In which the pond, and the reptiles of the lizard Oz, as always, remain loyal to the onion muncher ...

 

The reptiles were a tad glum this day, and the pond wondered what might cheer them up …

Of course there was the Donald, smashing the 'leets and showing Scotty from marketing how it should be done …

But the pond realised that only the ghost of Christmases past might cheer the reptiles up, and is there a better ghost than the onion muncher, always impeccable in his timing, and returning yet again to clank his chains?

Lordy, long absent lordy, once again he's in peak form and at the top of the news cycle …

 

Want an onion-munching link to the current pork barrelling?

The onion muncher is on hand to help …

Worried by the gathering of the 'leets and the bad light affecting poor old Mathias?

Oh you snivelling 'leets …

Now some might turn to Dame Groan to defend Mathias, and the rough time he had …

But the stout-hearted feminist and member of the lumpen proletariat was off her game, and the pond could stand only a short potion ...

Strange, only yesterday the pond was thinking that planting a few trees would do the job, but it turns out we need major cost-effective technological breakthroughs and adaptation.

Never mind, there had to be a bigger picture, and again the pond insists, there must be someone with a grand vision to bring all the strands together, and who better than the onion muncher, and naturally he's top of the digital page, ma, in this day's lizard Oz, blessed by the stretched out graphics …

By golly, back from his denialist world tour, and ready to do it all again, and such is his status, he was given the Lobbecke of the day, a wondrous abstract illustration that alarmed the pond, hinting as it did at the decadent strain of German expressionism that ruined the Weimar republic …

Now it goes without saying that the onion muncher, with the greatest respect, doesn't really think all that much of Greg Mullins …

And here the pond used up one of its valuable monthly clicks on the Nine rags to note Matthew Knott covering the onion muncher abroad, as usual bringing religion into the discussion, as is the wont of fundamentalist tykes…

'Almost a religious aspect': Tony Abbott downplays link between bushfires and climate change

The Nine mob jam their pieces so full of graphics and ads, the pond decided on a cut down version …

Washington: Former prime minister Tony Abbott has downplayed the contribution of climate change to the Australian bushfire crisis, telling a US audience he believes the link between extreme weather events and carbon emissions has become akin to a religious dogma for many people.
In a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, Abbott also heaped praise on US President Donald Trump, essentially endorsing him for a second term in the White House.
"I'm not one of those people who sees the current bushfires as confirmation of all we've ever feared about the changing climate," he told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Washington on Tuesday (Wednesday Australian time).
"I see the current bushfires as the sort of thing that we are always going to be prone to in a country such as ours - a land of droughts and flooding rains as the poet [Dorothea Mackellar] said all those years back."
Abbott, who serves as a volunteer firefighter in NSW, continued: "Everything associated with an extreme weather event these days is taken as proof of climate change.
"Bushfires prove climate change. Floods prove climate change. Superstorm Sandy, I think that proved climate change.
"Whether it's extraordinarily cold or extraordinarily hot; whether it's extraordinarily dry or extraordinarily wet. It all proves climate change.
"If you think climate change is the most important thing, everything can be turned to proof. I think that to many it has almost a religious aspect to it."
Abbott said the duration of the current bushfire season may be the longest in Australian history, but past seasons had claimed more lives and burnt out bigger areas of bushland.
"I think the Prime Minister is right: he said climate change may be playing a role in the drought which triggered the bushfires," he said. "But we have to remember that bushfires are hardly unknown in Australia."
Abbott praised Scott Morrison's handling of the fires, saying: "I don't think anyone could fault the extraordinary effort that the Prime Minister has put into responding to the current or now I think starting to recede bushfire emergency.
"In terms of money, time, and commitment of the armed forces it has been unprecedented so all credit to Scott Morrison for what he has done there."
Abbott said that Australia should be praised by other countries for meeting its carbon reduction targets under the Paris climate accord.
"The great thing about Australia is that while we are perhaps not the most enthusiastic members of the climate squad we are actually meeting our Paris targets in a way few other countries do," he said.
"I think we should get more credit when it comes to actually meeting our commitments when it comes to reducing emissions."
Australia should take "sensible measures" to reduce carbon emissions but not at the expense of economic growth, he said.

Religious dogma? Religious aspect?

Like the Donald, the onion muncher is always really obvious in his tells, and must be a hopeless poker player, and speaking of religion, there was religion sticking its head up in Crikey the other day …

The pond will only sneak behind the paywall for this little grab ...

There's a lot more on Angus, with the prime Angus beef in it up to his neck in the usual corrupt Angus way, but the pond knew it had to finally turn back to the onion muncher, hitting his straps in the lizard Oz this day ...

The same old talking points, the same old routines, the history lesson, and poor old Andy Pitman, misquoted yet again …

Poor old Pitman has been trying to get back to what he really meant to say for months, as noted in Media Watch here …

Well the reptiles know how to put a stop to all that idle chatter.

You see, all that scientific mumbo jumbo is nothing up against a man in the field, a field man, given wisdom by practical field experience ...

You won't find la-di-dah scientists out in the field, gaining hard practical religious insights of the onion muncher kind ...

Yes, don't you worry about the future, let us just go day by day, there will be time …

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
               So how should I presume?

Nothing like throwing an arch anti-Semitic fundamentalist Anglican into the mix, with the full thing here …

But the pond can hear distant voices, as they drown, snuffling at coffee spoons, asking what about the Donald? How does the Donald tie in with the onion muncher, climate science and all that stuff, right at the moment?

Well really, did the pond need such a simple-minded rhetorical trick question? Unleash the Malware kracken ...

And with the Malware beast out and about, cue the onion muncher going the full Donald …

Abbott said he would have been a "reluctant Trump voter" in 2016 but had now been converted into a strong supporter of the US President.
"He might seem crass or intemperate - that doesn't mean he's not the best possible president," Abbott said.
"The one thing you can't say about Trump is that he's been shy to lead.
"The singular feature of Donald Trump is that he has supreme self-confidence in himself and his country and that frankly was the missing ingredient in the previous presidency."

Indeed, indeed …

Abbott was speaking just as Trump's Senate impeachment trial, examining his dealings with Ukraine, was beginning in the Capitol Building.
He said Trump had made some "questionable calls", such as pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal and announcing the withdrawal of US troops from Syria. But these were overshadowed by his strengths.
"Given officialdom's tendency to fudge, maybe an unfiltered US president is what the world needs," he said.
"His style sometimes grates, but he has been a very good president.
"Maybe it's been overtaken by Trump derangement syndrome, but for the first time in years the main narrative has not been one of American decline.

Indeed, indeed …

"It's refreshing actually that Trump doesn't talk about what America can't do, but what it can do."
Abbott said Trump embodied a trend among conservative leaders around the world to prioritise social conservatism over free market economics - a shift from the era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
"President Trump is not a free marketeer in the way that Reagan was," he said. "Boris Johnson is not a free marketeer in the way that Thatcher was."
He said the political slogan that defined the 1990s - "It's the economy, stupid" - has been replaced by a new mantra: "It's the society, stupid".

Indeed, indeed …

What else?

Well the pond really shouldn't let that last onion muncher line go un-noted …

He said the political slogan that defined the 1990s - "It's the economy, stupid" - has been replaced by a new mantra: "It's the society, stupid".

Poor old Maggie. Wasn't it bad enough to have Rod Stewart singing a song blessed with her name? Must the onion muncher now renounce her and Ronnie Raygun, so he could join the Donald cult?

"They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours." – in an interview in Women's Own in 1987

Put it another way …

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man
That function is smothered in surmise,
And nothing is but what is not.

Or put it another way. Blather and bullshit through the day, with eel-like twists and turns, and epic contributions to profiles in hypocrisy, just provided the fix stays in, and the pay-offs and the perks might continue, as the Pellist onion munching God ordained in Her infinite, nothing is but what is not wisdom …

And for that, the immortal Rowe offers the final comment of the day …