In which the pond begins its Xmas wind down with a challenge ...

 

The pond is winding down for the year, and offers this timeline and a challenge. 

If the weekend reptiles live up to their job, then the last pond posting for the year will be this Sunday, provided that a reptile has offered up a decent Sunday meditation, something that will serve as a badge of honour for the pond for the holiday season, so that if anybody should stumble on the pond, they will say, yes, this is worth reading again and again, and so the reptile fort will be held well into the new year, and the pond will continue to attract and sparkle and shine, with a veneer only a reptile polish can provide ... even if it's just the usual reptile cant and nonsense writ large.

But if these weekend reptiles fail, and the Monday reptiles - perhaps an Oreo, a Caterist or the Major himself - produce something even more dazzling, then that will be the heirloom the pond presents to the world during the holiday season.

The challenge is on, let the reptile diamonds cascade forth and fall where they may, and meanwhile, please step back, and allow the pond to step into the muck of the average reptile Friday proceedings, and yes, come on down Theo ...

 

 

 

 

This is how the reptiles play the climate denialist game these days. 

 

Find a rat in the rank, a useful tool, a useless fool, and give him a splash of space, while ignoring the interesting stories doing the rounds, such as this one in the Graudian here ...

 

 

 

 

And so on ... and meanwhile, the reptiles need a useless tool to muddy the waters, and cry for Joel to represent the face of Labor and Labor energy policy, because coal ... or nukes, or whatever, anything but renewables ...

 

 

Mark Butler is fanatical? Well that's a novel way of describing being thrashed by a lettuce, but that's why the reptiles need these useless tools, because coming from the reptiles these days, it would be too obvious, and there's always the odd cartoon hanging around to point out the coalition comedy ...

 

 

 And so back to the useless tool, grinding away like a useful fool ...

 

You see? You might just as well be reading a dog botherer rant, or some other climate denialist dredged up by the reptiles, but the cunning ploy is to get a rat in the rank to play the luddite role, and froth and foam about renewables in all the usual reptile ways ...

At least it gives the pond a chance to correct an error, because the pond is always mortified when time limits force it to run a truncated Pope, when a full version will inevitably become available, perhaps on somewhere like Reddit ...

 

 

That makes the pond feel so much better, and so it can put up with the last outburst of the useless tool jumping the shark and nuking the fridge ...

 

Oh the fucking altar of fucking renewables!  Get fucked, you useless tool, you rat in the rank ...and besides you didn't mention the "climate debate" or a dozen other reptile denialist talking points.

Perhaps you should go on a voyage with the infallible Pope, it's sure to end well ...

 

 

And so to the truly onerous duty of the day, one of our hole in the bucket man Henry's rants, and this time it's a ripper ... not that it was an easy choice to make ...

 

 

 

Oh yes, the war on China proceeds apace, and the authoritarians are shivering in their boots, and perhaps also quivering in fear ... 

Aye lad, by gum, they need dinkum, sweet, pure, precious, virginal, innocent, clean Oz coal, they do, and it's only a matter of time, a day or two, before they shiver themselves to their senses ...

But enough of distilled essence of reptile comedy, because our Henry was in a rage ...

 

Now the pond isn't all that keen on identifying anyone by their ethnic or religious identity. It's why calling Obama a Muslim from Kenya always struck the pond as a tad unfortunate ... and why there's been some confusion at the ranch in past times ...

If you thought the United States had achieved the significant historic milestone of electing its first African American president, think again. According to Next America, a just-released Pew Research Center report, only a little over one-fourth of Americans believe Obama is black.
Obama self-identifies as black—he checked the “black, negro, African American” box on the 2010 U.S. Census—and has jokingly identified himself as a mutt too. But when asked if Obama is black or mixed race, 27 percent of Americans say that he’s black, and 52 percent say he’s mixed race.
When the data is broken out according to racial groups, whites and Hispanics respond similarly. Of whites, 24 percent say Obama is black, and 53 percent say he is mixed race. As for Hispanics, 23 percent say he’s black, and 61 percent say he’s mixed race. Asians weren’t asked what they thought. (What’s up with that, Pew?)
The question—Is Obama black or mixed race?—is phrased oddly. A person can be both. And where is Pew's “Is Obama black or mixed race or white” option? But this study is simply the latest example of America’s mass confusion over Obama’s identity. (More here, and lordy lordy does that discussion say much about the United States).

Of course the pond does reserve the right to call senile dotards of the one-eyed Henry kind a little demented in their blind fury ...

 

 

The pond was a little startled to see that some in the comments section thought our hole in the bucket man was doing a little egging ...

 

 

Of course the pond is being selective, but still, it was surprising to see that even some of the reptile readership thought that our Henry was if not demented, at least heading senility's way.

It also reminded the pond that only yesterday the pond featured anti-BLM piffle from the squatter up Gunnedah way ... and then the pond began to wonder why our Henry took such umbrage at Obama, what with him being a black man and all, and yet the pond couldn't recall a similar sense of outrage in our hole in the bucket man at the obvious target mentioned in that last comment ...

 

If Henry had been sensible, he would have covered himself by noting that anti-semitism isn't restricted to one side of politics, and that the Donald years have been a white supremacist shocker, and he might have even gone so far as to note that the policies of the current right wing government in Israel doesn't always help the cause of a theocratic state which has Iranian tendencies ... just on a different side.

Instead our Henry donned his eyepatch, cast one eye on the subject, and took refuge in history ...

 

And yet, and yet ... was it progressives that were doing all the marching and the chanting and the saluting during the Donald years?

 

 

 

Why no mention of the obvious? Has it already been forgotten, the empowering of white supremacists, the deaths, and the last four years of empowering racism, under a white President with a deep loathing for Obama, and fomentor of birtherism? Apparently ... and meanwhile, our Henry goes right off ...

 

There you go ... it seems it's impossible these days to have a discussion of religion without grumpy old loons getting personal about it ...

What's wrong with finding faith incomprehensible at best, irrational at worst? 

If people want to believe in imaginary friends, off they go, and do their chanting and their praying, but please, leave your average atheist secularist out of it, or the next thing you know, we'll be wondering why our Henry only ever blathers on about the Jewish and Xian god, and leaves the Islamic god out of it (same chap, isn't he?), or yabbers on about the abundance of Hindu gods ... and all the others that litter the planet ...

Fortunately there was one comment which lightened the tone before things could get too heavy ...

 

 

 

Dear sweet long absent lord, there's going to be a lot of loony grandpas and crazy uncles let out of the attic for the Xmas dinner this year, the pond can feel it in its bones ...

And yet with the price of crayfish this year plummeting, thanks to the war on China, what is the pond to make of that hammering injunction in Leviticus?

An abomination? Oh fuck it, just one lobster can't hurt, and besides, that'll teach the bloody Chinese ...

Hmm, perhaps the pond should have just done a complete re-run of Leviticus, one of the funniest books in the bible, but instead, let our hole in the bucket man have his final flurry of froth and foam ...

 

Did our Henry just say 'Trump the protections', just to rub it in? And did he just invoke an imaginary friend as the only way he could manage to think?

For the long absent lord's sake Henry, think what you're saying, think about all your companions in the lizard Oz, think of their views on topics such as black lives matter, and perhaps wonder why Obama enrages you so much, and yet you always seemed to have had a kind word to hand for Trumpian thoughts and deeds and protections ...

Why is that the way of things, hole in the bucket man?