Keeping it real ...

(Above: the pond keeping it real).


Was it only a dream, or May last year, that the pond read this solution to Sydney's second airport from Lee Rhiannon and Paul Fitzgerald in Second Airport No Saviour:

Only one possible solution remains for Sydney Airport: to close it and build a replacement airport. It would need to be outside the Sydney Basin airshed and have high speed rail connections. The site should be determined through comprehensive scientific study and broad consultation. Its cost could be partly met by transforming the current airport site into a mixed residential and employment precinct.

The Sydney basin airshed the pair linked to, if used as a basis for deciding on a replacement (not a second) airport would put the new airport further north than Gosford, further south than Campbelltown, Wilton, or further west than the Blue Mountains (try running a fast rail connection through those hills).

Well maybe Wilton would do at a pinch, it's a mere 88ks from Sydney by road, but the talk is enough to get the citizens of Wilton agitated here.

But really Rhiannon may as well be spruiking Canberra as a second airport connected by VFT, like her fellow visionary Barry 'have we got a Bazza airport for you' O'Farrell.

Repeating the sound of a meaningless drone is always a good idea, so there's Rhiannon droning away again in Albo Can't Fix The Airport Jam.

And maybe Albo can't fix the airport jam, but is he as deluded as the 'pie in the sky bye and bye' stuff that Rhiannon trots out?

It's more of the visionary same:

Overseas cities have grappled with this challenge and have relocated inner city airports to reduce problems such as air, noise and water pollution and crash risks. Hong Kong, Oslo, Athens and Bangkok have all moved their airports away from densely populated areas. 

Let's just run that line again with a few handy details added:

Overseas cities have grappled with this challenge and have relocated inner city airports to reduce problems such as air, noise and water pollution and crash risks. Hong Kong (distance from downtown a mere 34ks), Oslo (45ks to the city), Athens (33ks to the southeast of Athens, 45ks to the port of Piraeus), and Bangkok (which has two international airports, Suvarnabhumi, 30ks to the east of Bangkok, and Don Muang, 30ks north of downtown), have all done the equivalent of locating their airports within the Sydney basin, and with flight paths that affect some parts of the densely populated cities.

And if we can just add, even Tokyo, with Narita located 58ks or so east of Tokyo station, and Haneda, some 14ks south of Tokyo station, would have stuck its airport inside the Sydney basin.

 Does any of this bother the rhetorical Rhiannon? Nope, just a wave of the hands, and all will be well.

This requires long term planning and high speed rail linking Australia’s east coast cities. This would help reduce air traffic. Airport plans designed to deliver messages for the next election are non-solutions.

And so Sydney will have only one airport, out in the donga, somewhere past the black stump, and the Greens and dazzling Bazza are as one.

It's easy to see where this is heading. Abolish the curfews at Sydney airport and turn it into a 24/7/365 international airport. At which point, can someone make sure that Rhiannon is in the same queue as Bazza when they start forming a line for transport to the gulag ...

But enough of delusional greens and parochial Sydney problems and politicians who don't have a clue, since it seems not having a clue is an essential political skill.

Which brings us to Tony Abbott to making a grand tour to announce his grand plans while waving a simple-minded booklet/pamphlet/brochure. Whatever, just make sure it's thin and light and doesn't scare the horses and can be carried as hand luggage.

And so to the bat jet and a grand tour! (Talk about useless ways to overload crammed airports).

There Abbott is, bobbing up at shops and fish markets and workplaces, all the while donning silly costumes and pretending to actively participate in the life around him, and now we get another bloody road show.

There's no wonder the Liberals get agitated about the NBN. It seems they haven't heard of the internet, or putting their fancy policy booklet online, so anybody wanting to lose a few extra brain cells can read it at their leisure. For the few minutes it requires, with a lifetime of questions left unanswered ...

Naturally the lizard Oz was all over the idea like a rash, because it's going to be a positive "whirlwind" tour which will explain all the Liberal party policies in a nanosecond.

(No hot links, screen cap only, behind the paywall, and there it can bloody well stay).

The title alone of the 'positive message' was enough to induce nausea and gagging in the pond: Our Plan: Real Solutions for all Australians.

Real solutions?

Yep, if you follow the title back to Liberal 'home of spin and PR' HQ, it seems moving we're really into a real year for reality. If you head off here, you will see that Mr. Abbott has:

- Real plans to get the Budget back under control 
- Real plans to scrap the Carbon Tax 
- Real plans to grow a bigger, stronger economy 
- Real plans to help families get ahead 
- Real plans to help small business get ahead 
- Real plans to create more Australian jobs 
- Real plans to deliver better health and education 
- Real plans to strengthen our nation
- Real plans to reduce our nation to a mob of gibbering simpletons baying at the moon.
- Real plans to not mention climate science
- Real plans to forget about the NBN
- Real plans to over-use 'real' so much that suddenly the world becomes intensely surreal.
- Real plans not to spell out anything, because there's too much reality already.
- Real plans to use a catchy phrase because these days politics is as real as Macca's being a real dinkie di Aussie company.

And so on and so forth and thereby ensuring that immediately after Australia Day the suffering of long-suffering real Australians enduring the reality of each real day will really compound exponentially, like compound interest on a really big house mortgage.

The pond particularly loved the button promising "Hope", "Reward" and "Opportunity", and indeed there is the "hope" that the "reward" for suffering this whirlwind tour will be the "opportunity" to get as pissed as a parrot and ignore the whirling dervish at its centre.

The man will do anything in his lust for power, including torturing hapless punters for the rest of the bloody year. It's like having a persistent vacuum salesman turn up at the door each day, remind me that I'm doomed without a Dyson, and then offer me a real opportunity to get rid of him, by buying the bloody thing. Trouble is, a vote for Abbott means he'll hang around like a bad smell until his fellow Liberals decide to exhume the House.

Perhaps the best thing of all on the site was the grim intensity and seriousness exhibited by the gaggle assembled for the group photo:

Oh there's some real suffering. Jolly Joe looks like he's just swallowed the bit of the banana left-over after he used the rest to fix the diff in the clapped-out used car he's selling me.

And they wonder why the bulk of the electorate is cynical about politicians and their spin-meisters, and the way their tortured abuse of the English gets more and more strangulated by the day.

Yes, they really truly do, for real daddyo, hep cat and all that hippie 'it's for real man' Tony Abbott shit.

Who'd have thought, moving forward, that anyone could come up with anything more dire and offensive than that child-like mantra, repeated incessantly, 'moving forward'?

Excuse me, the pond will now go and really bay at the very real moon.

But just before we go there's time to mention the vintage form of Scott Morrison scribbling Advance the bold idea of diversity for the lizard oz (behind the paywall so life can go on as usual):

Our national anthem used to begin with "Australia's sons let us rejoice for we are young and free". We were right to change it, but what was arguably lost in the change was the celebration of the nature of the special kinship we share as Australians. 
 The word "sons" not only conveyed a sense of intimacy but also the notion that as Australians we are joint heirs to an inheritance with an obligation to responsibly steward that legacy.

Yes, because the word "daughters" could never ever convey a sense of intimacy, or special kinship, or a notion that as Australians we are joint heirs to a rich inheritance of sexism and with an obligation to responsibly steward that sexist legacy.

The word "sons" is so rich in patriarchal meaning, completely unlike useless "daughters" (and what were the French thinking about when they showed that naked woman holding up a French flag? Had they just dropped a tab?)

Come to think of it, women in general know nothing about a sense of intimacy or a notion that as Australians we are joint heirs to a rich inheritance.

And there you have it, out of the mouth of a clap happy intellectual babe, and watch now as all the professional non-feminist feminists in the school of Janet Albrechtsen seek to explain how this is different to the direst of Taliban thinking.

Morrison, who has made a career out of demonising the "different" and the "other" in a wild-eyed way, spreading alarums about boat people and refugees, spends the rest of the time in his piece yabbering about diversity and its joys and benefits, arriving at a wondrous place of fulsome, rich blather.

That arrival point is naturally intolerance:

We must also send a strong message that cultural tolerance is not a licence for cultural practices that are offensive to our cultural values and laws, and that our respect for diversity does not provide licence for closed communities.

You mean the pond shouldn't respect diversity, or tolerate the closed minds and closed communities of gay bashing, women-demeaning, daughter-diminishing conservatives and Liberals?

You mean the pond should send a strong message that any token cultural tolerance is not a license for the cultural practices of conservatives to indulge in acts offensive to secular values and laws?

Well there's a good start.

The pond will spend Australia Day being intolerant of Scott Morrison and his gibberish:

 Parkes's notion of us being adopted sons and daughters provides a strong basis for such a post-multiculturalism approach. It takes us beyond our ethnicity, race and religion to embrace a more inclusive national identity, and asserts our obligation to honour the values, virtues and lessons of our complete heritage.
The Howard government sought to shift this emphasis of multicultural policy and adopted the term "Australian multiculturalism" to place greater focus to what communities had in common and their responsibilities as Australians. Labor has moved back towards the more traditional emphasis of multiculturalism, as practised and now strongly derided in Britain and Europe, on accommodating and promoting diversity almost as an end in itself.

Yes, somehow, quite mystically it seems, that placing the word "Australian" in front of "multiculturalism" changes everything, and prevents ordinary, common and garden decadent, decaying, wretched European and British multiculturalism from sprouting on these shores like a foreign, alien, filthy seed. A bit like calling McDonald's Macca's transforms it from an American franchise into dinkum Aussie culture ...

There's a lot more to endure - dog whistling about "myriad taxpayer-funded programs" and troublesome "discrete geographic areas" and a "post multiculturalism approach" which is a bit like post-modernism, but not quite.

Naturally there's plenty of waffle about how we must all rally around the flag and honour the legacy and the heritage, when of course one of the key legacies was the larrikin ethos that said Australians didn't have to take the crap effing politicians like Morrison love to shove down our throats ...

Just keep it real daddyo, and get back to telling the world how boat people are spreading typhoid and fear throughout the land ...

Oh and take a little time out to explain to your daughters how being a daughter can never be quite the same as being a son ...

Yep, Australia Day is looking like yet another epic blow out.

1. Real:

Often used by someone to describe themselves as "genuine" or "authentic". It is perhaps the most overused and generic word in current use, rendering it almost meaningless. Browse any personals advertisement, (or set of policies) and every other person (or politician) who lacks a sufficiently descriptive vocabulary will describe themselves as "real".
I am (and my policies are) for real.

Thanks Urban Dictionary.

(Below: a few xkcd thoughts on keeping it real, just for a little Friday upper after a really real Friday downer).

More buccaneers, loveable rogues and yammering voices than a body can stand ...

(Above: make sure you own the media or a nine shooter).


So here's how it goes, if you run with the right pack, beguile the best crowd, and charm the eastern suburbs.

You'll attract a fine obituary from the likes of Paul Sheehan.

If you're a common thief, an indolent prole, perhaps a shop-lifing single mum, or a wretched Celt ruining the UK, you deserve nothing but contempt.

But if you have the brass to make off with millions which once belonged to other people, why then you're just a charming buccaneer and a colourful corporate figure (or perhaps, if you turn up in the AFR, you're a loveable larrikin or an engaging rogue).

So it is in Sheehan's Colourful corporate figure died as he live, as the colourful corporate figure in search of excitement is given a big wrap and farewell.

Those seeking a more balanced, objective and less personal view, might head off to Paul Barry's Coe and Co. for the Monthly in May 2010.

By borrowing big, Allco was able to pay double-digit returns and hook in investors, sucking in precisely the people who shouldn’t be taking risks, such as self-funded retirees who need high incomes. It was like dropping shiny cluster bomblets for kids to pick up. Few investors had any idea how easily their money could be blown away.

Uh huh. But that's just being a colourful character, a charming buccaneer, and a loveable larrikin. Help out with modern art, give generously to charity, raise money for the Sydney Children's Hospital, do a nice lunch with Paul Sheehan, and all's forgiven, and no worries, because the eastern suburbs push will look after its own.

As the sub-prime crisis and greed brought Allco down, there was a suicide (Children bring Allco action), and a lot of people lost a lot of money, including the principals. But not too much for the principals:

And then there are the top blokes who built this house of cards, who should feel even more ashamed of themselves for taking a fortune from investors and leading them to disaster. Of course, the dynamic duo, Coey and Gordo, are not entirely unscathed. Their shares are worth nothing, they’ve slipped down the rich list and their reputations are in tatters. Coe has even had to sell one of his Vaucluse mansions, for an Australian record of $45 million. But as far as we know, he’s still got the one next door and his fabulous art collection is still intact. There are unconfirmed (and un-denied) reports that he has taken delivery of a new luxury yacht. Meanwhile, Fell is sitting pretty in his $28.7 million Point Piper pad, which he bought in his wife’s name just as the empire began to collapse.

Yep, that'll be enough to get you a kindly obit from usually grumpy Paul Sheehan.

Remember that next time you find it a bit of a struggle to get by on Newstart, single mum, and head off to the local brothel to ask about employment opportunities.

Remember,  it's not half as burdensome as having to drop off a mansion to pick up a luxury yacht ...

(Above: one Tess Corbett)


Meanwhile, attention must be paid to Bob Katter and his party, and the splendid contribution of his party's selected candidate for the seat of Wannon, currently held by Liberal Dan Tehan. According to Katter party hopeful in gay furore, Tess Corbett from Lake Bolac let fly:

"Paedophiles will be next in line to be recognised in the same way as gays and lesbians and get rights," she said.

Apparently she has problems with the Catholic church!

In relation to planned changes to the federal anti-discrimination act Ms Corbett said she thought organisations should be able to discriminate. 
"I don't want gays, lesbians to be working in my kindergarten. If you don't like it go to another kindergarten," she told the Spectator.

No doubt the federal Labor party will do the right thing by Tess and make sure that religions locked on to the taxpayer teat can continue to discriminate. Or maybe that's about the first and last we'll hear of hapless Tess's step into the bigger pond ...

Meanwhile, the pond is standing by to take whatever drugs or alcohol is necessary to overcome the wave of nausea due precisely on the 26th January.

First came the news that in Victoria, the day has been the most violent day of the year for the past five years (Violence warning ahead of Australia Day parties forced video at end of link).

Then came the news that explained the violence - a comedy epic by Dick Smith showing refugees staggering ashore from a burning shipwreck.

You can catch a link to the advertisement here at Mumbrella. Or instead of clicking on the link, you could just pluck out an eye before it offends you.

Naturally the pond doesn't think the ad should have been banned - Smith's gained more publicity from the banning than from whatever feeble placements his pathetic campaign could have paid for, which was quite possibly the aim of the controversy.

But there is an upside, even now he's mining his indignation. A few more people will know about Smith's simple-minded jingoism, and his desperate attempts to pump up a feeble, failing, flailing brand.

Hell will freeze over before the pond ever buys anything with the name of Dick Smith on it, and that's a ban that will stick ...

If it wasn't enough to see Smith making a gherkin or a pickled onion of himself, recently there's been the extraordinary sight of a giant American combine, McDonald's, dressing itself up as dinki di Macca's, the Aussie burger supplier.

DDB Australia is the one to blame for that monstrosity, as you can read at Campaign Brief here.

It's hard to work out what's more nauseating - Smith shoving crappy rip-off food, Macca's pumping up its bloatware crap food, or Sam Kekovich demeaning the noble lamb by ruining it in a McDonald's lamb burger.

Is this what the diggers died for?

Never mind, it reminded the pond why commercial television is unwatchable, and why the streets will run red with blood this Australia day. So many people mad as hell, driven mad by watching Macca's ads and then eating Macca's food ...

Meanwhile, readers of the lizard Oz will be tortured by a conundrum.

Naturally the editorial at the lizard Oz claims that the Manner of captain's pick illustrates poor judgment, and talks of misjudgment, martyrdom, act of revenge, clumsiness, political execution, winner-take-all brutality, faceless men, decrepit Labor, and cynicism (outside the paywall because the lizard Oz editor's voice must run wild and free).

Meanwhile, Warren Mundine, who got done over by Bob Carr for a Senate position, and let his membership of the Labor party lapse, pens Labor finally does right thing by indigenous voters for the very same rag, but you have to fight the paywall to read it.

It's remarkably generous and blithe and sharing, way more than the pond feels most days of the week about the Labor party.

You'd have to be blind Freddie not to notice the way the NT branch of the Labor party lost out to the conservative Aboriginal push in the last state election, and its Berrimah-line posturing about liberals from the south ruining everything is just more of the same.

Mundine took a simpler view:

... it is a shame that such an important milestone has to be mired in a debate about internal party process...
This announcement has been 112 years in the making. Like most of Australia, I hope it will contribute to better outcomes for indigenous people.

Well Warren unfortunately you're scribbling for a rag which is desperate to mire everything in a debate about how evil Julia Gillard is.

But as usual there's an upside, because at least on this matter Mark Latham and Peter 'short memory' Garrett should keep their yaps firmly shut.

And finally the pond was bemused to read Bettina Arndt getting deeply distressed and concerned in Plenty of fish online, but that's no danger to monogamy (behind the lizard Oz paywall, but really you don't have to pay up to share the distress and the concern).

Can too many first dates create an unrealistically high bar for good relationships, undermining commitment and threatening marriage stability? That's the challenging issue raised by Dan Slater in "A million first dates: how online dating is threatening monogamy", just published in The Atlantic.

That's a challenging issue?

Ye ancient cats and dogs heralding the arrival of yet another first world problem, of the trivia and indulgence kind, you have done a mighty job.

Never mind, it was the duty of the pond to wade through Arndt's reams of gibberish, just so you could be saved the arduous job, so the conclusive finding could be reported:

Online dating has its flaws but is hardly posing a threat to the future of marriage.

Wasn't it gay marriage doing that, last week sometime?

Anyhoo, what a relief. The pond knows the world will sleep more soundly tonight knowing that marriage is safe from the dire implications of cads and bounders using online dating to undermine the very concept of marriage.

Now if you've reached this point, bravo, you need a medal, a good lie down and a break from the media ...

(Below: oh choke on it Paul and Tess and Dick and Sam and Bettina and all the rest of the yammering voices)

Is it time to ditch bewitched members of the commentariat?

(Above: yes, we're back in the ditch, and returning to the vomitous days, but not through any fault of the pond. Blame Janet Albrechtsen, who apparently couldn't see the signs, in the same way that Tony 'the blind' Abbott couldn't see them through his glass darkly).


The business of the commentariat is the business of throwing stones, and it doesn't much matter the kind of stone thrown, provided that there's a pleasing clunk when it hits, or better still, the tinkling of breaking glass.

Janet Albrechtsen loves to throw stones, but her latest outing is also a measure of the degree the commentariat became unnerved by Julia Gillard's speech about Tony Abbott (2.24 odd million viewers here, another 250k or so here) . Lordy lordy, what a lot of stone-throwing that's produced.

Indeed it so unnerved Tony Abbott that he's devoted endless time to strategies to counter-attack it, the latest including rolling out Peta Credlin to do a sob story about what a wonderful boss he is, so thoughtful and such a feminist (and which resulted in all kinds of lashings, from Peta Credlin over-eggs Tony Abbott to Crikey's more sedate Credlin a 'reluctant' but savvy star in Abbott's female strategy).

Janet Albrechtsen's not the sort who would stand idly by and pen a column denouncing Tony Abbott's feeble attempt to gain feminist credentials at this late stage in his Pellist game. After all, she hungers, perhaps even yearns for the arrival of Abbott ...

So the title for her latest stone-throwing bout says it all: PM's fake feminism is man made (behind the paywall so you can enjoy breakfast, lunch and dinner without stone-throwing yourself).

The header says it all, it's insulting, offensive and provocative, and it makes much of the rest of the text completely redundant, but hey ho, on we go.

First up is a contrast between Gillard and Helen Garner:

One is an Australian author who, twenty years ago, offered up a considered, nuanced analysis of a messy, complicated story of sex and power to inform the perpetual debate about feminism. The other is an Australian prime minister who, 20 years later, offered up a barrage of confected outrage to launch a gender war for purely political reasons.

Now whatever you might think of Gillard - and on occasions the pond has thoughts that are unprintable  - it is surely demeaning of Albrechtsen for her to use words like "confected" and say that Gillard's memorable speech was a gender war for "purely political reasons".

One of the reasons it had such impact was that there was a genuine personal seething and rage on view. She was as mad as hell and she wasn't going to take it any more  - which naturally meant that other members of the commentariat abused her up hill and down dale for taking it all too personally, and for launching a vicious personal form of outrage for not entirely political reasons. Like any and every woman, she'd let the personal get in the road of the professional.

That's how it works with the commentariat; if they can't work out one way to hang you, then perforce they must find another.

Yes, instead of all the elaborate talk of 'fake' and 'confected' it would have been a lot more honest, a lot more simple and a lot more short if Albrechtsen had simply scribbled "oh I do so hate Julia Gillard and I do so yearn for the ascension of my overlord and master Tony Abbott".

Why a column could have become a sentence, and we would have been spared this sort of naked, pathetic thought process:

Regardless of her politics, many people, including me, were chuffed when a woman reached the Lodge. Julia Gillard had shown potential as a strong, capable woman.

Which of course is a nonsense. Albrechtsen has disliked Gillard from the get go, and has said so often and loudly. But she needs to peddle this nonsense so she can propose a fall from Albrechtsen's grace:

More than two years on, it is with a sense of genuine disappointment then, not political schadenfreude, that she has failed to measure up. By making deliberately empty allegations of misogyny against Tony Abbott, the gender-card-waving PM rates poorly as a feminist role model.

Genuine disappointment? Quick, is there a bag for barfing handy ...

Deliberately empty? Standing under signs saying "ditch the witch" and "Bob Brown's bitch" are signs of a modern feminist?

Can the pond enter the political debate by calling Albrechtsen a pathetic bitch of a witch?

Let's not go there, because we have more serious issues to address:

Real misogyny is a serious matter. Just ask the women in Saudi Arabia who still may not drive a car. Or ask the families of the thousands upon thousands of "missing women" in India who are routinely killed over disputes about dowries. Ask yet another young Indian woman travelling on a bus who was brutally raped for hours by a gang of six young men in their 20s.

Yes, it's a classic form of hysteria. The pond used to endure it when threatened at the family meal for not eating vegetables ... think of all the starving millions in Asia and think how selfish and inconsiderate you're being and now eat your vegetables because there are millions in Asia who'd love to be sitting at this table eating vile over-cooked spinach (though on any given day it might also be silver beet).

It really cheapens Albrechtsen, this sort of freighting in of issues outside Australia. Of course it's terrible women in Saudi Arabia can't drive. Of course Wahhabism is terrible, of course it's completely mysterious that conservatives cheerfully accept Saudi Arabia as a middle eastern ally, while cheering on the war in Iraq. Of course it's terrible that Albrechtsen lined up alongside the Wahhabists ...

Of course things can be terrible for women in India. But then they can also be terrible for women in Australia.

So what's the point? Well it's little more than that old refrain "oh I do so hate Julia Gillard and I do so yearn for the ascension of my overlord and master".

Here's how it runs when you take the basic tune and elaborate it into a whole movement, or at least a par:

Gillard's accusations against Abbott do not resemble anything so serious as a hatred of women. So he used the phrase "honest woman"? So he, like many Australians, believes that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. So Abbott looked at his watch while the PM was talking? Australia's first female prime minister has embarrassed herself and maligned many thousands of Australians who share Abbott's socially conservative views. Rather than debate gender intelligently, Gillard chose to cheapen the conversation.

Actually it's through such elisions, distortions, opaqueness and bloody-mindedness that Albrechtsen cheapens the conversation. It's as if she'd never watched Abbott in angry action.

The pond isn't inclined to feminism, and so can cheerfully contemplate the notion that Albrechtsen should be thrown into a chaff bag, taken miles out to sea, and drowned, like any irritating mewling kitten.

What? You have a problem with that?

Sorry, that's not a serious hatred of women, that's just Tony Abbott's best mate making a joke or three.

What's interesting of course is that Garner's book, which Albrechtsen celebrates mainly to denigrate Gillard, isn't about driving a car in Saudi Arabia or the plight of millions of Indian women. It's about a very specific case, and the ripples that arose from it.

Albrechtsen uses the case - involving claims made by two young female Melbourne University students about the master of Ormond College - to reduce Gillard to the level of what she proposes are a couple of thoughtless, intolerant, dishonest university students.

It's a shamelessly dishonest and intolerant metaphor itself, but then Albrechtsen has never been short of gall and hutzpah:

Born in 1942, Garner could have been a less thoughtful feminist. She could have been like so many of the women in her book, the 1960s feminist ideologues who are devoid of nuance and regarded it as treachery to even suggest that women enjoy a power of their own. Instead, Garner represents feminism at its most intelligent. 
 Born 20 years after Garner, Gillard should have been a more thoughtful feminist. She didn't have to burn bras to be heard. The big fights had been fought and won. Freedom was there for the taking. And Gillard rightly took it. Instead, as Garner's book draws to a close, there is a sinking feeling that Australia's first female PM represents an out-dated, less intelligent form of feminism. 

Uh huh. Like an undergrad.

It's vicious and demeaning, but ironically and in the usual way, it's the stone thrower that gets demeaned.

To arrive at Albrechtsen's conclusion, first of all you have to let Abbott completely off the hook, and yet if you ask any woman about Abbott, they will provide an intuitive, usually ambivalent response in relation to Abbott's pugnacious testosterone-charged lust for power, mixed sometimes with an awareness of his long-enduring Pellist fellow travelling ways (fellow travelling from which recently he's back-pedalled in various ways, even indulging in assorted heresies, like questioning the sanctity of the confessional).

To Albrechtsen, all this is idle chatter, mere observation of reality and action and thoughts and deeds and expressions of attitude for which she has no need, because Abbott is entirely blameless and Gillard entirely guilty (it so helps to look at the world in black and white when a card-carrying member of the commentariat):

By using baseless allegations and seeking the solace of victimhood for ulterior motives, our Prime Minister has let Australian women down. In a headlong collision between politics and ethics, the politically ruthless PM chose to debase the one issue that seemed dear to her heart -- championing the cause of women. If a female PM recklessly and ruthlessly uses gender as a weapon, isn't that PM saying to other women: "Go girl, go ahead, make serious allegations, never mind the lack of evidence, so long as it furthers your agenda."

Which is pitiful when you think about it, since the reason that Gillard's speech so stung the commentariat, so stung Abbott, rang so true to so many, is that it wasn't baseless. It had been there to see for quite some time, and after it, Abbott pulled his head in, and a parade of women - amongst them Albrechtsen - have come out to testify about what a nice feminist lad he is.

Contemplating any of that history would have been too arduous and difficult for Albrechtsen. It's much simpler to diminish and demean Gillard, and her celebration of Abbott is truly pathetic:

Of course, this is just politics. Perhaps the brutal political realm is no place for nuanced debates about men and women. Presumably, that is how Gillard and her fellow gender warriors such as Tanya Plibersek and Nicola Roxon justify their almost daily determination to portray Abbott, the happily married man with three confident daughters, as a woman-hating ogre. But if we accept the premise that it is just politics, then don't we also need to accept the logical next step -- that these Labor women have chosen to balance a fraudulent feminist chip on their shoulder whenever it suits their political purpose?

If you're having a difficulty with the embedded code there, please allow the pond to translate.

Tony Abbott is a happily married man with three confident daughters; please remember that Julia Gillard is an unmarried atheist barren mother of none, shacked up with a comical hairdresser - he's a hairdresser d'oh - and a man-hating ogre to boot, carrying on like a selfish, indulged, spoiled, out-dated less intelligent feminist child of the 1960s.

Yep, it would have been a lot simpler for Albrechtsen to have said: "oh I do so hate Julia Gillard and I do so yearn for the ascension of my overlord and master".

Instead she yabbers on about confected outrage in a dishonourable gender war, thereby taking her place in a dishonourable gender war by expressing confected, contrived and fundamentally dishonest outrage.

It's a pitiful and yet at the same time a pitiless spectacle, and the only relief is that the final charge she makes is so comical:

Despite her eagerness to play the gender card, Australia's first female PM is a role model for nothing more than a politician who chases power at any price and will do whatever it takes to keep it.

Why then she's the perfect model for Tony Abbott, a politician who has spent these last few years chasing power at any price, and boring the world with his nattering naysaying nabob style of negativity, and no doubt once in power, he will do whatever it takes to keep it.

Question: have you learned anything useful or meaningful or insightful thus far? Explain in one hundred words or less how to make a stone skip across a pond to the delight of all.

Well the pond has learned one thing. Somehow the editors at the lizard Oz reckon this sort of polemical guff dressed up in learned tones and literary comparisons is the sort of stuff worthy of handing over a gold bar.

If that's the case, if we can borrow the lizard Oz's header, Albrechtsen's fake fraudulent column full of petty spiteful analysis is man written ...

There are of course better columns to be written and read about feminism, politics, Gillard, Abbott and the past few years of spite and biliousness. Just not by a member of the commentariat indulging in spite and biliousness ...

No doubt the newly found feminist in Albrechtsen is now lining up with Helen Garner to sign that open letter to Gillard regarding Julian Assange ... (here).

In your dreams.

Repeat three times "oh I do so hate Julia Gillard and I do so yearn for the ascension of my overlord and master", and maybe you can avoid eating your over-cooked socialist feminist vegies from the 1960s ...

It's war, war, war ...

(Above: Kochie takes to the thumb. Someone find him a pacifier).


It's war, war, war ...

Poor old bubble-headed boobie Kochie - as he's known to his bubble-headed chums - is shocked, shocked, he says - at the venom his entirely harmless views have attracted.

'I have an opinion ... always have and always will' says the proud header - but you have to brave a forced video to get at the meat of this story, or should we say we say the fairy floss.

Here's the height of the venom:

The venom associated with my comments on breastfeeding has been extraordinary. From being called a buffoon with discriminatory views by the Fairfax Media critic Michael Idato, to being accused of hating kids, being jealous of babies and having a boob fetish.

Yep, a series of sweeping understatements, including Idato calling Kochie a buffoon, when surely harsher words would have been more to the point.

It seems all the sweet dear lad said was that women feeding children were an embarrassment in public, and should be hidden from public, and hide their shame and their disgrace and their filthy offensive boobs, or perhaps locked up in a special pumping house a bit like a diary until feeding time is done and the milk run dry and the frumpy, dowdy cows can be let loose in the paddock once again.

Oh okay, we made that last bit up, but it's just another part of the faux exercise in shock, horror, scandal and controversy that light-weight bubble headed boobies in search of aggrandising publicity conduct.

So naturally there has to be a wounded follow-up, an explanation, an agreement to disagree, and more tedious wasted hours.

Should they be rewarded for their stunts? Should anyone pay attention when they slip in promotional fodder like this?

 For me it is an abuse of our privileged position in the media to ignore dissenting views. That is not the Sunrise way.

The Sunrise way? It's a gormless television breakfast show, it's a breeding ground for mediocrity and dickheads, you dunderhead.

But it's a pleasant distraction from another call for war, war, war.

Yes expert professional armchair general Gerard Henderson is demanding war, war, war- by golly there's nothing like a comfie armchair for strategic thinking - and as usual there's an irony in the presentation of the stories.

You see first of all there's Hendo's clarion call for war, bigger wars and better wars against the Islamic hordes, an entire clash of civilisations, a crusade of the righteous against the vermin, in War on terrorism needs a united front.

And then what do we see just below his big, grand, war-mongering from that comfortable armchair in Paris?

Yes, it's Ben Doherty scribbling an unsplashed piece, Rise in Afghan refugees likely with army pullout.

With Australia likely to remain the destination of choice among Afghanistan's wealthy, the number of Afghans seeking asylum will increase in the lead-up to the withdrawal of foreign forces from the country next year, says a report by the development consultancy STATT. 
Facing dire predictions for the stability of their country, many Afghans are already preparing to leave. The report finds Australia is likely to remain a favoured destination for those who can afford it, particularly the ethnic Hazara minority which faces significant persecution in Afghanistan and Pakistan, many of whom have family in Australia.

Uh huh. And of course it's a fair bet that politicians on the conservative side will rage about the inability of liberal politicians to stem the tide, and how stern action must be taken against runaways and refugees, and there's an even fairer bet that the addle-brained commentariat won't be able to put two and two together. Or follow this formula: war + instability = arrivals in Australia.

You'd think they'd have got a clue after the Vietnam war gave new ownership to bakeries and dry cleaners in Australia.

But back to Hendo, and he's terribly excited that President François Hollande, an alleged socialist, has turned out to be a war-monger, and somehow this redeems the failures of George W. Bush as a crusader in Iraq.

According to Hendo:

Bush - war monger overseas and human rights oppressor at home - is a phenomenon widely referred to at universities and within sections of the media. 

Actually Bush as someone who acted on the pretence of WMD which he never found, while failing to do anything about Osama Bin Laden, and this is a phenomenon someone like Hendo has wasted entire tomes in the media defending for no apparent reason.

Apparently it's something to do with Bush being poorly labelled:

... Bush was never a neo-conservative since he has been a political conservative all his adult life. But facts rarely suffice to diminish a convenient theory. 

Indeed. And presumably Tony Blair wasn't New Labour because he'd belonged to Old Labour.

The point about the use of neo-cons is of course to describe a willingness to take action, including of a military kind, and the gaggle of theorists who gathered around the label and were proud of it (as can be found in the wiki here), until Iraq turned into a bit of a bust.

It's as if Hendo needs to airbrush out of history any notion of a Bush doctrine, and a willingness to use force. Remind us Dick:

"If there is anyone in the world today who doubts the seriousness of the Bush Doctrine, I would urge that person to consider the fate of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq."

Sounds neo-con enough for the pond. But it produces a howl, a shriek from Hendo:

The fashionable left-wing view of former president George W. Bush is he invaded Muslim lands and instituted draconian national security legislation - the embodiment of which is the Guantanamo Bay military prison. According to the leftist line, all this was a manifestation of a world view labelled neo-conservatism.  

Actually neo-colonialism would do for a label - let's not forget the oil - but that would depend on an understanding that colonialism was rampant in the nineteenth century, and that variations and manifestations have kept on appearing right up to the moment.

The reality is that when Bush invaded Iraq, it was ostensibly secular. And he used as an ally and as a base a country, Saudi Arabia, which is both extremely repressive towards its citizens, and damaging to the world by using its oil dollars to pump out an endless stream of propaganda supporting Wahhabism. Remind us wiki here:

The official and dominant form of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia is commonly known as Wahhabism (a name which some of its proponents consider derogatory, preferring the term Salafism[198]), founded in the Arabian Peninsula by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the eighteenth century, is often described as 'puritanical', 'intolerant' or 'ultra-conservative'. However, proponents consider that its teachings seek to purify the practise of Islam of any innovations or practices that deviate from the seventh-century teachings of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and his companions.

It's sometimes overlooked that bin Laden and his mob came from Saudi Arabia, and if you wanted to invade any country on the basis of Islam, Saudi Arabia should have been first choice (Wahhabism - PBS - Saudi Time Bomb?)

So Bush picked the wrong country, because for some primal Freudian reason he wanted to show his daddy he could finish the job, and then he truly, awesomely bungled the job, with Guantanamo Bay just one aspect of the bungling. Remind us of the illogicality, Tony Judt:

We are slipping down a slope. The sophistic distinctions we draw today in our war on terror—between the rule of law and “exceptional” circumstances, between citizens (who have rights and legal protections) and noncitizens to whom anything can be done, between normal people and “terrorists,” between “us” and “them”—are not new. The twentieth century saw them all invoked. They are the selfsame distinctions that licensed the worst horrors of the recent past: internment camps, deportation, torture, and murder—those very crimes that prompt us to murmur “never again.” So what exactly is it that we think we have learned from the past? Of what possible use is our self-righteous cult of memory and memorials if the United States can build its very own internment camp and torture people there? (here)

Well if you're Hendo, you've learned nothing, absolutely diddly squat. Instead you're just tremendously pleased that a French socialist president once again is fiddling in Africa, and going back on his word, and Obama is droning the world - even taking out American citizens without thought of a trial - and why there must be war, war, war, without end, against the jihadists.

Ah the perfidious French. Remind us Tony Judt:

Torture certainly “works.” As the history of twentieth-century police states suggests, under extreme torture most people will say anything (including, sometimes, the truth). But to what end? Thanks to information extracted from terrorists under torture, the French army won the 1957 Battle of Algiers. Just over four years later the war was over, Algeria was independent, and the “terrorists” had won.

Indeed. And these days the Algerians think nothing of wiping out a bunch of terrorists, along with a fair swag of civilians.

But France still carries the stain and the memory of the crimes committed in its name. Torture really is no good, especially for republics. And as Aron noted many decades ago, “torture—and lies—[are] the accompaniment of war…. What needed to be done was end the war.”

The French of course have a long history of fucking things up in Africa. Americans, who have a history of fucking things up all over the world, never tire of pointing this out, and that helps explain why Time magazine prepared a short list: In Mali's Shadow: A Short History of French Military Mishaps in Africa.

It's a fair bet that the French will make a hash of Mali, in the Bush way. About the only recent military action that was relatively quick and concise and turned out the way that was wanted by a western power was the Falklands war. The French fancy themselves as the police of Africa (Gabon to Mali: History of French Military Interventions in Africa), and it helps explain why Africa is such a mess.

And why Hollande is already in a pickle, and why, if he only knew it, the support of Gerard Henderson should be sending him into a frenzy of fear and loathing.

A more sensible view of likely consequences for Hollande can be found in French action in Mali exposes absence of African neighbors, Western allies. Or in Francois Hollande's new war trappings. Almost anywhere except Hendo:

So far, the unexpected switch has paid off; Hollande has been praised at home and abroad for crisp leadership. But should the operation bog down in the dusty vastness of northern Mali, where the Islamists roam, it could become a weight around his neck and an easy target for the conservative opposition in Paris, as well as Islamist and anti-colonial elements around the world.

Yep, Hollande has been praised by Gerard Henderson, for making us understand George W. Bush had it right all along, and as Hendo resumes his comfie armchair seat, French soldiers will be roaming Africa one more time trying to work out how they can fix things rather than fuck things up in the classic George W. Bush style.

Yes, it's war, war, war, and poor dumb Kochie doesn't understand how lucky he is ... or what a feather-weight bit of morning TV, floating helium balloon opinion-spouting, dunderheadedness he is ...

Venom? Venom, to mangle Keith Miller, is a Messerschmitt up your arse ... or having Hendo on your side ...

(Below: naturally the cartoonists have weighed in, because everybody loves a decent crusade, and war, war, war).

Playing the silliness card ...

(Above: gad sir, a feast of Blimpisms to set the right tone, before we get on to Paul "General often demoted to Major" grumpy Sheehan).


The good news is that the take-down of David Brooks contained in David Brooks Now Totally Pathological has gone totally viral.

The point it makes is that those moderates who remain within the current extreme and negative version of the Republican party must escape into progressively more baroque fantasies.

Obama is being blamed for making Republicans ...

... “look like whackos willing to endanger the entire global economy.” 

Yes, and so:

Brooks displays an almost surreal lack of interest in the underlying reality that Republicans actually are whackos willing to endanger the entire global economy. It is his responsibility to conceal this reality from America.

It's a nice piece on the madness that's infesting the United States, courtesy of crazed Republicans.

And it's as good a way as any to remind others that bald-faced whackiness exists elsewhere, as in Paul "generally or majorly grumpy" Sheehan's tirade about Obama in Meanwhile, life goes on but mind the speed bumps:

He (Obama) had one major policy, healthcare, and one major tactic, a relentless attack on his opponent's wealth and corporate background. He also played the race card. He created a massive transference of wealth, via Obamacare, then urged voters to act in their self-interest.

No evidence or explanation was offered by Sheehan as to how Obama played the race card. It was just a general, vicious slur of the lowest, most debased kind. Perhaps there's a hint of it in the notion that only blacks benefitted from Obamacare, but it's such a silly notion that Sheehan dared not make it explicit.

Sheehan did, like a pony performing a trick at the circus, produce a flurry of letters, of the kind that signifies somebody read the piece and reacted with outrage.

This is somehow understood by editors as a sign that attention is being paid and that opinion-makers in the Fairfax rag are reaching their readership. As Sheehan reached letter-writer Philip Lee of Leura:

Paul Sheehan states that Obama ''played the race card''. As a keen student of US politics, I can recall no such act, or was Sheehan merely channelling another of his ''comrades'', Andrew Bolt, who has made similar scurrilous and unsubstantiated claims? 
He then goes on to quote, in support of his claim of massive voter cynicism, a faux survey conducted by another of his ''comrades'', Tim Blair, from, wait for it, that paragon of balance, The Daily Telegraph. 
For once, words fail me. A new year, same as the old year. (here amongst similar letters)

Roll on the Fairfax paywall, and let's see how many in the readership are willing to pay to be abused intellectually by Sheehan.

Because you don't simply accuse someone of playing the race card, without offering any evidence, and expect to get away with it.

Which makes it all the funnier that this week, Sheehan spends his entire column writing in support of a Dutch politician who routinely and explicitly plays the race card, and piously dresses it all up as a free speech issue in Free speech dogged by politics of difference.

Geert Wilders is one of those politicians who makes the breaking of Godwin's Law a mere doddle, a bit of pre-breakfast warming up, a figure of alienation, signalling fury and turmoil.

Naturally he's just the sort of vicious politician who'd attract Paul Sheehan. (And receive the bounteous admiration of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik).

When you're an attention seeking self-promoter, the best way forward is to compare the Qu'an to Mein Kampf, and campaign to have the book banned in the Netherlands. And lump all Islamics together as crazed, murderous fanatics.

In his visit to Britain, Wilders excelled himself by calling Muhammad a barbarian, a mass murderer and a pedophile, and calling Islam a fascist ideology which was violent, dangerous and retarded (and you can cop any number of similar statements in his wiki here).

As a politician, Wilders is a one-trick pony. He needs violent Islamic extremists in the same way that the extremists need him. Everywhere he goes he sows ferment, discord, sourness and disorder, with his idle chatter about the fall of Rome, the fall of western civilisation and so on and so forth, to the point where the German resort town of Monschau decided he wasn't welcome:

"Anyone who pollutes the integration debate in the Netherlands with poisonous right-wing populism as Wilders has, and advocates prohibition of the Koran by a comparison with Hitler's Mein Kampf, is not welcome in Monschau. I wanted to distinguish Monschau from that."

So how does Sheehan portray the Mein Kampf-wielding Wilders?

As ...

...a supporter of democracy, freedom of religion, feminism and gay rights.

Indeed. And Hitler was a vegetarian who loved dogs.

Oops, at least the pond pays, and pays handsomely into its Godwin's Law swear jar.

Sheehan presents a pitiful, piteous tale of organisers unable to find a room or a lodging or a stable or a conference centre willing to help out organisers wanting to hear Wilders do a little rabble-rousing down under. Hapless Westpac cops this sort of abuse:

The bank, which has been courting the Chinese Communist government for years, wanted nothing to do with this Dutch democrat. 
''I was organising an e-way payment system with Westpac to link to the website of the Q Society [the sponsor of the tour]. I received a call from a manager who said the Westpac Risk Management Team had decided the material for sale was offensive and inappropriate and therefore they would not proceed with the e-way system. I asked to speak to the manager responsible and was told he was on leave.''

Don't you just love the image of the bank courting the Chinese Communist government for years, while  ignoring a pious Dutch democrat?

Your mission, thought it is understood that you will likely ignore it, is to find Sheehan waxing uxorious about Gina Rinehardt, who has been selling her iron ore to the Chinese government for yonks.

Oh never mind, here you go, with Rinehart didn't start the fire, and Rinehart's vision puts north at the top.

Did either piece start off Gina Rinehart, who has been courting the Chinese Communist government, a major buyer of her iron ore for years, and campaigning to bring in foreign workers, including some from China ...?

Of course not. And so it's back to Wilders, and this remarkable juxtaposition of information:

Apparently, the anti-Western Hizb ut-Tahrir is not ''fringe'', nor worthy of an excoriating opinion piece, but the leader of a party that won 24 seats, 1.4 million votes, and 15 per cent of the vote in the Dutch 2010 election represents an extremist fringe.

That's as opposed to that extremist fringe party, the Australian Greens.

The Dutch MP causing so much concern is Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party of Freedom (PVV), the king-maker in Dutch politics over the past two years. 
When Wilders withdrew his support for the government last year, it collapsed and a national election was called. A month after that election, in which the PVV polled a million votes and won 16 seats ...

Yep, the king-maker ain't a king-maker no more. He took a bath in the most recent election, as the Dutch electorate moved away from his extremist ranting, and decided a middle course suited them better.

The information is out of the mouth of the babe Sheehan but the angry, grumpy bub is incapable of understanding the contradiction.

The enfant terrible he so loves, the grand-standing Mein Kampf Godwin's Law breaker is a fading force in his home country, and instead must rely on controversial tours - of Britain and now downunder - to maintain interest and sustain his attention-seeking.

And naturally this allows Sheehan to recycle all of Wilders' most dire statements:

Wilders believes Islam is a political ideology, not just a religion, and should be compared with totalitarian belief systems. He has compared the Koran to Fascism and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. He advocates ending immigration by Muslims because the Netherlands was losing its demographic and social stability. For this he was taken to court for hate speech. He won, but the case occupied three years.

Uh huh. Fancy that. And when the pond remarks that the Bible produces a totalitarian belief system that led to Adolf Hitler ...?

Well of course it'd just be wild-eyed nonsense, but that's the whole point of being wild-eyed. You'll always find a ratbag columnist or two willing to swing a cudgel or a baseball bat for you.

Wilders is opposed to what he calls the Islamification of Europe by a combination of demography, immigration and accommodations by multiculturalism that are not reciprocated by Muslims. Two other Dutch political activists who were similarly critical of Islam were subject to numerous assassination attempts. One was murdered, the other fled to America. 

Uh huh. Now there's as fine an example as might be wanted of playing the race card, and confusing it with religion - explain and discuss how an Indonesia Muslim is exactly the same as an Arabian one.

It's the usual blather of fear-mongers and right down the fear-mongering path of Sheehan, who loves to rage about Islamification himself.

And the cheeky devil has the cheek to talk about Obama playing the race card.

So how do we know it's all about fear?

Debbie Robinson believes the fear she has encountered in Australia merely confirms her reasons for arranging Wilders' visit: ''With every refusal I asked why, and was almost always informed that management had concerns about the repercussions. The audience was never the issue. The issue was offending Muslims. Looking at the number of cancellations and refusals it is apparent the Islamic community are not getting their message across about being the religion of peace.'' 

Actually this is echo-chamber logic.

Most Australians, it would seem, couldn't give a stuff about Wilders, in much the same way as most Australians couldn't give a damn about Lord Monckton. It's just a bunch of noisy attention seekers and poseurs of the right wing kind in their echo chamber, poncing around claiming it's all about fear of intimidating Islamics.

Shock jocks shouting at airheads, and airheads shouting back at the bubble heads. And the blimps.

Why would any organisation think about offering a platform for a shit-stirrer? Why go through the pain? And for what? Mere aggro self-aggrandising, self-promoting ratbaggery, proclaiming a religious apocalypse.

Why to go the trouble, when we already have Fairfax offering a platform for Paul Sheehan who routinely offers up this sort of sanctimonious clap-trap and double-speak and double-think (we almost said Orwellian but the Godwin's Law swear jar has copped a pounding this morning) ...

People are entitled to loathe Wilders, or shun him. They are also entitled to support him, or hear him. The problems encountered with his visit illustrate the double-speak, double-standards and fear that exists when it comes to the subject for which Wilders is notorious - confronting Muslim extremism.

Gad sir, there's no fear at the pond. Just disdain, disinterest and a fair amount of contempt.

Especially for those who chatter idly about Obama playing the race card, then wheel out Wilders as a St. Sebastian style victim of a monolithic horde of Mein Kampf clutching Islamics ...

Gad sir, and sweet long absent Jesus ...

(Below: playing the race card)

Sunday is a fine holyday for taking pot-shots at the prejudiced, the discriminatory and the subordinationists ...

It seems that bashing the Pellists is turning into something of a national sport.

Yesterday, there was Anthony Ackroyd, who seems to be the seasonal Mike Carlton substitute, letting fly with both barrels in Catholic brand appears Pell's priority.

Who knows if Ackroyd had read Cardinal Pell's musings on St. Francis's choice of a life of simplicity and poverty, which you can find here under the header Assisi, but in any case, Pell still managed to send him into a frenzy:

I write from my sun-drenched garden, seated on a banana lounge next to a metre-high statue of Saint Francis of Assisi. I have a primarily Buddhist worldview but I have a lot of respect for this quirky Catholic saint and not just because we share the same haircut. 
This Italian friar had the crazy idea that if you were a Christian you should actually follow the teachings of Christ who never said, ''Go forth and accumulate appalling amounts of wealth and live a lifestyle of ostentatious self-aggrandisement''. So, unlike the Pope and his pals, Francis and his followers lived simply just like that guy in the gospels. 
Fast-forward from the early 13th century to the present day and we find that some of the folks at the top of Catholic Church Inc are still diabolically ignorant of what is written in the pages of their company manifesto. 
Take, for example, that role model for ethical underachievement, Cardinal George Pell ...

And take he does, going on from there with the aforesaid cliched both barrels.

Now some may take this as unfair, to keep the sporting "Bazza loves yas all blazing away in national parks" shooters metaphor going, because it's a bit like taking a pot shot at a deer, or a rabbit or a 'roo caught in the glare of a spotlight.

After all, your average Pellist loves to dress up in a sumptuous frock. Simplicity ain't the go.

Oh what a grand excuse to run a nifty photo of a frock or two:

But in any case the pond takes a different view as to what to do with that proverbial deer.

The more the merrier should pile in and pile on.

Because if you read the week-old thoughts of Cardinal Pell, for the Sunday Terror, the unremitting banality will have you reaching for something, and instead of a hammer to smash your computer, you need something with a little more grunt, and directed away from self so that self-harm can be avoided.

The Pellist tract in question is called Holidays, and if it were submitted by a first year high school student, it might pass muster for a student who didn't know how to pitch the line that the dog had eaten his or her homework.

Did we say unremitting banality? As usual an understatement:

During the last forty years I have managed to take regular holidays, near the beach; I count this a blessing.
It is a time for rest and rejuvenation, for family and extended family, for catching up with friends. It is one of the best features of Australian life for those who can afford it. Some elements in this holiday mix have remained constant. The weather can be fiercely hot in Victoria, but it is regularly changeable, sometimes for the worse. In N.S.W. the summers are more predictable, often warm to hot with a touch of January humidity. 
 The ocean waters are cold off Victoria, warm and pleasant in N.S.W., although this year they have been nippy.

Okay enough. Is there a Chauncey Gardiner in the house?

Hair tearing isn't allowed, screeching is forbidden, and a fainting fit is only allowed while reading Pamela. The pond expects sterner stuff from stray readers.

Is there anything else, apart from Pellist discussion of the cricket, and Pellists being luddites who avidly devour printed books and newspapers?

Well yes, because the tract conforms to the first rule this summer season.

Sssh, whatever you do, don't mention climate change!

Neither state has had bushfires every year, but this scourge does develop at irregular intervals in the worst forms, as we have just seen in Tasmania. Evil is a bigger mystery than goodness and fire bugs are always active at these times, sometimes causing death as well as destruction. It is one of the more baffling examples of evil doing, inexplicable except as an act of hatred towards society. This debit is more than balanced by the unfashionable but sometimes heroic work of the firefighters, many of them volunteers.

And there you have a bonus classical example of a straw dog. Who's said that firefighters are unfashionable? Except Pell.

Indeed, while sitting at an outdoor restaurant the other day, two firetrucks turned up, and a dozen firies milled around like chooks, and then went away again because it was a false alarm.

Now your average Liberal party reductionist anti-government anti-regulation anti-socialist would propose this was a vast waste of taxpayers' money.

Why not first send one man on a bicycle to see if the threat was real?

Let it be noted that the pond would like at least three fire trucks to turn up at the first hint of a fire alarm at the pond's headquarters ...

If you've ever been near a fire, you'll completely forget about fashion.

Pell was probably thinking of the press Tony Abbott had attracted for his grand-standing and posing, since Abbott was incapable of going about the business of fire-fighting, without attracting the media like a swarm of bush fires.

Which is typical of someone completely clueless about St. Francis. Only a man much given to frocks would think about fire-fighting with an eye on what's in or out of fashion.

Meanwhile over at the Sydney Anglicans, the front page splash concerns the building of homes in Kenya.

No doubt this is admirable and much needed work.

But it falls to the pond to remind the Sydney Anglicans of the situation of gays in Kenya. There's a wiki on the subject here, which starts off:

Homosexuality is "largely considered to be taboo and repugnant to [the] cultural values and morality" of Kenya, and the state punishes same-sex sexual acts as crimes.

Will we ever see a headline on the Sydney Anglican site announcing an intention to build hope in the hearts of Kenyan gays, by reaching out to them in a compassionate Christ-like way, judging them not for their sexuality and their lifestyle, but instead planning to implement a life-saving venture ... the changing of laws and attitudes and hearts and minds in Kenya towards homosexuality?

A sort of Anglicans go St. Francis thing.

In your dreams.

Nope, instead you get this sort of tosh, as performed by Mark Earngey, assistant minister in the parish of Toongabbie praising the work of Michael Jensen to the skies as a must-read:

Sydney’s position concerning women and ministry is given judicious and firm coverage, as Sydney is defended from the charge of Arianism.

From refusing to give women a high role in ministry to charges of Arianism, all without pause or taking a breath!

The problem of course is that Arianism is all about Jesus being subordinate to the father (cf John 14:28), and the Sydney Anglicans are always blathering on about how women are subordinate to men, proving once again you can get three wise blind men to decipher the bible and the shape of a camel in many different ways.

The Sydney Anglicans just love subordination, they just happen to prefer it in the matter of women rather than Jesus.

Clearly the Sydney Anglicans are guilty of subordinationism, guilty as hell, and they will have an eternity to reflect on their heresies.

Well they would if there was a hell to send them to, but the pond can't let technical details like this get in the way of a sweeping consignment of the lot of them to eternal damnation, in best Anglican Calvinist style.

Meanwhile, the big news this week was the desire of Xians and others in different faiths to go on discriminating, pocketing taxpayers dollars while punishing people for being different.

There were any number of stories, including Religions will be allowed to discriminate against gays, and Christian lobby rejects push to remove religions exemptions and Religious groups free to discriminate against pregnant women, and David Marr's rant Gillard's bizarre act of faith leaves vunerable unprotected.

All in all, it's a reminder that there's not much difference between Liberal and Labor when it comes to the discriminatory crunch, and it's a reminder how precious the churches and the religious view their right to discriminate, to ostracise, to demonise, to revile and to exile, and to punish and to withhold, and to sack and to fire - all in the name of their intolerant beliefs.

Now there's a thought on which to meditate this Sunday. The unremitting hostility of the religious towards love, forbearance, sharing, and giving, as opposed to what they consider their right and proper entitlement ... taking the taxpayer dollar and using it to discriminate, to subordinate, and to spurn gays, women, and any poor person who doesn't share their fanatical views of the world.

The only bright spot? The fuss surrounding the cult of scientology, following the publication of Lawrence Wright's book Going Clear, which you can read more about in Lawrence Wright Publisher Defends Book Against Church of Scientology Claims.

That's the way it goes in America these days, cults armed with lawyers and publicists and apologists and fellow-travellers, and still they can get their comeuppance with a timely publication.

Take it away Mr. Golding.

Finally to an Anon correspondent - sorry the pond doesn't do email - who's having trouble with his emails from the pond.

Sorry, Blogger is a labyrinth, and the best I can suggest is that you unsubscribe. Cut off all connections ... and then re-subscribe. Toy with its mind and see what happens, or alternatively set up a gmail account (costs nothing but the time, do not allow personalisation). There's really no easy way to deal with issues like email from this end; the only excuse is that it's a hopeless product but it is free.