Let them all become fruit pickers, but let Scott Morrison, Sharri Markson, Nick Cater and Eric Abetz go first ...

(Above: and more David Pope here)

Sorry, the pond is too angry at the way the contemptible Scott Morrison has ducked and weaved and avoided responsibility for his part in the Manus Island matter, aided and abetted by a derelict, guilt-laden Labor party.

And that's before we get on to the contemptible way Morrison is getting into bed with the Cambodian dictatorship to use one of the poorest countries in the world as a dumping ground, having already got into trouble by using PNG as a dumping ground.

Questions are being asked already - the report settled nothing - and the issue will become a festering sore, a canker at the core of this ostensibly Christian government ...

Robert Cornall's report on the violence on Manus Island tiptoes around the main failures of the Abbott government and avoids a conclusion on whether the policy of indefinite detention in such a remote location is fatally flawed. 
The wishy-washy set of recommendations belie the gravity of what unfolded inside a place where Scott Morrison maintained, even after the carnage, the safety of inmates could be guaranteed as long as they behaved. (and so on, here, forced video at end of link)

A kindly reader provided a link to the report in pdf form, here, but how many will be interested in reading the output of quislings and lackeys?

No, all that does is get the pond into a rage, and it's too much for a Tuesday, when we should be able to look at the lighter side of life - like Bronwyn Bishop rorting her way through life with nary a jot or a whit of balance or fairness.

Now that's how to do a kerosene bath in style (Forgotten? Try Parliament hears kerosene bath led to death).

And speaking of comedy stylings, there was Crikey doing a pitch to lure the pond back to a subscription. Purportedly, it was a special, pleading message from Tony Abbott PM:

Well, winker I may be but I also love a fight, which is what I get from Crikey. They still believe in facts and cogent argument and I've always loved history myself. 
As for those ‘independent journalists’ over at News Corp, they get my goat. What’s the applause of a bunch of sycophants really worth anyway? 
I know I’m PM and all that but I still struggle for meaning. Thinking of my enemies gets me out of bed in the morning. How else could I face Malcolm Turnbull? 
I sum it up like this: Crikey keeps me on my toes while Chris Mitchell washes my smalls. That’s a pretty good reason to subscribe to Crikey Insider I’d say.

And then the coda:

P.S. Chris, if you’re reading this, can I have a bag wash on my cycling gear ready by Wednesday?

It was a good pitch, but it was wrong. It turned out that it wasn't Chris Mitchell washing Abbott's smalls that caught the pond's eye, it was Sharri Markson washing Rupert's feet, as an eerie angelic glow emanated from his prophetic brow.

Remind us Guy Rundle:

Ain’t that good News. There are few things more joyful in Australian media than seeing how many twists News Corp can get into reporting on itself. Thus, Prince Rupert announces that his papers would be printed for “decades” more to come, which is covered breathlessly by The Australian, after which media editor Sharri Markson writes a comment (behind the paywall) about the story about Rupert talking about the paper she’s writing in. It’s difficult to know what is more gobsmacking about Markson’s report. Is it her Google Translate version of English prose — “reports to talk it down are exaggerated”, “he has proved correct” — or her mixed/incorrect metaphors, with the observation that “[Channel] Ten’s flailing ratings do not sign the death-knell for free-to-air television”? Neither. It’s this, which would raise a blush in the cheeks of the editor of the Pyongyang Times: 
 “Being engaging and innovative in the digital space, while still selling millions of newspapers, is critical to the success of News Corp, unlike its one-time Australian competitor Fairfax, and is a reflection on Rupert Murdoch, the most successful publisher the world has ever seen. Murdoch has proved himself a visionary in a media industry largely populated by lesser executives who show more reservation than courage, more anxiety than insight and more uncertainty than solutions.” (and more behind the Crikey paywall here)

After pointing out the many ways the visionary chairman Rupert had done a MySpace flop, and still pissed money against the wall on his Australian newspaper empire, Rundle hailed Markson's imperial flattery as potentially unveiling the next Rebekah Brooks.

Now you might think Rundle was being unfair, but truth to tell, he was discreet, and avoided showing the depths of Markson's shame. Hers was an astonishing effort for a rag which doesn't make a profit, with a gloating and a preening and a promenading that was beyond unsightly.

The truth is that not only are newspapers alive and kicking, but the media organisations that will suffer in the digital age are those that reverse-publish, such as Fairfax, taking its news cues from the twitterati and internet ephemera. By failing to invest in the quality of its newsrooms and newspapers, Fairfax will become one small player in a large online pond occupied by others, such as the BBC and The Guardian, with far greater global audiences. 
Fairfax’s confused and self-destructive strategy can be seen in its use of columnists such as Clementine Ford as “clickbait” to boost its online audience — a dumbed-down audience that has little appeal for advertisers seeking AB readers and that will never be able to match the scale of a free site, such as the Daily Mail. 
It’s a hopeless halfway house. 
 “Hywood is simply plunging into the bottom of the toilet as sure as the famous scene in Trainspotting,’’ The Australian’s editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell said of the company’s direction. 
News Corp is heading in a different direction, armed with facts that show newspapers command robust circulation and a healthy financial future.

Has Markson ever heard of hubris? Vanity, all is vanity ...

Well at least it gives us an idea of the shitty metaphors that Chris Mitchell loves ...

The pond was so astonished and delighted that there was an immediate and urgent need to track down Sharri Markson, and here she is as she appears in her Twitter account:

The Twitter account contained some wonderful gems. Like

... you know Murdoch Derangement Syndrome has taken hold when they dispute the "visionary" tag. Genuine lolz.

The pond was lolzing around, rolling Jaffas down the aisle.

Oh sure, a few tried to point out the bleeding obvious, like Fairfaxian Bevan Shields tweeting peak satire had been reached (here), which led the pond to this:

But most of all the pond was reminded of the good old days when Markson scored the job as reported in mUmBRELLA: Sharri Markson named new media editor for The Australian, vows to bring more 'attitude'.

'Attitude' is the new word for pitiful forelock tugging, servile abasement, and a kool aid drinking party?

A host of generally negative comments could be found attached to that mUmBRELLA story, including this last one at the end"

Seriously Sharri – you sound like a silly young schoolgirl

Oh Stan, that's so cruel and sexist. She's just a member of Chairman Rupert's youth party ...

And if nothing else, Markson reminded the pond of the monolithic culture that now exists amongst the reptiles at the lizard Oz.

Sure enough, what do you know, come on down the Caterists this very day:

Yes, if you can be bothered getting around the paywall, or if you duck down to wherever they're throwing away the rag for free - it's the only way to keep the circulation figures half-way respectable - you can read Cater doing his very own comedy impression in Aunty's inquisitors turn on the heat.

It's a supremely childish, petulant piece, right down there with Markson, and it shows its colours right up the front.

Instead of Chris Mitchell's dunny speak reference to Trainspotting, Cater opts for a children's horror film:

In the movie Godzilla, mankind’s punishment for upsetting the balance of nature is meted out by a hideous, gargantuan monster on a primeval mission of retribution. 
Tony Abbott’s comeuppance for disrupting the politically correct equilibrium of Australian cultural life is administered by the ABC. 
It is an ugly sight on or off the screen. The two monstrous hulks have grown meaner over the years, and neither will be deflected from their vengeful path by reason and persuasion.

It's bizarre. Anyone with an imagination might conjure up Cater at night reading a story about monsters to terrify the children. Or maybe the 10-15 demographic. The illustration captures the tone perfectly:

Really? Guy Rundle made reference to the Pyongyang Times, but you'd swear we were in a life and death struggle:

Yet what's the ideal the Godzilla-wielding futtock wants to deploy?

QandA started with great promise seven years ago, but in recent years has become a caricature of a discussion program. The BBC show from which it was copied, Question Time, shows it does not have to be this way. Firm and yet ever courteous and polite, its host David Dimbleby insists on discipline and decorum from the panel, and the audience responds in turn.

Firm and yet ever courteous and polite? Discipline and decorum?

From a man who starts off by quoting a crappy Godzilla movie?

What a futtock the man is, what a click-baiting, trolling stirrer, deserving of Markson's wrath if she had half a brain or half a clue. Well just to save any stray reader the trouble, here's how the Caterist ends his piece:

It will be consolation to Jones and his producers to know that they have succeeded in splitting the Right in half. 
On one side there are those who, out of a sense of civic duty, are prepared to brave the stacked panel, discourteous host and a crowd that thinks it’s been invited to watch the punishment of a ­medieval witch. 
On the other side there is a growing group of politicians and commentators who do not regard a slice of cold pizza and a warm beer in the green room as sufficient recompense for watching your knuckles turn white for an hour, clinging to a ducking stool on national television. 
Does it matter? Probably not. Abbott has already demonstrated that the ABC world view is not impregnable. 
 His policies on border protection, the carbon tax, the mining tax, gay marriage, renewable energy, preventive health, school and hospital funding and a whole lot more were considered “totally inappropriate” by his cultural opponents. 
 Yet he won the election anyway. Now there’s a good topic for Faine’s next The Conversation Hour.

Astonishing stuff.

The pond didn't think anyone could cause the pond to feel a shred of sympathy for Jones and Q and A, but somehow Caterists can manage the job.

The upside? Well it did remind the pond of Guy Rundle's great smack down of Cater in What Nick Cater's book gets wrong about Australia (basically everything) (may be Crikey paywall affected)

And yet after he achieved fifteen minutes of fame for getting everything wrong, here's Cater conflating all sorts of issues, lumping them together, and talking about them, as if it's only a matter of Abbott's "cultural opponents".

Like this?

Eeek, it's a winking Godzilla, and the Washington Post is part of the vast ABC-UN-climate science international conspiracy ...

Meanwhile, the hagiographers and the knob polishers are out and about, and still they're banging the drum of a budget crisis, a national emergency:

Oh yes, it's a suicidal disaster in a hostile world, no doubt about it.

Except why are there all these rumours of the Abbott government trying to buy its way out of trouble with income tax breaks, and a sudden discovery of cash in the meat safe? Pass Go and you'll collect a bonus?

You couldn't write a better comedy about contradictions and hypocrisy, unless you happened to be Moliere, or left Cleo to become the media editor of the lizard Oz ...

But here's the thing. The moment that Abbott tries to buy his way out of trouble, and back to favourable polls, all that Newman and Reithian blather will be used as a reminder of Abbott's own rhetoric.

Is it possible to make a mess of bribing taxpayers? Just watch Abbott weave his magic ...

And finally the pond has just enough room to squeeze in an honourable mention for Eric Abetz's "let them all become fruit pickers ..." (that should give them enough money to be able to afford cake), as outlined in Young and without work? Take up fruit picking, says Liberal senator Eric Abetz.

There are some wonderful precedents for the good Senator to turn to:

Don't listen to all the gloom mongers and the naysayers, the Hon Abetz, of the kind you can find in Fruit industry not 'babysitters' for jobless, farmers warn Abetz.

Indeed as any proper nationalist socialist knows, there's a good instructional, lyrical, and inspirational video on hand, ready to inspire all Tasmanians:

Crossing the Rubicon without a working iPad ...

(Above: that's the PR version, here, and here's the pond experience)

Let's first get yet another sorry anecdote about why Qantas is fukt out of the way.

The pond was pleasantly surprised to discover the iPads in the seat pockets of the aged 767. A nice, caring touch. Three iPads later, the pond managed to get a working beast, and not by way of ignorance, as the pond uses a home iPad every day.

Two sets of earphones later the music still couldn't be heard, and a blithe member of the cabin staff advised that she'd heard they were still having trouble getting the old earphones to work with the new iPads.

Maybe it was an impedance mis-match, maybe it was an output issue - the pond's partner swore that there was ghostly, ethereal music to be heard in the dim distance. Happily the pond's partner also had a set of decent earpods to hand, and finally the Shostakovich could be heard.

At first the pond suspected it was a plot to detect Russophiles in these dim, dark 'Putin the fascist' days, but truth to tell, it was just a minor Qantas fukt-up, rolling out a system without any notion of making it work, and using a half-arsed, cheaply modified jack to get the earphones connected and never mind that they didn't match up. At least nobody could be fukt to steal the cheap-arse earphones.

Inspired by the pond, a passenger behind also began to agitate for a new iPad and new earphones, but the roll out seemed to be generally fukt.

The pond immediately began to brood about Alan Joyce and why he still had a job, and the failed Asian initiative, and all the other stupidities and endless follies of his regime.

You see, it's all to do with thwarted expectations. If the iPad hadn't been in the seat pocket, the pond could have just ignored the crappy Hamish and Andy in Asia show on endless rotation in the cabin, and settled down to read the free Murdochian tripe which litters the Qantas lounge (it's more heavily papered than a Peter Garrett revival gig).

Instead the pond spent the rest of the flight wondering about the rest of the airline's operations and was rewarded with a cowboy landing.

It's sort of a metaphor for Tony Abbott's Australia, confirmed by the news that the smirking, winking PM has stacked his literary awards with stooges, the most prominent being Prattling Polonius himself, a man who has spent decades denouncing writers and writers' festivals, but as everyone knows, is a man free of irony, contradictions, humour or self-awareness (Tony Abbott chooses conservatives to judge the Prime Minister's literary awards). It's good to know that a trough is always available for the snouts as a reward for their diligent knob polishing ...

The funniest thing? The pond had the bizarre pleasure of reading Hendo in tree killer mode, but all you need for a laugh is this:

From Trotsky killing Ruski sailors to a bit of minor jostling at Australian universities? Only in Hendo's paranoid la la land ...

On the upside, how good is Melbourne's street café, especially at this time of year and the exceptional weather (sssh, don't mention climate change).

The pond had an early breakfast at a place in a laneway populated by French speaking staff offering French snacks, and realised that while the whole country is in a budget crisis, an emergency of the first water, at least they'll go down eating in Melbourne (meanwhile vulgar Sydney is entranced by a light show).

Never mind, the consensus is that Denis Napthine is a Qantas iPad, which is to say fukt, as he approaches his November day of doom (Prime Minister Tony Abbott morphed into Denis Napthine's worst nightmare).

And the gossip on everyone's tongues involved Kathy Jackson - Shop union slush fund linked to vote _ usually always in the media touting something or other, yet managing to avoid talking to Fairfax Media for some three days ...

The other lark was the joke that's called the deficit levy and this sort of twaddle you can read in the Oz, presented with all due solemnity. This sort of stuff:

At a celebratory luncheon, the pond was offered a re-packing of salary using private school fees, the car lease, and sundry other expenses to get the pond's salary package down from 250k to 180k in a nanosecond.

There was only one thing missing - an actual 250k salary - but please, if you're having trouble, talk to your accountant. There's no reason any entrepreneurial Australian should be as stupid as the people who scribble the headlines for The Australian ...

Meanwhile the futtocks at the paper go about their diligent knob polishing, in a style which shows exactly why the Qantas lounge is so heavily papered by the reptiles - it's the only way they can get respectable circulation figures, and it also helps explain why they're so heavily dependent on Rupert Murdoch's welfare and charity:

Actually the co-payment was ostensibly to fund a twenty billion dollar medical future fund, so the rich who can afford cutting edge research treatment will be able to live longer and healthier lives, thanks to the efforts of the poor.

Who knows why Troy Bramston writes such drivel, but roll on Elysium, the pond says, roll on ...

Meanwhile, the woman who has singlehandedly managed to persuade the pond to turn off Radio National (admittedly helped by the musical selections of Fenella Kernebone) produced a spectacular headline today:

Oh yes, those wicked students, beating up the hapless, smirking, winking Tony Abbott and the poodle Pyne. Oh those naughty thugs and bullies ...

At which point you might rightly ask whether Abbott and the poodle Pyne are the bigger and more empowered bullies ... but first, here, drink this kool-aid from Vanstone la la land, and remember that Joe Hockey was out in the streets, protesting about being made to pay a $250 tertiary student fee, which one wag noted would have bought a box or two of Cuban cigars in the 1980s (Protest vote from a bored student).

But wait, there's even greater delights on offer today:

The poodle has a vision?

But wait, let's be serious for a moment, the Monday hysteria will soon pass.

Dale Russakoff wrote for The New Yorker a marvellous, if lengthy, insight into the attempts to privatise the American school system in Newark NJ, and since it's outside the paywall at the moment, you can read it by clicking on Schooled. The pitch alone should hook you:

Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education.

There's much comedy in the piece, and then there's stark tragedy:

Teachers worked closely with children who couldn’t keep up, and many of them saw improvement, but the effects of children’s traumas outside school posed bigger problems. The father of a student in Shakel Nelson’s fifth-grade math class had been murdered early in the school year. When Nelson sat beside his desk and encouraged him, he sometimes solved problems, but as she moved on he put his head down and dropped his pencil. A girl who was excelling early in the year stopped trying when her estranged, emotionally disturbed parents resumed contact and began fighting.

Sadly the chances of Poodle Pyne getting an education is nil.

Roll on Elysium ...

But wait, there's no need to spend time discussing a poodle having a vision, not when there's the magic water man out there spinning and weaving, ducking and dodging, in Change is coming - you can be sure of that.

Change is coming? We can be sure of it? Like Same Cooke?

I was born by the river in a little tent 
Oh and just like the river I've been running ever since 
It's been a long, a long time coming 
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will 
 It's been too hard living but I'm afraid to die 
'Cause I don't know what's up there beyond the sky 
It's been a long, a long time coming 
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will ...

It turns out that it was Sheehan is just trolling in his usual way.

Oh he starts off with a tease:

It’s a long game, and it has just started. I am not assuming Tony Abbott will lead the government to the next election. I am not assuming Bill Shorten will lead Labor to the next election. I am not assuming Clive Palmer will be in Parliament in 2½ years.

Leadership changes, Clive in the clink?

Turns out it's all verbiage, verbal dross, full of hints, and doubts, and saucy fears, and diddly squat of anything solid.

Computer modelling is led to explain how social inequity isn't a flyer, but what's the bet Sheehan knows how to organise a tidy salary package?

And then there's talk of how the entirety of state premiers seem to have missed the point:

Speaking of con jobs, at some point Labor is going to have to account for its claim that the government is strip-mining $80 billion from health and education spending when in fact federal spending on public health and government schools is not just going up, but going up significantly.


So the entire bunch of Liberal state premiers have been taken in by a Labor con job? At some point the Liberal state governments are going to have to account for their bleats and moans? Tell that to Denis Napthine ...

And the Federal government has no interest in stimulating a discussion of an expansion of goods and services, or an increase in the rate of the GST? Tell that to an all-day sucker ...

Sheehan is such an idle futtock, such a lazy journalist, he can't be bothered these days mounting a decent defence of the Abbott government, because it requires a bit of work ... and all he's got is dissembling and deviance ...

His conclusion?

Assume flux. It is the only safe assumption.

No, you can always assume that magic water man Sheehan will mount a flimsy defence of the Abbott government, using distraction and innuendo, surface gloss to disguise the rock-solid bias.

It's a safe, reliable assumption. There's always plenty of waxing, and never much by way of waning ...

Meanwhile, if the chattering of the water cooler class in Melbourne is any guide, the budget was a Rubicon for Abbott and his government ...

The trouble, it was agreed, was that, whatever Barners might say, when Abbott shouted ālea iacta est, he wasn't being Julius Caesar, nor even JFK, nor Winston Churchill, but perhaps more like Napoleon setting off for Russia ... or just a naughty boy ...

Which might help explain David Rowe's cartoon today (more Rowe here), and the way poor old head of treasury Martin Parkinson has been kept around, while the Visigoths conduct a love-in ....

The pond heads off to balmy, sunny Melbourne ...

(Above: from Portlandia, episode 2 season 2, One More Episode)

The pond is off to sunny, balmy Melbourne ...

Say what? Sunny, balmy Melbourne in late May?

What happened to the wearing of the black, and to existential emotional crises in Brunswick street? (Smith street if you were poor like the pond).

Of course it's balmy in Sydney too:

On the upside, everyone is in T shirts and shorts and blouses, and on the downside the mosquitoes remain on the prowl, bringing Ross river and Dengue fever and such like further south.

Mossies in late May! Of course the pond just zaps them and never mind the neuro-toxins ...

As always, thanks to the stern advice of the world's leading climate scientist - strangely employed as a blogger by News Corp, but still at the heart of observation and empirical evidence and thrusting theoretical vigour - the pond never links one off, exceptional and extraordinary weather events to global warming.

That would be wrong, and scientific heresy. Sssh, don't mention climate science.

Except of course when it's climate scientists getting stuck on a ship heading to the Antarctic.

Then it's exceptionally funny, even hilarious, and extremely scientific.

Speaking of fun, it's likely to be a great weekend of goofs and stuff ups, courtesy of Tony Abbott and his goofball government, and the pond will miss it all.

Already we have a bold and brave contender. Barners the brave!

So now the budget is fighting Adolf Hitler and the Cold War and the Cuban missile crisis ...

Is there nothing this budget and Tony Abbott can't do?

Oh we'll miss it, the ceaseless stream of comedy routines ....

The pond has nothing to do except dine and brawl with the extended family, and await the season finale, episode 8, of Silicon Valley (HBO is slow to load), which has, after a rough start, turned into a winner, and has been renewed for a second season (what a pity Christopher Evan Welch died after only completing the first five episodes).

Of course the comedy stylings of geeks in a start up aren't in the race when compared with the screwball comedy of a start up Abbott government, but the pond will have to give it a break this weekend.

Otherwise it'd be like the binge-watching that became the fashion amongst young people in 2013, a habit and a word which earned its place in dictionaries (binge-watch):

This viewing pattern is parodied in Portlandia’s “One More Episode,” when a couple takes binge-watching to an extreme (even if their method of binge-watching is via old-fashioned DVDs). 
The term binge-watch originates from the term binge, which in some English dialects meant “to soak a wooden vessel to prevent it from leaking.” 
By the mid-1800s, binge could be used metaphorically to describe a drinking spree, which led to the term binge drinking about a hundred years later. While binge drinker was the first use of binge- in a compound, other terms soon followed. 
Binge eating came along in the late 1950s, and has soared in usage since the 1980s. 
Binge-Abbotting has soared in usage since Tony Abbott came to power and refers to an unhealthy fascination with a blunderer who makes Sheldon seem like a part of mainstream society. There's the bizarre cackle, the winking, the nudging, the budgies, the MAMIL gear, all the staples of a sitcom ... and then there's his krazy kaper colleagues like Barners, a funny foil full of quips and jokes of a Churchillian kind ...
Binge-watching and Binge-Abbotting aren’t the only terms to describe new media and raving ratbag pollie consumption habits. 
There’s power-streaming, which refers specifically to the streaming of videos about Tony Abbott online. 
Additionally, there’s marathoning, or watching Tony Abbott and his krazy kaper gang on endless rotation, marathon-style. Starting in the late 1940s, TV marathons existed, but they were usually call-in charity drives. 
By the late ’70s and early ’80s, people could binge-watch TV and movie marathons, though viewers had no power over the programming, and even less power over Tony Abbott when it came to millennial marathons. 
One Netflix executive told the Wall Street Journal that he doesn’t like the term binge because of its negative connotations of excess - frankly a day watching Tony Abbott can lead to a kind of vapid intoxication, then insanity, then death.
Instead he prefers marathon, which, to him “sounds more celebratory”, because anyone who can do a day watching Tony Abbott and his krazy kaper gang can survive anything the world has to offer ... call 'em Churchillian, call them heroes like John F. Kennedy, heck just call 'em survivors ...

Oh dear, how did that bit of wiki vandalism get in to a useful definition of strange behaviour?

Never mind, it'll be back to normal business for the pond in a few days time, though with Tony Abbott at the helm, will anything ever be normal again?

Enjoy the balmy weekend, and if it isn't balmy in your neck of the woods, why break out the black (remember hipsters love hats, and if you can't grow a beard, go and get a tat in a discrete place) and have a coffee or three ... but please, don't overindulge in Tony Abbott.

Sure, it's a fascinating, compelling sitcom, and the jokes come thick and fast, but it could be fatal ...

(Below: a few New Yorker cartoons and covers)

And here's a golden oldie Addams for Tony Abbott watchers.

And more about the gutter daily ...

(Above: found on Facebook).

And to rub salt into the wound, the other image is taken from Damien Parer/Cinesound/Ken Hall's Academy Award winning film about Kokoda, the 1943 Kokoda Front Line!:

Want a further irony?

Back in the day, it was determined that it was inappropriate to use the image in an advertising campaign, because one of the Diggers was wounded, and the image was overused:

Australian Defence Force recruiters were warned not to use famous wartime film footage of two diggers crossing a New Guinea river in a new recruitment campaign aimed at harnessing the spirit of the Anzacs. 
 The World War II image was deemed "overdone" by marketing experts hired by the military for a $1 billion recruitment campaign that starts with an intense advertising blitz next month. 
 The image of the bedraggled soldiers, who had been fighting the Japanese, was dropped from a series of images because one of the Diggers was wounded. (here)

No such niceties for the grubs of Holt street ...

You can watch the movie on YouTube here.

No style, no shame, they do dirt on the disabled, the diggers and on life.

There's only one remaining question. Why would anyone buy the Daily Terror, why hasn't there been a call for a ban of the kind that Liverpool imposed on The Sun?

The voice of Australia? Or a voice from the gutter of yellow tabloid journalism ...

To answer your question, Peter Brent, everyone's disposable ... the poor, the young, the student, the pensioner, the disabled, the Tasmanian, jolly Joe Hockey ...and Tony Abbott ...

(Above: more here, and more below)

What's remarkable is how quickly it's happened.

The bungles, the bloopers, the mis-statements of policy, all building to that fatal question.

Helped along by the stupidity of a Queensland MP suggesting that we should all troop off to Asia. Yes, he did, yes he did. Here's how that looked in Fairfax:

And here's the patriotic flag-waving fool himself:

And then there was the stupidity of Tony Abbott telling Tasmanians it would be no big deal if they left Tasmania for happier climes.

A canny politician would have just said that he expected his esteemed state colleague to turn Tasmania into a golden state, with jobs galore, but instead, in an ideological folly, he told anyone in earshot that moving to Woop Woop or beyond the black stump would be no big deal, especially when compared to living amongst the apple munchers of Tasmania.

How did that turn out? Did it help the momentum build to the fatal question?

Well the Hobart Mercury did its best to confuse and conflate Tony Abbott with a zebra:

But even the Murdochians posing as the "voice of Tasmania" found it a tad hard to swallow, and allowed themselves a discreet moan in their editorial:

The Abbott Government’s focus on the national economy and national figures fails to consider the impacts on a small, fragile, island economy that has already been through the wringer. The negative perceptions held by consumers and investors about the Budget threaten to be the final nail in the coffin. It is imperative the Hodgman and Abbott Liberal Governments – both elected on a “jobs, jobs, jobs” platform – get proactive in Tasmania before the spiral of dwindling confidence develops into an irretrievable nosedive. A lack of confidence will not attract private investment nor will it create jobs. Tasmania is part of the Federation of Australia and should not be penalised because it is smaller and has a lower threshold to withstand funding cuts.

As that sensitive master of politics might say, oh go and live in woop woop, you parochial apple munchers and Tasmanian Tiger killers. You can't build an economy on a fox hunt ... stop whining about a fragile economy and go live on the mainland ...

And then there was the profoundly stupid Daily Telegraph front page, abusing both the disabled and diggers. How did that work out?

Complaints to press council in response to Telegraphs depiction of disability pensioners as slackers.

Having the Murdoch press on your side is a bit like being supported by a cancerous growth. Eventually it will devour the host:

(Above: you can find Graeme Innes' Twitter feed, with links for the above, here)

Surely that helped as we rolled along towards the fatal question ...

And then there was the dirty pool of the daughter issue, being given a right old pounding by the Graudian:

Amazingly even New Matilda got into that game with a lucky break. Someone felt so strongly about the matter that the Matildans Nouveau scored leaked documents and a scoop that left the Graudian quoting them:

(And here's why)

Well it would be dirty pool, except of course for the years that Tony Abbott made hay with the question of Julia Gillard's appalling taste in boyfriends in her youth.

Lordy, lordy, did Abbott set himself up for a world of pain with his boofhead, go the biff, 'trawl through any sewer you can find' approach to political life.

And so came the inevitable, fatal question:

Asked on Fairfax Radio in Melbourne whether he would survive the leadership to the next election due in 2016, Mr Abbott said: "Absolutely." 
 "What we saw in the last two terms of parliament was the political disaster that occurred to governments that wantonly changed their leader," he said. 
 "I'm happy to run a few political risks for the sake of the country." (here)

Well you know what happens when you issue a denial.

Everybody immediately focuses on the smoke, even if there's no visible fire.

And soon after that, the speculation began, led - bizarrely enough in The Australian - by Mumbling Peter Brent.

Oh they shuffled him off the whirling digital splash of doom quickly enough, but not before he had time to get this out:

If Abbott gets wobbly, and Newspoll and others start surveying for possible replacements, Malcolm Turnbull would probably top the lists again. But it is difficult to see the party going back to him.
Joe Hockey would be more likely. Snarling Scott Morrison won’t win any general public polls (regardless of how well they believe he’s doing his job), but the public doesn’t get a vote in leadership contests. 
Morrison would be well-regarded in the conservative, Abbott-supporting section of the partyroom. Ideologically robust people have a tendency to project their views onto the electorate at large. 
This is why I have thrown a few dollars on Morrison as PM in 2016. 
Not because I believe it’s more likely than not, but that the chances are better than the 33 to 1 odds offered. 
But you know I don’t encourage gambling. (and more here)

It's game on already?

The key phrase? If Abbott gets wobbly ...

Abbott's already wobbly.

He's wobble central, he's building wobble city.

If you can't get your head around policy details and instead you sow confusion and chaos, then you can't sell the policies ... you wobble around in the dark, and soon others join you, including personages like vice chancellors and doctors and other prestigious people, who don't seem to have the foggiest about what you're saying or the implications of your policies, except to say that they seem to be fukt ....

And soon enough other people notice the wobbles and the gyrations, and conclude the emperor's new clothes can't hide the reality that you're as naked as a jaybird.

Now the pond has no dog in this fight.

Whoever leads will be an inept Liberal leading an inept Liberal government, a right royal ship of fools, and Bill Shorten is no joy to contemplate either.

Some of the alternatives are profoundly dire - in fact the pond won a bet when someone offered the prediction that Scott Morrison would be the next Liberal PM, and backed it with a bottle of wine, just before the current wobbling rubber duckie floated to the surface and to power...

The trouble for the Liberal party is that they have no viable alternative. Hockey is tainted by the budget, Turnbull is tainted by his massive failure with the NBN (a cunning ploy by Abbott to render him impotent and harmless), Julie Bishop is a woman and that's more than enough, even if she was Margaret Thatcher, it would be more than enough, Christopher Pyne is a yapping poodle, and part of the education policy disaster, and so on and so forth. Scott Morrison is a barking mad speaker in tongues, but hey, he stopped the boats ...

But not having effective contenders won't stop the game being played, especially if Abbott continues to endure epic failures, winks, twitches, glitches and stitch-ups ... and soon enough, with the new senate, he's going to deal with the buffoon and the cross-benchers and the greenies and the Labor party, and he's managed to alienate many of them already ... and in selling the budget he's shown all the skills of a boofhead rugby head brawler stuck in a ruck or a maul and trying to punch his way out...

It's a joyous time to be interested in the dog eat dog world of politics.

Take this image which went around the tweet world:

The pond couldn't believe it, especially as it came with a tag saying it had been put together by "progressives". When the pond sees the word "progressive" it's inclined to reach for the Glock.

But what do you know. Head off to jolly Joe Hockey's website, there's jolly Joe as bold as brass:

Okay, let's just print that out - you can find the original here:

REPORTER: Treasurer, Joe Hockey is with us to talk Budget fall-out. Now Joe, I presume you were politically active at uni; did you ever protest? 
TREASURER: Well, yes I did. And I'm sure you have got the tapes somewhere. 
REPORTER: What did you protest about? 
TREASURER: At the time that was the first introduction of university fees, and at that time there was no HECS or Helpers as it's now known, so we obviously were concerned about the fact that we were paying fees up front, which no student has to do now. 
REPORTER: So, Joe, you protested against fee changes at university. Can you understand now, why students are so upset about the changes you're proposing? 
TREASURER: Well, I understand why they're upset, but there are no choices here. University fees are overwhelmingly subsidised by taxpayers and now the evidence is clear, that a university student is going to earn on average a million dollars more during their course of their career than someone who doesn't go to university. And this allows us to offer the concessional loans that go to university students, to TAFE students and also to apprentices undertaking apprenticeships.

The irony and the hypocrisy is astonishing and breathtaking - the fees that got jolly Joe agitated were miniscule in comparison to the debt burden - with interest - he's currently proposing for students. 

And then comes the throwaway line that an arts graduate is going to make a million dollars more during the course of their career than someone doing electrical or plumbing work for the toffs of the eastern suburbs or the lower north shore.

What in infinitely stupid, profoundly privileged man ...

Is it any wonder that the fatal question is now out and about, and like any decent genie, it's not going to be herded back into its bottle.

And is it any wonder that David Rowe is in the very best form of his career? More Rowe here, but the pond choked on its porridge (only the darkest of brown sugar please) when it came across this one: