A dog's breakfast ...

(Above: who else but that genius David Rowe, and more Rowe here, though we do wish he'd written The Dog's Breakfast, or even The Dogs' Breakfast, but hey you have to forgive him, for showing big Mal dining on wild duck, no doubt filled with tasty bits of crunchy broken NBN).

It isn't just the pond, you know, calling the Pyne a poodle.

Everyone finds the poodle Pyne irresistible fun:

If you're pining for a pun, Pyne is the go to shrine.

You can read the story here if you like because it provides  a handy history of the poodle Pyne's recent thought bubbles and own goals. And what an impressive list it is ...

But the pond is just as happy to deal in headlines:

Oh come on Graudian, where's your sense of humour? Surely that header should say something like Pyne Moonshine Elephantine ...

Of course if you read that story, here, it's an elegant report on the Pyneapple up the student bum confusion doing the rounds, but sadly it also contains some grotesque insults:

The Greens' spokeswoman on higher education, Lee Rhiannon, said Pyne's comments were clearly contradicted by the government's own website. 
 “Either Mr Pyne deliberately lied or he doesn't understand his own policy changes,” Rhiannon said.

Which is outrageous and verges on the defamatory, a kind of "either/or" gotcha we'd expect from Brezhnev lovers ...

Truth to tell, it's perfectly possible for Pyne to have to deliberately lied and at the same time not to have understood his own policy changes.

He's that sort of Whitmanesque man, he can embrace contradictions ...

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes of poodle.

The thought bubble king moved the pond to mangle Shakespeare:

A blank, my lord. He never told his policies, 
But let confusion, like a worm i' the bud, 
Feed on his damask cheek. He pyned in thought, 
And with a green and yellow melancholy 
He sat like impatience on a monument, 
Smirking at student grief. Was not this folly indeed? 
We men may say more, swear more, but indeed 
Our shows are more than will, for still we prove 
Much in our vows, but little in our policies....

Don't blame the pond, blame the poodle ...

The trouble is, it's hard to blame the poodle, when his master also mangled the facts. Was it only a week or so ago we were reading Tony Abbott contradicted by universities, Education Department on how deregulated fees will be applied to new university students (forced video at end of link)?

It's not usual for the pond to quote Fairfaxian editorials, but in the past few weeks, the lack of discipline in coalition ranks has got the pond going and turned it into quite the s'gnt major martinet:

Members of the Abbott government are building a reputation for running untested and often offensive ideas up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes. 
The government is consequently having to become quite adept at pulling the flags down again when the salute from normally civil Australians turns out to be of the one-fingered variety. (here)

Thought bubbles, confusion, back downs, pirouettes on a dime, and worst of all, it's flung the reptiles into chaos and confusion, and a deep funk and a sulk.

Yep, speaking of editorials, after many years of exempting the thunder and the chunder from the paywall, in a bid to be heard and to address the citizenry of the land, the reptiles have now begun to put their thought pieces behind the paywall:

Is this the way it's going to be in the future? Is The Australian disappearing into a void, a black hole? Are the rich, those mug punters who can afford to subscribe, being asked yet again to do all the heavy lifting, and now lift a little more?

Will Lifting, not leaning, is the way ahead for our nation be the final ironic editorial word available for free, before the rich are punished yet again?

In his budget speech a few weeks ago, Joe Hockey declared: “We are a nation of lifters, not leaners.” Yet since outlining the Abbott government’s rather modest fiscal repair plan, the Treasurer has been assailed by jumpy agitators and serial complainers, proving once again that Australia is prone to indulging in the culture of complaint. Such baseless moaning has too easily fed an opportunistic false narrative about the budget’s fairness, ignoring the obvious point that one person’s tax rise is not the same as another’s loss of benefit. High-income earners are actually doing all the heavy lifting — paying the tax that supports our burgeoning welfare state — and will now be obliged to lift a bit more.

Oh indeed, it seems the rich are being asked to fork out to keep the fat cat reptiles in the style to which they've become accustomed ...

What will the world do, now it's excluded from the moaning about the moaners, and the elites berating the elites?

Who's to blame for this sorry state? The pond is glad you asked, because it seems it's all the fault of the thought bubbles, and the policy chaos and confusion, which has reduced the reptiles to wringing their claws in anguish:

In September, the Coalition won a mandate to fix our fiscal mess, but has itself became a victim of the politics of the ephemeral. Mr Hockey did not continue to argue the case for slashing wasteful spending. He convened an audit commission to identify cuts and a way ahead in the medium term, but instead of engaging the public with its findings well ahead of the budget, he sat on the audit’s work. To make matters worse, the Prime Minister is clinging to an extravagant paid parental leave scheme and muddle-headed direct action plan on carbon emissions, an untenable posture given he is trying to convince voters and the political class that he is the enemy of the free lunch. There has been poor discipline and mixed messaging on economic reform, too easily playing into the hands of the crazed Occupy crowd.

Oh indeed, indeed. How they pyne for spine and instead they get the bovine ...

There's only one solution. Tony Abbott must immediately head overseas for a couple of weeks, and the cat must allow the mice to play and get it out of their system.

This Monday morning it seems the magic water man, Paul Sheehan, has shown how it should be done, and taken a powder. There's only so much heavy lifting and knob polishing anyone can be asked to do.

So what do the Fairfaxians do? Lead with a piece by Ian Dunlop, Abbott is gutting science just when we need it most:

Grandees such as John Howard and Cardinal George Pell parade cynical climate denialism before international audiences, putting more peer pressure on the current incumbents to toe that line and providing rare insight into the widespread denialist groupthink within conservative ranks. 
Literally and figuratively, we are witnessing a "burning of the science books", the like of which has not been seen since medieval times. It did not work for the Catholic Church in the days of Copernicus and Galileo, nor in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. It will not work today.

Great. More cash in the Godwin's Law swear jar, along with a reminder that it's just not the poodle:

Greg Hunt’s Direct Action white paper has no scientific and economic grounding at all, whether from our own Institutions, the IPCC, the Garnaut and Stern climate change reviews or numerous other global bodies such as the World Bank, IMF and the OECD. It is the climate policy you have when you don’t want a policy.

Want a definition of futility? Greg Hunt going on RN to talk about threatened species and proposing three point action plans and the appointment of a commissioner and grand coalitions, and yadda yadda blather blather, let's degut the Murray basin...

So what can the reptiles come up with?

Who will stand up and do the knob polishing that's now urgently required, day in, day out?

That's it? That's the reason we should have Pyne making a mess of education and Hunt making a mess of the world and big Mal dining on duck?

A kangaroo-poo throwing 4WD enthusiast couldn't make a bigger mess ...?

(Below: a couple of old Popes that never grow old, and more Pope here)