It's Daffy Duck days, and he managed to lay a golden egg or two ... so there's hope for the reptiles at the lizard Oz yet ...

These are golden days for the pond.

Oh sure, they might be days of lead for the country, but there's always a solution to hand.

Let the peasants eat Japanese ケーキ, the pond says, or maybe サムライケーキ:

Yes, it'll be worth squillions, at least if you believe the uxorious and wildly excited Greg Sheridan:

The Tony and Shinzo show could just deliver historic results. (behind the paywall here, because you don't get military cake for free)

But why the "could"? What happened to "will" and "shall"?

Joint sub building, use of Australian  air testing ranges, and soon enough we can bung on a do with China. Glorious future, glorious dreaming.

Meanwhile, Andrew Robb is also wildly excited:

Full text of the agreement?

Don't you worry your head about that. Why it could be as glorious an accomplishment as the Howard government's free trade deal with the United States. And wasn't that a wondrous success.

But enough of samurai cake - careful, that sword is sharp and inclined to the right - because the pond was ever so pleased to see a valiant warrior out fighting the good fight to keep the age of entitlement alive.

Step on up, Dame Judith Groan, groaning Q and A duties done:

Oh indeed, indeed. The pond is right at the moment surrounded by rich friends intent on using real estate investments to ensure they pay not a whit or jot of income tax in the next few years.

Now the pond isn't bitter - hey the long absent lord surely designed troughs and snouts for a reason - but each time one of the Oz commentariat comes up with yet another self-serving explanation as to why some snouts and troughs need saving, and why the age of entitlement should continue, it gives the pond yet another reason to click heels and dance for joy. Such a golden age ...

In fact it's got so bizarre at the Oz that these days the commentariat squabble amongst themselves. That irredeemably ponderous, pontificating ponce Henry Ergas - he that makes desiccated coconut seem fully wet - did another of his doom and gloom outings yesterday:

It was so silly it got Peter Brent's goat:

Poor Brent. Reading Losing the Base, it seems that the poor lad has at last worked out that he's surrounded by barking mad reptiles who drink their kool aid daily ...

Brent's mumble soon shuffled off the whirling fickle digital finger of doom at the top of the lizard Oz page, and tragically many others also get lost in the shuffle. 

Come on down Sharri Markson and do a little shimmer to light up the golden world of the pond.

Right at the moment, Crikey and others routinely dine out on the barking mad Sharri Markson, with Monday her chance for a little mayhem.  

You see, yesterday, not content with fucking up The Australian, and making the media section of the rag a bundle of laughs, she was issuing editorial orders to everyone else, including, inevitably, the ABC and Fairfax.

It seems everyone should join in the Oz's crusade against the Pupster,.

It also seems as if Markson should be put in charge of both the ABC and Fairfax, as she demands answers and issues marching orders in Clive let off the hook by star-struck media (behind the paywall because it would be dangerous to have too many readers Sharri-struck).

Yes, they all commit thought crimes. They're all thought criminals, the lot of them, because they refuse to look, act and sound like the demented reptiles at the Oz:

...the ABC and Fairfax Media have not assigned journalists to investigate the issue, nor have they covered with any prominence the court proceedings brought against the resources tycoon by Citic Pacific. 
The Guardian has also failed to investigate the issue independently, while the commercial networks have only touched on it lightly. The ABC, Fairfax and The Guardian refused to respond to questions yesterday. 
The Nine Network’s news and current affairs director Darren Wick said there was no deliberate strategy not to cover the story and when Mr Palmer appeared in court, “we’ll be across it”.

And so on. Markson also talked to Seven and Ten, who politely said they'd do their own coverage in their own way and in their own time, and then, in the most anal way imaginable,  Markson even quoted Hedley Thomas berating Tony Jones ... for not being Hedley Thomas ... and for the ABC not being the Oz.

It's truly weird stuff, and it's a measure of the megalomania and paranoia that infests the reptiles at every turn.

Because in the minds of zealots and ideologues, everybody should march to a single drum beat, to a single hive mind. 

Oh okay, and the Godwin's Law swear jar is coming along nicely so the pond is off to Melbourne this weekend to live the wild lane-way life again ...

But it's also a way of highlighting how deeply of the kool aid does this one drink ... 

And hey, at least it allows the pond to note that Leni Riefenstahl's hymn to the hive mind, Triumph of the Will, is currently available at full length at YouTube, here.

Markson  also got up the collective noses of Crikey with an effort discussed here, paywall affected:

If you read the full article and not the quotes used by Markson to make her point, you’ll see Go writing that while she has seen plenty of people manage up successfully using the above tips, “unfortunately I have never known my manager’s favourite wine or restaurant, and I prefer my meetings with industry leaders and clients to have a direct purpose”. 

Reading comprehension failure, or just an axe to grind?

It's small beer in a small pond, but Markson's a real live wire, and she shows just how narcissist and incestuous the media and its personal spats are becoming , and to the fore are the reptiles at the Oz, issuing orders, barking at everyone, and then wondering why everybody's a little jumpy or barking mad.

Enough of samurai Markson, because the pond also wants to celebrate the reptiles' capacity for crocodile tears.

Now this is hardly surprising, if you accept the notion that is often attributed to a work circa 1400:

In that contre ... ben gret plentee of Cokadrilles ... Theise Serpentes slen men, and thei eten hem wepynge. (and the rest at the Phrase finder, here)

The reptiles showed how it's done in today's editorial:

None of this is to deny our long standing position that an ETS remains the most efficient way for Australia to abate carbon. (Costly 'direct action' plan clouds the budget message)

The reptiles keep saying that, yet everything they do, everything they publish, proposes that they really don't give a flying fuck, and that they're just a mob of denialists in drag. The Lord Moncktons of journalism down under.

So what about an ETS, even a zero one?

Provided that allows for the abolition of the vast array of climate change bureaucracies — having bureaucrats oversee a fictitious ETS would be artful tragicomedy — such a condition seems harmless. 

Yes, provided it's absolutely useless and no one does anything, the reptiles are all for an ETS. Now that's the kind of full-hearted, generous support we all love to see.

As for direct action? Well there it's a matter of cutting off noses to spite face. You see, the greenies cut off their nose, and so should the government:

If the Greens’ rank hypocrisy is limited only to blocking re-indexation of fuel excise, the government can expect to pass its direct action fund. How could the ostensibly pro-environment party oppose $2.5 billion to abate carbon? Regardless, the government should not be too insistent. Dropping the policy would save money and help reduce inconsistencies in its budget, which calls for spending restraint yet perseveres with costly paid parental leave and school chaplaincy schemes, and this potentially feckless carbon abatement fund.

End result? No direct action, no meaningful ETS, no one in government able to contemplate carbon and the matter of climate science, funding to scientists cut, the perfect denialist agenda achieved, and all the while crocodile tears can be shed about how the reptiles have always supported an efficient ETS scheme, provided one's first implemented by Afghanistan or whatever other laggard country you can find as an excuse for doing nothing ...

Meanwhile, on another planet, Warm water likely to accelerate Antarctic ice melt, and Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction.

So when will Sharri Markson turn around and berate the reptiles for their coverage of climate science, and demand that Chris Mitchell be more like the ABC and Fairfax and The Graudian?

Golly, are you sure that much kool aid is good for you? It seems to have produced a surreal Salvador Dali dreamscape up there with Jodorowksy's Dune (and what fun that was).

Finally, it seems that Scott Morrison today is going to have his day in the High Court.

Naturally the Fairfaxians are wildly excited:

But what's this? Right at the same moment, The Graudian leads with this?

And then oh irony of ironies, with Richard Ackland?

Not Ackland, not already befouling and refouling the Graudian nest ...

Well you can read Ackland on refoulement here, if you like, but the pond has a tip for the Fairfaxians.

Why not hire Sharri Markson?

She knows how to take care of everyone else's business, without knowing how to do her own. Just like the reptiles know how to support climate action which involves perfect inaction ..

Oh it's a golden age, no doubt about it, and now back to your gruel, and never mind the flakes of lead and mercury ...

Soon enough you'll see the world is the way it is so cartoonists and the pond can have an easy life ... (and naturally more David Pope here and more David Rowe here).