In which the pond just has to go mining with Dame Slap, nattering "Ned" and the bromancer ...

Let's be clear.

The pond is only here, like a prospector in a Cohen brothers movie, looking for rich veins or the occasional nugget worth the keeping …

Any stray passing reader should keep on passing, lest they get dry-gulched by the loonacy on parade. If, for example, they want some semblance of sanity on current American politics, why not read George Packer's The Demise of the Moderate Republican, in The New Yorker … it's outside the paywall at the moment so there's really no excuse …

The pond's turf is the demise of sanity in the lizard Oz, and is there anyone more whacky than Dame Slap?

Well yes, on a good bad day no one can top the Oreo, but Dame Slap refuses to give up her crown as the Trumpiest of them all … so naturally the reptiles have rewarded her with the absurdist, surreal Lobbecke of the day, thereby guaranteeing her cult status ...

Speaking of The New Yorker, there's also Jeff Flake and the G.O.P.s Complicity problem … though other punters might be bemused to read in the NY Times, Trump Stands With Saudi Arabia Despite Khashoggi Killing …

… though some might have added ...despite Yemen, the kidnapping of Lebanon's prime minister, sundry acts of brutality, beheadings and repression, and a full-blown authoritarian regime headed by a sociopath …

But what's best about doing some alternative reading is how it provides a setting for the rich brand of loonacy and hearty trolling being peddled by Dame Slap ...

"It's the tyranny of experts," scribbles a fuckwitted academic expert, reported by a handsomely paid lizard Oz jack of all trades expert on pretty much everything that involves rightwing ratbag fundamentalist Trumpian extremism …

That must be worth a cartoon, that's more than a nugget, that's the mother lode vein almost smothering the chunk of quartz in which it's embedded …

Ah, but let's not pay any attention to the recent election result, let's get back into that weird rabbit hole because there's sure to be more rich pickings at the bottom ...

Here, the pond suggests, is the new form of academic cretinism, a kind of rampant stupidity, forelock tugging and fellow travelling which, despite Dame Slap's protests, does evoke in the pond fond memories of Lord Haw-Haw …

You see, the inherent contradiction of Babones posing as an expert on the new authoritarianism while an academic, an unelected expert, is simply too rich for the pond, the irony level cranked up well over eleven …

What legitimacy did Babones get from the people? Why, at least Dame Slap can claim that there are stupid people willing to fork over money for the lizard Oz, which gives her the sort of legitimacy that might also be found by someone subscribing to the Daily Mail … or Der Stürmer …

But the pond really doesn't know what it would do without these "experts", being a humble soul from Tamworth, except perhaps head bush to rake the forest floors …

Yes, the comedy from Finland and from Pleasure, California has been strong this week … and yes, humour is one way of coping with tragedy …

(Found at Vox)

And that's why the pond will keep hunting out the rich vein of undiluted drivel offered up by Dame Slap ...

Trump may be democracy's saviour in this epic tale?

Sure, just like the Donald's good buddies, and other Dame Slap favourites, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Vlad the Putinish impaler, Rodrigo Roa Duterte, Viktor Orbán, and the others in this brave, bold Dame Slapian, Trumpian universe of crypto-fascist populists …

Now passing stray readers might think the pond would rest there, having struck a vein of loonacy rich enough to retire on, but the lizard Oz led this day with a couple of firm pond favourites …

The pair have urgent domestic duties, painting lipstick on a pig in time for the coming election, and both are diligent in their duties, and their work shouldn't be overlooked …

 

The pond thought it should go with the bromancer first, because he's likely to be shorter - nobody beats the exhausting "Ned" for verbiage - and besides, it was only back in February that ScoMo was rabbiting on, as reported by Fairfax here ...

….Treasurer Scott Morrison and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton have quickly pushed back against the former Liberal leader's analysis, with Mr Morrison saying a cut to the annual planned migration intake would harm the federal budget. Mr Morrison also said the social and economic issues Mr Abbott raised were separate to the level of permanent migration. "I can understand why people would be superficially attracted to this idea that if you lower the level of permanent immigration that that will have that impact, but let's just think it through," Mr Morrison told 3AW. "If you take this proposal, this is what it means. You'd have to drop [the intake] by 80,000. The hit to the budget of that would be about $4 billion to $5 billion over the next four years."

Heck, he didn't stop there, the rest requires a gobbet, with bonus embedded cartoon …

But enough scene setting, please permit the pond to roll out the bromancer's first delicious chunk of meaty ScoMo goodness, as he works hard to reconcile the 'then' with the new 'now' …

And there you have the relativism at the heart of the lizard Oz these days, as the bromancer celebrates meaningless, wilful playing with figures, not as misleading or outright deliberate lying, but as political smarts … why the Trumpians, Dame Slap and Babones would be dancing in the streets at this clever playing with your average dumb Joe Palooka or Tamworthian Pondian ...

And there, you see, the nugget the pond was waiting for, which made the digging worthwhile …

"Our Soviet-style imposition of uniform high minimum wages …"

Yep, let the poor get the biscuits they can afford, while the bromancer and Dame Slap dine out on their, Chairman Rupert-funded, Donald-approved cake …

All this has to be worth a cartoon from the infallible Pope, with more papal celebrations here …

Sheesh, the bloody worst campaign slogan, and now a politician ready and willing to do to Australia what he did to tourism ...

And so to nattering "Ned", an offering designed only for hard-core obsessives wanting to re-enact The Treasure of Sierra Madre and score a hollow laugh …

You see, the reptiles have been pushing hard for dinkum clean Oz coal, oi, oi, oi for years, but certain inconvenient polling suggests that your average Australian actually takes climate science seriously … as here in The Conversation in June 2018 (with graphs!):

The annual Lowy Institute Poll on Australian attitudes to the world and global issues for 2018 has been released. Among a series of interesting findings, one thing is clear: support for climate action and renewable energy continue to grow. In response to the survey’s questions on climate and energy, 59% of respondents agreed with the statement: “climate change is a serious and pressing problem. We should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs.” This represents an increase of 5 percentage points from 2017, and a consistent increase in support for this statement over the past six years. It suggests that support for climate action in Australia is bouncing back towards its high point of 68% in the first set of Lowy Polls in 2006.

So dancing on that particular pin, and celebrating the deeds of the beefy Angus, is a job for an expert. Send in nattering "Ned"! Why it almost might be worth beginning with an alarmist shot of a chunk of ice breaking off …a bit like a chunk of government policy disappearing into the NEG ocean ...

Actually it's not the ghost of Malware hovering over beefy Angus … it's the ghost of not so long ago ScoMo …

 

Ah the joys of politics as a stunt fest … now see how nattering "Ned" can dull the senses so that all will be forgotten, nothing remembered … and beefy Angus will be the new boy wonder ...

Yes, all that blather, and it turns out that the solution is … dinkum clean Oz coal, oi, oi, oi, funded by the government in Soviet style ...

And there's another nugget, because devoted readers will recall the bromancer only minutes agao bemoaning Soviet-style behaviour that cries with pain at the thought of anyone getting a minimum wage that might actually allow a worker a barebones existence…

Yet such is the reptile capacity for spinning on a dime that nattering Ned" is on hand to celebrate "manifest government intervention." And it gets richer, as beefy Angus recants years of government NEG endeavour,  explaining how that dud Josh wasted his mind and the country's time on a stupid policy development that beefy Angus realised at once was a wrecking ball …

How dumb do they expect a Tamworthian pondian to be? Apparently dumb enough to accept that taxpayers cheerfully forked out the moola so that Josh and his team might devise a wrecking ball ...

10% for 4%? What an epic change in mindset. Why in the same spirit, the pond will knock ten per cent off the harbour bridge, just because it hasn't been able to move it in the past year …

And what do you know, it's not the end, it's not even the beginning of the end, it's the end of the beginning ...

That last par is pure nugget-hunter delight, the blather about results, not ideology, in a rag dedicated to the ideological celebration of dinkum clean Oz coal, oi, oi, oi, for years, and the talk that there's no contest between coal and renewables, when the reptiles have been demanding that the government fund a new coal-fired power station, because they love their Soviet interventions, unless it happens to involve a minimum wage for the mug punters, and embedded in that heap of nattering "Ned" blather is the talk of the urgent need of more coal …

Is it any wonder that the pond chortles with joy and claps hand with glee when the experts at the lizard Oz opine, while Trumpian Dame Slap celebrates populism and common sense from her lofty eerie in Surry Hills, with plenty of baristas on hand to fuel the daily hypocrisy …

And now, the digging done, a last cartoon …