In which the pond wanders away from the reptiles and ends up enjoying some desiccated coconut and a dinkum groaning with the Speccie mob ...

 

For a moment, these two stories were shackled together in today's edition of the digital lizard Oz, with petulant Peta at the top on the far right of the digital page, and Dodson directly beneath her, but then the Dodson yarn was unshackled and drifted off down the page, while petulant Peta still strutted at the top of the far right roost ...

 

Placement and prominence says pretty much everything about how a site goes about its story-telling, but the pond remembered it was out of that game and had decided to restrict its Voice commentary to cartoons ...

What else? Well there was, as an esteemed correspondent noted, Paul Karp's story in the Graudian, When Peter Dutton claims Labor isn’t horrified enough about Hamas, it doesn’t help anyone.

As usual, the usual suspects were involved in not helping anyone ...

The Australian ran the former Liberal prime minister John Howard accusing Labor of “pussyfooting” with terror because two senior ministers, Chris Bowen and Tony Burke, had not condemned the protest full-throatedly enough. Burke had condemned Hamas; Bowen had backed Albanese on condemnation of the rallies.

The pond had noted the way that little Johnny had been dragged out of the cupboard and the moths dusted off to run the terror motif one more time, but couldn't stand to go there.

Karp concluded Terrible things are happening overseas: the murder and kidnap of innocent Israeli civilians and reprisals that arguably amount to collective punishment, cutting Gaza off from water and electricity.

The strength of feeling about this in sections of the Australian community is understandably extreme.

All of this is bad enough without one side of politics misrepresenting the Australian government’s response, making unreasonable demands and trying to score points.

But his other conclusion was just as apt:

The opposition’s weaponisation of the most minute points of difference between the Coalition and Labor on the situation in Gaza – and at times its outright falsehoods – are sure signs that US-style extreme political polarisation is now a feature of Australian politics.

Actually that sort of polarisation has long been a feature of Australian politics, thanks to the Chairman Emeritus and his mob, but it's the reason the pond has steered clear of the reptiles doing a Huxley and being eyeless in Gaza ...

Then the pond shifted below the fold and was immediately underwhelmed by a dire lack of interest ...

Another wretched Thursday, so the pond wandered off to take a squiz at the Speccie mob ...

Dutts? They're trying to make him sound human? But Dutts? That's awfully close to "Nutts", as in give 'im a kick in the "nutts", or why is he so "nutts"?

Jimbo was scribbling in the guise of part coach, part cheerleader ...

...In a way Poilievre is reminiscent of Florida’s Ron DeSantis (and not just because Poilievre also disliked the government thuggery, heavy-handedness and regulatory over-reach of the Covid years). You see Poilievre knows the bureaucratic caste, as a whole, is not particularly sympathetic to right-of-centre views. So he learns his brief. He can defend his values and positions in an articulate way. He is prepared, regularly, to call out the legacy press for its patent left-leaning bias. And he is optimistic about the future. The next Canadian election need not be for almost two years. But if an election were held today it would likely deliver a big Conservative majority.
You might think that all of this would be a powerful lesson to our Liberal party in this country. But it hasn’t been. At the state level the Liberal brand is in total disarray because its elected MPs are barely distinguishable from Labor and hold the party membership in seeming contempt. And federally that appears to be true too of a good-sized chunk of the partyroom (aka ‘the moderates’). The received wisdom that the best strategy is for the Libs to park themselves a centimetre to the right of Labor has failed repeatedly. Were it not for our virtually unique preferential voting system (that forces voters at some point to pick between the two established parties and that only one other country in the world mimics) this dessicated strategy would long ago have been exposed for its worthlessness.
Come on, Liberal party. Cast an eye on what’s going on in Canada and start to make some changes.

Yes, yes, ostensibly Jimbo is reputed to be some kind of Toad prof, but the pond swears it transcribed his spelling of 'desiccated' faithfully ...

More startling than the desire to get Dutts to embark on a war with the house of mouse was the sight of Dame Groan ... because there she was over on the right from Jimbo, just a few lines, but still top of the page ma ...

Dame Groan had gone MIA from the lizard Oz this week, and an esteemed correspondent had helped out with assorted sightings of the old groaner, but there was the duck quacking and hiding in plain sight ...

It turned out that there's not much turnover at the Speccie mob, so the groaning was very dated ... but what the heck ...

7th October, and she's still at the top of the page? It turned out that the groaning was beyond the valley of the predictable, but what the heck, anything for a quiet life in these difficult and troubled times ...

What's all this talk of Jimbo? Must every James be dubbed a Jimbo? What then Jimbo Allan's status as a prize Jimbo?

Never mind, a deeper anxiety struck the pond. What was going on at the lizard Oz, with the best and brightest desiccated coconuts now to be found at the Speccie mob? Jimbo Allan used to be a prized regular at the Oz and so did Dame Groan's incessant groaning. Is this a temporary departure, or has she left the reptiles?

Not that anyone much outside pond cultists would notice or care, because same is as same was ...

Only Dame Groan could celebrate Petey boy with such fondness, but how the old stick does ramble on - four legged Toorak Santos shareholding types good, two legged avocado toast munchers bad - and always with her stick aimed at the pinko preverts ... but the pond stuck it out to the very last gobbet ...

What else, apart from unexceptional groaning about sheer madness and the pond being able to claim that Groan cultists have been served an unexpected sample of undiluted Groaning? 

The pond supposed it should stay loyal, what with this being a site dedicated to herpetology and needing at least one reptile for study purposes, and with the bromancer offering a good news story ...

Yes, it is good news. The pond has no time for dictator Xi, and even less time for sociopathic war monger Vlad the Impaler, especially as Ukraine has had its first real frosts and things are going to get ugly during the winter ... and even more so if GOP isolationists have their way...

But as for the significance, why not just head off to The Conversation and read David Goodman's Why has China released detained Australian journalist Cheng Lei?

Inter alia, the learned Sydney Uni prof ended up this way ...

Well yes, that bit about SloMo being an unsophisticated bull in a China crockery shop is a point the pond takes, though to be fair, at the height of the unsophistication, you could rely on the bromancer to be scribbling about the need for a war with China by Xmas on a weekly basis. There was weekly lizard Oz hysteria in the air, and it doesn't take much to get a clap happy clapping away furiously in time with furious reptiles.

Would the bromancer deign to mention the lack of sophistication, or would he continue on his badgering and hectoring ways? Would a dunny door flap in the wind?

Case closed. The bromancer couldn't let go, and so you get approving credit for Albo behaving "like the Coalition government before it", and a classic bro warning - be extremely careful - because after all, there's still a war to be had with China by Xmas, and it simply wouldn't do to start carrying on like an optimist out of Voltaire's Candide ... and yet “I have not a farthing, my friend, and all over the globe there is no letting of blood or taking a glister, without paying, or somebody paying for you.”

Perhaps the bro was referencing this, but even then the pond could see an upside ...

’There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts.’ 

And if the reptiles had not been so predictable and tedious this day, you would not have been enjoying a groaning while spending time with desiccated coconuts ...

And with that thought, the the pond will pause for a moment of comedy ...

Ah, what's famously known as the desiccated coconut syndrome (yes, the pond routinely got it wrong for years).

And now to an infallible Pope to wrap up proceedings, because the only way the pond will note the current mess - in what the English called the middle east before starting the whole mess way back when - is by bringing on the infallible Pope ...