In which the reptile begins with a tax on piss, and things get worse from there, with the dog botherer and the Major pissing in the wind in their usual way ...

Before beginning the day's duties, the pond would like to begin with a reading in honour of one of the pond's most treasured and revered residents:

What is Tony Abbott to Britain or we to him? A failed Australian politician who will be remembered, if at all, for believing climate change was “probably doing good” as his country burned, and being eviscerated for his sexist comments by Julia Gillard. Abbott is a has-been from the other side of the world of whom we know little and care less. Nevertheless, Boris Johnson is thinking of making him our trade envoy. No one has voted for Abbott in Britain and he negotiated no major trade deals in his error-strewn period as Australia’s prime minister, which ended in 2015, when, incidentally, his own party judged him to be worthless and brought him down.
His record does not matter to Johnson because Abbott is a product of the global network of rightwing thinktanks that has learned how easy and cheap it is to manipulate British politics. I want to emphasise the cheapness. Britain is the Poundshop of European politics, where money goes further. Pecunia non olet – “money does not stink” – said the emperor Vespasian as he defended his tax on the sale of urine from Rome’s sewers to tanners who used it to soften animal skins.

The onion muncher and a tax on piss together in the opening pars? Is this not the way to begin a Monday?

There's more at the Graudian here, but the pond felt in good cheer as it began the drudgery of tackling the usual reptiles at the lizard Oz ...

Of course bias swings both ways in the world, but the dog botherer is so biassed he can't conceive that he's biased. Such is his delusion that he somehow he imagines he doesn't show his true colours with his talk of biased US convention coverage ... when what he really means is that the coverage of the whining, narcissist American carnage, showboating, snake oil salesman carnie and his neoptic crew isn't to his liking ... and that certain commentators refuse to recognise  that reality television Donald style is a train wreck which commands attention (even if ratings were down on the first season) ...

Yes, it's outrageous that the ABC should carry on so, whereas the bromancer, the dog botherer and the like are busy tending to their duties of expert Donald arse-licking, because everyone agrees, and promises made, have been promises kept ...

 

And so to a doggie botherer special ... though it takes an inordinate time to get there ...

Say what? Is the dog botherer suggesting Obama was wrong. Is the dog botherer confounding the optimist with news that the oceans are still rising. Is the dog botherer suggesting that the planet hasn't begun to heal? Is, in short, and in fact, the dog botherer proposing that climate science is real, and that climate alarmism is a more useful response than Obama's?

Lordy, lordy, lah-di-dah, the pond promised it would be special ... there's nothing like a world on fire to put the dog botherer's denialism to the torch ...

And so on to the dog botherer railing about double standards and gullibility, as if he's never seen the glazed eye fish look of the Fox and Friends crew as they listen to their demented president ramble ... but relief is at hand, because it's the last gobbet ...

Keep Trump on is the dog botherer cry, and the pond must echo it, because the chance to fuck the sanctimonious nonsense of the United States being the font of democracy and a civilising influence on the world will at last be laid to rest, and instead all we'll get is a continuing clown show, with the dog botherer in the premium seats ...

And so to the Major doing his best for SloMo ...

The Major wasn't the only reptile to attempt to distract with talk of the flu, and how the pandemic was just a doddle, and what's the fuss, and never mind what's happened elsewhere.

The reptiles dipped as low as dragging in Clive Palmer to join simplistic Simon and some Karen the reptiles illustrated as """ ... (Clive had the same honour, apparently the reptiles haven't got a photo of him, or couldn't be fucked) ...

And yet at the top of the reptile page itself ...

While the war on China dominated the front page of the tree killer edition, even there came talk of "premier power" ...

 

Naturally this put the Major on a war footing ...

 

To put the Australian pandemic experience into historical perspective, one of the reasons we've done so well is that the science is better, and leaders haven't followed the moronic advice of the reptiles, especially that moron in chief the Major, who seeks to make points about influenza and World War 1 and the misnamed Spanish flu in a way that entirely misses the point, both in the past and the present ...

But back to saving SloMo's skin, and the suffering of reptile favourite Graham Turner ... who has frequently turned up in the pages of the lizard Oz to urge people to travel, and never mind the pandemic, or the return flight in a body bag, without mentioning the most naked of reasons ...

Troubled travel group Flight Centre has warned investors of a multi-million-dollar loss ahead of its financial results, flagging the coronavirus pandemic is still inflicting pain upon the tourism-dependent business.
The Queensland-based company is anticipating a statutory loss between $825 million and $875 million from direct impacts of COVID-19 grounding the travel and tourism industry.
Flight Centre’s expected shortfalls are off the back of the economic downturn sparked by the virus, reducing the value of its assets that will be recorded as impairment charges.
The company has set aside $110 million for COVID-19-related costs, with the 2020 financial year loss a significant reversal on the 2019 net profit of $364.3 million.
Removing impairment charges caused by impacts of the virus upon its business, Flight Centre is anticipating an underlying loss between $475 million and $525 million, largely incurred from the company’s inability to operate during the height of lockdown measures. (here)

If you want to see how a corporate head can handle their plight, contrast the  self-pitying carry-on routinely offered by Turner to Alan Joyce at Qantas, as he slashes and burns ...

Sorry for that detour, the pond will turn to the Major now, it just wanted to pre-empt some of the gibberish in the final gobbet ...
 

And yet, and yet, for all the Major's work, for all the reptile efforts ...

And with the immortal Rowe on a break, the pond has decided to celebrate an event, because today is the last day of a certain person at the White House, and the pond has studiously avoided mentioning the fraudulent liar or contemplating the state of her marriage (though imagining being one of her children sets the pond's teeth on edge and puts its mind in a tizz and generates thoughts of emancipation) ... but surely all will be well ...

In which Polonius wanders down well-worn history as a Sunday meditation and distraction from the Trumpian pain ...

 

The wags had a field day with that green screen green dress, including Colbert, but the pond felt the need to begin with a little light relief, if a tad ancient, because as usual, prattling Polonius is on hand for the Sunday meditation, and that's always a grim way to start a Sunday ...

 

Why harp on a dress? Well Polonius has, as he usually done when under stress looking at the state of things in current times, has retreated into the past, and blathered on about symbols ... 

The pond can remember a time when such symbols were thought of as friendly fire ...

You know, in ancient times there were all sorts of oddities. Yesterday the pond featured Ming the merciless cosying up to Adolf, until it was decided that we should be cosying up to Uncle Joe, and never mind the millions he murdered ...

The trouble with the Polonial beef resides in the way anyone in the second world war would have been obliged to see the Soviets and Uncle Joe as an ally, and the hammer and sickle quite a friendly symbol ...

Life is a little fickle, not that you'd expect fundamentalist Catholics to remove the blinkers for any reason whatsoever...

As it so happens, the pond doesn't think much of any flag or symbol, since the notion that you can summarise things this way leads you straight to the Confederate flag, or saluting the British flag and pretending it's Australian ...

But back to the tongue clicking and the disapproving looks, designed to make Polonius sound like an old-fashioned, fuddy duddy pedant, with traces of Pooterism ...

Times change of course. At one time Ming the Merciless was cosying up to Adolf, and calling him a fair player, and at the same time, he was shipping pig iron off to Japan, so that it might be sent back in the form of munitions ...

It's strange how times and perceptions change ...

 

But all that's forgotten these days, and if remembered, the pond certainly wouldn't expect Polonius to recall it ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, did Polonius miss reading our hole in the bucket man Henry yesterday?

Why there was tyranny and draconian powers, and basic freedoms lost, and festering abuse, and no accountability and transparency, and no freedom of movement, and no right of appeal to an independent and impartial tribune, and talk of how such restrictions had played into facilitating the crimes of Hitler and Stalin, and all this in the lizard Oz, in exactly the same place as where the reptiles seated Polonius, and and yet, there he is, imagining it's all just social media-style chatter.

Does anyone at the lizard Oz actually read what the lizard Oz pundits say?

Well the pond can claim no superiority because here's two the pond won't be reading. Forget the war on China, the reptiles now want to begin their war on super in earnest ...

If Killer Creighton can't kill people with the virus, then he certainly can try to kill super, since the whole point is for it to be compulsory ... and the bouffant one is keen to turn it into a nest egg that can be dipped into, though once spent, who knows what people will be living on in their old age? The generosity of the federal government? Why the grasshopper might as well ask for a free pass from the ant ...

And here's another one the pond won't be reading ...

The pond is also going to ignore Dame Slap, doing her own version of our Henry's hole in the bucket routine and having another go at Comrade Dan.

The pond has long lost any interest in Dame Slap, and will maintain that lack of interest, as she carries on more like an IPA flack than a lizard Oz columnist ... at least until she finally summons up the courage to write about Donald Trump.

Years ago, Dame Slap donned a MAGA cap and stepped out into the New York night to mingle with the like-minded crowd (so she alleged), and ever since, she's avoided the Donald as much as she can ...

It's a cowardice unseemly even for a reptile in a ship where cowardice is an essential part of avoiding chairman Rupert's impersonation of Captain Bligh (yes, yes, they were all into rum, sodomy and the lash, and Bligh was just another captain, but carry on like that and you'll turn into Polonius and think British imperialism was a jolly good thing for all those wretched black chappies).

Never mind, because next to Dame Slap, was a story which was no doubt designed as another shot across the bows in the reptiles' ongoing war on China.

But if the pond had to select the most egregious, fucked-up decision in relation to China, in the last decade, poor old Comrade Dan and the universities and even lickspittle, fellow-travelling Twiggy, purporting to give a fig about human rights while dancing with oppressive dictators, were overshadowed by one singular, staggering CLP/federal coalition government feat.

It begins this way here ...

In 2012, the Country Liberal Party — long viewed by itself as the "natural ruling party of the Territory" — was brought back to power after 11 years in the wilderness, and while no gauge of public opinion was taken, decided all public assets were up for grabs.
The first was the port. Expressions of interest were sought in late 2014 and early 2015, with 33 respondents signalling their interest in acquiring it.

The pond should probably note that that consummate branch stacker Kevin Andrews was sworn in as minister for defence on 23rd December 2014.

And then a question was asked:

How did it get through FIRB and Defence?

And then it was answered ...

A 2016 Senate committee revealed that while the Foreign Investment Review Board had been contacted to look at the deal, it ultimately didn't formally investigate because, at the time, there was an exemption from scrutiny of a deal like this because it involved a private company and a state or territory government.
The head of FIRB admitted the entire process had undermined public confidence, failed to show a balance between economic gain and national security concerns and was finalised on an "ad-hoc" basis.
The committee called for greater transparency in the decision-making process and for more details to be publicly disclosed, and its report stated the NT Government failed to answer key questions around the details of the port deal to the committee's satisfaction.
The rules were ultimately changed to not let this happen again.FIRB chairman Brian Wilson told the committee he had become aware of the deal in late 2014 and asked for a response from Defence and intelligence agencies a few times in 2015, but was repeatedly told that Defence had no issue with the deal.
It was also later revealed that the Defence officials were only middle management, and that senior figures and the Minister of Defence only learned of the deal hours before the NT government announced it publicly.
"It was an inexcusable stuff-up by the federal government and various departments, but that doesn't excuse the NT government making this parochial, stupid decision in the first place," Mr James said.
"You can't mortgage the strategic security of 25 million — and in the future more Australians — just to make a quick buck for a local political problem you have at the time, and then lie about it, and lie about it consistently in your supposed defence of it.
"You may well find that future generations of Australians reading Australian history books will have the most scathing judgments about the idiocy of the decision-making.
"It's quite possible many decades in the future if there is a serious war, where this becomes a serious problem for us, people will wonder whether the decision wasn't just a stupid one, but whether the people doing it hadn't looked seriously at the concept and laws surrounding treachery."
Back in mid-December, when the current Labor Government was trying to explain how the NT was in the middle of a full-blown financial crisis that sees it borrowing $4 million a day to keep operating, Jodie Ryan was asked in a briefing what happened to the $506 million the NT received for the port.
She said it was put into general revenue and spent. It's long gone, with less than 96 years left.

And there you have it, the mouse roared, not a shot was fired and the CLP and federal coalition surrendered a significant strategic asset for a mess of pottage, quickly pissed against the wall ...

The pond suspects it was all comrade Dan's fault, double-dealing duplicitous Victorians being what they are...

Of course the pond could have been reading Marina Hyde in The Graudian here ...

Like me, you will have been transfixed to discover that failed former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott is being lined up for a senior role on the UK’s new Board of Trade. What a worthy exchange of assets between our two great nations – like learning that Theresa May had accepted a part on Neighbours, possibly as some kind of Mrs Mangelreboot. Suggested plotlines could include May driving round Ramsay Street telling any immigrant characters to go home. (Which, let’s face it, wouldn’t exactly require starting the engine.)
Then again, arguably something far more ridiculous has already happened: Theresa May is now paid £100,000 a time to make speeches, presumably at nihilist conventions, or in dedicated art spaces at avant garde parties. “Siegfried! Let me mist you with absinthe, then you must call into the installation room – Theresa May is performing ‘The Cough’.”

Oh what a bitch she is, how the pond loves her, how the pond wishes it could write like that ...

Or you could have been discovering that refugee News Corp recalcitrant Malcolm Farr can now be found in The Graudian here describing the same thing, but in more sedate prose ...

The appointment of former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott as a British trade envoy is not quite treason but certainly a further sign he has London written on his heart.
That is where Abbott was born in 1957. He went from Australia to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and remains a royalist who as prime minister gave the Duke of Edinburgh an Australian knighthood.
The bestowal baffled many Australians who couldn’t see what services to them warranted a tribute to a prince already overloaded with gongs. But Abbott was keen to do what British PMs could and dispense royal rewards.
And he probably wouldn’t reject a display of royal approval himself, should his services rendered to trade negotiation be worthy of honour. Perhaps he has been chatting to Sir Lynton Crosby.

Sir Onion Muncher, if you please, muh lord.

So much pleasure to see Farr escaped from the reptiles but so little time, and that left the pond with only a chance to briefly meditate on a lizard Oz editorial ... which remarkably, bromancer style, began with the notion that the Donald represented a vision of light over darkness ...

It was, of course, a chance to begin with a few cartoons ...

And then after a few pars of the very bromancer-like, delusional, lizard Oz editorialist tirade ...

... a chance to throw in a few more ...

... and then after the lizard Oz editorialist finished off with another par, still replete with bromancer-style delusions ...

 

... a chance to throw in a few more, and end up back where the pond had started, feeling the pain ...

Climate science denialism and Donald worship in one go, are you not entertained

The pond felt its first surge of hope in a long time. Spring is just around the corner, and the lizard Oz just heralded the first cuckoo of the climate science denialism season.

Could things be getting back to normal, which in the case of the reptiles is a return to the usual abject stupidity, and a willingness to ignore the real world in the quest for their own phantom delusions?

What's even better for the pond is that there's no need to argue with the dog botherer, who is perfectly happy playing with himself, and doing what he can to fuck the planet in the way he usually treats dogs ...

Rather, all that needs to be done is unroll the feast, and let the specious arguments, drivel, non sequiturs and general nonsense take care of themselves ...

There's no need to point out that the dog botherer has no expertise, does no field work, does no peer reviewed studies, and is just a seething mass of reprehensible bullshit. That's the entire point of proceedings.

No, we need no science here, all that's required is that you be standing up, so that you might pace about ...

Already we see myopia is the key condition of the dog botherer. While he fancies himself as a field expert, the dog botherer rarely gets out of his own backyard, where he feels comfortable.

Others have moved on and paid attention to what's happening in the world - Climate crisis: business, farming, environmental leaders unite to warn Australia 'woefully unprepared': an extraordinary statement by 10 groups says the nation's future prosperity is at risk without a coherent response ...

It included this nugget:

The Insurance Council of Australia said on Thursday the industry had received more than 297,780 claims relating to bushfire, flood and hailstorm catastrophes last summer, with losses totalling almost $5.4bn. The chief executive, Rob Whelan, said it was the worst natural disaster season he had experienced in 10.5 years in the role.

Ah, that almost sounds exceptional stuff, but the planet fucker has been a denialist for a lot longer than that ... we must sweep the floors, sweep the floors, it's the only way ...

Indeed, indeed, koalas are doing ever so well ... and so to the new pet of the denialists, who knows which side to butter his book sales on ...

Yes, there's nothing to see here, folks, and forget world trends and events, the whole thing can be trivialized with talk of smoke haze ...

Ah the koalas again ... meanwhile, on another planet, Koalas will be driven to extinction before 2050 in NSW, major inquiry finds ...

Yes, we're fucking habitat the way we're fucking the planet.

And elsewhere? Well, we're just fucking the planet: Antarctica: 60% of ice shelves at risk of fracture, research suggest: collapse of shelves would accelerate loss of Antarctic ice sheet and increase sea-level rises.

And so on and on and on, for anyone interested in the real world, as opposed to the factoids the dog botherer keeps dragging out of his denialist arse ...

And speaking of arses, the pond has resolutely maintained its interest in the expert arse-licking on offer from the bromancer this week, and to his credit, the bromancer has now reached peak arse ...

This is another good result for the pond, because all that needs to be done is present the arse-licking, and insert a few cartoons, and the pond can rest, knowing that it has done what it can to make the spectacle remotely endurable, and possibly, for masochists at least, somehow perversely entertaining...

The notion that the Donald has been 'normalised' is one of those whacko notions that must have gone down a treat in the 1930s. Of course others have followed the bromancer style guide, and 'normalised' 'normal' people ...

  

But the pond promised a cartoon-led recovery, so let us begin that task ...

 

And now Godwin's Law duty done, swear jar filled, on with the bromancer ...

 

Indeed, indeed, it was a tremendous, quite stunning presentation of new policies, as fresh as 2016, apart from the bit about Trump worship and having no other fatted calves before you ...

And with that cartoon out of the way, it's back to the arse-licking ...

... whereas the GOP convention was full of policies and caring ...

There have been a few correspondents who have wondered if the bromancer has any connection to reality, but of course he does ... reptile reality ...

And it will be noted that as a skilled arse-licker, every so often he pauses in his work, and comes up with something that suggests he's being balanced and rrational, before getting back to the more important job, the butt-licking and polishing ...

At the same time, he manages to celebrate the many ordinary folk who turned up to give speeches ...

The pond has wondered at the fairness of blaming it all on the Karens, and the lack of an appropriate male name is troubling. The pond has seen Terry mentioned, together with Kevin and Ken, but in light of the work of our correspondent, the pond is happy to settle for Greg ...

Greg and Karen... you'd be happy to have them scribbling columns for the lizard Oz ...

 

 

You see how cleverly the bromancer manages to blame institutions, even when the Donald and his team have put a finger on the scales.

This is not your average arse-licking, this is prime reptile caviar, lipstick on a pig's bum turf...

Anyone who is starting to flag should realise that the bromancer is nothing if not diligent, and will keep on carrying-on in his quest make it all seem normal. Sure, there'll be the talk of the odd mistake, in a bid to seem balanced, in much the same way as a one-eyed magpie supporter presents a genial face to the crowd ...

Sorry, just had to slip that bit of Newtown field art in for the pond's many magpie lovers ...

Good old gun violence, but sssh, don't mention the NRA ...instead just enjoy the breaching of norms and proprieties, because damn sure, the bromancer's not going to bring them up ...

And so on to the penultimate gobbet of the bromancer living out his wish fulfillment dream, and in a way the pond hopes he achieves his dream, because four more years of the snake oil salesman and his corrupt nepotic cronies will see the end of the United States as a world force ...

At the end of all this, with just one gobbet to go, the pond felt like it had been on an acid trip, of the kind Tom Tomorrow took here ...

Already all forgotten, already erased from the pond's mind by the bromancer's expert arse-licking ...just as the convention itself is already a distant memory, even as as the bromancer hails it as an effective convention ...

All that lingers in the mind is that the bromancer surely must be a bear of very little brain if that's the image of the fear-mongering he expects us to retain.

Meanwhile, as any TV reality star will tell you, it's all in the ratings ...

The six major networks covering the convention at 10 p.m. ET Thursday averaged 19.85 million viewers, topping the 18.02 million for Tuesday's coverage for the biggest audience of the RNC.

It was down by more than a third — 34 percent — from Trump's acceptance speech at the 2016 convention. On that night, 30.22 million people tuned in across the same six networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Trump's speech also trailed the final night of the Democratic convention last week, which averaged 21.78 million viewers on the same six outlets.

Adding in Fox Business, PBS, Spanish-language broadcasters Telemundo and Univision and a couple of smaller outlets brought Thursday's total to 23.81 million, closer to the 24.6 million who watched the last night of the Democratic convention. The all-network audience down 26 percent from the final night of the 2016 convention. (Hollywood Reporter, here)

You wouldn't have wanted to be selling advertising to the RNC's events, because ratings were down across the board and the Democratics generally won night v night comparisons, but still the bromancer works valiantly to put an orange tint on the proceedings, and on the Donald ...

 

And if you believe that Donald really cares about the working-class, the bromancer has a day's butt-licking with a guaranteed happy ending as his incentive for you to become a true believer ...

And so it's over and it's on to the bromancer scoring the debates, though as the bromancer thinks the sun shines out of the Donald's arse, he might well be blinded by the light, and the scoring might go as wobbly as his convention reporting.

And now to wrap things up, a word from the infallible Pope ... who, if he can't be linked to behind the paywall, can be found slackly tweeting here ...