In which the pond backtracks and walks backward to Xmas with prattling Polonius ...

The pond has lately been taking lessons in walking backwards to Xmas from the Goons and from the Donald ... walking backwards, and walking back firm promises seems to be all the go ...

The pond pretended it was going to ignore Polonius this weekend - in much the same way as the Donald lied about almost everything during his campaign - but truth to tell,  in the end, the pond couldn't bear to break its traditional weekend time with the prattling Polonius.

The withdrawal symptoms became particularly acute watching The Insiders. 

There they all were - you can check it out for the moment here - Laura Tingle from AFR, Shane Wright from the West Australian and Fran Kelly from RN, all sniggering and mocking and rolling their eyes, and where was Polonius to correct them and deliver a baleful stare or three ...?

Oh, they mocked Barners as a doofus and an idiot screwing up the Murray Darling and certain Armidale relocations, and they mocked mutton Dutton as an idiot and a doofus stirring up fear and loathing,  and they jeered at the corrupt George Brandis trying to make off with $300 million in federal taxpayers' money, and conniving to put it in the hands of the corrupt sandgroper government, only to be slapped down and put back in his judicial box.

And that prize doofus Mathias Cormann bravely fronted up to try to make sense of it all and defend the backpacker tax, while Pauline and Jacqui circled.

It all seemed like fair average neo-realist reporting to the pond, unless couched as a Dali-esque surrealist nightmare, but no doubt Polonius would have prattled a different, inconsolable song ...

Now as with every Polonius outing, the pond's main mission is to pick the best line, the one that got the pond rolling the Jaffas down the aisle ... and by golly he gets off to a zinger start with "Thank God for Tom Switzer"!

Thank god for prattling Polonius, the pond fervently says ...

Splendid stuff. It seems unless you're in favour of a corrupt, fraudulent, delusional character who lied his way into the presidency, you lose points with good old Polonius.

Naturally, once the pond gets a taste for this sort of sweet confection of ineffable nonsense it wants more ...

And so, modest solo trumpet please, the pond would like to thank Polonius for this line, which got those Jaffas rolling down the aisle, against the extremely stern competition provided by many other Polonius lines ... feel free to pick your own favourite ...

The unfashionable fact is Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has a group of left-of-centre Democratic supporters who are paid contributors and appear at least weekly on its prominent programs.

It might be unfashionable to say it, but if Polonius thinks that the alternative perspectives served up on Fox in any way represent genuine left-of centre Democratic views, he's either barking mad, or a prize goose, or perhaps a combination of both ...

Here's what actual Democrat lefties think about Fox "Democrats" ...

And that's just one of many opinions about these "Democrats".

Yes, they all carry "inverted commas" because they're considered "Democrats," in the way that a Polonius occasionally represents himself as quite the balanced centrist, B. A. Santamaria views allowing ...

But enough of that, because in a bid to make weight, the pond was torn by a couple of other left-over bits of reptile weekend business ...

It was a tough call, given the way that Peter Baldwin has gone increasingly weird and strange over the years, but how could the pond miss that heartfelt plea from the editorial team of lizard Oz?

Indeed, indeed. And for that line about the finest Judeo-Christian and Western democratic traditions, the pond had to race out and buy another pack of Jaffas ... coming as it did amidst a profoundly intolerant spray, which somehow perversely managed to boast about the reptiles and the country's open, tolerant and generous ways ...

So many fuckwits incapable of reading what they've actually written, so little time. No, you can't scribble furious bilious rage and bile and then boast about how open and tolerant and generous you are ...

As for the rest, the pond was suitably shocked, and looks forward to an Australia Day appointee who can uphold the reptile ideals of an open, tolerant and generous society.

It seems, if the pond can re-phrase the desirable qualifications using negatives to highlight the positives, they should be unsocial or antisocial entrepreneurs, champions of monocultures without any diversity whatsoever, unsustainable living advocates, pro-torture advisers, and with an emphasis on making sure that refugees are never rehabilitated, but instead are dilapidated and debilitated.

Oh and here no reconciliation, no reconciliation here, just angry old white men shouting at the world , promoting disagreement and dissension... 

So many reptile fuckwits, so little time ...

And now, since somehow we seem to be talking of fuckwits with wavering, quavering voices of the kind that turned up on The Insiders this morning - well if there's no music on RN, what's a pond going to do? - here's a classic example ...

Luckily, the pond has never had it up to here with ironic Treasure of Sierra Madre laughs.

Now the pond looks forward to prattling Polonius furiously scribbling how Pauline Hanson supporters deserve a prominent role in the Sydney Institute ... open the doors, open the doors!