In which the scales fall from the pond's eyes ...

Thanks to the rigours of the newly enforced paywall, the scales have fallen from the pond's eyes.

What a wealth of reporting there is outside the herpetarium. 

How strange that the reptiles took ages to realise that the Graudian and Channel 4 and others had discovered all sorts of Analytica awesomeness and had taken to asking Is it time we all deleted our accounts?

If only the pond could, but the pond has never Facebooked. For a start, it has an objection to turning nouns into verbs, and then uploading all that personal data on to the web? Talk about an uninviting cult, as unattractive as the zombies stumbling around in the glow of their screen light ...

You'd think the reptiles would be all over it, seeing as how they've raged for years about the dangers of social media.

There's just one fly in the reptile ointment. The latest scandal also reveals another level of the deep corruption surrounding the Donald and his assorted campaigns, and adds to the links to Russia …

So what did the reptiles have at the top of the digital page this morning?

Silly old Dame Slap, still back in the ice ages bashing crooked Hillary and going into raptures about Nikki Haley … and even worse, talking about the UN … while the real high comedy is the Donald congratulating Vlad the impaler on winning a sham election …

It's slowly dawning on the pond that spending endless hours gazing at the reptiles is perhaps worse than Onan's crime … even if Dame Slap is blessed with the Lobbecke of the day ...

Now it's not for the pond to criticise the masterly Lobbecke, but surely today's effort is disappointing. 

Couldn't the UN logo have been twisted into a sinister spider's web? How about a monstrous maze? What about a beehive of devious deception?

It's as cheeky and as impudent as telling Rembrandt he could do better, but surely the master cartoonist could do better at evoking the reptile mind set of paranoia, fear and loathing.

As for the rest, whenever Dame Slap mentions the UN, the pond always reverts to the Dame's previous warning, and wonders whatever happened to it….

Eight years on, and it's all forgotten, and these days the Dame is still for the Donald, but even more for Nikki, and she's possibly still getting out her MAGA cap and fondling it and remembering the glory days, and perhaps even wearing it at night …

Oh and she's still carrying on about the UN, and a new set of crimes, but none of this appealed to the pond as much as the Dame's love of what might be called "the disappeared."

You know, as soon as someone fell out with the likes of a Stalin or a Hitler or a Mao, and were sent off for re-education or worse, their portraits always "disappeared".  Portraits went away, files were removed, names were never mentioned ...

The Dame loves the notion of disappearing portraits ...

Yes, yes, and Jared Kushner is sure to bring peace to the middle east by Xmas and teach the UN a lesson and all's well with the paperwork, and the the UN is using climate science to introduce world government by Xmas 2009, but what about all the fun surrounding the Donald right at the minute?

You won't find any of this coming from the Dame, you'll have to head off elsewhere …

And what's the Dame got to offer?

Well if you love hucksterism and boosterism and shameless hustling, and snake oil selling, she's got a new name for you.

It seems the Dame has fallen off the Donald's bandwagon and has a new contender … hmm, is the Donald's portrait safe, or did the pond see it wobble a little?

Here's the pond's agony.

Is it really worth sitting through all the Dame's comedy stylings to arrive at her best line:

One term of the Trump, the disrupter, may be enough to convince Republicans that they need to get better connected with American voters and the country's changing demographics …

By golly, that cap is wobbling too ...

So what does the Dame think of the Donald now? What's the Dame's view on all that's going down?

Kicking the Clinton can down the road, and heiling Haley is the best the reptiles and the Dame have got?

Bring on a tighter paywall, bring it on now …lock the reptiles up, lock the Dame up.

Luckily however the Pope has returned to issue an encyclical which takes up another cause dear to the Dame's heart, with more endearing Pope here …