In which some of the reptiles keep on with leadership speculation and help to continue the chaos in Canberra, bless their long thin reptilian cotton socks ...

Fact. Some politicians and their minders are routinely stupid ... and their stupidity hurts sometimes ...

Not content with fucking up the inner west of Sydney, Mike Baird and minders lately revealed themselves as pirates, thieves, stealers of copyright, purloiners, pilferers, seemingly unaware of the way music companies use algorithms to patrol YouTube for breaches.

And for what? To steal maudlin out of date music to try to humanise just another political doofus intent on turning Sydney into a giant LA car park. (If you missed the yarn, the ABC has the story and the clip here, and don't you worry about the copyright).

If he'd been a film producer, Baird would have been one of those clowns caught out by Happy Birthday still being under copyright.

Usually this sort of folly is reserved for Republicans in the United States, bleating about the rights of Hollywood studios while doing what everybody under thirty does, which is misuse intellectual property rights, and then with a smirk and a wave of the hand, expect forgiveness ... while instituting three strike rules.

Okay Mike Baird. Take a leave of absence for a year from the intertubes for your crime, get your ISP to ban your access, and see how you like it ...

But enough of parochial follies, and a lightweight dumbo.

Let's get back to the big league dumbos and the delightful sight of a PM assuring anyone who will listen that he has the full support of his colleagues, when even those totally uninterested in politics would be aware he didn't have the support of 39 of them a couple of weeks ago when they voted for an empty chair over Abbott ...

So how is it playing out in today's Murdoch rags?

Well  lately there's occasionally been one that dares breach the silence, and this time it's the Currish Snail:

And then there are the others, which adopt a familiar stance:

The pond knows this style well.

It's called the three monkeys school of journalism.

Back in the day when it was Gillard or Rudd being put down, there were photoshops galore,  and endless slavering, slobbering front pages and hysterical editorials.

Now?

Of course the Currish Snail's EXCLUSIVE column by Laurie Oakes is no such thing, illustrating only the way that the word has become debased by the Murdochians. In the story here, you can see it credited to the HUN. Look, there it is:

It's one of the reasons that the Murdoch empire is shown as a monolithic octopus or hive with hive mind, and parochial tentacles:

Oakes doesn't have that much to say, mainly brooding about how the Liberals might time the execution of Abbott to help the doofus Baird, though he does deliver a nice blow to the enormous stupidity of jolly Joe, who realises as the world's worst treasurer, he'd be the first to go after Abbott:

And again there is debate over whether the party is entitled to remove a sitting prime minister. Morrison and Bishop on Friday quoted the view that Howard used to espouse — that the leadership is always a gift of the party room. 
Treasurer Joe Hockey, who will sink or swim with Abbott, claimed: “It’s the Australian people who have the right to remove a prime minister — not anyone else.” 
Hockey’s attitude was not always so black and white, however. In 2007 he was one of those who called on Howard to stand down rather than lead the Coalition to that year’s election.

Ah yes, the rats in the sewer with short memories but a desperate longing for cheese.

Of course there's an alternative approach, one looking for hope in the pit of despair, one seeing the glint of sunlight at the edges of cloud, one looking for survival and a glorious future.

Guess which gaggle of reptiles hares down off down that track?

Oh it's a glorious thing to see, the reptiles in revivalist preacher Elmer Gantry mode ...

And as you'd expect there are the usual suspects doing their best to sound like Burt Lancaster:

But wait, there's more. Someone's dragged Kein Andrews out of the closet, dusted off the mothballs and dragged him into the sunlight, though it has to be said he's looking mouldy and absurd, and the smell of the napthalene lingers:

But honour the man. It takes considerable strength of will to offer up that sort of gibberish about the circus in Canberra with a straight face.

Why any ordinary comedian would be cracking up and ruining the joke, but not Kevin Andrews. The pond knows it's quoting itself, but the comparison's always irresistible:

Reading this day's runes, it seems that Chris Mitchell has instructed the reptiles to draw back from the cliff, to avoid the apocalypse, and stay the execution.

Somehow, magically, ineluctably, a government which made a mess of its first budget, has indulged in silly culture wars of a boofhead bullying kind and otherwise scored an abundance of own goals, is now going to transform itself through a policy recovery plan, and the next budget just around the corner, with the 2014 budget still a complete mess.

As if jolly Joe isn't jolly, and Abbott hasn't always been a bullying thug and attack dog.

It's up there with a belief in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and the impending arrival of the Easter Bunny.

Does Andrews have anything useful to say? Well yes if you read between the lines and the usual blather about there being some 500 "high skill" jobs in Australia for the lifetime of the project.

That's 500 for an expenditure of some $50 billion (it's already well on its way to the $60 billion the pond predicted, and we've now hastily upped it to a total cost of $80 billion).

But here's the crunch talk:

Uh huh. The mug who sold his vote to Tony Abbott to keep the subs in South Australia must slowly be working out he's a mug ... better get ready for a few more sushi restaurants in Adelaide. That'll do wonders for the train wreck which sees its festival facilities run down. Oh no, can't even stage a festival ...

There's a lot more from Andrews of course - you know what it's like when a bore stops you on the way to a wedding and starts pointing a finger and jabbering about the evils of Labor as a way of distracting you from the circus parade that's happening right now, especially when it's a prolix wretch like Andrews, who knows that a tedious droning is a sure way to produce boredom, and then hopefully a stupefied silence ...

How stupid does he manage to sound? How's this for a closer?

Labor’s “valley of death” could be felt for years to come and, once again, it is up to a Coalition government to fix Labor’s disaster. 
I make this solemn pledge: this government will not leave Australia undefended. 
Kevin Andrews is the Defence Minister.

A solemn pledge? What a prat.

Surely he should have signed off this way:

Kevin Andrews is the Defence Minister, and for relaxation at night, he's a master of stand up comedy in various dives around Canberra.

Meanwhile, for all the upbeat nature of the splash for Dennis "the bouffant one" Shanahan's short story, the actual text is a little more gloomy:

How's that for a last line?

Better a full blown Titanic style catastrophe and a slow and agonising death than a swift clean blow with an ice pick, of the kind Stalin gave to Trotsky ...

The poor reptiles, driven by fear and panic, don't seem to understand that the more they talk about the leadership, the more they - a substantial slab of the media - contribute to a sense of continuing chaos.

And for that continuing sense of chaos, you don't have to look to the Fairfaxians.

You just have to read the faithful scribbler transcribing the deepest thoughts of Chris Mitchell in today's Oz editorial.

Talk about wondrous. So Abbott's the best to lead the Coalition to the next election, but thus far, he's been something of a disaster. So the junior woodchucks should get back to reading Carl Barks in question time. But do go on:

So Abbott is deluded, and acts in a delusional way, and the way forward is to call in Artie to sort things out?

So how should we play the last half, coach?

Oh right. Don't bung on a do until the doofus Mike Baird gets in, and then give Abbott the flick.

Thanks, Mr Mitchell ...

Yep, that media de-stabilisation is doing Abbott down, and the funniest thing is that the reptiles at the Oz are at the heart of it. They can't help themselves. Pleading that a doofus be given more time so a pirate doofus can win in the polls.

Well, whatever the train wreck, however big the Titanic, it still sells papers and draws clicks ...

Naturally the reptiles try to dissemble. They bury rival stories like this one that bobbed up in business:

Well you won't find that sort of treason in the reptile front page, but it turned up on the front page of The Age, under the header Business turns on Tony Abbott as cabinet urged to act (with bonus forced video):

And just like the reptiles, there were other stories discussing the impending demise, like Michael Gordon's Is this Abbott's end? which began with an explanation of why the reptiles are clutching at straws if they think the bully boy is going to settle down and suddenly turn into a statesmanlike figure;

The warning came from within, just as Coalition senators were embarking on their attempted character assassination of Gillian Triggs in a Senate committee room on Tuesday. On the other side of Parliament House, government MPs had gathered for their weekly meeting and one of the least experienced in their ranks, Craig Laundy, rose to address the Prime Minister. 
Laundy won a seat in western Sydney at the 2013 election that had been a Labor stronghold since its inception. A second-generation publican, his few contributions at joint party room meetings have revealed a plain-speaking, common-sense politician whose values are firmly embedded in moderate middle Australia. 
On Tuesday, he articulated his deep unease about the government's response to the report on children in immigration detention prepared by the Human Rights Commission, led by Professor Triggs. Reminding his colleagues that Triggs was in the building, he argued that "shooting the messenger" was a strategy flawed on political and moral grounds and warned that, if Tony Abbott persisted with it, the government would be the story at the end of the day for all the wrong reasons. Far better to focus on the children, he suggested, argue that the Coalition has dramatically reduced their numbers in detention and resolve that such damage on such a grand scale will never be repeated. 
Laundy was wrong on one score. The Prime Minister's belligerent attitude to Triggs and his looseness with the facts guaranteed that this was the story for the entire week – one that became a lightning rod for those who want to end Abbott's reign sooner rather than later, maybe as soon as next week. 
For four days, Abbott welcomed all Opposition questions on the government's ham-fisted attempt to secure Trigg's resignation by offering her another job. In the process, he was complicit in turning the spotlight away from his own attempts to demonstrate good government internally and externally. 
For four days, the Prime Minister maintained Triggs had lost the confidence of the Australian people; accused her of conspiring with ministers in the former Labor government to delay the inquiry to embarrass the Coalition (a charge repeated by others, but at odds with the facts); and challenged Triggs' competence and judgment. 
All the while, he denied point blank that Triggs had been asked to resign and offered an inducement to go – and dismissed the whole issue as "Canberra insider nonsense". 
When Julie Bishop gave the same response, and then fuelled scuttlebutt that 69-year-old Triggs had come up with the idea of resigning if she was offered another job, the Foreign Minister plunged herself deep into the same bucket of mud and, as a consequence, complicated the intense leadership debate within the Liberal Party.

And so on. There's a lot more and it's an excellent review of the (entirely unnecessary) latest folly.

All the pond could think was "frog and scorpion".

And where were the reptiles on that one? Adding to the folly, demonising Triggs and publishing Chris Kenny's attack dog assault on the woman. Helping send the leadership speculation into the stratosphere, while poor old Chris Laundy failed to introduce a note of sanity. He can see where things are heading in the west of Sydney ...

But let the reptiles cling to their hopes and delusions. Frankly the pond wouldn't know where it would be without them and Abbott ... especially with the schadenfreude of big Mal ''dream of Queen Victoria's copper" Turnbull and zinger Bill hovering on the horizon ...

Luckily, as always there's David Pope available to lighten the mood, as the Liberal and Labor parties combine to facilitate the way to and the mechanisms for a police state (and more Pope here). That portrait of zinger Bill is cruel, but fair, and just what is that plug connected to the copper wire doing?

Well played Mr Pope. Human rights and privacy clogging up the disc space? Just take a tip from Mike Baird and steal some music ... and you can use that to fill up the room you've created ...

Time to go ... before the EOG hits ...

The news you won't read in the Murdochian la la reptile land of the lizard Oz.

This in the emerald city:

And this from the socialists by the muddy Yarra:

Let's not forget the fun of the video death stare:

Well you know how to google all those stories.

Meanwhile, back at the Death Star, where the death stare is highly fashionable, it's the same old same old:

Well there's one way to end speculation and end the self-interest of the jackals gathering around the lonely man limping and bleeding in the unloved desert.

Bring it on.

But you'll notice this Friday Abbott didn't have the courage to bring it on. Maybe he's counted the numbers ...

Strange, you'd think the bully had it in him to take on the world, strutting about like some cowpoke from the old west. So that's what riding horses or bikes can do to you.

The pond is indebted to a reader drawing attention to this excellent sequence of photos by Alex Hellinghausen:

And here's Alex himself, in front of a portrait of macho man - he also won a Yooralla Media award for his photos of Australia's paralympians but looking at these, he takes the pond's prize for Abbott snapping.

And finally, the pond is indebted to a commenter for this wondrous set of remarks by Margo Kingston in relation to the dog man canine consorter:

By golly, and some claim the pond says what it thinks.

And guess what, the frenzy is going to keep on getting better by the day.

That's what you cop when a strident belligerent bully throws the kitchen sink at anyone standing in the way of his survival ... and the apparatchiks in Murdoch la la land keep on facilitating him ...

Now let's see how the dog man canine consorter and the other Murdochians answer that headline:

Ludicrous? Well dog man canine consorter? Where are your sources now? Where's the fierce rebuttal? When will you call Triggs a liar in print?

Come on, the lawyers need the work.

Ah well, the pond is standing for good government to finally get going next Monday ... without all this sublime hoo hah and comical fuss.

Don't hold your breath ... it could be fatal ... almost as bad as that death stare ...

Now for all those who enjoyed the concept of EOG, aka early onset grumpiness, here's a clip from Portlandia explaining it.

The pond suspects that Tony Abbott is going to be gripped by the disease shortly:

Is it still EOG, or is it a case of soul clap hands with joy?

This day the HUN is the only one to go directly to the heart of the matter on its front page.

All this sort of talk does is induce a dose of anxiety in the pond. Is it schadenfreude that makes the heart skip, and fingers tremble or is it just another case of eOG?

Yes, the pond hasn't given up on Portlandia, though it's an intermittently successful joy, but it's diagnosis of early onset grumpiness finally revealed what the pond's been suffering from since at least the age of five:

But if that's the syndrome, why is the pond's heart skipping and fluttering this morning?

Could it be the immense fun embedded in David Rowe's cartoons (and please give the AFR a hit here for his services):

Look at that steaming list of contents - hubris, bile, death cults, beltways, boats, spin, served with a decent dose of hypocrisy and a warning that the box may contain inducements.

What a wag. And so true ...

The story of leadership madness also trickled on to the front page of the Terror:

The other rags weren't so direct, being more circumspect and still obsessed with the Triggs matter:

There's no need to go into much by way of detail, except to note that once again a woman was sent into to the dirty work and the washing up:

But it does fortuitously bring the pond to the case of the barking mad reptiles at the lizard Oz.

This is, the pond has decided, a classic case of paranoid schizophrenia, which can be seen on both the front page and the top of the page digital splash:

Who knows where it comes from? Perhaps it was an early, harsh case of potty training, perhaps it was having mother's breast milk snatched away. No matter, clearly it was a woman wot done it.

But as a result, the reptiles are currently in a state of deep anxiety, and are wildly divided.

There's David Crowe wringing his hands over Higginson, and there at the top of the page is Chris "dog man" Kenny attempting to be a journalist.

The pond hardly dared use the word journalist in the context of a Kenny "story", but it certainly takes a generous dose of breakfast cereal to back the pitiful performance of Attorney-General secretary man Chris Moraitis's performance, and his epic "I lost my notes", and who knows, the dog might have eaten my homework as well ...

Here's how it goes down according to Kenny and Moraitis:

What was in that Rowe breakfast cereal again? Hubris, spin, bile and a decent dose of hypocrisy?

Well if all this was the case, it would seem extremely useless and perverse of Mr Moraitis to allow the dog to make off with his notes. Ah Mr Kenny and his dogs ... do go on:

And there you go, that's how journalism gets perverted. There's a nakedly ideological warrior putting his best spin on it, and at the same time referencing, as his conclusion, the words of gorgeous George embedded elsewhere in the paper:

Remember this is entirely an own goal.

Brandis and company have had since November to work out how the matter of the report be dealt with, and then decided, in the ideological cultural warrior way that seems their only path through life, on all out war and destruction, with Triggs to fall as a ritual sacrifice ...

Only to be surprised that, in a big Mal manner, they might have taken positives from the report ... and turned it around on Triggs and sailed off happily into a deluded sunset ...

Now bear with the pond here, because the pond thinks it is wrong that a major statement of Australia's attorney-general should be placed behind a paywall and used as a money-maker for Murdoch enterprises.

At the least, it should have been published simultaneously on the Minister's web site, here, but damned if the pond could find it.

So what does Brandis, clearly after a double serving of that breakfast cereal, have to say for himself?

That's a huge amount of self-justifying verbiage from a pompous man intent mainly on self-justification, or wiping the egg from his face.

It's a pomposity of style the pond would need a John Clarke to deflate. But the ponderous elephant has barely got to the point, which is to say the recent kerfuffle and his inept handling of the matter:

Uh huh. No one could sensibly say, outside la la Murdoch land, that George Brandis has any reputation, except that of a prize doofus.

But then attacking zinger Bill's about all he's got left in the kit, so badly has he mishandled the matter, no doubt egged on by a fearless leader with a visceral dislike of Triggs.

On and on the pompous blowhard rants:

There you go, it's a long and tedious haul, but at the end of it all, you have to marvel at the childish petulance - oh he loved big Mal, and he hated me ...

Well in a democracy, it isn't character assassination to call the bookcase man woefully inept, and his explanation pathetic, even by his beyond the valley of cereal-gobbling standards...

But wait, there's even more in this study of alleged journalism turned mad by grief and woe.

Because this very day, the anonymous Oz editorialist has felt the need to lash out at all the usual enemies:

Oh not all that tripe about the ABC, Graudian and Fairfaxian conspiracy yet again.

There are other forms of media around, and most of them have been noting that the Triggs matter has been a major coalition fuck up. Why there's even sections of Murdoch la la land that have dared to note the state of the emperor's clothes ...

Which brings the pond to suggest that it seems too much cereal eating in childhood does lead to paranoia and the taking of a childish outlook into adulthood, with conspiracies to be found all around.

Yes, in the time it took for the pond to scribble the above, the reptiles discovered that the game was a afoot, and they hastily upgraded the top of their digital page:

And all they can drag out of the cupboard is an old Dennis 'the bouffant one' Shanahan piece, and recycle the Crowe story.

It's outside the paywall but who cares?

Now it so happens that the pond thinks Triggs can look after herself - she's got the job for as long as she cares to hold it for her five year term, unlike the politicians jumping up and down around her, beating their flatulent breast like a gorgeous George (yes, yes, mixed metaphors, yadda yadda) - a point lost in the gorgeous George stew of indignant words.

But it's patently clear that Abbott and his government can't look after themsveles, and it's left to the die hards in the lizard Oz to do what they can to breathe live into a corpse and suggest that the unsettled coalition should settle down, even as the joint is jumping and the ants are in a frenzy.

As soon as the poodle urges calm in the kennel, you know the dogs are barking ...

There's no need to reprint all the rest of the reptiles' re-hashing of the case for Abbott, or their hatred and fear of the Twitterati, except to note how that reflects their paranoia, hatred and fear of being online, the NBN, and the whole new damned, hateful age of broadband and that intertubes thingie ...

Let's just cut to the chase, and the final par:

But he didn't tell that story.

Instead he blathered on endlessly, in the nattering negative way that he's resorted to at every possible point in his career, about how he and his government had lost confidence in Triggs. How it was all Triggs fault ... how the world would be better off if it were rid of that pesky woman and her pesky report ...

He didn't tell the "good story", he went female bashing in his usual way ...

And that's why it's likely soon enough he won't have any sort of story to tell the nation, regardless of who is sitting in the HRC president's chair.

Instead he'll be sitting on the sidelines, regaling the nation with useless commentary, in the style of John Hewson, Peter Reith, Jeff Kennett, Peter Costello, Amanda Vanstone, Helen Coonan (by golly, she's looking really deep south magnolia lady weird these days) and the rest of the pack still seeking attention and relevance via the media ...

You see, dear paranoid reptiles, the incoherent protestations have been coming from the Abbott government, not least from the likes of Ian McDonald explaining how he hadn't read the report, and wouldn't read the report, thereby confirming that he preferred to operate as a profoundly ignorant doofus ...

There is much more of course to observe in the world at large today.

But it's the pond's duty to report on how the functionaries at Murdoch la la land are now so deeply lost, the only question is whether it might be called navel-gazing, or a heroic journey up their alimentary canal.

Such a capacity to deny the obvious is remarkable, and deserves the sort of respect offered to the inhabitants of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ...

And so to David Pope, who this day decided to swim against the tide, and makes quite a fair fist of it.

You see, under the cover of all the fuss, Joe Hockey has been changing his tune, and trying out what the pond can only think of as nattering positivity.

Remember doom and gloom Joe Hockey? Gone, or at least swept under the carpet until needed:

(in the lizard Oz, you can google it if you have time to waste).

It's as if jolly Joe thinks mug punters have the same attention span as he has, which is roughly about five minutes, and as consistent as a water spider relying on surface tension to stay afloat.

Well there's another upside to Abbott going. The nation won't have to listen to this twit posing as treasurer ...

Go on Mr Pope, give the doofus a serve.

Naturally being fair-minded, Pope apologised to photographer Nick Cubbin, who scored this shot of Sussan Ley.

Naturally there's no need to apologise to Ley. She's donning that glove all of her own volition.

Sadly you won't see any of that sort of cogent analysis by the reptiles in the lizard land of Oz.

Thank the long absent lord for cartoonists, and please given the Canberra Times a hit for the provision of Pope's services, here. You'll find, like Rowe, that the gallery makes for compulsive viewing, almost as much as watching the train wreck unfold in the bunker at the top of that Canberra mound ...

As for the pond's header? Well there are a few poems that cover the matter, but this is kind of the end to a Walt Whitman poem, available in full and proper form here:

O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys, new politicians to abuse! 
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on, shout at and decry! 
To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports, with EOG insults at the ready
A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air and Canberra,) 
A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys, and wondrous nattering positivity.