In which the pond lines up the bromancer, the dog botherer, and our Gracie serving up a Nigel making plans...

 

The pond was astonished and relieved to discover it was not alone with it came to feeling grundled ...

Even the Weekly Beast decided to get into the act, with a snippet that ran ...

News Corp can’t seem to decide whether the new Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni is fascist or not.
After several pieces which argued the Brothers of Italy candidate was not a fascist, including one from Daily Telegraph political editor James Morrow, came one from news.com.au which listed all the reasons she is a fascist.
The website, which, it has to be said, often breaks the mould, listed her remarks about immigration, race and gender which have made people worried. “There’s a reason one woman is being described as ‘a danger to Europe’,” Rohan Smith wrote. “Her fascist roots and radical far-right beliefs have many worried.”
It’s a far cry from the Australian’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, who wrote a piece with the blunt headline: Relax, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy aren’t fascist.

There was a link to the Smith piece, and the pond had already covered the bromancer (and why link to a paywall?), but it was as good a cue as the bromancer to be top dog this day ... 

Relax, if you want to share intelligence, Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy must be a really good place to start ...

Full disclosure. This is a long rant by the bromancer - it seems in the absence of nattering "Ned" he's the reptile that's been assigned to filling up the digital void - and it's only a chance for him to revive his favourite hits and hatreds, but the pond can't simply avoid the bromancer because he wants to wander down memory lane, and perhaps revive memories of the Cambridge Five, a splendid example of British intelligence at its finest, with Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Harold "Kim" Philby, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross sterling examples of how it should be done ...

What's that you say? Odds are, if you bet a delusion, imperialistic fascist Vlad the impaler against a plummeting Pommie pound, they're not going to get a mention?

Never mind, you've always got Smiley for that ...

Ah yes, the mango Mussolini, the orange Jesus ... why would anyone have a complicated relationship with such a deep thinker? 

No, the pond isn't going to do a cartoon-led distraction, but why not one for the fun of mind power? 

Did someone mention a data breach?

Not to worry, here's the greatest hits and memories moment ...

Yep, not a hint of a mention of the likes of the Cambridge Five, but that's how it goes when you only have one eye with which to observe and tell a story ...

Oh indeed, indeed, righteous restoration of the Ming the merciless legacy, and surely Ming absolutely did not weaponise the Petrov affair, and Meloni isn't a fascist. 

Trust the bromancer? Sure can ...

As for that reference to Madame Hoover, the pond has no idea if he was a cross-dresser, nothing wrong with cross-dressing any way, and as for being gay, who can say?

Hoover and Tolson worked together more than 40 years. They traveled on vacation and official business, rode to work together, shared lunch nearly every day at Washington’s Mayflower hotel and sometimes even wore matching suits. Hoover, at his death, left Tolson most of his estate. Their relationship, by all appearances, was stable, discreet and long-lasting. But what they did physically behind closed doors, if anything, they kept between them. (WaPo)

Yes, just two good old bachelor buddies sharing quiet moments together ...

...Friends and political associates knew to treat them as a bona fide couple. In the 1930s, for instance, Hoover and Tolson hit the town with Broadway star Ethel Merman and Stork Club owner Sherman Billingsley, busy conducting their own illicit affair. By the 1950s, the two men were double-dating with Dick and Pat Nixon, whom Hoover had met while pursuing the case against Alger Hiss. “I did want to drop you this personal note to let you know how sorry Clyde and I are that we were unable to join Pat and you for lunch today,” Hoover wrote to Vice President Nixon after one failed invitation in 1958. On another occasion, Nixon suggested that Clyde—“our favorite bartender”—ought to learn to make the mean if unspecified pink cocktail that they all had often enjoyed together.

Such exchanges evoke nothing so much as the formal world of 1950s married life, one set of spouses trading entertaining tips and social niceties with the other. But did these friends actually view Hoover and Tolson as a romantic and sexual couple? In recent decades, many acquaintances—including Ethel Merman—have claimed that they “knew” about Hoover and Tolson. But it’s hard to say if this is posthumous speculation or accurate insider knowledge. Nixon famously referred to Hoover as a “cocksucker”—a suggestive word, but one that may or may not be referring to Hoover’s sex life. In the press, Hoover and Tolson were most often described as “bachelors,” a term that served simultaneously as a euphemism and as a straightforward description of an unmarried heterosexual man. At the FBI, acquaintances consistently denied anything other than a close friendship.

It is easy to write off the more open aspects of Hoover and Tolson’s relationship as proof of old-fashioned naiveté—to assume that folks in the 1950s were unaware. But this gives the people of the past far too little credit and flattens out an intriguing social history. If Hoover’s story tells us anything, it’s that today’s binaries—gay vs. straight, closeted vs. out—map uneasily onto the sexual past. Hoover and Tolson were many things at once: professional associates, golf buddies, Masonic brothers, and possibly lovers as well. (Slate)

Indeed, indeed "cocksucker" is a suggestive word, but the pond has strayed far into Deadwood territory and must return to the bromancer ...

Ah, J. Edgar Hover again, but the pond will settle for a final gobbet and a celebration of all that's good in democracy, including cross-dressing and Cambridge life ...

Strange that all those other human relationships didn't get a mention, but any reader who made a bet now scores a plummeting Pommie pound, and so on to the next weekend reptile, and how could the pond forsake the dog botherer ...

A valiant defence of our Glad, and in the pond's defence, look at the alternative reptile offering on the same theme ...

The pond is so over its visits to planet Janet above the faraway tree. Once she gets on to a theme these days, she can harp about it for weeks and weeks.

Right now all we get is attacks on the voice, and valiant support of the right of the politically corrupt to run wild and free ...

Why turn to Dame Slap for that when a serve of dog bothering is more than enough?

The pond thought that the heart of the case was whether Glad should have given the grifter his grift, but never mind, the dog botherer is here to explain that there's nothing wrong with a little shady grift ...

Look at the upside. The dog botherer has had to do such an elaborate and weird set of contortions that the usual mention of climate science, and a snide aside celebrating climate science denialism, have had to be put on hold ...

Oh indeed, indeed ... who can forget the very model of a modern persecution?

Julia Gillard has said “decency” should require coalition members who falsely accused her to apologise after the royal commission into trade union corruption found no evidence she had engaged in serious wrongdoing or criminality.

The royal commission recommended criminal charges be considered against scores of officials from three unions but found the former prime minister committed no crime and was unaware of any crimes committed by others.

“Australians may well ask themselves whether the millions of dollars the Abbott Government has spent on a twenty-year-old matter that was already in the hands of the police would have been better allocated to health, education or law enforcement,” Gillard said in a statement after the royal commission released its interim report. (Graudian)

As for the rest? Only one conviction resulted from the process, while five other union officials either had their charges dropped or had been found not guilty.

And as for the righteous commissioner himself?

In June 2020, an investigation on behalf of the High Court found that Heydon had sexually harassed six female associates while he was a member of the Court. The Chief Justice of Australia, Susan Kiefel apologised to the women on behalf of the Court, and announced new measures to protect judges' personal staff, and to improve the handling of complaints. The same month, the Sydney Morning Herald published the results of its own investigation in which several women alleged that they had been sexually harassed by Heydon. The newspaper also said that "Mr Heydon’s predatory behaviour was an 'open secret' in legal and judicial circles."

Heydon denied the claims and apologised for any "inadvertent and unintended" offence. He did not apply to renew his practising certificate with the New South Wales Bar Association upon its expiry on 30 June 2020.

Three of the associates sought compensation from the Commonwealth and Heydon. In February 2022 the Commonwealth Attorney-General[52] and the associates' lawyers announced that the three had settled with the Commonwealth, with terms not to be disclosed (although some reports refer to a "six figure" amount). Neither announcement said whether the settlement dealt with the trio's claims against Heydon personally. (wiki for the footnotes)

A classic triumph in the onion muncher manner, and a splendid example of how to deal with integrity in politics, and so to a final gobbet ...

Luckily there's an infallible Pope to hand celebrating the deeds emanating from cockroach land ...

And so to wrap up proceedings with a light hearted serve from our Gracie ...

Now the pond had other choices ... there was Brendan yelling freedumb for womyn in a way only Brendan can do ...

Yes, the patented Brendan freedumb to control your body and have an abortion if you choose ... but who knew that Brendan would indulge in a wild-eyed attack on the GOP, the Donald, religious fundamentalists of the Southern Baptist kind, and the Taliban running things in the USA ...

We keed, we keed, but the pond has been very unfair to our Gracie of late, and thought she deserved her time in the pond sun, especially as she's handing out advice to elderly gents... and she invokes a man having a wild-eyed farage ...

Some reality should be brought to the conversation?

The pond would rather bring a cartoon ...

Now there's some prime dating material ... and yes, the pond caught Bodies Bodies Bodies last night and survived the experience ... how ancient and long ago the Scream franchise seems, but as our Gracie tells us to look to popular culture, the pond just wanted to reassure everyone that The Old Dark House still has a role to play ...

Infotainment on the fringes? How about comprehensively fucking a country? And with that thought, the pond must end proceedings with yet another cartoon ...