In which the pond steps out of the tent for a little while, but not before spending time with a man who should do the same, and a "Neddy" who simply can't understand the reference to a tent ...

 

The pond is hitting the road to Victoria tomorrow so there will be a lacuna in reptile coverage. With a generous dose of musk to the armpits, the pond might manage a post, but could be outside the tent a number of days, leaving the reptiles to piss into the wind alone ...

Before going the pond was vastly relieved to see that the keen Keane's piece, Trump is a confirmed unhinged traitor. And Murdoch is his unindicted co-conspirator, (paywall?) and better still, had been saved to the Wayback Machine, wherein the rousing conclusion might still be read ...

Far from avowing “I’m not a crook”, Trump boasted he could murder people in broad daylight and his supporters would still love him. His election loss didn’t bring to an end the crisis he inflicted on the American political system, it simply propelled it into a new and perhaps just as dangerous phase.

And Nixon didn’t have the support of the world’s most powerful media company, which continues — even in the face of mountains of evidence of Trump’s treachery and crimes — to peddle the lie of the stolen election and play down the insurrection Trump created.

If Trump ends up in the dock for a variety of crimes committed as president, as he should be, not all his co-conspirators will be there with him. Nixon was famously the “unindicted co-conspirator” in Watergate. The Murdochs and their slew of poisonous Fox News commentators are the unindicted co-conspirators of this continuing crisis.

Apparently Lachie can't handle the truth and has been strewing legal threats around like confetti ... and it had even reached the Daily Beast, which could be found on Yahoo ...

On the other hand, the pond hopes no-one is Waybacking the grundling that occasionally litters Crikey like crap in a kitty litter tray, with his latest effort about Rushdie beyond the valley of the pathetic ... the grundling seems to have reached its Glenn Greenwald phase, and the pond is often tempted to threaten to tear up its Crikey subscription, only to be reminded that it doesn't really have one ... and really, tearing eyes on sighting a grundling isn't really an option.

What else? Inevitably the pond must turn to domestic matters and to the way the reptiles have let the cat out of the bag, though it's as surprising to the pond as the news that Hillsong is deeply corrupt, and about as Xian as the mango Mussolini ...

The yarn is outside a paywall at the ABC here ... 

Court documents allege internal audits conducted by Ms Moses uncovered dubious bookkeeping unlikely to be compliant with legislation and which would bring the church into disrepute if those details were ever made public.

She claims this included leaders making "significant" gifts to church directors and their family and friends, as well as using credit cards to pay for international travel and designer products

And so on and on ... the pond loved that bit about designer products, because vanity, all is vanity, saith the preacher,  and that provides as good a segue to the latest saga as the pond can manage, ripe and full blown on the tree killer edition ...

It was also all over the top of the digital edition, replete with snap of smug, smirking con artist ...

The upside? The pond wouldn't have to spend time with Dame Slap, still bashing the blacks - it seems it's now a bi-weekly game of Dame Thugby - and the pond also wouldn't have to join in Davie Sharma doing the war on China from a plucky Israeli POV ... Taiwan's lesson perhaps should be to set up a gulag it can pick on at regular intervals with regular bombings, with the regular killing of children a good way to teach the lesson ... (or just steal their homes and land, whatever).

But enough of has beens and nonentities, and feeble seekers of a place in the reptile sun. 

The pond knew what was coming the moment that little Johnny turned up on the ABC to flog a book and advise that there was no need for the speaker in tongues to imaginary friends to resign ... think of what that would do for the numbers...

And sure enough there in the commentary section, it came ...

What a great juxtaposition - George blathering about "Trump's lesson for us: lies can't be allowed to flourish", apparently unaware that he's appearing in a paper that belongs to a bunch of unindicted co-conspirators, just below an outing by the man himself, the teller of lies, the liar from the shire ...

What's the point of the scales briefly falling from the lizard Oz editorialist if they give the gherkin a prize spot to defend himself?

The reptiles shamelessly lifted a piece from Facebook, edited it, and ran with it ... and what a Hillsongy work it was ...

Why run a shameless bunch of lies by a shameless liar defending the indefensible? 

It's the unindicted co-conspirator reptile way, it's what you must expect from a bunch of unindicted co-conspirators ... yet even at the first hurdle, and the talk of the plague there were headlines that gave the game away ...

No need to lunch with the unindicted co-conspirators at Sky or the pitiful Pitt, when the Graudian was freely to hand ...

Scott Morrison used his extraordinary ministerial powers to overrule the resources minister, Keith Pitt, on the controversial Pep-11 gas project, without revealing he had appointed himself responsible for the portfolio.

As details emerge about the former prime minister’s takeover of at least three additional portfolios, government sources say Morrison took control of the resources portfolio to reject the offshore gas exploration permit in the lead-up to the election.

Liberal MPs in coastal seats had raised concerns directly with the prime minister’s office about the Pep-11 project’s unpopularity, and had expressed frustration that Pitt had not rejected the permit renewal after it expired in February 2021.

Soon after, according to a report in the Australian, Morrison was appointed by the governor general, David Hurley, to take control of the entire Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources in April 2021, giving him the authority to reject the project.

Four MPs – Lucy Wicks in Robertson, Jason Falinski in Mackellar, Trent Zimmerman in North Sydney and Dave Sharma in Wentworth – all joined Morrison in December 2021 to announce that the government would be opposing the project.

It is understood that Pitt, as the responsible minister, had been seeking a review from the regulator about the project’s renewal, and had expressed concern that the government did not have grounds to reject it.

He is understood to have had been supportive of the project’s renewal and had intended to allow the approval to go ahead despite the concerns of the local MPs. Privately he had told colleagues he was concerned the government could expose itself to legal action if a political decision was made that did not follow proper procedure.

The decision is now the subject of a judicial review in the federal court with the project proponent, Asset Energy, taking action against the prime minister “as the responsible Commonwealth minister of the Commonwealth-New South Wales offshore petroleum joint authority”.

Morrison is understood to have insisted on the need to oppose the permit renewal because of the electoral unpopularity of the project in seats that were being targeted by Labor and teal independents. All four seats were lost at the 21 May election.

What else is there to say? And worst of all, an assault on the reptiles' deep desire to gas the country, and perhaps gas the planet ...

Well the liar from the shire just kept on keeping on ...

"It was not necessary for me to trigger use of any of these powers"?

Except the matter of the pitiful Pitt and the gassing of the country, and who knows what other amount of fecund bullshit lurks in the shadows, to be liberally spread around Facebook and gratefully recycled by the reptiles ...

Why did the reptiles bother? Was it just so that the pond and others could enjoy the hypocrisy in its full flowering?

Could matters get worse? Of course they could. The pond might have managed to avoid Dame Slap's latest bout of black-bashing, but it couldn't avoid "Ned's" natter, because the venerable one was on topic and determined to do a dinkum job of both siderism ...

Oh that sounds troubling, even  worrisome (the pond speaks fluent American), and to cap it, the reptiles interrupted "Ned" with a pictorial representation of the situation ...

The pond does understand the desire to have some say over beefy boofhead pure Angus's portfolio ...but it brings into question a whole range of issues ...

Sorry, it's the only way the pond can get through "Ned" ... a few asides and tweets to leaven the lumpy sourdough ...

When you get "Ned" to speak in a youthful patois, an exceptional argot - to whit, "beyond weird" - things must really be dire ... but as often happens, there was an upside ...

And now back to "Ned",  still marvelling at the beyond weirdness of it all ...

Ah the belts and braces approach ...

And now back to "Ned", suddenly realising that he needs to get on to the case with a bit of "both siderism", and instead of "WWJD", it's a case of What Would Albo Do?

How did parliament ever pass it? The act's wiki advises the pond that it's possibly "one of the most substantial and significant pieces of legislation to pass through Parliament during the term of the [Abbott] Government".

The onion muncher strikes again!

Oh look, and there's a snap of a Karen, and she's doing a Karen in the ABC ... 

A senior Liberal frontbencher whose role was assumed by Scott Morrison without her knowledge has called on the former prime minister to resign from parliament, as he admits the extraordinary move to jointly appoint himself to several ministries in secret was "unnecessary".

"I had absolutely no knowledge and was not told by the [prime minister, the prime minister's office] nor the department secretary. This undermines the integrity of government," Ms Andrews said.

"This is just unacceptable, and if this is the way that he is prepared to conduct himself without an adequate explanation — even though it is now going to be well past the time when such an explanation should have been made — then it is time for him to leave the parliament and look elsewhere for employment."

...and the pond never thought it would say this, but for once the pond has sympathy for the Karen going full Karen,  because she was caught up in another case of dirty tricks, as even the reptiles were forced to confess ...

Scott Morrison personally rang former home affairs minister Karen Andrews on election day, ordering her to put out a statement about the interception of a Sri Lanka asylum seeker boat.

Just before noon on May 21, after the government was alerted about the boat on Saturday morning, Mr Morrison contacted Ms Andrews and asked her to release a statement from Operation Sovereign Borders and for the opposition to be briefed.

The Australian understands that Ms Andrews, who did not know that Mr Morrison had sworn himself in as joint home affairs minister, supported a generic apolitical statement from OSB and the department be released.

Senior Liberal sources said the former home affairs minister’s approach was focused on transparency and deterrence rather than using the event for political gain.

It is understood Ms Andrews was unaware of discussions that took place in the Prime Minister’s Office about other matters, including sending out text messages to voters’ hours before the booths closed.

At a 1pm press conference held on election day by Mr Morrison at Lilli Pilli, in his southern Sydney electorate of Cook, the former prime minister confirmed that “there has been an interception of a vessel en route to Australia”.

“I can simply say this. I’ve been here to stop this boat. But in order for me to be there to stop those that may come from here, you need to vote Liberal and Nationals today. And in the interests of full transparency, in the middle of an election campaign, the Labor Party was advised of this and a statement is being issued by the Border Protection authorities.”

Shortly after the press conference at 1.09pm, Australian Border Force published a statement about the boat interception. The opposition was briefed at 2.26pm following the release of the statement.

In a review conducted by the Albanese government and led by Home Affairs Department secretary Mike Pezzullo, it revealed that Mr Morrison’s chief-of-staff John Kunkel had phoned Mr Pezzullo at 12.17pm to ask him to facilitate the release of information and the opposition briefing.

At 12.48pm, the review said Mr Pezzullo directed the department to not “drop the story to selected journalists”.

Ms Andrews later held a press conference on the Gold Coast to discuss local election issues and the Sri Lankan boat intercept.

The Liberal Party text message sent out to voters said “BREAKING – Aust Border Force has intercepted an illegal boat trying to reach Aus. Keep our borders secure by voting Liberal today”.

The pond refuses to link to the reptiles but proposes to keep the mood jolly, even when confronted by the full deviousness of speakers in tongues ...

The pond thanks Crikey for that assembly of twittering tweets ... which is why the notorious cammyboo scored a mention...

And so back for a final gobbet of "Ned", doing his best to make the best of a sticky wicket and a difficult situation ...

And there you have it? A modest proposal - decency, responsibility, willingness to shoulder the blame, display conservative values, take a Karen's advice ...

Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God. Adam Smith

Of course Adam ... but the bunch of unindicted co-conspirators are worried about losing a seat in a by-election, so what need of shouldering responsibility, doing the decent thing, and stepping out of the tent when a whining Xian thinks saying sorry is more than enough chook feed for the infidels?

And just to prove that the pond was right to avoid Dame Slap's most recent bout of black-bashing, both the infallible Pope and the immortal Rowe had celebratory cartoons, as the pond itself steps out of the tent for a little while ...