A late edition round up featuring a couple of boys with trust in Santa and SloMo to deliver the toys ...

 

 

As noted earlier in the day, the reptiles went into a frenzy over the nuking of the subs ... just look at the front page of the tree killer edition, saturated in a nuking frenzy ...

 

 

 Alliance for the ages, and the reich shall stand a thousand years ...

And the reptile tabloids were in a similar mood ...

 

 

Well if the subs won't save us, the puns certainly will ...

And so the pond has, in a late-breaking edition, decided to present the cream of the reptile crop ...

First - and it should go without saying - comes nattering "Ned", though yet again there seems to be no mention of his podcast and the chance to hear his very own words read out aloud by "Ned" himself in his sonorous voice ...

What a splendid opening suck. It is quite possible that "Ned" has done a more historic suck, a more splendid example of what it is to display the vision arising from a close examination of SloMo's rear end, and yet, for all the singular vision, without a shred of humour ...

 

Australia;s leading news site? Um, not really, not even close ...

 

 

 

Still, it's better than the sixth spot you slipped to in 2020 ...

 

Come on man,  enough with the malarkey, the pond has to get on with "Ned's" malarkey ...

 

 

 

Forever? When did the pond last hear that talk? Was it the thousand year Reich? Or was it the deal for Japanese subs that never was, or the deal for French subs that now will never be ...

 

Never mind, the reptiles thought it so serious an affair that they drummed up a timeline, and never mind that it was a set of blunders, follies, and mis-steps, all taken by coalition governments ... though they start by suggesting that Ruddster set the schmozzle rolling ...

 

 

Note how the reptiles manage to elide over the best bits of the schmozzle, and even managed to insert themselves into the yarn ...

How have the perfidious French taken it, my liege?

Oh passing well, my lord, passing well ...

PARIS — Apoplectic. Blindsided. Jilted.
Paris was a swirl of enraged adjectives Thursday, after Australia, the U.S. and the U.K announced they were coming together in a trilateral strategic partnership that stole away a multibillion-euro submarine contract Paris had signed with Canberra. The move prompted France to issue harsh statements in response and cancel events with both American and Australian allies.
Rarely have French officials been so acerbic in their statements, toward an ally or a foe. For them, the U.S. under President Joe Biden is still Trumpian, Australia is disloyal and untrustworthy, and the U.K. so scorned as to not even be worth mentioning.
“This unilateral, brutal, unpredictable decision is a lot like what Mr. Trump did,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on national television Thursday morning. “We learned brutally through a statement by President Biden that the contract that the Australians signed with France is over and the U.S. will make a nuclear [submarines] offer to the Australians.”
The only difference for Paris is that the American disregard for allies is now expressed through press conferences rather than tweets.
Australia was forced on the defensive after Le Drian described its decision to walk away from the deal as a “stab in the back.”
“This difficult decision was taken only in response to a rapid evolution of the strategic environment with which Australia is confronted,” a communiqué published by the Australian embassy in France said. “France remains a first-rate strategic partner for Australia.
Yet Australia’s tossing aside of France was a loud signal that, despite the Trump years and the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, the American security guarantee still reigns supreme.
Worse than the disregard for elementary diplomatic protocol among close allies, or the loss of a deal so massive it was dubbed the “contract of the century,” the Australian-American-British alliance is a cruel reminder to France that partners and allies still do not perceive it as a credible partner with whom they can build an alternative to the U.S. (Politico, here)

Don't forget to send them a trunk full of tennis balls, and they'll soon get over it ...

Now back to "Ned" and that hagiographic film clip that the reptiles seem to have inserted in every story this day...

Yes, we've been promoted from deputy sheriff to actual sheriff, or so the reptiles have suggested, and so the armchair warriors have stepped up the war with China a notch, and might even develop an itchy trigger figure ... whenever the subs actually land, though the pond suspects the pond will have long finished, and the pond's third person self dead and turned to ashes and blowing in the wind ...

How has Crikey taken it my liege?

Oh passing well, my lord, passing well. Yesterday the Rundle trundled out a classic rant, and a few others seemed hot and bothered ...

 

 

 

And today Keane was as keen as mustard for the deal, and your eminence's strategic marketing skills:

 

 

Um, perhaps a tub of golf balls might soothe the lad? He seems to have simply mis- or un- or something-comprehended "Ned's" stunning insights into our stunning achievement ...

 

What's left? Well there's the rest of that cruel Keane rant, which might almost have "Ned" in its sights ...

 

And on that boys and toys, and perhaps cigars and a dash of Scotch in the leather chair note, the pond should add as a finishing tough that the reptiles left "Ned" not with his podcast, but with one last click bait video, which of course the pond turned into an inert screen cap ... but at least some can note it featured jolly Joe, as good as sign as any that a doomed fuck-up of classic proportions is on the way ...

 

And so to another reptile stroke of genius, because who better to comment than that masterful piece of irrelevance, the onion muncher?

 

 

 

 

Oh dear, now the onion muncher is forced to rely on the reptiles showing him in company with the great visionary. Now the onion muncher must clutch at the coat tails, and yet once upon a time, the onion muncher was a player ... 

 

Hmm, perhaps best not to go there, not the onion muncher's finest moment ... now on with the nuking of the subs, and who knows, a chance to nuke the country ...

 

Yes, yes, how much better it would have been if we had taken an existing Japanese submarine and wasted 15 years redesigning and rebuilding it ...

Oh dear, sorry, best not to go there ... on with the war on China ...

 

Indeed, indeed and yet ...

 

 

 

Oh indeed, indeed, and yet when you think about it for a nanosecond,  it was a very strategic matter, and all the boys danced with glee to be given such toys, even if in a never never land where the pond will be as long gone as SloMo ...