In which the pond does a Thursday meditation with the savvy Savva and the bromancer ...

What a relief. For a moment there, the pond thought the savvy Savva had ducked off to write a brooding book about the persecution and assassination of Malware, as performed by the inmates of the Asylum of Capital Hill, under the direction of the Marquis de ScoMo …

The pond always enjoys a Thursday meditation with the savvy Savva, and what a tease that header was, with its oxymoronic linking of ScoMo and thinking. Since when has thinking got anything to do with hard selling?

Indeed, indeed, there is a special responsibility on religious leaders to protect not just their communities, but the community at large, and to ensure that dangerous teachings and foolish ideologies do not take root here …

Talk about an irony fest, and there's heaps more irony to be found here at IA with active links … but now the pond must return to the savvy Savva ...

Actually, there's a small theological problem at work here. You see, in the end, if Sco's brand has its way, the Islamics are all off to hell, or if the Islamic brand has its way, ScoMo's mob are off to hell, and sadly the pond can't have its way because it can't figure out where the hell hell is …

Gee, it seems like it's IA day at the pond, with more hellfire good fun here … and now back to the savvy Savva ...

Um, is there any possible reason ScoMo might be a tad tone deaf when it comes to Islam, Islamic leaders and the Islamic community, and the question of the Palestinians and such like?

Frankly the pond struggles to understand why, given the wondrous beliefs outlined in the piece linked to above …

Sorry, Islamics, it's off to hell with you, while the pond must keep searching for where the hell hell is, and in the interim head back to a final gobbet with the savvy Savva ...

Hmm, maybe that cartoon was a little too small ...

Type in those links if you want more David cartoons, but speaking of hellfire, the pond was intrigued to see that the bromancer also seemed to be having second thoughts …

The pond knew at once where this was heading …

… but decided to go there anyway, because the bromancer was certain to come up with a half-arsed, half-baked compromise that wouldn't satisfy anyone or solve anything … and sure enough, look at the real headline, and never no mind the attempt to give the bromancer cult status with a Lobbecke, when by Lobbecke's grand standards, the illustration is just a murky pile of poo designed to please the sheep gazing at it on a cell phone …instead of noticing that the pond is bearing down on them in a large chunk of metal ...

Now for anyone wondering why the pond maintains its loyalty to the onion muncher, be reassured that Abbott was right, Abbott was absolutely right, Abbott is wonderful, the sun still shines out of his arse for the enlightenment of the bromancer every blessed day … but stay, what fiendish, devilish recalcitrant plot is this?

Dear sweet long absent lord, what ruckus is this? What roiling and railing?

Well anyone wanting to know can google away, but the pond must return to the bromancer, who still has to outline the finer details of his half-baked, half-arsed solution to ScoMo's self-induced pickling session ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, such chaos and confusion. Was it only on the 15th November that the bromancer was scribbling furiously Morrison makes his way deftly through minefield of foreign affairs?

Some deft, some clearing away … and back then the bromancer was already peddling his half-baked, half-arsed solution, though nobody was paying any attention and he might have been whistling at the moon or baying on the moors …

Why the bromancer keeps brooding and banging on about it is a transubstantive mystery to the pond, when we all might instead be brooding about a Rowe cartoon, with more Rowe here … 

Never mind, there's only one gobbet of bromancer to go …but for anyone who can't handle the pace, and to balance things out with the Pentecostals and the Islamics and the onion muncher, please allow the pond to draw attention to Alexander Stille's The Sins of Celibacy in the NYRB, outside the paywall for the moment ...

Since the French Revolution and the spread of liberal democracy in the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church has been torn between the urge to adapt to a changing world and the impulse to resist it at all cost. Pope Pius IX, at whose urging the First Vatican Council in 1870 adopted the doctrine of papal infallibility, published in 1864 his “Syllabus of Errors,” which roundly condemned modernity, freedom of the press, and the separation of church and state. Significantly, its final sentence denounced the mistaken belief that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” Since then the church has been in the difficult position of maintaining this intransigent position—that it stands for a set of unchanging, eternal beliefs—while still in some ways adapting to the times.

By golly, as the pond deals daily with the reptiles' syllabi of errors, it might just return to that Catholic folly sometime … devout punters can find it online here … but right now the pond must return to the deeply errant bromancer for a final gobbet as he once again tries to sell his half-baked, half-arsed solution, designed to satisfy no one and to please nobody, except perhaps the bromancer himself …

Oh and Russia and Brazil, because the bromancer is down with dictators and far right populists of the barking mad kind ...

Indeed, indeed, the issue has been wildly overblown, it's only a matter of translation issues, the pond has it on good advice the trade agreement will be signed no later than tomorrow or perhaps by Xmas, or whatever or whenever, just learn to speak in tongues and commune with the long absent lord by speaking to a post box, and all will become clear …

But is there something divine at work in the world. Surely the bromancer's blind faith that ScoMo can make a winner of this proves that the long absent lord works in mysterious ways …

Get on board with the Donald, a proven mid-term election winner, Vlad the impaler, and Jair Bolsonaro … what could go wrong? Why not call a meeting of Islamic leaders to discuss it, and settle down their community? Maybe speak a little tongues together ...

And now, somehow, thanks to the pond's perversity, papal matters have made it into this Thursday meditation, so why not end with an immortal Pope - as always, with more jolly Popery here …

And now we know the price that anyone can pay to circumvent that pesky commandment about thou shall not kill. Feel free to murder way, if there's an arms deal at the end of it ...