In which Dame Slap does her usual libertarian rant, and the bromancer talks of a fluid hard reality ...

 

 

 

The pond's editorial policies are, at best, haphazard. 

There's the Killer, fresh from unloading buckshot into a swag of masks, inspiring the pond to reminisce about the day it shot a snake while out and about after rabbits - only in self-defence, mind, but ah, the pleasures of reptile hunting.

But then Killer had his go yesterday celebrating the Wolf at the door, and Dame Slap talking of a whiff of fascism - well, as we used to say in the old days in Tamworth, it takes a fascist to recognise the whiff of fascism - so surely it was only right and proper to clear the decks for a good Dame Slap rant ...

 

Poor, hapless bureaucrat. In a right and proper world, that association of a "whiff of fascism" with a reptile mug shot at the top of a Dame Slap rant would surely see a generous amount of damages awarded ... but when Dame Slap sees a bureaucrat standing in her way, she doesn't just fantasize about unloading a spray on them ... she hurls her keyboard at them ...

After that rant, some might wonder at how Dame Slap comes to select her targets. How about Clive? Why no mention of his latest outrages? It's not as if they're invisible ...

Dame Slap's editorial targets are peculiar, which helps explain the pond's own peculiarities. The pond would like to think that Dame Slap had decided against giving Clive a platform, but at least his vulgar inanity, and culpable, dangerous stupidity might be noted ahead of other targets ... but no, Dame Slap seems intent on forcing the pond into a defence of SloMo, a wilfully perverse tactic bound to fail ...

Might Dame Slap have noted the shocking reports of deaths in assorted countries, ranging from Japan through India to Peru, and also noted that the way to end all talk of lockdowns would simply have been to deliver an effective vaccine rollout?

Nope, because in her own libertarian way, with a whiff of fascism, Dame Slap is with the Killer in yearning for a decent saunter through the killing fields, and will use any tactic, device, report, or talk of mental health to get herself and the rest of the country there ...

 

What to say? In the end, the pond would rather have been in Australia for the pandemic than in many other countries, despite the worst intentions of reptiles of the Killer and Dame Slap IPA kind. That way, at least the pond is alive to puzzle over Rowe cartoons, as in the latest one to hand here ...

 

And after all that, the pond usually goes looking for reptile seconds, by heading down the page to the commentary section ... only to be disappointed, as always ...

Loosley on the loose, and supporting the paywall? Babones downplaying sexual harassment, as a Babones would? The lizard Oz editorialist sounding like a pale echo of Dame Slap? And who is this Damien Freeman, expounding on complex and divisive black folk?

 

The ACU dressed up as a think tank guru? Sorry, there was nothing for it, the pond simply had to go with the bromancer, doing hagiographic reptile duties for the day.

The pond has surely been there a zillion times before, sometimes with the bouffant Shanners, sometimes with simplistic Simon, but neither of them have the absolute Pepsodent ring of confidence that the bromancer brings to the task ...

 

Luckily the bromancer keeps his hagiographical outings short, and whenever he talks of being "based on reality",  especially in relation to a man who speaks in tongues to an imaginary friend, and who has a QAnon insurrectionist in his circle of friends, the pond is assured that reality will be a somewhat distant and fragile concept ... almost moist and fluid at some point in proceedings ...

Well, yes, it's even possible something printed in the lizard Oz might be true, but thus far, all the pond has seen is Sharri going surreal, and assorted other hints and suspicions, and yet, not a thing on which to hang a hat, let alone a conspiracy theory ...

Don't get the pond wrong, it would be pleased to have genuine scientists establish a genuine source for the virus, but with a heavily realistic heart, when the bromancer talks of SloMo as a deep realist, the pond has to wonder ... is it the bromancer that's barking mad, or the pond?

Was it only a short time ago that SloMo, in his "deeply realist" way, was sucking up to the Donald on just about every policy position doing the rounds, from climate science to the WTO to the UN?

 

Phew, that's a relief, the pond isn't going mad, that was what was going down in 2018, as noted at the Fin here ... and so to the next short gobbet ...

Say what? Well, the pond only does screen caps, so it's not possible to Watch The Video, even if You Would Like to Know More ... but ignoring that family resemblance to Big Brother in the portrait, what were the reptiles thinking?

Everyone with half an ounce of reptile or Fox News or Tucker coursing through their veins knows that the Fauc isn't an authority, but has been involved in a deep conspiracy with the Chinese government to let loose the virus on the world ...

It's all in the latest set of emails to be loosed on the world, and might even make Fox News forget about Hillary's emails for a nanosecond ...

 

And that, bizarrely, is how the pond came to read Kelly Hawes in Indiana scribbling about the latest conspiracy theories for the Greensburg Daily News ...

 ...Guys like Scalise, though, see something else in all those emails. They see the message Fauci received more than a year ago from an executive at EcoHealth Alliance, the global organization that helped to fund research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. In that message, the executive thanked Fauci for saying publicly that scientific evidence seemed to support a natural origin for the virus rather than a release from a lab.
CNN’s John Berman asked Fauci about that discussion during an interview on CNN’s New Day.
“There are some of your critics who say this shows you have too cozy of a relationship with the people behind the Wuhan lab research,” Berman said. “What do you say to that?”
Fauci didn’t hold back.
“That’s nonsense,” he said. “I don’t even see how they get that from that email.”
He pointed out that the origins of the coronavirus remain uncertain.
“I have always said, and will say today to you, John, that I still believe the most likely origin is from an animal species to a human,” he told Berman, “but I keep an absolutely open mind that if there may be other origins of that, there may be another reason. It could have been a lab leak.”
Fauci keeps an open mind. He looks for scientific evidence. That’s what scientists do.
“You can misconstrue it however you want,” Fauci said. “That email was from a person to me saying ‘thank you’ for whatever it is he thought I said, and I said that I think the most likely origin is a jumping of species. I still do think it is. At the same time as I’m keeping an open mind that it might be a lab leak.”
It’s at least worth noting that two researchers going to the hospital with respiratory issues in the middle of cold and flu season might not be the smoking gun some folks think it is.
Fauci didn’t hide his frustration when Berman asked about another email exchange, this one with Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. Berman noted that much of the message had been redacted, and he asked whether Fauci remembered the substance.
“They only took about 10,000 emails from me,” Fauci said. “Of course, I remember. I remember all 10,000 of them. Give me a break.”
Again, though, the doctor said what he thought.
“I don’t remember what’s in that redacted,” he said, “but the idea, I think, is quite farfetched that the Chinese deliberately engineered something so that they could kill themselves as well as other people. I think that’s a bit far out, John.”
Conspiracy theorists like Scalise won’t pay attention, of course. They already have all the evidence they need.

Say what? There are still some sane people in the United States?

Clearly the pond's logarithms are involved in a deep global conspiracy to hide the truth ... but now, back to the bromancer for the final word ... and what do you know, he starts off with the bizarre proposition of "more fluid yet deeply realistic", which sounds truly weird ... though once the pond heard the notion, it realised it could make a motza flogging fluid deep realist lolly water ...

 

Of course the one thing the hard vision based on alleged hard reality won't mention is climate science ... but never mind, for that we have the infallible Pope conjuring up the Terminator ...

End on a deeply realist cartoon, with a hint of powder puff fluidity? No, let's have another burst from the Wolf at the door ...