In which the pond marvels along with the ministers for selling out ...

(Above: the rest of the cartoon, and the payoff - it involves cats, anyone allergic to cat hair should approach cautiously - can be found here).

So Albo's decided to have buyer's remorse.  (Labor wrong on security)

Too little too late, and probably from feeling greenie pressure, but at least there's remorse. The rest of the pack? Sheep ...

Even now the reptiles are sleeping on their hot rocks, most of them quietly wearing their government-fitted muzzles with pride ...

So the bully Putin is going to turn up after all, and all that talk from the hot air crew run by the bully Abbott turned out to be hot air? Because when a bigger bully meets a smaller bully .... Quelle surprise

And now Campbell Newman can look forward to crushing protests, which he has identified already as being a worthwhile cause... seeing as how he's said Vlad the impaler won't be welcome in the state (here back in July)

Oh the pond loves the smell of irony, in lieu of napalm on a Monday morning ...

So nobody has a clue what happened to MH370, yet back in March and April, Tony Abbott was egging the search as much as he could, jumping the gun and being very confident ... and banking the boost in the polls, yet months later, the pond is reading Emirates chief Tim Clark reveals suspicions ...

So there's a new report out revealing that a substantial proportion of Australians live below the poverty line, and the provisions of the failed budget are likely to affect them more adversely than the better off ...

(story here)

And Abbott's response is to apologise, eat humble pie, explain that there was no intention to punish poor children with a seven dollar slug to see a doctor and medical research on the backs of the poor is a tad unseemly and making kids starve for six months is a little extreme and so he's had second thoughts and ...

By golly the pond does live in fantasy land in the most delusional way ,,,

Of course the bully doubled down, because he really, deep down, doesn't get poverty, doesn't care about the poor, and in a punitive way, thinks it's all their fault, and given a choice between starvation and success, they'll all turn into wild-eyed entrepreneurs ...

Could it get any stupider?

Well of course it could, glad you asked, and the Fairfaxians show just how to do it:

She gets paid by Fairfax and she picks up a healthy stipend and that's how she can afford so much cake, with a fine, fancy-free 'fuck you, poor people' air?

So there's a new report urging a greater focus on Western civilisation and Australia's Judeo-Christian heritage in the history curriculum, and there should be more emphasis on morals, values and belief systems,  but Kate Ellis allegedly and reportedly finds the findings of the report pretty straight forward?

And Fairfax reporters dance with glee at the news there will be no renewal of the culture wars, because, after all, we're all in lock step on the morals, values and belief systems we should endorse ... like pedophilia in the Catholic church ... (here for the blather)

So it being Monday, let's see how gratuitously stupid some myth-monger can sound.

Come on down Henry Ergas:

Can a man manage to be more fatuously tone deaf in the use and abuse of metaphor?

Now the pond knows little of cricket except that it's the start of the season, and that, like Oscar Wilde, the pond never played cricket because it required one to assume such indecent postures ...

But the Don has always intrigued the pond because of the way the myth mongers have routinely done a Simpson and donkey on him, and ignored the darker side ...

Monash University academics David Dunstan and Tom Heenan are writing a new study on the life and legend of Don Bradman, whom they describe as an acquisitive, ruthless, and self-interested loner. In short, “an extremely peculiar Australian”.

Uh huh. The pond suspects that desiccated Henry hasn't ever bothered to read stories like Shattering the Don Bradman myth ...

Bill O’Reilly told me. ‘Out there he was magnificent. Off the field no greater bastard ever lived.’

Now the pond has no problem with Bradman as a cricketer. No doubt he was an immortal and all that, just as Simpson was a brave radical, revolutionary trade unionist under fire.

But like most conservatives, in time the Don was found wanting and dwelling in the past, a bit like John Howard wanting to be Bob Menzies. Picket fences and the 1950s and all that sort of stuff.

So when it came to apartheid, and recognising commercial television, and paying players their full market value and similar issues, he was a dinosaur ... and in that context, Richie Benaud was an avant-garde televisual modernist ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, has it come to this? Has Tony Abbott reduced the pond to scribbling about cricket ...?

What on earth could have seen the pond brooding about the traditional western values of colonialism and British imperialism?

Ah, so Kate Ellis was sounding like a typical Bill Shorten acolyte and drop kick, and there's going to be a culture war after all, just not from the forelock tugging, law abiding Labor party ...

Unless like Albo, it wakes up months later, with a bloody big hangover and a dose of buyer's remorse:

It calls for “more emphasis on morals, values and spirituality” and better recognition of “the contribution of western civilisation, our Judeo-Christian heritage, the role of economic development and industry and the democratic underpinning of the British system of government to Australia’s development”. 

 “Another criticism is that whereas the history associated with western civilisation and Australia’s development as a nation is often presented in a negative light, ignoring the positives, the opposite is the case when dealing with Indigenous history and culture,” the report says in a section on the history material. 

 “The curriculum needs to better acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses and the positives and negatives of both western and Indigenous cultures and histories. Especially during the primary years of schooling, the emphasis should be on imparting historical knowledge and understanding central to the discipline instead of expecting children to be historiographers.” 

 The report calls for “some significant recasting” of civics and citizenship teaching, saying “serious gaps” have been identified. 

 “A well-balanced emphasis on the virtue of patriotism – pride in being Australian – along with being a citizen of the world is needed,” it says. (here in The Graudian)

Good old patriotism, the first refuge of the scoundrel. Let's hear it for the Don, for colonialism, picket fences and lamp chops, and none of that wog food, puh-lease ...

But the pond is shattered, No call to bring back the cane and the strap, no clarion call to introduce a bit of discipline, and a frog march each morning to salute the flag and spout propagandist tripe about honouring the Queen of another country?

Donnelly is going soft in his dotage, and Prof Flint might well take a view ...

Could it get any sillier? Glad you asked. Here's the poodle Pyne given pride of place on a reptile hot rock:

Rigorous?

What the fuck's rigorous in guff about western civilisation, and our Judeo-Christian heritage?

Rigorous?

The reptiles couldn't even be bothered getting off their hot rock to find a file photo of the poodle ...

Never mind, the pond has now broken its silence on cricket, so it's probably time to mention porn.

Of late the Fairfaxians have shown a deep and abiding love for porn, for its trolling and click-baiting potential.

There have been endless stories about porn at the top of the page, all done with a hellfire preaching tub thumping relish about the evils, dangers, and wickedness of porn.

This effort yesterday particularly caught the pond's eye:

Is it possible to imagine a more stupid line in trolling?

Hollywood goddesses?

Now the pond has met quite a few actors and actresses in its time, some of them with an international aspect.

It's the pond's observation that they are ineffably vain, obsessed with their appearance, deeply insecure about their abilities and intelligence, consequently deeply neurotic, troubled in their personal lives and relationships, especially when enduring the unemployment that affects 97% of the game, concerned about above the title billing, jealous of rivals and attention paid to same, and often vaguely disturbed or puzzled that their singular skill seems to involve representing some other person leading some other life ...

And that's the male stars taken care of. 

Let's not even begin to consider the women ...

Yet a fatuous twit by name Rowan Pelling expects the pond to brood about Hollywood goddesses?

There's an unendurable amount of guff before Pelling finally gets to his punchline:

The unthinking tyrannies of porn culture should be fought as fiercely as other forms of injustice. 
We all know depriving girls of education is barbaric - but persuading educated women to pose like harlots for their boyfriends isn't much more progressive.

Harlots? That's the punch line for a woman offering a photo to a loved one in trust and having the trust betrayed?

It's all the woman's fault?

Yep, deep in his heart and throughout the piece Rowan Pelling exhibits all the style and class of an Islamic fundamentalist rabbiting on about exposed meat ...

Men must do what men must do, including smearing photos of the loved one all over the intertubes, because it's in their nature, and women must cover up, because men will do what men must do ...

It's a pick up from the Terror in London of course, which makes that "Independent. Always" just above the story so much more poignant.

Well no link to that click bait trolling of a borrowed kind.

It represents yet another slide down towards full tabloid status for the Fairfaxians, as the gap between the Sun-Herald and the weekday daily rag disappears up a digital fundament ...

But at least Cathy Wilcox is on a hot streak. 

A correspondent drew attention to a recent Wilcox cartoon, below, but look at her next one on black dogs.

If you must give Fairfax a click, please don't give it to faux UK Terror click bait, but to Wilcox here:

After just a few moments contemplating the cartoon below, the pond determined that the entire Abbott ministry qualified in at least three categories - swallowing humanity, selling out and being hated - but of course when you have an insouciant, snappy, utterly stupid poodle, you end up with Christopher Pyne.

Oh it's going to be a great week ...