In which the pond dances with Gazza, then swims in untreated arm-breaking sewage, and finishes under God with the hastie Pastie ...

Why not start with a meme, especially when the alternative is to start with a Johns ...

Yes, it's the far right seeking to normalise even the most aberrant and abhorrent expressions of far right values ...

Now why "Johns" felt the need to put inverted commas around "Asians" and not "Aborigines" must remain a mystery. 

But then some might think it's also a mystery why "Johns" would celebrate the "barking mad" Malcolm Roberts, failing to understand that when one climate denialist loon howls at the moon, others have an irresistible yearning to do the same ...

But it's a tad unfair to drag Antony Green into the mess. Context please, and what he actually said is here, way back when ...

But how can an Oz reptile columnist get away with shamelessly recycling ABC data and analysis, and calling it their own kind of insight?

Because that's what the reptiles do, while at the same time frequently berating the ABC ...

Never mind the contradictions, let's get on with the looting and the cherry picking ...

Well that last par is a wonder of confusion. Hopefully if politicians have any brains, they'll work out what Johns actually meant ...

Meanwhile, speaking of reactionary contributions, the Terrorists produced this bit of anarchy this day ...

Naturally they also had a clown at the top of the opinion section.

Well you might leave the circus in disgrace as a failure and a flop and a fraud, but you will stay a clown ...

No, not the smirking clown, the scribbling clown ...

Hmm, that "feedback about the result" offers the chance to dob in the Terrorists, vile enemies of the people, for peddling fake news and alternative facts ... and Mark Latham ...

Whenever the arm-breaker hovers into view, and taxi drivers head off into hiding, the pond fondly recalls Pope's evocation of the untreated effluent spilling from the mouth ...

Of course a few delusionals might think that Latham is conducting a clever covert operation, whereby his enthusiastic support for the onion muncher undermines Malware, and so facilitates the return to power of the Labor party ...

Unfortunately for this theory, splendid though it is, the arm breaker is somewhere to the right of the onion muncher, and perhaps even Genghis Khan, and has a deep and abiding hostility to Bill Shorten ...

Nope, he just loves destruction and mayhem and confusion and chaos, and the more it can be dressed up as mindless male strutting macho mojo, the better ...

Why is it that the Terrorists favour that snap of the smirking onion muncher as their go to pic whenever its commentariat is doing a hagiographic homage to the wrecker, sniper and underminer?

Who knows, because on we must go into the morass of blather about identity politics and cultural Marxism ... and the Oreo-like need to teach the benefits of Western civilisation in our schools and universities.

How else are the kids going to learn to break a taxi-driver's arm with skill and with pride? And the fascist capacity for deportation based on thought crimes ...

Hmm, is it possible to deport the arm-breaker for preaching hate?

It was around this point that the pond noted that Vegemite was advertising in a hate rag.

In the US, they're managing a very nice campaign to make Breitbart suffer - here in the Independent is a story a couple of days old about a further 100 companies pulling advertising ...

Watch out for the sleeping giants, Vegemite,  as we head back to the Terror for another snap of the onion muncher ... together with an entirely wrong, delusional and misleading blaming of immigration for the death of the Great Australian Dream of home ownership ...

The pond can understand the onion muncher peddling this sort of mischievous misinformation, but just think ... here's a former leader of the ALP returning to the days of the White Australia Policy ... 

But then came the pond's special treat - there's always a special treat in unfiltered sewage and waste disposal water - and it came in this short chunk ...

Remember the talk of the suffering young? Cue talk of the outer suburbs battlers ...

Outer suburb battlers?

Roseville golf club?

Say what?

Yes, the long suffering larrikin outer suburbs battlers lurk on the north shore at the Rosevill Golf Club ... oh see their suffering and shed tears of woe. Don sackcloth and ashes, wail and sing lamentations for their affliction and despair ...

Oh the suffering and the unhappiness ... and look, such is this tale of woe that they've had to offer a deal ...

Amazing savings, and only $25 green fee for pikers who want a five day membership!

Frankly the pond was staggered at the way that life on the upper north shore of Sydney had been reduced to such a tragic state. No wonder these north shore larrikins are up in arms. 

Aux armes, citoyens, 
Formez vos bataillons, 
Marchons, marchons! 
Qu'un sang impur 
Abreuve nos sillons!
Sauvez votre club de golf!

Well there was just one final gobbet in this battle to save western civilisation and prevent the financial collapse of golf clubs in Sydney ... and especially Roseville ...

Ah the good old inner city 'leets, as frequently mentioned in a rag produced from a bunker in Surry Hills, the home of the best baristas in the land ...

Thank the long absent lord that the honest burghers of the upper north shore will have nothing to do with these fiendish inner city traitors ...

Let us have no more talk of fibros and silvertails. The north shore is the heart of the larrikin masses.

And there you have the rich absurdity of the day, even better than the Donald discovering health might be tricky ...

It's the arm breaker heading off to Roseville - median house price $2,266,000, median unit price $882,500 - while blathering about inner city 'leets?

This could only be managed in that most fuckwitted rag, the Terror, dedicated as it is to the celebration of clowns still doing their tricks long after they'd left one circus for another ...

Now around this time, the pond would usually wrap up proceedings with a Rowe cartoon, with a pointed reminder that more excellent Rowe could always be found here ...

But the pond was extraordinarily pleased to be given a link to this story ...

Under God! And there's that damned atheist toad from the north defying his God and going off on his own.

Finally, for a touch of nostalgia, the pond really should run that full Pope cartoon which featured the regurgitator. It turned up in the infallible Pope's twitter feed here ...

In which the pond bubbles and fizzes with the Caterists ...

Smug.

That was the pond's reaction to news that the Nokia 3310 was about to return, as reported in The Graudian here, and many other locations ...

The 3310 never went away for the pond, and is still hard at work. Try locating the pond on the grid, see how far you get ...

A phone's a phone. Want a photo? Get a camera ...

Inconsolable.

That was the shock, the fear, the palpable sense of loss the pond experienced when it went searching for its Tuesday Caterist fix, only to discover that the dear lad had been buried deep within the lizard Oz reptile daily digital edition ...

What a relief to discover that the Caterist had taken up the story of Coca-Cola running out of gas in SA.

Of course it came hard on the heels of a Media Watch story - transcript and visuals here - about Coca-Cola and the reptiles, and repeated denials, and repeated refusals by sundry reptiles to accept what Coca-Cola reps said ...

Well sorry, but no, that hasn't settled that at all ...

Please, allow the Caterist to step forward, replete with sly innuendo and cunning allusions and suggestive, disparaging hints ...

Now at first glance, it might seem that the cunning insinuation connecting electricity supply to Coca-Cola's retreat is missing from the artfully derogatory and denigrating Caterist's opening.

But this is a slow burn, a slow build, before the pond gets to read the wrong result in the wrong envelope out loud ...

Now reading about how the Caterist moans about the size of the public service, around this time it would be usual for the pond to make a joke about the need to sack the Department of Finance public servants who hand over cash in the paw to the Caterists ... 

They still haven't updated their table on recipients of cash in the paw here.

As a result, the pond is in a terrible state of suspense about this year's awards ...

It's long past due ... please, pass the envelope and the winner is ...

Dinkum coal, coal, coal, oi oi oi ...

Yes, that Caterist mention of the coal industry had the pond on alert, and eager to read the final gobbet ...

Now the Caterist is passing cunning here.

There's no direct connection made between Coca-Cola going and  tricky renewable energy ... just associations ... hints and murmurs ...

But it was part of the murmuration of the starlings ...

Of course the pond can believe it.

Liars, ponces, rogues and thieves and Dame Groan ... what else to expect, what else to believe?

And now, just to top things off, the Oz editorialist this day offered another thought or two ...

It is of course also a splendid opportunity to lie and dissemble and distort ...

At last it comes out.

The climate denialist reptiles would like to do a Donald and duck Paris ... talk about timely.

Around this point the pond would usually wrap it up with a climate denialist cartoon, in celebration of the reptile climate denialism ...

Sign that lad up to the Caterist Institute right now. He's got the right stuff ... he just needs a grant before the last public servant switches off the light and shuffles out the door ...

But really, memes being what they are, the pond thought it should acknowledge the valiant attempt by Senator David Fawcett to score a mention in the pond ...

Well played Senator Fawcett ... there's little doubt that you're one of the reasons that South Australia finds itself where it is today ... and since you claim to have been mis-represented, in the usual way, here's what the reptiles said you said ...

After Senator Cash finished, Senator Fawcett made a comment that appeared to be directed at the Labor Party’s questioning of the Government’s policies, when its own policies had led to an increase in arrivals: “I question the ethics of nitpicking when your particular group brought the fleas in the first place.” 
Fellow Liberal Senator Ian MacDonald agreed. “Nicely put,” he said.

Indeed, indeed, nicely put, though the pond would have preferred - for the price of the Godwin's Swear Jar contribution it now has to make - if you'd mentioned lice ...

In which the pond completes its Monday feast by sharing some parrot food with the Major Mitchell ...

The pond has a settled path on a Monday these days ... a dose of Oreo to get a morning sugar hit, never mind the risk of diabetes, and then it's off the Major Mitchell, this day to learn how to tolerate the intolerant.

This is an important lesson to learn, because tolerating the intolerant Oreo is a difficult business at the best of times. And it's just as hard tolerating the intolerant Major Mitchell, ranting away about the digital world and Islamics and Fairfax and the ABC and the Graudian, as only an intolerant bird can manage ...

There's another advantage ... there's no need to learn how to tolerate the intolerant, correction prolifically intolerant, Bolter ...

Oh they'll do Malware down, no doubt about it, but how curious that the Bolter should seek to exempt Trad and blame the book ...

If it's the book that's the problem, then the bible is equally full of instructions on what might happen to disobedient wives ... from turning them into pillars of salt to putting them to death for committing abominations to sending them off to lakes of fire...

And what about this weird giving over?

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.

Things which are not convenient? A little tickling of the toes?

But the pond has strayed away from the Major Mitchell, a fickle, intolerant god, though a very nice bird ...

Thank you Mr Gould, and so to the Major Mitchell ...

M'lud, point of order.

The pond is routinely irritated/outraged/sent into a frenzy by assorted people flaunting religious dress. Whether it's the kippah, especially when ostentatiously exhibited by the likes of Malware without genuine entitlement, or Xians flashing fish symbols on their cars, or Scientologists showing off their arcane silly symbols, or nuns in full drag - oh the nuns, especially the nuns, even if they're a vanishing dream - or priests reduced to wearing a decorous little cross because the full gear is too silly, or Islamics demonstrating their attachment to an imaginary friend, the pond is ready to be riled ...

But in the end, outside secularist France and accepting a libertarian approach to free speech, what to do?

Should the wearing of Nazi symbols be banned, as in Germany? Where would that leave Prince Harry? With a jail record?

If one religious symbol is banned, then all should be banished from the public arena. But that idea isn't going to fly, nor should it.

There's a lot to be said for facial recognition in certain locations. If you expect to cross a border, expect to show your face; if you can't enter a bank wearing a motorcycle helmet, don't expect to go in wearing concealing religious garb; if you're giving evidence in court, it's reasonable to see your face.

Beyond that, what to do? Should Orthodox Jews who refuse to keep the company of women be demonised the way that fundamentalist Islamics are being demonised? 

As for that talk of Anglo-Celtic Australians, it's funny, because the pond can remember the days when anyone with an Irish or Catholic strain in the heritage was routinely mocked and bog Irish jokes were dragged out ...

Ah Paddy, if you be going there, I wouldn't be expecting to start from here.

When did the Celt in Anglo-Celtic male become fashionable, as opposed to potato-laden and inherently dumb?

Naturally it was the colonial militarist in the Major that set him off this time doing one of his ineffable, nonsensical personal surveys ...

Right at this moment, the pond felt a Margaret Thatcher "there is no such thing as society" moment coming on. 

There is no such thing as Twitter's desperate desire to identify with victims. 

Donald Trump is a rampant Twitter user ... there is no evidence in his twittering of a desperate desire to identify with victims. There is no evidence of Milo's desperate desire, or the desperate desire of many other alt right users of the thing ...

It's of a piece with Major Mitchell's thesis that Israel equals bad and Islam equals good. This is the paranoid psychotic simpleton simplistic world of the reptile crusader, which will allow no other category than black and white. There is no room for equivocation, or ambivalence or shades of grey ... there is not even a willingness to acknowledge Netanyahu's status as a wretched right wing leader who has done harm to middle east peace, and in the process to his country, while allowing settlements to sprout like mushrooms ...

Of course up against the inexorable, fanatical obsessed logic of the Major Mitchell - sssh, don't mention the Order of Lenin, it'll set him off again - the balanced hand-wringing of the average cardigan wearer anxious to live and let live simply doesn't stand a chance.

It is the Major's way or the highway, but it does allow the pond some juicy ironies.

We ended the gobbet above with the Major Mitchell reporting an alleged Twitter trend ... "It is all about Twitter's desperate desire to identify with victims."

We can now proceed to the Major Mitchell scribbling "In a stressed and understaffed media world it is easier for Fairfax Media and The Guardian to report Twitter trends than real facts."

Now we must overlook the tautology of "real facts". The last time the pond checked, the status of "unreal facts" was in doubt.

He must be forgiven, because in the Major's world, alternative facts are a real thing, and so real facts must be deemed to be real, in the way that unique must be totally, completely unique ...

And we must also hope that by this time the Major's readers have nodded off, and none can recall the Major's opening gambit ...

"Our schools and universities appear to be turning out some very confused young people, judging by the outrage on Twitter ..."

Say again say what?

"In a stressed and understaffed media world it is easier for Fairfax Media and The Guardian to report Twitter trends than real facts."

Don't believe the hair-brained parrot can't hold two conflicting thoughts in a single piece? Can't believe the Major wrote these lines? 

Don't trust the pond's word on all this... read the Major Mitchell gobbet ...

First please allow the pond to do a little copy fix:

"In the stressed and understaffed media world of the lizard Oz it is easier for the reptile Major Mitchell to parrot Twitter trends than unreal facts."

And then do a few more notations.

Actually there was a huge act of terrorism perpetrated, though they called it a war.

The invasion of Iraq precipitated an astonishing, continuing, still not over period of uncertainty and slaughter. It was conducted by mainly Christian Americans, supported by the reptiles and by Christian Liberals (though not so many other Australian Christians) and for the most cynical reasons, as recently exposed by Fairfax ...

We might also well ask the Major Mitchell to expound on the alternative to a two state solution.

What will the single state look like under Netanyahu? Will the institutionalised apartheid be toughened even further? Will the second class citizens be deprived more and more of their basic rights, land and property?

So what of even-handed fair play in all this, as opposed to the depredation and victimisation of the weak?

Sadly, the reptiles of Oz need a reformation to drag the more conservative adherents of fanatical alt right thinking out of the middle ages, but it's probably a lost cause for the Major Mitchell, who never ever had the grace to apologise for his behaviour in relation to that Order of Lenin ...

The biggest irony in all this?

Week after week, the Major Mitchell keeps railing in intolerant Trumpian way about the enemies of the people, be they the ABC, the Graudian or Fairfax, which really these days is just a real estate operation, with a bit of editorial top dressing to help keep the brand alive ...

Yet somewhere in the bowels of the 'leet Surry Hills bunker some reptile must have realised that if they came for the moderates, some day they might come for the fundamentalists too...

And so came a strident call from the reptile editorialist ...

No doubt the Donald's team immediately stood up and listened and possibly even grew up ... but somehow the pond doubts it.

That would be a bit like asking the Major Mitchell to grow up and show a little tolerance ...

Will anyone talk to the Major Mitchell about his routine lashing out at the enemies of his people? At his refusal to allow that some might have a different view of the world?

Not likely. Deep down, the Major Mitchell is at one with the Donald in blaming Islam, blaming refugees, blaming climate science, blaming the enemies of the people ...

It's blame, blame, blame, and it worked a treat in the 1930s ...

Meanwhile, as the Major Mitchell drifts off into his world of twittering about Twitter, the real business proceeds apace ...

In which the pond gets the week off to a good start with a delicious Oreo-flavoured brew ...

The pond knew it wouldn't be long before the dimmest bulbs in reptile Oz land began glowing at the thought of the onion muncher ...

The news, of course, has sent the reptiles into a tizz ...

Some blame a motley bunch of deplorables ...

The pond hesitates to call the Oreo deplorable. 

That sort of misses the point ... especially when 'barking mad howler at the moon' remains available to evoke the tone of the Oreo's scribbling ...

Now the pond has to admire the Oreo's cunning, which is possibly a bit like a self-criticism session conducted by Maoists ...

First there's the acknowledgment of a few errors and miscalculations ... then comes the righteous assertion, devoid of substance, or examination, that the onion muncher's policy proposals are spot on ... along with the mandatory mention of the back-stabbing of a first-term dropkick and loser ...

Will there be any detailed examination of the mindless nature of the onion muncher's policy proposals?

For this the pond must turn to a new phenomenon - Oreo-flavoured beer ...

If ever there was a better indication of why the United States is on the path to hell, and why Oreos are the ruination of civilisation, the pond can't find it ...

Meanwhile, refreshed with the very thought of a drop so pagan and perverse, the pond must press on ...

And there you go. 

Or there you went, because there's not another word about Abbott's policies and the substance of his insubstantial proposals ... proposals he himself never managed to follow, or showed any signs of wanting to follow ... the most obvious one being the snowball's chance in hell of reforming the Senate by way of referendum.

Instead there's Oreo talk of the latest poll, the thoughts of reptile Hudson, the Pauline terror, bitter pills and draining the swamp, a threat of the Oreo to leave the tent, blather about classical liberal philosophy - as if the Oreo has the faintest claim to be called liberal - and more blather Abbott as "the right man" and "muscular conservatives" ... (clearly the Oreo has never heard of A. E. Van Vogt's "right man syndrome").

It builds to that immortal, quintessential Oreo line: "Abbott is providing the intellectual leadership the Liberal Party needs..."

This is why the Oreo is mandatory reading for the pond, this is why the United States is drinking itself senseless on Oreo-flavoured beer ... the best drop for these Trumpian times ...

Now the pond has already linked to analysis of why the onion muncher's five point plan has its problems, and the poodle himself has barked and marked his territory by pointing out the "say and do" world of the onion muncher ...

But the real indication that Abbott is a lying, dissembling snake in the grass came with his tactical retreat ...

Well there's not much that can be said about that level of hypocrisy, which even for the pond's parade of hypocrites, reptiles and fools, hits 11 on the scale ...

Here's the odds on the real game plan ...

The mutton Dutton as the next leader?

Is it any wonder that the pond turned to the immortal Rowe to summarise the state of play, with more Rowe here ...

He means well?

Take your pick as to what meaning well means: The Shining, Freddy Krueger, or a psychopathic raven tap-tapping, rap-rapping at the window, axe in hand, and muttering "never more, never more"?