In which the pond catches up with fallen Xian warrior crusader Cory ...

It being a lazy Sunday, the pond thought it should take the chance, pace the Devine, to catch up with Cory ...

Cory at one point was the pond's great white croweater hope, and he strutted in the banner like a proud cockerel, and he looked a goer as the onion muncher stumbled and fell ...

But then hubris took over, and he went out on his own, and the reaction to that Lucy tweet suggested a little hostility to his current circumstances ...

That's beyond cruel. 4% in Bennelong, some train?

How can people be so unkind, easy to be cruel.

And yet in her own way Lucy has just twisted the knife. It was way back when that Cory refused to wait and rushed ahead with his merger with Family First, and she headed off to independent status, and Albo cruelly joked here ...

"It's a pretty remarkable effort when you have Family First with one senator, Cory Bernardi, pretending he has a party but with one senator, and the two amalgamate and 1 + 1 = 1," Mr Albanese said.

That's Cory maths ...

And now she's gone to the Libs, but even back in October 2017, she was disavowing the Lyles and Devines of this world, with the lizard Oz profile of her quoting her as saying she was no Christian warrior (requires googling):

Actually it can be pretty difficult and tricky to be sad and lonely and gay in nursing homes, but as Lucy raised the issue of financial literacy, that reminded the pond of Cory's outing yesterday for the reptiles.

Yes, the lizard Oz has stayed loyal, and still gives Cory space to pursue his agenda ...

It sounded impossibly quaint, and for a minute the pond almost felt like passing it by. 

It was also impossibly sad, a bit like seeing a fighter reduced to fake wrestling, as in the feature version of Requiem for a Heavyweight ... wherein a young Ali sends poor old Anthony Quinn to the canvas.

You see, these days conservatives have spun on a dime, and tax cuts for companies and the filthy rich are all the go, and never mind the impact on the bottom line ... and if there's cutting to be done, why the poor can undergo another flensing, and who will care?

See how the lizard Oz has been parroting the line ever since the Donald introduced his cuts ...

And so on and so forth, and up against that momentum, Cory sounds like a tired old hack, an ancient Jeremiah who's missed the wave ...

$684 billion?

That's chicken shit ... now if the talk was of $1.5 trillion, that would at least be in the ball park.

The pond despairs. Perhaps Cory would understand more with the help of cartoons. You see the rhetoric has gone from this ...

... to this ...

Nowadays conservatives love enormous tax cuts for the rich and for companies, and never mind the poor or the burgeoning debt ... remember, it's a middle class cut ...

Poor Cory, abandoned by Lucy and wandering in the wilderness, seems to be stuck with the rhetoric of times long past, an ancient rocket turned stick in the mud ...

A private member's bill? That's got about as much chance as a 4% freight train in Bennelong ...

Sadly, it looks as if one challenger to the onion muncher's record stay at the top of the pond's banner has dropped off the twig ...

What to do with a demagogue reactionary bigoted populist who isn't that popular?

Way back when, Cory was in touch with the zeitgeist ...

Now he's sounding like some rectitudinous, uptight, piously self-righteous old school banker. 

Where's the harm with a few bankruptcies? Look what it did for the Donald ...

Tax cuts now, live fast, explode and die young ...

Please, Cory, if you want to get back to the top and kick the onion muncher into oblivion, let the talk be of a trillion dollar tax cut for the filthy rich, and to hell with all this jibber jabber about debt.

Oh wait, Malware's already cornered that game.

Never mind, there's always an alternative career path for ancient mariners, so start booking spots on the pavement outside weddings now, and as all roads lead to Rome, here's an admiring Rowe cartoon of the new hero of the reptiles of Oz, with more Rowe here ...