In which the pond is endlessly diverted, before celebrating the start of summer with a Hawaii-style shirt...

 

The pond thought it would be winding down for the summer holyday season, but it has been hitting the reptiles hard of late. 

The pond now knows more about Nick Fuentes than the pond can ever forget, and then there was Elon dancing with the far right in the LA Times, here at Yahoo, and this offering by Tim Miller to Ron fan boys, (Bulwark), with these immortal lines ...

Dear Residents of DeSantistan,
It’s nice to hear from you. I notice you have had some harsh words for Mr. Trump of late. You might even think he’s a Bad Orange Man? Concur! So lucky for you to have been awoken from your torpor on this matter at the most convenient time imaginable.
Before we get to the meat of my correspondence, I do have to mention that we missed having you on board these past few annums: During the 2016 general election, Impeachment One, the 2020 Republican primary, the 2020 general election, the alarming interregnum, the 2021 Georgia run-off, Impeachment Two, opposing the Trump election deniers in the 2022 midterms, and the recent FBI raid on the former president’s home.
Better late than never.
It’s especially nice to hear that your candidate plans to challenge and defeat Mr. Trump once and for-all. Though you might forgive a bit of tepidness in our anticipation for this event given that he hasn’t actually done anything yet and we’ve been disappointed by your ilk so many times before (see above).
You also might forgive those of us who have spent seven years fighting Trump if we are not super thrilled to jump on board with someone described by Rich Lowry as being not just from the “Trump Wing” of the party but the “Trump fuselage, wing and landing gear.” (This was intended, I believe, as a compliment).
Bearing all that in mind, I want to put forth what I, as a charter Never Trumper, will do and not do in order to provide the aid and comfort you are demanding for your chosen candidate’s campaign against the former president.
We’ll start with the will nots (natch).

• I will not be a human shield for Ron to protect him from all the hard (and not so hard) questions about Donald Trump. For example, you might feel like it is not strategic for him to state clearly that it’s bad for the man he supported for president twice to have had dinner with one of the nation’s leading white supremacists. I, for one, am not certain that this convenient silence is good strategy. Maybe it’s true he might need the votes of anti-semites, maybe it’s not. But I am sure that it’s not too much to ask a prospective president what they think about it.
• I will not give him a pass when he refuses to provide an answer, any answer, about whether or not he thinks Donald Trump’s coup attempt was a good thing or a bad thing. Given that his only comments to date were supportive of the coup, it feels like his updated views on the matter are something we should hear about before we give him the keys to the kingdom.
• I will not practice strategic silence while he exhibits every single behavior of enablement and collaboration with the crazy that got us to Donald Trump in the first place....

And so on ... there's a lot more, and The Bulwark has become a fun place because those ex-GOPers know where all the bodies are buried ... so many bodies ...

And then there was this exceptional marketing ploy by Balenciaga ...

The pond enjoys bondage as much as the next prevert, but kids with bondage teddy bears? That would have been a big hit in Tamworth back in the day ...

By the time the pond turns to the reptiles, all the comedy had been done and dusted, and so it was terribly easy to resist poor petulant Peta, so ravaged by recent events ...

Just that thumb with snap was more than enough, and the pond drank deeply on the petulant one's tears.

What need to read further? Please, keep on trotting off to the barking mad fundamentalist loony land of the extreme right and the Xian fundamentalist, such a winning formula ... but it did allow the pond to throw (careful not to throw up) to a snap of a recent portrait launch,  as noted by a correspondent ...

How did Albo manage to land himself in that snap, smirking like a goose? And as for that macho pose by the failed strutting peacock and onion muncher ... clueless to the very last daub of mediocre oils ... (oils ain't oils, ya know) ...

It's the sleeves rolled up, belt-slumped, cock-jutting, preening of it all, without the slightest shred of self-awareness,  that had the pond rolling jaffas down the aisle, and heading off to the The Betoota Advocate way back when in 2015 ...

You have to read it to understand that visual satire never dies, it just transforms and transmutes and the next thing you know the pond has sprung a leak ...

Hang on, hang on, the pond can hear some murmuring in the trenches. Isn't this a blog about the lizard Oz? What's all this leaving of the train tracks with Tootle?

Well apart from petulant Peta - and sipping the tears of her sorrow is more than enough for the pond - look at the rest of the line-up ...

What on earth were the reptiles thinking to allow that blather about the voice not belonging on the cultural battlefield? Of course it does ...

Are the reptiles having second thoughts? As well as trying to stir up trouble between states and feds, the top of the digital page discovered  that there might be an alternative to Price ...

Dear sweet innocent Oz coal ... and that's why the pond ended up visiting the ghosts of Xmas's past ...

Note the incredibly discreet, subtle, nuanced and kind way that simplistic Simon avoids naming names, the splitters and the rats in the ranks ...

"Bar two", but don't you worry about "bar who" or even bah humbug ... though the pond did wonder if having a "Bid" in the ring might have raised conflict of name issues for the no conflict of interest man. Could the Bids be confused? Better to keep the Bids out of it ...

The best they could produce was brother Paul? 

Meanwhile, over at the AFR, the rats in the ranks were spilling into the streets, or at least spilling into the ear of the savvy Savva and so into Joe, celebrating his besties ...

Christmas is nigh and there is no more reliable stocking filler than election books. And there is nothing more tempting for revisionists than an election post-mortem. Whoever said history is written by the victors?!

Six months since the defeat of his government, how terrific it is to see the greatest enablers of Scott Morrison’s prime ministership forsaking him with reckless abandon.

Enter Niki Savva, father confessor to the brave and censurer of all Liberal prime ministers bar the ones who employed her husband.

According to Morrison’s own numbers man in the Liberal party room and cabinet minister, Alex Hawke, the former PM “didn’t really take advice from people” and “wasn’t the greatest listener”.

Hawke reckons Morrison’s vacation in Hawaii during the Black Summer bushfires was so disastrous he would’ve been removed as leader if not for the immediate onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also says Morrison “probably” would’ve won the election if he had called it before Christmas 2021. That’s called having a bob each-way.

Better yet, Hawke told Savva that he advised Morrison not to install anti-trans activist Katherine Deves as the Liberal candidate for the NSW seat of Warringah.

Even if that’s true, Hawke conveniently omits the damning context. Morrison was only able to handpick a candidate in Warringah by state executive decree because Hawke, Morrison’s representative on that body, helped him stall grassroots preselections – over the outraged cries of local Liberal branches – until it was too late to hold them.

Hawke was only too happy to do this – indeed, he was the tactic’s author and chief beneficiary – because he didn’t have the numbers to win his own preselection in Mitchell, a seat so safe even Deves would have won it.

That’s right, the prime minister’s numbers man couldn’t even marshal the numbers in Baulkham Hills.

One might reasonably surmise that if Hawke had stuck to low-altitude branch recruitment drives, instead of graduating to the high commission of Morrison’s grand accomplice – today the Liberal Party would “probably” not be so completely f---ed.

Morrison’s other closest ally, Stuart Robert, meanwhile, told Savva “Scotty’s a friend as much as one can have a friend in politics”.

Malcolm Turnbull dumped Robert from the federal ministry. He was untouchable. And from the backbench we now know he was helping contractors score government contracts out of the kindness of his heart.

This is someone so intimate with Morrison that they regularly prayed to God together, including on the morning that Morrison was elected leader. And Robert now calls him “a friend as much as one can have a friend”. How easily he slips into the sandals of Judas Iscariot. Has conservative politics ever produced a more grasping, faithless character?

Josh Frydenberg provided Savva with a carefully crafted statement describing as “extreme overreach” Morrison secretly swearing himself in as co-treasurer after his treasurer had been “loyal to a fault”.

Frydenberg has every right to feel aggrieved by Morrison’s betrayal. He could not have been more devoted, bunking with Scotty at the Lodge, sharing microwave dinners, and episodes of Yes, Prime Minister.

When it suited him, Frydenberg laboured their closeness. It requires no courage to distance himself from ScoMo now. Where was he when Morrison was captaining the ship into the rocks? Standing beside him at the wheel.

Frydenberg wasn’t merely duped on the secret ministries, he was duped full stop. This is the lethal truth for Frydenberg, even if he manoeuvres himself back into parliament. He was conned by the most conspicuous charlatan in modern political history. The rest of us worked it out when Morrison went to Hawaii (or earlier), but Morrison’s deputy still couldn’t. He just clung on.

Or Frydenberg conned himself, and he knew what he was doing because he was one out, one back, hoping Scotty would fall over and he could claim the prize. If he had said that to Savva, you’d totally pay it.

The original version of this article said “bar the one who employed her husband”. This has been changed to “ones”.

It's not often that the pond strays into the AFR but that was too delicious, and those who want to to more straying could head off to Samantha Maiden in the softer reptile site for Are you sure that‘s a good idea?’: Scott Morrison’s biggest mistake...One of Scott Morrison’s longest serving lieutenants, who sits next to the former PM in Parliament, has unleashed an extraordinary attack on his ally.

Scott Morrison was “addicted to power” and his disastrous decision to fly to Hawaii was such a debacle he would have been dumped as leader if the Covid pandemic hadn’t arrived.

In an extraordinary attack, one of Mr Morrison’s longest serving lieutenants, Liberal MP Alex Hawke, has joined his former staff in admitting Hawaii was his biggest mistake.

As Parliament prepares to censure the Prime Minister for the secret ministries mess, Mr Hawke has unloaded in a new book.

And it’s likely to make for some awkward moments for Mr Morrison and Mr Hawke in Parliament tomorrow, where they sit next to each other in question time.

"He got addicted to executive authority,” Hawke told veteran political journalist Niki Savva in hew new book Bulldozed.

She writes that Mr Hawke believed “Morrison should have quit parliament almost immediately after the election, rather than stay and risk becoming bitter and twisted”.

And then ... yes, there's a closing 'and then '... beyond the valley of the bitter and the twisted ...

Former frontbencher Karen Andrews also told the author that when she asked her three daughters — aged 18, 22, and 26 — why people “hated Mr Morrison so much”, they told her it was because he went to Hawaii during the fires.

“He should have been back here,’” Ms Andrews said. “The optics were awful.”

In the book, Savva argues that “everything that flowed from that fateful decision — the secrecy, the lies surrounding his whereabouts, his protest that it wasn’t his job to hold a hose.”

She argues it was a moment that “provided piercing insights into his character and his judgement that reverberated all the way through his term as prime minister, right up until election day, 21 May 2022, when posters of him wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a frangipani headdress were plastered around polling booths in targeted electorates by his opponents.”

The poor reptiles, and with only simplistic Simon and shameless Shanners ready to stand up and be counted, and never mind that all would have been better if the liar from the Shire had retreated, took a job in a church and began talking in tongues to his imaginary friend...

Yet he still sits there, like that bloody Raven above Poe's door, still croaking away, and forcing Shanners to croak with him ...

Time to move on? Partisan? He got dumped by the country and even the reptiles at news.com.au couldn't resist digging up old comedy items to celebrate the season ...

The pond did its best to move on, remembering that it really did once rent a house in Mcdougall street in Kirribilli, and so has a connection to the Caterist, though finding a park was an ordeal as bad as the pond's time in Paddington, and there were these bloody trees that kept on dropping things on cars ...

Begone baleful biscuit tin sight, just look at that line of vehicles and think of all the wretches turning up to gawk at them and take a stroll in the park, and pity the poor residents.

Sure, any home to Caterists, should suffer, but there should be a limit.

Sorry, sorry, time to move on, and the pond still has a few Shanners tears to sup, with the bouffant one also desperately trying to move on ...

Time to move on? Yeah, nah, not while it's fun ... perhaps only after the pond has had a Shylockian moment or three ... and so, if the pond might paraphrase ...

The reptiles weren't merely duped on the secret ministries, they were duped full stop. This is the lethal truth for the reptiles even as petulant Peta sheds her copious tears. They were conned by the most conspicuous charlatan in modern political history (with the possible exception of the onion muncher). The rest of us worked it out when Morrison went to Hawaii (or earlier), but Morrison’s deputy and the reptiles still couldn’t. They just clung on.

Or the reptiles conned themselves, knowing they'd backed and kept on backing a dropkick loser, hoping Scotty would fall over and the reptiles could still keep aloft the glittering prize for their mates. If Shanners and simplistic Simon had confessed and scribbled that, that they'd been willingly conned by a con artist, so they could keep on conning their readers, you’d totally pay it.

As it is, the pond isn't interested in moving on, so much as moving over to end with an infallible Pope ... and how soon before the holyday season saves the pond's sanity?