In which the poodle disgraces himself, the Chairman texts in his dotage, and Moorice shows signs of incipient paranoia ...

(Above: and more Pope here).

Sorry, Mr. Pope, the pond loves the image, like all your cartoons, but he'll always be the poodle to the pond, and what a silly, naughty poodle he's been. Talk about the problems the Dude had with the carpet ...

Playing bluff at poker with empty threats is clearly beyond the average poodle's pay grade, so why make the empty threats in the first place?

This morning is abuzz with poodle folly, and while the pond doesn't usually link to political pages, it's worth heading off to Tony Burke's Facebook page just to catch the clip of the poodle in action on Sky News.

Click here, and you'll be able to answer the question Did someone hand Christopher Pyne and David Speers the next Clarke and Dawe script?, and - if you don't happen to be a university student contemplating a life of debt - it'll get your day off to a glorious start ...

No doubt it will turn up on YouTube in due course, because there are comedy lines  in there - fixer, surprise - that will get the jaffas rolling down the aisles ...

As a result, the reptiles of Oz are in uproar:

Oh we'd just thought we'd throw in Hedley Thomas gloating about Clive's dinosaur going up in flames - though it also reminded the pond that for all Thomas's relentless crusading, he never laid a glove on Clive. That job was left to his fellow party members and the sensible people who stayed away from his resort, and besides you can cop the same story at the Currish Snail here.

As for the David Crowe piece on Credlingate, the reptiles were in desperate catch-up mode, trying to pretend that they were on top of everything that turned up in the Four Corners program last night, available here.

That show was a litany or a listicle of the gang of Abbott's broken promises, sundry crimes and comedy acts, with not much new apart from the leaked email and a little more on the hijinks surrounding the subs deal.

So it was left to Crowe to extract what little extra comedy he could from the material:

The pond is vastly relieved that The Australian has dedicated its vast resources to confirming that Mr Higginson referred to Ms Credlin as the fourth horsewoman of the apocalypse, without even deploring Mr Higginson's scant knowledge of biblical texts, since there's clear evidence the four were men, and besides only one was named, and he was more of a PM type:

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with inaction on climate change, and with hunger from battered pensions, and with death by conducting colonial adventures abroad and by battering higher education, and with the beasts of the earth, which is to say the hapless voters of Australia.

Or some such thing. But perhaps it was even better to see Mr Higginson complain, in an email clearly directed to the press, about text messages being leaked ...

Actually Mr Higginson there's an old rule. Let he who doesn't want something read not commit it to such easily breached media... lest you end up like Fairfax editors at a defamation trial.

You see Mr Higginson, thanks to the Labor party conspiring with the Liberals on metadata - thereby ensuring that the pond will never vote for either major party - that old joke about the dog on the intertubes badly needed updating:

Never mind, the journalists now think they're home - as if getting a warrant will help them in a crunch - and it's boo hoo for everyone else, including bloggers who once imagined they were dogs ...

As for the rest of the Higginson piece, it was just a plaintive whine:

Oh never mind, just charge $22,000 for hearty access to ten boardroom "events" with the Treasurer and that'll fix everything, and balance the books as well.

As for the other Crowe piece, the pond takes its marching orders from the Chairman and knows that any jewels that fall from the Chairman's twitter account should be treated with biblical authority:

What nice, polite correspondents the Chairman has on his twitter account.

But quick, let's not brood, let's do a quick segue to minion Crowe doing his best to oblige:

 So did the silly old goat get it wrong in his dotage? And is Salome at work again?

Well so it seems:

Oh dear, that's not a nest of reptiles, unless by reptiles you don't mean the average lizard, you mean a host of vipers ...

What else?

Well there's silly old Moorice, the world's best climate scientist, still blathering on about reform:

Uh huh. So who's the HIM that must be loathed?

The PM must act? He must ignore his critics, in the very way, style and manner that got him in to the hot water in the first place?

So it's not just chairman Rupert that's in the grip of senility, it's the world's greatest climate scientist too?

Hasn't Moorice tumbled to the news that Abbott would throw away anything, including that zealously reforming kitchen sink, to save his hide?

So proposed media reforms are leaked to mislead the chairman in his dotage, and to berate big Mal?

While the university backdown just adds to all the other blow outs that are currently leading to the most spectacular blow out of all, the next budget ...

As the Four Corners' show reminded anyone who could endure it, Abbott came to power with a string of unsustainable and conflicting promises ... which came down to a promise not to slash everything, while somehow managing at the same time to slashhe budget.

So now the pond should weep for a professional liar and his motley crew?

No, it's comedy all the way, and how about this for Moorice's opening comedy styling?

For the Left there is no greater hate figure than Tony Abbott. After all, the Prime Minister is a liberal of the European school and embraces all the policy instincts and beliefs the Left des­pises. What’s more, Abbott effectively toppled Australia’s first female prime minister, the Left’s beloved Julia Gillard, and it is determined to get even.

Eek, he's a liberal European you say? He's caught the decadent European disease? Why we'll be Greece within the month ...

As for the blather about Gillard, how childish, or should that be adolescent? Payback, revenge, boofhead thuggee behaviour as the political norm, from a tribe who promised more consultative and collegial ways only a month ago ...

The pond rarely thinks of Gillard these days, because she's not the one in power. She's long gone, but it's a measure of how much Moorice likes to live in the past that he should think that somehow she's the motivating force, as his Grecian liberal whirls out of control ...

Oh okay, the pond finds Moorice's form of paranoia irresistible. How about this for a rant?

Um, strangely, Moorice the last poll returned to 55-45, whereabouts it has been stuck for most of eternity.

So what's your real problem? The leftists at work in the deviant, perverted Oz, which, thanks to the tyrannoboltersaurus and his readership, the pond now realises is as bad, or possibly worse than Fairfax and the ABC combined, thanks to the likes of van Oscillates?

Or is it the rats in the ranks?

Actually it seems the real problem is a sinking king rat looking to save his own skin ...

Each of those acts comes directly from the sinking king rat looking to save his own sodden skin.

No wonder Moorice spends the rest of his piece in a state of funk and despair, and it's got nada, zip, zilch, to do with Gillard and the allegedly leftist media, as if the pond would swallow the line that Chairman Rupert runs a leftist crew.

So we cop a poignant plea from Moorice for the PM to do something, anything to balance the books.

So much for the alleged influence of the PM's top business advisor, reduced to sending his advice via the Murdochian press. Has he thought about using messaging? Then it'd be guaranteed to leak ...

And there, in a nutshell, is delusion walking, talking and scribbling, with the choicest line reserved for 'leadership stability'.

Tell that to your media reforms Moorice ... and the latest university flip flop and so on and so endlessly forth.

Let's not sugar coat it Maurice though it might offend your feelings. Abbott's fucked, and so are teamplayers like the poodle. They've managed to blow their credibility in spectacular fashion, and not just by routinely sticking their feet in their mouths, but by inept tactics and woeful strategies, such that a gormless man like zinger Bill just has to sit by and watch them self-destruct.

Oh dear and then there was jolly Joe on Q and A as you can read in Joe Hockey outclassed on QandA, by an economist, if, like the pond, you steadfastly refuse to watch the program, even if it's available online at the ABC here ... where you can also see the gormless Chris Bowen in action...

Not to worry ... the pond is pleased and gratified that so much spectacular clowning and foolishness should be offered under the one big tent, even if thus far it's only been a very short run ... and the run might get even shorter after all the surprises waiting in the next budget, and not just the poodle's big surprise ...

No wonder the cartoonists are in clover ... and more Fairfax cartoonists here, and more Rowe here.