Budgies, swine, dogs in heaven, dolts, village idiots, and what joy to be alive, unless you happen to be poor, vulnerable or a climate scientist ...

(Above: and the rest of that First Dog cartoon here)

That portrait of the budgie budget, and Brett Spatula's craven response regarding the occupied territories almost got the pond going, but today there are other fish to fry.

You see, the dolt was at it again yesterday, fanning the flames and keeping leadership speculation alive.

This time Fairfax was used as an excuse, a hearty bout of creamy fudge-like abuse with a cherry of ripe paranoia on top:

And so on and so forth. The ostensible target was Fairfax, the real target was Turnbull. You can read the dolt here if you like - though the pond always advises visitors to approach with caution and to cover themselves in anti-hysteria and anti-paranoia cream, and a fireproof suit - but it's worth it, if you take your time.

Why take time? Well you need first of all to recover from the gales of laughter of that opening thrust:

I don't even believe Turnbull has done anything but a good job in his portfolio.

That convoluted use of double negatives tells you the Dolt has his tongue firmly in cheek, though who's cheek is always open to doubt. 

He could have written Turnbull is doing a good job in his portfolio, but knew his readers would get agitated, and the patent nonsense that is the basis of all the dolt's scribbling would have been revealed. 

And so you get the bizarre I don't even believe ...  has done anything but ... construction ...

And then when you get to the end you score another insight, which might be termed the hurt, aggrieved princess syndrome.

You know the song, or you should:

How can people be so heartless 
How can people be so cruel 
Easy to be hard 
Easy to be cold 
How can people have no feelings 
How can they ignore their friends 
Easy to be proud 
Easy to say no 
And especially people 
Who care about strangers 
Who care about evil 
And social injustice 
Do you only 
Care about the bleeding crowd? 
How about a needing friend? 
I need a friend

With the Bolter it came down to a couple of lines:

Why is Turnbull misrepresenting
And exaggerating my argument?

Not much of a lyric, but you can feel the hurt and the pain and the suffering. Why is big Mal being so cruel, as if it's got nothing to do with the dolt?

But then this morning comes a sign that the dolt has no intention of giving up on his crusade, as he promoted his unsellable, largely unwatched program.

Yep, there's 22 million plus people who will ignore this pitch, and consign the Ten network to ratings hell tomorrow, as they've done in past months on a Sunday, but here it is:

A message to Malcolm Turnbull?

No doubt big Mal can hardly wait, but as usual, the pond will be doing other things. Here's hoping the messsage reaches big Mal:

Spread your wings for the Eastern suburbs,
Barking mad Melbourne fundie bluebird, fly away
And take a message to big Mal
Message to big Mal
He sings each night in some cafe with Clive
In his search for more noodles for the NBN ...

Contemplating the Bolter, the pond was always reminded of a dog the pond shared time with until the dog went to the great dog pound in the sky.

You could get the dog in a tug of war at the drop of a hat, or a piece of clothing, or anything else the dog could sink its teeth in to and then dig in its heels. Minutes later, the average human would cede the cloth or whatever ... but, as the pond once found out, the dog would carry on for hours, as if was a life and death struggle rather than a game.

That's the way it is with barking mad fundamentalists, especially ones that make their living out of being showbiz personalities.

What good does it serve?

Well it provides high comedy - just as the kids used to love watching the barking mad dog defiantly grapple with the demons trying to snatch away its prize rag.

It's not often the pond quotes Mike Carlton - he has an established readership, and everyone already knows where to find Tory self-destruction is so painfully enjoyable.

But there's a wonderful sense of shared joy which the pond just has to share this morning:

You can smell the doubt in Tory ranks, see the fear in Tory eyes. It’s not yet panic, although in this febrile political climate it wouldn’t take much to start one. But they are worried, deeply worried, that Tony Abbott might just have lost the plot. 
This swine of a budget has been a disaster, both in its construction and its political execution. Stunned by the public protest, Abbott and his ministers have been furiously daubing the pig with lipstick, but it’s not working. The polls have the Coalition trailing badly on the primary vote and Bill Shorten is streets ahead as preferred prime minister, even though he has done little but keep his bum pointed to the ground. 
So the usual Tory toadies of the media are stampeding to the aid of the party. For more than a week they have been exhorting Abbott to stand firm, to take arms against a sea of troubles, blah blah. Always a sure sign the faecal matter has hit the fan.
An even more certain sign is when they start fighting each other. Treachery! The shrill denunciation of Malcolm Turnbull by Melbourne’s village idiot, Andrew Bolt – amplified on Thursday by Sydney’s village idiot, Alan Jones – sent the needles on the right-wing paranoia scale trembling off the dial. Hilariously, the Parrot dictated a pledge of loyalty for Turnbull to repeat on radio, a wheeze not seen in any modern democracy since the demise of the infamous American Senator Joe McCarthy. 
To his credit, Turnbull stiffed the two nongs right back, branding them ‘‘bomb throwers’’ doing Labor’s work. He’ll not be forgiven. It’s been hugely enjoyable. 

Hugely enjoyable! Who could disagree?

And Carlton kept having fun:

 In truth, we are saddled with a gang of punishers and straighteners, of cutters and slashers, run by the sort of bossy former private school prefects who enjoy enforcing dress codes at golf clubs. 
To borrow from that American wit, the late H.L.Mencken, these Abbott Tories are racked by the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might not be working hard enough. So the government has changed. But despite the dogged efforts of Peta Credlin and her platoons of highly-trained spin doctors, it is ever more obvious that Abbott himself has not. Beneath those crisp white shirts and pale blue ties there still beats the heart of the campus bully. 

Yes, it's long weekends like these that the pond wakes up and feels gladdened to be alive, and the Bolter will do his very best tomorrow to ensure that the nonsense continues.

Will he back down? No, just like the pond's long lost dog - oh pray there's a lovely dog pound in the sky with heaps of rags for tug of war games - the Bolter will keep worrying away, and Mike Carlton will have easy meat scribbling about the village idiot (Carlton also has a lovely swing at the buffoon, and Catholics who moan about sectarian bigotry - yes the pond can walk a mile with him on that topic too, while noting that the pond has a gay priest in the extended family and a nice man he is too ...)

And yet amidst all the fun, the pond always likes to note a serious issue doing the rounds.

The Bolter once played a key role in all this. As the world's leading climate scientist, he was the go to man for expert scientific opinion on global warming, but since he's embarked on his feud with big Mal, the science has been suffering.

Unfortunately as a result, the pond has turned to reading other, admittedly less grand, scientists, and stories like Fossil-fuel reliance puts world on track for 3.6- degree rise in temperature: report.

Yes, it turns out that the International Energy Agency is another of those alarmist bodies armed with black helicopters, sending conspiracy theories out into the ether, and proposing - with links to sundry reports and ideas - New approach to 2015 climate talks.

It turns out that some 29 member countries are responsible for this outrage, and o frabjous day, callooh, callay, the pond chortled in its joy, Australia is one of them.

Yes, there we are, cheerfully supporting the IEA, while having a luddite as a leader.

Are there any consequences?

Well The Age this very morn chose to highlight a few:

No, not the sympathetic TG story, the other one:

Read US ties at risk over climate, and what do you read?

Environment Minister Greg Hunt would not respond to questions.

Well how could he? He's a futtock in the service of a luddite ...

It used to be that the Chinese were convenient whipping boys in this conversation:

The concern over Australia's stance came as the leaders of the Group of Seven major economies expressed their ''strong determination'' to adopt a global climate treaty that was ''ambitious, inclusive and reflects changing global circumstances'' at a summit in Paris next year.
It also coincides with China, the world's biggest emitter, confirming its intentions to limit emissions for the first time. ''We will try our utmost to peak as early as possible,'' said Xie Zhenhua, China's chief climate envoy.

What did Mike Carlton write?

The polls tell you more and more people are realising Abbott has not so much lost the plot as that he never had one. In opposition he was the wrecker, brutally effective against a divided and demoralised Labor Party, promising to lead an adult government faithful to its election commitments. But in power he and his ministers trudge through the smoking ruins of their policy flip-flops and broken promises, haplessly blaming their predecessors for the mess. This scaled new heights of idiocy on Wednesday when Defence Minister David Johnston proclaimed that it was Labor’s fault Abbott’s RAAF VIP jet had been late leaving for Indonesia.

Oh that.

And it's going to get better as it gets worse, or if you will, it's going to get a lot worse before it has any hope of getting better.

You see, some of the speculation surrounding the fuss about big Mal is that a cabinet re-shuffle is in the wings, and David Johnston is one of the key targets, though some have suggested Abbott might also take a swing at big Mal.

And so the embittered corpses begin to accumulate, littering the back bench and the lesser ministries, and soon enough malcontents begin to mutter about the need to throw the biggest corpse of all on the woodheap.

Labor showed how it's done, and inept seat warmers like Martin Ferguson showed how even the inept could contribute to a nice bonfire of the vanities ...

Watching the Abbott government is a bit like watching film run through the camera at 100 fps. Yes, it speeds up, but that's how you get slow motion shots of cars tumbling and crashing to the bottom of the cliff....

At least, inventive cartoonists manage to extract a single frame from far too much footage (and more David Pope here).

And what do you know, it turns out it features the budgie budget, or as Mike Carlton might put it, mixing his creature metaphors, this swine of a budget ...