In which the pond settles for team dog botherer ...

Et tu reptiles?

...contradicting the Trump team playing down humans' role?

What happened to the reptile team playing down humans' role? 

Can they be so quickly and easily discarded? 

Can it all be dumped at the door of the Trump team, and the likes of Moorice and the Lomborgians abandoned on the doorstep like orphans in the impending storm?

Would it were so easy reptiles ... but your role, your vital contribution, like that of the Trump team, will long be remembered and treasured by those who were there to see it ...

But enough of the easy free kicks, because as usual the pond was confronted by some agonising choices. 

Should it go with Dame Slap, freely confessing to her horrid treatment of her children by staying a reptile columnist through the vital early years of childhood?

Or is that just another example of the confused Dame Slap dumping her confusion on others?

And what of nattering "Ned" blathering on in his interminable way, wringing his hands and doing a Chicken Little at the impending arrival of the socialists?

The pond can only dream of a matching headline: "Onion muncher aims for a minimal amount of trouble."

Of course it would all have been easier if the reptiles had simply put up prattling Polonius early enough... but in these troubled and confused times of reptile mayhem, Polonius was nowhere to be found ...

Oh sure he'd done his evil Mr Hyde routine about the meejia yesterday in the lizard Oz, rushing about, muttering and knocking people to the ground with his cane, but the pond prefers its history lessons from Polonius in his Dr Jekyll persona. Sober dull pedantry that's wrong is always more fun than the snide, snappy dark side that makes your average lemon seem all sweetness and light ...

There was nothing for it but to go the dog botherer ...

Now as soon as anyone says "pivot" the pond always thinks of poor Silicon Valley sitcoms, and even worse that google splash cut off the point of the pivot, which is, according to the dog botherer, "by pivoting to the sensible right."

The pond has won many a bet by asserting that at some point in a dog botherer column - minor war criminal that he is, with a hand deep in the Iraq folly - he will say something stupid. It won't be just your average bit of silliness, it will be monumentally silly ...

The pond is inclined to argue that there's no point reading any further to collect the bet  ...

... because "by pivoting to the sensible right" is as insensibly a silly thing as the dog botherer might scribble, but hey nonny no, on we go ...

Now it's pleasing to see the dog botherer talk of the lizard Oz as the home of gotcha journalism - how they tried to gotcha Josh - and partisan sniping, but on the evidence thus far, a pivot to the sensible right seems to involve pre-empting Comrade Bill by doing a sensible pivot to an independent expert ... yes, Minister, it's time for an independent inquiry ...

Does that mean being in the sensible right involves doing a Comrade Bill impersonation?

And so to the next gobbet ...

Once again the pond feels the need to give credit where credit is actually due. 

If anyone thinks that the postal survey will deliver smooth legislative waters before Xmas, they've forgotten the ugly malevolent hostility that exudes, like the smell of bitter almonds, from the sensible right ...

The reptiles are already well advanced down the track of making religious freedom a major issue, in a bold attempt to obfuscate, delay and dissemble any impending legislation, should the postal survey deliver the goods.

How bizarre does it get? Well recently the reptiles were peddling this headline ...

Hmm, the pond might well return to that one a little further down the track. By golly, if the reptiles manage to catch that bus ...

Meanwhile, the poor old oscillating fan was having a meltdown about it this day ...

Well yes, but that's where being a member of the insensible, hostile, ugly right will get you ... the company of Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, and let's not forget, in the matter of homosexuality, bosom buddies with Daesh ...

But thus far, the dog botherer hasn't mentioned climate science, and the pond is starting to get worried he won't say something truly stupid ... the bet still hangs in the balance ...

There you go, and the pond will shortly be off to collect its modest winnings ...

Turnbull, too, decided to scale back rather than abandon the National Broadband Network ...

Yes, abandon the NBN, that would have been a wondrous policy thrust, up there with Malware falling in to line with the dog botherer and pretending that all that stuff and nonsense about climate science was just some form of religious delusion ...

Having totally fucked it up, what better way to sort it out than to drop it like a hot potato and skulk into the night?

Well it worked for Iraq, no doubt about it, so the dog botherer's probably just following his proven track record of policy initiatives ...

It also turns out that being involved in the sensible right means voting for the likes of Pauline or Cory ... because you know, incrementalism is never enough for your average rabid dog-bothering ratbag of the hard insensible right kind ...

And now, since the pond cut the oscillating fan off in full rhetorical flight as he was savaging the dog botherer, the onion muncher and all the rest of them, perhaps the pond should let him have his head ...

The funny thing? There's the oscillating fan, shouting at reactionary dinosaurs, when arguably that's almost the entirety of the lizard Oz's staff ...

All that talk of gender equality when Dame Slap's explaining how women should stay home, and badgering the reactionary dog botherer about pluralism and diversity when the dog botherer thinks sensible folk should be turning to the sensible Cory ...

It makes it all the funnier that for some peculiar reason the dog botherer imagines he's not a reactionary simply because he reluctantly and with infinite regret suggested that it might be okay to vote for SSM...

With this sort of civil war going on between the insensible right and the rest of the world, there's actually very little for the pond to do ...

And Comrade Bill must be rubbing his hands with glee... by golly the pond can see the pre-Xmas headline now:

Malware abandons the NBN 

It was all a terrible mistake, Malcolm Turnbull said today, and following advice from our independent policy advisor, we've decided to abandon the whole sorry turkey of a thing ... it's fucked, there's no point trying to fix it, and I'd just like to thank the dog botherer for his sensible right advice ... we can now all return to using DVDs and where's the harm in that.

Is it any wonder with this sort of carry-on, the sensible right has given the world the Donald?

And so to a few sensible cartoons of the Donald kind ...