In which the pond endures yet more inefffable, almost infallible, almost infinite nonsense by the bromancer ...

No, the pond hasn't decided to go off to observe some intelligent writing. 

That would be unwise, a complete betrayal of the pond's loyalty to the reptiles of Oz ... think of it more as a way of announcing that the bromancer is once again on hand to give the world his splendid insights into American politics ...

Yes, it's another does of equivalence. Hillary is just like teh Donald, so what's the difference and why bother ...

You can't take the fat-shaming bigotry out of the fundamentalist tyke, can you?

What the fuck has nude photos got to do with fat-shaming?

Well that's the art of the equivalencer and the distracter ... and suddenly Trump is a hero for persecuting a woman and making her lose weight and saving her job.

Presumably the bromancer wrote his copy before the unhinged Trump went into a midnight hour tweeting meltdown, but that's the way it goes. He should have expected teh Donald to triple down before he tried it on with the equivalence ...(As America Sleeps, Donald Trump Seethes on Twitter).

So Bill Clinton can get into trouble for, not the blow job, but lying about the blow job, and Trump and his spokespeople - the pond hates the word 'surrogate' - can just roll on by, lying about everything in sight in relation to just about everything?

Never mind that the man is technically obese himself, he's a serial adulterer, bankrupt and formidable bully.

The disputed weight, the notion of a weight clause in her contract (all the evidence suggests there was none), Trump a knight in shining armour riding to her rescue, and all the other attempts to soften the essential bullying ... right down to women daring to publish nude photos ...

Yes, there's the moral high ground for you, and so the pond must return to trudge on with the wretched bromancer ...

The capacity of the bromancer to repeat himself is almost infinite - if the pond might borrow a News 24 scientific concept - but that reference to The American Interest is perhaps the most revealing of recent bromancer revelations ...

It helps explain why the bromancer pronounced the first debate a draw ...

And so back to the bromancer repeating himself yet again, and so getting closer and closer to almost infinite repetitions ...

You have to hand it to the bromancer.

Not a mention of Fox News, or Hannity, who has now gone well beyond patsy host to sublimely surreal Trump spruiker, to the point where even Megyn Kelly found time to make a joke of it ...

Kelly said, “”We’ve got Trump speaking to our own Sean Hannity. We’ll see whether he speaks to the journalists in this room after that interview.” Get it? Hannity isn’t a journalist? (here).

As for the general ruination of debate and political argument in the United States, others try to keep track of the pernicious Murdochian poison ...

More here.

You won't find the reptiles there or here reflecting on this, gazing at their navel, perhaps experiencing a little shame at their ideological zealotry, and doing a little fluff removal, or brooding about the way that almost single-handedly, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Aisles, Fox News and their kool aid drinkers in and out of the office have driven the nation to the outer valleys of the lunar hard right, such that intelligence and an ability to move beyond creationism must be treated as some kind of national crime ...

Instead you'll get apologists like the bromancer doing his best at a little equivalence, and never once mentioning in all those grand sociological factors the sort of fact-free hysteria cultivated by Fox and others in the Murdoch stable in relation to climate science, birtherism and so on and so forth ...

It goes without saying that the the bromancer is part of the problem rather than the solution, and confronted by his ineffable stupidity, there's nothing the pond can do except get agitated, wave hands in air, and run some more New Yorker cartoons, with a reminder that the magazine is online here, where some scribbling and analysis worth paying for can be found ...

In which the pond awards an Order of Lenin medal to an heroic reptile scribbler who proves that running a marathon is for wimps not up to the job of scribbling a marathon hagiography ...

What's this? A line-up of rogues, of the usual suspects, but no prattling Polonius?

Ah, poor Polonius. Perhaps he's frolicking on some beach somewhere, his trousers rolled, parting his remaining hair just so, getting out the coffee spoons, spitting out the butt-ends of his days ...

And then a few more rogues caught the pond's eye ...

Hang on, hang on, there's something kinda funny looking - to borrow from the Coen brothers -about that rebel yell. 

What on earth could it be? 

Please allow the pond to seek a context ...

Yes, there it is, gold bars of greed to the top of it, gold bars to the bottom, gold bars to the left, and if they'd had the room, there would have been gold bars to the right ... but no gold bar on the rebel yell.

The reptiles are giving it away for free!

It's a brand new business plan, destined to ensure the mighty rag will soon be well down the path to profit.

Now usually this sort of generosity would defeat the pond's business plan - after all, free is worth what you've paid for it - but it's a long way until the next full serve of the major Mitchell on a Monday, and the pond decided instead to get in provisions, and embark on the extremely long and tediously hagiographic journey with Rothwell.

Well if you're going to be a suck and a sycophant you may as well do it at extraordinary length so that full suckiness might be deployed ...

Oh dear, the pond is beginning to feel fatigue and we're only at the fifth par. Time to get the nibbles out of the back pack and have a little light relief ...

Oh dear, so it's going to be the Hitchcockian way.

But wait, the reptiles are aware things might get beyond the valley of the tedious, so they've introduced some nicely hagiographic and significant pictures to relieve the monotony of the climb ...

Oh dear. So Chris Mitchell is the Machiavelli, the master puppeteer, who helped the master of the dark art of media manipulation rise to power, but was just a hapless pawn in his fiendish scheming ...

Or whatever. 

Just make sure that the major Mitchell is at the heart of the nation's affairs, a giant, a colossus of Rhodes, or at least of Brissie ...

What a movie that was and while we're rummaging through the snack pack ...

Oh dear, the break was far too short. Back to the full-on explanation of the complete and utter significance of the major Mitchell ...

Oh dear, the pond feels faint, but the crew needs to shape up, we need to hit ramming speed now that Kim has hovered into view ...

Oh no, wait, Kimmie sank himself, it's time for a little Freud. 

How silly of the pond not to realise and back story to the plot ...

Sadly of course we will see the likes of a major Mitchell again. News Corp specialises in growing these roosters and then when they're plucked and sent to the back roost, on they squawk and crow ...

Now the pond can hear distant shrieks and howls, forlorn cries of despair, and even offers to read the book rather than endure the unendurable ...

Perhaps the trick is to lie shamelessly and say it'll soon be over - but then the wise punter could simply look down and see a further three huge gobbets which would make even the Donald change his definition of huge ...

Now there's been quite a few pars gone by since that gobbet opened with Rothwell's sublimely stupid suggestion that if Abbott had blamed it on the palace, he would have been spared much critique - or even criticism and ridicule, but that's the trouble with this sort of hagiography.

Only a truly dumb reptile would think that blaming it on the palace, and using them to take the rap would explain away the other knighthoods or the monstrous tone-deaf stupidity of the onion muncher on the matter.

But to comment on it and the rest of the nonsense peddled by Rothwell would simply compound the original crime. 

The pond would have to be as tedious as Rothwell, and there would be no end of it. The pond would be off on a journey to the twelfth of never and that's a long, long time, but not for Rothwell ...

It's around this time that the pond's feeling of nausea began to take hold. Something of the equivalent of a diver coming up too fast and getting the bends, or high on a mountain top and running short of oxygen, and the climber goes into featherless freefall flight ...

Not even a sixties joke from The New Yorker could help ... though at this point, the pond should acknowledge the magazine and boast of being a subscriber and point out that the gourmand providore of cartoons can be found here ...

Now be still, over-pulsating heart, because we have reached the very last gobbet ...

At journey's end, the few that have made it this far might consider re-labelling Nicholas Rothwell as the senior whore at The Australian, but the pond will have none of it ...

Senior, most respected hagiographer is much grander. Clearly these words, this profound tome of the major Mitchell lodged deeply in Rothwell's heart and lit his path in journalistic life.

As for the reptiles giving it away for free, it suddenly became very clear why the reptiles were so generous.. Most readers confronted by this sort of claptrap and insufferable hero worship would demand to be paid to read it, rather than pay for the pleasure. Even your average masochist would flinch at troubling the redbacks in the purse, with Rothwell making Thomas Carlyle sound like a novice in the hero-worshipping game ...

Never mind, the pond has bit its tongue, despite rolling around on the floor with the jaffas at the talk of the lizards of Oz being on the verge of profit ... and so able to afford its fit of Rothwellian generosity.

What to do to wrap it all up? Well it goes without saying that Rothwell is in line for an Order of Lenin medal, but more importantly, he might well now be considered for a plum job as senior writer on Pravda or similarly balanced and insightful newspapers ...

Meanwhile, the pond must count the lost brain cells and mourn their passing, and turn to the infallible Pope for a little final light relief, with a reminder that there's always more infallible papal japery at the Canberra Times here ...

In which the pond visits the Catholic Boys Daily and the predictable happens...

(Above: well that's all the illumination the pond needs on certain matters, and more illuminating Rowe here).

Yesterday, it took the pond seven and a half hours to upload data which on a good day could have been uploaded in less than a half hour.

But the good days are gone and the pond is stuck in a lemon, where maintenance is a meaningless word ...

It's impossible to count the ways that the pond loathes the Optus the (please in German), Malware (and News Corp and Stephen "a great big internet filter for everyone" Conroy).

In other agile, innovative news, the pond was tremendously reassured to learn that the federal government is criminalising the de-anonymising and publishing of data.

At first the pond wondered if this meant the entire staff of the ABS might be hauled up on charges, but of course they didn't bother anonymising the data in the first place, in their attempt to destroy privacy and turn some coin out of the data.

But at least the pond was reassured that Russian hackers were now quaking in their boots waiting for the knock on the door from the federal plods, while apparently Chinese hackers have sworn to go on the straight and narrow. Apparently the 400 lb hacker identified by Donald Trump as a serious threat to the cyber has resolved to give up pizza.

Never mind, after a moment's reflection, rocket scientist George Brandis - resting from his day job as brain surgeon - realised that things might get tricky for the white hats so has decided on some exemptions.

The latest sorry sign of terminal technological stupidity in the government is here, and now, there's time for a quick pivot because there's always a need for a laugh...

Now the pond usually has no time for present or past restaurant writers, but for anyone that missed it, please allow the pond to commend Frank Bruni's effort in the NY Times to replicate in a column Donald Trump's performance in debate, Sympathy for the Donald ...

That's better, and now the pond must turn as always to the giant minds of the reptiles, who like the pond live in some Optus-supplied fortress island unconnected to the rest of the world ...

This can lead to unusual, fluff and navel-gazing obsessions, such as the Daily Terrorists beyond the valley of the gutter tabloid obsession with a politician's daughter ...

The pond feels grubby and soiled just noting the sordid and seedy way the grubby, soiling, spoiling way the reptiles go about the business of selling their tree killing rags. 

But the pond wanted something more, something sure to lance the festering boil of anger, and sure enough, right on cue, the Catholic Boys' Daily,  as the lizards of Oz are fondly known (term patented by Justinian, borrowed by the pond at times of an emergency), came to the rescue ...

Yes, that'll do it, there's nothing like a smarmy, righteous Xian blathering on about love and respect, as a way of dressing up bigotry and homophobia, a Catholic church tradition for a few thousand years, to really get the pond going...

With respect, the pond really gets agitated by this sort of demeaning horseshit. The bullshit notion that it's possible to hate the sin but love the sinner is the classic form of Xian passive aggressive behaviour ...

Passive-aggressive behavior is the indirect expression of hostility, such as through procrastination, stubbornness, sullen behavior, or deliberate or repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible. 
For research purposes, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) revision IV describes passive-aggressive personality disorder as a "pervasive pattern of negativistic attitudes and passive resistance to demands for adequate performance in social and occupational situations." (Greg Hunt it here, watch out for passing walri).

Porteous is one of those classic Xian gits - yes, over the years the pond has been smarmed over with righteous talk of correcting Xian love helping reform its many sinful ways - who dresses up the hate as a respectful criticism of the beliefs or actions of others ...

You know, like you're off to burn in hellfire for all eternity you damned faggots ...

Never mind the way Christ liked the company of men in a way the church and Cardinal Newman might think is unhealthy, there's more on the hate and the homophobia in that story here, but perforce the pond must return to the domestic brand being peddled in the Catholic Boys' Daily ...

It's hard to imagine a better way for the pond to exorcise its anger than this steaming pile of tosh.

Don't proffer your demeaning faux love, get out of the way so that people might share rights, you carping superstitious transubstantive cannibalistic medievalist ...

Of course Porteous was one of the bishops behind that steaming pile of bigotry and prejudice, the pamphlet "Don't Mess With Marriage" - easily googled for anyone wanting their dose of honey-smooth bile dressed up as love ...

The pond is too over it to feature it, but it's worth remarking on at least one of its semantic and definitional flaws ...

...marriage is the covenant of a man and a woman to live as husband and wife, exclusively and for life, and open to the procreation of children.

So if you re-marry in your dotage, like Fred Nile, you're not really married at all, unless you're senile enough at 79 to think that somehow your new 55 year old partner is open to the procreation of children ...

Never mind, at least this means Fred is living in sin, and is off to hell in due course to dwell there with the gays ...

And as for exclusively and for life, don't get the pond started on the enormous stupidity of alleged virgins married to Christ who can peddle this sort of twaddle while their church is a festering home for pedophiles ...

Never mind, at least in other countries, the two thousand year reign of bigotry and homophobia has suffered a few dents in recent times, rather like the big tobacco companies that peddle their poison ...

And now, while the pond is lashing out, it's about time to turn to Twitter, because this might be all the energy the pond has this day while battling the intertubes ...

And there's more Moir here ... though perhaps rather than sand, he should have shown Malware being blown away by a blast of wind ...

In which the pond gets out the cabbage and the sealing wax ...

(Above: an old Pope, but a most relevant one, and more Pope here).

With Dame Slap gone missing, and the uploading and the downloading and the yadda yadda an existential agony, the pond thought it was probably okay to cool down over lunch instead of trying to find a reptile to mock ...

But then it came, the surging, seething white heat of anger ... yes, it's the pond in ...

Good old Jimmy ...

It started slowly enough with the headline 'A dark day' for Turnbull as NBN abandons Optus cable network ...

But that's behind the Crikey paywall and the pond wanted to know more about this dark day, this blackest of hellhole days, as the Optus uploading and downloading and yadda yadda seems like a business plan for boosting tranquiliser sales ...

Pausing only for a revitalising restorative Pope cartoon ...

... the pond rushed off to Fairfax to read 'A lemon': NBN backflips, abandons plans to use Optus cables it purchased for $800 million ...

Sure enough, only another movie and a Pope cartoon could conjure up the right level of fury ...

Of course watching each upload take place in real time is like extracting teeth, or perhaps spending too long last year in Marienbad ...

This is the nub of it ...

...on Wednesday NBN announced it would abandon the Optus HFC rollout entirely and instead deploy a new technology, fibre-to-the-distribution-point (FTTdp), to up to 700,000 premises.

Acknowledging the Optus HFC network was not "NBN-ready", the company said FTTdp would provide a better customer experience and value for money than upgrading the old network. The leak of the Optus HFC documents - and subsequent leaks from within NBN - so angered the company that it lodged a referral with the Australian Federal Police last December.

And this was the lie ...

After the Abbott government came to power and pursued a multi-technology mix rollout, NBN renegotiated its deal with Optus so it could use its HFC network to deliver broadband services. "This deal will bring down the overall cost of building the NBN and enable us to complete the rollout much earlier than originally anticipated with less disruption to residents and communities," NBN chief executive Bill Morrow said in December 2014.

So why, in his litany of complaints about Malware this day, didn't the Bolter list the NBN as one of Malware's most epic achievements? If you regard sailing the Titantic into the iceberg as an epic achievement worth matching ...

Well that's because Malware was doing Abbott's bidding, degutting the notion of a wired nation, making horseshit of his mantra of agile, innovative and all the rest of the balderdash ...

The reptiles never wanted it, did their best to delay it, came to it only grudgingly. Tree killing newspapers had to be protected, and so did the Foxtel business model, and to hell with the rest of the world that might want to explore the full to overflowing intertubes, which certain people assured us was a revolutionary thing to do ...

Gizmodo's got more of the brand new, exciting and innovative horseshit 2.0 currently being bundled up here ...

From NBN’s chief network engineering officer Peter Ryan: “We have tested FTTdp over the last year and we’re confident we can now deploy the technology in areas where it makes better sense from a customer experience, deployment efficiency and cost perspective. This includes premises in the FTTN footprint that have too high a cost per premises (CPP) and premises served solely by the legacy Optus HFC footprint that are yet to be made ready for service… nbn has confirmed it will deploy FTTdp in those areas where the use of the Optus HFC network was planned, with the exception of the already launched network in Redcliffe, Queensland. 
 “The move to FTTdp was outlined in the 2017 Corporate Plan where we stated nbn’s overall HFC footprint would be between 2.5 and 3.2 million by 2020, with more premises being served by FTTN, Fibre-to-the-Building and FTTdp. These ranges reflect nbn’s flexible and technology-agnostic approach. HFC remains a highly valued part of our MTM deployment, however in balancing the requirements to convert Optus’s current network architecture and design to be nbn-ready, and the opportunity to introduce FTTdp, makes the new technology compelling in these selected areas.”

With the greatest respect, and in the politest way possible, Mr Ryan, the pond would like to suggest that you're a technology agnostic, flexible wanker of the first water ...

As if 2.0 horseshit offers anything better than horseshit 1.0.

This was of course part of the fuss of the 2015 leaked document ...(here) ... no wonder they wanted to stop the truth emerging, though in the way that some turds will float to the surface, the truth had to eventually emerge ...

Meanwhile, Malware thinks it's good politics to seize on the current situation in South Australia for political purposes - his thoughts on climate science gone the way his thoughts on a wired nation and SSM ... and his new best mate and chum is Chris Uhlmann ...seminarian and candidate for the Osborne Independent Group ...

What a dissembling disaster Malware is, and what a fraud that the reptiles keep on blathering on about 18C when they are perfectly free to talk about some of the real disasters Malware has perpetrated in his servile servicing of the onion muncher ... and all we hear is the sound of crickets and moans about 18C ...

Enough already, you servants of Satan, the pond has just enough strength to upload one final mighty Pope ...

In which the pond is shattered by fickle Dame Slap but finds consolation with the Bolter and the bromancer ...

It's very unsettling, very disturbing, for a conservative blogger to discover the world has been turned upside down ... we all know the feeling ...

Wednesday is Dame Slap day, and that's it ...no argument, no discussion ...and then suddenly it's not.

Now there's no point going back to yesterday and pretending to take an interest in Dame Groan. Sadly Dame Groan is so desiccated you couldn't use her on a lamington, while Dame Slap is fruity. But suddenly she's been disappeared, another of those well-heeled Devine bludgers who think they can just bugger off from the job whenever they feel like it.

So the pond had to turn to alternatives, and what a dismal choice it was ...

There's always the Bolter of course ...

Now the pond understands that the concept of monomania is no longer in technical use, but what a handy term it is when contemplating the Bolter contemplating Malware... a form of partial insanity, a pathological preoccupation, a mental illness whereby the mind is limited in expression to one idea or area of thought ...

The opening of the Bolter piece captured it all in one ... the lost loved one, and the hated new arrival ...

The long absent lord knows how the Bolter defines Liberal - it's likely even Genghis Khan wouldn't make the cut because of his centrist ways ...

But the pond shuddered at the idea of reading the rest of it - the idée fix, the manic compulsion, the obsessive fixation, the fear and loathing were sure to be predictable ... and full of the usual nonsense ...

Incredibly, half of voters have changed their mind and not just because Labor leader Bill Shorten has a golden tongue. No, blame Turnbull for being so half-hearted in arguing for the plebiscite he promised at the election. Part of that is personal. The plebiscite was thought up by his predecessor, Tony Abbott, to allow same-sex marriage to be legalised without splitting the Liberal Party. It would have worked but Turnbull stuffed it.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda, because the onion muncher could stuff a superior turkey, and could have spent his time in a plebiscite campaign standing on principle and opposing SSM. That would have been a grand sight ...that would have worked, and all because the onion muncher wanted to legalise it without splitting the Liberal Party.

Is it any wonder that occasionally the pond feels like grabbing the Bolter and giving him a smack on the chops, saying "listen to what you're scribbling, you stupid, stupid man" ...

Then it's on through assorted other matters, the Republic, schools, and as always 18C, and then a last bit of petulant foot-stomping ...

Already he’s had a warning this week from Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, whose Australian Conservatives movement could be turned into a rival conservative party at the flick of a switch. Bernardi urged Turnbull to pick up some of the more acceptable parts of the agenda of the resurgent Pauline Hanson, particularly on “migration, culture … jobs, manufacturing” — plus a ban on more refugees from Iraq and Syria. Bernardi is right, and Turnbull must offer voters an alternative to the Labor-Green agenda, not just a watered-down version that satisfies nobody. But again, that familiar question: could Turnbull actually sell anything, even if his political life now depended on it?

It left the pond singularly unsatisfied, as most forms of madness are wont to do.

What the pond needed was a dose of fruity, and so reluctantly it had to turn to that old reliable, the bromancer ...

Sure, however you cut it, it's just more of the US election and the debate, and the usual infinite capacity of the bromancer to be tone deaf, but what else to do?

Now if the pond might just interrupt at this point, it seems that we must never mind that most fact checkers after the first debate marked down Trump heavily for the number of porkies that he told, up against the relatively modest number told by Clinton ...

The point here is that old ploy of equivalence. If you say they're both full-on liars growing more alike, resembling each other, why then you might think the Donald is a perfectly acceptable candidate ... so the bromancer getting agitated about trade deals is just a fig leaf on this basic truth ...

Moonshine it might be, though if you look at the budget under Clinton, the country didn't do so badly in terms of deficit/surplus, as can be fact checked here.

Of course it's possible to prefer a degree at Trump University and a business methodology which sees bankruptcy as a routine good solution, and renegotiating national debts with creditor countries will be a wonder to see ...

But how do we know that the bromancer is secretly on with Trump? Well the last gobbet gives a clue ...

That's deeply, deeply weird, all the more so in the face of what motivated, and still motivates, Trump's birtherism.

Does it get any more blithe or carefree for the bromancer to assign the African American population to high crime areas, and expect them to just get on with life as they're assaulted by both cops and criminals?

It's about as sensitive and as insightful as this sort of approach ...

"Our government has totally failed our African American friends, our Hispanic friends and the people of our country. Period," Trump said in Akron, Ohio, straying from the prepared remarks the campaign provided to reporters. "The Democrats have failed completely in the inner cities. For those hurting the most who have been failed and failed by their politician — year after year, failure after failure, worse numbers after worse numbers. Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing, no homes, no ownership. Crime at levels that nobody has seen. You can go to war zones in countries that we are fighting and it's safer than living in some of our inner cities that are run by the Democrats. And I ask you this, I ask you this — crime, all of the problems — to the African Americans, who I employ so many, so many people, to the Hispanics, tremendous people: What the hell do you have to lose? Give me a chance. I'll straighten it out. I'll straighten it out. What do you have to lose?"

Well maybe dignity and self-respect for starters ...and a capacity to accept that since before the Civil War, the United States hasn't had an inherent racial bias, still clearly visible today in the politics of birtherism, the white supremacists that love teh Donald, David Duke, the KKK and so on and so forth, and the deep south, which remains very deep, though these days in a Republican way after they stole the racists from the dixie Democrats ...

But enough of all that, fortunately the pond has the Pope providing infallible coverage of matters domestic, with fragrant echoes of Cory, George and Bolterism, and more infallible papery here ...