Let the mania and the manic phase and the white-anting and the sniping continue, thanks be unto the bromancer ...

Quelle surprise, quelle surprise ...

The pond, as always, is only here to help the reptiles and their failing business model, and so it faithfully maintains an interest in all their efforts ...

But talk about pitiful. Only the HUNsters tag teamed with the lizard Oz on the book designed to rock the nation, yet sadly in its core function as gossip, the Savva turned into a damp squib ...

Along with much well-rehearsed and repeated ancient history, the pond came to this central bit of the burnt offering ...

That's it, a comparison to Wallis Simpson, but not meaning to imply an affair? No wonder they've already knocked 35% off RRP for dedicated reptile lovers ...

Now the pond has long been serviced - if one may indulge in a Trumpism - by the best deliverers of common, preferably sordid, gossip.

Whenever Wallis Simpson is mentioned, the pond goes into overdrive.

We learn that the Prince was a little man, sexually inadequate, and prone to premature ejaculation. We learn that Wallis Simpson was a femme fatale with the legendary ability to make a matchstick feel like a cigar. We learn that Simpson was an adept at prolonged and carefully modulated hot oil massage, a woman who had perfected sundry arts called the Baltimore grip, the Shanghai squeeze or the China clinch. Moreover, she was an expert at oral sex and perhaps wasn't a woman at all. At the least, she might have been an intersexual who had actually never had conventional sex.

And so on and so forth, if one is to follow the Daily Troll's Was Wallis Simpson all Woman?

Now that's common, sordid gossip as it should be done.

Please, no fey comparisons to Wallis Simpson and the proto-fascist King Edward VIII, or it might set the pond to blathering about the wayward king's love for Hitler as an explanation for why the young uns like to don fascist gear for a party ...

Meanwhile, the matter of Savva set aside, it was tremendously reassuring to hear the news that Tony Abbott was no King Edward, no wrecker he ...

The reptiles felt so strongly about this, the need to repair the damage that they themselves had inflicted, that they sent their hardiest troops into the frontline ...

Now the tragedy for the reptiles is that this message came before Malware had spoken ... and meanwhile, the Fairfaxians had jumped on the bandwagon ...

Yep, it was all about Abbott, Abbott, Abbott, and quelle surprise, the reptiles were also all about Abbott, Abbott, Abbott ...

Oh thank you Polonius, thank you for noting that small-l liberals were always welcome. Why your love of small-l liberals has long been celebrated at the pond ...

It was a veritable welter of Abbott belly-button fluff-gazing and agonising, so much, so tediously long, that the pond simply didn't know where to turn, which way was Wallis coming and which was Simpson going, if one might continue the standard of American political discourse.

After all, the Fairfaxians had dropped Sheridan into it, along with Abbott, per Hartcher here:

The basis for the former prime minister's flabbergasting was that the Turnbull document committed to having the first new subs entering service in "the early 2030s" while the Abbott draft reportedly promised the "late 2020s". 
Sheridan quoted Abbott as telling him: "I'm not just disappointed, I'm flabbergasted at this decision." And: "It's the biggest decision we face. It needs to be made swiftly so that we get the new subs from the middle of the next decade." He said of the existing six Collins submarines that it is "a fragile capability at the best of times." 
There are three problems with this. First is that the drafts written for the Abbott government are classified. The Defence department has asked the Federal police to conduct a leaks inquiry to find the leaker. 
Suspicion immediately fell on the former prime minister, but Abbott and Sheridan both said on the record that Abbott was not the leaker. Nonetheless, many of Abbott's colleagues are themselves flabbergasted that he would, in effect, confirm and endorse the leak with his comments to Sheridan. Second is that the Abbott outrage appears to be built, once more, on a fond imagining of how things might have been, rather than the way they were. 
In rapid succession, the secretary of the defence department, Dennis Richardson, the chief of the defence force, Mark Binskin, and Abbott's own first defence minister, David Johnston, all attested that defence had consistently told the government that the earliest realistic delivery date was the early 2030s, which is exactly what the white paper says. 
The third problem for Abbott is that this intrusion has appalled many of his colleagues and confirmed him as a wrecker. Peter Reith spoke for the majority when he called it "a classic case of deliberate destabilisation". 
Even some hard-case conservatives were angry at Abbott. One defended him: "He puts his dissent on the public record – when those who destabilised him leaked against him, they did it anonymously." But others were harsh: "I think he's in a dark space and wants us to lose," said one. "There's now a chance we could lose, unthinkable six months ago" when Turnbull first took the leadership. The vengefulness of the betrayed leader reminded many this week of Kevin Rudd's conduct after Gillard's lightning coup against him. Asked about this on Friday, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said: "Tony Abbott is no Kevin Rudd." He's right. 
The defining difference? Rudd was popular before and after the coup. This meant that there was always a plausible pathway to a comeback for him. This does not justify disruptive conduct. But it does mean that there was a potentially positive purpose to his jihad against Gillard. 
But Abbott has never been popular. He was the uniquely unpopular prime minister. There is no plausible pathway to a comeback for Abbott. 
He will justify himself by saying that he is defending his record, that he is speaking for the conservative movement. But however he might rationalise it, the net effect of his destabilisations can only be negative for his party. There is no happy ending here. 
Can he be assuaged? He has not asked Turnbull for anything for himself. But he asked Turnbull to appoint his former chief of staff, Peta Credlin, to the post of Sex Discrimination Commissioner. And to appoint her husband, Brian Loughnane, former Liberal federal director, to the post of ambassador to the Vatican. 
Turnbull let Abbott know that the post of high commissioner to London could be available to him, but refused the requests to appoint Credlin and Loughnane. 
Abbott was uninterested in London. He persisted in lobbying the prime minister on Loughnane's behalf, but to no avail. The government has since filled both posts. 
Abbott probably cannot be assuaged. He seems only to want to be avenged. If so, the chance of an end to the manic phase will have passed. The mania will continue unabated.

And at that point the pond knew what it must do, knew where it must head, knew it must check on the manic phase and reassure itself that the mania might continue unabated ...

Yep, there was the bromancer, faithful and loyal, still proudly following the tradition of wrecking, white-anting and sniping.

Talk about water off a duck's back or a submarine surfacing, as Sheridan continued to cling to a government press release as the basis for everything ...

The pond felt a deep sigh of relief at the way the sniping would continue, with the bromancer citing as character reference such unbiased sources as Stephen Conroy ...

And so to that press release ... and Stephen Conroy being very, very clear ...

As Stephen Conroy so clearly put it ... Malware is hopeless. And Tony Abbott is right, right, right!

As for the lickspittle lackeys that seek to serve that humbug lawyer, with his fine lawyer's sense, why they're hapless, hopeless. 

Let's face it, that Marise Payne is just utterly ridiculous ...

Oh dear, and then there was even more ... as the undermining bromancer proceeded to channel the sniper and to discuss grievous errors of judgment by a government that thought it might escape the stern, steely, gimlet eye of the white anter and the bromancer ...

Yes, it's blooody downright flabbergasting.

In the coming third world war with Russia and China, Australia will fall apart from the want of 12 submarines. Why already it might be necessary to turn to the pond's hastily prepared Gundagai line, with fortifications built to protect the dog on the tucker box, perhaps the last remaining sign of a genuine Australia:

It was about the point that "non-niche" capabilities were led in relation to East Timor and a Russian naval ship doing a bit of flag-waving, that the pond realised, with a deep and grateful sigh of relief, that we were deep into mania and the manic phase would not pass any time soon. 

The fever and the paranoia and the shirt-fronting and the tribal beating of chests like a jut-jawed primate on the prowl would continue ...

It was therefore with delight that we could end this phase of the weekend's engagements and retreat to a Pope cartoon, and more infallible Pope here (is it only the pond that finds Pope's Canberra Times broke? Is this a way to treat a Pope?)