In which the pond enjoys an irony breakfast thanks to the Major Mitchell...

The pond thought that the budget carry-on was done and dusted. Foolish pond ... always underestimating the staying power of the reptiles of Oz. 

What's the point of being fanatical without a daily display of fanaticism? Or at least, after deploring the budget as poll-driven, then assess the budget on the verdict of the polls ...

The reptiles were keen to celebrate the budget's failure, with petulant Peta at the head of the pack. Having done the job for the Murdochian tabloids, it was time to don broadsheet garb and repeat the dose...

Oops better not the Crowe commenting on the Crowe story ...

Sadly, the pond has done its petulant Peta time this week ... after all, when it's boiled down the message is a simple one, a bit like that Samantha Bee joke, there'll never come a time when I'll say I wish George W. Bush was president. 

All petulant Peta is saying is the onion muncher was tops, is tops, could be tops again, and I should still be running the country in the splendid way I ran it before, ably assisted by the onion muncher ...

Naturally in these grave times, the pond looks for leadership, or at least the thoughts of the Major Mitchell, and he too is concerned about the budget ... and the role the reptile commentariat is playing ...

The pond knew that there would be multiple ironies afoot. No need here to eat a meal consisting of a quarter of sugar - one spoonful in four is like raiding the sugar jar - is there a Caterist in the house? - to get a little iron ...

Four health stars? Tell that to a sceptical kiwi ...

So easy to get distracted from the reptile news of the day, but here we go in the quest for a healthy diet of irony ...

Petulant Peta? She's been crying a river the entire week.

Somehow we're supposed to forget all that talk of emergencies and crises and disaster and what not ...

Suddenly it's a new Punch and Judy show ...

Actually the pond is something of a budget and debt crisis, and is running out of budget-related cartoons...

Fortunately the sight of the Major Mitchell shedding crocodile tears - birds are closely related to reptiles - is something of a cartoon itself.

At the same time that the reptiles are still in full, furious, neo-con cry about the budget ... look over there, it's little Timmie Bleagh  at the Terror, upping the ante from the weekend cry of the dog botherer, 'won't someone think of the grandchildren', to a full Helen Lovejoy cry of "won't someone think of the children..."

Who knew little Timmie suffered from Helen Love syndrome?

"Think of the children" (also "What about the children?") is a cliché that evolved into a rhetorical tactic.

At the same time as all this keeps whirling around, and the reptiles inspect the runes, the chicken entrails and the polls, the creator of all the rabid ratbaggery at the lizard Oz is now worried about the direction his monster is heading in ...

Oh it's rich, it's so rich. Here in his dotage and his irrelevance, the Major Mitchell is suddenly worried about the monster he created, a monster apparently as rabid and as useless ass the Victorian Socialist Left ...

Good times and an explanation of the cartoon here...

And here was the pond thinking ...

But it gets even better than the Major Mitchell deploring his colleagues and his fellow commentarians as barking mad fundamentalists down there with the socialist left ...

The rogue and charlatan has to resort to "If..." for his salvation ...

See how he trots out the "if"...

He's left to wonder?

The man who helped set up the whole rabid fundamentalist right wing howling at the moon lizard Oz?

The man who was fundamental in its climate science denialism and economic irrationalism and the punishing of the poor so that the rich might enjoy their dividends?

And somebody dares to suggest the pond would be better off with Kellogg's sugar and salt infested products in order to score a little irony for breakfast?

Well by this time in the game, the pond's visual resources had plunged into a debt and irony crisis, so in the quest for visual distraction, the pond finally had to turn to First Dog, the full cartoon available here.  

The Dog makes the obvious point ... as anyone with contacts in Canberra or federal parliament house will know, drug use is rife, with cocaine the preferred way to speed through budget papers (what happened to good old innocent speed as used before the ice years, the pond wants to know).

Fast talk and glittering eye is just reckoned to be someone fully wired and up to speed on the job ...

The stench of hypocrisy is as high as the average weed smoker, but at least the government can argue that it knows what the druggies out there get up to ... it's the very same thing that the diligent government workers do when using a little of the necessary to crack the long hours, and then to party hard into the wee hours after the long hours are done ...