In which the pond does its level best to focus on the Caterists, despite many distractions ...

The reptiles were in top form and the conjunction of Safe Schools and the wacky mutton Dutton talking of wacky causes was almost too rich for the pond to resist.

The pond deeply appreciated the reptile quandary and commiserated with them. 

How could the reptiles and Miranda the Devine and the like demonise safe schools if it didn't know where to find them?

Too unfair, sad, and thank the long absent lord that Rebecca Urban was on hand to report on the latest brave deeds of the bigoted fundamentalist Catholic Labor!! MLC Greg Donnelly ...

Naturally the Catholic Boys' Daily editorialist was on hand to applaud the work of this variety of Donners and bemoan the way the reptiles had been deprived of easy targets ...

The pond confesses it snuck a look at the tree killer edition of the lizard Oz today - in honour of the Major Mitchell, and wanting to turn from uneducated blog into educated consumer of kool aid wisdom and insight.

Naturally the pond took the squint for free, thanks to the pond's vehicular servicer.

The mechanics also had the Terror, but that only takes a minute, on a good day, and a nanosecond this day - with Caroline Marcus blathering about Larry Pickering and Ross Cameron's freedom of speech and 18C and we must defend Larry's right to make jokes about throwing gays off buildings ...

... the true test for those defending free speech is to do so even when we find it repulsive. 
Other than incitement to violence (indefensible and rightly illegal), we should not try to shut it down but rather discuss why it is wrong.

It seems throwing gays off tall buildings isn't an incitement to violence, so it seems that a pond joke about someone cutting out the dumb bitch's tongue is merely a conversational gambit and a witticism worthy of Alexander Pope ...

There was also a heap of Mark Latham doing his usual Trumpist blather, but the pond could only take a little before the IQ began to flee out the door, and the car still wasn't ready ...

Meanwhile, the reptiles were in a state of wild-eyed excitement about coal, coal, coal, oi, oi, oi, for the world, and the coiffed one, in a frenzy of cleverness, trotted out a nice Trumpism ...

Naturally the reptile editorialist was on top of that one too ...

Of course when you murmuration of reptiles like this, the dumbest birds in the flock are sure to join the whirling in the sky ...

Note well, how with infinite capacity for stupidity, the Caterist manages to wangle a reference to gays and TG folk into his celebration of coal, coal, coal ... (What? Climate science? Never heard of it) .

It takes particular skill, and it makes the pond insight that the Caterists routinely have their heads stuck up their arses seem supremely relevant ...

Damn you gays, and don't you go worrying about the world in twenty years time, dinkum Aussie coal will see everything is ship shape ...

Note well how the glibness of the Caterist trots off the tongue so lightly - it sounds so simple.

Reopen and retrofit existing coal-fired stations will do wonders for Hazelwood power station ... and just around the corner there's even better coal power stations ... high efficiency, low emissions, and expensive as hell, but don't you worry your heads about that ...

There's another Caterist note that struck the pond as particularly astute. 

"We should be cautious about calling for subsidies."

As every Caterist knows, subsidies are certainly not needed ...

What's needed are grants! Or as we used to say in the old days, non-recourse loans, in the way of meaningless bureaucratic gibberish up there with a Caroline Marcus or a Mark Latham ...

That's a guaranteed way to avoid the complicated idiocy that lurks in the lizard Oz's tangled market of ideas ...

Meanwhile, as Liberals patiently explain how One Nation has become a policy dynamo, and maybe Malcolm Roberts has got some great ideas about climate science and we can all get by on a 2% tax regime, Pope chimed in with a tidy little cartoon featuring this crock of crap ... (and more Pope here ...)

The infallible Pope tipped his lid to the immortal Row and the pond feels it's worth remembering that original inspiration ...

That's what happens when a man sells his soul for power, and the Peterloo sword gets rusted into the scabbard...

Catch Fame is the Spur here ... it's only the Boulting Brothers, but it has a screenplay by the rarely remembered Nigel Balchin ...

And speaking of that, as the pond retired to discuss how to deal with North Korea at a well-heeled restaurant (how else to maximise privacy?), the memes started to flow, thanks to a certain Miller's grinding away at the usual nonsense about electoral fraud ...

By golly, the Godwin's Law swear jar is bulging, but it's worth every penny ...

And one meme naturally leads to another, as Pierre Trudeau showed all the spine expected of someone accustomed to being supine ... as this ...

... became that ...

Oh yes ...