In which the pond gets sidetracked into a good slapping by cackling Claire, before landing on the usual groaning ...

 

A tidy joke from John Oliver this week. After noting Bill Clinton's ending of welfare - as the US once knew it, with major and catastrophic changes - he tossed in a clip of Clinton  thanking Kevin Spacey, and then did a reverse pike: "pretty remarkable right? That they let that sexual predator anywhere near Kevin Spacey" ... boom tish.

The pond does find life with the reptiles incredibly turgid, comparable only to the study of the three fields system. 

In general the reptiles take themselves incredibly seriously, a bunch of preening, self-important blowhards, incapable of landing a joke ... but it's not just the reptiles of the lizard Oz. 

Then there's Peter Hartcher. Any time that the pond accidentally lands on The Drum, it can feel its IQ drain out of the ether and leave the room, but there he was last night, a dullard lowering the room temperature to below zero. 

Hartcher is terrible TV talent, stiff and awkward and grating, and besides that a fool, and as usual, he was treated with awe and reverence by the Drumsters, and never mind the shameless hysteria of his beat-up, and it was only later in the evening that the pond caught up with Media Watch ...

How good was it to see that supplier of arms, Peter Jennings, and his doom sayer prediction of a war with China in months given a bit of a dust-up ... the pond can say with some pride that it has routinely ignored this Jennings, even when he was the pride of the reptile fleet of warmongers ... 

As for doofus Hartcher's defence of his pandering to the war mongers, you wouldn't have learned anything of alternative realities from the soft time given to him by the Drumsters, nor apparently the ABC letting loose one David Marquet on the world, a classic American hustler promising Intent-Based Leadership ® "for your organisation to implement to create effective leaders at every level." (hat tip to Kez, because the pond can't be bothered doing a Polonius for the entire ABC).

Nine's foray into war mongering folly was an attempt to match the reptiles, but the reptiles have been doing this for years and now they have a lesser member of the Kelly gang trained up to do the job ... and there he was going full blast today ...

 

Talk about a reptile response to Hartcher, but at least it helps out cartoonists of the infallible Pope kind ...

It's too hard to pick out the detail, every detail is equal in that 'toon, and it reminded the pond of that old koan, "everything is best" ... When the pond was walking through a news agency he overheard a conversation between a  cartoonist and his customer. "Give me the best piece of caricature you have," said the customer. "Everything in my cartoon is the best," replied the cartoonist. "You cannot find here any piece of caricature that is not the best." At these words the pond became enlightened.

And so to the moment where the pond explains why it won't be looking at this reptile or that ...

Oh dear, the reptiles have hit on a new riff to berate Albo and drag in former Chairman Rudd, and it was also on view in the triptych of terror, which saw a flurry of EXCLUSIVES ...

Well the pond is pleased it didn't waste time with Marcus Stewart because sweet Sarah has an EXCLUSIVE insight, and apparently these days publishing Geoff Chambers pushing a routine bit of reptile bullshit about reviews and consultations is also an EXCLUSIVE ... and never no mind what might have happened if someone had bothered to do a review or a consultation or a summit or an inquiry about Robodebt. Sorry, sorry, the pond keeps forgetting, the reptiles disappeared Robodebt, it's a non-thing, a nothing ...

Is it any wonder that the pond settled for a light-hearted moment with cackling Claire, before moving on to offer up a standard groaning?

What a doofus she is. The pond had a go at her yesterday for her 'Jill coming late to the scene' routine, because it provided the pond with a chance to slag off the real criminals doing the censorship rounds, Ron DeSanctimonious and his merry band of book banners ... you know, DeSantis Calls Book Bans a Hoax, Brags About Banning Books...

You know, WaPo paywall noted...

Ah yes, Twelfth Night ... don't get the pond started on the history of men in frocks ...

Will : Kate, don't go there, lady acting is illegal but beside, girls can't act just as they cannot practice law, cure the sick, handle financial matters, will stand for any office.

Kate : No woman has ever been allowed to try any of those things.

Will : Because they can't do them!

Will : But Kate, you know very well that it is illegal for girls to do anything interesting.

Well at least the pond didn't do a Master Bater joke and the pond stands on its own record ... for years, the pond has proudly evoked the memory of Dame Slap to describe the slapping ways of Dame Janet from planet Janet above the faraway tree ...

Back in her climate science denialist days - these days the pond ignores her almost daily bashing of uppity blacks - the pond used to love to take a trip down memory lane, and routinely ran these portraits of Dame Slap at work ...

 

Naughty reptiles, how they deserve a good spanking, or at least a good cartoon ...

The pond noted that you had to go back to the 1943 original or a 1970s reprint to find references to Dame Slap ...

 

But as any fuel would kno, except apart from cackling Claire, those days are long gone, and in any case, Enid Blyton herself had a canny eye for commercial fodder and so defanged Dame Slap in her 1943 spin-off ...

What the heck? A concert? A beautiful bouquet? The worst that Dame Slap got in 1943 was extracting a rubber ...

A bloody good shaking? No, where the pond came from, Dame Slap on planet Janet helping to fuck the planet comprehensively deserved a bloody good slapping ...

But the pond digresses from cackling Claire, so back we go ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, only now has she discovered what happened long ago, and suddenly it's some sort of epiphany? And then the reptiles completely disgraced themselves by inserting this ...

No reptiles, it's not Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected, and you didn't even have the decency to do a decent edit. There's the remnants of a name lurking at the bottom right hand side ...

It's actually a bio of Dahl by Matthew Dennison...

And that's how shit happens even in a cackling Claire piece, no thanks to stupid editors. By this stage the pond was well over it ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, she's the lizard Oz "editorial director", whatever that blather means. The reptiles are fucked, the country's up shit creek without a paddle or a sub, and the planet's doomed ...

And so without further ado, off for Tuesday's regular groaning ...

Here the pond must apologise. It can't help but include all the snaps of Jimbo the reptiles dig up, whether pointing into the air with eyes half-closed, or looking down while an out of focus Albo looks on ...

Clearly the reptiles have decided that Dame Groan is pretty dull stuff, and needs visual stimulation ... and so there was more stimulation in the next gobbet ...

But is that visual stimulation as interesting as it used to be in the old days when a master of the art of the vest did his thing?

Those were the days ...

It will possibly be noted by correspondents that the pond hasn't said a thing about the actual groaning, but why should the pond bother? 

Correspondents will have their say, having supped deep on the groaning, and all will be well, and after the autumn, there will come a spring, and still there will be much lamenting and groaning, because not a single thing this federal government might do could satisfy the groaner, except perhaps piss a huge amount away on subs still scheduled to arrive off Port Kembla, perhaps, in the 2040s, perhaps ... though apparently with one sub we can take over the entire Pacific ...

Yet another reptile snap, but in a suit, albeit with a Satanic spectre lurking in the shadows, and yet the pond can't resist shedding a tear for the lost glory days ...

Now there's a leader, just don't ask what he's going to do with that glove ... and so by magic we reach the final gobbet of groaning ...

It's a bit like cackling Claire discovering what happened to Enid ... the Groaner discovering that Labor might be up for a bit of pork-barreling... and speaking of that, why not give money to the Americans so they can build their subs and send us a couple of shop-soiled items? 

Here we go ...

Administration officials said the US would announce an investment of US$4.6bn in its own submarine industrial base. While these would be American funds, Australia would also make a sizeable contribution.

The funding for US domestic production could be a point of tension in Australia at a time when the budget is facing pressure on multiple fronts.

Here we go ... Peter Dutton says Coalition would support NDIS cuts to pay for Aukus submarines. aka Liberal leader offers bipartisan backing for ‘sustainable’ savings for the next generation defence scheme

And at that point, the pond abandons cackling Claire and the jolly good groaning for an immortal Rowe ...

Why that dress is up there with the grand days of the onion muncher ... it's all in the details ...