And apparently all this is being done ... for us ...

The simpering nausea continues:

And what a compelling lack of imagination as the squirrels go about their business as the PR department for the Royals. By appointment, lickspittle Murdochians ...

Now on to today's business. Note-taking and list-making.

The pond has always had a golden rule - never take notes.

Think about it. If you say something in the company of the pond, an acknowledgment, an admission, a confession, a shopping list, a laundry list, the pond won't takes notes, and within twenty-four hours, the pond won't remember a single thing, and there'll be no need for any action about anything. Especially the laundry.

This comes from a Catholic education and the nuns explaining how a soul soon became black as soot, charred and dark like coal, because of assorted sins of omission and commission. But if you told the priest in the confessional everything, he'd be guaranteed not to make a list, and your soul would be Persil-white. Or Rinso. Or whatever you like to use in your laundry.

And this glorious tradition has continued ever since in the Catholic church, to judge by Brian Lucas's explanation that he never wrote a single thing down, as revealed in Senior church figure advised clergy not to take notes of interviews with accused priests (careful, it'll cost you a Fairfax hit, and is reading about the depravities of Catholicism worth a hit?)

The pond can remember the days when Lucas was a go to media man for the Catholic hierarchy way back in the day. But what about this?

 He said his main priority was to remove priests from situations where they had access to children, and taking formal notes could be "unproductive" and stop them from speaking to him. "The particularities in dealing with these priests were that one had to, in a sense, seduce them into agreeing to resign," he said.

Seduce? Oh dear sweet absent lord, why this word?

 "Is the real position as to why you didn't want to take any note that you didn't want it to have to be exposed in any subsequent legal process?" asked counsel assisting the inquiry, Julia Lonergan, SC.
 "I think that would be a reasonable comment," he replied.

A reasonable comment? Try telling a priest in the confessional in the old days that you wanted to evade exposure, and avoid the keen eye of the lord ...

She asked whether he had published views for the benefit of other clergy to the effect that it was a good idea not to take notes "so that a subsequent legal process that would compel production of them cannot be successful?" 
“In some instances that would be accurate” Father Lucas responded. 

But what was even more astonishing? Well Lucas righteously dressed this up as the church thinking only of the victims and showing enormous care and consideration. Because you see if a victim didn't want to go to the police, and so didn't dob in a priest, it certainly wasn't the business of the church to dob in the priest ... just nab them and shuffle them off to somewhere else where they could keep on doing what they like to do ...

And even after that, there was no sign that Lucas understood the enormity of his behaviour.

Never mind, let's move on to list-making.

Here's one for the opposition and Tony Abbott.

Alienate PNG? Tick, done.

Alienate Indonesia? Oh that's a big job, let's save it for next week.

And now let's see how the thoughts of the PNG PM were reported by the reptiles at the lizard Oz:

O'Neill? Who is O'Neill?

PNG PM Peter O'Neill warns Coalition to stop misrepresenting foreign aid deal

Oh that O'Neill.

Well it simply wouldn't do to feature a man sordidly accusing Tony "General MacArthur" Abbott and Julie Bishop of lying. Was anything written down? Were notes taken? Of course not, and that's the end of the matter.

And now the pond offers its daily choice in the matter of splenetic bilious bile, no list required.

There's an obvious choice, there usually is on a Thursday, and there might be those willing to sacrifice a Fairfax hit to indulge in an acid bath with Paul Sheehan, furiously scribbling Another backflip for Rudd, another win for Labor's whatever-it-takes ethos, which is of course completely different to Abbott's whatever-it-takes ethos, including lying and misrepresenting hapless O'Neill, who finds himself in the deep end of the pool with Australia's political sharks.

In a way that ensures Fairfax will never receive pond patronage, bizarrely Sheehan's outburst is labelled "Editor's Pick", but the pond would rather pick its nose ...

It is, in the usual offensive way, an attack that purports to be from the caring side:

A backflip with pike. What makes the cruelty of this policy even more outrageous is that it is so transparently cynical, so clearly an election ploy, so self-evidently flimsy.

Naturally there's not a word about the cruelty of Nauru or the Pacific solution, nor this risible "news" which has flooded News Corp like cockroachs in the sewer running in the back lane, General to run Coalition's asylum boats strategy. (yes it's a Daily Terror news+ Emma Jones "exclusive" being aired to the world by the lizard Oz, and at Perth now here if you want the true tabloid experience at the click of a non-exclusive mouse. Can we put it on the list? Must get paywall shit together)

A top-ranking general and the might of 11 agencies would wage war on people smugglers - that's part of Tony Abbott's plan for a likely August 31 election.

Yes, we're at war, and who better to run the navy than a four star general? Get lost admirals ...

Oh that's right, it was on the list. Alienate the navy ...

And how much will the general have to spend on his war? Ten million smackeroos. That's a pitiful, tragic, pathetic ten million bucks to you ...

But while all this is jolly good stomach-turning fun for chums, today the pond recommends Greg Sheridan as doofus of the day, and if you have a lead-lined stomach, his hand-wringing in PNG plan is a dangerous game of bluff (behind the paywall for google risk-takers) is revealing for the game being played by the commentariat.

If you read the digital splash of doom, you might think he's inordinately sympathetic to subtlety and nuance:

When you get into the actual read, it turns out to be incredibly simple:

Many who come now are economic migrants rather than refugees, as Bob Carr has argued.

Yep, there's your immensely complex question involving a thousand shades of grey sorted in a nano second.

As for the rest, Sheridan berates the PNG "solution", yet manages to give Abbott a free kick:

... Abbott is not entitled to criticise PNG itself, to demonise the idea of sending asylum-seekers there, or to demonise even resettlement in PNG. Up to now, I would say the opposition has not crossed the line, but it's come close.

Oh never  mind that O'Neill called Abbott and Bishop dissemblers and liars. That's not crossing the line. By the way, who's O'Neill?

As for Sheridan's gee whiz, whiz bang alternative to PNG?

Why to adopt it and do it all over the place. Wherever:

... Canberra would hope it has a chance of getting either the Philippines, Thailand or Indonesia, or some combination of them, to set up processing centres financed by Australia. This would be difficult, but not impossible. But none of those nations would accept the idea of permanent resettlement. 
The only nations that could conceivably accept that are South Pacific nations. Australia could make the balance of such deals so attractive that South Pacific governments might accept them. But imagine what the South Pacific would be like in five or six years' time if there were 50,000 resettled refugees in PNG, and perhaps 10,000 in Vanuatu, 5000 in Solomon Islands and a few thousands elsewhere in the Pacific. 

Uh huh. We're worried about the impact on the small island countries?

Of course not silly, remember it's all about Australia:

... if the program is implemented for more than a short time it's going to create an entirely new security problem for us. 
That will be the creation of a disgruntled, new Muslim population in the South Pacific.These refugees would be Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Palestinians, perhaps some Sudanese and Somalis, and most of them getting some Australian financial support. 
 This population would constitute a recipe for social instability and a significant security problem for the region, and for us. 

Oh no, surrounded by deviant Islamic hordes, fencing us in, and ruining everything.

For us.

Oh there's a lot more, but the pond can only take so much paranoia and hostility, especially as Australia's done such a sterling job this past decade helping turn Afghanistan into a paradise of peaceful living that no one would want to flee, a deputy sheriff Howard government bit of war-mongering aided and abetted by the commentariat reptiles at the lizard Oz ...

But Sheridan does give a further clue as to how Abbott will proceed should he win. Assault the Refugee convention and blame the entire mess on the UN, and appoint a four star general to sort it all out ...

For us ....

It's just as well the pond never makes notes. If we did, they'd run into thousands of pages detailing the stench of hypocrisy and the stupidity of analysis provided by Australian politicians and the lizard Oz commentariat ...

Ostensibly for us ...

As Sam Goldwyn said, include the pond out ...

(Below: found here at Shane Maloney's thoughts on Thomas Blamey and General MacArthur)

Are we talking bullsh*t or are we talking bullshit at a rollicking north shore dinner party?

Only in Queensland.

Oh wait ...

Only in New South Wales ...

And so on and so forth ... probably only wherever you live.

The quest for a new angle shows "the squirrel factor" runs high as news of the royals - even Prince Chuck, normally an environmentalist feared and loathed by the likes of monarchist Tim Blair - breaks the banks of magazines (oh women think of what you do when you buy them, would the real Dorothy Parker buy "women's magazines) and floods the tabloids, gushing like the breaking of the waters ...

Perhaps most admirable thus far is Anne Twomey, professor of constitutional law at the University of Sydney, scribbling Messing with the royals is a crime (behind the paywall but you know what to do).

Twomey seizes the chance to make an impassioned plea for the NSW parliament to take a stand on the Treason Act of 1351:

Yes, the Treason Act 1351, enacted at the time of Edward III, is really part of the law of NSW. It is so old that the original version was written in medieval French rather than English. In translation it states, among other things, that it is high treason to "compass or imagine" the death of the king or the queen or their eldest son and heir, or to violate the king's wife or his eldest daughter if she is unmarried, or the wife of the king's son and heir. 
To "imagine", in this sense, is not just to think about something happening (otherwise all those officials planning for the Queen's funeral would be in a spot of bother) but to plot or plan it.

It goes without saying that the pond has reported Twomey's act of treason to David Flint, and may the long absent lord have mercy on her soul. Hanging's too good for some of these dissident academics and their modernising ways ... what was good enough for 1351 is surely good enough for now.

And then there was Zoe Williams scribbling Birth of future monarch has animated the unique lunacy of royal watching.

Oh it started out sounding like the sort of treason that should agitate the NSW parliament and shame Twomey:

... the frenzy around Diana would have been a modest village fete compared to this carnival; the arrival of this future monarch somehow animated for me, in a way that nothing has before, the unique lunacy of royal-watching. Waiting for this baby to come out has never had anything to do with its constitutional import, except to use its place in history as a cover for the unabashed prying. There was a woman in labour, whom none of us had ever met, and Nicholas Witchell was disappointed not to be able to give us hourly updates on her vaginal dilation.

But by the end Williams had fallen into benevolent, simpering line, delivering the sort of sentiments that would surely placate the NSW parliament:

... actually, besides the threats to privacy and the hassle of pomp, there have been the inevitable "dramatic comparisons": how was this baby born, compared to its birth-twin in Liberia? What will Kate's post-operative care be like, compared to a mother in the Central African Republic? Even though you can see how irresistible that is to campaigners for maternal health worldwide, how piquant, how potent, is that comparison, I don't think it's fair to Kate Middleton. 
When you make her the emblem of all the inequality in the world, you make her its agent. She isn't; she's a person who's had a baby, as precious and awe-inspiring to her as any baby is to anyone who's just had it. Some other time to rain on their (ridiculous) parade.


Yes she's just a person, just an average Josephine Blow, who happens to live in a castle with a prince, and all's right in Williams' (ridiculous) world.

Never mind, at least it's a distraction, and the pond is sorely in need of a distraction, and the usual distractions don't offer the usual pleasure.

Take Dame Slap today in the lizard Oz, usually a reliable source of fun:

Who could argue with that as a proposition?

Yes Tony "Mr Smooth Humanitarian" Bourke was sounding out of his depth on RN, confronted with claims of what was happening on Manus island, and never mind the rioting that had happened on Nauru shortly before that.

Meanwhile, Tony Abbott has been running around like a headless chook wondering what's been happening and what's the contract with PNG, and calling it a two page document, and all the chooks in the media have been flapping and squawking, and yet what dropped into the pond's email box yesterday?

Exclusive: Our Contract With Manus

Yes, New Matilda claims to have scored a copy of the Manus contract between G4S and the federal government, and thoughtfully put it up on Scribd for the world to see.

So while the PNG deal might remain a mystery, you'd think in the light of talk of what has been happening on Manus island that the mainstream media would be all over this document, examining it, testing its veracity, measuring the claims made by NM, inter alia:

New Matilda and Detention Logs analysis of the Manus contract reveals: 

• The Immigration Department has set out terms that suggest the standard of care and services on Manus Island may not meet the same quality as facilities in Australia. 
• There is no requirement for mandated independent audits of the facility. 
• A weaker financial penalty system has been set up than for the mainland detention centres in Australia.

Did the MSM get the sulks at being scooped by NM?

Well the pond was infinitely reassured by the news that the Auditor-General is on the case auditing Manus, and Tony Bourke is going off personally to sort out the problems, and all will be hunky dory, at least until the election is out of the way, and let's not get too excited about sordid stories of rape and violence.

Oh yes, the pond is sorely in need of distractions, and it's got so the pond can't even have fun with Miranda the Devine:

Worried about News Corp's paywall? Just head off to the Devine's blog under the header The great Australian bulldust detector is beeping. (please explain, why do they allow the blogs and still seek to charge for the content?)

Oh wait, we can have a little fun:

I was at a rollicking north shore dinner party on Saturday night, at which talk turned briefly to Kevin Rudd’s much trumpeted Papua New Guinea “solution” to the asylum seeker boats problem.

Rollicking? North shore? Dinner party?

Oh and they routinely take the piss about the inner west and urban elites, the ponces and the gits, yes they do ...

And then the Devine made much throughout the piece of the splendid bullshit detectors deployed by the great unwashed Australian public:

A well developed bullsh*t detector has always been a quintessential element of the Australian character, part of a cynical, anti-authoritarian streak that perhaps stems from our convict roots.

Yep, it was written throughout as bullsh*t and the pond calls bullshit on anyone who doesn't know how to spell the word bullshit - not to mention the bullshit that credits the anti-authoritarian streak to convict roots and fails to mention much more important factors, such as the union movement, and a readiness of working class people to call people who attend 'rollicking north shore dinner parites' as chronic bullshit artists ...

What's even more astonishing is that the Devine spends considerable time listening to the word of a tobacconist, which is to say a professional dealer in pain, misery, sickness and death.

But then she's really only interested in the opinions and the issue as a way of taking down current chairman Rudd, and as a way of installing Tony Abbott, as if he'll sort things out. Well the pond's not in the business of defending, supporting or cheering on the Ruddster, but if you believe that Abbott will fix things, you really do need a brand new bullshit detector ...

And now as a further distraction, how about this stroll down memory lane, from the Sydney Morning Herald on 9th December 1977, when the sleaze merchants at the Liberal party were up to their usual bag of tricks.

Doesn't poor old Gough look like a snake oil seller, quite possibly a child molester?

Oh Fraser has developed a classic case of the guilts since, but look how he smiles at the character assassination at the time ...

Things only change so that they can stay the same ...

(Below: click to enlarge)

Hendo and Cater, as fresh as Irish bread, or a shipping container in Botany ...

(Above: Steve Bell on royal breeding. More Bell if here).

One thing is absolutely certain: there is no way the pond will start off the day by referencing, let alone celebrating, the breeding activities of the House of Windsor.

What's that you say? By mentioning the breeding activities, they have in fact been referenced?

Damn you reflexivity, you dirty reflexive ape, damn you to hell.

But at least the pond isn't as bad as RN, which has seen Fran Kelly cooing and clucking, and a gentleman in the studio celebrating the triumphs of the British ... the Olympics, the Test cricket, the Tour de France, and now a Royal bub. Yep, breeding as a kind of sporting contest.

Truly why old Flinty goes on about the ABC, when it's a nest of Royalists of the most dubious kind.

Another thing that's absolutely certain is that the pond won't reference the hypocrisy that's been doing the rounds in relation to boat people. Nausea's certain to follow ...

What's that you say?

Oh okay, after the utterly incredible and amazing Tony Abbott said a few days ago:

"I will never subcontract out to other countries the solution of problems in this country," he said... (here, may cost you a Fairfax hit and a forced video)

Because you know the Pacific solution didn't involve other countries because there aren't any countries in the Pacific ...

And because you know towing back the boats and telling Indonesia to fix it up by themselves isn't subcontracting, just a form of piracy ...

Yes, after Abbott showed once again an infinite capacity for lies and deceit - possibly involving lying to himself and self-deceit, such is his inability to hold a straight line on anything - the feral rabid Scott Morrison turned up in the lizard Oz with this:

Hello Nauru, goodbye responsibility.

No link, the pond would rather link to its favourite brand of rat poison (yes if you live in the inner west, you have rat problems, and they're not all political).

Meanwhile, prattling Polonius - yes it's Tuesday and we all know what that means - has gone all Catholic in 'Sorry' would give Rudd credibility (it'll cost you a Fairfix hit, but who's counting or caring):

Yes, this from a man who never apologises for anything, presumably on the basis that infallibility means you're never wrong:

Sometimes a confession of error works better than evasion or denial.

Uh huh, and how many Hail Marys and Our Fathers are involved?

Howard erred when, as opposition leader in August 1988, he called for a reduction in the Asian proponent of Australia's immigration intake in order "to ensure the maintenance of social harmony and cohesion". Howard soon distanced himself from this comment and came to express regret that he had ever spoken in these terms since his position was clearly wrong. The mea culpa worked and Howard went on to establish excellent relations with Asian communities in Australia. 
A Rudd mea culpa would diminish some of the opposition to the Prime Minister's current stance by those who resent his apparent denial. Also it would give greater authority to his new position.

Which is nonsense, gibberish, and yet amazingly the Fairfax troops routinely publish this sort of nonsense.

A mea culpa just out of an election? Why not just hand Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison baseball bats and urge Rudd to give them a free hit?

And never mind John Howard's fellow-travelling with Pauline Hanson:

“Of course I will be called a racist, but if I can invite whom I want into my home, then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country,” she (Hanson) said. 
Five years later, after he had stopped the Tampa with its cargo of boatpeople from landing in Australia, Howard raised the rafters at his election campaign launch by declaring: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.” Coincidence? Perhaps. But it represented a certain meeting of minds. (here)

Now the pond long ago gave up on the notion of coherence without back-tracking, hypocritical double dealing, and other political chicanery - the pond isn't actually sure it's believed any politician saying anything, no matter how apparently heartfelt it was, because the average politician would ship their grandmother to Indonesia if there were enough votes in it ...

But surely it's right to expect a bit more subtlety and nuance than the routine follies of a Hendo?

Never mind, aficionados of twittering twits will today have an exceptional pleasure, thanks to the reptiles at the lizard Oz:

Beelzebub? WTF?

If you want a light-weight showing what it's like to match wits with a hot air balloon, look no further than Cater being Cateresque in Still waiting for the Left's condemnation (behind the paywall, because the lizard Oz thinks there are mug punters out there keen to do their dough cold, but tired of the nags and the pokies).

Is there anything more offensive than a git who not so long ago hopped on a plane and landed in country with a plum job poking a stick at hapless refugees?

Not in Cater's world. And yet this squawking goose sounds just like Hendo, wanting an apology:

Either way, the nation is unlikely to get the humble and forthright apology it so richly deserves. 
The rules of progressive politics mean mistakes can never be acknowledged, since it would destroy the illusion that constant social improvement is the one true path to civilisation. 
A mea culpa, even a small one, requires abandoning the moral high ground.

Uh huh. Much like the Howard government grovelled and apologised for all the pain, suffering and abuse of its policies.

But you know you're in the presence of a really offensive, pathetic, tawdry git when you cop this:

In the Rudd government's defence, it clearly had little choice but to repudiate the Howard administration's policies if it wanted to calm The Age's editorial writers and avoid a shellacking from the pontiff of progressivism, David Marr.

Bugger the pond dead, yet another tedious riff on The Age v the reptiles at the lizard Oz.

So tired, so lame, so wretched.

Now look, the pond generally has nothing against British refugees landing in Australia by air and taking up residence. But can it be made a rule of law that at Customs said refugees are stripped of their dictionaries and keyboards so we don't get this sort of simpering, pathetic prose?

We must forever be on our guard, for Beelzebub and his agents - "Piers Akerman, young Andrew Bolt and the indestructible Alan Jones" - never sleep. "Old fears recycled work their magic over and over again." 
We tremble as we await Marr's denunciation of Rudd, now that the devil has taken hold of his tongue and his policies. Mighty will be the sword of righteousness that is about to smite this fallen cherub. Verily, they will withhold fellowship from he who walketh on a path abhorrent in the eyes of the righteous ones, seated around the table in a fair-trade bakery in Annandale.

Actually Marr did a fine job in Captain Rudd steers Australia into new depths of shame, but sssh, he works for The Guardian these days, and some people might be refugees from the rag. Double sssh, actually given the way both Fairfax and News Corp a going into a new round of downsizing.

As for the joke about a fair-trade bakery in Annandale? Oh that's so funny, so elegant, so intelligent, so witty and gay, but it just misses, since clearly Cater hasn't caught up with vegetarian butchers ...

But what's the bet this British refugee in fact doesn't drink shitty coffee, or quaff four buck De Bertoli, or eat at his local fast food joint as a special treat on a Friday nigh?

Even more offensive is Cater's assumption that refugee politics can be just played as another game, with the Ruddster denounced for hypocrisy by the right, and given a free pass by the left, and vice versa Abbott can be given a free pass by the right, and never mind his hypocrisy ...

You might think that if you're a privileged refugee from Britain, and never mind that country's recent success at sport and royal breeding, you can get away with rhetorical tripe of the half-baked biblical kind, but as cheap point scoring goes, Cater is about as cheap and as pathetic as it gets ...

Now hie yourself off to your local server of bulk white bread, pre-cooked in Ireland, and show you're at one with the gormless mob ...

(Below: read about Nick Cater's preferred form of baking in Kennett toasts Coles over 'fresh' bread. Well you wouldn't want your bread from a bakery in Annandale, would you?)

Sheehan, Rudd and Bonhoeffer ...

One of those honoured above the Great West Door is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, pastor and peace activist. Bonhoeffer is, without doubt, the man I admire most in the history of the twentieth century. He was a man of faith. He was a man of reason. He was a man of letters who was as well read in history and literature as he was in the intensely academic Lutheran theology of the German university tradition. He was never a nationalist, always an internationalist. And above all, he was a man of action who wrote prophetically in 1937 that "when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." For Bonhoeffer, whatever the personal cost, there was no moral alternative other than to fight the Nazi state with whatever weapons were at his disposal.  
Three weeks before the end of World War II, Bonhoeffer was hanged by the SS because of his complicity in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. This year marks the centenary of his birth. This essay seeks both to honour Bonhoeffer and to examine what his life, example and writings might have to say to us, 60 years after his death, on the proper relationship between Christianity and politics in the modern world. (here)

Ah, the good old WWBD test ... almost as much fun as WWJD ...

Bonhoeffer had indicated to Bishop Bell even before the Saar plebiscite that if the Saarland were annexed by Germany, there would be a considerable surge of refugees reaching Britain. He was able to make the first preparations for aiding them himself, with Bell's help, before he left London. He found lodgings for refugees, raised money and gave pastoral care himself to many of the new arrivals. Among the people whom Bonhoeffer aided during the first weeks of this migration was Armin T. Wegner, the German author who, as a war reporter, had witnessed the Armenian genocide. Wegner had protested to Hitler against the way the Jews were being treated, and escaped to England after being tortuted by the Nazis. Former Transport Minister Treviranus was also compelled to flee, and his son was conformed by Bonhoeffer at Sydenham Church in London.
The work with refugees was greatly expanded later on ... (here)

But don't take it from an academic.

Take it from the horse's mouth, or backside if you will:

Another great challenge of our age is asylum seekers. The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear. The parable of the Good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst. That is why the government's proposal to excise the Australian mainland from the entire Australian migration zone and to rely almost exclusively on the so-called Pacific Solution should be the cause of great ethical concern to all the Christian churches. We should never forget that the reason we have a UN convention on the protection of refugees is in large part because of the horror of the Holocaust, when the West (including Australia) turned its back on the Jewish people of Germany and the other occupied countries of Europe who sought asylum during the '30s. (here, the same place as before)

Smell the usual stench of political hypocrisy?

Well that was then, but this is now, and hypocrisy isn't just to be found amongst politicians.

Isn't it wonderful how the commentariat have gone rabidly leftist, almost indecently Bonhoefferish? Isn't it amazing how those celebrating Scott Morrison baying like a rabid ratbag hound are suddenly shocked?
Isn't it astonishing how those who wanted to turn the boats back are suddenly suffused with compassion?

Look around and you can find any number of weird examples, but can any match generally grumpy Paul Sheehan and his header, Devil's Island plan unmasks Rudd.

Never mind that the sneering designation of Papua New Guinea as a Devil's Island is as pathetically colonialist, arrogant and condescending as the Ruddster's own plan.

After all, at one point Australia used to be in charge of PNG, and has been busy back-pedalling away from responsibility and engagement as quickly as it could, while maintaining a semblance of a decent appearance.

Now you'll hear from those on the left and the right that it's a hellhole:

The real gotcha is the generally grumpy Sheehan's pious righteousness, which is as nauseating as the Ruddster.

Here's a sample. 

Oh you've guessed it. 

We're all - Sheehan, Abbott, Scott Morrison - Bonhoeffish now:

Rudd's Devil's Island ploy is beyond cynical. It is grotesque. The policy has not a shred of functional credibility, policy consistency or moral coherence. 
In an essay in The Monthly in October 2006, Rudd wrote: ''Another great challenge of our age is asylum seekers. The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear. The parable of the Good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst. That is why the government's proposal to excise the Australian mainland from the entire Australian migration zone and to rely almost exclusively on the so-called Pacific solution should be the cause of great ethical concern to all the Christian churches.''

Sheehan quoting Bonhoeffer. It's beyond cynical, it's grotesque.

Now let's get a dose of Sheehan's own moral coherence:

The policy of turning back the boats is humane compared with this policy. 

Waiter, bring that bowl of water. Turning them back and who the fuck cares what happens to them is vastly more humane than letting them land ...

Uh huh. And now can we have a mention of the cost to the poor old taxpayer. Because you know, being a bleeding heart and a good Samaritan can be damned expensive:

Not surprisingly, there was a riot at the detention centre on Nauru on Friday night, leaving the centre destroyed by its inmates and a bill estimated at $60 million - to be footed by you.

As were the costs of the various riots, and all the rest that went on in detention centres in Australia during the Howard years, until they hit on the spiffing policy of exporting the problems.

Here's the really revealing line in Sheehan's polemic:

Even the opposition, which has always supported offshore processing of asylum seekers, appears gobsmacked by Rudd's audacity. As Scott Morrison - the immigration spokesman and a man not noted for softness on border protection - pointed out, it will take years to build a functioning processing centre on Manus Island, as distinct from the row of tents that Rudd is now treating as a policy centrepiece.

Yes, rabid attack dog Morrison is gobsmacked, and so is Abbott, and so is Sheehan, to the point where Sheehan is caught quoting Bonhoeffer!

Sheehan quoting Bonhoeffer!

Oh it had the pond rolling the jaffas down the aisles for hours, though it's unlikely a genuine refugee fleeing Iran - were we only a few years ago talking of mad Mullahs needing a good bombing? - would share the laughter.

Could it get any funnier, in a bleak, dark, cynical, sour way?

Of course it can, of course it can:

On and on it has since gone, creating a multibillion-dollar black hole that can only get bigger. ''It will not be inexpensive,'' Rudd said with a straight face as he announced his PNG ploy. ''Our responsibility … is to ensure that we have a robust system of border security and orderly migration … as well as fulfilling our legal and compassionate obligations under the refugees convention.'' 
Legal and compassionate obligations. What a dark joke. Two weeks ago I met long-serving foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer, who has friends on both sides of politics. This is what he had to say about Rudd: ''In all my years in politics I never encountered anyone more cynical, opportunistic and narcissistic than Kevin Rudd. ''He will do anything to gain an advantage.'' 

Alexander Downer? Alexander bloody Downer talking of doing anything to gain an advantage?

Has Downer - or Sheehan for that matter - never met feral attack dog Scott Morrison?

What about nattering negative naysayer Tony "invisible substance" Abbott?

How about John "don't want no Tampa here" Howard outsourcing the problem with the Pacific solution?

How about Alexander "the stocking" Downer himself?

Here's the real problem. For years, the Morrisons, the Sheehans, the Abbotts, none of whom have given a toss about legal and compassionate obligations, have whipped up the hysteria, and used the boats as a stick to beat the government around the head with, so desperate were they, so offensively disinterested in people, so obsessively interested in gaining a political advantage, were they ...

And now it has come to this, in this game of poker. A bidding war for the darkest side of the Australian psyche,  and the Ruddster, playing with the thinnest of hands, has gone all-in, and all that's left on the hard right is is clucking and tut-tutting by Sheehan about Bonhoeffer and political advantage ...

Waiter, a bowl of peppermints. Anything to squelch the taste of nausea and bile in the mouth ...  anything to disguise the stench of hypocrisy ...

But I suppose there's an upside ... at least we can say Paul Sheehan unmasked in story about Kevin Rudd unmasked ...

Oh okay, here's a little Bonhoeffer. Apply it to Sheehan, Rudd, Morrison, Abbott, and Downer how you like:

Would it be Sunday without the angry Sydney Anglicans taking on the pagans and the gays?

It's excitement city time at the angry Sydney Anglicans, as Davies goes head to head, glove to glove, with Smith (nominated by Mark Thompson of Moore College, say no more) in a fiery smackathon, as you can read in Archbishop-in-waiting.

Inter alia, it included this poignant remark from Davies:

...we prayed for each other, because – especially with social media, which provides a great temptation for immoderate, unedifying discourse – we wanted to model godly and edifying discourse.

Well the pond is always on the search for immoderate and unedifying discourse, and what better way to start than by celebrating David Pettett celebrating the way brave Sydney Anglicans have stood up to the Pagans.

Truly, according to Engaging a community, up Katoomba way, there was all sorts of stuff that could send your average Sydney Anglican in to a total Reverend Lovejoy meltdown:

Twenty years ago Katoomba started its Winter Magic Festival, celebrating the winter solstice. 

It was a decidedly 'New Age', 'Pagan' event, a counter to Christians. The churches closed their doors. Witches, warlocks, fairies and goblins paraded. 

Shocking. But there's good news, and such a relief:

The event has changed somewhat over time and has more of a community focus and inclusion these days. People still dress up and the odd warlock can still be seen. But the pagan symbols have been removed from the promotional material. 

Um, but it's still on the solstice, right? It's still a pagan ritual? 

No, thanks to the steadying hand of the Anglicans, the pagans are being tackled head-on:

Here is a church that exists in a hard place, side by side with an overtly pagan, new age community. It has become the Christian voice in this public sphere from which it once retreated.

Oops, a little clarification please:

My article is about the engagement Christians are having with their community but I may have given the impression that they had retreated in the presence of an overt paganism until recent times.

Ah well, it was a good story, pagans in retreat, angry Anglicans back off the mat and on the march ..., while it lasted.

The pond has only one suggestion. Until they stop holding it on the winter solstice, the pagans will be winning. There's no time for faint-hearted fellow-travelling here, the festival must be shifted to John Calvin's birthday on 10th July, and to hell with those pagans ...

Meanwhile, Michael Jensen is on hand, ready to tackle a subject even more problematic than pagans, which is to say teh gays, under the header Book review: Is God Anti-Gay? by Sam Allberry...

Anybody who expects an answer to the actual question in the header will be bitterly disappointed, as will anyone expecting an answer to interesting questions such as why did god create gays - so She could persecute them?; or why did god allow homosexual behaviour in other parts of the animal world - so she could perplex bigots and irritate angry Sydney Anglicans?; or why is god such a misery - is it because She really likes kicking people around and making them miserable over the form of sexuality She's given them, because it's so much fun...

No, Jensen isn't having any of that:

It’s ‘the issue’, isn’t it? 
If ever there was an issue in the Western world for which Christians feel assailed, then it is homosexuality. Gay rights is a political and social issue that doesn’t seem to want to disappear anytime soon, with the push for same-sex marriage seemingly sweeping all before it. 
The media seems extraordinarily biased in favour of this agenda, and against those who take a different view. The churches are most certainly the enemy, as far as this debate goes. And so the ‘issue’ has become one of those things we are known for, like it or not; it is a cause in society with which the Christian community is associated, and not much in a good way. 

Oh dear, the media, totally biased and pushing an agenda. Is that paranoia slip showing or what?

Why it turns out that even the actual Sydney Anglican site is part of this deviant agenda:

(One of the few complaints I have about this excellent website is the amount of stories it links to that are to do with homosexuality. The impression given sometimes is that in the Sydney diocese it is our particular fixation.) 

Oh no, fixated Angry Anglicans. What a tragedy if there was a hint of gayness about the place. And then to a confession:

And so the temptation is for church people to forget that this is not ‘an issue’. It is not simply about ‘us’ and ‘them’ in a political or social argument. It is about real people, many of whom are ‘us’: the people alongside us in the pews of our churches, and their children. I know I have spoken angrily or aggressively about the 'gay agenda' in such a way that any Christian who was themselves experiencing same-sex feelings would have felt very alienated.

Well indeed, because you just whinged about the media and the angry Anglican website.

But is there a way forward?

Sam brilliantly explains how sexuality is not the same as identity, and how the gospel helps him to see that. He does not make rash promises about change, although he does know some people who have experienced a change in their same-sex attraction. He also reminds us that the Bible is very positive about singleness as a calling, and doesn’t absolutise marriage at all. One of the best sections of the book is the section ‘What should I do if a Christian comes out to me?’ The advice is exactly what pastors especially need to hear, but any thoughtful Christians as well. 
I would really hope that this short book is widely read. It should be available in any church or youth group, and I pray it will be of a blessing to Christians seeking to live a God-honouring and biblically faithful life.

And there you have it, in one short burst, every form of patronising exclusion that can be mustered. Feeling a little gay? Work on a new identity ...
Feeling like changing your gayness ... well it can be done, it might just take a little work, but no rash promises, just loads of guilt and humiliation ...
Still feeling like a gay fuck ... ever thought about "singleness" as a calling ...

And so on and on, down to the Reverend Lovejoy sign-off.

The long absent lord help any young gay person caught up in an Anglican church and being hectored, lectured and admonished about the need to live a god-honouring, biblically faithful, screwed up, fucked-up, self-denying, self-abnegating life ...

Finally it's been such a long time since the pond dropped in on Cardinal George Pell's musings for the Sunday Terror. Well that's because they've stopped printing them at the Catholic site here.

Maybe there is a god after all, and She's decided to do the right thing, and support the Terror's paywall ... thereby saving thousands from enduring Pellism ...

Knavery, hypocrisy and a little popery this Sunday ...

(Above: the Daily Terror in a frothing and foaming frenzy).


A long time ago, Paul Cox made a film about an elderly woman trapped in an old folks home, where she had absolutely no affinity with the other residents, still being alert of mind, interested in the arts and interested in the world.

It was called "We Are All Alone My Dear", and anytime the pond gets melancholy, that title still swims around in the mind.

The pond has no political party and no religion, and in melancholy mode looks at all the others in the world running around with certainty and wonders where it comes from. It's not much of a country either, what with dropping its refugee solution on another, still developing, country ...

This being Sunday, it's meditation day, and while the pond loves Yeats, it was a wretched thing for him to capture in a few lines the essence of the problem, in a way which has long haunted the pond:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre 
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 

The pond was never likely to vote for the Labor party, but its latest flourishes of policy in relation to refugees and other matters makes it a certainty - this falcon can't hear the falconer, at least not if its the Ruddster. As for its local rep, Albo, the member for useless reports ... if this falcon caught a mouse, it would only be so it could drop it down Albo's useless pants ...

As for the thought of contemplating a vote for Tony Abbott and team, how to live with the shame? The ignominy? The sheer implausibility and impossibility...

And the Greens, led by Christine Milne? So severe ...

Is it wrong to judge this way? Guilty as charged - but at least Bob Brown showed a sense of humour at the same time as setting up interesting initiatives (and why not listen to Off Track's tale of Naree Station as a heritage site on the ABC here).

What's even more appalling in its own way, is the response of baying right wing loons to the Ruddster's lurch to a tougher position than even the Liberals imagined:

Yes, suddenly the hardliners baying like hounds have turned sook, as you can discover if you can summon the stomach to read Miranda the Devine in Kevin Rudd just created another boatload of humanitarian problems.

Is it possible to imagine the Devine as a bleeding heart?

Of course not, she spends the entire piece attacking bleeding hearts for not attacking Rudd, and then comes the real comedy:

In the end, if Abbott wins the election, Rudd may have done him a favour. No matter what policy he implements, it can't possibly be crueller than Rudd's PNG solution. 
Abbott has a conscience and this will lighten his load.

Abbott has a conscience? Abbott welcomed the policy, only pausing to note that he was the best gauleiter to run it ...

The pond has at last come to understand why many don't bother to enrol, why those that do then evade voting, and why those who get inside a voting booth deliver a donkey vote or scribble abuse on the paper, making it invalid.

The pond can even understand Alan Langer, and why he came up with the Langer vote, though when you remember the jail sentence he copped, it might be best to speak of it in hushed tones. In his day he first Australian prisoner of conscience in twenty years ...!

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world ... 

Ah well, at least, we've still got mere anarchy!

And a goodly dose of comedy, and again it features the Sunday Terror.

A long time ago - well it seems a long time - and in another country, John McTernan wrote a piece for the UK Terror, the header for which says it all: Julia Gillard: Australian blokes have done their country down, Julia Gillard has been driven out as Australia's prime minister by a brutal and unfair misogynist culture.

Fair enough. And rags like the downunder Terror were front and centre with this sort of stuff:

Yes, McTernan was routinely abused as a spin doctor and a spin meister of the lowest and most pathetic kind, a rogue 457 ratbag smuggled into the country to fool the natives. News Corp hacks spent a considerable amount of time demonising him as an out of touch Scot who'd ruined things in the UK for Labor, and was now ruining things in a foreign land ...

At the time of the 'Spins and Needles' cover, the Terror opined in an editorial:

Six prime ministerial staffers accompanied her at the photo session, which was the idea of her senior adviser, John McTernan. Consider the public expense, all just to present a positive angle at a time when Ms Gillard's political stocks are in freefall. 
Rather than being positive, the image suggests a prime minister who is completely out of touch with the electorate and who cannot read the public mood. It also supports the view of critics who claim Ms Gillard misunderstands the seriousness of her office. (here)

Ah that McTernan, coming up with a grand idea that showed how completely out of touch Gillard was, completely incapable of reading the public mood, in the grip of a profound misunderstanding about everything ...

So who turns up in today's Terror scribbling what?

Not to worry, people on a 457 have to have an employer and make a living if they're to hang around, but if you actually click on The Julia I know and love but you never really met, you'll find an astonishing pile of guff of the most fawning kind.

What's even worse is if you click on it to read it, you might get a news+ demand for money before being able to proceed ...

So why is the Terror finally on board with Julia worship? Why hire McTernan? 

Well it's mischief-making and hypocrisy of the first water, and all that we've come to know of the Terror and its ways ...

To deal with it, the pond had to turn to a little Popery to get through this Sunday. More David Pope here.

Swimming with the goldfish ...

There's nothing like Chris Kenny analysing Chris Kenny as a way of starting a Saturday read:

Goldfish, so they say, have a three-second memory span. So if you put a toy castle in your goldfish bowl the fish will swim by and think to itself, "Oh, look, that's a lovely castle", before swimming another lap, passing the toy and exclaiming to itself, "Oh, look, that's a lovely castle." 
Singularly Chris Kenny is a goldfish. He lives in the present.

Oh sheesh, those bloody New Zealand subbies have been at work again, and totally got it wrong. It seems it should have read:

 Collectively, the media is a goldfish. It lives in the present.

Actually the rather lengthy header tells the reader Kenny's real point, and perhaps makes the exercise of reading his goldfish insights rather redundant - Splashing goldfish of the media overexcited by the resurrection of Rudd. (behind the paywall so you never have to bother).

But hey the pond wanted to read it anyway, because the pond always loves it when one of the media, (or should that be, when one of the mediums?), turns on its own, a bit like those notorious stories of cannibal goldfish that litter the intertubes.

But there was another reason the pond was intrigued, and that's because of the hook on the digital carousel of doom on the lizard Oz's front page:

Hmm, was goldfish Kenny turning into a whale-lover and a whale-hugger, and criticising the current Chairman Ruddster for going more right than Genghis Khan?

You can imagine the disappointment when the pond actually read Kenny's piece and could find no mention of whales at all, except in the splash. Zip, nil, nada. 

Did the goldfish eat his homework?

Perhaps there was some problem with the digital finger of doom:

Anyhoo, that's about as exciting as it got, as Kenny turned on and ate his own:

Since Kevin Rudd has returned to the leadership, the self-perpetuating and self-fascinated media reaction has revelled in what was always going to be. 

Cameras create a crush around the resurrected Prime Minister so they can report the crush around the resurrected Prime Minister. Oh, look, that's a lovely Prime Minister.

But should he have been so cruel? After all the front page of the lizard Oz is littered with the work of reptiles rushing to report and comment on the work of the Ruddster. Et tu lizards?

Look at them all, all hyperventilating - goldfish Shanahan, goldfish Kelly, goldfish Sheridan - quick check the oxygen pump and the filter.

And worst of all, poor old Kenny has to deal with the goldfish who wrote the lizard Oz's editorial, After years of failure, a refugee policy with merit (not behind the paywall, but why would you bother?)

Yes, now that the Ruddster has gone Gengis Khan, the rag is almost sort of kinda on side, or at least on side with the Khan routine.

Never mind, the rest of Kenny's piece is really just an attack on Rudd, dressed up with a sideways assault on the rabble that make up the lizard Oz. 

But then, just when you think the whales are completely forgotten, he concludes the assault with a bleeding heart:

With the stroke of a pen, Rudd could have reinstated temporary protection visas and ordered our navy to turn back boats. Yet he won't. Instead, the man who dismantled the Pacific Solution has created an ad hoc PNG solution: sending refugees to a country bedevilled by corruption, violent crime and serious health and economic issues. 
Whether for good or for ill, this moment will be remembered.

Ah, at last, an attack from the left! And never mind what might happen when the navy turned back boats and they sank ...

And at that point you realise why the goldfish are floundering, now that Rudd has turned Khan. Even Abbott hasn't been able to summon up the nerve to attack near neighbour PNG ...

Is it possible to think that Kenny really cares about refugee seekers and their fate in PNG? Only if you're a goldfish ...

You have to go to another Kenny piece, published this same day, to get the real measure of the man, which is to be found in the lizard Oz under the header Conservative campaign HQ cranks up (behind the paywall so you never need to know).

It's a gushing, to the point of nausea, bit of cheer-leading, and this sort of private dick - or is it war cabinet, Churchill style - opener evokes the tone perfectly:

In a non-descript office block at the parliament end of the Melbourne CBD, some of the nation's most important political operatives have been quietly coming and going for a number of weeks. 
One full floor and part of another have been set up as national campaign headquarters for the culmination of Tony Abbott's 3 1/2-year assault on the prime ministership. 
Some campaigning has already been directed from this nerve centre in recent weeks, with the Opposition Leader using it on Victorian visits. 
The moment the election is called, 100 staff will descend and turn it into a hive of responsive and hyper-focused activity, 24 hours a day for the 33 days or more.

Goldfish!

And so on and so forth as Kenny adores the campaign team - yes Loughnane handled the wonderful 2007 election success and yes the team is ready for the return of the diabolical Rudd, and everything thus far has turned out wonderfully well, and the team has made some specific calls which have been spiffing and top notch:

One of the Liberals' first tactical challenges after Rudd's return was whether to accept the Prime Minister's challenge for a debate. The strategists knew it was a risk to let that opportunity pass -- Abbott could look weak -- but considered it more important not to jump to Labor's tune. This stand-off frayed some nerves among members of the Abbott camp. 
Yet when Rudd was left speaking on his own at the National Press Club, struggling to offer policy detail, they believed their call was vindicated. 

Goldfish!

Especially as that call seemed to result in an overwhelming majority in a national survey preferring big Mal as a leader.

Never mind, in the old days this sort of admiring tosh, served up luke warm, would have been called a colour piece.

It's the sort of stuff you write when you're given a star-fucker assignment (oh Mr Beiber tell me why you're a genius all over again, please, just one more time).

All we need to do is measure the strength of the kool-aid Kenny has imbibed.

By golly it turns out it's pretty potent stuff, and it really is Churchillian in tone:

When the campaign headquarters swings into action it will be filled with opposition staffers, Liberal Party employees and former staffers now working in the private sector who rejoin the battle, like army reservists, whenever the campaign call-up comes. 

Army reservists ready for battle! And what a team?

The political experience and corporate experience already being assembled is impressive. John Howard's former chief of staff Tony Nutt , who resigned as former Victorian premier Ted Baillieu's chief of staff over the police tapes controversy in March, is already among them. 

Tony Nutt? What was that about the goldfish and their memories?

Let's hope he does for Abbott what he did for Baillieu (Tony Nutt the latest victim in secret police tapes crisis).

But do go on with all this rally round the flag talk from the bunker:

Staff will be assigned specific roles, often something below their capabilities - because even the most tedious jobs must be done with diligence and an astute eye for political disaster or opportunity. Seemingly menial tasks such as scanning local media for candidate mistakes, cross-checking opponents' policy announcements, or scouring transcripts for misstatements can produce nuggets of campaign gold. An experienced operative on such a task may swing the campaign by spotting a single error.

Oh valiant warriors, they will sing your song for all eternity, the way Homer sang the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey

And now for a little comedy:

Even Liberal critics would agree the party has picked up some impressive recruits, with Howard government minister Mal Brough returning ...

Say what? The rough perfidious Brough is an impressive recruit.

By golly, what they feed the goldfish these days ... and so to a last rhetorical flourish:

The Rudd campaign is Plan B and must be more difficult. 
It has delivered one undeniable campaigning boost; removing complacency as a looming danger for Liberal candidates around the nation.

So what ultimately have we learned from the thoughts of a goldfish?

Nothing much, except his opinion pieces are cheerleading and his colour pieces are cheerleading, and not for a nanosecond would you expect a balanced insight into proceedings, but he surely is a dab hand at writing a sponsored documentary for the operatives working so terribly hard behind the scenes ...

The real question is why the editor of the lizard Oz wastes space on the cheer-leading, since it's as naked and as obvious as a killer goldfish ...