Mark Coleridge, Robert McClelland and a hearty dose of shocked and appalled ...

Personally I find the sight of a 66 year old former doctor and prisoner and football team owner getting hitched to a 25 year old former fitness instructor shocking, appalling and offensive.

Silly old goat, silly young bimbo. The fact that it's a heterosexual coupling's no excuse. You can salivate along here at And the bride wore red. Or Edelsten defends wedding exposure at prenup press conference. Or any of a hundred other sites and stories and snaps.

Hang on, wait a minute, what am I saying? I actually don't give a flying fuck that they're getting hitched. They might live happily ever after, or it might all end in tears, but they're both adults, and they have the perfect right to do what they're doing. Just don't expect me to pay attention.

Start again.

Personally I'm shocked and appalled that two gay men yesterday got hitched in a legally recognized same-sex civil ceremony in Canberra. (here). I know for a fact that at least ten thousand heterosexual marriages were immediately undermined, and that the divorce rate will increase substantially by the weekend. Weak pathetic marriages, you say? Clearly you don't understand the impact of the sight of two men kissing one another ... something best left to Catholic priests behind the altar.

Hang on, wait a minute, what am I saying? I actually don't give a flying fuck that they've got hitched. Good luck to them, cheers and all that. They might live happily ever after, or it might all end in tears, but they're both adults, and at long last in this godforsaken country they have the perfect right to do what they've done.

The fact that they've hung around together for nearly twenty years indicates a bit more emotional maturity and stability than a lot of heterosexual couples going around in the marital stakes (me for one), but I guess for Christians coming from a religion ostensibly based on love, love doesn't count for much ...

Start again.

I'm shocked and appalled the Federal government is persisting in attempts to bring down the ACT's legislation:

... the Federal Government is not backing away from its plans to block the new laws.

It has asked the ACT Government to amend the legislation.

Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland says he is not worried that ceremonies will take place while negotiations are underway.

"We're not panicking about the situation," he said.

"We're trying to see these issues in their context."

Any legal ceremonies that take place will still stand regardless of the final outcome.

What? Get in now, get in quick, and the ceremonies will stand as legal? Leave your run too late and you'll be left out in the cold.

What a bunch of dingbats. Well I hope that the ACT takes it down to the wire, to the point where the Federal Government has to veto the legislation, and its shame is up there for all to see. If I'd wanted John Howard to keep setting my moral compass, I'd have bloody well voted for John Howard, but any of you mugs who voted for Kevin Rudd did, in fact, vote for John Howard. Or so it seems ...

Oh and while I'm shocked and appalled, can I just add how shocked and appalled I was by that goose, the Catholic Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn Mark Coleridge, carrying on about how the ACT laws undermine marriage and how he wants the Federal Government to step in.

As Attorney General Simon Corbell notes, it's extraordinary that a church leader wants to undermine the legislation of an elected parliament.

Get thee gone prattling priest.

But I guess that the Catholic church has form, what with the recently outed decision to ban Rep. Patrick Kennedy from eating wafers in church. (Bishop Tobin is doing his best to prove the anti-Catholic bigots right). Perhaps they could let him eat vo vo's or a nice lamington. Blessed of course, and turned by magic into the body of Christ.

Oh and in other news the Catholic church kicked in over US$550k to help defeat the same-sex marriage campaign (Portland ME Catholic Diocese Donated $550k To Defeat Same-Sex Marriage Campaign).

Pity they couldn't spare a little more hard cash for victims of pedophile priests, instead of regularly managing to conflate homosexuality and pedophilia in ways that are unforgivable.

What else can I be shocked and appalled about?

Got it. I want to know what the bloody Catholic church is going to do about bestiality.

Look no further than that filthy, perverted Bill Shakespeare and his mating of the fairy queen Titania with a donkey. I expect a handsomely funded campaign to ban A Midsummer Night's Dream, and I expect it now ...

Meantime:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

And all's well that ends well, provided that all is allowed to end well, without the benefit of prattling priests.

David Penberthy, Miranda Devine, and the rumble in the jungle, part two ...

(Above: the start of the first Australian New Zealand netball test in 1938. And now they've gone and passed a revised ETS scheme before Australia, here).

It's sometimes boring at loon pond, and my own voice is hoarse from all the shouting, so I thought today perhaps a way of generating some excitement would be to stage an ultimate fighting contest between two likely tabloid contenders, David Penberthy and Miranda the Devine (suggestions that the Herald isn't a tabloid are hereby ruled out of order).

Penberthy in You can't immunise against arrogance:

Some years ago at one of those excruciating dinners which really make you hate being middle-aged, we got bailed up by a bombastic couple who chose to bore us senseless by outlining their vehement opposition to immunisation.

Neither of them were scientists but they spoke with an unnerving degree of authority on the vaccination question.

They seemed untroubled by plonking their potentially disease-carrying kids in the middle of a crowded childcare centre, populated by the offspring of families with the sense and humility to defer to those who actually hold medical degrees.

Later the conversation turned to pet ownership and the anti-vaccinators popped their heads up again to say that their poor puppy was scheduled to get his shots.

If only they’d leave their dog at the local ABC Learning Centre. Most parents would be happier if their kid got fleas rather than whooping cough.

Hmm, sounds like he's getting dangerously close to a conspiracy theory about impertinent scribblers:

It seems a special kind of impertinence for people who have absolutely no scientific background to declare that the overwhelming body of scientific and medical knowledge, gathered over the centuries, tested and re-tested not for commercial gain but the good of humanity, should be blithely dismissed out of hand for opinions that have no basis in science, or are embraced only on the scientific fringes.

Miranda the Devine, who has a degree in mathematics from Macquarie University, and spent a year in the CSIRO's textile physics division, before obtaining a masters from Northwestern University in the graduate school of journalism (here), with Climate doomsayers caught out:

Armageddon is not nigh. The planet has been cooling for almost a decade and the fabled climate computer models never predicted that.

And now damning emails leaked from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia have implicated some famous climate scientists in a conspiracy to manipulate data and suppress evidence to exaggerate the case man-made “runaway” global warming is threatening the planet. We see clearly the rotten heart of the propaganda machine that has driven the world to the brink of insanity on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit.

A conspiracy! And not just the world driven to insanity! The Liberal Party of Australia with it!At last damning proof, in those emails and documents recently hacked and leaked into the full to overflowing intertubes.

But wait, Penberthy isn't done, and tries a quick riposte:

As much as I respect colleagues such as Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt I cannot cop their analysis of the leaked email “scandal” from the University of East Anglia which they and other climate change deniers are now citing as proof that the whole global warming caper is, as Liberal Senator and climate sceptic Nick Minchin might say, some sort of communist plot...

... The emails include a number of statements from prominent climate scientists, some of whom have been advising the UN, in which they question their own research methods, challenge their findings and the assumptions they have made.

One stolen email which has been held up by climate change deniers as the most damning features an admission from American climatologist Kevin Trenberth that scientists cannot quantify the lack of global warming to date.

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t ... our observing system is inadequate,” it reads.

That statement of itself doesn’t suggest to me that this scientist or any of his colleagues are cooking the books to create some imagined climate change artifice.

Rather, it sounds like a very orthodox call for scientific rigour - a statement of professional frustration that more has not been done to devise a more reliable method of measuring and checking the extent of temperature increases.

Other leaked emails show the scientists agonising over the veracity of their results. Which is what you want them to do, not knock things into shape to suit their prejudice, but to demand they face even more scrutiny.

But in the hands of the climate change deniers it’s irrefutable proof that the whole thing is a con and a sham, proof that climate change is some sort of cult or religion (ignoring the fact that climate change deniers are so evangelical about their views that they could readily join the Scientologists in holding tax-free status).

The University of East Anglia beat-up does not alter the fact that almost every scientist on the face of this planet believes that the evidence of climate change is there

Wait a second. There's no conspiracy? Quick, Miranda the Devine has the answer to those kinds of weasel words:

The good thing is people can now see the tactics of the alarmists and their army of bovver boys. You can read the emails online and then you can read the sly attempts to explain away the misdeeds. Despite their feigned reasonableness and world-weary calm over the email scandal, climate alarmists are in a mad fumbling panic. They are exposed as dangerous megalomaniacs, foolish, but with enormous power.

Their power came from the complicity of the media and because it suited a certain type of politician to build a new bureaucracy and pose as an environmental saviour, never having to face up to the consequences of being wrong.

Uh huh. So Penberthy is an alarmist bovver boy. I'll always think of him fondly that way in the future. Penbo the bovver boy. Glad we finally got that settled. Let's see how he bovvers given he's in a mad fumbling panic, a dangerous foolish megalomaniac with enormous power:

...when it comes to the basic questions of science, forgive me for sticking with the guys in the lab coats.

The most vociferous critics of climate change on the conservative side of Australian politics are blokes whose past careers include working as policy wonks, party directors, graziers, lawyers - and one of them was a publican.

These are all noble professions - particularly the last one - but I am not sure what kind of standing it gives them to posture as such confident experts on the most perplexing scientific question of the modern age.

Being a lowly hack, I have no scientific background either obviously. Which is why I will listen to what most scientists say.

For all the continuing scientific arguments, there was something I heard recently on an aeroplane which triggered a much more emotional and awestruck response from the passengers, and one which the party political deniers should remember as they advocate that government stay idle on this question.

It was last Thursday, when the pilot said: “Welcome to Adelaide, where the local time is 8.40pm and the temperature is currently 39 degrees.”

Well Penberthy was of course stirring for comment, and he got it in spades, and so is the Devine, and no doubt she will cop a fair collection of comments too. So it goes, and if you want another opinion, why not head off to the Scientific American for David Biello's Climate change cover-up? You better believe it.

Not that we're stating a view, we're so over the science, these days we just print the controversy in a fair and balanced way, and you decide.

But if you want an explanation of why the Liberal party has gone barking mad, and can tolerate the sight of Kevin "the undertaker" Andrews, aka the personality with the charm of a cheeseboard (thanks to others for these), posing as pretender to the throne of the leader of the opposition, look no further than the likes of Miranda the Devine. For she manages to see a glimmer of hope in the debacle:

It was no surprise Kevin Andrews lost yesterday's vote to call a leadership spill for the Liberal Party. But he made a fair fist of it, getting 42 per cent of the vote, despite being a surprise fringe candidate never previously considered for leadership.

Andrews also made a fair fist of explaining the rationale behind his run, stating the obvious truth that Liberals fare best electorally when combining economic liberalism with social conservatism.

More to the point, the fundamentalists want to take control of the asylum, and rather than heading towards the middle ground where Chairman Rudd has put up his tent, they prefer to go off baying at the moon, and barking at the sun, and sounding like a discontented rabble of extremists. Dare we say it, like Miranda the Devine?

Oops, that sounds like the start of an editorial, when all we wanted was a decent battle, and maybe a tap out from a choke hold.

So there you have it. Penberthy v the Devine. The ultimate grudge match between a caring considered person, and a megalomaniac bovver boy. All we can do is show the fight, and it comes down to a points decision where you get to decide.

(Below: more xkcd here).

Kevin Rudd, Maralyn Parker, and the worst are full of passionate intensity ...

(Above: St Kevin with the boss, and below that, I recognize the woman, but who's that Mormon missionary she's with outside the church?)

On a day when the Liberal party is finally in a position to authorize the Labor party to carry out a deeply flawed Liberal party policy, to the consternation of a squawking rump of the Liberal party, it's worthwhile contemplating the continuing legacy of John Howard, as executed by Kevin Rudd.

For that, let's turn to the dogwhistling that marked Chairman Rudd's keynote speech at the Australian Christian Lobby's National Conference, in which the Ruddster eerily managed to sound like Peter Costello being chummy with Pastor Danny. 

Contemplating the quiet years of ordinary people working hard, raising families, building communities and institutions, Rudd whips himself into a fine old lather about the importance of religion:

If we studied those quiet years more closely, I believe we'd all better appreciate the profoundly important role of our churches and religious institutions in our national life.

The work of sustaining community life in times of celebration and times of grief and loss.

The work of caring for those at life's extremities, those in need of care in our hospitals, our aged care homes and our refuges.

The work of improving opportunity for all through our schools.

The work of helping shape the values that are essential for a healthy society - values of compassion, of tolerance, of sacrifice for others, of hard work, of responsibility, of self-respect, - and of the equal dignity of every human being.

And the work of helping people to wrestle with deeper questions of meaning.

This isn't noisy work - it's quiet work.

Yet it's the work that builds a nation.

Work that builds families.

Work that builds communities.

Work that strengthens the social fabric - or the social capital - of the nation.

Homosexuals and uppity women who don't follow the party line excluded of course.

Then Chairman Rudd got into his major theme - the benefits of school chaplains to the educational system and to children. He might not have given the fundies at ACL what they wanted in relation to the current state of homosexual unions in the ACT, but he gave them the next best thing - an education revolution which sees Australia retreating to the educational practices of the nineteen fifties.

O brave new world:

I have been a supporter of school chaplaincies since my time in the Queensland Government almost twenty years ago, as chief of staff to Premier Wayne Goss and then as the Director General of the Cabinet Office.

It was during this period that we formalised arrangements through the state education department for school chaplains to operate in our schools.

The Queensland Department of Education formally approved the Scripture Union of Queensland as the employing authority for state school chaplains.

And the first chaplain was employed at Kelvin Grove State High School, followed by chaplains at the Mitchelton and Craigslea State High Schools.

The development of these formal arrangements for school chaplaincy acted as a catalyst for the education department to develop chaplaincy guidelines, which were first published in 1993.

When these guidelines came into effect, Scripture Union Queensland was the only employer to seek employer accreditation Queensland-wide, and as a result became the predominant chaplaincy employer in the state.

And it is still the most significant group coordinating chaplaincy services, with the strong support of local communities across the state.

We supported the role of chaplains and other student welfare staff such as counsellors and pastoral care workers because we recognised that schools are key institutions in the lives of kids and their families.

The Scripture Union! As weird a set of god botherers of the old school of piety still going around, and always keen to get into the act, whether in schools or universities, here - with no shame on Rudd's part - given a virtual monopoly in Queensland as chaplaincy employer.

But wait, there's more, much more, and it doesn't involve talk of state schools or the employment of counsellors, or the virtues of a secular approach to children and their emotional problems. No, it's about the benefits of god bothering:

Chaplains do great work.

They provide a listening ear for individual students - who are often more comfortable talking to a chaplain or a counsellor than a teacher, because they see them as being independent of the school authorities.

They provide an additional adult role model in the school.

They help connect the school community, including parents and teachers as well as children themselves.

They organise informal school activities where students can make new friendships and develop new interests.

They can arrange expert help with specific challenges, such as dealing with family breakdown, bullying, self-esteem, drugs, grief and behavioural management problems.

Did you catch the throwaway line "Or a counsellor"? Well enough of that idle chatter. Here's the punchline:

School chaplains make a difference.

That is why today I can confirm today that the Government will be continuing the school chaplaincy program.

We will guarantee funding for the next two years until December 2011 for schools currently funded under the National School Chaplaincy Program.

This will involve a total additional investment of $42 million over the 2010 and 2011 school years.

This does two things.

It provides certainty for our schools and chaplains.

And it provides the Government with further time to consult with the community and evaluate the best long-term shape of the program.

During the course of 2010, the Government will be consulting widely over the future shape of chaplaincy and pastoral care programs beyond 2011.

We are doing this because we want to hear your views about ways the long-term program can be improved.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. How about one last outburst of sanctimonious piety in a speech so littered with them it's hard not to feel vaguely nauseous while reading, or being constantly reminded of the smug smirking pieties of Peter Costello:

In the complex world of the 21st century, governments must work together with the whole community to tackle the difficult social problems that we confront.

Churches and faith-based organisations are among our most important partners in that challenge.

You have been doing this quiet work since the first days of European settlement in this nation.

And your work will continue to be of great importance as we confront the challenges that lie ahead.

The Australian Government greatly values the contribution of the nation's churches and faith-based organisations, and we look forward to continuing to build stronger partnerships in the years to come.

Yep, it's Peter Costello in drag, and the real Peter Costello must be chortling with joy to see his legacy so enshrined by Chairman Rudd. If you've got a strong stomach, you can catch the rest of the speech here.

Yet this nonsense, this blather, has passed almost unnoticed, as the Liberal party deguts itself over the implementation of an ETS scheme it devised itself.

The only response I've seen has come from the always reliable Maralyn Parker, who for some strange reason has become a voice of sanity in the Murdoch tabloid Daily Telegraph. Here she is on the deviant Rudd offering up another $42 million for chaplains and the devious Christians:

Worse - Rudd justified the extra spending on a deeply flawed recent study of the chaplaincy program that deviously concluded it was a good thing for public schools to have Christian religious workers on staff.

The Effectiveness of Christian Chaplaincy in Government Schools was commissioned by the National School Chaplaincy Association, an umbrella association for organisations, such as the Scripture Union and GenR8 that supply chaplains to public schools and benefit directly from extra funding.

The study did not include one single NSW public school and one of the two researchers involved is a Uniting Church minister employed by the Christian Research Association

Of course it came up with the insidious recommendation that all public schools should have chaplains.

There's a lot more in Parker's piece, but rather than cannibalize it, I commend it to you - you'll find it here under the header Public schools do not need Christian chaplains.

Oh heck, I can't resist one last grab:

In a speech to the Australian Christian Lobby’s national conference last week Rudd boasted he was Director General of the Cabinet Office in Queensland 20 years ago when that state’s government arranged for school chaplains to begin operating in state schools. Today nearly every public school in QLD has a Christian chaplain.

Bible lessons can be given in regular classes by regular teachers at the discretion of the principal, Christian prayers are chanted at school assemblies, Creationism and Intelligent Design have been taught in senior classes, Christian evangelists are used to “motivate” students and girls are taught to be gentle and obedient - and it is all happening in QLD public schools.

I would hate to see any of that in NSW public schools. Kevin Rudd was very wrong to promise more tax payer money to this sly religious program.

Yep, meet the new boss, he's a carbon copy of the old boss (ah yes the good old days of carbon copies). 

Everything changes so that it can remain the same, and the Labor party keeps on keeping on the policies of John Howard. No wonder the Liberal party is in disarray ... the art of the odious dog whistle, at a cheap, knock down, one off price of $42 million, is now firmly within the tent of Chairman Rudd as he goes about his unctuous, smirking, smarmy business.

(Below: John Howard in a moment of quiet reflection. Lord, what have I done. And who's that Mormon missionary in the background?)

How about my favorite poem to wrap up the morning's reflections. It doesn't really bear on anything, and yet somehow it does:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Glenn Beck, Jan Utzon, and the joy of a tasty conspiracy theory

From all over the world, the signals are coming thick and fast, and they're so strong, they can easily penetrate the aluminium I daily wrap around my head in a futile bid to stop them.

I date it from the moment when fluoride was introduced into the water supply. Sure the holes in my teeth were reduced, but then came the hole in my head. It was compounded by a brief moment when my father dabbled and dallied with freemasonry. Sure he came to his senses, but the damage was done. Then came the moon landing that wasn't, and I knew I could trust no one.

Of course the early influence of the papacy and nuns has to be taken into account, not to mention the Lutheran zealotry of the German side of the family.

If you go back further, perhaps Darwin started it all. He certainly led to Nazism. Of course there was once a time when there was a flat tax and a flat earth, and all was good. But that was before government became big and ruined everything, and started tracking me through my gold fillings, and the bar code I only recently discovered on my bum in the form of a bunch of pimples.

Fortunately there are sages who can warn me of all the perils I face. One such is Glenn Beck, sadly remote from the antipodes, but still his warnings resonate. It seems the United States is facing Recession, Depression or Collapse (see the blackboard above for totally convincing evidence), and he has strategies for all three.

The first is to become a filthy rich wealthy commentator making a fortune out of preaching loonacy, depression and despair, in much the same way as religious quacks did in the nineteen thirties, knowing that the only alternative way to get rich quick is to publish books telling people how to get rich quick.

Sorry, got that wrong. In the case of recession, get out of debt and save, in the case of depression, build a fruit cellar for the fruits sure to come calling, and in the case of collapse, do both, plus throw in god, guns and gold.

Well god will be as useful as he or she has been in recent mass disasters, such as world war 11, the guns will be useful for shooting anything that moves, including yourself, and the gold will be exceptionally handy for trading with everybody else carrying gold. Not so sure about exchanging it for food. Pity the farmers stopped farming during the total collapse, but hey, if you want only the best dental work, the gold will look mighty flashy (you can see more incredibly wise advice from Mr Beck here).

But even though I now feel fortified for the collapse soon to come - no doubt the first step to armageddon and the rapture - I still worry about one of the great mysteries of our time, and I'm not talking about the sphinx, the pyramids, Stonehenge, the work of aliens in South America, or the rise and fall of civilizations gripped by mad hysteria promoted by crazed, deluded members of whatever commentariat was going around at the time (any decent court has its fools, jesters, wizards, witch doctors, seers and prophets of the Rasputin and Nostradamus school of doom).

Yes, the real and pressing issue for these times is what brought down the twin towers and other buildings on 9/11. I used to think that I was in bed watching television when I saw live footage of hijacked aeroplanes crashing into the towers, and I watched in horror as they burned and collapsed and people died in all kinds of ugly ways, and I credited the acts to mad fanatics acting under most dangerous delusion of all, the god delusion which promises them eternal life for being crazed fruitcakes.

But I got it wrong, it must have just been a dream. It seems that the United States government was somehow involved, and controlled detonations were the real cause of the various collapses, and what's even more remarkable is that this kind of thinking reportedly infects the likes the likes of Jan Utzon, son of Joern Utzon.

In another life - so many lives, so little time - I had more than a passing acquaintance with explosives - oh yes I could mix a slurry with a fringe on top, the finest ANFO ever brewed - and I have some idea of the degree of difficulty of wiring busy, working, downtown skyscrapers with sufficient explosives to do a decent controlled detonation, unnoticed by anyone until the fatal day.

Only someone trained on conspiracy theories or Hollywood movies - or both - could conjure up a decent conspiracy, which both absolves al-Qaeda and implicates the US government. Me, I prefer the Bourne trilogy, but for some, it ain't a decent movie unless it's happening in real life.

Well you can read the story about Jan Utzon and the matter of 9/11 in the Herald, under the header Utzon's son signs up for September 11 conspiracy theory, and being clever at stretching its juicy conspiracy theories to an unseemly tabloid depth, the Herald also manages to extract double the juice by printing Rick Feneley's denialism of the deniers in Fire, not a government plot, felled third tower.

Well I don't need any convincing by Feneley, as only recently I wandered through the local town square and saw conspiracy theorists preaching the gospel up close. They seemed normal, and perhaps were in many ways, but in one fundamental way - the particular 9/11 conspiracy theory that held them in its icy stare - they were barking mad, and it was only by supreme self effort that I didn't go up and bark at them.

I mean the intertubes is the place for barking mad conspiracies, not the town square as sedate shoppers go about their materialist promenades.

It got me to wondering why the modern generation of conspiracy theorists don't go back to the really tasty conspiracies like the assassination of John F. Kennedy as an alternative to stamp-collecting.

What interests me is how people get bound up in conspiracy theories and turn into Sherlock Holmes types who gradually lose connection with reality - as shown by the BBC program on the conspiracy theories surrounding 7/7, where they start off giving credence to the theorists, then slowly peel away the layers of the onion to reveal the nothing at the middle (here for the ABC background on that show, which also links to the BBC site). If you google 7/7 conspiracy, you'll get plenty of video to while away the hours.

Now what I find befuddling is that between a muddle and a conspiracy, a muddle wins every time. And sometimes the muddle and the hysteria surrounding it can lead to straight out naked tragedies, as happened to Jean Charles de Menezes when he got blown away in a train. That's the real cause for alarm, not the notion that the UK government set up 7/7. But somehow that's too nakedly obvious for a decent conspiracy theorist intent on uncovering secrets - what's to get excited about if someone gets blown away in public, or aircraft crash into buildings and bring them down? On such mindless fodder did the alchemists and the Rosicrucians build their empires.

My best guess is that it's something to do with obsessive compulsive behavior, paranoia and, once a conspiracy theory is given exposure and gains traction, mutual reinforcement in social settings for those alienated from society or from others (Dr. Patrick Leman only scratches the surface of the psychology of conspiracy here).

As usual, wikipedia is an interesting starting point - you can take your digital content Chairman Rupert and shove it - with a neat introduction to conspiracy theory here, and a link to a list of conspiracy theories which could keep you going all week or all year.

Whatever, while the world might run more smoothly without either conspiracies or conspiracy theorists, it would be a disaster for loon pond, which cherishes every absurd theory that comes its way, and these come from the highest to the lowest. Former Prime Minister Thabo Mbeki's denialism on Aids is still resonating in South Africa (here) while I can assure you without blushing that it's the mind parasites in my brain which causes my addiction to chocolate.

Yep, the news that Jan Utzon and Glenn Beck have something in common is somehow strangely reassuring. We can all be barking mad, north by north west, as a hawk is to a handsaw, and others will listen, and here at loon pond, we can jot them down as a record of the times.

What a pity it will all come to an end in 2012 ...

Oh and how remiss of me. Go here if you want an antipodean blast of the 911 'truth'. But don't get too worried or excited ... remember you've only got three years, and we're counting ...

(Below: more xkcd here).

Reverend Fred Nile, and on a day when the spruce goose squawked, a most important survey

(Above: the Rev Fred survey, which we commend to you with all our heart. Click for a larger image, see below for details).

Lordy, the spruce goose sometimes known as Kevin Andrews has failed in his leadership challenge, leaving Malcolm in the middle to continue with his impression of the last dodo standing, on the basis of a 48 35 split which leaves him like a barn door in a gale.

But while the result might have been predictable, and the sun might be shining, it's been a dark and gloomy day on loon pond. When the main parties act in a loony way, it unnerves the real loons, who are inclined to be sensitive and shy.

All the squawking and fussing and feuding over the Liberal party leadership has driven a lot of loons away from the pond. Or under water, or into the scrub where they can hide their light under a bush.

Sure the climate change debate goes on and on at tedious length, but even the usually reliable Janet Albrechtsen has taken refuge in bank worship as a way of undermining Chairman Rudd (We can't bank on risky Rudd).

Well I guess that at a time when the Liberal party resembles the Titanic, or perhaps a leaky rowboat, and Malcolm in the middle the hapless women and children about to be pushed off the boat, then announcing profound, widespread fiscal disaster unless we worship at the feet of the wonderful banks is only mildly loopy.

A magnificently functioning economy is about to be sacrificed to the Rudd government’s desire for G20 glory, she croaks, in a passable imitation of the ancient mariner, but sadly on this day of crisis, she's pissing into the wind, and there's not even any blowback from the punters.

Besides, worship of Australian banks is old voodoo for Albrechtsen, and at loon pond, we always like the hot spicy curry of genuine lunacy to distract us from the sight of Kevin Andrews posing as a contender in a heavyweight battle, when truth be told, he should really be given the job of posing as a tumbleweed in a B grade oater (or western to you young 'uns). Even then there's the question of whether he could roll across the set on cue and with conviction ...

That's when an idle moment - surely the hand of god was involved - led me to The Tally Room, and the revelation that the Reverend Fred Nile has launched a kooky survey in Bradfield as part of the by-election campaign (Fred launches kooky survey in Bradfield):

It’s difficult to work out how this is supposed to help the CDP campaign in the by-election, beyond some fairly obvious push-polling. I don’t expect many voters will bother to respond to such a survey, and it seems like a bizarre use of resources.

Well excuse me, I think it's a wonderful use of resources, and in these dark and gloomy days, it behooves us all to help out the Reverend Fred.

Because you don't have to be a Bradfield voter to express your point of view. You can rush here online, using the very latest futurist good given technology, the intertubes, to express your point of view on such vital and seminal and important issues as to whether Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and Reverend Fred is wonderful.

Amongst some of the more wonderful seminal and vital issues requiring your adjudication, surely this is one of the most pressing:

7. Australia should employ the Fijian Navy to intercept illegal immigrants.

Sadly there's no room for my personal opinion that we should employ the Peruvian Navy, and that Tasmania should be converted into a gulag for all foreigners currently resident in Australia, but I'm surely the Rev Fred will catch up with us in time.

But you do get a chance to cast your vote on whether we should do what the Greenies want, and let any foreigner in, or instead give our migratory preference to persecuted Christians, or better yet put a ten year moratorium on Muslim immigration to keep Australia Christian.

Again I feel a little let down - no mention of the key question as to whether atheists and secularists might best be employed by being sent into the dead heart in a gulag, and given the job of turning the desert into a new garden of eden (or at least do a better job than the gulags managed in Siberia).

Let a thousand flowers bloom from their filthy perverted thinking, and any dissenters can be crushed into blood and bone to fertilize the soil.

Now idlers, wastrels, self-abusers, immolators and ne'er do wells might well request that there be a question on whether we can evict the Reverend Fred to New Zealand, but I have it on good authority that the New Zealanders might not accept him. They too take a firm stand on foreigners, especially devils with an Australian accent.

Anyway, this site naturally disapproves of flaming, and any attempted mischievous abuse of a wonderful, determined attempt to find out the heart and soul and thinking of the electorate, but all you have to do is dust off one of your old Hotmail addresses, expect it to be spammed for an eternity, and you too can answer all the questions and skew the results how you will.

I commend the survey to you.

Sadly when I attempted to help you meet the Christian Democratic Party Candidates for Bradfield (at the same locale here, I got a 404, proving once again that satan is as suspected a heartless geek with a nerdish inclination to evil. As a result, it looked like I wouldn't be able to show you the candidates you might flourish your handcrafted 666 sign at on the way to casting your vote.

Then by accident - or was it once again the hand of god which pointed the way - I took a look in my download box, and found that the advanced geeks had decided a power point presentation was the way to go, not surprising because the wily Fred has put forward a team of nine - almost enough for a decent game of beach cricket.

Well that's too many to show here, so let's just put up one, whose cavalier laughter looks inspirational. Yes, you have to admire the cut of his jib, and thank the lord for the cavortings of the Rev Fred on a day when the pond is full of squawking geese.

Paul Sheehan, David Penberthy, Liberal leadership dreams and delusions, and a couple of moments of sanity on loon pond

(Above: Goya's visionary painting of the Liberal party leadership struggle. You can find a convenient listing of Goya at the Prado - a great museum on the basis of its Goyas alone - by going here).

Every so often, it's almost natural for the inhabitants of loon pond to seek rational debate and reasonable insight, instead of the rambling portents and incoherent signs of doom and disaster pronounced from on high by commentariat columnists.

No good will come of it, of course, because the craving for spectacle is as innate as the craving for sugar and salt and chocolate.

And it has its benefits. Consider, as the Liberals tear themselves apart, the rich fantasy life of Paul Sheehan, in Nothing wrong with Libs disunity on climate change.

Here's the inspiration for his delusion:

In the US, Republicans and Democrats vote against their party on major issues all the time, because they are not bound by the convention inherited from the British that party discipline is the first principle of politics.

The first principle of politics should be principle.

Actually the first principle of politics is politics, and you don't need to read Machiavelli's The Prince to realize that. But having established the delusional notion that the United States political system should spring to life in Australia fully blown in a leap and a bound, Sheehan can then end his column - with the pious hope that it will end Liberal internal self-destruction - this way:

It would be a victory for principle over factionalism, if Labor members as well as those from the Coalition crossed the floor on this issue without destroying their careers.

Memo to self: do not employ Paul Sheehan as political consultant. Do not follow his advice to wish upon a star because in reality anything your heart desires will not always come to you, some requests are too extreme when you wish upon a star as dreamers do, and sometimes bolts from the blue are likely to be fate getting involved in ways that don't make dreams come true.

Only benefit from reading Paul Sheehan? Strange surreal flashback to Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket singing When You Wish upon a Star.

Oh and the hope that Tony Abbott is suddenly a potential leader, squelched by Tony Abbott in a trice.

But Sheehan isn't the only one caught on the hop by the current Liberal blood sports. Some of the commentariat have wandered off into the furthest deeps of loon pond rather than write about the bull fight, knowing that at the end there's a kill and blood in the dust.

Perhaps the most bizarre belongs to David Penberthy, who in search of an angle offered up Is this the next Leader of the Liberal Party?

In it, Penberthy canvasses the notion that the delusional Kevin Andrews might challenge Malcolm Turnbull today, which is to say at the time of writing, yesterday.

Of course no challenge came, and the notion that the gormless recessive Andrews had a snowball's chance in hell shows how the bloodlust can let the pen run ahead of any rational insight. In the old days, at least we would have had a decent fish and chip wrapping, these days the intertubes gets dangerously full to overflowing keeping track of reams of digitized blather.

The meaningless meditations and cogitations by Penberthy, in a world totally unrelated to the current one in which we live, included this kind of nonsense:

... Andrews’ candidature could do two things. In isolation, it would damage Turnbull by drawing public attention to the level of dissatisfaction within the party, and set Tony Abbott up for a run in the near future. But it could also have the immediate effect of triggering a wave of other leadership nominations and counter-nominations inside today’s Party Room meeting with an unpredictable Melbourne Cup field slugging it out.

Which is journalist shorthand for bring on the dream - fresh fodder for weeks as we delve into the entrails of the leadership crisis.

The last time we had this sort of nonsense, Joe Hockey was involved, and Hockey had ten - some would say a hundred - times the credibility of Andrews.

Amongst the puffery, a glimmer of reality struck home in Penberthy's piece:

Andrews is a gentle sort of a bloke, a devout Christian and social conservative, and is well-liked within the party. But he has many strong critics of his past ministerial performance - most notably as Workplace Relations Minister when he struggled to sell the apparent benefits of Workchoices and was punted for Joe Hockey, or as Immigration Minister after Philip Ruddock when he led the bungled crusade against the (wrongly) accused terrorist Dr Haneef.

Oh dear, you mean that Kevin Andrews, the totally incompetent doofus? Well surely he's perfectly positioned to lead the current Liberal team, and that team player Wilson Tuckey.

Then Penberthy provides the icing on his rambling cake:

But today isn’t about his vision for the future or his leadership talents. It’s about clobbering Malcolm Turnbull. And as a loyal member of the Right, Andrews is prepared to go in as the spear-carrier for his faction today as Turnbull limps towards the end of this final sitting week for 2009.

It's not about his vision for the future or his leadership talents? WTF?

Every now and then, Penberthy shows he has a tenuous hold by one finger on reality, and a seat in the real world:

Kevin Andrews is not the Right’s preferred candidate - but he is the one who has volunteered to go over the top on behalf of the party’s conservatives. He told SkyNews ominously yesterday that “At the moment we have a leader but I am a loyal servant of the party and I will do any job that I am asked to do,” Mr Andrews told Sky News.

Andrews is not expected to get the numbers.

WTF? Ominously? A powder puff is ominous? So why am I reading this nonsense about this goose?

Well here's the reason. Anything for a bit of cross promotion:

- Kevin Andrews has submitted several pieces for The Punch over the past few months on climate change, population policy and an interesting personal piece on how his first job was as a race-caller. You can read them here.

Sorry, I somehow dropped the link at the end of that piece, but you can go to The Punch for the links if you've got intestinal fortitude.

Meanwhile, I'm afraid I'll have to unilaterally declare David Penberthy goose of the Liberal leadership crisis week, for sheer puffery and silliness while scribbling. Sure it's only Wednesday, but who could out-goose such a class act of goosery? Such a goosey honking.

Phew. Well let's just step away from loon pond for the moment.

Yesterday loon pond featured the dilemma facing poor old Chairman Rupert, with his singular inability to understand the intertubes, but we didn't manage to mention Matthew Ricketson's The brave new world of media advertising.

What Ricketson says isn't new news, but what a pity Chairman Rupert and his minions don't settle down for a read. Let me borrow Ricketson's punch line as a tease, so you might be beguiled in to reading the substance of his piece:

Murdoch may rail against "content kleptomaniacs" such as Google but his ire appears to be misdirected. It is really against new forms of technology that spell the end of a business model that has supported media companies for nearly two centuries, and he, like everyone else it seems, has no clear idea what will replace it.

And finally we'd like to make room for Ross Cameron, and Please explain: why Palin is their Pauline.

Cameron's conclusion, for the former member of Parramatta, shows a singular insight into the way politicians can crash as the wax on their wings melts when they fly too close to the sun:

Palin's faltering advocacy diminishes the conservative cause. Choosing Palin was the biggest Republican blunder since the impeachment of Bill Clinton. She cannot sustain this bubble. Australians are ahead of Americans here - we have seen the rise and fall of Pauline Hanson.

Like her, Palin will crash. The more pressing question is, how much damage will Palin do to the brand of a truly grand old party before the star implodes? We right-wingers should do ourselves a favour, limit the fallout and face the fact the left is right about Sarah Palin.

But if you want the absolute truth, it was because while reading his piece, I was struck by this image of Sarah Palin and a pissing fountain boy, as provided by a crass Yellow Pages ad, typical of the new world of in your face online advertising, as old media tries to get a bit of money out of the intertubes.

Click to get a bigger picture. And don't blame me, we only provide fair and balanced images, and you decide:

UPDATE: by golly, I might owe that goose Penberthy a huge apology. According to this AAP story in The Age, I want Turnbull's job, says Andrews, the goose Kevin Andrews continues to remain hot to trot for the leadership:

Mr Andrews said he believed a spill motion had been circulated and seconded.

‘‘It would be extraordinary if that wasn’t facilitated,’’ he said.

If Mr Turnbull did not call a meeting over the issue tomorrow, Mr Andrews said party members would be forced ‘‘to think about what happens’’.

Asked if he would be a starter if the positions of Mr Turnbull and Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop became vacant, he replied, ‘‘Yes I would’’.

The cunning deviant! What better way to make Tony Abbott, jolly Joe Hockey and any one else in the Liberal party sound like a qualified candidate. Who are you, what you got? will be the first question asked, and the answer will be Well, I'm better than Kevin Andrews. Sold, step up to the job with our blessing. Even Wilson Tuckey might get the gig on that basis.

Meanwhile, it's reassuring to know that Andrews will be forced to think about what happens. I know, I know, thinking is hard for bears with limited brains, but just remember honey, and all will be well.

Premier Mike Rann, and an international crisis covered in depth by Chairman Rupert's minions

(Above: quick, old Adelaideans, the above is just a screen cap, the real juice is here. Go local for the truth).

At this key moment in the nation's affairs, when we confront a crisis of gothic proportions - perhaps even exceeding the crisis that overwhelms in the world in the barely fictionalized dramatized documentary 2012, where do you turn for the most up to date news from the source that you can most trust?

What's that? The ETS? Never heard of it.

Robb undermining Turnbull? Molehill.

Kevin Andrews wanting to be PM? Snicker. In his preening dreams, the ponce.

No, no, none of that. The crisis overwhelming crow eaters as they slowly digest the news that Premier Mike Rann is embroiled in a sex scandal, and Chairman Rupert strikes again.

I so loved the effort of the oxymoronically titled Adelaide Now ... - the latest news at time of writing is an offer of lie detector tests at ten paces - that I found the need to do a little cap of the online masthead irresistible. Here is the way forward for journalism, and a way to ensure the common gossips and the scolds will fork over their sixpence to keep up to speed. Surely the online feast is a marvel of modern technology, showing exactly how puny the feats of the ordinary front page of the hard copy have become. So puny, pathetic, and striking up against the 'in a heartbeat' updates online. The main story has already copped 650 comments at time of writing, and surely more to come.

What a pity Larry Olivier and Marilyn Monroe won't be around for the revamp of The Prince and the Showgirl, under the new title, The Premier and the Parliamentary Waitress, which I hear is already in book form, and shortly to be optioned and receive development funding from the SAFC.

Meantime, the only excitement of any kind in any of the media is the breathless babbling surrounding the affair, with concerns about the ethics of reporting the matter, or the ethics of the relationship, or the ethics of the lifestyle choices of the participants in the saga.

Such a squawking on loon pond, and who said sex didn't sell. Well we don't have anything to add to the squawking or the rabbiting on, which has preoccupied sundry sages from places as diverse as The Punch, Crikey and the broadsheet rags (we take the tabloids as par for the course - it only being nature and natural for the tabloids to embark on a slobbering, lip smacking, seething, foaming frenzy - but how strange to see old aunty Adelaide Advertiser now dressed up in mini skirt and bright red lipstick as The News of old).

Why am I reminded of the time when I was spotted walking in the mall with an out of towner, and within minutes it had been reported to my partner that I was clearly in the middle of an alarming affair?

Well here's a song for all you old Adelaideans, and thankfully it isn't Paul Kelly, though whenever in the grip of despair, you can always put on Paul Kelly and sing about the wisteria on the back verandah still blooming, and the great aunts either insane or dead or sitting in the same chairs as last year, and Kensington road running straight for awhile before turning, or spilling wine on Colonel Light's statue, and all the king's horses and all the king's men not dragging you back again, but hey, I thought the Pogues evoked more of the spirit of the moment:

Heard a siren from the docks
Saw a train set the night on fire
Smelled the spring on the smoky wind
Dirty old town
Dirty old town

I'm going to make me a good sharp axe
Shining steel tempered in the fire
Will chop you down like an old dead tree
Dirty old town
Dirty old town

I met my love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a dream by the old canal
Kissed a girl by the factory wall
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
Dirty old town

Storm in a teacup? Some cup, some storm. Remember Don Dunstan in his pyjamas? Oh Adelaaaayde, Adelaaaayde ...

Chairman Rupert, the Zune, the Bing, the Google, and boycott Bing ...

(Above: black sunglasses are so cool).

Remember the Zune?

Ah children, gather around, because it was the worst of times, with the evil Apple empire threatening the brave republic with the iPod, and a rival product was needed (now you might think that with over ninety per cent of key markets, that Microsoft is the evil empire, but enough of that or you're off to the re-education camps, which include a little salt mining for recreation and fitness).

Here's how PC Authority called the Zune move:

Microsoft seems to have missed one of the essential laws of the technology industry. Many companies have their cool moments. Apple is probably the most commonly called cool, but Sony, Nokia, Cray and even IBM have had their stylish moments. But Microsoft is not, and will never be, cool. It's the IT equivalent of the your dad's fashion sense – elasticated trousers are very sensible but they'll never grace a Milanese runway.

If you want more Microsoft bashing fun, why not take a look at their Top 10 worst Microsoft products of all time, which only allows Encarta an honourable mention! In the end it boils down to a close call between Vista and Windows ME, with ME topping the list.

There's plenty of other lists out there on the full to overflowing intertubes - just google top 10 worst Microsoft products and you can have hours of educational fun and geek nostalgia for the way things were.

Oh sorry, I should have said why don't you just bing the top 10 worst Microsoft products.

Bing? As in Bing Lee? No, Bing as in how Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch will combine to bring down Google and set the intertubes right, and save the world and newspapers, and allow decent people to charge a decent dime for a decent day's work.

Did Murdoch Just Figure Out How To Save The Newspaper Industry? is the latest meme to grip the intertubes, as exemplified in Eric Savitz's piece:

According to the Wall Street Journal (which like this blog is published by News Corp.), Murdoch has had talked with Microsoft (MSFT) about a deal in which News Corp. would remove its newspaper content from Google’s (GOOG) search engine, while continuing to include it in Microsoft’s Bing search engine. The story is attributed to “people familiar with the matter.” (here)

Well we'll overlook the "has had talked" because the intertubes is no place for sub editors. As part of costs issues, and down sizing, quality control has had to be sacrificed, and we at this site pursue that task with relish and vigor. No quality control here, here no quality control (or cash for that matter).

But back to Savitz:

The story said the talks are in a very early stage, and might not result in a deal; a key issue is the price Microsoft would pay News Corp. to feature its content, which includes not just Barron’s and the Journal, but also the New York Post, the Sun, the Times of London, the Australian and various other publications. Unclear is whether the deal might also include MySpace and Fox television properties.

The Financial Times, which broke the story on Sunday, writes that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search index. The FT writes that “one website publisher approached by Microsoft said that the plan ‘puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them’.”

Golly, all Rupert's minions are in a lather of excitement (you can still read the slobbering in the Financial Times in Microsoft and News Corp eye web pact, but expect a demand for payment in the process). There's a way out of the wilderness, and Microsoft will, Moses like, part the seas and show them the way to a peaceful home (like the Middle East is sooh peaceful).

The ceaseless quest for an oligopoly that can tend towards a price gouging monopoly is never ending.

Well yes, but once you stop jumping up and down, it's just Microsoft trying to buy a loyalty it hasn't earned through its product base, and for a contrasting view, why not take a look at Erick Schonfeld's Bing Tries To Buy The News:

In order to actually make a dent in Google’s market share, Bing would have to pay such exorbitant sums to so many different news companies that it would be difficult to recoup its investment. Bing certainly get some marketing buzz out of any such move, but that’s about it.

The big problem with a search engine trying to buy market share by buying parts of the news is that information spreads so quickly these days, exclusives last about 30 seconds. That information will end up on a site that is indexed by Google. Or the same news will be broken by someone else on the Web before the WSJ.com even gets to it.

Exclusive indexing goes against the Web’s inherent openness. Companies that try to curtail that openness don’t last long on the Web.

Well bring it on, and good luck with that.

This site has been part of a ceaseless, tireless campaign to put all Chairman Rupert's commentariat columnists behind a paywall immediately, and yet we see no signs of our demands being met. Day after day we're confronted by loons demanding recognition in loon pond, let out of the asylum, with no paywall to keep them captive, and day after day we capitulate to their squawking demands.

Enough already. Do the deed, get into bed with Bing, and let's see where it leads us in this crazy, troubled mixed up world.

But you can sense the leftist radicals are already feeling that the time is right to strike. Take that wretched Nicholas Kristof, in his enclave in The New York Times, with his call to Boycott Microsoft Bing (oops, typical leftie, direct link currently ends in cyber space, go to blog and scroll down, here):

Critics have accused President Obama of kowtowing to Chinese leaders, by failing to meet dissidents, toning down his criticisms and delaying a meeting with the Dalai Lama. On balance, I think that criticism is premature: Confrontation doesn’t help with China and can hurt, and so engagement becomes a fine line to navigate. The Obama visit wasn’t a ringing success, but neither was it a craven embarrassment.

For the latest craven kowtowing, we can look somewhere else: Microsoft and its new search engine, Bing.

Oh sure, Kristof slags off Yahoo and Google too, pretending he's fair and balanced and you decide, but he reserves his main venom for poor young Bing:

If you search a term on Bing that is politically sensitive in China, in English the results are legitimate. Search “Tiananmen” and you’ll find out about the army firing on pro-democracy protesters in 1989. Search Dalai Lama, Falun Gong and you also get credible results. Conduct the search in complex Chinese characters (the kind used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) and on the whole you still get authentic results.

But conduct the search with the simplified characters used in mainland China, then you get sanitized pro-Communist results. This is especially true of image searches. Magic! No Tiananmen Square massacre. The Dalai Lama becomes an oppressor. Falun Gong believers are villains, not victims.

What’s most offensive is that this is true wherever in the world the search is conducted – including in my office in New York. If Microsoft felt it had to bow to Chinese censorship within China’s borders, based on the IP address, that might be defensible. But when Microsoft skews its worldwide searches to make Hu Jintao feel better, that’s a disgrace. It becomes simply a unit of the Central Committee Propaganda Department.

But, but, billy goat butt, that sounds just like the kind of product Chairman Rupert would have a natural affinity for, bringing him and Paramount leader Hu together to forge a new and exciting and controlled and paying intertubes. After all, Chairman Rupert has long dreamed the impossible dream about China and been ready to jump through all kinds of hoops to make that dream come true (Murdoch's China dream shattered).

Now before the alliance is even fully developed, the lefties are calling for a boycott of Bing:

Microsoft apparently doesn’t want to pursue the Google solution of having separate sites – one that produces generally legitimate results (google.com) and another within China that blatantly censors (google.cn). Instead, Bing figured it would have one site and just censor all the results in simplified Chinese characters. It then compounded the problem by dissembling and disguising its policy. That’s craven and embarrassing, it betrays the integrity of Microsoft searches, and for me it’s a reason to boycott Bing.

Boycott Bing!?

Sir, you are a cad.

Well Kristof provides a link to Microsoft's response, and you can read others on the response by starting here.

But why do I get the sense that Chairman Rupert might have decided to buy his very own Zune to solve his business problems?

The upside? Chairman Rupert's empire, home of Fox News, continues to totter a little precariously on its high heeled indignation.

The downside? Loon pond will continue to be full of loons romping outside the paywall for a considerable time to come ...

It just ain't fair. Bring back the Zune!

(Below: old blackboard. They left out Bing!)

Gerard Henderson, the socialist media, the battling Liberals, a history lesson, and a word from Mr Pooter

(Above: et tu Gerard Henderson?)

It takes a special skill to chastise a political player for a speech devoid of empirical data, and then lead with a statement devoid of empirical data, and to chastise the Liberal party for airing their dirty linen in public, and then proceeding to wash their linen, dry it, and give it a thorough ironing, with bonus lashings of arch starch.

But Gerard Henderson puts that special skill on display with In this climate, it's stupid to air your dirty linen in public.

First to the score this week, and it will be a boondoggle for those loving long odds:

First mention of John Howard in the column: 9th paragraph

Number of mentions of John Howard in the column: six

Not until the ninth par does the immortal John Howard enter the picture, then in a flurry scores six mentions! The canny, wily Henderson is playing with the punters, and surely someone somewhere today pulled off a betting coup of the quality of the Fine Cotton affair.

Meantime, back to the empirical issue:

Some Liberals seem to forget that a substantial majority of journalists vote for the Labor Party or the Greens and there are few soft interviews available to them on the electronic media or in newspapers.

Source please, instead of a repetition of a long held, often stated, but never sourced prejudice. Henderson has been known to mock the one attempt at statistical study of bias in the media, but in a singular demonstration of magical powers, always prefers to channel his own prejudices when it comes to the dominant Murdoch and Fairfax media, not to mention the commercial television and radio mobs. (If you lost money on Henderson today, why not irritate him by taking a look at the Gans and Leigh study in pdf form, available here).

Perhaps his source was the always reliable musings of Australian News Commentary, which way back in 1999 called things the Henderson way when musing on the failure of Pauline Hanson's One Nation:

Maybe it was because the extremely powerful men who control Australia's media are quite comfortable with the Labor/Liberal duopoly in politics. The media barons know they can get their way with either when they are in power. One Nation would appear to them as a renegade outfit. It might not be so compliant - better to destroy it at birth. There is strong evidence that the Packer and Murdoch media have led the anti-Hanson campaign.

Maybe the journalists themselves didn't like the proposition of Labor being consigned to opposition for a long time. There is a philosophical alliance between Labor and journalists. Most journalists are unionists, and hence have a sympathy with the party set up and supported by unionists. And by the time journalists leave university most of them have a natural lean to the Left. The pseudo-sciences of sociology and psychology indoctrinate many of them into becoming politically correct, do-gooders with a socialist outlook on life.

I will leave it to you to speculate as to the reasons for the media's anti-Hanson campaign.

But one fact remains - the media in Australia have far too much power and influence.

Lordy, and they didn't even blame Henderson's albatross and bête noire , the ABC.

Never mind, let's get on with the airing and the washing and the ironing of the dirty linen in the Liberal party. First of all it's Malcolm Turnbull's fault:

Yet last month the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, chose the Radio National Breakfast program to send a message to his parliamentary colleagues that he was not prepared to lead a party which has nothing to say on climate change.

There would have been no problem if Turnbull had delivered such a message in the Liberal party room in Canberra. However, by issuing this missive on radio, in the presence of a television camera, he made public what should have been private.

There wouldn't have been a problem with Barnaby Joyce and Nick Minchin rolling around in the corners of power? Dearie me that sort of optimistic pious platitude from our prattling Polonius shows exactly why poor old Malcolm in the middle is having such a hard time. As usual, it's all the fault of the victim, who helped introduce the very kind of bill while in power that the fundies are now seeking to frustrate:

If the Opposition Leader receives a reasonable compromise from Labor on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme this week, and cannot get this deal through his party room, the Breakfast clip will be used widely to demonstrate he was rolled.

Because he will have been rolled, and that would have been understood whether he turned up to debate the issue on air, or not.

Henderson finally gets to the real cause of the trouble, the sundry clowns and climate deniers who made such transparent Judas's of themselves on Four Corners:

Earlier this month, a number of Liberals decided to go on Four Corners to express their doubts about the Coalition allowing Kevin Rudd's scheme to pass through the Senate. The group included two frontbenchers - Opposition Senate leader Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott - and backbenchers Cory Bernardi, Julian McGauran, Dennis Jensen and Mathias Cormann.

Barnaby Joyce, who leads the National Party in the Senate, indicated his opposition to the scheme. However, the Liberal frontbenchers Ian Macfarlane and Christopher Pyne defended Turnbull's position. It was as if the Coalition had decided to film their internal arguments and place the product on the Liberal Party's website.

Well if Minchin, Abbott and the rest had shut up there wouldn't have been a problem!

Oh you believe that do you? Put yourself down for a place in the prattling Polonius school of deluded optimism.

The real problem is of course that the Liberals had and supposedly have had, and still have a policy on climate change. Poor old Malcolm in the middle told us so, as you can find on the Liberal Party site (here):

Now the Coalition will offer bipartisan support to the Government for the carbon abatement targets Australia takes to the Copenhagen climate change conference in December. Those targets are, as you know, an unconditional five per cent reduction from 2000 levels by 2020 and a reduction of up to 25 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020 subject to a global agreement being reached to achieve a substantial reduction in global emissions. Now this enables Mr Rudd to go to Copenhagen in the knowledge that the entire Parliament or at least the Government and the Opposition support the targets he is taking there. It’s a rare degree of bipartisan support and I imagine few national leaders will go to Copenhagen with that degree of support.

Well yes I imagine few national leaders will go to Copenhagen with that rare degree of bipartisan support. Because rounding up the cowboys proved harder than Malcolm thought, as they acted like enraged steers on a stampede.

Poor Henderson is troubled by the concept that the Liberal party might have a policy on this issue:

Life in opposition was always going to be difficult for the Coalition. The problem has been exacerbated by Turnbull's insistence that the Liberals have a firm stance on carbon reduction.

Better that they don't have a firm stance, that they wobble around like jelly, with the strength of a marshmallow and the philosophical depth of a doughnut?

Never mind, as usual with Henderson, when confronted by a real issue in the here and now, he always retreats to the safety and comfort of a history lesson about Liberal traditions. This time it's Abbott, Turnbull and Brandis who must cop the lecture on their lecturing:

All three identified themselves with the Menzies tradition. But the sharpest contrast was between Abbott and Minchin. Abbott supports the stand adopted by Howard. He sees the Liberal Party as embodying both liberal and conservative traditions. Not so Brandis, who maintains that "one of the keys to grasping the Menzian conception of liberalism is that he did not view the Liberal Party as a conservative party". According to Brandis, Menzies "stood for freedom". It's as simple as that.

Well surely it has to be as simple as that. Who on earth, right at this moment, in these troubled times, would dump on the immortal founder of the Liberal party?

But is it? Those contemporary Liberals who see Menzies as embodying the principles of liberalism and freedom - and nothing else - overlook the fact this is not how he was viewed when prime minister. The Menzies government sought to ban the Communist Party, committed Australian forces to Korea and Vietnam, introduced conscription for military service overseas and upgraded the national security provisions in the Crimes Act. None of this is mentioned in Brandis's speech, largely devoid of empirical data.

Gerard Henderson would dump on him, that's who! By golly he stopped short of mentioning the pig iron Bob phase of Menzies' career (press release here) or his embarrassing "I did but see her passing by , and yet I love her till I die" devotion to the British monarchy (here), but his portrait of Menzies as an anti-freedom tyrant comes pretty close to heresy. Pass the smelling salts please, reading this kind of Nick Minchin posturing, Tony Abbott hectoring heretic is heady stuff. Next thing someone will be telling me Barnaby Joyce is an agrarian socialist ...

Lordy I feel faint. Quick, pass me someone else to bash, preferably outside the Liberal tent, so we can get back on an even keel. Yes, Waleed Aly, you'll do, you need a history lesson too:

A similar absence of evidence can be found in current assessments of the Liberal Party. On the ABC's News Breakfast program yesterday, the Monash University academic Waleed Aly depicted Minchin as "very close to John Howard" and maintained "he was one of the few people in the Liberal Party who actually was prepared to approach John Howard and suggest that he step aside for the good of the party". In fact, the relationship between Howard and Minchin in the years leading to the 2007 election was less than cordial and Minchin never spoke directly to Howard about the leadership issue.

Ah well, history's done and dusted, now to sort out the squabbling Liberals:

The problem for the Liberals is not that Turnbull and Minchin disagree on carbon reduction but that their debate is being conducted in public as part of a discussion about what the Liberal Party really stands for. It's possible this debate will continue into next year. But it's also possible the absence of a consensus at Copenhagen will put the focus back on the Rudd Government. The challenge for the Liberals is to remember they are in opposition and to understand downloading to the media is usually ill-advised.

It isn't a problem they disagree, and that there's a profound philosophical split in the party, if they'd only stay out of the debate and stay out of the media and keep everything behind closed doors like the 36 faceless men who ran the Labor party?

By golly, that's advice Mr Pooter himself could live with as he searched after middle class respectability and the quiet life. And while you might think that kind of posture spineless or craven, what a bold policy stroke it is, as strong and as sensible as an ostrich sticking its head in the sand.

Such are the days of our lives, and so pass the columns of Gerard Henderson through the hourglass of time ...

And now, because we never like to be gloomy, in memory of Bob Menzies and the picket fence hook on tie view of the world, a reading from Mr Pooter and his Diary of a Nobody:

I shall never forget the effect the words, “happy medium,” had upon him. He was brilliant and most daring in his interpretation of the words. He positively alarmed me. He said something like the following: “Happy medium, indeed. Do you know ‘happy medium’ are two words which mean ‘miserable mediocrity’? I say, go first class or third; marry a duchess or her kitchenmaid. The happy medium means respectability, and respectability means insipidness. Does it not, Mr. Pooter?”

I was so taken aback by being personally appealed to, that I could only bow apologetically, and say I feared I was not competent to offer an opinion. Carrie was about to say something; but she was interrupted, for which I was rather pleased, for she is not clever at argument, and one has to be extra clever to discuss a subject with a man like Mr. Huttle.

He continued, with an amazing eloquence that made his unwelcome opinions positively convincing: “The happy medium is nothing more or less than a vulgar half-measure. A man who loves champagne and, finding a pint too little, fears to face a whole bottle and has recourse to an imperial pint, will never build a Brooklyn Bridge or an Eiffel Tower. No, he is half-hearted, he is a half-measure—respectable—in fact, a happy medium, and will spend the rest of his days in a suburban villa with a stucco-column portico, resembling a four-post bedstead.”

We all laughed.

“That sort of thing,” continued Mr. Huttle, “belongs to a soft man, with a soft beard with a soft head, with a made tie that hooks on.”

This seemed rather personal and twice I caught myself looking in the glass of the cheffonière; for I had on a tie that hooked on—and why not? If these remarks were not personal they were rather careless, and so were some of his subsequent observations, which must have made both Mr. Franching and his guests rather uncomfortable. I don’t think Mr. Huttle meant to be personal, for he added; “We don’t know that class here in this country: but we do in America, and I’ve no use for them.”

(Below: happier times for the Queen, and then a cartoon about sadder times).