Day 71 of MUC and day 24 of MOC, and time to head north with Lloydie ...

The pond felt the need for a change of pace, and decided to drop in on that great environmental apologist and reptile window dresser, and was startled to discover that Lloydie seemed to be infested with gloom ...

Sure, others were being titillated by Julie Bishop's gotcha moment, and there was the man from Cronulla welcoming the backing of the ALP - could that Bill be as kind as Mathias had suggested? - but the pond was compelled, transfixed by Lloydie's pessimistic demeanour ...

Relax, it wasn't so much concern about the reef, as the way fiends and perverts might use the fate of the reef for nefarious political purposes ...

And yet it wasn't so long ago that everything was spiffing and all for the best, in the slightly imperfect, not quite the best of, imperfect worlds ...

The Bolter was on the same sort of roll ...

Lloydie was doing his best to talk it all up, back then ...

But lately things haven't been going so well - there have been more stories about the bleaching of the reef than you could shake a stick at or google in a second - and the cartoons have been flying thick and fast ...

(Fairfax cartoons are here, Tandberg here).

So was Lloydie really worried and agitated about the reef this day?

Well not really, his major concern was the political implications ...

Yes, they're fiddling at the edges, with the Virgin flying into help and the Crown of Thorns tackled, but sad to say, the talk of improved water quality has bugger all to do with the area where the major bleaching took place ... in the north ...

What could possibly be the problem? How could this have happened?

Sadly the pond doesn't have the foggiest, having relied on getting the very best climate science advice from such top climate scientists as the reassuring walri man, always ready with a platitude, and a glib explanation, and the Bolter, Lloydie, the Pellists, Miranda the Devine, Dame Slap and Lord Monckton and the whole damn lot of them living in the land of the lizard Oz.

Never mind, the pond has already written off the reef.

In the meantime, we can celebrate the transition which will see the ocean temperature reduce, and so the day can be saved, at least until the next day when it can't, and more reports can be censored, so that all can say that mum's the word, and Lloydie can continue with the art of distraction and reeling and writhing ...

And don't you worry about anything because in an imperfect world, everything is for the best ... and it would verge on the indecent to note the dreadful, festering things that lurk beneath the water ... or the even more obvious things that are in plain sight above it ...

(Below: and more Rowe here).

Day 71 of MUC and day 24 of MOC, and the Oz's war on labour continues ...

So here's how it works when you're conducting a war on labour and on Labor ...

Publish the thoughts of a ning nong nonentity from the north stirring the pot, and then the next day, you can carry on the war, framing any comment on the ning nong - and so the front page - in such a way as you can get a second day of class and business warfare ...

And you get to call it your own EXCLUSIVE, because everyone else knows it's a bit of reptile navel fluff of the class war kind ...

That's just code of course, everyone knows it's the reptiles ramping up its war on labour ...

It's a sweet deal, especially when you've got a cluck-clucking, tut-tutting, finger-waving oscillating fan ready to chip in with one of his more fatuous headlines ...

You see how it works? Suddenly the reptiles campaign, their very own war, has turned into an ugly class war ... and it's all the fault of Bill, rather than the reptiles and the ning nong nonentity from the north ...

And then you get the taxpayer, grant-funded Caterists to come up with their own inimitable interpretation of the war ...

It's been awhile since the pond has seen anything so la-di-dah and dripping with visceral contempt for the "unskilled", the hoi polloi, the low lifers, the riff raff ... those getting paid above their station, unlike the dribbling, taxpayer-funded correspondent for the reptiles of Oz ...

Never mind, it wouldn't be a war without a taxpayer-funded warrior on hand to deplore the bludgers, and so the pond must get down with it ...

Now around this point in a fair and balanced program, there might have been some mention of property developer donations, which end up on both sides of the aisle and have done much to reduce New South Wales politics to the level of New York government (luckily Jeffrey Toobin's piece for The New Yorker, The Showman, is outside the paywall at the moment to provide some excellent entertainment - at least if you don't leave in that corrupt state).

But you won't find the Caterists talking about the obscene amounts of money that developer bandits make off with, because you never know when the Menzies mob might like a little donation ... though they won't turn down a tidy 60k from Google either ... (here).

Take a squiz at the impeccable list of directors of the Menzies Research Centre here ... not least Anthony McLellan, who has been "chief executive of international corporations in the mining and property development industries ..."

And so forth and etc from the big end of town and the Liberal party ...

It's sometimes forgotten that the MRC is just a Liberal party laundry ... for the processing of donations from the needy in search of needful political actions, that prior to his employment at the IPA, John Roskam was it executive director, and that it shamelessly boasts about the way it lives off the taxpayer teat ...

As a non-profit body, the Menzies Research Centre is funded by donations from individuals, the corporate sector, and an annual grant from the Department of Finance. (here).

Yes, taxpayers line up to help the Caterists so that they might continue to rail in print about the wickedness of the "unskilled" ...

But frankly, given the choice between a garbage collector turning up in the back lane once a week, or the Caterists scribbling garbage once a week, the pond knows which unskilled worker it would prefer ...

Of course it would be wrong to suggest there's some sort of analogy between a bundle of cash and a longstanding, opaque, hidden, secretive and historical relationship with business ... that would be pretty low and a very long bow ...

Actually the rest of us pay the grant that keeps the Caterists in the lifestyle to which they're accustomed, and surprisingly without any display of skill beyond that of forelock tugging and servile boot licking to the Liberal party and the big end of town...

Time then for a Pope cartoon ... and more Pope here ...

Day 70 of MUC and day 23 of MOC, and the dog botherer scratches around in the litter box ...

Poor hapless reptiles ...

It swiftly became clear why they'd held the dog botherer back ... while attempting to suggest his offering was of more interest than the ning nong nonentity from the north ...

The pond often notes how the right wing commentariat attempt a sense of humour and lamentably end up sounding more like dicks than pythons ...

There was of course an irony seeing the Chaser cheek by jowel with the dog botherer, and then the pond made the fatal mistake of actually plunging into the dog botherer's attempt at jocularity ...

Now the pond gets it - there's nothing like a satirist sending up stupid people by sounding stupid, but in the end, the pond simply walked away thinking ... now there's a really stupid man, more Adelaide than he realises ...

With apologies to the sensible and sane people who manage to live in Adelaide ... assuming they don't yearn for Norman Gunston and Aunty Jack, or if they do, know they've long been out in the digital domain and only a prime doofus wouldn't know how to find them ...

Oh wait, that's the whole satirical thrust of the stupid man ... sound really stupid, and people will think you're full of sharp, cutting wit ... as opposed to a dog botherer scratching around in the litter box of life...

And yes, that's also assuming the good folk of Adelaide don't insist, in true cretin style, that all the full to overflowing intertubes is only good and useful for the magic spiral of doom while watching entertainment ...

When really it's bringing end days to this sort of tree-killing nonsense ...

Meanwhile, more Moir here ...

Day 70 of MUC and day 23 of MOC, and the pond reaches for an Oreo ...

(Above: or you could find more Rowe here).

Please, don't ask the pond. We'd rather watch paint dry or listen to chalk squeaking on blackboard than watch Malware do his impression of teflon, or Bill frantically reading Stanislavsky in search of an action evoking "sincerity" ...

And please, don't blame the pond.

In a normal world, the election campaign would be just beginning ... we wouldn't already be at day 70 of MUC, Malware's unofficial campaign, and day 23 of MOC, Malware's official campaign ...

The cruelty is all his, and the Teflon will not stick ... it will not stick!!

Instead of brooding about the tedium of the night with the bouffant one ...

...as always, the pond turns to the reptiles for its understanding of the world, and what a fine front page there is this day ...

Naturally the pond had to bite.

Which Labor veteran was looking for a moment in the sun and his thirty pieces of silver?

Who had the reptiles managed to dig up - perhaps exhume is a better and more appropriate word ...

There's a lot more, but that'll do piggie, that'll do.

The pond routinely gets sucked in and routinely is disappointed by the naked, brazen nature of the reptile snake-oil selling ...

This ning nong no-hoper nonentity from the north routinely pops up like a grisly spectre at inappropriate or irrelevant times to do an ancient mariner routine ...

Here he was awhile ago in the ABC ...

Yes, indeed, and the pond is still asking what the hell he's doing here ... except filling up the front page for the reptiles with a bit of idle grand-standing of the more pathetic Queenslander kind ...

Of course De Lacy might have noted the way that the reef is comprehensively fucked ... Most coral dead in central section of Great Barrier Reef, surveys reveal, and the best the Queensland government, busy building ports and shipping coal, could come up with was an invite to Obama to make a day trip down under ...

But this is Queensland, where toads run wild and free, and nonentities like De Lacy hog the limelight, and of course there's a reason, and it's easy enough to find. You just have to flip eyes down from De Lacy to the news from Newspoll ...

Yes, things are a bit tight in Queensland, so naturally the reptiles did their very best dib dib dob best, and dug up the mummified remains so that they could have a decent, right and proper headline for the Monday edition ...

Meanwhile, the pond is stricken, because the dog botherer's rant about the ABC seems to have gone missing, and the Order of Lenin man has turned to scribbling about his jock strap ...

Suddenly the pond was desperate, but luckily it had a much better solution than unleashing the kraken ...

Unleash the Oreo!

Now usually the pond would attempt some sort of commentary, derive some comedy from the Oreo's deep thoughts.

But truth to to tell, of late the pond has taken to reading readers' comments on the reptile follies, finding them far funnier than anything the pond might come up with ...

Of course there are easy shots to be had - the Oreo talking about the entrepreneurial class, when the only visible means of support she seems to have is ranting for the reptiles ...

And then there's the quoting of the onion muncher ... because he was such a wall-punching success ...

It was enough to keep the pond reading for the final gobbet ...

Indeed, indeed, and such is the irrelevance of money to education that the pond applauds the decision of all the rich schools to give up their libraries and gyms and halls and computers and lavish grounds and trips abroad, and to feed their students gruel so that they might learn the law of the jungle and get ahead ... starvation and poverty being by far the best motivator for educational attainment ...

And there it is, another serving of Oreo, with all the substance that might be expected of a thing made mainly of sugar and flour and fat ...oh and don't forget the high fructose corn syrup ... 

Is it any wonder that the pond wishes it had a million Oreos ...

Day 69 of MUC and day 22 of MOC and the pond revisits old favourite Akker Dakker doing a bloodnok over Barners ...

What the pond finds beguiling is the slow turning, the whirring and whirling in the sky, as the News Corp commentariat come home to roost ...

Not so long ago, good old Akker Dakker was in the McCrann camp ... and every so often the pond likes to drop in on the Bombay club for a serve of decent conservative curry, with lashings of G and T and the creak of leather to see how the dear old lad is making the adjustment to his new Malware-decorated home ...

The pond has noted a shift in tone, through "Even muddled PM is better than bungle Bill" to "Vote Labor in haste, regret at your leisure" to this offering today ...

Oh dear, thank the long absent lord, he's called it.

Akker Dakker's pronounced it game, set and match, so there's absolutely no need to pay any attention during the long weeks still ahead ... that'd be like following the Calvinists, or perhaps the angry Sydney Anglicans down the pre-destinationist path ...

It wasn't so long ago that Akker Dakker was a bit more edgy and tetchy.

Any sampling of the thoughts of the fat owl of the remove about Malware would have shown lots of yaroop garooah ...

Oh he did so despise Malware, but now he's coming in gently on a wing and a prayer and a zephyr to pronounce the election a done deal ...

The trick, it seems, is to firmly hold the nose to block the smell, then flail away at anything or anyone else ...

Yes, the greenies are always a good target ...

Yes, it's not just refugees caught up in a cat conundrum of being bludgers while stealing jobs with their innumerate and illiterate skills. It seems that Aboriginal workers do really spiffing hard yakka in the live cattle trade but when it comes to working in parks, they're a pack of bludgers ...

Who knows how they manage it. Perhaps tt's something about the greenie vibe that makes them chill out in a parks vehicle but turn wild with hard working blood lust herding cattle ...

In some weird way, it's a bit like the confusion at News Corp, wanting to charge for Akker Dakker's dulcet insights at the front door, while giving them away for free at the back door ...

Oh by golly, it's still hard, embracing and holding close that despicable, effete ponce ...

But Akker Dakker closes his eyes and does it for queen and country, no doubt in much the same way as Major Bloodnok once did ...

Thank the long absent lord for Barners and the Nats and Agrarian Socialism.

By golly sir, harumph, harrah, if you dare show your effete, ponce colours in public, by gad and by flaming damn, Barners will take you out like he took out Boo and Pistol ...

Yes, Malware is just Johnny Deep in an elaborate disguise, and it will take a manly Nationals man to keep him on the straight and narrow ...

So this is what it's come to, this is where Akker Dakker has pulled up ...

No wonder the Terrorists are featuring Peta and the Devine, the Thelma and Louise of the right these days on a Sunday ... p

Poor old Akker Dakker, bloodnoking his way into irrelevance ... and with such bad ideas for a movie ...

Day 69 of MUC and day 22 of MOC, and the pond had to struggle past the blonde sex bomb sting to get to the dynamic duo of Peta and the Devine ...

It's official.

Only hours before the great debate - which assuredly the pond won't be watching - the Terrorists have abandoned their specialist "black hole" front pages and reverted to genuine Penthouse Pet sting bombing form ...

It's left to their noble commentariat much lower down the page to raise the spectre of Bill and Marxism ...

This election campaign is so dull even the Sunday Terrorists have gone with the Penthouse Pet and Put Peta Down The Page ...

By golly, already the pond can feel a deep ennui, a black fog of indifference curling around and rubbing its back upon the window panes ... what was the story of the day again?

Ah, that's more like it, a sexy come hither look, tropical winter getaways ...

Sorry, where were we? Ah, that's right, lining up for a simplistic explanation of simple things by Peta ...

Even Mark Latham! Well he and the taxi-driver's arm would surely know a thing or too.

And how shocking to learn we're being crushed by mortgage debt. To the barricades, comrades, destroy the banks, shatter the trickle down capitalist swine!

Oh wait, perhaps the pond took the wrong message from that remarkably fatuous and silly analysis, comparing households to the national economy and urging us all to tear up our credit cards ... or else. 

Hey ho, hey nonny no, on we go ...

Mmm, four legs and John Howard good, but how good to be reminded that Malware speaks "endless guff." And how good to care about everyday workers ...

This from the mindless land of the mindless three word "built the moats" slogan.

Could it get any richer? No, but anyone with an interest might care to read Repeat after me: the Australian economy is not like a household budget ...

...Government expenditure today is not limited by taxation or borrowing but by inflation risk. Government expenditure in 2030 will not be limited by taxation, borrowing or previous debt but by inflation risk. When you’re first presented with these facts it can seem like a magic pudding or a perpetual motion machine but that’s just because we’re used to thinking about finances from a household or business perspective. 
National governments with their own currency bear absolutely no resemblance to a household or a business. All of the frequently used analogies give a distorted picture of the reality of government finances. To get a clear picture you need to peel back all the layers of finance speak, and look at the real economy.

Bah, humbug, pettifogging economist, what we need is a simplistic explanation of everything by a patronising Terrorist columnist trotting out the same childish nonsense as she had her puppet do during his short stint at the top of the wall-punching onion munching brigade ...

But wait, for hardened pond veterans, there's more, because right next to Peta in training wheels was hardened Miranda 'hang a greenie from a lamp post, sniff out a Marxist' Devine ...

This day the fundamentalist Catholic bigot was on a roll, and naturally the pond rolled with her ...

Apologies, the pond had to jam it all together. If it's unreadable, this typical rant, so much the better, and yet there was still more ...

Oh it tore at the pond's heart ... no doubt about it. There's nothing like the sight of a fundamentalist Catholic bigot recycling the views of ancient old men, married to Christ but prone to night emissions, running a 'men only' club and calling it the Catholic church to remind the pond how much better things were in the good old days ...

And even worse, the pond discovered that the Marxists have taken over Canberra, which no doubt explains the national penchant for running gulags and getting divorced ...

Eeek, more here, and is it time to become a fundamentalist Catholic bigot and thereby save the country?

See what you've done, gays, you've ruined marriage and reduced it to Marxist Soviet rubble ... damn you and your bullying ways. Kneel down and kiss the ring of the Pope.

Or quick, have a whiff of this parfume ... it'll pick you up and put a spring in your step ...

And now, in celebration of the impending debate, the pond was pleased to see reports circulating on Twitter that street art was alive and well in the inner west ...

But don't worry if you miss the debate. Anybody who made it through both Peta and the Devine and reached this point have done their duty for their country, and are as tough and as brave as anyone who went over the top to be confronted by shrieking, wailing, keening, caoining banshees ...