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 To steal maudlin out of date music to try to humanise just another political doofus intent on turning Sydney into a giant LA car park.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 ...