Not even the end of January, and already the pond is weary, and the Murdochian woods are dark and deep ...

 

 

 

It occurred to the pond that what with the current showdown between Google and the Murdochians, the pond might soon go away ... just vanish, disappear into the night.

The thought produced an immediate sense of relief, the sloughing off of dark shadows ... we're not even at the end of January and already the pond is deeply tired of the reptiles, the usual line up of suspects offering their usual tired, jaundiced, bizarre takes on the world, as seen through the fluff in their navels ...

Take Killer Creighton for example ... will someone just take Killer Creighton? No, oh okay then ...

 

 

 

 

The Killer became something of a pond favourite last year, but there's only so much time you can spend with one of the more moronic reptiles before the novelty wears off ... and becomes very wearing ...

 

 

 

 

 

The former White House noted? The White House was infested with notorious liars, and led by a serial liar of prodigious capacity for lying. And yet the Killer takes their word for it?

 

 

And just to add a little more:

These long-term trends gained political traction during the Great Recession. It became popular to refer to the “1 percent,” the group of ultra-rich who now hold more wealth than America’s entire middle class.
By the time 2016 rolled around, it seemed like voters were fed up. Capitalizing on widespread disillusionment with the economy, Trump campaigned on a pledge to do something about it. Among other things, Trump promised to restore America’s ailing manufacturing base and to stand tough against emerging markets that many people blamed for syphoning jobs away from the U.S. economy. The idea was that prioritizing workers would alleviate the pressure on blue-collar America.
Unfortunately, things have gotten worse, not better.
The numbers are revealing. The distance separating America’s highest and lowest income brackets grew by almost 9 percent annually under Trump. That growth is faster than in previous periods. From 1990 to 2015 growth was about 7 percent — a period that included three recessions.
That 2 percent difference might sound small. But it matters once we recognize that many households cannot meet their basic needs.
By 2019, housing was unaffordable for workers in 70 percent of the country. The average family is now far less able to afford home ownership than it was just a few years ago. Almost 30 million people lacked health insurance in 2019. One-quarter of Americans have no retirement savings. And one widely cited report from the Federal Reserve found that 40 percent of the country could not afford an emergency expense of $400. 
The list does not end there. A full 20 percent of American children now live in poverty, a number that increased under the Trump administration. At the same time, education, which is supposed to help overcome these problems, is becoming increasingly unaffordable as tuition outpaces income growth.
Perhaps most strikingly, all of this happened before the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the U.S. economy. Things have gotten worse since then.  

 

There's more at The Hill here, with links, but back to the man who feels humiliated at the notion of donning a mask ...

 

 

You can see why the pond is tired, deeply tired. Only a fuckwit would bother to defend a record that's seen 400k + deaths, shortly rising to 500 +, and the Killer is just too fuckwitted to waste time debating the point ... like that pointless blather about a travel ban on Chinese arrivals, which has long been noted as doing three fifths of fuck all, so porous and pointless was it ...

 

Thankfully the humiliated Killer had only one last small gobbet in him ...

 

 

 

US vaccine? Pfizer had the good luck to get into bed with BioNTech, a German biotechnology based in Mainz Germany ... and in any case, there had been much research done for years that paved the way for the current crop of vaccines ...

As for that talk of the US recovery, waiter, the pond wants a serve of the same kool aid they supply to the water cooler in Surry Hills ...

But why argue with a scribbler still trying to scrub a turd clean, and polish humbug to a gleam?

Instead the pond turned away from the commentary section and the likes of Bjorn to admire the top of the digital page as it appeared early on Saturday morn ...

 

Fuck, talk about an almost unendurable sense of futility ...

It is possible to believe the shameless cheek of SloMo? Politics of carbon has ended?

In what known, or unknown, reptile denialist universe? The same one that featured the usual Bjorn blather this very day, rabbiting on in a way that sees the pond step around him discreetly, as it does with the mad uncle down from the attic.

And what about the reptiles awarding a meaningless 'Australians of the year' gong to Victorians, having spent the entire time of the virus pouring shit on Comrade Dan and all the other state premiers who did something about it, apart from noble Gladys, who managed to be the slow one at the tail of the pack as the new year began...

And then over on the far right of the page was the dog botherer, less a harmless distraction than the pond's nemesis. Could the pond cope with two fuckwits in the one day?

 

Well at least there were some nice fireworks before the pond set off on its journey into mind-numbing tedium with the Utegate, war in Iraq man ... but perhaps the pond should start small, with a chunky gobbet full of meaty dog botherer...

 

Say what? Is the dog botherer pretending that he's above the culture wars, that he disdains the culture wars, that he's not, along with other reptiles, a proud barking mad member of the conservative forces that routinely howl at the culture wars moon?

Oh it was too much, and the pond knew it wouldn't get any better ...

 

 

Yes, more of the standard shit, but thank the long absent lord not many in Australia had to do what many have done in the United States, the UK and Europe when it comes to human rights ... toddle off to die in an emergency room hooked up to a ventilator ...

Now there's your basic human right, reptile style ... 'the, human, the', or as Bart would have it in German, Die, Human, Die ...

If the reptiles had run the show, the pond shudders to think of the carnage ... but then remembers what Lord Downer and his disciple, the dog botherer, helped produce in Iraq, and it can just begin to imagine what might have gone down, as the humiliated Killer Creighton tore off his mask and walked free and proud ...

More twaddle defending the Donald? Wearisome ranting about Trump's appalling character? Guess that means there should be no wearisome ranting about the dog botherer's appalling character ...

Chris Kenny is my dad. On one of the Sky News political analysis programs he hosts, he has replied to the Chaser joke, lamenting that if his children were ever to Google his name in the future, this is the kind of filth we would stumble across.
Heaven forbid.
Kenny is a staunchly neo-conservative, anti-progress, anti-worker defender of the status quo. He is an unrelenting apologist for the Liberal Party. He was one of Alexander Downer’s senior advisers at the time of the Iraq War. He’s been known to argue for stubborn, sightless inaction on climate change. He spits at anyone concerned with such trivialities as gender equality, environmental issues or labour rights from his Twitter account on a daily basis. Recently, he characterised criticism of the lack of women in Tony Abbott’s Cabinet as a continuation of the Left’s “gender wars”. He is a regular and fervent participant in The Australian’s numerous ongoing bully campaigns against those who question its editorial practices and ideological biases. The profoundly irresponsible, dishonest, hate-filled anti-multiculturalist Andrew Bolt has recently referred to Kenny on his blog as “a friend”.
And it’s a jokey picture of a bestial embrace that I should be afraid of discovering online? (here) 

It's an old trope, but some things never get old ... and the pond thought it should remind those who came late to the story, how the dog botherer earned his name.

And so to a couple of last gasp dog botherer gobbets, cut into digestible sizes ...

 

 

Unilaterally leading the world in energy innovation and efficiency? It's too long to repeat here, but take a squiz at the BBC in October of last year answering the question What is Trump's record on the environment?

"It'll start getting cooler. You just watch ... I don't think science knows, actually."

Barking mad, but then, why should the dog botherer, who has dedicated his life to climate science denialism care? Or think that's a significant achievement?

Leading the world in combating a gigantic hoax?

Oh it's all too wearying ... but at least the pond has reached the end of what turned out to be a predictable litany, designed to suggest that we'll someday look back on the Donald as an unfairly maligned genius, and Fox News as being right all along ... as opposed to being barking mad, far right Q delusional all along ...

 

 

Less abrasive? What a pity, because after all that, the pond is only left with abrasive thoughts of the 'fuck Killer Creighton and the dog botherer' kind ...

But then there always comes a moment of redeeming pleasure, when the pond can visit the immortal Rowe here, and discover a cartoon to be treasured as a way of wrapping up, and possibly even redeeming, proceedings ...