In which nattering "Ned" and the dog botherer show how easy Jennifer Lawrence had it in the hunger games ...

As usual, the reptiles have spared no effort and produced a stunning array of weekend reading, at least if the aim is to emerge looking like a stunned mullet, with the glazed eyes suggesting too much time on ice in the shop display case …

But why nattering "Ned" of all people?

Why not just a simple display of sycophantic arse-licking of the forelock-tugging kind beloved by the bromancer ... when he's not scribbling furiously about Soviet-style minimum wages?

Hiding in plain sight? But the speaker in tongues is never in hiding, because each day the bromancer announces his new true love to a hopefully adoring world …(poor old used and abused onion muncher).

If public displays of lust and love nauseate, why not lead with prattling "Polonius"? Why not attend to Dame Slap, raging on, and not just about her great love for the Donald, saviour of democracy?

The answer's simple enough. Aversion therapy. That which does not kill makes the stray reader stronger, and anyone who can make it through a nattering "Ned" piece will emerge knowing they can survive almost anything. They might be scarred, they might even be mentally broken, but in time thoughts of "Ned" will recede, like a nightmare, and there will be peace … if it weren't for the chirping of those bloody cicadas and reptiles in the summer months …

Now for starters, it will be noted that the reptiles honoured "Ned" with a Lobbecke, guaranteeing him cult status, but based on the delusional premise that the illustration should be framed as if for a cell phone … as if anyone under the age of seventy would willingly read "Ned", or even more silly, as if some twenty something young thing would sit on train anxiously devouring every word.

Never mind, that's the last cartoon the stray reader will see. This is a case of cold turkey, doing the hard slog, grinding away, and sure, there'll be much groaning under the weight of the blather, but those who are on the pond's saving plan - whereby words such as "virtue-signalling" and "self-interested elites" are trotted out - are already well on their way to a fortune, because there's a dollar down on every cliché that's abused by the mind-numbing tedious one …

The pond promises a fortune too big to fit into Scrooge McDuck's money bin before it's all over ...

Keep reading this 'leet blatherer, and another use of "elite" will surely produce one more dollar in the pond's saving plan ...

Yep, there's nothing like trust, when the speaking in tongues man and the banking system are trotted out as long suffering victims doing their valiant best … as if that blather about broken trust and self-serving 'leets in the first gobbet had already been forgotten …

And as if the punters had failed to notice that the lizard Oz itself fancies itself as a 'leet institution, appealing to a 'leet audience …

For the "informed Australian?" What wankers, more like nattering "Ned" for the delusional Australian … 

Oh heck, the pond couldn't resist one teeny-weeny graphic …before moving on to talk of democracy in action, and people voting as the mood took them, which in the world of nattering "Ned" gets transformed into a "nightmare" …

Indeed, it's rich, coming from a rag that's part of an oligopolistic corporation that controls a substantial part of the print media, and has its paw prints over other forms, and delivers frequent patronising lectures of the nattering "Ned" kind …

But by now the pond can sense a certain restlessness, a need to press on, to climb the final summit ...

Of course the pond played a trick. There's no such thing as trust, and that gobbet was nowhere near the final summit.

But admit it, there was still pleasure to be found in idle blather about the climate change wars, when the war has largely been conducted by dinkum Oz clean coal loving, oi, oi, oi, Murdochian reptiles, while the rest of Australia tried to retain a modicum of sanity about climate science …

If the speaker of tongues is in a pickle, let's not forget that it's the reptiles who helped put him in the pickle jar...

Yes, yes, everything's for the best, and it would be even better if we could just get rid of Soviet-style minimum wages and allow the gig economy to flourish, so that workers might learn how to survive on five dollars an hour. That way they'd be toughened up enough to make it through an entire nattering "Ned" piece …

And now for the trace of colour the pond always looks for in any reptile's quartz offering. Yep, after all that blather about trust, who does "Ned" turn to?

That arch loon, that astonishing nonentity, John Anderson …a man of such vacuity and mindless posture that even the dullest knife in the drawer resents the comparison …

If the thoughts of John Anderson are proposed as the solution, then there is no known cure ...

And there's the rub. It was reading the reptiles that dangerously radicalised the pond and drove it to blogging. And blather from nattering "Ned" about exposing false nostrums, while the reptiles keep on with their coal-loving climate science denialism and celebrations of the speaker in tongues is what keeps the pond grinding through the thoughts of "Ned" …

Didn't they ever realise that by hitching their wagons to the onion muncher that they destroyed whatever shred of credibility and trust they hoped to retain?

Social inclusion? Income inequality is in great shape? It's still all trickling down? Go tell that to the bankers, facing their moment in the sun, or perhaps on the street …

Well the pond couldn't resist Rowe celebrating the French revolution, with more celebratory Rowe here, but don't imagine it as an act of kindness …because there's more to come.

Eyes open, please ...

When the pond arranges a weekend torture session, it likes to double down, and it's impossible to get more down than the dog botherer ...

Your average passing stray reader will immediately realise this is the mere ranting of a paranoid and get on with a useful life.

Anyone who can talk of the "greatest enemy lying within" is carrying on like the Donald or one of those old-time dictators who spent their careers defining the world as being full of enemies …

You know, "enemies of the people" and the sort of twaddle designed to fuel a complete lack of trust and send the likes of "Ned" out into the field to shout at passing clouds ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, and the pond foreswore the arse-licking, forelock-tugging bromancer for this "you've never had it so good, you're all eating cake" routine from the dog botherer?!

But is it about reassuring the nation? No, it's about doing and saying anything in the hope that comrade Bill doesn't win the next election, the real reptile "nightmare" … (which is how the dog botherer can blithely skip over the nation "narrowly" dodging a recession a decade ago, without mentioning the dreadful man and the shameful policies that allowed for the dodging) …

And now back to the laudatory arse-licking, which passes for commentary in the dog botherer's domain ...

Sheesh, can't the reptiles get their story straight? There was "Ned" assuring the pond that everything was hunky dory, and here's the dog botherer suggesting there's a diminished sense of shared prosperity … which even more shockingly, might also involve a tang of reality …

It'll be hard to dig good news out of that hole, but trust the dog botherer to manage ...

Indeed, indeed, and for what? Everyone who reads the climate science denying reptiles, and especially the dog botherer, knows that all this talk of global warming is just pie in the sky nonsense …

If only the speaker in tongues continues to acknowledge that the dog botherer and the onion muncher were on the right side of history, dinkum clean Oz coal, oi, oi, oi, and Malware, curse his rich battery-laden eastern suburbs lifestyle, was wrong, all will be well. It would be futile to attempt to do anything, and so much better to fiddle, even if parts of Rome suffer the occasional burning ...

Yes, the dog botherer takes an unashamedly rationalist approach to national affairs … like bombing Iraq to civilisation, and democracy, or back to the stone age, it's up to them really. There's rationality for you …

And now, as we've been talking about Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur and fellow traveling with Islamics, at last it's time for another Rowe cartoon … with a little preamble …

...when politicians eventually learned the lesson and suggested that the "war on terror" has failed - in part because smashing states like Iraq and Libya created a vacuum in which extremists could flourish - they are pilloried by true believers who think that the campaign against ISIS can be advanced by a close alliance with Saudi Arabia, the source of the austere brand of fundamentalist Islam that culminates in ISIS. If columnists in The Australian have criticised the Saudis as a factor in the terrorist equation, I must have missed it… (more here).

The pond missed it too, but recently, what the dog botherer has been offering is a dose of ambivalence, as a kind of excuse …

Chris Kenny: This is an absolute outrage but this is a country where 20 people are executed every month for very dubious reasons. Don’t pretend that this one terrible incident has suddenly opened our eyes to Saudi Arabia. (here).

Yep, it's eyes wide shut at the lizard Oz ...

Crickets? Here's some crickets ...

Now there's some mighty fine crickets for the Murdochian Foxes and Dame Slaps in love with the Donald and the Saudis …

And now, here's that Rowe cartoon …

You see, dog botherer, if you cultivate one set of fundamentalists over another set, why you're cultivating the enemy within …

And that's more than enough irony and tedium for any weekend ...