a cheerful way by singing the Monty Python song about spam ... and yet it seems that the only real distinction between the routine spammer and the reptiles at the lizard Oz is that they yet haven't worked out a way to spam the pond.

Which is why no Murdoch fiefdom will ever get hold of an email account associated with the pond ... and instead the mug punter pond will seek out the Murdochians in much the same way that it called Citibank.

Look at today's lead reports and EXCLUSIVES:

Look beyond the glistening red and you soon discover that the reptiles at the lizard Oz are in fact the Citibank of Australian journalism.

Naturally the most noticeable aspect is the way each story is angled to reinforce the anti-Labor agenda the rag wears so proudly.

But then there's the brazen misrepresentation.

Chris Bowen calls for modernity, or Labor is doomed? This is an exclusive? In what known or even unknown extra dimensional universe?

Bowen's been all over the place like a particularly virulent form of spam promoting his book, written from the backbench, and he even turned up to ruin 7.30 last night, as you can remind yourself by heading off to Treasurer Chris Bowen discusses his book.

Yes now that Tony Abbott has done his tedious oyster and carpenter dance with patsy Chris Uhlmann, Leigh Sales is suddenly and mysteriously back to deal with the Labor dullards.

Interalia, the pond was moved to tears with this epic display of logic:

CHRIS BOWEN: No, not at all and I deal with that head-on in the book and say this is not a criticism of the decision to go into alliance with the Greens, but it is a reflection of my views, having been considered, that the Labor Party when it puts a view to the Australian people and campaigns in an election campaign for office, that we should govern alone and that we should not enter into formal deals with other political parties. 
LEIGH SALES: Well, the logical conclusion from what you say is that you think that three years ago an Abbott minority government would've been better for Australia than a Labor government reliant on the Greens. 
CHRIS BOWEN: No, I completely reject that conclusion, Leigh. There's nothing in the book which could lead you to that conclusion, with respect. 

But with the greatest respect, didn't you just say?

Oh never mind:

LEIGH SALES: No, but you're saying it's better for Labor to govern alone or rather not at all. 
CHRIS BOWEN: This is a book, a forward-looking book about the future, saying that we need to be clear about what we deliver, we need to be clear about what we stand for, we need a crisp explanation of Labor's beliefs and we should stand by those beliefs before and after election campaigns. It's a forward-looking book.

Ah, so we're moving forward, in a forward-looking way, with a forward-looking book:

Oops, how backward-looking of the pond, but you have to hand it to Bowen, he knows how to deliver verbal spam that batters the ears and introduces a kind of torpor, a languid desire to go to sleep ...

Meanwhile, Gra Gra, having urged that the party unleash the hound of the baskervilles, has returned from checking on any matters relating to Swiss bank accounts, to develop a case of the Chicken Little cluck clucks:

It is not too difficult to understand why Kevin Rudd wanted to change the rules under which his caucus operates. The opposition's line on the Labor leadership - "In 2007 you voted for Kevin Rudd and you got Julia Gillard. In 2010, you voted for Julia Gillard and you got Kevin Rudd. Who will you get this time?" - was always going to be a problem for him. Unfortunately he came up with the wrong solution.

Yes, once again we have the bizarre and unpleasant spectacle of a former politician, much disliked when he was an actual player, now with nothing much to do except spam the eyeballs of innocent stray readers, as you will discover if you evade the paywall to read Labor reform? Tell him he's dreaming.

Richardson spends his entire time explaining how the Ruddster's proposed reform will be a disaster for Labor, digging up examples such as Mark Latham, Bob Hawke v Bill Hayden, and Keating v Hawke (points  previously noted by the pond).

At the same time, he downplays the role of factions, which presumably includes his own fiddling and interference, and then having righteously denounced the Ruddster's entire plan, comes up with this:

Meanwhile the Rudd juggernaut marches on relentlessly. I don't know how many times over the last 18 months I have written in this column that people had stopped listening to Julia Gillard. If there is one big change that Rudd has brought with him it is an end to all that. Now everyone, friend and foe alike, is listening to every word he says. As MPs and candidates hand out flyers at railway stations they all report a dramatic change in the reception they are getting. The abuse has stopped and once again people are engaging with the Labor party.

Yes, for the last 18 months Gra Gra wrote relentlessly braying columns about how everyone had stopped listening to Julia Gillard, because listening to brave, witty incisive Swiss bank counting Gra Gra was so much more sensible, and now the Rudd juggernaut rolls on, delivering policies that Gra Gra contends will be a disaster for the Labor party, but happily everyone is listening and everyone is engaging with the Labor party ... and never mind actually engaging with Tony Abbott ...

Well let Gra Gra inherit the wind, and as they sowed so shall they reap and so on and so biblically forth ...

And if that wasn't enough, that eternal git, Alexander Downer, the former minister for foreign affairs and stockings, turns up with Rudd sold out our national interests and lost respect in Jakarta.

Let the pond save you the trouble of reading it, by sampling the highlights:

I'll never forget President Yudhoyono taking my hand in both of his and, with tears in his eyes, saying he would never forget Australia's generosity and help. It was a moving moment. He made me shed a tear as well.

Yes it left the pond brushing a tear aside, and the laughter also stopped in due course:

It's heartbreaking for me to watch all this. Rudd has undone all the good work we did and the best he has come up with is a new regional conference. We already have a regional process in place, the Bali process. 
And a last thought: how come our Foreign Minister isn't trying to fix this up? He spends his time on Twitter and Facebook. He's the Foreign Minister: his job is to solve problems, not play with his iPad. It's as sad as it is pathetic.

Actually it's heartbreaking for the pond to read Downer, and there is something just as sad and pathetic, and that's the sight of former politicians scribbling furiously in tree-killing newspapers, explaining how all was for the best in their day, and curiously overlooking the way and the reasons they got kicked out of office ...

Meanwhile, it being Friday, it wouldn't be the lizard oz, if we didn't have a Bjorn Lomborg piece, for which the rag wants to charge money to access, by calling it Pessimists' fears proved wrong ....

...when it had been published long ago here under the header The Limits to Panic on June 17th, 2013... and is available free at this site ...

...which is about as much as the pond is prepared to pay for Lomborg's childish positivism ...

Now charging money for something that's freely available, and already has a dated, moth-eared air about it, a smell of silverfish and naphthalene,  is right up there with the cheekiness of Citibank.

Lomborg is of the tiresome cheer-leading school that growth is good, and we just need more, more, more of everything, and never mind futile gestures like recycling and forget about worries about pesticides and merely turn to economic growth, grow, grow, grow, and all will be well:

The four decades since The Limits of Growth have shown that we need more of it, not less. An expansion of trade, with estimated benefits exceeding $100 trillion annually toward the end of the century, would do thousands of times more good than timid feel-good policies that result from fear-mongering. But that requires abandoning an anti-growth mentality and using our enormous potential to create a brighter future.

And is there any limit to this growth cornucopia? Might ten billion people put a little strain on things? Are the world's resources in any way finite? Are we currently fucking it over in any way at all?

Apparently not ... just wander down to the two dollar store and pick up another useless gizmo and all will be well ...

By this point, the pond was enduring a profound sense of spam fatigue. Once again the digital carousel of doom had won, and there was simply not the strength or the will to tackle that other Murdoch fiefdom, the Daily Terror, which managed to explain how the only way to restore the economy was to hold an election immediately, which can only mean that the economy is stuffed beyond repair ...

And bizarrely the rag claims this channeling of Tony Abbott is an exclusive:

What to do, where to start? Well not paying for the lizard Oz or the Terror is one step, and another is to throw away the copper connection? Spend up big on fibre. It's the Lomborg way forward.

Will you join the pond in this big Mal? Oh will you, will you ...

The Walrus and the Carpenter 
Were walking close at hand; 
They wept like anything to see 
Such quantities of sand: 
"If this were only cleared away," 
They said, "it would be grand!" 
"If seven maids with seven mops 
Swept it for half a year, 
Do you suppose," the Walrus said, 
"That they could get it clear?" 
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter, 
And shed a bitter tear. (the rest here)

A pot pourri of paranoia and lizard Oz pleasures ...

Things are bubbling along nicely on several fronts this day.

Once again Queensland provides a joyous spectacle, as Farmer Jones and Napoleon's pigs dine together, which is a roundabout Orwellian way of saying that Campbell Newman's piggies were caught with their snout in the trough.

It's all there in Campbell Newman flags measures to look at politicians pay scales following this week's backflip but it's solution that sends the pond into paroxysms of glee.

There's to be a five point plan and a new independent authority - yes another government body - to solve the problems created while Napoleon was out of town, and Jeff Seeney was in charge of the purse.

If he keeps going this way, Campell "quango mango" Newman could become the new Minister for Reports and Authorities, giving Anthony "Minister for useless reports on second Sydney airports" Albanese a run for his money.

And for a bonus laugh the $400k on offer to Campbell Newman would have rivalled the amount due to the POTUS, but could anyone imagine Campbell Newman as a jumped up POTQ?

 Meanwhile, it's been a slow build since news of Chairman Murdoch's dissembling double-faced forked-tongue appearance before The Sun's staff, only to be caught out by a leaked tape recording.

The chairman is facing fire on several fronts - Rupert Murdoch to be recalled by MPs over comments on illegal payments runs one story, and Rupert Murdoch: police investigate secretly recorded Sun meeting runs another.

Now you ask how the pond could gloat over the leaking of an unseemly recording, made without consent, of a private conversation amongst chums, and how the pond could dance about at the ongoing persecution of an elderly gentleman who has already experienced the most humbling day of his life, and you know, it turns out ... it's surprisingly easy and such fun.

The pond is always into poetic irony, and by golly there's plenty of irony in the chairman's poetic fate.

Nothing will come of it, of course, nothing ever does, and especially not the talk of finding Murdoch not a fit and proper person, no matter that there's plenty of evidence to discuss, but if there's some incidental pain inflicted along the way, then that's a start...

But speaking of the Chairman, that's good enough for a segue to see what's happening with the reptiles at the  lizard Oz - and it turns out they're acting like bullhead ants reacting to someone poking a stick into their nest. The pond marvels and wonders at the way the ants have been sent into a scurrying frenzy this past week by the arrival of the Ruddster.

And while everyone else has completely forgotten about the bumbling billionaire buffoon, the war on Clive Palmer continues apace in deadly earnest:

Yes, forget Campbell Newman, it's Clive who's ruining the country, and needs to be ruined.

And a new front has been opened up in the war on the Ruddster:

Oh she says she isn't but we know she is, because after all, she refuses to answer the question as to when she stopped beating her husband.

Imagine: a bloody Pommy bastard as first lady, just as our valiant brave lads on foreign soil find themselves on a sticky wicket, and not just in a pub late at night pissed as a parrot. Recently a hairdresser and now a damned furriner ...

What's that you say? An American resident runs the vast majority of Australia's print media? Sssh, not a word, let's keep it a secret, it might disturb the jingoists at the lizard Oz ...

And meanwhile the war on the main target continues, as the very best drones have been called out on a seek and destroy mission. Top of the digital page:

And it wasn't just the digital page:

Closely followed by Dennis "the tie" Shanahan:

And the reptiles at the lizard Oz are back doing what they do best - not reporting, but campaigning.

What is always marvellous for the pond is the way the flock wheels and whirrs and turns in the sky in unison, a flock of starlings all squawking as one. And all the Krudd jokes flood back, like a comfortable old glove ...

No one else bothered with this - the front page of the tree killing Sydney Morning Herald concerned the rating of the Great Barrier Reef as poor, and The Age was getting agitated about their recent discovery that school competition is a myth.

Education, the environment? The Great Barrier Reef stuffed, and Campbell Newman paid at POTUS rates to supervise the stuffing?

Pshaw, what nonsense. The Daily Terror turned up the "faceless men" rhetoric yet again, as if - if only oh if only - Paul Howes and Bill Shorten were faceless men:

And what stops the Daily Terror from banging on about the behind the scenes administrative team, "the faceless men and women" who run the Liberal party, on a daily basis?

By golly the pond knows how to ask useless questions.

But, you say, it isn't just daily anti-Labor rhetoric, the reptiles in Murdoch la la land care deeply about the reef and the environment and climate science and ...

Uh huh. No doubt that's why the lizard Oz gave Bob Carter's latest book a healthy splash yesterday:

Yep, they felt the need to wheel out the notorious Matt Ridley to handle the brave Carter's latest imitation of Don Quixote, but contented themselves with tagging Ridley as a scientist and author.

In the usual way, Ridley's wiki is much more forthcoming, including a reminder of his war with George Monblot.

Inter alia, that war was about Ridley's attitude to government, and so it's with a heavy heart that the pond reports the last line or Ridley's review, which is full of the usual denialist rhetoric and guff, long on abuse, and short on science:

Carter is a courageous man, because within academia those who do not accept that climate change is dangerous are often bullied. 
Indeed, Carter, who retired from James Cook University before he got interested in the global warming debate but remains an emeritus fellow, recently found himself deprived of even an email address by colleagues resentful of his failure to toe the line. As the old joke goes: what's the opposite of diversity? University.

Carter was bullied because he lost an email address from a former employer? An email address? A bloody email address?

That's it, that's all? That's the symbol of his courage and his persecution? Right up there with Joan of Arc?

Strangely the pond lost its employer email addresses on the day it left its employment, but surely you couldn't get a funnier indication of the bizarre world of entitlement and paranoia that infests Ridley's scribblings.

What's exactly the same as stupidity? A cheap Ridley joke ...

Perhaps he and Carter should get a life, and get a gmail account. They're both free ...

As for the man who presides over this daily nonsense, the shadowy man who lurks in international waters? Let's see him grovel one more time ...

The pond goes into a utopian post-Costello and Gra Gra dream ...

(Above: yes if you were in Tokyo, all this could be yours. Thanks to the correspondent who sent it to the pond).

The pond is always compelled, amazed and astonished at what people, sometimes ostensibly sensible business people, think other people will pay for.

The pond has already noted that the Daily Terror seems to think that they're on a winner, and that people will rush to pay for the thoughts of yesterday man Peter Costello, snap 'em up like hot cross buns or Ultraman clocks.

Look, they tried it on yesterday with their prize snatch from Fairfax:

But what do you know, if you google up the line, it turns out that the HUN has splashed the very same piece on the full to overflowing intertubes without a thought of charging for it, so the pond could read Bill Shorten is just a guy who gets things done.

Don't ask why subbies keep changing the headers - it's what they do, even if it doesn't make sense or its clear they don't have a clue.

Even worse, it turns out that Costello, clearly a hack in the making, a reptile on the move, borrowed his opening line from Neil Mitchell, as you can confirm by heading off to the transcript for 21st June 2013 here on Bill Shorten's very own page.

21st June! In this fast-moving world,  that's not so much conducting an autopsy as digging the corpse out of the ground to confirm it smells.

The astonished Costello is amazed that Shorten did the rat, as if somehow the Liberal side was entirely rat-free.

Now you can waste your time reading Costello's rant - or you can join the current chairman in eating the wax out of your ear, or picking your nose, or simply having a quick power nap.

They're all free, life-affirming activities. 

There's nothing new to see, and most people will move along, just to avoid the sight Costello doing the old political baseball routine, asserting that only the Labor party is perfidious and treacherous.

You know, "policy vacuum", unfettered ability, no real loyalty, yadda yadda. And never mind if Costello had mustered the ticker, maybe the Liberals wouldn't have trotted off like lambs to the slaughter way back when.

Instead you get this kind of mournful nonsense:

The old school of politics, which I used to belong to, thought it was all about policy and ideas. In a ballot I always thought it was relevant to know what a candidate's policy commitments were because it indicated what they might do - where they wanted to take the country.

Oh it's pitiful, pathetic stuff, especially as it suggests that way back when Costello chickened because he didn't have a clue where he wanted to take the country in the post-Howard era.

That sort of old school blather reminds the pond when it used to get up at 4 am to lick kitchen floor clean with tongue before heading down to work to do a full 25 hours at factory.

Towards the end of the piece, it sounds like the pious Costello is contrasting his own loyalty to that of everybody in the Labor party, when in reality everybody knows he simply was a gormless goose who lacked the ticker. 

Whatever you think of the Ruddster, he'll never die wondering, whereas one thing's absolutely certain: Costello will.

How it must still stick in the craw to know that he could have had the crown, could have tried for the preciousss, but was stared down, and backed away, like one of the lesser chooks in the barnyard of political life.

Even then, he could have still stayed in the ring, been a contender:

You remember that? This ain't your night. My night! I coulda taken the Ruddster apart. So what happens, he gets the title shot outdoors in the ball park ... and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville writing for Murdoch! You should have looked out for me a little bit. You was my brudder, little Johnny, you should've taken care of me a little so I wouldn't have to take dives for short-end Murdoch money.

You saw some money. You got a good parliamentary pension. You'll never have to work again.

You don't understand, I could have had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a Murdoch bum, which is what I am, let's face it ...  It was you, little Johnny!

Poor Petey, so he settled for being a show reptile at the HUN.

Now deep down the pond doesn't mind any of this. People should have a second life after politics. Horses for courses and paddocks with lush green Murdoch cash for tired, worn out old hacks who in other crueller eras have been sent to the glue factory.

Run wild, run free and scribble as much as you like.

No, what gets the pond is that anyone thinks anyone should pay for this - and frankly the notion of paying for the thoughts of Bill Shorten, freely available on his website, or Paul Howes or anyone else in the game is equally risible and preposterous.

We've got hundreds of politicians in all the states and the federal sphere blathering away about this, that and the other, and the gab fest is filling the intertubes to breaking point, and there's absolutely no need to pay to read the thoughts of a man that gave the game away, and worse, is dull, tedious, boring and predictable in his writing. 

At least with Mark Latham, you get a decent spray of crazy talk, which sometimes, if the wind is blowing north by north west, turns really sharp and incisive ... (sssh, don't mention that the Ruddster's plan might have seen ML entrenched in the leadership).

In fact it's hard to think of many conservative political hacks who turn member of the commentariat with any sort of style. 

There's an air of stuffiness and solemnity in the writing, which always cranks up the hypocrisy, as if only survivors of the Liberal party roulette wheel are entitled to write sanctimonious righteous tosh about loyalty - say Abbott scribbling with a straight face about his loyalty to Turnbull. 

Contrariwise, it seems it's impossible for anyone in the Labor party to scribble about loyalty with a straight face.

Oh okay, both sides manage each day and generally keep a straight face.

In that sense, each day is a political miracle, but that's their business, they're in a very special branch of showbusiness where the skill is selling the backtracking, changing paths, lying, being devious, is part of the game. 

Naturally both sides are always on hand to harp and point out the slippage.

It's really tedious when one side - Costello - pretends all the virtue is on his side, and all the rottenn-ess of Denmark is on the other. That's when you know you're in the company of a first class hypocrite.

But what's astonishingly tedious - almost in your face offensive - is why on earth anyone would expect anyone pay for the privilege ... that's roughly equivalent to slipping Petey boy a meal in the club so everyone can cheer about the way he shafted Bill Shorten in print ...

These days the relentless news cycle tends to consist of 24/7 of tedious repetitious, only enlivened in the tabloids by reporting of some fresh shock horror disaster. 

The way out isn't to recycle politicians like Costello or Gra Gra Richardson, taking a break from checking his Swiss bank accounts. That just maintains the long established, research-based conclusion that journalists are down there with politicians, used car salesmen and real estate agents.

You want cash for comment? 

Well about some nice fresh balanced comment from people without an axe to grind? Is it news that Costello dislikes Shorten and vice versa? Only in Murdoch la la land, where the humblest day of your life turns out to have been the most crossed fingers hypocritical day of your life ...

Oh I know, I know. It's completely hopeless, a useless utopian dream, but where's the harm in dreaming ...

From a dull Uhlmann to a desiccated Hendo as the hotheads come out to play ...

(Above: the pond usually opens with a cartoon, but this will probably do).


So to the first order of business, which saw Tony Abbott flushed out of the woods to make an appearance on the ABC on 7.30.

Oh dear, the very name of the segment, Tony Abbott calls on PM to 'name the date' gives the game away.

Yep, it was Chris Uhlmann on duty. No wonder Abbott fronted to end all the taunts about being an ABC no-show.

But how would it feel to be the soft fop Chris Uhlmann, designated pinch hinter and soft cop, given the task of smoothing the way for Mr. Abbott?

Uhlmann didn't lay a glove on Dr No, possibly because he thought it beneath him to put on any kind of glove at all, and the result was a deadly dull interview.

The bumbling dullard Uhlmann bowled, or pitched, or rolled up lollipop after lollipop, and is it possible to imagine a better one than the question which rounded out the interview?

CHRIS UHLMANN: Finally, briefly, what would an Abbott Australia look like?
TONY ABBOTT: Well, under a Coalition government, we'll build a stronger economy, we'll abolish unnecessary taxes, we'll get the budget back into the black and we'll stop the boats. We will be a consultative, collegial government. No surprises, no excuses. That's what you'll get under the Coalition. CHRIS UHLMANN: Tony Abbott, thank you. 
TONY ABBOTT: Thank you, Chris.

Fancy that. And we were thinking he'd talk about a weaker economy. necessary taxes, climate science, copper wire as a futurist NBN dream, and bunging on a do with Indonesia, with plenty of surprises  and excuses.

Well no thank you, "ever so chummy, lay down and let it all roll over you", Chris.

If that's your idea of a penetrating, incisive interview, have you thought about a career as a butter cutter? Remember, getting the knife hot will help a lot ...

Meanwhile, the punters are wildly excited about current Chairman Rudd's new "democratic initiative", details unclear, which might lead either to the ALP's leadership resembling the joys of a fixed four year parliamentary term - no way to get rid of the ratbag in charge - or resembling the incredible problems people face genuinely trying to reform the constitution in useful ways, by carrying all states and the popular vote. No reform at all.

The pond was fondly reminded of the Democrats, now dead as the proverbial dodo, and their experiment with democracy, as summarised in Cathy Madden's research paper here in pdf form:

The Democrats established a practice of participatory democracy unusual in Australian parties. The concept was inherited from the Australia Party and was reflected in the new party’s constitution. Party policies were developed with the maximum participation of members, and determined by the direct and equal say of the membership by means of a voluntary postal vote. The leadership of the party was also decided by postal ballot. Party members could also remove their party leaders, a spill requiring only 100 signatures from members.

That's more extreme than what's being proposed by the Ruddster, but it didn't stop the Democrats in their dying days from being riven by factional and leadership disputes, with a revolving door specially built for their many feuding, fussin', fighting leaders.

What's more the Democrats found only 10-20% participated in the decision-making process, with the collective mechanism cumbersome and time-consuming. By 1993, the leadership had enough with the process, and thereafter members voted on general principles with details left to the engaged and involved.

The UK Labor party mechanism has also been trotted out in recent days, but it didn't stop Gordon Brown stalking Tony Blair, nor did it stop a couple of brothers feuding, and one heading off to exile.

Now should it, or would it have stopped the necessary removal of Bill Hayden, drover's dog, by Bob Hawke? Or Keating's assassination of Hawke? Or for that matter Kevin the assassin taking out Bomber Beazley for Roving McManus with Karl? Will the Liberal party ever attempt to imitate the system, thereby denying Tony Abbott's ascension to nattering negativity by a single vote?

The most profound irony of all of course is that Gillard helped Rudd nail Beazley, and then nailed Rudd and then Rudd nailed her, and that somehow this parade of egos will be ended by engaging the "rank and file", as opposed to spreading more widely the dispute throughout the community, as if branches aren't already riven with stacking, and as if the most important issue - the election of candidates by the local membership - has been resolved, or will be sorted in the future, with parachutes still much in favour ...

The most important question is whether, under the Ruddster's proposal, an under-performing leader can be given the royal order of the boot, without an extended bout of widespread navel-gazing and introspection.

Probably not, which means, should the Ruddster win the current election, the most important order of business - how can he be got rid of, and someone less prone to fits of enthusiasm be appointed in his place - will forever be placed on the backburner.

It'll develop quickly enough, should he manage to pull it off (the odds remain slightly against him, no matter the universal loathing of Abbott), and then we'll discover how the enforced parliamentary term works out. The moment that Peter Beattie spoke in favour of the proposal, the pond had a sinking feeling ... is there any more useless shop-worn second hand op shop politician doing the rounds, apart from Jeff Kennett?

Never mind, the pond isn't, and hasn't ever been a member of the Labor party. Let them sort it out, and let them explain why this high-minded imitation of the Democrats will draw the punters.

It is passing strange however that you don't find the Liberals indulging in anti-business rhetoric, yet every day of the week, you'll find someone in the Labor party ready to put the boot into organised labour ... as if everyone should revert to contractor status on short term contracts, and unions need to be conspired against because they're a bunch of conspirators.

Toujours gai, Archie, toujours gai, and so the pond bravely decided to round out  thisTuesday by spending another of its precious Fairfax hits on catching up with prattling Polonius, who has been given a plum spot in today's paper under the header A problem shared demands solution (careful, it will cost you a Fairfax hit, is it truly worth it?)

Wouldn't you know it, but Hendo delivers right away, in the very first line:

Once upon a time, many members of the intelligentsia criticised Coalition and Labor governments for being too beholden to the foreign policy of the United States.

Oh that shocking, shameful intelligentsia, and following the United States into Iraq and Afghanistan turned out spiffingly well, and not a single boat refugee resulting from the colonial adventurism.

And then the droning Polonius doubles down:

Now many of this same group effectively argue that Australian foreign policy should be in accordance with the wishes of the communist rulers in China. Others are determined that Australia's approach to the attempted unlawful arrival of non-citizens should be consistent with the wishes of the democratically elected leaders of Indonesia.

You can't argue with these sorts of bizarre assertions - Henderson grows more doddery by the day, as was shown when an ailing pond took to bed and watched his actual appearance on last Sunday's Insiders (as you can, if qualified as a masochist, by heading off here). The pond was startled to see Henderson actually hanging out with the intelligentsia, the China lovers and the Indonesian lickspittles ...

Not to worry, the rest of today's piece is the standard hagiography of John Howard, a bit of revisionist history, and a standard swipe at mortal enemy Malcolm Fraser:

Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser has taken over the holier-than-thou role as he campaigns for Greens candidates in the Senate. It is true that, between late 1975 and early 1983, Fraser exhibited tolerance and compassion to Indo-Chinese asylum seekers. However, the circumstances were different. Only 2059 asylum seekers arrived in Australia by boat in this period. This is close to the monthly arrivals in recent times. 

Surely this has to be dissembling at its finest, and revolving around the matter of boats, since the boats v other methods of arrival argument continues to this day, with other methods of arrival far outweighing boats.

During the Fraser years, from 1975 to 1982, some 200,000 migrants arrived from Asian countries, including nearly 56,000 from Vietnam, who had applied as refugees (or so it says here), thereby permanently solving the pond's goi cuon, dry cleaning and bakery problems. Now that's more than a couple of thousand ...

And it's hard to see how the circumstances are that much different, at least for those wanting to flee the ongoing turmoil in Iraq and Afghanistan - perhaps Hendo would have been better joining with the intelligentsia in opposing these colonial forays (leaving the matter of Sri Lanka's turmoil as a different affair).

We soon reach the point of all the side-swiping, which is to endorse Bob Carr's proposal that these days everyone is an economic refugee and how it will all turn out for the best of all possible worlds in Tony Abbott's new regime:

Even so, Indonesia and Australia have a common interest in stopping people-smugglers from plying their trade. If the Coalition wins, and Abbott implements his turn-back-the-boats policy, this would be unlikely to cause conflict with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono or his successor. 
The influential Indonesian political operative Dewi Fortuna Anwar was asked on QandA what would be Jakarta's response if an Abbott government turned back boats. She replied: "Not confrontation, as some people have mentioned lately", but did concede that Indonesia would convey its concerns. The relationship between Indonesia and Australia is strong enough to survive a disagreement about the proper response to a problem in which, as Anwar commented, "Indonesia and Australia are both victims". 

Now this would all be well if in the past day the barking mad Scott Morrison had already gone out and about saying he was going to send in the SAS here there and everywhere, which might well bring Australia into conflict not just with Indonesia, but with the rest of the international community, as noted by Lenore Taylor in The Guardian in Morrison: send navy into international waters if asylum seekers threaten crews.

Abbott backed away at a rate of knots, refusing to talk about "operational matters", but it's a truism the pond has known from childhood is that if you keep playing with matches or the military, things are likely to go wrong.

That mood was reinforced by watching Lateline last night, and the remarkable belligerence of Major General Jim Molan in Indonesia could close down people smugglers, demanding that Indonesia get off its backside, and in any case Aussies, oi oi, were standing by to give any derelict backside a damned good kicking ...

No wonder poor old Hendo wants to assume everything will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds between Australia and Indonesia, but the hotheads want to bung on a do, and at that point, it will be useless to turn and rail at the intelligentsia or Malcolm Fraser ...

And now the pond feels compelled to publish this poignant note from Hendo:

Postscript: There was a typographical error in last week's column. William McMahon married Sonia Hopkins in 1965 (not 1975), aged 57, on the eve of Robert Menzies' retirement. 

It makes the pond feel ever so much better about its own typos, errors and omissions and self-loathing, as we ponder the mystery of an inner Sydney urban elitist who sits down to sup with the intelligentsia on the ABC, and blames it on a typo, when it's surely an errant keystroke by a dodderer up there with Chris Uhlmann in the tedium stakes ...

(Below: Geoff Pryor on the good old days of 2002, when Megawati Sukarnoputri was the Indonesian president)

fuck you blogger

For years the pond was a devoted reader of The New York Times, and then the 30 hits a month rule came to pass.

Now the pond has no problem with paywalls, content wants to be free, and owners want to charge, and that's the way it is.

But it made the pond look at its reading habits, and it soon became clear that one of the main reasons the pond went to the NYT was to be outraged by David Brooks, the token self-serving, Republican-serving, allegedly moderate apologist for all that's bizarre and weird in current conservative America, and by golly that kept him and the pond going week in, week out.

At the same time, it also answered the question as to what you do when you find yourself hitting yourself on the head with a hammer. Stop it, or else you might go blind ...

So the pond began to drift, just to avoid the pressure of the 30 slots. Off to The Guardian, off to old-timers like Slate and Salon, off to the Huff Post, though by golly it's click-bait misleading simple-minded tabloid headers are off-putting, and a dozen other sites, even to wannabes like the Daily Beast ...

In time David Brooks slipped from memory like a bad dream. And as an extra special bonus, so did Thomas L. Friedman!

These days if the pond drops in, it might be to pick up a story by Richard Ford, The Song of the Suburbs, or a piece by Oliver Sacks, The Joy of Old Age. (No Kidding.)

Oh sure, Brooks is still there, but the habit is gone, the addiction and the craving killed off. If you keep chocolate in the fridge it will surely be eaten, but why waste time on compound chocolate thinking?

The pond is optimistic that the same thing can happen thanks to the Fairfax paywall.

Monday, for example, has always been Generally Grumpy Paul Sheehan day, whatever the temptations on offer behind easily evaded paywalls, and lordy lordy there are always temptations:

Yes that bear with very little brain simply can't imagine any scenario or situation where Indonesia could plausibly object to Tony Abbott's boats turn-around policy, not even a situation where a turned-around boat sank in Indonesian waters with major loss of life and attracted the same attention as a Korean Boeing trying to land at San Francisco. Or perhaps a boat load of people indulged in ritual suicide, in Indonesian waters ...

What's most interesting about this is the way these days the reptiles at the lizard Oz try to link wayward opinion pieces by their inhouse loons to alleged news stories, which are dressed up as "exclusive". 

As if it's an exclusive that some people seeking refuge have threatened to kill themselves rather than return to say the joys of life in Afghanistan:

The same routine's at work in that "exclusive" about Queensland. State the bleeding obvious - that delusional cane toads are excited about Kevin's return - and then rush off to Sean Parnell's piece in the digital carousel of doom for reassurance. 

Note the different, optimistic tone of his pitch:

Yes, announce "exclusive" signs of problems, then rush off to the reptiles Sheridan and Parnell for the news that everything is the best in the best of all possible worlds, and instead of being a barking mad right winger of the most reactionary kind, Scott Morrison will lead Australia bravely into a bold new world, and presumably Campbell Newman will keep on sacking people to improve employment figures ...

Or some such thing, but this is just skimming the surface, gliding about on a very predictable oil slick, because the pond is about to spend one of its Fairfax monthly hits, so you don't have to.

What the hell, toujours gai, Archie, the pond has always been cavalier, a toot toot Toadess of Toad Hall, spendthrift and gay, extravagant, immoderate and improvident, intemperate and profligate, reckless and dissipated, a waster and a wastrel. 

So let the fickle finger of fortune set the wheel in motion:

Alas and alack, Crown plan is no roll of the dice - remember a click will cost you a hit - was a really risky roll of the dice, and it turns out it's just another bout of Sheehan doing fuck you Jack, I'm all right.

Here's how it rolls:

I may as well throw in some personal bias. I loathe poker machines. On most days, I walk past the Star casino and it has never occurred to me to go up to one of the gaming rooms. Quite the opposite. I was recently in the world capital of gambling, Macau, which does five times as much gambling business a year as Las Vegas, and found the place mesmerising - but it never occurred to me to place a bet. I also discovered that Macau has 165 pawn shops.

Yes, and there's probably a lot of human tragedies behind those pawn shops and not always the short of story you'd feature on a jolly cable reality show about a pawn shop in Vegas.

But you see Jack, Sheehan is okay, he loathes poker machines, and he's okay Jack, so fuck you jack.

But, having made all these points, my personal bias pales into irrelevance compared with my belief that people should be as free as possible to spend, invest or waste their money without bureaucrats telling them what to do. If gambling makes people happy, without harming them, it is a good thing for them. 

Which is of course a specious eliding and gilding of the lilly ... if gambling makes people happy, without harming them ...

Sheehan of course doesn't actually go into the matter of people actually harmed by gambling, because that would get in the way of the argument:

The real logic behind the Crown proposal and the green light it has been given can be found 6000 kilometres away, in a place not noted for spendthrift ways: Singapore. The Marina Bay Sands, a giant casino-hotel complex, transformed the centre of Singapore when it opened in 2011. Transformed it for the better. The Marina Bay Sands anchors an integrated casino-hotel-retail-resort-convention development that cost almost $7 billion and dwarfs the proposed transformation of Barangaroo. 
Having visited this complex last year, the next time I go to Singapore I want to stay at the Marina Bay Sands, dine at some more of the superb restaurants and swim in the infinity pool atop the three-tower complex that is now the most singular structure in the city. I won't be gambling but that's not the point. The Marina Bay Sands is a destination.

Which says all you need to know about Sheehan and being a philistine.

It turns out that the pond has actually stayed at the Marina Bay Sands. It's an okay hotel if you like that sort of pallid international style, with a faux infinity pool of the sort that provides a mindless distraction to mindless swimmers (clearly Sheehan is suited), but it's actually removed from the interesting parts of Singapore (though cabs are cheap) and it's miles from the dynamics of say the Indian part of town.

What is truly comical, in a tragic pathetic sort of way, were the "cultural" tokens dressed in to give the gambling joint a sort of cultural gravitas.

The time the pond was there the attached arts and science museum had a third rate exhibition of Salvador Dali pieces (right now it's mummies and Charles and Ray Eames, here).

Again you had to go miles away from the Marina Bay Sands to find museums revealing interesting things about Singapore and Singaporeans ...

It's like talking about Vegas as a destination - not that the pond has anything against  Penn and Teller - when the only sensible way to approach it is as a base for a conference or an exhibition, or as an anthropological insight into the Americans who flock to it imagining they're going to have a bit role in The Hangover Part 7. It goes without saying it's built on human misery and despair, and step outside the strip, and Vegas is a very bleak town indeed ...

It turns out that world-weary Sheehan is resigned to Sydney being a shitty town:

This is the model for the Crown project in Sydney. (It's too late to save the city skyline from mediocre high-rise buildings - that horse bolted decades ago - and the specific mediocrity of the towers of Sydney is offset by their collective grandeur as a cluster. The proposed Crown development will slot right into this pattern.)

What a splendid argument. Now how about a bit of tokenism:

Measures are also under way to strengthen the response to problem gambling, which can only grow as the gambling industry grows. The same can be said about alcohol and the internet. It should not be the catch-all card for ''no''.

Say what? The same can be said about the internet? The pond's about to lose its house and family and life savings and troop off to beg Tim Costello for help because of spending too much time on the internet?

The man is barking mad, in the manner of a David Brooks.

And so to a celebratory drum roll:

The Crown project is seeking to tap one of the biggest growth stories in the world, one that has given the major listed casino companies - Las Vegas Sands Corp, Wynn Resorts, Melco Crown Entertainment and MGM Resorts International - a combined market value of about $80 billion. Packer has become one of the whales of this global gaming industry. He inherited a fortune and has made it much bigger. 

Ah yes, it reminded the pond of all the talk of how Adelaide casino was going to make Adelaide a go to place on the high roller international circuit, and soon enough it sank to its natural level, a bit above the casinos you can find littering Indian land in the United States (now there's an anthropological experience).

The one thing that Sheehan doesn't mention is the absolute certainty that within twelve months of opening, the Packer casino will be presenting figures explaining how because of cost blow outs or debt burdens or turnover being less than expected, it urgently needs poker machines and average punter gambling to sustain its dream. And the place will take on the seedy sort of come one, come all tone of the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, not much better than an MGM dive.

Now the pond doesn't mind much. After all, like Sheehan, the pond doesn't gamble. Not the slightest interest. So fuck you Jack, the pond is all right, smug and complacent, and up itself, though it's bloody hard to get as far up itself as Sheehan gets up himself, Barry O'Farrell and James Packer ...

And why should you complain? The pond took a Fairfax hit for you, and now we're down to a motley 28 for the month, and some day soon hopefully Sheehan will become a fading memory, like David Brooks ...

(Below: more XKCD here)

Inside Waleed Aly's mind ...

There are many, many reasons that the pond rarely bothers with The Monthly, but if you wanted to find a single reason, then the piece by Waleed Aly, Tony Abbott's Mind, is as good as any.

Aly has in the past, somewhat cruelly, been dubbed the smiling face of Islam, and it's true that as a token moderate representative of Islam, he's been given an easy time at Fairfax and the ABC.

He's certainly been adept at making a career as an apologist, and he manages to teeter between the moderate and the conservative in a way which is wholly admirable if you want to have some sort of veneer of appeal to all sides.

His exercise for The Monthly,  allegedly delving into Tony Abbott's mind, is the classic work of an apologist, with defence lawyer twist, and it's when we come to the matter of climate science that we see where this leads:

It’s easy to mock Abbott’s changing positions on climate change. It’s also easy to see the streak of denialism in him. Battlelines rehearses several classic denialist arguments: we’ve had radical changes in climate before industrialisation; future changes in climate are “unknown and perhaps even benign”; climate change used to be called “global warming” until particularly cold winters in Europe and North America demonstrated that the alarmists were wrong. He cites approvingly Bjorn Lomborg’s declaration that “a narrow focus on reducing carbon emissions could leave future generations lumbered with major costs, without major cuts in temperatures”. It’s a deceptive line. The point of carbon-emission reduction isn’t to reduce global temperatures: it’s to limit the inevitable temperature rise to a level that isn’t catastrophic. 
The truth is that Abbott’s beliefs on climate-change science don’t govern his political actions. He supported an ETS under Howard, then opposed one in Battlelines. He supported one again under Turnbull’s leadership, then unseated his boss and took his job in order to defeat it. Now he rails against the carbon tax. Clearly, he opposes an ETS or a carbon tax as a matter of principle. Whether or not he supports one as a matter of policy is, at all times, a matter of political judgement. If he thinks it is inevitable, if he thinks the argument against it is ultimately lost, then he will acquiesce. That’s what led John Howard to adopt one just before his political demise. It’s what led Abbott to go along with Turnbull, who famously declared that the Coalition would be “wiped out” without one. But, in the end, Abbott was convinced that “the politics of this issue have changed dramatically”. He was right.

He was right?

This is, amazingly enough, even more cynical than Abbott.

It starts with the "it's easy to mock" and then it ends with "He was right", and in between, we can see the apologist at work.

Try to break down these contradictory thought bubbles:

Clearly, he opposes an ETS or a carbon tax as a matter of principle. 

Uh huh. A principled man.

Whether or not he supports one as a matter of policy is, at all times, a matter of political judgement. 

Uh huh. An unprincipled man.

If he thinks it is inevitable, if he thinks the argument against it is ultimately lost, then he will acquiesce. 

Uh huh. A man utterly without principles.

Or perhaps a deluded man by name Waleed Aly who thinks that life is just one long political judgement, and whatever you can get away with, is right.

Now you might think it unfair to ping Aly in this way in relation to Abbott and climate science, but by column's end, he does exactly the same thing in relation to Abbott and abortion:

In Battlelines, he makes an explicit distinction between “deploring the frequency of abortion and trying to re-criminalise it”. From his time as Howard’s health minister, and from Battlelines, we know his approach will be to try to “nudge the abortion rate down without affecting women’s right to choose”, probably by tailoring support services accordingly. But he’ll also be extremely wary of taking any steps that will unleash a backlash. For Marr, this is because Politics Abbott won’t have the numbers and wouldn’t risk the political cost of doing anything more coercive. I suspect his reasons are more philosophically considered. His political conservatism means he understands the folly of trying to re-create the past. He knows that any attempt at regressive change would probably create a bigger problem than it is trying to solve.

It's almost criminal to use the words "philosophically considered" in this context, unless you happen to think that Machiavelli was philosophically considered.

We already have a guide to how Abbott related to the matter of abortion, in his behaviour as Health Minister when the matter of the RU486 pill came before him.

And we still have an indication of Abbott's attitudes in a speech which remains on his website here, under the header The ethical responsibilities of a Christian politician.

As Abbott ostensibly remains a Christian politician, we can assume his position remains much the same:

Christian faith is not an essential pre-condition for serious worry about where this type of tilitarianism might lead. The problem with the contemporary Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience. Aborting a first trimester foetus is not morally identical to deliberately killing a living human being but it’s not just removing a wart or a cyst either. 
Even those who think that abortion is a woman’s right should be troubled by the fact that 100,000 Australian women choose to destroy their unborn babies every year. What does it say about the state of our relationships and our values that so many women (and their husbands, lovers and families) feel incapable of coping with a pregnancy or a child? To a pregnant 14 year old struggling to grasp what’s happening, a senior student with a whole life mapped out or a mother already failing to cope under difficult circumstances, abortion is the easy way out. It’s hardly surprising that people should choose the most convenient exit from awkward situations. 
What seems to be considered far less often is avoiding situations where difficult choices might arise. Our society has rightly terrified primary school children about the horrors of smoking but seems to take it for granted that adolescents will have sex despite the grim social consequences of teenage single parenthood. If half the effort were put into discouraging teenage promiscuity as into preventing teenage speeding, there might be fewer abortions, fewer traumatised young women and fewer dysfunctional families. Why isn’t the fact that 100,000 women choose to end their pregnancies regarded as a national tragedy approaching the scale (say) of Aboriginal life expectancy being 20 years less than that of the general community? No one wants to recreate the backyard abortion clinic (or to stigmatise the millions of Australians who have had abortions or encouraged others to do so) but is it really so hard to create a culture where people understand that actions have consequences and take responsibilities seriously? 
As a local MP, I am regularly challenged over the Government’s policy on the detention of boat people. “How can you live with yourself as a Catholic”, the argument runs, “when your government treats women and children with such cruelty?” When it comes to lobbying local politicians, there seems to be far more interest in the treatment of boat people, which is not morally black and white, than in the question of abortion which is. Oddly enough, no local Christian has ever asked me how, as a Catholic, I can preside over a Medicare system which funds 75,000 abortions a year. 
I fear there is no satisfactory answer to this question. Christians are not required to right every wrong. Christian politicians are not required to promote policies for which there is no constituency. As it happens, the Government gives nearly $1 million a year to “pro-life” family planning groups (but $13 million to “pro-choice” groups) and provides a quarter of a million dollars to the Federation of Pregnancy Support Services. Still, as a gesture of support for traditional values, this lacks even the drama of King Baudoin of Belgium’s abdication for a day rather than sign an abortion bill into law. 

What's astonishing is the disapproving tone in relation to discouraging teenage promiscuity. This, it should be noted in passing, from a man who had unprotected sex, such that he wasn't certain at the time whether he might have fathered a child. (Paternity shock for Abbott - might cost you a Fairfax hit).

Keep that in mind as you run a few of those lines back over again:

To a pregnant 14 year old struggling to grasp what’s happening, a senior student with a whole life mapped out or a mother already failing to cope under difficult circumstances, abortion is the easy way out. It's hardly surprising that people should choose the most convenient exit from awkward situations.

The easy way out! The most convenient exit! As if abortion is easy or a convenience, whatever the age. And then this presumptuous line:

When it comes to lobbying local politicians, there seems to be far more interest in the treatment of boat people, which is not morally black and white, than in the question of abortion which is.

Abortion is morally black and white!

Which is why in the end that Waleed Aly's apologist piece on behalf of Abbott, whether his celebration of Abbott's cynical position on climate science or his "philosophically considered" opinion on abortion is in reality contemptible.

In the end, it's easy to stand back and affect a position of analysis, without taking any sort of position.

It’s easy to mock Abbott’s changing positions on climate change...

You could just as easily propose:

It's easy to mock Abbott's unchanging position on abortion ...

The result?

Well it's pretty easy to mock Waleed Aly for being an apologist for Tony Abbott on issues which have serious consequences for the planet, and for the rights of women.

Aly has been at this sort of soft rhetoric in other contexts, most notably when it came to the Boston bombing.

Now most people, when confronted with the loss of randomly involved life, would condemn terrorist acts as reprehensible, whether in Boston or Iraq or Afghanistan or Norway or a picture theatre or a plane, but not your apologist wanting a fresh angle and scribbling Bomb response refreshingly honest:

Let's clear something up: our responses to terrorism are not about the loss of innocent life. We think they are because that's the first thing we talk about. We use the suffering of victims to emote, and we look at the attacks through that prism. But it's never really about the victims. It's about us. It's about the magnetic trauma of watching these attacks repeat on our news services. It's about the fact each of us is entirely interchangeable with the killed and injured; that we can so easily transpose ourselves into the situation. It's about the brutal unpredictability of the violence.

Actually the pond's response to terrorism is about the loss of 'innocent life', which is to say the ready identification with people who have lost their lives for no discernible meaning.

It's called empathy, and trying to walk a mile in someone else's shoes and trying to imagine what it might be like living with a killer drone flying overhead on the way to the killing fields, night and day. Or being blown away by someone with a gun or an out-of-control car.

You see, it's possible to hold several thoughts in the head at any one time:

(Click to enlarge, more Tom Tomorrow here)

Anyone with any experience of life knows about the Under Toad, and knows it's rarely a good experience.

So what's Aly's real point?

Well it's to ease anxiety, to sooth and pacify, to offer up a verbal smiley:

The most encouraging one is that we're finally maturing in the way we handle terrorism. Gone is the triumphalist rhetoric of the ''War on Terror'', with its ridiculous promises of a terrorism-free world and the ultimate victory of freedom over tyranny. In its place is a far more sober, pragmatic recognition that terrorism is a perpetual irritant, and that while it is tragic and emotionally lacerating, it kills relatively few people and is not any kind of existential threat.

A perpetual irritant? Not an existential threat? It doesn't kill many people?

Easy for someone lurking in comfort in the bowels of the ABC, or scribbling for Fairfax to say. Harder if you happened to be in the twin towers, or attended the wrong wedding in Afghanistan, or got caught up in the drug wars in Mexico.

And yet we're all entwined with those things, from the person sniffing Mexican drugs in a night club toilet in Sydney to anyone who voted for a colonial adventurer to hold power.

Now the pond doesn't mind being in the company of Tim Blair, in Reluctance to blame extremist Islam a sign of our 'maturity', because in reality Aly is a lawyer and a correspondent for all seasons and cases, capable of making soothing noises about Abbott for readers of The Monthly and equally capable of making soothing sounds about radicals, terrorism and Islamic extremism for readers of Fairfax ... (where the pond parts with Blair is his reluctance to talk about extremist drones).

Doing this sort of even-handed dance about terrorism or Tony Abbott is an exceptional skill, and a deadly one, but with hindsight it's easy to see how this sort of tosh can take air of unreality, as when it came to Aly's interim conclusion about Boston:

We won't know until perpetrators come to light. Does the act become more heinous if it is Islamist? Does terrorism cease to be a fact of life, and once more become an existential threat? If so, it cannot be about the attack itself, which, after all, is the same either way. It must be about the politics, the prejudices, we bring to it. That could be very revealing. Watch this space.

Actually the pond watched that space, and it turns out that it's not just about the politics or the prejudices, it's about the stupid reality of fundamentalists bombing a harmless sporting event, as meaningless and as catastrophic as Obama droning a wedding party or Abbott thinking he can take a judgmental view of the rights of others while having sown his own wild oats in his youth, or even worse, that somehow climate science is a matter where you can be called right by calling climate science crap, or be called "philosophically considered" by saying a 14 year old seeking an abortion is taking the easy way out.

Sometimes you just have to say enough already, and when it comes to the half-baked legalistic equivocations of Waleed Aly, the pond feels ready to say enough, already ...

And now, since we raised the matter of the Under Toad, a reading from John Irving's The World According to Garp:

"Duncan began talking about Walt and the undertow- a famous family story. For as far back as Duncan could remember, the Garps had gone every summer to Dog's Head Harbor, New Hampshire, where the miles of beach in front of Jenny Fields' estate were ravaged by a fearful undertow. When Walt was old enough to venture near the water, Duncan said to him - as Helen and Garp had, for years, said to Duncan- "Watch out for the undertow." Walt retreated, respectfully. And for three summers, Walt was warned about the undertow. Duncan recalled all the phrases. 
"The undertow is bad today." "The undertow is strong today." "The undertow is wicked today." Wicked was a big word in New Hampshire - not just for the undertow. And for years, Walt watched out for it. From the first, when he asked what it could do to you, he had only been told that it could pull you out to sea. It could suck you under and drown and you and drag you away. 
It was Walt's fourth summer at Dog's Head Harbor, Duncan remembered, when Garp and Helen and Duncan had observed Walt watching the sea. He stood ankle deep in the foam from the surf and peered into the waves, without taking a step, for the longest time. The family went down to the water's edge to have a word with him. 
"What are you doing, Walt?" Helen asked? "What are you looking for, Dummy?" Duncan asked him. "I'm trying to see the Under Toad, " Walt said. "The what?" said Garp? "The Under Toad," Walt said. "I'm trying to see it. How big is it?" 
And Garp and Helen and Duncan held their breath; they realized that all these years, Walt had been dreading a giant toad, lurking offshore, waiting to suck him under and drag him out to sea. The terrible Under Toad. 
Garp tried to imagine it with him. Would it ever surface? Did it ever float? Or was it always down under, slimy and bloated and ever watchful for ankles its coated tongue could snare? The vile Under Toad. 
Between Helen and Garp, the Under Toad became their code word for anxiety. Long after the monster was clarified for Walt ("Undertow, dummy, not Under Toad!" Duncan had howled), Garp and Helen evoked the beast as a way of referring to their own sense of danger. When the traffic was heavy, when the road was icy- when depression had moved in overnight - they said to each other "The Under Toad is strong today." 
"Remember," Duncan asked on the plane, "how Walt asked if it was green or brown?" Both Garp and Helen laughed. But it was neither green nor brown, Garp thought. It was me. It was Helen. It was the color of bad weather. It was the size of an automobile.

Or perhaps the size of Waleed Aly of saying Abbott was right to make a political meal of climate science ...

(Below: the pond goes religious)