The new business plan model ... zero tax and a fundamentalist Christian crusader war continues ...

A certain observable tendency ...

Well it passes for humour in some quarters and for an on-going tragedy at the pond, but speaking of visual cliches and stereotypes, the pond commends this image from Walkabout to the attention of Mr Leak ...

But enough of good-hearted humour, because the pond's duty is to the reptiles of Oz and their immediate concerns, and as always, their concern is to fortify the rabid and the outrageous. The more the fear and the terror, the more trees can be killed.

None of this cool things down, quieten, settle, get around behind ...

Not bloody likely!

Yep apart from paying no tax - that'd be zilch, zero, nada, nihil, nothing - the business plan relies on prodding the ant's nest, stroking the fires, fuelling the flames and a dozen other stereotypical metaphors that would form the basis for a very funny cartoon about blacks making fire by rubbing sticks together.

Ah, those stone age blacks, so richly comic ...

But the pond got distracted.  Let us return to lizard reality:

No, Australia's tranquility hasn't been jeopardised by the fundamentalist Christian crusaders conducting a war against Islam, without paying the slightest bit of attention to the sizeable mote in their own eye.

Yes, today's bête noire is a naughty, secretive, furtive military man and spy, down there with that drunkard Spry - and don't expect prattling Polonius to jump in to defend this regrettable military man, as he did with the drunkard Spry.

You know how it goes, almost without needing to read the text, but hey nonny no, never mind, here we go:

Yes, if you make a bleeding obvious point - that Abbott is a disruptive, devious ratbag, using terror as a way of drawing attention to himself, and perhaps in due course using it as the basis for an insurgency which sees him return to power - at the cost of sounding more Hansonite than Pauline - you're sure to cop a shellacking from the reptiles, and satirical comments about the mindlessness of the military.

Of course if anyone else dared to mock the mindless military, they'd be hung, drawn and quartered by the reptiles for high reason, but the wondrous thing about the reptiles is the way they can bite their tail to form a perfect circle of hypocrisy:

Oh okay, the pond was wandering through an old favourite, The Man Who Would Be King last night and getting re-acquainted with the doings of Masons and the Illuminati ...

Ah the Shield, what a way to organise your AV data, except when trying to access fraudband and watch Colbert's current crop of excerpts ...

(Yes the pond subscribes here).

Back to the reptiles, tedious chore that it is, as bad as feeding the chooks on a forty degree day in Tamworth, wherein it will be noted below that the editorialist cites Sheridan who speaks of national security figures but doesn't mention any of their names.

The pond of course talks regularly its own security figure, if only to point out that at the moment the resident rat is eating the slug killer left out in jam jar lids ... perhaps a little rat killer might be more to the point?

We digress, we digress, because staying focussed on reptile rage is so hard ... but it must be done because the country's security is at risk, and somehow it all stems from the Spycatcher trial ...

And there you have it.

As barking mad as a history lesson from old Polonius himself. Feel free to assemble absurdities in whatever Lego patterns that appeal.

For example, as someone who once generated their very own ASIO file, the pond was gob-smacked with awe and admiration at the news that ASIO was and is an apolitical agency.

It's even more remarkable that ASIO could imperil this status by pointing out that the rabid ravings of an embittered PM might be more unhelpful than useful, as might be ranting contributions from Cory, George and others stumbling across an Halal certification authority and into the arms of Pauline ... Oh dance, crusaders dance, dance as if the world might end tomorrow ...

But what was most pleasing to learn was that the reptiles remain on side with a creationist crusader, who in terms of science is as barking mad and as fundamentalist as any Islamic fundamentalist you might care to mention lurking in this fair land ...

And just like this very poor show, the reptiles want the right to continue on their own way, using inflammatory rhetoric and producing bold, divisive front pages ...

All of which reminded the pond of a very useful reader comment ...

If we teach our kids that West is best and to hell with the rest, and Muslim countries teach their kids that Islam is best and to hell with the rest, won't that increase the chance of war between the two? 
Of course if China teaches its kids that Chinese is best and to hell with the rest, we'll all be toast. (sorry, the pond pays no royalties and since we rip off people regularly, we run no advertising either).

And speaking of ex-PMs, and Bill Leak, might the pond note another tendency?

You know, the best place for a woman is on her knees ...

So sad, such a tragedy. And worse, not even funny. As Woody Allen might say,

“There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the cartoons at this place are really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and doled out in such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly, especially if you've wasted time on Bill Leak's cartoons.”