In which the Caterist and the Switzer swish at the left, Lloydie of the Amazon does his thing, and somehow the pond still finds room for a good groaning ...

 

It's the second week running that the pond hasn't bothered with Media Watch and the pond's nerve is still holding ...

In any case, there are plenty of other ways to further pond's herpetological studies ...

Take this day's set of comments as a fine example ...

Note that Fergo is front and centre talking about comrade Dan and the distraction of his fall. 

This is an exceptionally cunning ploy, because it keeps the smoke spewing into the air, with the lack of a fire all the more reason to point at the smoke ...

But where's the smoke coming from? Well there was this insight at The Conversation ... with that front page featured in a tweet...

And there was this in Crikey ...(paywall)

There you go Fergo, the call's coming from inside the reptile house, and so is all the smoke, and that's what happens when you have an undeclared agent of foreign interests active in Australian politics.

The fuss was a tidy distraction from the rest of the reptile herd. 

Truth to tell, the pond hadn't even noticed that the Caterist didn't appear yesterday but was held over to join the swishing Switzer in blaming the left ... look at them, cojoined at the hip ...

Blame the barking mad mango Mussolini and his MAGA madness and the supine grovelling of the GOP? Of course not ...

Meanwhile over at Sky after dark, conspiracy theories were still being peddled, with Paul Murray blathering about very weird and strange details regarding the Pelosi attack, which the pond won't recycle because they're as demented as anything the QAnon mob have managed in the past week ...

As for the rest, please excuse the pond if it weakens and immediately turns to a cartoon for help ...

That's better, because it's deeply weird and passing strange, but somehow inspiring that the Caterist - himself a certified loon - manages to ignore the large scale loonacy currently on view in the United States ...

Or perhaps deported ... with the lede tastefully deleted by Yahoo News, but worth repeating ...The former United Nations ambassador said some wildly offensive shit at a rally for Republican nominee Herschel Walker on Sunday.

That's right - a former UN ambassador, lining up for Herschel and spouting some wildly offensive shit ... anything to distract from the mind numbing dumbness of the mango Mussolini-approved candidate ...

Yes, deport him to Georgia, where he was born ...

Every day there's a fresh burst of the crazy, with Kari Lake the compleat bundle of crazy ...

The pond is only here for the entertainment, and perforce that includes the wilful blindness of the head of a government cash in the paw operation which showed a remarkable ability with the movement of floodwaters in quarries...

Finally ... despite everything, the Caterist couldn't help himself ... "the wilder the US political freak show becomes ..."

And at the centre of that freak show is the Chairman and his Faux Noise crew, though Elon Musk is making a late run through the pack ...

Well in for a penny, in for a pound. While the pond usually avoids ABC radio for fear of stumbling across the swishing Switzer, there's no harm in a few gobbets of him doing a little Sir Echo to the Caterist gambit ...

At this point the pond will leave it to others to find their favourite crazy ... and their favourite medium ... and settle for a cartoon featuring a couple of suggestions ...

Now back to the swishing sounds of a fine bout of both siderism ...

The reality is that if the lunatics get control of the asylum, the swishing Switzer doesn't have the foggiest clue what might go down, what might happen to Ukraine, and what might happen to the United States ... because bashing trans people isn't the most useful way to run a country ...

So according to these two grand loons, everything is hunky dory and it's just politics as usual, except "expect more hyper-polarised politics..." and somehow it's all the fault of the left ...

Thank the long absent lord that the pond goes elsewhere for its insights ...

And so to a dilemma. To be fair, the reptiles did put Lloydie's report on COP27 at the top of the page ... but it was remarkably anodyne, and if the pond looked at Lloydie of the Amazon and Dame Groan, it would be way too long.

What the hell, let's just do it, and with appropriate snarl, let's do it live ...

Part of the Lloydie of the Amazon problem was that there were many, many snaps, and through the snap fest, it was hard for the pond could see a Lloydie trend building ... but one did emerge ... the suffering of the west being forced to bail out countries ... 

Marvel at the way the master of climate science denialism go about his business ...

With that, Lloydie of the Amazon could see a future fruitful line of attack and made a tentative start with a snap of Albo...

There were some fine little bits of Lloydie inserted in the text ... "in a world where extreme weather events have come to define the meaning of climate change", and never mind the existential threat, because"many islands grow with rising seas" ...

It was thin gruel ... and there were endless snaps ... but still Lloydie could do his dog whistles about the impending suffering of the west, and never mind the suffering of the planet ...

Note Lloydie's gentle, almost gentile form of alarmism, with costs stretching into the trillions and never mind the costs of climate change stretching into the trillions ...

Meanwhile, have another weirdly ominous snap ...

Lurking behind it all is Lloydie's smug sense of satisfaction at the impending failure of another conference ... leaving plenty of room for a snap of Rishi keeping excellent company ...

Splendid stuff. Coal back in business, forest logging on the move, and it's all up to Rishi ... and doesn't that bode well for the planet, especially if it ends up in the current condition of Little England ...

But here's the dilemma. After watching Lloydie of the Amazon's smooth stylings, was there room for a good groaning?

Almost any outing by the groaner would usually feature an excellent groan about renewables, but just at the moment when it might have counted most, Dame Groan retreated to a standard bit of Albo legislation bashing ...

The pond decided on a compromise, ending the usual proceedings with the immortal Rowe of the day ...

... and then the pond will do the groaning hard, with minimal commentary but with the sense that devotees of the Groaner will hang in and lap it up ... because while they've been here many times before, where's the harm in going there again?

Indeed, indeed. Didn't the Groaner herself get shifted from a lavish annual Murdochian stipend to status as a casual without any sign of harm? Hasn't she since valiantly supported the right of the gig economy to fuck over giggers, and transfer the costs of old age way down the line to the government?

Ah, but the pond promised little by way of commentary, so it's back to the groaning ...

Meanwhile, there's a lot of nervousness in the tech sector, at least those working for US companies with some sort of presence in country ...

Elon has been setting a frantic pace, but the Zuck is following on hard, and those individual arrangements don't do much when dealing with sensitive types ...

Okay, okay, the pond had promised minimal interruptions, but if the reptiles keep throwing in click bait videos, can't the pond offer a few distractions?

What's remarkable isn't the steely sense of self-satisfaction. The pond always takes for granted in any groaning that the motif will be 'fuck you Jack, this Jill is fine' ...

No, it's the steely resolve where by the groaning not once managed to work the epic failure of renewables into the conversation ...

There, done and dusted and the pond's duty done, and another day's union-busting on hand for Dame Groan's devotees, and that at least means the pond can please itself by ending with a meme ...