What this country needs is a sense of humour, because they're certain to tax the tears ...

(Above: yup, and more Moir here)

Machiavelli would surely have approved.

It is, at least if you're of a Machiavellian bent, a wholly admirable, perfect political ploy.

Increasing the tax on petrol ticks all the boxes. It can be described not as a new tax, but as an adjustment of an old one. It avoids parliament, where supposedly the rights of people can be considered by their representatives, and instead empowers the executive. It is part of a high taxing, big spending agenda, ostensibly with the big spending going on roads, but actually going on whatever passing fancy the government might have, provided it doesn't involve renewable energy ...

And it's a delicious political wedge, not just for the Labor party, but most especially the Greens. It is, in its own way, a carbon tax, and the greenies had already developed a fit of the wobbles internally about whether to support it.

But the best of the wedge comes if parliament, way down the track, decides to over-rule the regulation. The money won't go back to the punters, it will go to the oil companies.

Motoring associations have blustered and blathered about keeping receipts, but that will never happen, and Labor and the Greens will be tarred with giving the oil companies a free kick, and never mind that it was Abbott and Co that dished out the coathanger in the first place (that's a technical term best understood by thuggee boofheads like Abbott who like to talk of mature political debate, while kicking punters' heads in the mud).

And the move also conforms to all that's best for Liberals by way of taxation, in that it disproportionately punishes the poor who might dare to use a motor car. Not that they should, or that they should travel far. Yes, we've already been down that joke with jolly Joe:

But all this is obvious enough, and has been canvassed by many others. The real titillation for the pond was how the tree killer editions of the morning rags covered this brazen bit of stupendously cynical and hypocritical politics ...

The Advertiser, true to its navel-gazing parochial form, allocated a little space on the left, but saved all its indignation for the local Labor party, with a touch of Nova scandal:

The Currish Snail, in its own inimitable way, decided to go bog Queensland fascist:

Welcome to Brisbane ferals?

Couldn't they have found an even better image? Like:

Nothing like Nazi zombies to stir the hearts of Queensland Murdochians. The joke is, the Currish Snail wouldn't have the first clue how deeply fascist a rag it is ... or what an excellent image they provide for Campbell Newman's Queensland (up there with Mayor Daley's vision for Chicago, for anyone watching the Sixties on SBS).

The Fairfaxians were relatively predictable:

At least the story made the front page, along with other distractions. Poor old Denis.

But speaking of distractions, the pond's pride of joy this day is the Daily Terror:

Not a mention. Oh sure you can cede the gutter press a juicy sex scandal, but there's not a single mention anywhere else on the front page, not even a break out box. Instead you cop a shark feeding frenzy and "runway to wrinkles", a story on hospitals and germs, and a soccer supporter ...

It's a clean slate for Tony.

Surely that's a masterstroke of Orwellian presentation (no, nothing for the Godwin's Law swear jar if it's so obviously true).

Not a hint, not a word, not any sign of a Photoshop of Abbott, say in Machiavellian pose. Surely they could have done better than this?

In fact the HUN quite forgot itself, forgot it was a Murdoch rag, and down the bottom of the page did deploy a little Photoshop:

Well it's not up there with the hey day of the Murdochians in the Rudd Gillard years, but it has to be acknowledged as a solid effort, especially as it also offers a demeaning image of a princess in pink as a way of celebrating gambling ...

But the pond's winner for the day is, as usual, the reptiles at the lizard Oz, who have produced a splendid effort. Please allow the pond to blow this one up a bit so we can all admire the ingenuity:

There, you see. The HUN's petrol bandit is majestically and magisterially transformed into a waving statesman, with the headline reinforcing the image: PM waves goodbye to $2.2bn roadblock.

Nothing sordid like Ratbag petrol thief and taxing hypocrite deguts punters' purses of $2.2bn in epic shakedown with new tax that disproportionately punishes the poor ...

Which brings the pond to the capper, which is totally wonderful, and it comes right next to that image with Economic elite back Murdoch's inequality fears.

Yes at the very moment the rag puts its best foot forward for the tax, it has the cheek, the brazen hypocritical cheek, to run a yarn about the 'leets getting their knickers in a knot about inequality ...

In polite psychiatric hospitals, it's talked about as Murdochian schizophrenia ...

The reptiles' digital edition kept the routine going:

Yes, there he is triumphant, a Senate smasher with magisterial hand wave, a veritable Caesar ...

And just to ensure the distraction was complete, there was that pompous potentate of blather all in a rage about Labor:

The pond has some good money down on the absolute certainty that the Murdochians will join in the current campaign to expand the GST, a regressive tax which affects the poor disproportionately, while offering yet more sanctimonious crocodile tears from Chairman Rupert about the horrendous suffering of the board members of major banks ...

What else?

Well Kevin Donnelly raises some serious concerns:

But the pond has a simple answer. Pound that bloody Judeo-Christian western tradition into all the aberrants identified by Barry Spurr - let's not forget Murdoch's 'Do As We Say Not As We Do' - and if they don't like the taste of Christian steel, then let's give them a taste of leather or bamboo, with a damned good whipping or caning.

Now the pond will leave the choice of weapon to the experts, like Donnelly, or any decent Catholic order, say the Christian Brothers, or the Marists, but never let it be said that the pond isn't in lockstep with Kev as we march back to the 1950s and the glorious days of Empire and a decent Catholic education for the micks...

And a Wednesday wouldn't be complete without Dame Slap getting herself into a lather of terrorist hysteria.

What's most disturbing about reading Dame Slap?

Well yet again the pond is forced to admire the thinking of a man who stood up in parliament and celebrated smokers and smoking, an almost unimaginable feat.

You see, Leyonhjelm dared to call a Bankstown jihadist a dickhead and a clown (here, beware the Fairfax forced ad) and that sent Dame Slap into a slapping frenzy:

NSW senator David Leyonhjelm was wrong to say jihadists are simply idiots and easy to catch. Some jihadists are deluded. Others are evil. The fake imams and slippery sheiks who radicalise young men are both smart and difficult to catch under existing laws.

Uh huh. You can catch a full blown whiff of paranoia, hysteria and fascism in Dame Slap's outburst which concludes thusly:

In 1915 even progressive judge Henry Bournes Higgins said parliament was entitled to entrust a minister with “extraordinary powers during the present extraordinary war”. We are in the midst of another extraordinary war that requires extraordinary powers because without security, liberty is a meaningless Pollyanna dream.

Truly ruly, that's what she wrote.

We're in the middle of a new first world war, which the AWM here summarises this way:

For Australia, as for many nations, the First World War remains the most costly conflict in terms of deaths and casualties. From a population of fewer than five million, 416,809 men enlisted, of which over 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner.

Mature, rational, sensible debate? We're in the middle of a third world war? Exaggeration, hyperbole much?

It can either be taken as an obscenity - to misuse the dead of the first world war in Dame Slap's rhetorical way - or simply an absurd, monstrous stupidity, but as usual, all the pond can say, is forget it Jake, it's Dame Slap town ...

The point of the exercise - for those who want to take up the pond challenge and actually read Dame Slap from beginning to end, and for that you'll have to google - is to crank up the hysteria in support of the major parties' valiant attempts to introduce more elements of a police state into Australia, with Leyonhjelm one of the few questioning the need for an actual police state to deal with a few fundie Islamic ratbag.

That it comes in the context of Abbott pleading for more mature debate, along with urging for everyone to get on board the Team Australia team, and play a team game for the good of the team, just adds to the pond's sense of fun ...

Any reader can be guaranteed an undiluted dose of hysteria from the terrorists in Murdoch land, whether they be Dame Slap or the Bolter ...

And meanwhile, the taxes on the poor go up and no doubt the inequalities will continue to widen and no doubt the reptiles will show Chairman Rupert wringing his hands ... and just as in 1984, they'll expect everyone to pay for the kool aid they serve up on their front pages in lieu of actual news and insight ...

As usual, only a cartoon can provide some respite.

The pond attempted to find Dame Slap somewhere in the Rowe below,  and more Rowe here, but sadly she seems to be cowering behind all the other clowns. And by golly what a lot of clowns there are, as we sing 'don't worry, they're here':