If it's comedy and irony you want, you can't go past The Drum, Fiona Scott, Roger Corbett, Bjorn Lomborg, George Brandis and Janet "Dame Slap" Albrechtsen ...

(Above: first let's pause for a little mid-week Popery, the pause that always refreshes. More Popery here. More about lizard people here and here and here)

With the partner out of the house, it was time for a little naughtiness, a walk on the wild side.

Yes, the pond switched on The Drum on 24, to be confronted by Peter "send in the hounds" Reith, now a fixture on the ABC in much the same way as cockroaches infest the pond's kitchen, a hack from the News Corp empire, Jessica Irvine, who looked and sounded like a trainee Dame Slap, and John "share the NSW Labor party malaise with the world" Della Bosca.

Presumably Della Bosca was included to provide some kind of balance, but how can a chunk of very light weight fairy floss provide any sort of balance?

Host Steve Cannane asked singularly useless questions in a Coalition friendly manner, Reith was "send in the hounds" Reith, and the hack was a classic News Corp hack. (See for yourself at the show's website, here, but be warned, it requires substantial intestinal fortitude beyond the pond's).

When it came to discussing the matter of Fiona Scott, Irvine explained that infrastructure in Sydney was very bad, and refugees were an issue, and it was very easy to conflate the two, and rather than getting uneasy about conflating the two, we should just try to understand ...

The pond reeled away, deep in the grip of nausea, and with a realisation that the ABC was now a wasteland, and if Abbott cut it to the bone, then there'd really be little lost, what with the way the place has been infested by clap happies, right wing loons, and sundry similar sorts of cockroaches ...

Meanwhile, Scott herself seemed to realise she'd actually made a gaffe, and resorted to the tried and true routine of being mis-quoted, as you can read in the Daily Terror's offer of salvation, Fiona Scott says Four Corners took her words out of context after linking asylum seekers to traffic.

"I certainly think things were taken out of context with the way it was cut. The points I was making is we've had 16 years of failed Labor government here at state level, which has meant we haven't had the infrastructure investments that we have needed here." she said.

There's just one problem. The bit that caused the fuss wasn't cut. It's a two coherent grabs of piece of incoherent stupidity. There's the set up - Scott being stupid - and then a cutaway of traffic to cover the question - and then Scott's direct reply to the question. (Read the transcript and go to the footage just after the 26 minute mark here).

It's not like she was ambushed or bushwacked - she leapt into the folly with the agility of a gazelle and the brain of a woolly mammoth (apologies to any surviving mammoths).

So the excuse merely compounds the stupidity, but no doubt it will keep her out of trouble with the reptiles in Murdoch la la land, and their friends at the ABC ...

And by golly that's the last time the pond will take a walk amongst the dead heads on 24 for a long time to come .. why you'd be better off with the Grateful Dead.

Meanwhile, the chatterati are wildly excited by Roger Corbett taking down the Ruddster (as you can see here on catch-up TV).

Now the pond doesn't actually have many quibbles with what Corbett had to say, but it also provides the kind of irony that helps the pond get through the day.

In much the same way as the Ruddster has ably assisted in the decline and fall of the Labor party, Corbett has presided over the decline and fall of Fairfax. On the day he became chairman, Fairfax stock was trading at $1.73, and these days you'd be lucky to rustle up 56 cents - and the pond is glad to have sold them off long ago.

Corbett became a particular bete noir for Eric Beecher - Corbett, the functionary, sees Fairfax die on his watch - with Corbett the most visible symbol of a company that just doesn't get the new digital age ... (Crikey has a festival of Corbettisms under his tag here).

Watching Corbett writhe in relation to Fairfax on Lateline back in 2012, here, is worth way more than his passing savaging of the Ruddster.

The further irony? In response to Corbett's criticisms, the Ruddster said "I notice Mr Corbett has probably done okay in business in recent years, good on him", which is beyond the valley of the risible.

The Ruddster did allow himself a "probably" but if doing "okay" in business is helping drive Fairfax into the ground, then the pond has a new definition of "okay" ready for inclusion in all dictionaries ...

Doing "okay": taking a drive with "leading businessman" Roger Corbett into a digital wasteland ...

Speaking of wastelands, what an easy throw to the rampaging reptiles at the lizard Oz. Oh the hounds of Murdochville are slavering and slobbering with excitement.

Truly they must put it together in a dream, it's now so predictable.

The "news" features glowing accounts of Abbott, and the "commentary" features glowing accounts of Abbott, leavened only by Hedley Thomas carrying on about Clive Palmer, and yet another piece by Bjorn Lomborg, a man so discredited these days outside the lizard Oz that he's taken to blowing his trumpet on the full to overflowing intertubes.

This time Lomborg starts Climate challenge requires new approach (behind the paywall to keep your mind pure and innocent) with a lie:

Climate change is a hotly contested issue in Australia. An overwhelming majority of Australians, 84 per cent, wants to do something about it, yet a clear majority is against the present carbon tax.

The last time the pond bothered to look at a poll was back in July 2013 - Most want to keep carbon tax poll:

The automated phone poll of 1369 people was conducted last weekend and revealed 62 per cent of respondents wanted to keep the price on carbon and 38 per cent wanted it removed even if doing so damaged revenue.

So where did Lomborg get his "clear majority" from?

Meanwhile, you get a clue that you're in the land of the barking mad when you come to this bit ...

Geoengineering aims to counter the temperature rise by intervening in the climate. One way is to amplify the natural cloud formation over the Pacific Ocean to make clouds slightly whiter, reflecting sunlight and cooling the planet. Estimates show that about $6bn could potentially offset the entire 21st-century heating, meaning each dollar could avoid more than $1000 of climate damage. For now, however, they only suggest exploring the feasibility of this opportunity, which could also work as insurance if other policies fail.

Only $6 billion? Why as the pond's New Zealand friends would say, that's as chup as chups.

Now to try Dr. Lomborg's patented, tried and true, snake oil cure for rheumatism ... and chup too at half the price.

Despite Lombrog's best efforts, as usual, the most curious and bizarre bout of excitement about the arrival of the Messiah comes from Dame Slap:

Frankly the pond burst into hysterical laughter just reading the header, Freedom set to reclaim its spot at  heart of human rights debate (behind the paywall, because you know, in Rupert's world, you have to pay to read about fundamental human rights and freedom).

And who is this fearless freedom fighter, this new Nelson Mandela of Australia? Once mistaken for a terrorist by Margaret Thatcher, but now giving it his all! This new Martin Luther King? Boldly battling discrimination!

George Brandis ...

Yep, George Brandis.

You can see why by now the pond was writhing on the floor, caught up in gusts of laughter worse than the fiendish tickle torture once endured in childhood.

Of course what Janet Albrechtsen is really talking about is the untrammelled right of the lickspittle lackeys, the ravening slobbering, slurping hounds of an American billionaire (who dominates the print media) being allowed to trash whomever they like without let, hindrance or any fear of reprisals ... and grudging apologies once more shifted to a short par below the regional horse racing results on page 56.

Yes, Fiona Scott will be even freer in this wonderful new world to explain how it's the refugees that are clogging the highways and the freeways and the hospitals, and the Bolters of the world will be there cheering them on.

Of course Albrechtsen dresses it up in fancy words and fancy concepts, but anyone with half a clue - after reading yet another Dame Slap whine and moan about how badly the Bolter was done for his regular black bashing - will be able to decode this:

On the freedom front, the contrast between Dreyfus and Brandis could not be starker. And if placing free speech at the heart of the human rights debate also helps lift the less overt, but equally stifling, political correctness that has enveloped us these past six years, then Brandis will truly be changing the nation for the better

Yes, because not being able to label a female PM as a bitch and a witch is stifling political correctness.

Oh wait, somehow no one stifled the Abbott ...

Now such are the many wondrous ironies today, the pond is running long, but we can't let Dame Slap, mounting her standard wondrous mish-mash of paranoia and abuse, go without mentioning this:

Brandis also lays blame at his side of politics for the marginalisation of free speech. 
"We let the Left take over the language of human rights," he says, pointing out, incredulously, that the centre-right parties abandoned the issue in the same century where the blind pursuit of left-wing ideology led to the deaths of many millions of people. 
Brandis says the Liberal Party must re-embrace this issue. "We are the party of human rights. Remember that only one party (the Liberal Party) was established to advance the rights of the individual," he says.

It's great stuff, pure Groucho Marx, way better than Marx. The pond has always blamed the National Socialists in Germany and in Italy and the samurais in Japan for the deaths of many millions of people ... damned leftists, the lot of them.

What to do? Well why not call in a fabulous and famed libertarian, a fearless fighter for freedom and rights, to make a stand.

And so it came to pass that in the 1950s, it was Ming the Merciless, founder and father of the Liberal Party, who tried to ban the Communist party, except that his legislation was thankfully struck down by the High Court, and the following referendum in September 1951 was thankfully struck down by the Australian people (you can read about the nonsense in more detail here).

Whatever you think of Communism as a political system, or a philosophy or as an economic model - the pond never thought much of it - it's fair to say that the Liberal party started off as a party designed to repress the rights of individuals and their right to think as they might ... with Menzies doing his best to introduce an age of repression and group think terror right up there with Joe McCarthy in the 1950s ...

The pond tends to think of Marxist infatuation as the provenance of the young, usually passing with age, but the stupidities and oafish ignorance of the likes of Brandis and Albrechtsen are timeless ...

It's the bald-faced nature of the stupidity that gets the pond ... only one party (the Liberal Party) was established to ban political parties and repress the rights of the individual ...

Oh please, no more tickle torture, enough already.

One thing is absolutely clear however, and we can thank Fiona Scott for giving us a heads up.

We're about to enter a new age of Hansonism, and hapless refugees will be blamed for all that ails it, and the likes of Tim Bleah, the Bolter and Dame Slap will celebrate it as an end of political correctness and George Brandis will do his level best to ensure that they have the freedom to abuse the shit out of the runts of the litter ...

The level of debate in this country has been cheapened and coarsened these past few years, but we haven't seen anything yet ... the golden age of vile abuse is just around the corner, and the Murdochians and Dame Slap and George Brandis are chafing at the bit at the chance of payback ...

Like the schoolyard tickle torture bullies they are ...

(Below: 'All I Want Is The Power To Deal With These Reds!, Ambrose Dyson, 1951, more details here)