In which the pond hears the caws for coal, and then listens to the cawing of the reptiles ...

The reptiles have astonishing cheek - gall if you will - and it was on view in the advertising plastered over the reptile editorial this day ...

Lurking below the facts that aren't alternative were some decidedly alternative facts, including the Donald, a chant of 'dinkum Oz coal, coal, coal for the world', a cry with steel-capped boots of 'oi, oi, oi', and so on and so forth ...

From homophobia to climate denialism, in a clean coal leap and a single bound.

Well the reptiles might talk of realism, but between the Donald and your average scientist, climate or otherwise, it seems the reptiles subscribe to the Donald ...

Yes, there's realism at its finest, and there's plenty more at Every Insane Thing Donald Trump Has Said About Global Warming ...

Realism? Well if sociopathic insanity is just an expressionist form of worldly awareness ... which explains why the pond prefers your average scientific realist following the scientific method to the reptiles blathering on about "realism" ...

But enough of caring about the planet, because the reptiles were also hot to trot about the state of Malware, and there was some feuding in the ranks ...

The always 'glass half full' bouffant one was keen to discover the magic flashing in the pan ...

Unfortunately - or fortunately, as the case may be - this meant the bouffant one turned in a very short piece ...

Now why on earth would anyone doubt employers putting their hands in their pockets and cutting profits?

Isn't that why the generous Malware himself barely scraped a living, and managed to acquire a very humble abode, so keen was he to give it all back to the workers?

Or some such nonsense. As for the dubious reptile, the Crowe seemed to be cawing from a different part of the script ...

Ah, it's all the onion muncher's fault ... and what a cry, a Ginsbergian howl of pain, followed ...

It's all too late, the sky is falling in, and the chance of a coal-led recovery, oi, oi, oi, drifts away with the tide and endless talk about 18C...

And yet, who encouraged that particular folly?

Never mind, there's just time for a little more cawing of doom ...

Now the pond was a little startled at this distilled essence of suffering. Abbott's being blamed for 18C, when it's the pandering to reptile insanity that caused the fuss, and even led Barners to wonder what the fuss was about?

SSM, which could have been sorted, but for the homophobic reptiles stirring the angry Xians into a crusade?

China, when the reptiles have noted with truculence that the Chinese legal system is a bit suss?

And so on and on ... with the reptiles leading the way on almost every own-goal issue ...

But the pond won't hear of despair and talk of defeat.

Surely the way forward is clear. 

We need a coal-led recovery, and an abolition of 18C, so that insolent gays might be given a sound verbal thrashing, and the crusade might be won, and penalty rates stripped because everyone on them lives in rich households, and any wayward miscreants can be shipped to China which has the right sort of legal system to deal with them ... 

And then with everything restored to normalcy, and a ship-shape 1950s world view restored to lively health behind the picket fence, we can march forward with certainty, at least until the weekend edition of the Oz, and the next sighting of realistic Donald thinking  and a readership business model for the ages... 

Oh, and thanks to Pope, there's one other thing that would help, with more helpful papal insights here ...