In which, with a mighty roar, the bromancer announces the return of the lion from the wilderness ...

Talk about disappointing ...

Apparently all 60 Minutes managed to establish last night was that Pell's 'Melbourne Response' wasn't much of a solution, but was instead hopelessly compromised and wasn't independent and compassionate, but a smokescreen designed to protect the church at all costs (here).

Well yes, and in other news, Pell is an institutional Catholic ...

And so the rest of the reptiles have done the decent thing and refused to pick up the story, and so the pond had to go looking elsewhere for excitement.

And bingo, the bromancer delivered ...

For days now, weeks even, the pond has been looking for a sign that the rough beast, above, might still want to slouch towards Bethlehem, and sure enough ...

Now there are all kinds of sceptics who resist the bromancer's visionary thinking, but not the pond.

The pond understands and respects bromance, that first tremulous thrill, that surge of lust, and then the consummation ...

Oh and there's much more here, but who wouldn't want a lion in their bed, or such a sweet, giving, caring creature in their cabinet?

Let us look at the how and the why with a willing, congenial heart.

Let there not be any idle, faint-hearted chatter that it might be too early for such a bold move:

Oh indeed, indeed, how right on this agile, innovative day, and what a pretty sight it would be to see these two mighty lions in tandem, pulling together, a united team, campaigning for Malware to be PM, without a hint of back-biting, sniping and bitterness.

This is why the pond turns regularly to the reptiles of Oz. For such splendid insights ...

But wait, don't leave just yet, what about that set of steak knives? Let us understand in detail why these two lions need to lie down with each other ...

Ah you see, the impeccable logic. It also handily explains why America actually won the war in Vietnam ...

Why, if you add in the closet Abbott lovers in the ALP and the Greens, it might have been possible to announce a single party dictatorship ...

Now at this point, the pond can sense some dissent, some of that unruly scepticism that has frequently marred the bromancer's potent recipes for the future, some wretches who point out that he's fucked in the head and usually gets everything fucked up:

In March 2002, when the invasion of Iraq was barely being discussed, Sheridan had already begun speculating about nuclear attacks in New York harbour. As a consequence of his speculations, he had already begun imagining a series of American-led wars. “Bush’s task, which is huge, is to make sure there is not a single state in the world, starting with Iraq, whose machinery can be used by terrorists.” Sheridan’s analyses of the terrible Iraqi threat were untouched by doubt. In August 2002 he already knew not only that Saddam Hussein possessed a vast arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, but also that it was certain he would possess nuclear weapons in “one or two years”. When British Prime Minister Tony Blair released his weapons dossier soon after, Sheridan really did not need to be convinced. For those who still did, he posed the following dilemma: “Either Tony Blair is a monstrous liar or Saddam Hussein is. Take your pick.” Prudently, this was not a question to which Sheridan returned in the following year. 
Nor was Sheridan’s omniscience restricted to his knowledge of Saddam’s arsenal and his links with al-Qaeda. He could also see into the future. On one occasion he explained that when Saddam got his nuclear weapons in one or two years’ time he would either give them to al-Qaeda or “more likely … invade Kuwait for a second time, dominate the oil deposits of the Persian Gulf and stay there as a result of nuclear blackmail”. Why a tin-pot dictator should succeed in dominating a goodly part of the world’s oil reserves by the nuclear blackmail of the US, where for 40 years the Soviet superpower had failed to take any similar advantage of its nuclear arsenal, was not explained. Nor was it explained how Sheridan already knew in September 2002 that all the “alarmist predictions” would be proven wrong “after the US successfully completes its coming Iraq campaign”. 
Not surprisingly, given his clairvoyant gifts, Sheridan had little but amused contempt for alternative points of view. The opinions of the Labor Party left were described as the “shrill and politically semi-literate anti-Americanism of those hitherto hidden Metternichs”. His ridicule was not limited to lesser Labor lights. Sheridan thought the post-Cold War views of two of America’s best-known political scientists, Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama, had been rendered “almost idiotic” by recent events. Fukuyama was the author of nothing more than “fantastic nonsense”. Adjectives like “bizarre”, “absurd” and “preposterous” littered Sheridan’s prose. 
Sheridan’s disdain for those with whom he disagreed was balanced by his unqualified enthusiasm for the views of Republican politicians and members of the Bush administration to whom he had privileged access. Sheridan thought the former speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich, was “vastly personable” and “profoundly convincing”; that trade secretary Robert Zoellick was “prodigiously well informed”; and that the deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, was “the most brilliant figure” of the Bush administration, even more brilliant presumably than President Bush himself, who could be compared, not unfavourably, to Winston Churchill. Yet no one made a more favourable impression on Sheridan than the deputy secretary of state, Rich Armitage, with whom he conducted a dozen or so interviews. 
Sheridan wrote about Armitage with the kind of uncritical enthusiasm one might expect from a teenager in love. On a number of occasions he informed his readers that Armitage was the “straightest talker” or “straightest shooter” you could ever meet. Armitage didn’t “gild the lily”. He was “George Orwell-like in his ability to face hard facts”. You could “stake your life” on the reliability of what he told you. (Luckily for Sheridan he didn’t. Before the invasion Armitage convinced him that Saddam would pass weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda. Several months after it he still had “absolute confidence” that weapons of mass destruction would be found.) So deferential was Sheridan in Armitage’s presence that he admitted to feelings of “timorousness” in even raising with him the question of US unilateralism. Sheridan’s Armitage effusions were, for a journalist of his seniority, seriously weird. 
How had they come about? In July 2002 Sheridan wrote an extraordinary article about the “dizzying week” he spent in Washington walking the corridors of the White House, the Pentagon and the Department of State. “It is the heart of Washington, this display of US strength and pride,” wrote Sheridan. “It is imperial Rome without the vomitoriums, greater than London was at the height of the empire … [This] is the known universe, the most formidable agglomeration of pure power we have ever seen.” 
Sheridan was clearly blinded by American military might. In treating the viewpoints of the leading US figures to whom he had privileged access – and the occasional leaks he received from them as a result – as incontrovertible fact, Sheridan was playing the role of a publicist on America’s behalf. 

Now the pond has no use for this idle denialism and scepticism, which is why we resolutely refuse to publish excerpts from such denialists, and certainly not at any great length, nor can we recommend that any passing reader head off here for more.

These heretics simply refuse to understand the mystical vision. Please, step into the wardrobe:

Oh okay, there might be a few minor problems, a little teething, so to speak, so the pond only presents a few of these tadpoles, merely to show how perfect and complete is the bromancer's vision. Truth to tell, there's nothing that a little dab of Bonjela applied liberally to the gums won't sort out:

Make it so, let it be thus, the visionary bromancer has stoppeth one of three, and delivered unto the world a bounteous gift of healing ...

Let sceptics hang their heads in shame, while the pond turns to the sun rising in the east and honours the vision ...

Here endeth the lesson ... and remember, 'tis the season to be jolly ...