In which the pond shares moments with Polonius and the bromancer before they're lost in time ...

One of the tragedies of the pond is the lost moments ... so many moments that disappear like tears in the rain ...

Just yesterday the oscillating fan did his best to keep the onion muncher front and centre ...

... and then today, a minor war criminal turned world's leading climate scientist and state of the art national economist strutted his stuff in the lizard Oz ...

Perhaps the pond should decide if it needs an infinity of onion munching climate science denialism, but truth to tell, the pond sometimes reaches a surfeit and feels like it's bound on a wheel of fire, that its mine own tears do scald like molten lead.

At moments like that, the pond turns for comfort and reassurance to prattling Polonius ...

And there you go ... the pond was immediately distracted before even getting down with the prattler.

'Bully pulpit' has its own wiki listing here for Greg hunters ...

Roosevelt used the word bully as an adjective meaning "superb" or "wonderful", a more common usage at that time.

And a little more at Merriam-Webster here ...

Bully pulpit comes from the 26th U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt, who observed that the White House was a bully pulpit. For Roosevelt, bully was an adjective meaning "excellent" or "first-rate"—not the noun bully ("a blustering, browbeating person") that's so common today. Roosevelt understood the modern presidency's power of persuasion and recognized that it gave the incumbent the opportunity to exhort, instruct, or inspire. He took full advantage of his bully pulpit, speaking out about the danger of monopolies, the nation's growing role as a world power, and other issues important to him. Since the 1970s, bully pulpit has been used as a term for an office—especially a political office—that provides one with the opportunity to share one's views.

How would Polonius use the term? As always, the pond was compelled ...

Oh it's a classic Polonial troll, but surely that compare and contrast with Fox News' MediaBuzz is the trolliest troll of all ...

Of course the troll came out from under his bridge because at last, after many weeks missing in action, Media Watch dared to look at News Corp and a few of its many inanities, one of which included a front page apology which stayed up for days in the hope of evading legal action and a hefty settlement.

Naturally Polonius was most agitated that this singular failure should be mentioned ... nothing to see there, let's all move along ...

Now the pond is aware that Polonius is obsessed by any child molestation which involves anyone who had contact with or was at the ABC, however fleeting (Stephens might just as well have been identified as a prominent member of the AWG - his award for outstanding service and dedication is here - while he became a non-person google cache person at the ANU here), provided that this distracts from the Catholic church and its rampant paedophilia, but the notion that Kurtz would have been on the case in a fair and balanced Foxian way inevitably led the pond to An absurd claim from Fox News's Howard Kurtz ...

And that led the pond to thinking about the way that The Insiders never had any conservative commentators on, Polonius certainly not being conservative in any way, but rather a member of a popular comedy duo up there with Laurel and Hardy ...

But why would anyone want this odd couple back on the telly?

Of course, for the comedy ...and there they were last weekend, bickering away, still online here, and the pond wondering which one in the comedy team was Jack Lemmon and which one was Walter Matthau ...

But enough of prissy grouches - it seems we can all be both Lemmon and Matthau - because the pond is desperate to cram in as many tear-stained moments as it can, and this day the bromancer was also out and about ...

One of the more onerous, difficult, tricky duties of the bromancer and other reptiles is to normalise the Donald and his wacky administration ...

You see how easy it is for the bromancer?

While others have anxiety attacks and worry about the Donald's mental stability and competence, the bromancer merely looks at the tealeaves and deduces a much more traditional US president than anyone might have expected.

Once the thesis is out there in the public domain, any contrary stories, such as the WaPo's At G-20, world aligns against Trump policies ranging from free trade to climate change ... simply have no grasp of tradition, or at least Foxian Murdochian tradition ...

These alternate reality stories might be a dime a dozen, and can be found in abundance at sites like the international version of Der Spiegel, whether on climate here, or as low farce here ... along with some great comedy snaps ...

... but they simply don't show the much more traditional US president the bromancer has single-handedly discovered, and faced with this sort of idle chatter, the bromancer shows exceptional skill celebrating the way a pig's ear most certainly looks like a silk purse ...

Now once a writer sets up talk of six roads, or five years of planning, or killing seven flies at one blow, there's no way of stopping the normalisation routine (indeed, it worked a treat in Stalinist Russia with Lysenkoism sold as traditional genetics as usual):

Ah yes, the pond almost forgot that everything was the fault of that Kenyan Muslim socialist commie pervert, but sssh, please, no mention of Israel or their valiant attempts to give South Africa a nuclear future ...because there's much more normalisation work to be done ...

At this moment it seems best to squeeze in a Moir cartoon or two to help with the normalisation process, while noting Moir has prints for sale here ...

And now back to more arduous Xian normalisation ...

And there you have it in a nutshell. Barking mad, and without a clue that transcendent belief has done absolutely nothing to stop the pursuit of power as the highest human purpose in the Vatican (or in any other form of religion that might be named).

The pond has been assured by many who have seen the games played in the Vatican up close that they play it tougher than most tribes around the world ... though when you see the pursuit of power by evangelical Xians in the United States, you have to wonder if these days the Vatican is what it used to be ...

Never mind, there's just one last gobbet to go ...

Western governments are no longer able to ask for any sacrifices? So why have the poor fuckers been funding useless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the like for the last twenty years or so ...?

Not to worry, the pond was pleased at the way that - given Christianity is basic to Western cultural and political identity - the bromancer should wrap proceedings up with a decently Christian philosophical line ...

Um, that'd be Lao Tzu, or Laozi or Lao-Tze or Lao-Tsu, Warring States period, 4th or 4th century BCE ... Greg hunt here for more ...

And tomorrow it will be fish and chips wrapping, or digital bites lost in the ether, or tears lost in the rain ...

Oh heck, the pond can't leave the tears there. At least there can be dancing in the dark while the teardrops fall, as the pond sings out to Polonius and the bromancer...