In which dashing Donners saves the pond from the bromancer and mutton Dutton ...

The thing the pond most admires about dashing Donners is the way he's indefatigable, the way he can scribble at inordinate length about the suffering of the Catholics ...

Just looking at that splash, it might seem as if Donners has devised something of a conundrum ... you know, a bit like the Trumpians complaining about Hillary doing it with the Ruskis, and being shocked and saying how dreadful that terrible woman is, and then admitting they did it too, but that's a never no mind, because where's the harm ...

You see, if getting additional money will do nothing to raise education standards, why should the Catholics whinge and moan about missing out and being financially penalised? Why not just make do like a good little Mother Hubbard ...

She went to the tailor's 
To buy him a coat; 
But when she came back 
He was riding a goat. 
She went to the cobbler's 
To buy him some shoes; 
But when she came back 
He was reading the news. 
She went to the seamstress 
To buy him some linen; 
But when she came back 
The dog was spinning. 
She went to the hosier's 
To buy him some hose; 
But when she came back 
He was dressed in his clothes. 
The dame made a curtsey, 
The dog made a bow; 
The dame said, "Your servant," 
The dog said, "Bow-wow." (in full here)

You see? 

She went to the government

To get the tykes a grant

But when she came back

The tykes were spinning

The coeliac dame made a curtsey

The tykes said gluten wafers

The dame said 'your servant'

The tykes woofed the wafers ...

Or some such thing. Some days the pond just goes a little mad ... but the message seems clear enough.

Make do with what you've got, show off your superior excellent educational standards, produced on the smell of an oily rag, teach 'em all a lesson, become insufferably righteous, and in due course, bark "bow-wow" ... instead of rabbiting on endlessly about how unfair it all is ...

No doubt dashing Donners will cogitate on this at great length ...

That's it? That's all he wrote? Did the reptiles pay full quid for this measly offering?

What's this? Was someone else singing from the same song sheet back in May? Whoever might it be? 

Why it's dashing Donners, doing it for the Fairfaxians ...

                   

Now the pond is outraged by all this. Not by the contents of the guff - the pond has been there and done that a zillion times already with dashing Donners, stuck somewhere back in the 1950s for his educational model ...

Here ... but why stop there, why not go in search of proper education models?

Here ... because1900 feels just about right as we return to the moaning Donners ...

Indeed, indeed, the last thing we need is computers in schools, or children with any kind of computer-literacy. That's what we've got the Indians and the Russians for ...

No, the reason why the pond is outraged is the Donners' word count for the Fairfaxians. 

So short for the reptiles, yet so prolix for the Fairfaxians when it comes to ravaging the progressives, when really, in the pond's experience, all a child needed to get learning was a quick stropping from a nun (a ruler or a slap would do if there was a stropping shortage) ...

Yes, it's the usual Milton Friedman, market-driven guff currently fucking up America ... so that in addition to boasting that they have the worst health system in what Donners perhaps quaintly knows as the western world, they also have one of the worst education systems ... but at least it's lead to some comical situations and discussions, as in Politico's The Short, Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise ...

There has been a lot of this kind of reckoning over the past half-decade. From crisis came a desire for disruption. From disruption came, well, too much disruption. And from that came a full-circle return to professional politicians. Including one—a beloved mayor and respected bureaucrat who was short-listed to replace James Comey as FBI director—who is so persuasive he has gotten Colorado Springs residents to do something the outside world assumed they were not capable of: Five years after its moment in the spotlight, revenue is so high that the same voters who refused to keep the lights on have overwhelmingly approved ballot measures allowing the city to not only keep some of its extra tax money, but impose new taxes as well. 
In the process, many residents of Colorado Springs, but especially the men and women most committed to making the city thrive, have learned a few other lessons. That perpetual chaos can be exhausting. That the value of the status quo rises with the budget’s bottom line. And that it helps when the people responsible for running the city are actually talking with one another. All it took was a few years running an experiment that everyone involved seems happy is over.

Never mind,  there are always lessons to be learned ... and there's a lesson here for the reptiles of Oz...

See how you've been dudded, feel the width and length of Donners doing it for the Fairfaxians, and look what dashing Donners served up to you, a few paltry words, a reheated hash, a stale stew... so paltry, and without a hint of poetry ...

The words the happy say
Are paltry melody
But those the silent feel
Are beautiful ...

Well after a diet of Donners, the pond felt like changing the Dickinson mood ...

Is there any upside to all this?

At least dashing Donners allowed the pond to avoid the bromancer making the obvious point about amateur hour in the federal government, with jellyback Malware tugging the forelock yet again to the mutton Dutton.

How supine can a man without spine go in search of meaningless policies which do nothing to make the country safer, but which do pander to the mutton's aggrandising delusional lust for power?

Yes he did it to appease the hard right, and in the usual way, even the bromancer knew it was a grandiose Napoleonic, or demonic folly ...

And in turn that allows the pond to do a quick pivot to the latest Rowe, with more Rowe to hand for pivoters in search of a comical segue here ...