In which the pond breaks the ABTE mode, but for a good cause - the onion muncher and the Caterists ...

While the pond is in ABTE mode, there are always exceptions to the rule, and anything to do with the onion muncher's valiant crusade, his noble warrior fight - might there be a knighthood at the end of it? - will always find a home at the pond ...

What an exquisite framing of the question, though the question might be whether people want to vote for a climate denialist, gay marriage wrecking, sniping, undermining and otherwise hideously negative politician.

Which is why that header attracted the pond's interest, mentioning as it does "liberal-hating activists."

Whatever happened to caps in the world of the lizards of Oz? Shouldn't that have at least read "Liberal-hating activists"? It being obvious that the very last thing one might call the onion muncher is "liberal" and even "conservative" is stretching the friendship for such a toxic chap.

The mood of paranoia and persecution complex was right, and the pond was keen to follow this form of Fitzy down the "Liberal" garden path ...

Oh please, is this Fitzy purporting to be a prof of history and politics, and yet seeks to undermine the onion muncher's gold-standard ability to wreck, snipe and undermine?

And then came this ripper.

What's "hard right" about that?

The pond often wonders when old people go kinda funny, and Fitzy is about as good an example as any, with his mealy-mouthed, wondrous celebration of the onion muncher as so soft and cuddly, the pond thought he might have been writing about a kitten lost in Warringah … and yet amazingly he hadn't finished, and it was time to sink the hatchet into the onion muncher's mortal enemy, the deviant Steggall ...

Say what? The onion muncher knows he's vulnerable? But the vision, the dream, good old Fitzy just presented is of a harmoniser, a unifier, a uniter, a man with the soft, gentle purr of a mildly conservative kitten … apparently now safely neutered and defanged, because he can't imagine doing a real day job ... and what do you know, such is his plight and his desperation, after 25 years, he's suddenly discovered some money for his electorate ...

Emeritus professor? So that's what they call snake oil salesmen, shills and hacks on parade these days …

And speaking of shills and hacks, because Fitzy turned in such a lightweight effort, the pond decided it needed to make room for an old favourite, ignored in recent times ...

A bit of ABC bashing!

How the pond missed it, how pleased it is that some reptile traditions endure, especially when it's carried on by a cash in the paw man, a man always willing to score some funding from the Department of Finance so he can deplore government-funded broadcasters.

And yet where's the beef? If the ABC is doing lacklustre programming at election time, surely that's what the reptiles wanted, surely the reptile campaign to degut and/or castrate the ABC has been a major success …

Take the pond's own viewing habits as an example. If the ABC replaces Barrie Cassidy with Michael Rowland on The Insiders, as has been rumoured, the pond will dance with joy. Yet another ABC show the pond won't have to bother watching …

But enough digressions, has everyone got their baseball bat so we can join the cash-in-the-paw Caterist?

It goes without saying that the Caterist is being his usual one-eyed cheerleader and forelock tugger for SloMo and the current government, and any notion of impartiality is as silly as the notion that he has the first clue about the movement of flood waters in quarries.

But that's what the pond loves about the Caterist. He stands by always ready to prove that bias and prejudice is a science rather than an art when practised by a skilled Caterist, always ready to look at the world through the prism of his own government cash-in-the-paw values …

And now to evidence that in reality, and for some strange reason, the Caterist is a keen consumer of ABC radio ...

Indeed, indeed, though it's a tad lucky that the ABC never called on the expert opinion of the Caterist in the matter of flood waters in quarries, and that was left to the parrot and 2GB and others in the syndicate …think of the mess that might have produced.

Never mind, it's a nostalgic wander through the world of a man who is generally clueless, except when it comes to picking up cash crumbs from the Department of Finance table ...

Such a useless doofus. Such a mindless stick-in-the-mud. So mired in the past. Such silly blather about ratings, as if all the FTA ratings generally hadn't taken a bit of a pounding …

Come gather 'round Caterists
Wherever you roam 
And admit that the mobile phones 
Around you have grown 
And accept it that soon 
You'll be drenched to the bone with podcasts and streaming. 
If your time to you 
Is worth savin' 
Then you better start swimming' 
And messaging and driving with phone in hand while you roam
Or you'll sink like a stone 
For the broadcast times they are a-changin'…

Or some such. The pond could have done the whole Dylan song, but that would have meant covering the Watergate scandal, and since the Caterist is apparently clueless, it might have been better to refer him to Barnaby Joyce and Watergate: the water buybacks scandal explained.

And how about this one, at the Nine papers?

...She only re-emerged late last week, but says she will never identify herself publicly, nor her Deep Throat – not even to me. She believes Taylor to be extremely sensitive to his connection to the Cayman Islands, noting how in 2013, a mere letter to the editor to the Goulburn Post that asserted among other things that “Angus Taylor had an investment company registered in the Cayman Islands” was met with such a strong Taylor reaction that the paper followed up a couple of days later with a formal apology saying the letter about his “personal financial affairs” was incorrect, and should not have been run. Taylor has always maintained he had no financial interest in EAA or EAI. 
Salt also asserts – and has sent me screen shots – showing that Taylor’s wife Louise Clegg has been discussed on Wikipedia forums for trying to change her husband’s entry on his Wikipedia entry. She also sent screen shots showing that someone, not Clegg, did succeed in removing a reference to Eastern Australia Agriculture, just weeks before the $79 million transaction went through. When The Project asked Taylor last week if he was still a part of EAI, he responded with a very terse “No”, and declined to say why it was set up in the Cayman Islands. 
Whatever else, it really is beyond doubt that Taylor regards his own involvement in the whole affair as very sensitive. In 2016 when Aoife Champion, the ALP candidate standing against him in Hume for both that year’s election and this one, referenced at an event Taylor’s involvement with Cayman Islands-registered EAI and water licences, she received a strong phone call the next day from a Taylor staff member who threatened defamation action if it was not removed from the video hosted on the event’s Facebook page.

Angus is up to his neck in it, and the pond wonders at what point some of the family connections - say the ones involving his brother - become a matter for media inquiry …

Sorry, that's what happens when the pond reads the Caterist. He's such a mind-numbing forelock tugger, so partial and prejudiced, that the pond always goes looking for distractions.

Luckily, this is the last gobbet ...

So says a reptile, a jittery voice, palm extended for Department of Finance cash therein, utterly lacking self-awareness, sublimely uninterested in what happens to public money, unless it's to be spent on him, jumping at ABC shadows, fixated on the material - always with the cash in the paw - and utterly and completely irrelevant to everyone except reptiles at the lizard Oz wanting to know about defamation actions regarding the movement of flood waters in quarries …

Well after that long drive down the irrelevant road to nowhere, time for an irrelevant cartoon …