In which Polonius, our Gracie and the dog botherer make it on to a guest list for a club you might prefer not to join ...

 

 

Would that the pond could start off a column in the Marina Hyde fashion, as here ...

 It feels so wrong starting an article with the words “you need to hear about this” when it doesn’t concern things Gwyneth Paltrow wants you to put up your vagina, or 20 of the world’s most important kitchen islands. Even so, would you … could you possibly consider listening to this?

And so to errata and omissions, and the pond overlooking Jonathan Freeland in the matter of King Bibi, as featured by the bromancer yesterday, with Netanyahu embodied dishonest, divisive demagoguery. If he's gone, good riddance. Inter alia ...

...Divide and rule has been Netanyahu’s guiding principle, recklessly pitting one group against the other. In the 2015 election, he mobilised his supporters on election day by warning that their Arab fellow citizens were going to the polls “in droves”. It worked. This year, he manoeuvred to get Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of a racist, medievally bigoted party, into the Knesset, simply because he thought it would help him retain power. It’s no wonder that Netanyahu has felt comfortable with the likes of Orbán, despite the Hungarian leader’s trafficking in anti-Jewish tropes.
Netanyahu has attacked any institution that threatened to hold him to account or even to act as a check on his power, branding them part of a hated leftist elite. His assaults on the independence of the judiciary have been ceaseless. He appointed loyalists as attorney general and chief of police (and couldn’t conceal his frustration when they acted impartially), and to the previously independent watchdog role of state comptroller.
He has tried to hobble the media, shutting down a state broadcaster deemed insufficiently loyal and having a backer launch a Pravda-esque daily newspaper to hymn his praises. When a rival looked set to take the largely ceremonial role of president in 2014, Netanyahu sought to abolish the post altogether. He has trampled on valuable democratic conventions, including the one that says an indicted PM should step down. Instead, he has clung to office even as he stands trial on three major corruption charges.
In power for far, far too long, Netanyahu has corroded Israel from the inside. Replacing him with a government too divided to do much will not solve every problem, but it will solve one – and that’s a start.

And before getting under reptile way, another quote from Crikey here ... (paywall affected) ...

 

And that sets the scene for prattling Polonius, doing his usual, bog standard ABC prattle ...

 

 

But still the pond feels the need to slip in other gobbets from other places ... what with the Weekly Beast on  the case here ...

 

 

And so at last, mood set, a word from Polonius, though it  feels so wrong to be starting an article with the words “you need to read this”. You don't need to read it, nor have someone read it aloud so you can listen to it, and if you do, there's certainly no need to think about it ...
 

 

Of course Polonius was going to abandon his history lesson, and fulminate in the usual Polonial way ...

 

 

And so to a coulda woulda shoulda, which reminded the pond of that Xian Porter Crikey joke ...

 

 

 

A bit like the only one cancelling the Donald is the man who cancelled the Donald's blog ... namely the Donald himself ... ah that cancel culture, it'll get you going and coming ...

But back to Polonius, stoutly defending the line with his jammed Gatling ...
 

 

Speaking of Neighbour, the Weekly Beast also featured this tweet ...

 

 

 

Sorry, the one thing the reptiles don't do is admit error, apologise, retreat, retract, or in any way act like a civilised outfit. It's a knife to the carotid artery, or it's nothing ...

 

 

Reading all that, you'd swear that the evil ABC had done Xian Porter down, with its large in-house legal team and access to the best that money can buy, but Xian Porter had his chance, he could have given it his best shot, but for some reason, he ducked and weaved and ran for cover ...

You can't have it both ways - a triumph for Porter and a dismal display of the evil empire at work, though you can have a laugh ... cue the Weekly Beast again ...

... As for Anderson apologising to Porter, we understand the MD did not apologise but he did shake Porter’s hand as a sign of good faith. The handshake somehow translated into a “face-to-face apology to Christian Porter” in the Australian as the spinners went into overdrive.
An ABC spokesman told Beast: “The ABC entered into mediation with Mr Porter in good faith. There are confidentiality obligations concerning the mediation process and we are disappointed with some of the inaccuracies that have been reported by other media outlets in recent days.”
Haunting words
Back in March the Australian’s legal commentator Chris Merrit was so certain the ABC would lose the defamation case he committed it to print.
“The big issue is not whether the national broadcaster will lose; that’s almost a given,” he wrote. “It’s how badly it loses, how much material comes to light in court and whether the Federal Court will declare that the national broadcaster and one of its most famous journalists were motivated by malice.”
This week Merritt, the vice-president of the Rule of Law Institute of Australia, didn’t revisit his bold prediction but he did say the settlement can only be explained “in political and possibly financial terms”.
“Without a clear winner and loser, neither side will be able to put this behind them,” he said on Friday. “It will haunt Milligan and the ABC, just like their unprovable smear, will haunt Porter.”
We can add that his March prediction of a Porter win may just haunt him too.

Meanwhile, the obsessive compulsive Polonius just goes on being haunted and haunted by the spectral ABC.

And so to a pond treat, for which the pond makes no apology ...
 

 

 

Ever since our Gracie has "turned", the pond has been beguiled and enchanted ... and this one is a doozie, with the header saying it all ... Melbourne is the down under New York of the future? Couldn't it just be Melbourne, with nice sushi rolls in Swanston street?

 

The pond understands the reptiles have been grievous in their assault on comrade Dan, and by association, all those devious, perverted Victorians who for some reason helped him into power ... but there's something faintly desperate and quaint about our Gracie explaining how truly, exceptionally unique* (usage licensed from ABC 24) Melbourne is up against the cockroaches up north ...

 

And so to a final gobbet, and Melbourne as Australia's New York in the making ... ignoring the way that Sydney has managed to produce a skyscraper of astonishing vulgarity, a penis substitute of the kind even the Donald might baulk at, but which towers over the landscape thanks to the last of the Packers ... 

Sorry Melburnians, ou'll need more than a few RMIT buildings, and splashes of hideous green plastic to match Sydney, gloriously matching New York for Trumpian vulgarity (though these days you can pick up a Donald apartment for a song) ....

 

Actually, Gracie, being Melbourne might be the best thing of all ... because being Gladys-wrecked Sydney or Robert Moses-wrecked New York might not be the best place to be, though the pond notes that theTullamarine freeway is already more than half way there, transforming from a Jeff travesty to a veritable Godzilla of roads...

Here, have an infallible Pope for a break ... though the pond has mixed feelings, not least because the pond's sister recently experienced a fringe of the mouse plague which sees anyone outside loony PETA damned every which way, as they look for a solution ...

 

 

The pond wanted to slip that one in because great cartoonists think alike, as will be seen at the bottom of the page ...

And so to one token piece, if only because it's there, and because it's the dog botherer, with the dog botherer apparently confessing to being the victim of a horde of zombies ...

 

Yesterday the pond headed into the RPA, and no head scratching was required. 

Masks were required, however, and what a sensible precaution that was, since you never know, and since the vaccination roll-out has been such a comprehensive disaster you might even credit it to the dog botherer himself, what with his exceptional skill at staging a ute-gate or helping fuck over Iraq ...

 

Do the reptiles ever get tired of their knee-jerk abuse? Of course not, talk of worry warts and nanny-state aficionados and woke folk and such like, is the sort of stuff macho reptiles like to strut, though the pond thinks that the pudgy dog botherer would likely prove a bit of a wimp and a pussy himself should it come to a brawl out of the back of Maguires in Tamworth ...

But there is an upside to the dog botherer ...

 

How long has that EXCLUSIVE been doing the rounds? The Times of India way back on 29th April 2020 picked up a Newsweek story and ran with it here ...

 

 

Yes, at least the pond doesn't have to go down the rabbit hole with that one ...

 

Here's the thing. Whenever these cock-displaying, cock-strutting reptiles go on the prowl, flourishing their testicles at the world, the pond likes to reflect on what might have been ... what with the recent surge in infections in the UK, though thanks to vaccinations without concomitant deaths, and with the virus never having gone away in some places. In the dog botherer's macho world, staging the Olympics would seem like the natural thing to do ... but the pond shares the feeling of the Japanese people ...

 

 

 

 

Well yes, it's not normal, it's a form of corporate madness, the Olympics phenomenon cranked up to eleven. How soon will rationality return to the world, and the games held in the one location each four years? Who knows, but this is where the insatiable desire for cash gets you ...

 

 

Of course if the feds had managed a decent roll-out of vaccines, none of this would have mattered, but they left handling the virus to the states, and they've done sweet bugger all, and yet the reptiles don't have a unkind word to say about the assorted federal cock-ups ...

 

And there you have it in one. "We have been far more successful than we dared to believe." 

As if not enduring the disasters experienced elsewhere in the world was a problem.

Thanks to the states, we have been spared the worst, but it's possible to sense that the reptiles would have preferred a disaster, so they could spend their days in culture wars, spurning masks in Killer Creighton style and dissing vaccines in the patented Tucker  Faux Noise style ...

Dare the pond say it, without sounding a tad our Gracie? Fuck Gladys and fuck the reptile praise she keeps riding on ... it's easy to sound like a libertarian when the states north and south of you are doing the hard yards, and you can cruise along ...

Luckily there's a relevant Rowe to hand, with more relevant Rowe here ...

 

 

 

 

The pond has only one quibble, though it's easy to understand why Rowe might have preferred to put a shark on that arse, along with the shark on the cap. Turn SloMo the way that Slim Pickens was facing in the pond's favourite movie of all time, and a nude SloMo might have presented a challenge to the artist ...