In which the pond offers dog botherer shrieking, bromancer cannibalism and Lloydie triumphalist futurism ...

The pond must begin by humbly apologising to the NBN. 

Everything the pond said recently about its situation and condition was entirely wrong, and it was entirely appropriate for the NBN to strip the pond of its internet access privileges for a day. The pond understands, and unconditionally agrees, that this wasn't yet another casual fuck up, with dead people at the other end of the phone, it was what the pond deserved for its impudence.

But now privileges have been restored, mysteriously, magically and what better way to celebrate than with an interminable whinge, whine and moan from that master of whiners, the dog botherer ...

The pond should note that the reptiles themselves seemed to realise that it was a tedious outing, and so they put in illustrations to break it up a little ...

 

Hmmm, should the reptiles have put in a snap of Josh? Isn't the dog botherer saying that he's one of the head nannies in the nanny state? He certainly looks like a smug, self-satisfied nanny. 

Oh comrade Bill, where did you go, why must Josh now take the nanny state can? 

Now back to the whining and the moaning. There might be a global pandemic going down, but the dog botherer has much navel-gazing and fluff gathering to do ...

What a shocking illustration of the nanny state at work. Someone wearing a mask. Truly the pond almost fainted at the sight. Why on even closer inspection they were both wearing a mask. Will this oppression never end? Oh sure there might be a global pandemic going down, and Australia has escaped the worst of it, but stay, the dog botherer has much more navel-gazing and fluff-gathering to do ...

 

 

Indeed, indeed, leeches and bludgers and kill joys everywhere and none of them doing the useful work of the dog botherer, shouting at a television camera and pounding away at a keyboard and giving the world his blessed insights every week. 

 

Some might complain he never shuts up, but give it to him, when it comes to whining and moaning and being negative, he's indefatigable ... and if only he'd been in charge, why we might have had a new splendid war in Iraq or perhaps an astonishing Utegate, and wouldn't that have taught the virus a lesson quixstix ...

 

It does really stick in the reptile, and especially the dog botherer craw, that comrade Dan seems to be bringing the virus under control in Victoria, and elsewhere in the reptile pages there were a couple of dissenters ...

But they must wait their turn on the morrow. Today is dog botherer shrieking day, though at that uplifting talk of Ming the Merciless, the reptiles felt the need to insert an example of what they presumably thought was a lifter, meeting the great man in South Australia ... and the pond was so delighted, it had to break it out and make it loom large in the imagination ...

Ah humble lifter Ian Wilson, who started life eating coal on factory floor, and then through diligent work, became tar on highways and so made his fortune, and never looked back ...

Oh wait on a tic ...

Ian Bonython Cameron Wilson AM (2 May 1932 – 2 April 2013) was an Australian politician. He was a member of the Liberal Party and represented the Division of Sturt in federal parliament (1966–1969, 1972–1993). He held ministerial office in the Fraser Government from 1981 to 1983.
Wilson was born in Adelaide, South Australia, the son of Sir Keith Wilson, a prominent United Australia Party and Liberal Party politician. His mother, Elizabeth, (Lady Betty Wilson CBE), was a granddaughter of Sir John Langdon Bonython, owner of The Advertiser and a member of the first federal House of Representatives, and a great-granddaughter of Sir John Cox Bray, South Australia's first native-born premier.
Wilson was educated at St Peter's College and Adelaide University, where he graduated in law, and at Magdalen College, Oxford (S.A. Rhodes Scholar 1955), where he did a higher law degree. He was a solicitor and company director before entering politics. (and more at his wiki here).

Talk about silver spoons. Talk about Adelaide privilege. Could the reptiles have picked a more privileged croweater prat for their example of a lifter meeting Ming the Merciless?

By golly, it put the pond in a good mood, and it did the last dog botherer shriek and moan and whine in a canter ...

 

 

Should we have bombed the shit out of Iraq? Ah, but don't ask the dog botherer ... when it comes to ominous overeach, he knows all about it ... but is there anything more nauseating than an habitual overreacher suddenly discovering the error of his ways, and heading off to a street corner, or the Murdochian domain, to preach about his many, many overreaching sins?

And so to the bromancer, shunted into second spot, because nobody can moan, whine and shriek like the bromancer ...

 

What a splendid illustration to begin the bromancer, and handy too, in case some mug punter, some sucker and loser, is taken in by the occasional feeble efforts at both siderism that the bromancer occasionally indulges in ...

 

In short, and in essence, she is a loon of the bromancer kind, a fundamentalist Catholic loon ...dressed up under nonsense words of the "originalist" kind, which, for anyone wondering, means getting around in a horse-drawn buggy with a cunning exemption that allows you to use batteries and still claim that you're an originalist ...

As for that talk of being bound fully by Roe v. Wade, Barrett has already cleared the way by announcing that "stare decisis is a self-imposed constraint upon the Court's ability to overrule a precedent." She's also explained that overturning Roe v. Wade wouldn't mean ending abortion. It would just mean that the states could decide, and they'd end abortion, and all she was doing was driving around in a horse-drawn buggy, with a stare decisis battery ...

And we all know that there are many points to be won by executing a backflip in good style ...

 

 

Oh the pond had to break, it had to slip in a cartoon, it's the American way, and there's a lot more Xian bromancer to endure ...

 

Um, might the pond humbly propose an amendment: that's the grotesque state to which chairman Rupert Murdoch has helped reduce American politics and the court itself, and muh lud, might the pond now humbly submit Fox and Friends and indeed the bromancer himself, as evidence?

 

The pond has to admire the bromancer's both siderism cunning. Getting the craven Craven and Bob Carr to agree that the Supreme Court is partisan is as sublime a statement of the bleeding obvious that the pond knew it had to go another cartoon ...

 

By golly it's turning into a long march through the bromancer today ... especially when you have to swallow lines like "respected analyst Andrew Sullivan", such an absurd juxtaposition of words that the pond almost reached for another cartoon, but decided to get it done quickly ...

 

Indeed, indeed, hand the man another beer, it's the only way to forget ... because see how the bromancer, in his even-handed way, hints that Kavanaugh was a Catholic, and therefore entirely innocent, and yet Joe might well be a saucy rogue ... 

Oh it may or may not be true, though strangely the Republicans might verify it easily, and so might chairman Rupert, but they strangely decided not to go there ...

The pond has no idea why, though at one time, the pond was given to understand that pussy-grabbing was an entirely innocent sport, just as wandering into dressing rooms full of naked women was fun, and hanging around with Ghislaine Maxwell was fine - oh let's wish her well, the Donald wishes her well ... but now we must move on to the killer bromancer punchline that's supposed to wrap everything up ...

 

Will Senate Democrats impeach the gospel? Or will they send to the Supreme Court a delusional cannibal who wants to be a handmaiden to her patriarchal imaginary friend? What a triumph for complimentary women everywhere ...

Only someone trained by the Jesuits could think it was a killer punchline, but at least it puts the nonsensical, feeble attempts at both siderism attempted by the bromancer in its Catholic place ...

And so a few more cartoons before moving on to the bonus for the day ...

 

And so to the bonus for the day. The pond realises it's been a long and tedious march through the dog botherer's moaning and the bromancer's intrepid cannibalistic transubstantive Catholicism, but there is good news, because Lloydie is back ...

How the pond missed Lloydie. Sure, he's already saved the Amazon, and it's now looking in fine shape, but there's now work to be done at home, because Lloydie, along with his climate science denialism, has always been a first class suck, and now sucking on wondrous technological solutions is all the go ... as he joins the beefy Angus on a joyous carpet ride into the futurist future ...

 

Yes, yes, there are technological solutions everywhere, but it seems not enough to commit to being carbon neutral by 2050, or even 2060. 

The pond does appreciate Lloydie's attempt to elide over the coal situation, and his understanding that to mention gas might be considered indelicate by some, but let us have hope that something will work out somehow at some time in the future ... because it seems that the problem that never needed fixing must now be addressed.

But how to address it? The pond is glad you asked that rhetorical question, because the pond wanted to throw jaffas down the aisle when it read "The mega trend is undeniably for a lower-emissions future."

And you can join that mega trend. Oh yes, you can ...

 

By golly, the pond has to hand it to Lloydie. When it comes to mega trends and mega sucks, he has a full suite of endless clichés ... and they gush out like mega suet, as if he's been indulging with beefy Angus in a meat protein high, as the two climate science denialists come together to sort out the future with high tech ... because anything else would be a dull old slog, and really boring ...

Why there it is again ... the mega-trend, now with a hyphen, but nonetheless, part of a huge sustainability mega-trend which will define the 21st century.

But what is this alarmist talk of a planet bursting at the seams, and producing a profound calamity, at least as profound as the virus, which suggests that Liveris hasn't the first clue about genuine calamity, the calamity that climate scientists are predicting, or pretty much anything else, except that gas is pretty good, pretty good ...

Now the pond knows by this point that some stray pond readers will already be in a frothing, foaming frenzy, and keen to make some technical points, note the odd error, and the bloated stupidity and ostentatious technological futurism, but please, let us look to the future, and untried technologies as a great chance to speculate, because wind and solar on their own are just so dull and unimaginative ...

 

Lordy, lordy, it must be strange to live in the world of the reptiles. Only yesterday the pond was living in the Caterist's gaseous world, and the day before that, the pond was with the bromancer, shedding tears for coal, and seeing, as if an angel was descending from heaven bathed in golden rays, a vision for the wondrous deeds the black stuff might yet perform in the future ...if only dinkum clean Oz coal was allowed to do it ...

And indeed it turns out that they weren't far off the mark ...

 

Yes, coal and gas are the future, and yet innovation is the future, and yes, trust in beefy Angus. He might not have the first clue as to how those things ended up in the Lord Mayor's in tray, but he surely knows ways to overcome, better, faster, more cost-effective ... just make sure you put it all in a company with revolving door directorships so that all your mates can get in on the technological, grant-giving, government picks a winner act ...

Oh it's going to be a fine future, a future full of learning, a consistent part of our history, a set of challenges to be overcome and grants to be doled out ... 

They really know how to do it ... just like the fucking useless NBN ... a sure sign of where we're heading...