In which the pond leads with the Oreo, is aced by Jolly Joe and trumped by the dog botherer ...

 

 

 

Many reptiles are called in the Monday lizard Oz, but not all can be chosen ...

The pond usually steers clear of simplistic Simon doing an enormous SloMo suck, but the Major's standard ABC bashing also had to be ruled out. 

The Major's major recommendation, in a Major Major way, was to listen to Andrew West's Religion and Ethics Report to discover the truth about the Pell conspiracy. 

Alas and alack, the pond had already done that - as others can here - and discovered that despite West's best efforts, he couldn't get Joshua McElwee, a journalist based in Rome, to commit to a conspiracy. Not that the pond blames West for trying - it would have been a scoop - but for the moment, more research is needed. It's a pity the Major isn't up to that job, but he's still looking for that Order of Lenin medal.

And so the pond turned to the reformed, recovering feminist, the Oreo, to kick start the week with a standard Murdochian conspiracy ...

 

Indeed, indeed, but perhaps that's just as well, because buggered if the pond could find any hint of others' news in the lizard Oz ...

 

 

Speaking of cancers, back to the Oreo and that typical grasping whine and moan from the Murdochians and their failing, flailing business model ... (anyone wanting those alternatives above should feel free to Google away, which remains a better experience than reptiling or Murdochianising the time away ...)

 

 

Who knew that a reformed, recovering feminist could transform into such a loyal lickspittle lackey, but the Oreo shows how it can be done ...

 

 

 

Actually it turns out that the issue of political bias is hotly contested within one family, as the pond discovered by reading the NY Times, as those who have enough freebies left can do here, with Maureen Dowd interviewing James Murdoch ...

 

 

 

Ah, so much more at the source, but the pond is stuck with the Oreo, and the Oreo is inside the tent and has been inside the tent for some time now, recovered and reformed from her tragic feminist days, frantically drinking the Murdochian kool aid. She had one last paranoid, conspiracy-laden gobbet in her, but luckily it was brief ...

 

 

Fuck the pond dead, but do it gently please, what on earth is the Oreo talking about? The "free press"? 

Newsflash. The Murdochians aren't free. Oh sure they have one measly site that's free, and as a result is popular, but the rest want to charge like wounded bulls so that the likes of the Bolter, the dog botherer and the Oreo herself might get a little tickle from singing from the chairman's song sheet ... and as for honesty, and corruption, has there ever been a more corrupt and devious organisation than Fox News? Not even some actual Murdochs could stomach its crap.

Never mind, and as for Jason Thomas and the war on Iran, and the Oreo's devotion to the Donald getting the right sort of corporate support - apparently Fox News isn't enough - the pond was delighted at news that the Donald had found followers in far off lands ... who knows Jason, can Iran be far behind?

 

 

And so to Jolly Joe, who was outside the ruck of the commentary team and at the top of the digital page. The pond has developed quite a taste for Joe's comedy stylings, and hopes his engagement extends beyond the election, but in the meantime ...

 

 

At some point, Joe will fantasise that he's a woman in Maryland, perhaps even donning a dress Some Like It Hot style - let's face it, nobody's perfect - and start talking to himself, which is a fiction worthy of Samuel Richardson imagining that he's a Pamela ... (alas it was too early in the eighteenth century for Karens) ...

 

At this point, the pond should note that the reptiles have deemed Joe's copy as being in urgent need of click bait videos. The pond usually cuts them out, but couldn't be bothered removing one simply so it could get those last few treasured Jolly Joe words on their own ... especially as they triggered a cartoon by one of the US's far right Donald supporter cartoonists ...

 

But back to Joe, heavily trimmed of all the reptile ornaments ...

Here the pond should note that the reptiles proudly added a graph to Jolly Joe's piece to give it some appearance of substance, as if general polling had anything to do with the results in a country with that bizarre institution, the Electoral College ...

So the pond shrunk down the graph, and returned to Jolly Joe ...

He must grieve for the losses? The Donald is a narcissistic sociopathic carnie showman, he doesn't do grieving ... he does arson ...

And so to the last Jolly Joe gobbet ...

 

Yes, yes, good one, Jolly Joe team coach and supplier of oranges for the Donald, as if he wasn't already orange enough, another four years of the Donald ... how sweet it will be, how cartoonists around the world will rejoice ... a pity that the planet will be comprehensively fucked, like a Donald casino, but we must take our pleasures as we find them ...

And so to the dog botherer, offered up as the bonus of the day because that's what the pond is usually reduced to ... some hare-brained (well the dog botherer could hardly be hair-brained) Murdochian loon ranting away ...

 

 

On the upside, the dog botherer manages to encapsulate all the other reptiles after a kool-aid drinking party ... there's the ABC, there's the Donald, and in due course there'll be comrade Dan ... and there was also a tweet that set the dog botherer off ...

 

 

Now it will not come as any surprise to anyone living outside the dog botherer bubble that the Donald is a super spreader ...

 

 

 

But reality is hard to grasp when blessed with a dog botherer's pea brain ...  apparently it's all the fault of the ABC, everything is all the fault of the ABC, the entire universe is ruined because of the ABC ...

 

 

The pond loves it when ratbag ranting loons of the dog botherer kind toss out words like "sober" and "objective", as if they had some understanding of the concepts ... and now marvel at how the ranter manages to segue to hate mode ... for Paul Barry, climate science, comrade Dan, the ABC again, what have you got, he's got a drunken, subjective rant primed and ready to go ...

 

It got worse? What, like this?

Never mind, we're at the last gobbet ...

 

 

You see, the dog botherer more than made up for the pond not offering up the Major Mitchell's rant about all evil in the world emanating from the ABC ...

It would take a psychiatrist or perhaps someone expert in how to manage a disreputable, tawdry, failing business to analyse all of the above ...

As for the pond it is pleased it is allowed to drive on the road - so many pleasures, so much attention from SloMo to complimentary women - and indulge in the odd cartoon from the immortal Rowe, with more always to hand here ...