In which the pond reads that the Donald would make a better president than expected, and the irony quota is filled in a nanosecond ...

The pond is occasionally asked by people how it manages to fill its daily loon quota. 

The answer is easy enough. So long as the reptiles of Oz exist, the quota is a doddle, and the irony alert will always be maxed out at eleven.

Why the pond bothers with the loons is a different question, producing only weird, existentially unsound, deeply alienated and disturbed answers ...

See how the irony alert can be quickly maxed out on a Monday. Note the front page story, then note the digital splash at the top of the page ...

Already the irony cup is overflowing, but note then the splash ...

Then there are the other members of the gang, joining in with splashes of stupidity ...

Now note the actual reptile editorial splash ...

Yes, the deeply benighted and besotted reptiles devote endless amounts of energy and attention to Bill Leak and 18C, and then in a pivot which is astonishing, breathtaking and marvellous, talk about the need for reforms which produce jobs and income ...

Just how the rag's activities have the remotest connection to jobs and income - apart from maintaining Leak's 'leet position - must remain a mystery up there with the robots becoming sentient in Westworld.

Not a nanosecond's time in the paper's top of the line coverage involves policy - it's fluff gathering right wing extremism, the indefensible defending the indefensible ...

And yet the pond still feels compelled to trudge through the wilderness to reach the thoughts of the Messiah ...

Immediately the pond can speculate about the "big issues". 

Will, for example, the major Mitchell mention climate change?

After all, one of the candidates is a certifiable loon ...

And that's just one of the more egregious examples which the Donald tried to walk back as satire... there are many others ...

That's just a sample of the hundred plus that can be found on the handy Trump searchable twitter archive here ...

Now the pond realises it would be optimistic for the Donald to discuss all the great issues of the day - how the onion muncher and Malware, in league with the reptiles, fucked broadband in Australia is a tad parochial - but how drearily predictable the major Mitchell is in his talk of big issues ...

Nope, nary a mention of climate science. 

Just a lot of blather, and a rhetorical question, and a skating over of the way that News Corp - and not just its tabloid columnists - have actively, consistently and with unholy energy contributed to the dumbing down of Australia and the United States.

The surest way the pond knows to lose all signs of cognition and intelligence is to watch Fox News for five minutes. It even beats a daily dose of the Bolter, and that's saying something.

A day of it, and the result is gibbering idiocy ...a condition known as terminal Hannity syndrome ...

But you won't find any of this in the major Mitchell, a bird who fancies that his plumage is sensibly balanced, neither hysterically progressive nor fuckwitted in the Bolter, Devine manner. How discreet of him not to name the names of the troglodytes who dined with the onion muncher ...

So on the pond trudged through the second course of the meal ...

In short, Mexicans are rapists, Islamics, build a wall, build a wall ...

Climate science? Didn't Bjorn Lomborg sort that out for the reptiles and the world?

And as for that glowing testimonial to Reagan, a president with feet made of more than usually moist clay ... the notion that Trump is remotely within cooee of a bootlace on the boots that covered up the feet of clay is precisely the sort of delusional crap that might be expected of a writer who can never let a column go by without mentioning selfies, social media, twitter or the whole new world ... as if we're ever going to be able - or want - to go back ...

And as for Tony Blair... well the pond reserves almost as much contempt for the major Mitchell as it does for that war criminal ...

Is moral probity and a complete incapacity to look at the mote in the eye of the scribbler a prerequisite for scribbling nonsense at the lizard Oz?

And so the pond's quota is filled while barely breaking into a sweat ... at least for those hungry enough to eat a Mitchell horseload of 'Donald Trump would prove a better president than expected.' Especially if they can remember earlier in the piece the major Mitchell himself evoking the name of the singularly incompetent and useless Hoover whose main role in the great depression was to pave the way for FDR ...

The major Mitchell can only scribble that sort of nonsense, because deep down, and despite his denials, he really does expect Clinton to win, and so will have someone convenient to blame for continuing the work of the Islamic Kenyan-born terrorist ...

And so duty is done, plumage admired, weekly award handed out ...

Now all that's required for a meal fit for a loon is a garnish by the likes of David Rowe, and as always there's more Rowe here ...