In which the reptiles present many jihad temptations, but the pond has to cop warrior Lord Downer, and the flood water whispering Caterist (with bonus Saul minion)...

 

Many think the Iranian adventure has been a neocolonial folly of the first water, what with Iranian progressives thrown under mad King Donald's proverbial bus - now deployed to run over Ukraine - and with the world's economy driven into a brick wall (what a bonus to the mad King's tariff regime).

Is there a reptile in the house who will step up to the plate and defend the folly?

The pond is glad the question has been asked, because bold, brave warrior Lord Downer was present and incorrect this Monday morning ...

Marvellous stuff, but then Lord Downer has always exhibited warrior tendencies ...

On the warrior rambled through his field of dreams ...

It sounds so simple, so easy, in the hands of a master strategist ...

Great, there's collective punishment for Iranian people, with Lord Downer happy to dispense the pain ... 

Who do the Iranian public blame for the crisis? Who do they blame, if they happen to want an end to the mad Mullah's regime, and instead had to face up to a slaughter?

Surely a trick question, surely not mad King Donald, who promised bigly, and in his usual way failed to deliver.

But please, don't think Lord Downer's "not uncritical" - fierce, uncompromising warrior that he is ...

That's a contest of ideas? Kumbaya in due course, and peace in the middle east? Good luck with that, just avoid hospitals ...

Over in the "news" section, the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way was still trying to turn into himself into the faux ranga ...as the echo Chambers did his duty, and early on a Monday morning scored top of the digital page, ma ...

EXCLUSIVE
Taylor targets $53bn NDIS bill for non-citizens
NDIS spending on non-citizens is forecast to surpass $5bn annually in the early 2030s – rivalling AUKUS funding – as the Coalition pushes to restrict eligibility.
By Geoff Chambers

The pond would have liked to spend more time with the beefy boofhead and the echo Chambers, but then that infallible Pope came to mind ...

Brownie was also present, brown nosing the financial 'leets, as only lizard Oz reptiles can do ...

EXCLUSIVE
Chalmers’ trust tax bill blows out to $1.7bn
Labor is racing to pass its trusts crackdown before year’s end, but business groups warn the true cost to employers has nearly doubled – and the Greens’ support is not yet assured.
By Greg Brown

Jimbo looked downcast, as he always does when he turns up in the reptile Jimbo jihad ...

Cry the pond a river Bran ...

And a whole gaggle of reptiles were assigned to give Jess a go ...

VICTORIA DECIDES
‘Whole country is watching’: Wilson vows to tackle debt crisis
Victorian Opposition Leader Jess Wilson made the pledge as Labor launched personal attacks on her family.
By Anthony Galloway, John Ferguson and Lily McCaffrey

Look how sweetly she smiles ...

Jolly good stuff, even if the pond actually isn't watching or caring, what with the pond having to resort to those wretched teaser trailers because the had to cop to its COP duties ...

The malignant Magnay set the tone, celebrating the way that crow easters dodged a bullet ... Adelaide dodges $2bn logistics nightmare as Turkey COP31 summit chaos unfolds.

The level of suffering was apparently up there with a Nepalese village in the path of a glacier tsunami, but Magnay was just a warm up act for the main show starring the flood whispering Caterist ...

Not a smear campaign by News Corp, even as the Caterist carried on the standard climate change denying lizard Oz smear campaign?

It seems that thrust by Graham Readfearn must have hurt ... Anthony Albanese's coffee diplomacy can't remove shadow of domestic politics at Cop31 ...

...Much of the Cop coverage back in Australia has had a narrow focus on cost, including one segment from a News Corp outlet that complained free coffee at the Australian pavilion was costing the taxpayer A$32,000. That’s about one tenth of one Australian cent for every Australian, if we’re counting.
The former Australian Liberal prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who is in Antalya as president of the International Hydropower Association, said the News Corp coverage was “seriously bizarre, even by their standards”.
“Climate and energy policy should be determined by engineering and economics, not ideology and idiocy which is what we’re seeing from One Nation and, sadly, from the Liberal party at present,” he said.
“Despite the evidence of global warming being manifest and despite renewables actually being cheaper, we’ve still got this culture war going on.
“And that is all it is. I mean, it’s irrational.”

Irrational? Seriously bizarre? Ideology and idiocy?

Calling the Caterist ...

It goes without saying, which is why the pond always says it, that the Caterist and the rest of the reptile climate science denying jihadists, always ignores any talk of actual observable climate realities, of the kind you might read in the Graudian's yarn Choking fires, deadly heat and devastating floods: 2026 in extreme weather, People around the world have contended with unprecedented weather events and their fatal effects caused by the climate catastrophe

Instead you get this sort of guff for the gullible hive mind ...

You know ... 

\

That's a Contest of Ideas?

The pond would usually bail at this point, with a 'toon and a video clip, but the pond aims for climate completeness, especially as it's handy to note that there's never a contest of ideas, just an assembly of cackling parrots, all pushing the same line ...

Come on down Saul, prove the point by sounding like a wannabe quarry whisperer ...

Just the bog standard fossil fool routine ...poor old António ...

‘You cannot build peace on a burning planet,’ UN chief tells Cop31 in farewell speech
António Guterres says climate action central to every aspect of UN’s work, as leaders depart Cop31 and talks go on

Tackling the climate crisis is central to all of human life and must be at the forefront of global governance, the outgoing UN secretary general has said in an emotional farewell address at the Cop31 climate summit.
“You cannot build peace on a burning planet,” António Guterres said at his final climate press conference as secretary general on Friday. “You cannot eradicate poverty when climate disasters keep throwing people back into it. You cannot promise young people a better future while destroying the natural systems on which that future depends.”
Guterres has been the most forthright secretary general yet on the subject of the climate, returning to it again and again to castigate fossil fuel companies and recalcitrant governments.
He leaves office at the end of December and his successor is still unknown after Donald Trump tried to interject his preferred choices into the process. There are widespread fears that the next incumbent will downplay the climate crisis in favour of other issues.
In a clear message to his successor, Guterres spelled out why the UN must continue to place the climate at the top of the global agenda. “Climate change does not stay in its lane,” he said. “It drives anger and displacement around the world. It wipes out development gains built over decades. It pushes countries deeper into deficit. It aggravates competition for land and water.
“It fuels instability. And increasingly, it threatens the very existence of communities and countries. For all these reasons, I have never viewed climate action as just one of many other issues. Climate action is central to every aspect of the work of the UN.”

Words off the slick Saul's ducky back ...

Saul ended by slagging off EVs, as reptile jihadists are wont to do ...

That's a Contest of Ideas?

That's just a collective of parrots carrying out the lizard Oz's climate denialist jihad ...

And now the pond can end with the immortal Rowe, celebrating all that's currently be best in the Unites States...

Relax, Jesus will return to save us all ...

Prattling Polonius, a "Ned" Everest and Homeric Henry? This is the way forward for the lizard Oz?

 

The pond came to a stark understanding about the commercial potential of the current crop of lizard Oz contributors.

Is there anyone under seventy who has the remotest interest in the content?

Polonius led the way with prattle about "Whitlam's shadow".

Ye ancient cats and dogs, as if the lizard Oz itself hadn't already displayed a signal lack of interest in the end of the first world war.

Yet here were the hive mind troops being lectured on the notion that it was all the fault of Gough ... as if the dismissal loomed large in everyone's minds, when in reality only tattered tribal warriors and aged dinosaurs and perhaps Kennedy Miller cultists who remembered the miniseries had the foggiest memory of those events ...

In other words, the main benefit of the end of WWI? Providing a feeble excuse for Polonius to conjure up Gough and blather about long lost times. 

The pond understands the tendency - given half a chance the pond will always lecture younglings on the way things were, as a way to improve their understanding of the world.

But are there any younglings who would willingly pay for this sort of guff?

Just brilliant.

The strategy behind Gallipoli was, albeit flawed, "well intentioned".

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

   Someone had blundered.

   Theirs not to make reply,

   Theirs not to reason why,

   Theirs but to do and die.

   Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred

Knowing that the strategy

Was well-intentioned ...

Only an armchair warrior of the first water could come out with that sort of silliness.

Polonius did his best to make it all seem relevant, and "now", and dragged in personal touches, as aged warriors are wont to do, a bit like an Ancient Mariner stoppeth one of three with glittering eye and long grey beard. But wherefore stopp'st thou me?

Tedious beyond measure, and not even a mention of Oh! What a Lovely War, which might at least have produced a song or two ...

Early in the weekend, there was also the question of "Ned", who was briefly given top spot at the head of the digital "news" edition, as if that was some kind of selling point and attention should be paid ...

The reptiles felt so strongly about a "Ned" Everest climb that there came a pop up offering access the rag for less than a dollar a day ...

When you got to the actual "Ned" offering, a dollar a day seemed a very steep price for boredom, when simply staring at tea leaves or chicken entrails might offer the same experience, and the same level of insight ...

It was just another part of the reptile rag's endless jihad on the current government, down there with the coverage of dick jokes by a couple of dicks, which conveniently skated past the need to provide any coverage of actual climate change data and actual climate science ...

That was still the top of the "news" angle early Sunday morning ...

Meanwhile, that ancient dick blathered on in his own dickish way ...

As usual, any attempt to respond to climate change went under the "Ned" hammer...

In any "Ned" offering, you're never offered undiluted "Ned". He always reverts to padding by dragging in others to reinforce his own taste for nattering negativity ...

Oh and there had to be a battering of "renewables", as if "clean energy" was some kind of dirty concept that had to be spat out on to the keyboard ...

Who would pay for this relentless sort of doomsaying, this ranting about AI at the same time as the reptiles themselves have introduced an impossibly silly form of BETA AI?

Speaking of the intertubes and AI and all that, isn't everything under control?

The pond did look around for alternatives, only to discover that the reptiles idea of appealing to younglings of the female kind was to pump up the volume for a lesser wannabe new Kathy Lette ...

Menopausal billionaire ex-wives, not AI club, may shape the future

By Jenna Clarke

associate editor (caps, what are they?)

The pond could only bear to offer a sample, and let the intermittent archive carry the burden ...

Don't get mad, just leave the reptile room.

And snappy Tom's offering was just more of the usual reptile jihad which has gone on for month after month.

How many want to keep bashing their head with this particular hammer? Perhaps if you're a member of the hive mind cult, but pay for it, when you might be going for a walk, or enjoying a sea breeze and a coastal view?

By 

Tom Dusevic

Gap widens between PM’s rhetoric and reality

The old surplus rag ...hard pass, and off to the intermittent archive with him.

No doubt the reptiles thought that rolling out a serve of heroic Homeric Henry would keep the hive mind happy, but again, who would want to pay for a history lesson from the pompous, portentous pundit?

It was either him or the lizard Oz editorialist, so the pond dived in ...

Others have been there with this line ...

The pond badly needed the help of 'toons to make it to the end ... especially as, even on the pompous pundit's own terms, mad King Donald has done more than win a battle. He's redrawn the field on which the battles of the following decades will be fought ...

On with the history lesson ...

Here's the thing. Our Henry began that gobbet by referencing earlier scribbling in the lizard Oz: "Writing on these pages in the early months of Trump's first term ..."

How hard would it have been for the reptiles to have provided a link? It would have done what the reptiles always want with a link ... keep the punters deep inside the hive mind.

Did no one care, did no one have any interest in what a punter might want to see? Not even Our Henry himelf?

Must it always be left to the pond to duck out and have a look around and discover Washington faces Donald Trump’s shock and awe tactics:

Was that so hard? If the pond is going to be bored silly, it should be given the opportunity to do a "that was then, and this is now" comparison.

Back to the latest history lesson ...

Time to cast Ronnie Raygun as a moderate of the most genteel kind ...

It was about this point in the long haul that the pond began to realise that Our Henry would resolutely avoid any mention of Faux Noise, News Corporation, the Emeritus Chairman, and their roles in this folly ... with all of them rolling over at the drop of a hat, provided the ratings stayed solid, and business kept on doing well, to the point where they'd become so Trumpian they'd even have to fork out some US$787 million over the way that'd they'd recycled and amplified the mad King's election fraud claims.

Just a minor cost of doing Trumpian business.

It seems there's history to be tracked, and then there's history to be ignored, covered up, and forgotten ...

The ultimate threat? A president of the left? Is FDR still some sort of boogeyman that must be berated?

The pond reached the final gobbet with a bitter sense of disappointment.

This was the best the lizard Oz and the hole in bucket man had to offer?

Always the rabbiting on about the dangers of the left, and none about the dangers of far right media owners facilitating ratbag populists.

Might not a comparison between William Randolph Hearst and Emeritus Chairman Rupert have been germane?

Never mind, on with the eternal radical socialist shibboleth, a comfort to the rich, a never ending piñata for the Emeritus Chairman's hacks.

Health care for all? Affordable housing? The opportunity for an education? All dangerous forms of socialism ...

A wrecker not a builder ... that is what the Emeritus Chairman helped gift to the world.

And speaking of that, a final word from the lizard Oz editorialist ...

He must "remain resolute", after all that's already gone down?

Hasn't that "remain resolute" routine gone well ...

Indeed, indeed, carry on regardless...

And what about Invidia?

Oh go tell all that to Uncle Leon. Sounds like a dangerous form of socialism, of the kind designed to put a prick up the ears of Our Henry ...

Do finish up ...

The reptiles have only just worked out that mad King Donald has been making a fortune selling out to China, and selling Ukraine down the river to Vlad the sociopath, and selling the country off to the tech bros and the crypto overlords?

Oh and the Emeritus Chairman has been doing well, at least until the recent ratings slump.

So all's well in the world...

Might as well catch up with the immortal Rowe ...

... and celebrate yet another home improvement ...

Last but not least, one for the other team, a team that seemingly deliberately couldn't get its shiiiit together to give Pete Kegsbreath a hard time ...

Useless. They always disappoint, but the ability of the Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory seems endless, and endlessly astonishing ...