Alan Rosen, and the mad, the bad, the wicked, and the undiluted essential essence of evil ...

(Above: or is he bad and mad, or just a naughty boy?)

Usually we rabbit on at unseemly length at the pond.

Garrulous is just another word for nothing left to lose.

But there are plenty of real world examples to follow in our bid to be rambling, roundabout, excessive, tiresome, trivial and talkative.

Take Alan Rosen's offering, which runs under the intertubes ID Is Gaddafi Mad Or Bad? A Psychiatric Opinion, which wisely has been changed in the header to Are we letting bad guys like Gaddafi off the hook?

Because Rosen - who works with the Brian and Mind Research Institute - purports a psychiatric evaluation of Gaddafi's behaviour, without apparently benefit of having actually met Gaddafi. So we get this kind of rhetorical posturing:

... mad? Maybe he is, but where is the evidence?

It's all so that Rosen can bang the drum about societal stigma, stereotyping and discrimination against people living with a mental illness, as if the average punter is likely to confuse Colonel Gaddafi with a street person wandering down the street shouting and gesturing at passers by ...

Oops, I see the pond has wandered off in to a stereotype.

In the meantime, just to show he's not short of an adjective, Rosen variously describes Gaddafi as being a bit more than dysfunctional, heartless, cunning, cruel, inhumane, bad ... and evil ...

Evil? Ain't it nice to know that while 'mad' lights the good professor's wick, a two thousand old year superstition about the devil and hell and evil in the human heart passes muster ...

Yes, it seems that Gaddafi is bad, not mad, because madness would let Gaddafi get away with murder:

... it lets seriously bad guys like Gaddafi off the hook, as well as his international cronies, often thugs who are similarly vulnerable to being pushed off their luxurious perches. He couldn't be responsible for his actions because he is mentally ill, right? It's the same for his mates, typified as "idiots", right? Wrong.

Well it's nice to know that the good professor is helping out the case for the defence by suggesting a mental illness plea will get Gaddafi out of trouble with the International Criminal Court, but dare I suggest that in most jurisdictions, the notion that Gaddafi is metaphysically bad is as useless as bemoaning the way the idle pejorative 'mad' is tossed around in the community.

He may be very bad, but it is hard to find any unequivocal evidence that he is formally mad. He may be devious, deceitful, perverse and evil, but he is still one of us.

Yep, there it is again, 'evil', much like the four evils that will come at the end of the world: conquest on a white horse with bow and crown, war on a red horse with great sword, famine armed with a pair balances on a black horse, and on the fourth pale horse, death, and hell following him ...

I suppose 'evil' can be given secular connotations, but seeing as how the pond spends so much time listening to Christians rabbit on about the singular contribution of Christianity to western civilisation, surely we should give them their metaphysical due when it comes to the nonsense of evil, pure, distilled, essence of, or even diluted.

So it's a tad bemusing to see Rosen blithely noting Gaddafi indulging in 'unflinching atrocities' while getting agitated about people calling him 'mad', presumably on the basis of having seen him make one of his long, rambling, garrulous, mad as a march hare speeches.

And in much the same way, it seems we now must banish the notion of calling people 'useful idiots' or even 'useless idiots'.

That' will be a profound blow to the conservative Xian commentariat, who being generally useless idiots, are extremely fond of the concept of 'useful idiots'. You know, like George W Bush and Tony Blair and Berlusconi and too many other useful idiots to mention doing their thing to bring Gaddafi and his oil in from the cold ...

But it's also a tad unsettling for the pond. The concept is very handy for the useless idiots who visit here, scribble about 'uneducated opinions' and then come out with phrases like I guess as you were unable to rebuttle ... and I made this graph for you to demonstrate how important your are.

Sigh. It's "you are", Fotherington Smythe, you uneducated simpleton, you useless idiot. And why not try I guess as you was unable to rebuttle ... to demonstrate complete illiteracy (yo, Herbert Badgery sending me off to look up cromulent).

Please pick up the dunce's cap, Fothers, you bad naughty boy, on your way to the back of the classroom where you may stare at the wall for the rest of the lesson repeating over and over again Do not rely on the spell checker, it isn't your friend. It may be pure distilled essence of evil and bad grandmar...

But I digress.

We do understand where the good professor is coming from when it comes to mental illness and psychiatric disorders, and the tendency of those who suffer from them to get upset by casual mindless abuse.

But might it not also be a good idea for the amiable professor to resile from offering a diagnosis of Gaddafi, never apparently having met the man, or thrown him down on the couch for a decent analysis?

Who knows he might be as batty as a fruitcake, or perhaps as fruity as a bat addicted to stone fruits, or he might only be mad north by northwest, and when the wind is southerly know a hawk from a handsaw ...

Above all, might it not be a good idea not to evoke ancient theological strictures or divides revolving around the notion or concept of 'evil', or 'bad' or 'badness', and suggest that somehow these vague moral, metaphysical terms are less open to abuse than popular abuse of words like 'idiot' and 'mad' ...

And now on a lighter note, it's been doing the rounds for awhile amongst the Facebook mob, but you couldn't make up this story of The Stoner Arms Dealers, as featured in the Rolling Stone. No spoilers, just a note that it's a fully sick explanation of why everything is going so well in Afghanistan ...

And on a further lighter note, why not waste precious minutes of your life reading about the latest absurdity of Glenn Beck in relation to Dr. Martin Luther King. It's all here in Media Matters, under the header Beck Dismisses The Fact That MLK Died While Fighting For Labor Rights, and it was also picked up in Glenn Beck is still in denial about Martin Luther King's progressive leadership.

The total wilful ignorance of Beck reminds why I'll never buy a single product of the Murdoch empire while Beck's given free rein to peddle nonsense. But if Beck leaves the Murdoch empire - there's a contractual showdown impending, involving a lot of posturing which could either result in business as usual, or new business for Beck - never mind, I still won't buy a single Murdoch product because they once gave Beck free rein. Or should that be reign? Or rain? Fothers, thoughts please!

It's called Catch 22 ... you have to be mad or at least delusional (sorry Prof Rosen) to watch Beck, but if you decide you don't want to watch him, you must be sane. Hence you're fit enough to watch Glenn Beck, and so become insane ... Or some such nonsense, you know what I mean.

Sorry Prof Rosen, but Catch 22 is a wonderful exposition of the madness of psychiatry and it involves unseemly concepts like madness, craziness and insanity ...

But there is one positive result from reading about Beck. It led me to an excellent photo gallery about Dr. Martin Luther King and the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike.

Here's a sample, one of thirty one, with one of his aides, Jesse Jackson on that April 3rd night at Mason Temple as he prepared to deliver his last public speech, the "Mountaintop". Being a useless idiot, Beck isn't fit to shine King's shoes, let alone pretend he understands or is in some kind of symmetry with King's legacy ... And that goes triple for Rupert Murdoch ...

Chris Berg, and your ABC? Because I'm finding it hard to see how it's my ABC ...

(Above: Miranda Devine. Is that a smirk, or are you just pleased to embrace my contradictions?)

... look, I'm really - I'm not a Green. You know, I haven't gone - I'm not an extremist like they are.

Miranda the Devine on Q&A here

... it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.

Miranda the Devine here

... no one is dying from climate change.

Miranda the Devine on the same Q&A

LACHLAN HARRIS: What I mean is I don't accept the argument that, you know, just because, well, the world hasn't acted - John Howard himself in 2007 said the benefits of acting first outweigh the cost of acting, even if the rest of the world doesn't act. That was John Howard.

MIRANDA DEVINE: Well, that's ridiculous. Well, he's not the - you know, he's not God. He's not all-knowing. (on the same Q&A)

... the most successful politician in Australia's recent memory, John Howard, made no such mistake... (in relation to environmentalism)

.... Remember how he took off his jacket and leaped on stage with all those Labor Tasmanian foresters just before he won the 2004 election?

... Howard's autobiography Lazarus Rising is full of such wisdom.

It should be the handbook for any political party seeking voter approval on genuine issues, rather than sideshows in Mexican resorts. (Miranda Devine here)

Sorry John, sic transit gloria. Full of wisdom one moment, the next just a loud gong or a clashing cymbal or perhaps a fallen heathen idol.

Or perhaps Miranda the Devine is just following Walt Whitman. Be big enough to embrace your contradictions.

Here at the pond of course we've never thought of hanging as extreme. Truth to tell whipping's not good enough to bring the average reprobate into line, and stoning is a tad messy, whereas hanging is a nice exemplar of colonial British justice.

Meanwhile, we thought we might visit the ABC as a change of air, in much the same way that Victorian poets took a trip to the Lakes district to observe the cardigan wearers.

Isn't it wonderful the way the ABC's current affairs department continues to elevate the tone of the political debate? Last night we had Lateline presenting the thoughts of the moustachioed John Bolton in Bolton: Obama can not make hard decisions.

Okay, the ABC doesn't have the clout to get Obama on the line, but Bolton's opinions were routinely predictable Obama bashing, until this gem arose thanks to Craig McMurtrie:

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: The conservative former Bush advisor, who's contemplating a 2012 presidential run ...

Gee that makes him a genuine hard hitting leading heavyweight contender.

Which leads us to wonder when the ABC will interview us because we're contemplating a 2012 run for the job of Mrs Santa Claus ... (and if you want to contemplate the spectacle of Bolton making such a run, the Atlantic Wire collected a few samples back in September 2010, here, wherein you will find even George W saying that Bolton is 'not credible').

Indeed, the ABC has lately become the home of many a supporter of western civilisation. Dash off to The Drum Unleashed and you can find Chris Berg stirring the possum with West's history not complete without reference to Christianity.

Poor Mr Berg gets himself tangled in all kinds of knots as he tries to establish the importance of Christianity while not wanting to sound too Christian:

This secular defence of Christianity should not be taken too far.

While liberal democracy was conceived in a Christian framework, one obviously need not be Christian to be part of liberal democracy.

We're looking forward to an earnest explanation of the need to teach the joys of man boy love in ancient Sparta, (per the wiki Pederasty in ancient Greece), along with a robust defence of its historical relevance:

While liberal democracy was conceived in an ancient Greek pederast framework, one obviously need not be a pederast to be part of liberal democracy.

But at least Berg proves his point about the need for some decent history teachers in our secular schools.

If Berg can point to just one Christian helping frame the notion of democracy way back when in the times of the ancient Greeks - some four centuries before Christ was born - he's a better historian than me Gunga Din.

Happily the BBC, in its thoroughly British way, provides an introductory look by Paul Cartledge at The Democratic Experiment.

The ancient Greek word demokratia was ambiguous. It meant literally 'people-power'. But who were the people to whom the power belonged? Was it all the people - the 'masses'? Or only some of the people - the duly qualified citizens? The Greek word demos could mean either. There's a theory that the word demokratia was coined by democracy's enemies, members of the rich and aristocratic elite who did not like being outvoted by the common herd, their social and economic inferiors. If this theory is right, democracy must originally have meant something like 'mob rule' or 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

We also look forward to Mr Berg's pleading for a week devoted to reviving the memories of ancient Greek and Roman myths, and an extensive study of the role sundry gods and goddesses had to play. At least then students might understand how every month we have sundry pagans contributing to the markers of our lives, like Augustus, Maia, Mars, Julius, and other signs and portents of the early Roman calendar ... (calendar name origins).

A class on the way the Christian imperium tries to take the credit for everything - from liberal democracy to the celebration of Xmas, or more properly dies natalis solis invicti - would be a bonus ...

Don't think that Berg, who is a research fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs, attempts to eradicate the ancient Greeks from the notion of democracy just once. Earlier in his piece, he sagely advises:

Almost all thinkers in the formative centuries of Western liberal democracy were convinced (or simply assumed) there was a God, and He was a Christian God. The non-theist exceptions were… exceptional.

Yes bugger off ancient Greeks. You might have invented the word, perhaps the brand, but your wretched polytheism is beyond the pale. When the formative western liberal thinkers got down to it, the cheap knock offs flooded the philosophical two dollar stores, and there wasn't a place for you at the stables ...

Trust Cartledge at the BBC to miss the point entirely:

The architects of the first democracies of the modern era, post-revolutionary France and the United States, claimed a line of descent from classical Greek demokratia - 'government of the people by the people for the people', as Abraham Lincoln put it.

But Abe, Abe old buddy, what about all the formative thinkers hanging about who owed it all to their Christian god? Or is this a way of telling us that the ancient Greeks were Christians in disguise, just waiting for the messiah to arrive? In much the same way no doubt as the citizens currently await with bated breath the ascendancy of John Bolton ...

There's plenty more to get agitated about in Berg's ability to see through a glass darkly and without any understanding of Athenian democracy and its import throughout the ages, but time is pressing, and we must rush off to another participant in The Drum, one Kevin Donnelly, beating the gong Only the demise of independent schools will please Gillard's educrats.

When you get down to the nub of it, Donnelly makes a poignant moving plea for the right of Exclusive Brethren schools and schools based on scientological principles and schools offering creationism (or intelligent design) as part of their science program to just get on with it, paws stuffed into the honey pot proffered by taxpayers, without a by your leave or any interference:

Not only are non-government schools in danger of losing funding as a result of the Gonski review but, there is also the threat of losing their autonomy and being micromanaged by government and government appointed educrats committed to their demise.

Yep, get on with it non-government schools, keep peddling your outrageous malarkey at taxpayers' expense, keep those scientological and creationist thoughts flowing, because Kevin Donnelly's got your back ...

Indeed it seems Donnelly now infests the ABC in the same way as I'm having trouble with the cockies in the kitchen, because he lobs up again in Social conservative Julia: which is the real one now?

Given that the proposed ALP-inspired national history and English curriculum (compulsory for all Australian schools across the years kindergarten to Year 10) fails to make any mention of the Bible or its impact on Western literature, one has to wonder how fair dinkum the Prime Minister is ...

And yet you know, amazingly, because this was a long time ago, in the English and history curriculums under which I studied, there was a singular failure to make any mention of the Bible or its impact on Western literature ...

Sure I read the King James version in full at a tender age, but that's because, free of the shackles of Catholic education and the wretched Catholic translations, it seemed a bold thing to do. Reading the bible is an essential first step towards atheism, what with all the fairy stories dressed up as miracles. And if nothing else the King James version is a fine bit of literature.

But in none of the English or history classes (or the after hours honours portions of those classes) was the bible mentioned in any major way, even in relation to the main object of study, which in those days was Shakespeare (with sundry novelists coming up behind). Not that Shakespeare had anything to do with the KJ version - an old furphy - but he did reference the bible.

It's just that religion was perceived as something taught in the home according to personal precepts, and in schools, the plays were given a secular perspective ...

Strange, but of course Donnelly really doesn't give a stuff about the way things were, and how secular education was once taught, because he's too busy bashing Gillard, leftists, and cultural leftists talking about victim groups, a fine way to hide his constant blather about how Christians are victims ...

Meanwhile, if you're interested in further reading on Mr Donnelly, can we recommend this little piece from the Western Australian Hansard, here in pdf form:

When he was in WA in 2000, he was working as the Asia-Pacific consultant for the tobacco giant Philip Morris. He was promoting the Iíve Got the Power program in primary and junior high schools. He met with students while promoting this program in an outcomes-based format. I have that outcomes-based format with the major learning outcomes and the overarching statements. The member may like to look at it.

We have gone from 2000 when Dr Kevin Donnelly, the independent education expert, absolutely loved outcomes-based education while working for tobacco giant Philip Morris, to his being a very, very strong critic of outcomes-based education in more recent times. I would love to ask the independent education expert, Dr Donnelly, what has happened in between. In 2000, health experts actually warned the then Minister for Education, Colin Barnett, that the Iíve Got the Power program would encourage children to smoke. Minister Barnett ran him out of town, as did every other state and territory minister around this country. Yet Dr Kevin Donnelly is back in WA.

And now he's in The Drum Unleashed, smiting mightily at the leftists around him.

It reminds me, that whenever someone tells me it's 'my ABC', or 'your ABC', I look at them as if they're dreaming ...

And now to complete a very rare visit to the ABC - Gerard Henderson spends much more time watching - it would be remiss not to mention the way Q&A scandalously mistreated Christopher Pyne, as noted by Crikey in Aunty apologises to Pyne - again - over offensive Q&A tweet.

Frankly it's a scandal and shocking, especially given Pyne's support of gay causes over the years. According to the Australian Marriage Equality site, here, Pyne once offered these wise caring words to the gay community:

"I don't favour recognition for civil unions because I think marriage is a heterosexual construct, and I doubt it would be popular amongst homosexual couples, given that it's not a homosexual concept. I think there are some things that are heterosexual and some things that are homosexual concepts, and marriage is really a heterosexual concept. I can't see the logic in allowing same-sex couples to marry when it's not really logical."

And I guess it would be totally remiss if we failed to mention the mincing poodle's (Julia Gillard's most unfortunate and regrettable evocation of Pyne) most recent contribution to the climate debate, as outlined in Pyne alone hears Holocaust allusion.

I really feel the need to top and tail this droll piece by Tony Wright:

Here's the top:

Pity Harry Jenkins. Asked to adjudicate on the charge that Julia Gillard was clandestinely trying to equate Tony Abbott with the wickedness of a Holocaust denier, Harry looked as if he was trapped in a Grimms fairytale.

And here's the tail:

Mr Pyne protested. ''I make the connection between climate change denier and Holocaust denier.''

Mr Jenkins told MPs to ''take a deep breath and behave in a manner that those that observe us from outside would expect''.

His plea was, of course, denied.

Yep, there's nothing like denying denialists the dignity of being able to deny their denialism ...

But since we're deeply involved in education today, what actually does 'deny' mean?

• declare untrue; contradict; "He denied the allegations"; "She denied that she had taken money"
• refuse to accept or believe; "He denied his fatal illness"
• refuse to grant, as of a petition or request; "The dean denied the students' request for more physics courses"; "the prisoners were denied the right to exercise for more than 2 hours a day"
• refuse to let have; "She denies me every pleasure"; "he denies her her weekly allowance"
• deny oneself (something); restrain, especially from indulging in some pleasure; "She denied herself wine and spirits"
• traverse: deny formally (an allegation of fact by the opposing party) in a legal suit
• refuse to recognize or acknowledge; "Peter denied Jesus" (more here).

1984 and the fate of Winston Smith is one of the favourite morality tales of the conservative clan, which is why they're so adept at the abuse of the English language and Ministry of Truth insights, and why they simply refuse to accept that deny means to deny, as in refuse to recognise or acknowledge.

Never mind. In much the same way as Peter denied knowing Jesus three times with increasing intensity, and well before the rooster crowed, we might well say that the likes of Dr Dennis Jensen and Nick Minchin have denied climate change a hundred fold ...

Oh wait, I've just used a biblical metaphor. Curse you, Chris Berg, damn you to hell, Christians 1, loon pond 0 ...

(Below: and now for that misplaced tweet, which we only show to deplore and denounce, as we deplore so much at the ABC. In much the same way as we vigorously deplored Marieke Hardy's piece pulled from the Drum, The Christopher Pyne experiments, to which we link only so you can deplore it too).

Sophie Mirabella, and could Colonel Gaddafi produce such predictable mind numbing rhetoric?

(Above: Sophie Mirabella).

Shocking. Appalling.

There's Sophie Mirabella scribbling furiously in Labor's tax cuts just bread and circuses, and someone in the comments below dares to call her an attention seeking harpy.

A harpy?

In Greek mythology, a harpy ("snatcher", from Latin: harpeia, originating in Greek: ἅρπυια, harpūia) was one of the winged spirits best known for constantly stealing all food from Phineas. The literal meaning of the word seems to be "that which snatches" as it comes from the ancient Greek word harpazein (ἁρπάζειν), which means "to snatch".

A harpy was the mother by the West Wind Zephyros of the horses of Achilles. In this context Jane Ellen Harrison adduced the notion in Virgil's Georgics (iii.274) that mares became gravid by the wind alone, marvelous to say.

Gravid by the wind alone, marvelous to say?

I'm sorry, that's elevating Sophie Mirabella up the mythological totem pole way too far. What's worse, the ancients were divided:

Hesiod calls them two "lovely-haired" creatures, perhaps euphemistically. Harpies as ugly winged bird-women, e.g. in Aeschylus' The Eumenides (line 50) are a late development, due to a confusion with the Sirens. Roman and Byzantine writers detailed their ugliness. (and there's plenty more on harpies at their wiki, here).

Still, the term resonates because of Mirabella's use of bread and circuses in her piece, though being part of the inner suburban elite determined to ruin western civilisation as we know it, we prefer the original poncy Latin panem et circenses.

It was Juvenal who first noted the trend towards pleasing the outer suburban masses:

… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

What's comical is the way Mirabella forgets that John Howard was the master of bread and circuses for the middle class, and nothing wrong with that if you yearn for cheap wheat and a little entertainment.

Instead she runs off by rote the standard check list, the litany. There's the free fluff in roofs, the school halls, the illegal entrants (as opposed to the asylum seekers fleeing Liberal party adventurists in Iraq and Afghanistan), tax reform, and so on and on.

The trouble here is that a litany of negativity is about as effective as the current NSW Labor party's campaign against Barry O'Farrell.

I swear if I see another bunch of dumb women inveigled into a dramatic, depressing television commercial, chatting at the water cooler about how he'll ruin the state, or hectoring their obtuse partner about how he'll ruin the state - and never mentioning how the Labor party has already ruined the state - I'll throw a six inch heeled stiletto at the television set. It's bad enough that women are caricatured as the snide bossy ones in the relationship, but caricatured in the name of those nattering naboobs of negativity, the state Labor party ...

Yep, it'll be shoe time and a broken television. That'll learn them, teach 'em a lesson. Oops, can I send the Labor party a bill for the broken TV?

Meanwhile, let me throw a verbal shoe at Sophie Mirabella.

Simple regurgitation of standard offal doesn't feed the average owlet, let alone an interested voter. Perhaps you take your inspiration from Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream:

First, rehearse your song by rote,
To each word a warbling note.
Hand in hand with fairy grace
Will we sing and bless this place.

But it's not enough. There's no warbling in the notes, just a leaden predictability and a grating turgid monotony. No spritely fairy grace at all.

There needs to be a little fibre, along with the corn and the routine diatribe, because diatribes just leads to ungrateful churlishness in the reader.

Try, for example, to outline what you and your party might actually do in relation to climate change, apart from Jensenist and Minchinist denial of its existence, or what kind of panem et circenses you prefer to offer, or perhaps what you might do in relation to tax reform.

Because reading a panoply of adjectives like "desperate, directionless and laughable" is simply tiresome ... if not laughable.

Who knows, unkind people might end up comparing your meanderings to the empty bombast and rhetorical nonsense of a Colonel Gaddafi, which some would think a tad unfair ... since no thinking Australian would compare Australian politicians to a tin pot middle east dictator currently enduring some stress. Though perhaps there's a few unthinking, dumb Australians out there ready to resort to idle-minded abuse ...

You might even sound as silly as Barnaby Joyce getting agitated about today's Newspoll showing that Labor has clawed back the result to 51/49 2PP, with Tony Abbott taking a dive from 36 to 31% in the satisfaction stakes. Poor old Barners thought it was a rogue poll, like the crocodile in the back creek. Even though it came with an astonishing headline in the lizard Oz: Carbon plan gives Labor bounce in support: Newspoll, and even Dennis Shanahan reluctantly confirming the claw back in PM's two-pronged attack wins over voters. That must have hurt Dennis 'the colourful tie' ...

Come on Barners, you can't go on about polls being rogue this week, while the tribe was happily chortling about the very same pollsters doing their very same thing the week before. Never talk about the polls, because there's only one poll that counts (and a thousand and one other political cliches to wile away long rural nights).

You see Sophie, there's nothing so ennui inducing as constant negative political campaigning, as the NSW Labor party is shortly to find out.

And there's nothing so tedious as reading about panem et circenses from a politician who can't seem to produce the most elementary insights into how the clowns in the circus plan to deal with climate change ...

Positivity - yes

Have U had your plus sign 2day?

Positivity - yes

Do we mark U present or do we mark U late?

TAFKAP

(Below: a harpy. Political plans undisclosed).

Dennis Jensen, Gerard Henderson, Nikki Savva, and don't bother to send in the clowns, they're already here ...

(Above: the abstruse science of denialism).

(Above: the scientific exponent of the science of denialism, Dr. Dennis Jensen. Full text and actual moving images here).

Perhaps one of the more absurd sights so early in the week was Dr. Dennis Jensen flourishing a can of coke to unveil the carbon dioxide within it, after waving around some charcoal and showing it falling to earth.

Jensen is of course a full blown feral denialist (sceptics, you might remember, according to Quadrant, accept AGW as real and just argue about the size of impact), but if you act as a child, and argue like a child, surely you should be called a child. Or at least a clown, right up there with Wilson 'bring me that ironbar' Tuckey ...

What is it with Jensens generally? What is it with this particular Jensen?

Poor Tony Abbott. It's hard to pretend you care about the crap of climate change when you have a complete and utter loon sitting on the back bench squawking nonsense and indulging in silly theatrical displays.

Jensen, who won his PhD in the physics of ceramics, is prone to this kind of outburst:

"Albert Einstein was very much criticised by Hitler, and Hitler actually had a group of 100 top scientists in Germany write a book called 100 scientists against Einstein,'' Dr Jensen told reporters in Canberra.

"Einstein was asked: `Doesn't it bother you Dr Einstein that you've got so many scientists against you?'

"And he said: `It doesn't take 100 scientists to prove me wrong, it takes a single fact'.'' (here)

So now you know. The CSIRO and the BOM are run by a bunch of Hitler-worshipping neo-Nazis taking direct orders from Fräulein Gillard, ruler of das herrenvolk, and so completely incapable of delivering a single fact that proves Jensen is a total and comprehensive goose.

But I digress. After yesterday's outburst by Paul Sheehan about the way Chinese students and the Labor party have ruined NSW (please take a handkerchief dosed in strong perfume for fear the stench from the sewer of Cul-de-sac of broken dreams might overwhelm and sicken you), today is Gerard Henderson day.

Please, enough with the party poppers and the balloons and the comical hats folks, this is desiccated coconut day, and the header gives the game away: Bush and his allies deserve respect after earlier push for Arab democracies.

Yep, it seems that the left is in disarray, and their answers are simplistic, and in the action against Libya, no one is mentioning Israel.

Could that be because Israel thought it would be a jolly good thing if Mubarak survived the protests in Egypt and business as usual could be the order of the day - along with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah (a pretty pairing on view in Israel: Mubarak here to stay, or the standard line trotted out in the Jerusalem Post, Mofaz: It's best for Israel if Mubarak overcomes protests).

Yes, it's best not to mention Israel, and its right wing government's view that the Arabs aren't ready for democracy.

But that doesn't stop Henderson from blathering on about Israel in his usual blinkered way without once mentioning the way Israel warmed to the notion of Mubarak the dictator, and were startled and unhappy to see him fall.

Instead, in his usual myopic way, Henderson manages to conflate the situation in Libya with the war in Iraq, and hail Israel as a democracy which gives greater rights to Arabs than Arabs enjoy in virtually all Arab states, which I guess is a great way to justify a set of second class rights (seeing as how Henderson manages to overlook the US Department of State report which noted institutional, legal and societal discrimination against the country's Arab citizens, here).

As for Iraq as a nascent democracy ... well I guess nascent is the word, since it's hard to imagine how the country came back from the cocked up, half arsed, inept, massive dose of murder, anarchy, brutality, torture, death and slaughter dressed up as a war of liberation, and embarked on as a result of repeated falsehoods and lies.

This is not a fashionable point. Yet the record indicates it was the administration of George W. Bush which first raised, in a serious manner, the issue of democracy in the Middle East.

Damn right it's not a fashionable point as it was the administration of George W. Bush, in cahoots with Tony Blair's administration, which raised in a serious manner the right of a government to lie to its people and embark on an ill-considered, ill-managed, stupefyingly inept war mongering adventure in the Middle East.

Who knows how the current adventure in Libya will play out, but in the circumstances, at least the Europeans could foresee that if the Gaddafi regime triumphed, they would be facing (a) a mass exodus which would make the current exodus a trifling matter, and (b) a humanitarian crisis, if as likely, Gaddafi embarked on revenge and a killing season, and (c) having failed to act, all that would have been left for the world to do was wring hands and watch as stuff happened.

In short, the momentum for change and repression and action came from entirely different sources than the war in Iraq, and it is profoundly disingenuous to pretend otherwise ... (even the lizard Oz manages to publish a piece explaining Libya is not Iraq).

Not to worry. Henderson, in his usual prattling Polonius way, manages to elide and distort his way through the present crisis, celebrating the potential for democracy in the Arab world while smugly noting that Israel is on the sidelines in the current turmoil. Which is perhaps just as well according to the unofficial debriefing by one Israeli government minister:

... I'm not sure the time is right for the Arab region to go through the democratic process," he (an Israeli government minister) adds. (Egypt's Crisis: Israel Backs Hosni Mubarak's Regime).

It takes some cheek to completely ignore Israel's response to current events in the middle east, but you have to hand it to Henderson. He has plenty of cheek. Even chutzpah ...

Meanwhile, since a Jensen started out explaining to us that coca cola contains fizzy carbon dioxide - who would have guessed it's a carbonated drink, not to mention a source of tasty high fructose corn syrup (get your coca-cola formula here) - why not provide a nice circularity by heading off to The Australian to read Niki Savva's A spiritual guide to climate change.

That's right. Once again, an alleged journalist simple mindedly compares the scientific issues involved in climate change to a religious debate:

If Tony Abbott could only embrace the new global religion where belief in climate change is obligatory and in God optional, then he would spare himself the punishment of its spawn, the New Inquisition, and be better off politically if not spiritually.

His acceptance must be unreserved. There is only one path to enlightenment this century and those who doubt or dare express even minor misgivings are condemned straight to hell or political oblivion by the zealots.

Yep for sheer arrant nonsense and wretchedly obscurantist dumb fuckery, you can't go past a member of the lizard Oz's commentariat when they get to scribble about science. It's a religion you see ...

Amazingly Savva puts Christopher Pearson to shame. At least confronted by science he can't understand he resorts to sociology as well as religion. Savva can't get past the wafers ...

What's worse, she keeps the religious metaphor running for par after par as she charts Tony Abbott's 'lapses' from the one true faith, including his most recent 'lapse' ...

Well now we now the answer to any problems we face. Ten hail Mary's, a couple of Our Fathers, and she'll be right (hush child, only dedicated scientists do the whole rosary).

And nary a mention of the Jensen hiding in the attic, ready to pop open a can of Coke or watch a bit of charcoal fall to the ground, proving that Newton probably got his idea at a coal mine rather than by watching an apple fall.

Meanwhile, if you missed Media Watch's coverage of the actual science of climate change amongst the shock jocks and the AM radio crowd, you can catch up here.

That way, when somebody asks you where are the clowns, send in the clowns, you always have that standard answer, don't bother, they're here ... (and they sent the ring master ACMA packing with a fine flurry of ping pong balls and false noses and squeeze horn) ...

(Below:

Child: look mum, it's a rock.

Mum: hush, child, it's charcoal. Let the science man explain it to you.

Scientific politician: does anyone know what that is? Charcoal, also known as carbon. If you notice when I let it go, it doesn't float into the air ....

Child: So mum, climate science says that charcoal floats in the air, and is the basis for the anti-grav machine that will make cars and oil redundant?

Mum: Hush child, this is way too complex for you to understand.

Child: But mum, if climate scientists say charcoal floats and is an anti-grav device, I want an anti-grav bike.

Mum: Just drink your coke and rot your teeth you wretched child, and get bloated and gassed and supersized and full of chemicals and carbon dioxide because carbonated drinks are ever so good for you. If only we had an atmosphere full of coca cola, the world would be saved and the poor people of Asia would never go thirsty).

Amanda Vanstone, and saddle up, it's time to take the horse called Politics of Envy for a gallop ...

(Above: the good old days, found at the NMA's celebration of Australian cartoonists, here, as drawn by Mark Knight for the HUN in July 2006).

There's nothing like bloody minded vindictiveness to get the working week off to a good start,

so come on down Amanda Vanstone and Uni students get a free ride for too long with their HECS debt.

Ever since Gough Whitlam thought it wise to help out university students, especially poor ones like me - you know, search of the smart state, the clever country, the educated country and such like rhetorical blather, beloved of both sides of politics - and his grand plan dissolved into a welter of fear and loathing, and of abuse for tertiary educated elites ruining western civilisation, some conservative politicians have made hay by stirring up simple minded prejudices.

You know, university students ... free ride. Bludgers. Wankers. That sort of cheap minded, knee jerk, reflexive clap trap. Oh and did I mention tertiary educated elites?

Usually it's best done with a bit of manure of the forelock tugging kind, about how the lumpenproletariat are all fine and dandy and doing noble work by fixing things for the wealthy.

The usual line is bugger the university arts graduates, where can you find a decent plumber, and that usually involves what what we might now call the Vanstone Variation:

It's a sorry state of affairs when any secondary school student, in response to the question, ''What do you want to do when you leave school?'' starts the answer with a mumbled, ''Well, I won't go to university.'' In such a lucky, wealthy country, how did we end up with young Australians thinking they are somehow lesser because they are not going to university? How did we end up with any young Australians defining themselves in the first instance by a negative?

Yes shit carters wielding shovels in the horse stables of the nation, don't feel downsized as you go about your humble task. Shit shovelling is a noble profession. Where would we all be without the garbage men?

And what you might ask has this got to do with aspiring to a university education, while acknowledging that shit does stink, and someone has to take away the garbage, and thank the absent lord for that and pay them well while you're at it, unless a Liberal government gets in and tells the garbage collectors they have tickets on themselves?

Some might think three fifths of fuck all, but then you'd be admitting to knowing bugger all about the politics of envy:

In a society that all too often admires wealth over and above many admirable qualities, what else did we expect? If you value wealth over skill or decency or any number of other virtuous qualities, you must expect that those who get the ticket that sends them down the wealthier path, namely a degree, feel as though they are pretty special.

This from a card carrying member of the Liberal party, long a refuge for worshippers of wealth, and a politician who clearly thinks she's pretty special.

Of course Vanstone assumes a humble arts graduate, interested in literature or history, or even - gasp, poetry - (sssh, nobody mention those wastrel musicians) - is on the path to unseemly power, wealth and the envy of the world, as opposed to a job teaching or lurking somewhere in the bowels of the public service, or who knows, ending up as a lickspittle employee in the Murdoch empire.

It seems that Vanstone has returned from Rome with many homespun insights into the ways of the world, including lessons she first learned many years ago:

Thirty-something years ago, on my first overseas trip, an old man who made his living giving tourists horse-drawn buggy rides around Rome taught me a good lesson. My hotel, to suit my budget, was outside the walls. He was resting nearby and I flashed my student card to get a decent discount. Amazed and indignant, he refused. He had seen me come out from a reasonable, but certainly not flash, hotel and decided I did not need any discount.

I was annoyed and moved on to get a ride somewhere else. But I did not seek the discount a second time. That old guy, probably without much opportunity in his earlier life, stood up for the principle that if you do not need help, you should not get it.

What can possibly be said about such a stupid anecdote, or the stupid behaviour of the stupid teller of the anecdote, except that stupidity is not much of a basis for an insightful anecdote?

But it seems that stupidity grows aplenty in the world of the vituperative Vanstone:

More recently, Rome provided another lesson. I met a Filipina woman who had worked overseas for nine or more years. She sent every penny she could back home to her husband to help raise and educate their three boys. Her family could not give her an education and she will always be grateful to the Catholic nuns who provided her with schooling. She has made sure her boys get the very best she can. You would be lucky to find a more decent, hardworking, honest and principled person. She had the added bonus of commonsense, which is, after all, not that common.

Ah yes, that'd be when Vanstone was ambassador to Italy, a political appointment rewarding hackery of the first water, and with plenty of indolent time to spend wandering about glad handing and bludging on the taxpayer dollar, and meeting with noble Filipinas. Just one snag. Why did the Filipina bother with schooling at the hands of Catholic nuns? Where did she pick up the negative idea that she needed an education? Wouldn't she have been better off leaving after kindergarten, and not being a drain on the church?

Oh yes, it's just another smug, irrelevant anecdote, not a bad result for someone who collared a BA and an LLB and so is now finely placed to hector and lecture indolent students from a place of high righteousness ...

Why it even turns out that Vanstone's a splendid lyricist, just one of the many odd jobs she's been able to handle:

Free and friendly nation,
Born of our own hand,
Peace our greatest virtue,
Mighty southern land.

Valiant into battle,
Courage to the end,
Standing firm for freedom,
Loyal southern friend.

Oh for the love of the absent lord, enough already. Go here if you want more drivel, seemingly designed to make the current national anthem sound like a mix of T. S. Eliot and Shakespeare. What a pity doing an arts degree is now so fallen into disrepute ...

Sorry, time to get back to the abuse of university students:

At the same time, I have worked over many years with many people who did have a tertiary education, some of whom had picked up few, if any, of the abovementioned qualities.

Yes, but did they torture a nation with a hideous patriotic anthem, set to the tune of Pomp and Circumstance Marches by that well known dinky di dinkum Aussie composer, Edward Elgar?

Now how about a full hearted political cliche?

Science and research generally offer hope for the future. Without them we are doomed.

Yep, that's a pious platitude of the first water. Now mingle it with personal abuse:

But people with degrees are not in themselves more valuable. Without the qualities of my Filipina friend, they are just expensive pains in the neck.

Yes, but who apart from Vanstone, has asserted that university graduates are intrinsically more people as people than other people? On the other hand, is it wise to assert they're as expensive pains in the neck as junketing pain the neck ambassadors to Italy?

Okay, enough already, envelope opening time, and sting please:

I have no quibble with the investment we make in higher education or in students. I just think that, to be fair, they should have to start paying it back sooner.

Yep, it's bitchiness and the politics of envy dressed up as 'fairness' and never mind the way that students in these troubled times have to do substantial amounts of part time work, thereby reducing their effectiveness as students, and that some find it a struggle to repay their HECS debt.

No, instead let's just have a bunch of spectacular inter-generational platitudes and condescension from an old fart sticking it to the young.

You don't have to be much of a scholar to find out it's a bit tougher being a student these days than in my day. Talk to a couple of students, it isn't so hard, they generally don't bite.

Or just google stories like University students face life of debt, or Students struggle for study time, or the bundle of links provided here in Cost of Studying.

But before all that - and don't forget to footnote your sources, instead of just leading with stupid anecdotes - let's have one final fling at the politics of envy:

The full adult pension, including supplement, is about $19,000 a year. The minimum wage is just under $30,000. So why do we say to students, who get a massive loan at no real interest rate, that they do not have to pay back a cent until they are earning just under $45,000?

What's it all mean?

Has Vanstone done a study, assessed the capacity of students to pay? Has Vanstone studied the wealth of research material available regarding the current effectiveness and operation of the HECS scheme? Or did she just stuck a thumb in the air, get a couple of anecdotes off her chest, and think it passes for informed comment?

Well I have a couple of answers.

I'm really glad I did my university days way back when, and I'm really glad that the clueless Amanda Vanstone is no longer minister for employment, education, training and youth affairs.

Yep, on the basis of a couple of anecdotes derived from Rome, and a bit of prejudice and bile, Vanstone is gung ho to reform the HECS payment routine without demonstrating the first clue that she knows anything about it.

Well if she wants reforms, here's a few. How about HECS founder Bruce Chapman's proposal that HECS apply to TAFE institutions (Push to extend student loans scheme to TAFE)? Did that startle the Liberal punters in the Howard government or what.

But then Chapman is something of a fiend as he once proposed that athletes being given handouts should pay back some of the money they received from the Government while they're training (here). Hey he even thinks it can be applied to paid parental leave and drought relief (here). And how about a HECS system for pregnant mothers who want maternity leave? (here).

By golly, this politics of envy thing is pretty handy. Pretty soon the government should be able to get all its money back.

How about a HECS system for political hacks rewarded with junkets in Italy? You know, swanning about as useless ambassadors? How about they repay half their salary? With interest ...

Naturally when this sort of spiteful routine envy gets going, it's not too long before you find gherkins ready to dust off and drag out Monty Python's 'Four Yorkshiremen' routine:

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

(and the rest of the sketch here, or to be found on YouTube here)

Yes, just try telling the young people of today.

Of course in my day, and Amanda Vanstone's day, life was a helluva lot easier than it is for students these days ... and for Bruce Chapman for that matter (yes, he had plenty of time to be a less than average spin bowler, or so I'm told by informed South Australian sources).

Still it's pleasing to see that Vanstone in the comments section is given a right royal bollocking, by well over a hundred generally irritated angry punters, and rising, not least including demands for late payment of her tertiary education costs, calculated at a mere 50k.

Me? I'm demanding emotional suffering payments for having her anthem inflicted on me. That should be worth a cool million ...

(Below: Amanda Vanstone showing how to pose to camera. Yet another skill to add to lyricist and tormentor of university students).

Paul Kelly, and another round of drinks for the faux conservatives please ...

(Above: oh yes, it's like a jungle sometimes. These days you can just google map it by looking up the corner of Bailey and 38 Enmore road in Sydney).

By golly, you can rely on Paul Kelly routinely to destroy a political career, and he seems right on target again as he blathers on in his usual humbug way in The Australian in PM offers no hope to social Left:

Ms Gillard, in fact, is not the social progressive many Labor backers and politicians have wrongly assumed. On the contrary, she has deep roots as a cultural conservative and traditionalist.

Yes, yes, it's another case of saying the bleeding obvious, now let's get on with the details:

This is obvious across a range of issues - her belief in personal responsibility, rejection of the option of state-sanctioned killing, support for biblical and cultural dimensions of the Western canon and the belief that social heritage should keep marriage to an institution between a man and a woman.

Indeed, on such issues she seems aligned with John Howard.

Ms Gillard is John Howard in drag! What a killer idea. Surely it must mean the end of Gillard?

Yet Kelly seems to find it an invigorating source of optimism:

The broader point is that the Greens social agenda will run into Ms Gillard's resistance as a political conservative on such issues. Her views will become prominent because, as she says, they are tied to her past and identity. This will become a serious problem for the Greens and Labor's progressive wing.

Uh huh. On the other hand, as the NSW vote next Saturday is likely to show, along with the destruction of the NSW Labor party, progressive and conservative, there'll be a surge in the vote for the Greens. That will be a serious problem for Gillard and the Labor party ... who knows they might even lose a couple of seats to the latte sippers and chardonnay swillers ...

As always it depends on which end of the telescope you use. Kelly's end is the narrow blathering end of the conservative, not far removed from the customary myopia of all conservatives who think it wise to hold back the tide. In this, they display a profound affinity with conservative Muslims.

Not that I regularly wander through the outer depths of Islamic folly, but you simply have to drop in on a site like Islam Online to get a whiff, a sniff of the standard conservative religious mendacity:

Gay marriage is totally prohibited in Islam as well as in all the divine religions. Gay marriage is an atrocious and obscene act which belongs to unsound nature. Islam teaches that believers should neither do the obscene acts nor in any way indulge in their propagation. Allah says, "Those who love (to see) obscenity published broadcast among the Believers will have a grievous Penalty in this life and in the Hereafter: Allah knows, and you know not." (An-Nur: 19)

Yep, and it's replete with the usual justifying references to gobbledegook.

I feel that Allah will never let such an act go without punishment. We have an example of the people of Lut who were deeply involved in such immoral acts and were destroyed by Allah.

I, personally, feel that this is one of the deadly germs that are injected in the vein of modern civilization, which the westerners feel proud of. Human rights should not be extended to include human destruction or threats to our life on this planet. We hope that the legislators who enacted such a law will think twice about it and consider its consequences on our human race and to try to repeal this law and put things right. (here, only in cache form)

So back to the triumphal Kelly establishing that he and Gillard are at one with conservative Islamic thinkers worried by the people of Lut:

On same-sex marriage, Ms Gillard said: "I find myself on the conservative side because of the way our society is and how we got here. There are some important things from our past that need to continue to be part of our present and part of our future."

Dear absent lord, was it only in February that Daniel Finkelstein - Finkelstein of all people - briefly escaped The Times' paywall, and turned up in The Australian with Gay marriage is good conservatism?

Against this is the important fact - that to deny gay people the right to marry in the full sense is to deny people the dignity and respect they deserve. And who better than a Conservative can understand the desire of an individual for dignity, respect and social status?

What, finally, of the religious objection? I am not very good at praying. My wife complains I fidget in synagogue. The children complain I fidget. But for all my failings in the devotion department, I do have one conviction about prayer of which I feel confident. It would be very disappointing for the Jews to have prayed for thousands of years and learned nothing. Sometimes you have to sit there for hours. Surely some thoughts must have struck us in all that time.

For me, that thought is a steady, strong belief in the fundamental equality before the law and under God of my fellow humans and a determination to love what is different about them as well as the things I share. I do not expect, or demand, that all others share it, but I am as sure as I can be that this belongs in my religion. I would want Conservatives to champion my free expression of this religious belief.

Hmm, it turns out that Ms Gillard and Mr Kelly are what are sometimes known as faux conservatives, peddling bias, superstition, ignorance and prejudice, usually of a religious kind. Sometimes Muslim, but given where this society came from and how we got here, more usually simple-minded unforgiving Christian ...

Amongst the irredeemable and ill-informed sits Kelly.

Somehow he thinks it remarkable that Gillard is an atheist who likes the Bible:

She said: "I think it's important for people to understand their Bible stories, not because I'm an advocate of religion - clearly, I'm not - but once again, what comes from the Bible has formed such an important part of our culture.

"It's impossible to understand Western literature without having that key of understanding the Bible stories and how Western literature builds on them and reflects them and deconstructs them and brings them back together." The Prime Minister was happy to accept the brand of "traditionalist". She puts this into a personal narrative too often ignored in assessments of Ms Gillard's outlook.

Indeed. Who could understand the deeper implications of Cecil de Mille and wanton, lustful dancing girls, let alone - without referencing the King James version - the thoughtful way Agatha Christie dressed up some of her titles by ripping off either Shakespeare or the Bible? In a Glass Darkly and Evil under the Sun so to speak ...

Now there's a wonderful canon. Go for it Yul:

It seems to have escaped Mr Kelly's attention that atheists and agnostics generally tend to have a better knowledge of the bible and religious matters than believers in pie in the sky by and by:

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions. (Pew U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey)

Sure that only applies to xenophobic Americans and it puts atheists in the company of Mormons, but hey any port in a storm.

It's when Kelly continues his paean of praise to Gillard's intrinsic conservatism that things get silly:

Explaining her family background in a pro-union, pro-Labor, conservative household, Ms Gillard said: "We believed in politeness and thrift and fortitude and doing duty and discipline. These are things that were part of my upbringing. They're part of who I am today."

Yep, according to these brushstrokes, if you're pro union, pro Labor, pro Liberal, pro National Party or pro big business, or pro small business, pro thrift and pro politeness, you're like as not part of a conservative household. And there I was thinking that the Greens were a polite thrifty conspiracy to cut back on conspicuous consumption and capitalism.

Naturally Kelly gets wildly excited by Gillard's rejection of euthanasia, which is a particular bete noir of his, and perhaps helps explain the way The Australian these past few months has kept on harping on about Greens' conspiracies and the ACT government and the end of western civilisation aw we know it.

On euthanasia, Ms Gillard was sympathetic to those people who "may want that choice". But she rejected the argument. She had "never been able to satisfy myself" that the policy of the pro-euthanasia advocates contained "sufficient safeguards".

Her concern is that euthanasia laws "open the door to exploitation and perhaps callousness towards people in the end stage of life."

No need for euthanasia then. Just watch the callous NSW Labor party in action as they deal with people in the end stage of life ...

Which brings us back to Kelly's conclusion:

This will become a serious problem for the Greens and Labor's progressive wing.

Or will it become a serious problem for Gillard as she blithely thinks she can sail through unscathed espousing allegedly conservative values, and acting like an uber John Howard - when it's quite possible to be a Finkelstein, a conservative, and a Murdoch man, and hold contrary views?

It reminds me of a Facebook routine that went viral:

Let me get this straight...Charlie Sheen can make a "porn family", Kelsey Grammer can end a 15 year marriage over the phone, Larry King can be on divorce #9, Britney Spears had a 55 hour marriage, Jesse James and Tiger Woods, while married, were having sex with EVERYONE. Yet, the idea of same-sex marriage is going to destroy the institution of marriage? Really?

To which we might add the bizarre notion that somehow a woman living in sin with a hairdresser in the leafy suburb of Deakin is seen as supporting bible reading, conservative Islam and Christianity, and the institution of marriage as a religious construct. Really?

Sad to say, Kelly is sounding older and older these days - one wag dubbed his style as owing a lot to Spock, but that's a serious abuse of the charms of Mr Spock - and incapable of understanding his old world is rapidly changing.

Never mind, it's a very clever double play by Kelly, ensuring that Gillard is seen as a dullard up there with Mr. Kelly himself and the redoubtable John Howard. It's a serious problem for Gillard and no doubt it will get worse ...

Meanwhile, it's worth noting Mark Day's splendid offering Rupert Murdoch's Middle East call to freedom, which explains how the noble chairman sees communications as a way of liberating the populace, and more particularly the Chinese.

A cynic might re-title the piece Rupert Murdoch's sordid venture into the middle east in search of a way to rip off Al Jazeera's business model, or Liberating the sheep is important and beneficial providing they pay a modest stipend to News Corp for their freedom, but then that sort of cynic might also find the time to mention the way brave Chairman Rupert's bid to bring democracy to China futtered and sputtered (Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation to sell down China TV stakes), and to wonder whether phone tapping is quite the same as the liberation of information. (News of the World phone hacking affair).

No doubt the Libyan rebels will be greatly relieved that Chairman Rupert is embarking on a venture designed to bring freedom from regulation and intimidation to the middle east, in the company of a couple of other squillionaires (with UAE and Saudi Arabian partners), and we look forward to the impending liberation of not just Iran but Saudi Arabian women.

I guess it'll happen in much the same way as gay people everywhere routinely celebrate The Australian for the way it stands up for their rights.

Day forlornly hopes that he could see the impact of last week's speech by the Chairman in a couple of decades from now, and never mind what's actually happening at the moment in the middle east without benefit of chairman Rupert.

Let's hope it doesn't end up like British celebrities taking legal action or the sordid tales springing from the chairman's Chinese adventures (Murdoch's China dream shattered). Or worse still Fox News, still peddling Glenn Beck and surely one of the worst blights in the media world anywhere, making the old commie Pravda seem like a benign source of truth and light ...

Still, you have to admire Day's diligent, relentless burnishing of Chairman Rupert's image. The buffing and the polishing and the shining and the smoothing must get quite taxing and exhausting at times, especially as he's just risen from his sick bed to get back to the job at hand ...

(Below: oh dear, the company that the real Julia Gillard keeps these days).

Alan Jones, Piers Akerman,and Cardinal Pell, a truly unholy trinity well worth contemplating on a Sunday ...

(Above: Alan Jones getting ready to do a Mary Mackillop documentary for the History Channel, as explained here. We just so love the pink here at the pond, and we ever so love the fact that he ever so loves Mary Mackillop).

The next time you hear Gerard Henderson or Janet Albrechtsen or Miranda the Devine or the anonymous editorialist at The Australian rabbiting on about inner urban elites or tertiary educated elites or any of a dozen other 'leets ruining the western world, contemplate the lifestyle and menu of the parrot on view in Regrets? Maybe just a few.

There's the private butler and chef, there's the coral trout from Queensland, there's the tomatoes sourced from the Southern Highlands farm, there's the initials inscribed in cream on the soup (2GB they screech), there's the handsome apartment at the Toaster (adopted after the eerie in inner suburban Newtown was sold off), there's the egregious purple socks, there's the purple tie on pink shirt, with purple handkerchief (photo thoughtfully provided of same), there's the Mozart, or perhaps Cecilia Bartoli on the no doubt quite fine sound system (and truly her performances of Handel almost redeem Handel), and oh no, we almost forgot to mention the dessert, the flourless peach and almond pudding, before we get on to discussing the family free lifestyle, and then, what do you know, there's the parrot on air screeching Ju-liar, and guess what, now he's saying he's sorry ... in a most convoluted, irritating and unapologetic way ...

What a joke it is, what a tremendous con, what wonderful fun, as the unrepentant 'leets masquerade as the average Joe or Josephine Blow, at one with the residents of Penrith, and no con more wonderful fun than the screeching parrot pausing to say 'I think it's a terrible thing to hurt people's feelings', while listening to Cecilia Bartoli and contemplating his harbour view from his inner city squillionaire apartment ...

Meanwhile, week after week, year after year, Gerard Henderson hoes into the hapless cardigan wearers at the ABC. Oh the splendid irony and folly of it all ...

No doubt if you plumbed the depths of Piers 'Akker Dakker' Akerman's lifestyle, you'd find similar kinds of explanations for plumpness as he furiously scribbles Enough Already, Julia for the umpteenth time.

But the one thing you won't get from Akker Dakker is a faux apology, not when there's a jugular to hand and there's the chance of liberal blood spilling all over the floor.

Enough already Akker Dakker. It's bad enough to be a plump fear mongerer, but to think everybody else is a fear mongerer is fear mongering above the cause of duty.

Yep, it's Akker Dakker the climate scientist on duty for the weekend, reminding us all of Mike Carlton's intemperate put down of the head of the Pellist conspiracy in Mediaeval mindset, minus the screws for the extraordinary dogmatic ignorance Pell displayed in his attack on the head of the Bureau of Meteorology, Dr Greg Ayers:

Such folly is unsurprising in a man who believes that prayers to a dead nun can cure cancer.

Oh come on Mike, believing in the cancer healing ways of a dead nun is surely nothing up against the literal belief that you're munching on the actual genuine body of Christ, and slurping down his blood ...

Hmm, what frock to wear heading off to a feast of cannibals? Purple ... or red?

But back to Akker Dakker, who has impeccable scientific credentials, far superior to those of Cardinal Pell, who diligently studies "stuff", only to stuff it up with addle-headed personal abuse:

''Ayers, when he spoke to the House, was obviously a hot-air specialist. I've rarely heard such an unscientific contribution.''

Spoken like a veritable blimp of explosive hydrogen, a Hindenburg airship frocked in red ...

No doubt Akker Dakker gained his own incomparable scientific expertise during his time at Guildford Grammar School (before he was asked to leave), or perhaps in his schooling at Christ Church Grammar school, wherein he failed to complete his final exams (or so the Akker Dakker wiki tells us here).

Never mind, Akker Dakker is a full blown climate change denialist, the only term available to us now that scepticism as a term has been reserved by Quadrant for those who accept that human activities have an effect on the planet, and just want to argue about the size of the impact.

Yep, come on down the deadly trio of Lehmann, Farrell and Warburton scribbling away in The Intelligent Voter's Guide to Global Warming and remind us one more time:

Man-made emissions are likely to cause a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide during this century and this increase will continue to have a warming effect on global temperatures. One of the disappointing distortions of the climate science debate is the claim that sceptics deny this relationship. What sceptics are sceptical about is the strength of this AGW effect.

What utter bilge and nonsense. Go for it Akker Dakker and sock it to these faux conservatives, these wretched fellow travellers, these lickspittle conformists:

When Gillard told the Dunstan Foundation Professor Garnaut’s latest report indicates that the need to act is greater than ever and the scientific consensus is stronger than ever, she was only half-right.

The scientific world is more divided on the evidence and more questioning of the data than it ever has been.

Yes, that's more like it, the scientific world is utterly divided, and everyone is questioning the data, and chances are climate science is a complete myth and a fraud, and don't you worry about Akker Dakker's sources for these blithe assertions, just trust Akker Dakker. Or perhaps the healing power of nuns when it comes to suffering in the world ...

Okay Akker Dakker - now self-proclaimedly of a brave intrepid unholy trinity of Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt - time to nail that Ju-liar to the wall:

In her Adelaide address she went into full-on fear-mongering mode.

Humans were causing global climate change and the consequences were more extreme bushfire conditions and droughts, falling crop yields, loss of species, increased cyclone intensity, more days of extreme heat, coastal flooding as sea levels rise, bleaching of our coral reefs and a substantial decline in alpine snow cover. Phew!

But there is not a reputable scientist in the world who has yet said any of the above has been directly caused by global warming, let alone pointed to the hand of man.

Not a single reputable scientist! Nothing to do with the hand of man! Take that Quadrant quislings! Zap kapow!

Now of course there might be thousands of disreputable scientists out there who wildly assert some of these delusional notions, but none are comparable to the deep forensic intellect, and the scalpel-like wisdom of an Akker Dakker in full cry.

Naturally, just like Cardinal Pell, Akker Dakker doesn't rely on personal abuse to make his point, but instead relies on cutting edge scientific observations, honed by years of experience and a deep humility in the face of the need for objectivity:

Gillard relies heavily on Labor’s paid advisers to come to the party whether they be the failed weather forecaster Tim Flannery or the avuncular economist Ross Garnaut.

Talk about hot air!

Yep, there's nothing like a peer reviewed paper published in the Daily Terror to strike fear in the heart of dilettantes, amateur scientists, professional hacks, questers after government grants, climategate fraudsters and other sordid mis-readers of the world, up against the likes of the fearless Akker Dakker and the noble scientist Cardinal Pell and the coral trout loving Alan Jones.

Oops, I see my man servant has brought in a delicious coral trout, and is now busy preparing a wonderful dessert, and so as a member of the fiendish inner suburban conspiracy determined to undo democracy and drive our industry offshore and euthanase our economy (so Akker Dakker assures the world), excuse me while I don a nice purple outfit and hoe in like a hog in a field of truffles ...

Oh yes, and all you mugs out there who believe that Alan Jones is down wit you ... there's a bowl of first class porridge, full of enriching oats, waiting for you on the doorstep.

No milk or sugar of course, we wouldn't want you getting too uppity and demanding cake, not when a flourless dessert is all the go ...

(Below: some alleged photos of Piers Akerman, climate scientist extraordinaire, that litter the intertubes, and which now by being repeated here, clog up the full to overflowing intertubes even more. Readers are invited to imagine in which sitcom Akker Dakker makes these appearances).