Watching the reptiles produces a sinking feeling ...

Naturally the pond was ever so pleased that a reader provided stark evidence of the kool aid swilling reptiles dancing to the sound of their master's voice.

The pond immediately raced off to the angry old man's twittering to catch the instructions, with bonus feedback:

And that was followed up with this one, and even better bonus feedback (get the hot links here):

And then the pond raced off to the abject editorialist, forelock tugging and fawning yesterday:

And so on. It's summit, summit, summit, all the way ... the parrot says so ..

Yes, their master calls for a summit, and the reptiles pause in their sunning on a hot rock to demand a summit ... correctly substituting an economic whiz like the parrot for talk of Costello and Keating.

It's the start of a very busy day for the pond, and by the end of it, if any reader survives the journey, they'll be begging and pleading for mercy.

First, let's begin with the obvious. There was only one newspaper that could hold its head high with its front page today - the rest were off getting agitated about granny flat jihadists.

The Age dedicated its front page to the story no one wanted to know about, and followed it up with Hundreds of children abused in detention: report.

It should be viewed as a national disgrace - it's certainly a national scandal - and it's to the eternal shame of both the federal Labor and Liberal parties.

No matter how you cut it, or who says the words, it's institutionalised child abuse.

It makes a mockery of all the pious mouthings about closing the gap, or being shocked by Indonesia's death penalty.

You know, the kind you can find in today's lizard Oz editorial:

The moral basis of law? And locking up children conforms to the moral basis of law?

It doesn't seem to occur to anyone mouthing this sort of piety that the Indonesians simply look at what Australia's been up to in relation to children in detention, and smells the hypocrisy across the seas ...

The current government's response? To blacken reputations and consign it all to the history bin:

Redundant? Tell that to the kids still locked up in their prisons ...

As for closing the gap? And the quest for bipartisan solutions? Helped along by the adults being in government?

And that use of "several" send the pond off the deep end.

Around ten government members got the sulks, sucked their thumbs and left the chamber, including at least one minister, in a manner which indigenous leader Tom Calma called pathetic and a blight on their integrity. (here).  It was down there with all the Liberal party 'sorry day' antics ... no grace ... and in graceless numbers ...

As for several, here's a definition.

More than two but not many! Ten? Call it as it is, Fairfaxians, a gaggle of twits, or a swarm of dummies ...

But at least it provides cartoonists with some ammunition as we pause at the rail station called Hubris (and more Rowe here):

Which inevitably brings us to the long haul.

First there's the light relief in today's Fairfax rags:

But as always, as loon pond should really have been called 'reptile watch', hearts and minds turn to the reptiles, who are still in turmoil.

And who better to expose the confused, wretched limitations of the reptile brain than Greg Sheridan?

Even the splash offers a hint of the comedy that follows:

Now let's cut to the chase, get into the nitty gritty:

What a hoot. Yes, it's only Tony Abbott with the vision to save the country, and all those cheap mindless jokes about Putin and Kim Jong Il subs are just an example of the vision, and not the usual sort of nattering negativity. 

Easy silly jokes, not having any bearing on who could be invited to tender, but designed to hide the apparent truth that Abbott made a Captain's Call and did a deal behind everybody's back with the Japanese PM, though nobody will admit to knowing the nature of the deal.

And Abbott's peril is all the fault of Peta Credlin!

Except that Abbott is either (a) out of touch with his own government, or (b) putting personal loyalty above the national interest and indulging in self-indulgent folly.

On and on the bromancer rants, and somehow the mask of Credlin gets dropped, and then it's Abbott, and Abbott's government making the blunders:

You have to be as dumb as bromancer Sheridan to blame it all on Credlin, and then explain how the Abbott government, led by Abbott, carries out totally stupid policies or Captain's Calls on tenders arising from Abbott, producing a shocking Abbott mess ... 

And so, as he brings his rant to a close, right to the bitter end, the bromancer completely forgets about Credlin and keeps on ranting about the Abbott government making a total mess of the matter of the subs ...

Uh huh. So Abbott and his Japan Captain's Call got Abbott into a mess, and now Abbott has to get himself out of it. Clearly that's all Credlin's fault ...

And the Oz editorialist is just as schizophrenic. As usual, the reptiles start out by blaming the PMO:

But here's the thing. It was Abbott who talked to Edwards, and either Abbott mis-communicated, or Edwards mis-heard, or more likely they're both prime futtocks.

Unless Credlin sticks her hand up the sock puppets and does a great ventriloquist act ...

And perhaps that also happened when it was left to the king of futtocks to sound like Humpty Dumpty choosing the words he'd use (and how much he'd pay them).

And when I choose a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean, said the egg, and so did that doofus Andrews.

How can Credlin cop all the blame, except, like many women, she's forced to endure the company of a band of male clowns?

In the end, instead of calling out Abbott, Edwards and Andrews, the editorialist was forced to talk of "Team Abbott":

It goes without saying, because the Oz is the propaganda arm of Murdoch and Team Abbott, that it should feature at the top of its digital page a story that we should never mind the twenty billion or so (the pond predicts sixty billion) on the build, because there'll be thousands of jobs dedicated to maintenance:

But if you don't have the skills to build the subs, or at least participate in their construction, how do you build the skills to maintain them?

And maintaining them is a labor intensive, expensive business. Just ask Qantas, busy shipping offshore all its maintenance work. Why not just sail the subs up to Japan for a quick check and fix?

It's a measure of the reptiles capacity to swill down that kool aid that they'd buy anything at face value from this government ...

... but then there's the joy of union bashing and the joy of shipping Australia offshore, while the messaging coming from the Abbott government is so muddied, contradictory and confused that it's impossible to make any sense of anything ... except to know that deep in the gut, here comes yet another gigantic defence acquisition fuck up ... and haven't we had some grand fuck-ups in the past that help set that bar really high ...

And if you've made it this far, you probably feel like a cartoon, so why not a happy Pope cartoon about troikas and the day Australia got mistaken yet again for Austria (and more Pope here).