Day 48 of MUC and day 1 of MOC, and the curse of the monkey's paw strikes early ...

Okay, for those who came in late, the Bolter has for yonks been blathering on about the curse of the Abbott ... and charting the fate of those who succumbed to the black cat walking under a ladder, or perhaps, Edgar Allan Poe style, bricked up behind a wall ...

With a fiendish, hellish delight, the vengeful ghoul licks his lips and sets down the fate of all the fallen ...

Now all this is good adolescent fun, a bit like Colbert's hungry for power games ...

It shows how childish the Bolter is, how vengeful and spiteful and tribal. It explains a lot about his politics and his world view, and why he's such a keen racist and ethnicist, as well as a simple-minded divider of the world into goodies and baddies ... much like his onion-munching hero ...

And mentally and emotionally, it positions him back in Victorian melodrama days - okay The Monkey's Paw just made it into Edwardian times, but that show reeks of pure Bolter, and his mystical view that the onion muncher is some kind of monkey's paw wreaking havoc on his enemies ...

Of course once you get to thinking about superstitions, you could end up with Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, haunted by the curse of the hound or the curse of the mummy ...

Truth to tell, the onion muncher could take on many forms - half onion, half bandage; half werewolf, half onion; half vampire, half garlic ...

It doesn't seem to have occurred to the Bolter that describing the onion muncher as a pestilent deliverer of misfortune, a baleful carrier of bad tidings, like a plague, might put both of them in a really bad horror movie ...

But it turns out that the Bolter lacks real imagination and for that, and for another stage in the war of the reptiles, the pond must turn to Miranda the Devine this day ...

Now the pond can already hear the gasps of astonishment.

In her hatred and fear and loathing and her war with the Bolter, the Devine's not going to go there, is she?

She's not going to compare Malware with teh Donald, and decide both are a good thing? 

Why, that would verge on the sociopathic, or at least the psychotic ...

Oh mere mortals, how you consistently underestimate the Devine scribbler ...

Yes, there it is ... Trump and Turnbull, peas in a pod.

With friends like this, who needs sociopathic, psychotic enemies?

On and on and on she went, somehow imagining that the Trumpster and Malware were Tweedledum and Dee ...

Trump's the lesser of evils?

Now at first the pond couldn't see it, and thought the Devine was barking mad. 

But then the pond realised it's always thought of the Devine as barking mad, and reluctantly had to admit that the Devine might be on to something ...

After all, Malware has a fondness for striking the same rhetorical poses, and flinging his arms wide ...

Well not as wide, but see, look at the shared glazed expression on the faces, both quizzical and giving the appearance of being stunned mullets ...

The pond was captivated, and sure enough, the Devine provided a guide on how the sociopaths shared much in common ...

With friends like these ... 

A ditherer and an uninspiring elitist? And that's being kind to him?

But as with the Bolter these rhetorical flourishes explain as much about the scribbler as they manage to say about politics. 

It reminds the pond yet again that if the Devine had been around in the 1920s in Germany or Italy, there's little doubt that the Devine would be yearning for the strong men and celebrating their achievements ... while castigating their fearful, timid enemies for just wanting a quiet life ...

Now the Devine selects the safe example, the easy target of George Will, a man who memorably conducted a jihad on jeans ... and if Mother Jones mocking him isn't to your taste, you can read the actual piece at the Washington Post ...

But the Devine is really talking about the Bolter and his kind ...

Trump and Malware are streets ahead of the alternative ...

So we can look forward to the Mexicans building the wall, teh Donald nuking the middle east, walking away from the national debt, and encouraging an open slather on torture ... and all that's just for starters, after the taco entree ... with the new mayor of London banned from entering the United States, just because ...

By golly that gives Malware plenty of room for mayhem and mischief ...

It also suggests that Miranda the Devine has all the principles and standards of a ... Chris Christie ... 

Why even an alley cat would look askance and walk away... and you wouldn't catch Mehitabel in the same room ...

But not the Devine ...

And in its own way, the piece is very revealing of the hate-filled fear and loathing and bile that saturates the Devine ...

How else to explain why she would, in her usual richly delusional way, try to make a virtue out of Donald Trump?

Any sensible person - there are, it turns out, quite a few sensible Republicans - might pause at least for a nanosecond to note that teh Donald isn't in any way equipped to be President, either emotionally or in terms of capacity to deal with policy, unless the world is understood as a reality TV game with simplistic goodies and baddies ...

But that's the Devine ...

Just a slap in the face?

Get ready world, for the Devine's preferred candidate ...

Somehow this favourite pond image seems peculiarly apposite this day ...

And now for the next stage ... as the Bolter gets out the deck chair ready to deliver the Devine a crushing blow ...

Conservative politics ... these days just another word for geek shows, where instead of biting off a chicken's head, the reptiles bite off each other's ...