In which the pond catches up with, and celebrates, the return of the Oreo ...

 

 

 

 

 

The reptiles are, if the pond might put it in a polite way, trying to mess with the pond's mind.

 

You see the pond gets up early to pond, in order to go on with other things, and what do you know, the reptiles deliberately held back the return of the reformed, recovering feminist, the Oreo, yesterday ... only for the pond to discover that she'd been given a big splash welcome back, with heaps of pictures and videos and what not, and an enormously long four minute read to fill in the spaces between the pictures ...

As if the pond would turn its back on the Oreo at any time, but especially on her return to start a new year, devastated by news of the Donald  ...

Of course the Oreo is just warming up with this recitation, and the reptiles seized the moment to insert +15 images ... so those who found the words a tad difficult might settle for the pictures. 

The pond decided it was also a good moment to introduce at least part of another story, by Ben Smith in the New York Times, which ran under the header Fox Settled a Lawsuit Over Its Lies. But It Insisted on One Unusual Condition. (may be paywall affected). It asked a question ... Why did the network insist an agreement with the family of a murdered young man remain undisclosed until after the election?

And then circled the answer ...

On Oct. 12, 2020, Fox News agreed to pay millions of dollars to the family of a murdered Democratic National Committee staff member, implicitly acknowledging what saner minds knew long ago: that the network had repeatedly hyped a false claim that the young staff member, Seth Rich, was involved in leaking D.N.C. emails during the 2016 presidential campaign. (Russian intelligence officers, in fact, had hacked and leaked the emails.)
Fox’s decision to settle with the Rich family came just before its marquee hosts, Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity, were set to be questioned under oath in the case, a potentially embarrassing moment. And Fox paid so much that the network didn’t have to apologize for the May 2017 story on FoxNews.com.
But there was one curious provision that Fox insisted on: The settlement had to be kept secret for a month — until after the Nov. 3 election. The exhausted plaintiffs agreed.
Why did Fox care about keeping the Rich settlement secret for the final month of the Trump re-election campaign? Why was it important to the company, which calls itself a news organization, that one of the biggest lies of the Trump era remain unresolved for that period? Was Fox afraid that admitting it was wrong would incite the president’s wrath? Did network executives fear backlash from their increasingly radicalized audience, which has been gravitating to other conservative outlets?

Fox News and its lawyer, Joe Terry, declined to answer that question when I asked last week. And two people close to the case, who shared details of the settlement with me, were puzzled by that provision, too.
The unusual arrangement underscores how deeply entwined Fox has become in the Trump camp’s disinformation efforts and the dangerous paranoia they set off, culminating in the fatal attack on the Capitol 11 days ago. The network parroted lies from Trump and his more sinister allies for years, ultimately amplifying the president’s enormous deceptions about the election’s outcome, further radicalizing many of Mr. Trump’s supporters.
The man arrested after rampaging through the Capitol with zip-tie handcuffs had proudly posted to Facebook a photograph with his shotgun and Fox Business on a giant screen in the background. The woman fatally shot as she pushed her way inside the House chamber had engaged Fox contributors dozens of times on Twitter, NPR reported.
High profile Fox voices, with occasional exceptions, not only fed the baseless belief that the election had been stolen, but they helped frame Jan. 6 as a decisive day of reckoning, when their audience’s dreams of overturning the election could be realized. And the network’s role in fueling pro-Trump extremism is nothing new: Fox has long been the favorite channel of pro-Trump militants. The man who mailed pipe bombs to CNN in 2018 watched Fox News “religiously,” according to his lawyers’ sentencing memorandum, and believed Mr. Hannity’s claim that Democrats were “encouraging mob violence” against people like him...

What a bunch of fully sick fucks.

There's more, of course, but the pond decided was best to return to the Oreo, because as a reformed, recovering feminist, she loves a dedicated pussy groper, and was there anyone better at groping personal or state or country's genitals than the Donald, and then giving them a good hard twist? And it turned out that the NY Times wasn't that irrelevant to the Oreo's guff...

 

Rather, he urged them to march peacefully?

Of course when you're a reformed, recovering feminist, you're entirely comfortable with distorting, dissembling and outright lying.

But why did the pond find the Oreo's defence rose to the necessary level of rich irony required to gain entrance to the pond?

Well there was this story at SBS, one that can be found all over the web ... (with more under 'I Answered the Call of My President') ...

In the two weeks since a raging mob stormed the Capitol, US President Donald Trump has shown no sign that he believes he shares responsibility for the worst incursion on the halls of Congress in more than two centuries.
Shielding him further, his loyalists have started shifting blame for the attack to an array of distracting bogeymen: far-left anti-fascists, Black Lives Matter activists, even vague conspiracies of a setup involving Vice President Mike Pence.
But one group of people has already come forward and directly implicated Mr Trump in the riot at the Capitol: some of his own supporters who were arrested while taking part in it.
In court papers and interviews, at least four pro-Trump rioters have said they joined the march that spiraled into violence in part because the president encouraged them to do so.
In the past few days, a retired firefighter charged with assaulting members of the Capitol Police force told a friend he went to the building following “the president’s instructions,” according to a criminal complaint, and a Texas realtor accused of breaching the building told a reporter that by protesting in Washington, she had “answered the call of my president.”
A Virginia man has told the FBI that he and his cousin marched on the Capitol because Mr Trump said “something about taking Pennsylvania Avenue.” And a lawyer for the so-called QAnon Shaman — who invaded the building in a Viking costume — said that Mr Trump was culpable, and he planned to ask the White House for a pardon.
“Does our president bear responsibility?” the lawyer, Al Watkins, told The New York Times. “Hell, yes, he does.”
 

Oh it's rich, and being a recovering, reformed feminist, the Oreo gets even richer in her love for the defamed pussy groper ...

 

 

Oh they're so mean to the Donald, and it's so hard for the Oreo to let go ...

 

 

To read the Oreo up close is a dispiriting exercise ... but the pond does so hope that the United States drives the Oreo ever deeper into despair, especially as the reptiles, always a sucker for ironies, had this coupling for her return to the fray ...

 

 

 Here, have a cartoon celebrating the inflammatory left ...

 

And so to today's efforts, and Killer Creighton leads the way.

The pond thinks that the Killer became the reptile star of 2020. He abandoned any pretence at being about economics, and instead began to roam far and wide, and today he shows that in 2021 he will keep on roaming ...

 

 

 

 

 

Now the pond will admit that this is a very ordinary entry from the Killer, below his usual form, but anything the Killer scribbles deserves attention ...

 

Why the inverted commas around "cases"? You know, a case is a case is a case, or perhaps even a rose...

Ah, that's the Killer for you, and just to get his next gobbet off to a flying start, please allow the pond to agonise over whether to call him an entitled snowflake, or an up himself fuckwit ...

Whatever, can the pond dedicate the Killer's line about his fortunate job to those who wear masks all the time as a result of the work they do ... sanders, welders, doctors and nurses in the grip of an eight hour operation, and such like ...

 

What the fuck? Where's the "humiliation" in wearing a mask and protecting a neighbour, a relative, a friend, or a passing stranger?

Once again the Killer shows he's going to be in epic DLP form in 2021 ... 

And so to a few alarming notes.

After the Oreo's railing at big tech, the pond was startled by news of her beloved's attitude ... even though there's only a few days left for the Emperor to do his thing ...

By golly, the reptiles down under will have to start schmoozing with Joe if they want their dreams to come true ...

 

Oh it's all too confusing for the pond. Wasn't the Donald the reptiles dearly beloved hero? What went wrong, why is he doing this at one minute to midnight, and setting a precedent that rascally Joe might follow, what with him being filled full of malarkey ...?

 

That's it? They've contacted the ACCC for comment?

And finally a note from the lizard editorialist about the war on China, which it should be said, is going spiffingly well, following expert advice tendered to the reptiles, and so repeated by the lizard Oz editorialist, always willing to follow the example of the sheep in Animal Farm ...

 

Ah, Lord Downer's adviser has spoken, and naturally it's a sophisticated view, and there's no doubt that many others will want dinkum, pure, innocent, clean, virginal Oz coal, because they share the reptile aim of fucking the planet ... and not just a little bit, but in a comprehensive way. 

Bring on fresh markets is the reptile cry ...

 

Oh dear, that can't be right. Do go on, lizard editorialist ...

 

Good luck with all that, and so to the Rowe of the day, with more Rowe here ...