In which the pond celebrates an unbirthday with a Killer kolumn and some chappie from News Corp, kissing cousin to the Fox ...

 

 

 

The pond is up for an unbirthday as much as the next person, and for some reason recalled that it was way back on a Sunday, 20th July 2008, that a piece by Michael Duffy was the straw that broke the back and saw the pond plunge into then fashionable world of blogging, long since replaced by wittering tweeters …

That’s a long time, too long to do the maths, and no doubt Duffy has since gone on to lead a useful life out of the reptile limelight after that pond trolling, while the pond has stewed ever since in the quagmire of reptile thinking.

It helps explain why the pond has become cavalier over the years, cantankerous, and disinclined to write too much when a gobbet of undiluted reptile stew will do all the hard yards …

It also explains why the pond can’t muster the energy to cope with recent fly by nights and days of the petulant Peta kind, as if greenie bashing is something new for the Murdochians …

 

 

 

 

That unholy triptych of terror represents the current nadir at the lizard Oz, and the pond's fortunes have also sunk as the reptiles stumble into a morass of bogs ...

Clicks are down, interest has waned, herpetology isn't what it once was ...

Old favourites have gone - whither now the savvy Savva? - and new weirdness has come along, but if the pond can no longer be botherered with a Bolter or an Akker Dakker or a Devine, there's always a a new and upcoming reptile contender that can get the pond going ...

Yes, this day the Killer was on the loose, with another Klassy Killer Kolumn  ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's wonderful when an expert expertly disses experts, in the sort of expert way we might expect of a Killer expert, but the pond looked on this expert with a jaundiced eye, because the pond knew exactly what would happen.

 

At some point, the Killer would attempt to prove Freud right and get on to the subject of masks. 

 

Don't ask the pond why, there's such a stinking mess of neuroses involved that there's not a shrink in the world that could sort it out.

 

Don't get the pond wrong, we all make mistakes and live to regret them, and rather than think of constantly divorcing family values people as sanctimonious hypocrites, we should understand they love marriage so much that they keep trying it over and over again ...

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry, the pond just had to slip that one in ... after all, it was only a few days ago that Major Mitchell was scribbling in support of the outing of that Rebel woman, so why not out the chairman?

 

 

Still, the split could reverberate throughout his business empire, which maintains powerful sway in America and abroad through its right-leaning news brands including the Fox News Channel in the United States, The Sun in Britain and Sky News in Australia.

During the early days of the marriage, aides and people close to the family said he was happily devoting more time to his new wife, leaving room for his children — most important, his eventual chosen successor, Lachlan — to assert themselves at the top of the corporate hierarchy.

Some people close to Mr. Murdoch were surprised to hear of his split from Ms. Hall.

Mr. Murdoch and Ms. Hall wed in March 2016 at a centuries-old mansion in central London. Mr. Murdoch marked the occasion by announcing on Twitter that he would stop posting on the platform, calling himself “the luckiest and happiest man in the world.”

The October-December pairing — Ms. Hall is 65, Mr. Murdoch 91 — made the couple the regular subject of rival tabloids, with paparazzi regularly catching the two smiling broadly on a pristine beach, in a wintry football stadium or at a black-tie opening.

Last year, Ms. Hall attended Mr. Murdoch’s 90th birthday party at Tavern on the Green, a swanky restaurant in Central Park, according to one attendee. Ms. Hall doted on Mr. Murdoch during the festivities, which were attended by luminaries from the realms of business, sports and politics, the person said. 

 

Previously, Mr. Murdoch was married to Wendi Deng, an entrepreneur and investor, from 1999 to 2014. He divorced his second wife, Anna, a former newspaper reporter, in 1999, after more than three decades. Mr. Murdoch’s first wife was Patricia Booker, an Australian model, whom he divorced in 1965.

Yep, it's pure, undiluted family values, and you should just keep trying it until you get it right ... and now back to Killer, killing the experts in his usual killer expert way ...

 

 

 

 

 

See how blithely the Killer leaps from celebrating the astonishing successes of Vlad the impaler to the many crimes of Hunter Biden - oh the world's a much better place since Vlad got going with his war, though the pond did read this in the NYRB ... (sorry paywall)

 

Thane Gustafson, a longtime specialist on Russian energy, wrote Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change before the invasion, when the Covid pandemic seemed the great unexpected event complicating every prediction. Yet with its focus on the future of Russia’s energy, grain, and metals markets, all of which have been reconfigured by the war and the new sanctions, Klimat could hardly be more timely. Gustafson argues that Russia’s days of hydrocarbon-funded might are numbered. Unfortunately, the end of this era will not come soon enough for Ukrainians, or for the planet.

Russia is warming 2.5 times as fast as the world on average, and the Arctic is warming even faster. The cliché, avidly promoted by Moscow, is that the country will be a relative winner in climate change, benefiting from a melting and accessible Arctic shipping route, longer growing seasons, and the expansion of farmland into newly thawed areas. Gustafson counters, with a dry but persuasive marshaling of facts, that in the redistribution of wealth and power that will result from climate change, Russia is doomed. After reading Klimat, Russia’s attack on Ukraine begins to look like the convulsion of a dying state.

About two thirds of Russia is covered in permafrost, a mixture of sand and ice that, until recently, remained frozen year-round. As permafrost melts, walls built on it fracture, buildings sink, railways warp, roads buckle, and pipelines break. Anthrax from long-frozen reindeer corpses has thawed and infected modern herds. Sinkholes have opened in the melting ground, swallowing up whole buildings. Ice roads over frozen water, once the only way to travel in some remote regions, are available for ever-shorter periods. The Arctic coast is eroding rapidly, imperiling structures built close to the water.

 

 

As for Hunter,  the pond must confess to having missed that big story about him being prosecuted ... but doubtless in some Killer moment it will kome to the pond ...

 

So this is what an unbirthday looks like?

 

 

 

 

 

Instead of a cravat, the pond gets a dose of Killer climate science? Never mind, at least someone can do the maths, and it ain't the Killer ...

 

 

 

 

Drum roll please maestro, having dismissed climate change and climate science and attempting to do anything about it, will the real Killer bête noire stand up?

 

 

Eek, a period person in what looks like it might be a mask ... so carry on Killer ...

 

Of course that last click bait video is just the reptiles having a little ironical fun at the expense of the Killer, and now is not the time to mention that both the pond's partner and the pond's sister, both of an age, caught a dose of Covid, and if they hadn't been vaccinated, would likely be dead, or in an even worse condition than they were, because truly Covid is an awesomely hideous thing to catch if you're of an age ...

But the expert Killer is an expert on experts, and all the pond thinks is that thank the long absent lord there are other experts who can construct vaccines and might work out ways to save the planet for future generations ... because if they rely on the Killer for killer advice, then they'll find out what it's like to be truly fucked, if mask free ...

After the pond has supped on milk and mask, it always looks for a bonus, but this day it was yet another poor offering ... the reptiles are really intent on killing off the pond, even as it celebrates its unbirthday...

 

What's the pond supposed to do with this sort of dreck? How did Zali get into the mix, why are there the usual lizard Oz editorials trotted out as a form of padding, stuffing or seafood filler? Then there's blather about Assange and woke green credentials, when, as the Killer and everyone at News Corp knos, the planet is in tip top shape ...

 

 

What news of the planet to please our Killer? Come on down Gizmodo ...

The ramifications of the historic megadrought happening in the U.S. right now are getting increasingly serious. Hydropower is faltering, farmland is too parched to produce, and millions of people are currently under water restrictions. It’s a drought so big that it has eclipsed 1,200 years of climate history. Human-caused climate change is at least partially responsible.

Oh sheesh, must we? The pond spent yesterday watching the latest installment of American delusion, can't we go there?

Luckily the pond looked at yesterday's reptile offerings and noted a quintessential piece of delusion ...

 

 

You see? This Finkelstein chappy scribbles for The Times, which is part of the Chairman's stable, which means he's kissing cousins with Faux Noise, and by extension the current madness that is the GOP, which means ...

 

 

 

There's not much point making furious noises and impotently fulminating when all those around you in the corporation are busy kissing the ring, but when a Finkelstein gets going, he's quite content to ignore his News Corp circumstances ...

Shoulda, coulda, woulda ...

Sure it was depressing to see the deeds of a monstrous bully ,and the impact he and his besotted drunken lawyer had on innocent election workers sharing a ginger mint...

 

But you might as well talk of prosecuting the gang of criminals in News Corp who have facilitated and enabled the commissioning of many crimes by the mango Mussolini. 

Why the Finkelstein himself might be up on a charge, seeing as how he takes the Chairman's dime, as does Laura, Sean, Tuckyo and the rest of the gang ... and yet he seems surprisingly unaware of his circumstances and the deeds of his companion criminal colleagues ...

Nobody is above the law? Tell that to Faux Noise ...

 

Oh okay, the pond only ran the Finkelstein as an unbirthday treat, so that it could enjoy a few cartoons ... there's no sign that the GOP or its media master, Faux Noise, are going to turn on the mango Mussolini any time soon, so this is just another waste of reptile space, replete with a few snaps ...

 

 

Uh huh, but if we're going to look at a portrait, why not a balloon that hasn't popped yet?

 

Could the righteous Finkelstein get back to the pond when News Corp decides to do a 180, and pop that balloon?

Oh go tell it to the Chairman ...

 

 

All those cartoons didn't leave much room for the Rowe of the day, but damn it, it's the pond's unbirthday, so here's the Rowe, though those in the know, know there's more Rowe here ...

Ah, a mention of the beefy goodness of undiluted Angus beef ... what a way to celebrate an unbirthday, with a good supply of dinkum clean innocent pure Oz coal ...