In which there's your standard Groaning and a bro missive from another planet ...

 

The hits are starting to spin out of control again, so it's time to settle things down. 

First a little comedy offering - the NY Times finally decided to do a collection of great recent mango Mussolini slips and muffs, and it's outside the paywall at How Trump’s Verbal Slips Could Weaken His Attacks on Biden’s Age.

FWIW, the pond isn't big on gerontocracy, but it also isn't big on Xianity, which makes Matthew D. Taylor's piece for The Bulwark a startling read. 

Mike Johnson, Polite Extremist is outside the paywall, and Taylor dazzled the pond with names like New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and Xian plans like the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a profoundly anti-democratic program for Christians to take over key positions of influence in society to transform nations into hegemonic Christian domains.

One particularly fine moment came when Taylor selected out one name ...

...Both Carscadden and Christian Center are deeply linked to the ideas and ministry of a man with an even more innocuous-sounding name: Dutch Sheets. 
Those who have never heard of Sheets should consider committing his unusual name to long-term memory: He is a major apostle in the New Apostolic Reformation, a right-wing Christian strategist, and one of the more dangerous ideologues of the religious right. I would argue that among those who spurred politically extreme conservative Christians to show up in Washington, D.C. on January 6th prepared to take violent action, no Christian leader was more influential than Dutch Sheets.
One of the markers of Sheets’s extremist theology is his reinterpretation of a Greek word from the Bible. The word is ekklesia, which in Greek means “assembly,” but it is usually translated simply as “church.” In Sheets’s view, ekklesia should actually be translated to mean something like government, meaning that the church is God’s ordained governing body on the earth. Sheets envisions and advocates “marrying civil and spiritual government.” This is a formulation he seems to favor; the idea is that the church would align itself with interdependent government leaders, and they would do the bidding of the church.
It is important to reiterate that Dutch Sheets is not some marginal pastor or isolated theologian. He is an influential activist, and he was a core—though covert—adviser to the Trump administration, helping to coordinate prayer and spiritual warfare efforts.

The pond regrets to report that it was immediately transported back to its childhood days playing verbal games with mother, including I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit, or some variant, but all with the same naughty words intent ... the pond recalls finding it vastly amusing at the time if done when folding sheets ...

The pond was so moved that it headed off to find more tongue twisters, and sure enough, it being the full to overflowing intertubes, there was a collection of them here ...the pond didn't know a lot of them, and frankly some were just too obscure for Tamworth. What on earth to make of How much Zen would a Zen master master If Zen master could master all the Zen?

Speaking of Zen mastery, the pond thought it should settle things down even more by presenting the Tuesday groaning ...

For the zillionth time, the Groaning is about pesky, difficult, uppity furriners. If anyone fails to achieve enlightenment this time round, don't blame it on the pond ...

This is of course the segment where the pond takes a breather and Dame Groan cultists must do the hard yakka in the comments section.

The pond long ago gave up on trying to explain the Dame's obsession with furriners, but does look to the cultists for inspiration ...

At this point the reptiles slipped in a snap of assorted suits ...

.

... but all the pond could think of was that proud tradition that produced this cartoon in The Bulletin, 4th December 1946, showing Arthur Calwell doing all that Dame Groan feared ...

Hmm, you couldn't get away with those images today, you'd be kicked off the Graudian pronto, but it was all part of a proud tradition, including but not limited to Roy Rene's comedy stylings as Mo McCackie.

Who remembers Calwell today? The pond dimly recalls his gravel voice and his nickname Cocky Calwell and the cartoons that inspired it ... but the use of 'cocky' has long been displaced by the Parrot, who now has also had his feathers plucked by time, and now it seems only that wily bird, the Major Mitchell, remains ...

The pond was also reminded of the fearsome dictation test ...

That's what happens when the pond gets into a Groaning, the mind wanders and it's hard to keep paying attention, and so cultists must earn their keep ...

Alternatively, you could, for the zillionth time, conjure up that famous poem "We'll all be rooned, said Dame Groan" ...

And so the pond reached the final gobbet without lifting a finger ...

 

Have at it cultists, while the pond looked around for a bonus, and drew a blank ...

That assembly of non-reads reminded the pond of a particular grievance ... where's Lloydie of the Amazon? 

He bobbed up a few weeks ago in relation to the High Court and the EV tax, but then disappeared from view again. The pond thought so little of the appearance that it failed to mention it, and meanwhile the Lloydie mantle has been passed on to others ...

 

 

Good work team, but that's no excuse for that slacker Lloydie, and that's how the pond ended up with the bromancer, early this morning occupying the top far right corner of the digital edition - the top far right being his natural home - and in a sublime state of paranoia and hysteria ...

What brought it on? Ah, that would be a spoiler, and the pond will save the reveal right to the very end ...

Consider. The Chairman Emeritus is still backing the mango Mussolini and the isolationist wing of the GOP. It's possible that he yearns for others, but he's deeply afraid of the Frankenstein's monster he helped create, and besides, there's the bottom line to consider ... between Ukraine and the Chairman Emeritus's bottom line, there's only a nanosecond's consideration ...

Here he is bro, the man Faux Noise refuses to take down for fear of taking down the profit line ...

End his career? Not likely, not when the Chairman Emeritus has a bottom line to protect.

Meanwhile, the bro was still working up a lather ...

Meanwhile, not a word defending the indefensible, busy in the usual barking mad fundamentalist way adding fuel to the fire and anxious to stay in power to avoid prison? (Sorry, paywall)

At this point, the reptiles interrupted with some huge snaps of the usual suspects, naturally downsized...

It's an old ploy, an old trick to get the pond to take the side of a repressive dictator, a war mongering sociopath and a woman-killing mad mullah backer of the moral police, but all the pond would like to do is add a few more threats to democracy to the image bank, what with them willing to make cash out of fundamentalist loons of all kinds ...

There, fixed, and the pond could continue with the bro ...

AUKUS and not a word about Lord Downer? What about the subs? Is the bro somewhere else, lost in an epic bout of navel-gazing? Sorry, the pond can't answer, it would involve spoilers ...

Meanwhile, the reptiles flung in another huge snap ...

The pond preferred this Graudian cartoon as a way of stoking the bro's paranoia and hysteria ...

And so to a final gobbet and the big reveal ...

Yes, it was a missive from the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, a gathering of far right loons and barking mad ratbags of the onion muncher kind, apparently without the wherewithal to realise that fundamentalists need each other so they can maintain the fundamentalist wars, when the rest of the planet would prefer to settle down for a quiet life and the occasional tongue twister ... 

In the United States, you usually have to settle for thoughts and prayers ...