In which sundry reptile jihads are noted, but the pond must honour its devotion to the mad monk's bromancing chum...

 

With the best will in the world  - malice is infinitely preferable - the pond couldn't find anything remotely appealing in this day's lizard Oz...

Thursday is petulant Peta day, and what luck that the intermittent archive was working, and the pond personally supervised placing her there...

PM defended $6m golf grant, then his story fell apart
A senior government official has contradicted her own minister under oath, confirming sewerage works were never part of Anthony Albanese’s $6m golf club grant.
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

With the reptiles resembling a wrestling tag team, over in the "news" section it was the Jimbo jihad that continued apace ...

PRICES
Charade of savings as inflation rises and RBA hike on the cards
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has refused to commit to net savings in December’s budget update as inflation hits 4.3 per cent and a fifth interest rate rise looms.
By Matthew Cranston and Thomas Henry

The best that could be said for that outing? 

It provided yet another reminder that the reptiles have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of comical Jimbo snaps...

Oh there were charts and graphs and doom in abundance, and just below that, Geoff "the Echo" Chambers (a joke shamelessly stolen in the way mad king Donald uses Neil Young music in his rallies) was also all in on the jihad ...

COMMENTARY by GEOFF CHAMBERS
Trouble in Labor ranks as blame game gets personal
Jim Chalmers has entered the political danger zone after name checking Anthony Albanese and other ministers for their ‘parts’ in driving the government’s tanking popularity.

How disappointing to discover the reptiles did have limits on comical Jimbo snaps, with a quizzical Albo no substitute ...

The lead "news" item top of the digital page early was a bog standard contribution to the long running Victorian jihad ...

SEEING RED
Victoria’s decree: free pass on obscene debt ends … today
Victoria ranked last in national competitiveness for a third straight year. Now, sporting and business leaders are uniting to demand answers from both major parties on the state’s ballooning debt crisis.
By Samantha Hutchinson and Anthony Galloway

It ends ... today!?

Say what? 

They've brought the election forward, comely Jess won in a canter and issued a bold statement? 

Nah, they just wrote a letter ...

That "It ends...today" surely was an attempt by the headline writer to win the much revered but long lost Campbell Reid award ...

Not a single reptile offered the wit of the infallible Pope ...

Damon (why wasn't he named Damien?) chipped in with a bonus jihad contribution, apparently unaware that potholes have been a feature of Victorian life under every kind of regime ...

Labor’s $200bn debt finally hits the road
Potholes have become the symbol Victoria’s decline – and voters are blaming Labor for running out of money to repair the roads.
ByDamon Johnston
Melbourne Bureau Chief

Damon was in apocalyptic "time has arrived" mood, but it was just another chance to recycle that letter...

It was a Killer line, but apparently the reptiles haven't discovered how shutter speed can avoid blurring ... or maybe they were trying for a neo-realist look.

And where on earth is Dyelsford?

Jack the Insider favoured the Albo jihad, while resolutely refusing to be polite. 

The pond personally, politely, sent him to the archive cornfield ...

Polite politics merely act as a shield for dodging scrutiny
Calls to tone down political rhetoric shield the Albanese government from scrutiny over its dirt file on Helen Haines and a $560m pork-barrelling program.
By Jack the Insider
Columnist

There was just one outlier to all these jihads, with Jamie proposing a jihad on the tech bros ...

How Canberra can call Big Tech’s copyright bluff
Australia’s creative industries face the same AI copyright ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ ultimatum that Britain resisted – and a key insider says ministers must hold their nerve.
By Jamie Njoku-Goodwi

The pond didn't have the foggiest idea who he was, and the reptiles didn't give a clue, but the text suggested he was British, and so he was ...per his wiki, with an impeccable number of PMs to his name, including Theresa and Rishi, with Lynton Crosby and Matt Hancock also in the mix ...

If only the reptiles had reverted to their climate science denialist jihad ...

Whatever, and what with Israel determined to remain a fundamentalist ethnic cleansing theocracy, and what with Benji, having already reverted to second Holocaust muck, going the full Arab hate routine ...

ISRAEL VOTES
Election ‘stolen by Arabs’ claims Netanyahu’s Likud party despite narrow lead
The Likud Party has demanded an investigation into fraud and intimidation at Arab polling stations as the final count shows Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc with 53 seats, Gadi Eisenkot’s with 48 and the Arab parties on 19.
By Anne Barrowclough

... the pond knew at precisely 8.51 PM last night who would be the reptile du jour ...

This is an ongoing situation, as Haaretz helpfully tracked ...

But what did the Australian Daily Zionist News make of the situation?

As always, the bromancer was there to help the pond with all the answers ...

Thankfully the bromancer ignored the surge in voting for Arab parties. Who would want second class citizens in an apartheid state having a say in proceedings?

Best celebrate Benji's survival skills...

Subtle, but it didn't trouble the bromancer, busy relishing ironical smiles... as the dog botherer turned up to help...

The fawning and the adulation continued into a third gobbet, with the bromancer at the heart of the action ...

But at the very end, the bromancer broke down.

All he could offer was confusion, chaos and an abundance of rhetorical questions ...

...The future now is utterly confused. For much of Netanyahu’s prime ministership, his reputation as a hawk meant he often didn’t have to take military action. Israel’s enemies were scared of him. He talked tough but governed prudently. After the shocking Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, all that changed.
Netanyahu now is determined to cut down Israel’s enemies by military means and re-establish Israel’s deterrence. But does he go too far? Is he so polarising he needlessly damages Israel’s international standing? Does he still have the sound judgment he exhibited at his best? How do his own political circumstances affect Israeli strategic policy?
It may well be that Netanyahu gets to answer all those questions, for Israel and the world, from the Prime Minister’s office.

The ethnic cleansing and the genocide can continue?

What a relief.

And that left the immortal Rowe to summarise the situation ...

And there had been the pond hoping that some reptile down under would take up the cause and excoriate the defaming of the Cheesecake Factory ...

Now here's a viewing suggestion for the bromancer ...

A potpourri of reptile pleasures, with Dame Slap on offer in full for advanced students ...

 

The pond has become incredibly lazy in its approach to herpetology studies, and so when the intermittent archive has a little hissy fit, it throws a spanner in the pond's works when it comes to covering the the lizard Oz hive mind.

Of late the pond has preferred to do a collage, a montage, a potpourri (never fragrant), a medley, a hodgepodge, an assemblage, a miscellany, which allows fellow advanced students to study at their own pace and leisure.

And incidentally it saves the pond the time and the tedium of spending too long in company with the likes of "Ned".

Others might want to do this morning's Everest climb, but the pond is content to offer a teaser trailer and a link ...

Tempted? Feel a fire in the loins, a lust to read further?

How a Jess Wilson win could shape the attack on One Nation
A Liberal win in Victoria — where the party has surged ahead of both Labor and One Nation — could rewrite the federal political rule book.
By Paul Kelly
Editor-At-Large

That's enough of those hard yards for the pond.

No need to go there, and no need for the pond to indulge in the latest outpourings of the Australian Daily Zionist News, though the reptiles were so keen on this one it was top of the digital page early this morning ...

EXCLUSIVE
Landmark antisemitism plan revealed for nation’s schools
The national curriculum agency has proposed reforms mandating detailed Holocaust study and antisemitism education for Australian students for the first time.
By Lucy Carroll

Speaking of ethical conduct, will students be exposed to the latest example of ethnic cleansing, a latter-day genocide, with Gaza down there with the Warsaw ghetto?

Meanwhile, Mr Rubenstein lost the pond from the get go by talking about "Israel's vibrant democracy", which reminded the pond of talk in ancient times by rulers of South Africa of its "vibrant apartheid-based democracy"...

Israel’s vibrant democracy faces a deeply divided vote

As Israelis began going to the polls, Benjamin Netanyahu still divided the electorate but there was far greater consensus on the existential threats facing the Jewish state.

By Paul Rubenstein

Vibrant?

Long Lines and Police Presence at Arab Polling Stations Delay Voting, Legal Center Says

Adalah, an NGO advocating for Arab rights in Israel, urges election officials and the police chief to intervene. Officers were reportedly asking voters for ID to enter the polls, although they lack the authority to do so, according to Adalah

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, says it has received numerous reports of systematic delays at polling stations in Arab communities across Israel.

"There are numerous reports of severe slowdowns at many polling stations," Yeela Raanan, a member of a team monitoring election integrity in Bedouin communities, told Haaretz.

In many Bedouin communities, Raanan said, "people report waiting for hours, and polling station staff are taking a very long time to verify each voter's identity."

Haaretz has also learned of reports of police officers at several polling stations in these communities. In the southern town of Tel Sheva, 20 Border Police officers were reportedly deployed to a single polling station, while footage showed officers entering polling stations in Segev Shalom.

According to the reports, officers were asking voters for identification, a responsibility that Israeli election law assigns to polling station officials. Their presence was reportedly delaying and disrupting voting.

Adalah urgently wrote to Police Commissioner Danny Levy, Central Elections Committee chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg and the chair of the Be'er Sheva Elections Committee, demanding immediate action to ensure that voting could proceed unhindered.

At some point - why not here? - the pond likes to throw in a cartoon reminding students of what they might be missing in the real world, with thanks to the infallible Pope ...

Then it's back to the grindstone, and instead of AI, why not the war with China (no later than Xmas) to produce a little surge of fear and loathing?

By Rowan Callick

12-point plan for Taiwan isn’t an academic exercise (dodgy but readable)

This is usually the turf of the bromancer, but he's been distracted of late by other weighty matters ...

No worries. 

Dictator comrade Xi has been studying the mad king and learning the finer points of how to run a country into the ground ...

And the pond was vastly relieved that after the Haines tragedy, the reptiles could get back to routine business with an outing that bashed indies, teals and greenies all in one go ...

By Will Glasgow

Samuel Terry founder Fred Wollard backs teals with $591,000 despite fossil fuel ties

Splendid stuff, and with a dose of gassing the planet as a bonus ...

Sadly there is always an essay component for advanced students, a more detailed study of a reptile in full flight, from beginning to end, from alpha to omega, and this day it's Dame Slap ...

Um, that last line sounds a little stale, what with recent events in Serbia and Hungary (and who had Brazil on their bingo card?), but never mind, we're always up for mindless rhetoric, where a right wing populist mindlessly celebrates other mindless loon populists.

Some students, who might have come late to the story, might wonder why Dame Slap is getting all hot and bothered about Europe, but it's in her nature.

The pond always likes to remind these Johnny and Janey come latelies of Dame Slap's Trumpian origin story ...

 

Of course she's going to be down on Europe, and the perfidious French, and the recalcitrant Germans, and the rest of that unseemly mob ...and speaking of MAGA caps ...

Now back to bashing those bloody cheese eating surrender monkeys and their kind...

Back in the day the pond always liked to show the inspiration for Dame Slap, showing how she could dish it out to any of those cultists believing in the fake religion of climate science, showing her teaching style:

Just hard bloody work at climate science denialism, and as for keeping those naughty European pixies in line ...

Speaking of naughty children, and climate science denialism, the pond was still catching up with the latest reptile effort in that sphere, thanks to Media Watch ... Climate BOM-shell

Sorry, the pond is always getting distracted from the text at hand ...but it does sort of tie in with Dame Slap's hysteria about sovereignty, and climate, and her devoted denialism, and all that jazz, worthy of Brexit in its hey day (didn't that fall on very hard times?)

Oh if we wanted a belly laugh there's plenty to be found, and they're right up Dame Slap's MAGA cap-donning alley ...

And so to some good news, because every so often the pond doesn't need to resort to the intermittent archive.

Sometimes a featured piece can be swallowed whole...

By Our Editorial Writers

Public sector union boss claims rate rises are ‘economic sadism’

Sure, it's just a standard bit of Jimbo bashing, sure it's just a regurgitation of other bits of the hive mind, but remember this is a hurdy gurdy collage, and it's rare when the lizard Oz editorialist steps out into the limelight.

It deserves to be celebrated ...

Job done comrades, and you'll have your reward should the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way ever produce a miracle and take charge of the economy ...

Meanwhile, relax, everything is looking good ...

And speaking of good ... and being on the up and up ... though he really did need a shoe, for the banging thereof on the table ...

In which we'll all be rooned with Dame Groan, Geoff chambering a round, and the bromancer doing Australian Daily Zionist News duties ...

 

Sheesh, is Alt for Norge the new talking point for the week? What with the foul-mouthed mad king launching yet another attack on Norway ...

Relax, Norwegians, you're in good company: Canada, Greenland, Denmark, the sh*thole countries of Africa, Mexico, most of Europe and hapless, done down Ukraine ...and that's just for starters.

And speaking of Ukraine, who'd have guessed that Vlad the Sociopath would be accused of war crimes?Ukraine: Investigators find Russia committed war crimes by targeting civilians

And while mired in the excrement of state Russian TV, this opening to a yarn struck a chord with the pond:

There’s this old joke about a guy’s first day in hell. He’s being given the orientation: Here’s where we keep the pitchforks. Here’s where we make the printers. Then the time comes to pick his eternal punishment. The first room is fire and brimstone, eternal agony. “That’s not for me,” the man says. The second is full of people being eaten by animals. “Pass,” he says. In the third room, he finds people sipping coffee while waist deep in excrement. “I think I can handle that,” he says. The door closes behind him as a demon yells, “Coffee break’s over! Back on your heads!”

Alex Galbraith in Salon used that as a way into the cesspit that is Faux Noise host Jesse Watters' cesspit, Even Jesse Watters seems tired of pushing Fox News’ culture war.

But the pond thinks it's just as good an introduction to the daily inversion the pond experiences in the land of the lizard Oz reptiles...

For years now, the pond has done a running joke about Dame Groan living in the land of Said Hanrahan ...

And so around the chorus ran
"It's keepin' dry, no doubt."
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out.

Knock the pond down with a feather, the reptiles ran with the gag and stuck it in the header...with the Groaner taking us on yet one more road to roon (she has so many roads)...

Think? The pond should think?

Luckily this road to roon only ran to two more gobbets ...

So much fuss about something not going to happen? 

But that's what happens when you travel the road to roon ...and are likely to bump into all sorts of odd bedfellows or fellow travellers, including Walshie, because strangely the road to roon always leads back to some golden age ...

Speaking of the road to roon ...

 

Unfortunately the intermittent archive was having one of its hissy fits, so the pond was unable to find (or save) this featured yarn in the archive...

Bosses answer Jim Chalmers’ calls to nominate where he should cut
By Matthew Cranston and Thomas Henry

This might, or might not come in handy later ...

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation%2Fpolitics%2Fbosses-answer-chalmers-calls-to-nominate-where-he-should-cut%2Fnews-story%2Fc23dfe0c36ae3f2250050149c333d801

The canny Cranston and his mate assembled some grand suggestions, but the pond liked this one the best ...

Graham Bradley, the former president of the Business Council of Australia and former chairman of EnergyAustralia, HSBC, Stockland and GrainCorp, had a long list of spending cut ideas for Dr Chalmers.
“The government needs to reseize federal departments by eliminating duplication with state government agencies in areas such as planning, education, environmental approvals and licensing generally,” Mr Bradley said.
“The government needs to have the courage to impose means tests on many welfare payments, including NDIS (and) child care subsidies.
“It needs to reduce or eliminate federal subsidies for renewable energy projects even if this slows the energy transition and requires further life extension of coal generators. Unrealistic federal time targets are driving up costs.

Well played Gra Gra, another excuse for a toon while on the road to roon...

With the archive (briefly?) on the blink, the pond thought it might indulge Geoff chambering his round in just a couple of gobbets ... what with him being in condescending Dame Groan mode ...

The pond sometimes wonders what rags like The Daily Beast will do if they run out of mad king fodder - currently King Donald and his comical minions are an inexhaustible trove of treasures - but just as pressing is the question, what would the reptiles of lizard Oz do for kicks if they didn't have Jimbo to kick around?

Go on, Geoff, send him a condescending memo ... and make sure the graphics department helps out with a kinda blue snap of a man caught in a grimace ...

The hive mind preaching self-awareness?

The comedy never ends.

Now drum roll maestro, wheel in the immortal Rowe to set the tone for this issue of the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

Hat tip to that portrait on the shelf...

The immortal Rowe rarely misses a trick. Per Haaretz, sorry no archive listing ...

Netanyahu Lawyer's Firm Received $1.25 Million From Key Trial Witness James Packer

Australian billionaire James Packer reportedly paid Netanyahu's lawyer's firm $50,000 a month for two years. Saying the payments were unrelated to the trial, Packer denied the claim, saying the firm represents him in 'personal and business affairs'

Australian billionaire James Packer paid at least $1.25 million – 1.78 million Australian dollars or 3.85 million shekels – to the law firm of Amit Hadad, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's attorney, the Australian newspaper The Age reported Monday.

The investigation, published on the eve of Israel's election, uncovered a trail of monthly bank transfers of $50,000 over the past two years, from a bank account controlled by Packer's company to the account of the law firm representing Netanyahu.

On the same day the investigation was published, Hadad filed a motion on behalf of Netanyahu's defense team requesting that Packer and two of his employees be allowed to testify from abroad, with their testimony broadcast by video link to the judges in Israel.

According to the investigation, the first monthly payment was made on September 23, 2024, from a Citibank account belonging to Packer's legal firm to an account held by Hadad, Roth, Shenhar at Mizrahi Tefahot Bank. A source familiar with the details reportedly said the payments urgently needed to be investigated to determine whether Netanyahu had received an undisclosed benefit from Packer.

acker insisted that the bank transfers to Netanyahu's lawyers were payments for work carried out on his behalf, including "deal finding" in Israel, where he has business interests, and that they were unrelated to Netanyahu's trial.

The Australian newspaper also reported that a Netanyahu spokesperson asked for comment replied: "I couldn't give a monkey's about your questions. We are very busy. We have an election on right now."

Packer did not deny making the monthly payments but declined to comment. Hadad also declined to comment.

Packer's representatives responded that the law firm represents him in his "personal and business affairs." "Any claim that I paid even a single cent toward the legal defense of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is false. Anyone who claims otherwise risks being sued."

Packer was expected to testify as a key prosecution witness in Netanyahu's corruption trial in Case 1000, in which he and businessman Arnon Milchan are alleged to have provided Netanyahu and his wife with gifts and other benefits worth hundreds of thousands of shekels.

But the pond digresses. On with business, because it was the bromancer's turn this day to set the pace for the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

Splendid stuff, and as usual, that provided the pond with an excuse to head off to Haaretz to answer as to what Israel is for. The mall!

As Long as the Mall Stays Open, Israelis Can Live With War Crimes
Israel's liberal public wants to continue with its comfortable routines and consumerist lifestyle. Maybe sanctions that disrupt their vacations, binge-watching and shopping outings will force it to face reality?
Ofra Rodner

The pond would usually provide a link in the archive but this will have to do ...

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/2026-10-23/ty-article-opinion/.highlight/as-long-as-the-mall-stays-open-israelis-can-live-with-war-crimes/000001a1-4024-de23-a5fb-deb5ac3e0000 

Meanwhile, the bromancer was lathering himself into his usual frenzy ...

Stop right there.

The pond could overlook the spineless attempts at a little both siderism designed to downplay the current ethnic cleansing and genocide going down in Gaza and the West Bank, but the pond couldn't stand by while the bromancer tried to cleanse the Catholic church ...

At best the Catholic church for centuries had a deeply ambivalent relationship to Jews, as exhaustively laid out in the wiki Catholic Church and Judaism

For many centuries the church was the prime source of anti-Semitism and bigotry, and when the church got around to denouncing it in the strongest terms, what they were doing was denouncing their own wretched history.

Just a sample:

A few years later, within the responding Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church begun a process of self-definition in the face of the various heterodoxies and heresies and in this context also reopened the question on the status of the Jews. While Jews would be still tolerated, the justification was now the expectation that they soon converted and thus initiate the Second Coming of Christ. In 1553, following the Bragadin-Giustiniani dispute, the Inquisition confiscated the Talmud and burned it first in Rome, then in many other Italian cities in 1553, as it perceived the Talmud as a hindrance to Jewish conversion. Two years later, Cardinal Caraffa, a Grand inquisitor and hardliner against heretics, dissidents and Jews, became pope and ended the more tolerant policies of his predecessors. In 1555, he issued the bull Cum nimis absurdum, in which he ordered the construction of the Roman Ghetto and imposed restrictions on the Jews, such as prohibiting them to engage in most professions outside of moneylending, owning real estate and limit them to one synagogue per city. Pius V went a step further and expelled the Jews from all cities of the Papal States except for Rome and Anconca.In 1593 Pope Clement VIII expelled the Jews from the Papal States with the bull Caeca et Obdurata. At the same time, the new Tridentine Catechism, result of the Council of Trent, acknowledged that the Jews had historically crucified Jesus...

Back to the bromancer, pinning the blame on the Islamics and trotting out the Nazi card... while skipping over the roles of the church, the Crusaders, the Inquisition, the pogroms and the like (as outlined in The Times of Israel, too long to quote here)

Actually the leaders of the current government of Israel have managed all the demonisation of Israel by themselves, wanton cruelty, and a level of vengeful destruction that has seen Gaza virtually obliterated, a kind of collective punishment that has led to many charges of war crimes ... and for what? So that mall life can carry on ...

Was it just a casual coincidence that writer Ofra Rodner referenced binge-watching in the land of the lotos eaters?

Possibly not, because the bromancer's solution was a little binge watching ...

And so the wanton cruelty, the immensely destructive collective punishment and the war crimes continue.

Speaking of war crimes, there's another criminal still out and about ...

Take it away Jamelle Bouie ... (though the pond humbly proposes it's not just Republicans who should have to answer for the mad king and the ketamine-fuelled Uncle Leon) ...