If this isn't the best "Ned" comedy set to date, the pond will happily head off to a Vlad the sociopathic impaler health resort for a detox ...

 

Some people have been slow to appreciate "Ned" as one of the great comedy stylists of the lizard Oz, but today's outing is such a humdinger, the pond has little doubt that the neigh sayers and the doubters will at last be silenced ...

But first the tease ... what's top of the digital edition early this weekend in the lizard Oz?

There's "Ned" at the top far right edge, as he should be ... and down below is Dame Slap, sounding nervous, and the pond will take that one on notice ...

Again the pond can't help but notice that the reptiles have found space for a horse race ... but as for bushfire news, why you must look elsewhere, though you won't have to look far to discover the weather's been acting up again ...

What about the 'leet commentariat section down below the fold, commenting on the world in their usual way from their bunker in Surry Hills, home to the finest baristas in the world?

Is there something more disturbing than the bombing of ambulances?

Both Shanners berating the state of Canberra, the bouffant one and the Angelic one in a veritable firestorm of suffering? 

There's sure to be a bonus there, but first to "Ned" and this time the pond has no shame in introducing him as the lead act. 

In fact "Ned" is on such a roll that the pond decided to leave in situ photos of the main contributors to the comedy ...

Say what? It was a gathering of 'leets? There was a big problem for the pond right at the get go. The pond had spent years in strict reptile training learning to despise the 'leets, and coming to realise that the filthy, vile 'leets were the major problem afflicting the planet. It took a considerable readjustment, a bit of Linda Blair style head turning, to realise that these 'leets were in fact the path to salvation, and everything the pond had spent so long diligently learning was wrong ...

This astonishing revelation took a bit of a battering when it turned out that one member of these noble leets was a dodgy old codger who'd managed to lose not just government, but his own seat ...

Could the pond let that mention of the onion muncher go by without celebrating with a cartoon ...

... of course not, but how weak-willed is the pond, how incapable of a Joseph Campbell style hero's journey, at the first opportunity celebrating with a joke ...

Incidentally if you want to keep celebrating the Graudian has a feature The power of satire: Australia's best political cartoons of 2023 ...

And waddya know, the inaugural climate cartoon award winner was announced recently...

But the pond doesn't mean to upstage "Ned's" comedy stylings, even if that feat was possible ...

Meanwhile, on another planet, you might read DeSmog's Climate Science Denial Rife at Launch of Jordan Peterson's ARC Project ...

And then there was Politico's coverage, which included this great line about attendees...

Another, a theologian, mused that he was having a great time, but didn't quite understand the point.

It seems there was some confusion and chaos ...

...The conference brought anglophone right-wingers together at a time when the traditional conservative shibboleths of free trade and small government are out of fashion in the Donald Trump-captured Republican Party. That stands in stark contrast to the mainstream of the Conservative Party in the U.K. and the Liberal Party in Australia, where both still broadly follow a standard center-right economic playbook.

It’s that split which really casts into doubt the viability of a pan-western conservative movement. And it was on full display Wednesday afternoon on the conference’s main stage.

ARC attendees watched one economist claim that central bankers are “a bunch of criminals” and should be “suppressed” — just minutes before Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch spoke on stage about fairly mainstream economic policies.

Badenoch also issued a thinly-veiled critique of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his crackdown on the Disney Corporation. DeSantis removed Disney’s tax exemption status directly after the corporation’s criticism of the governor’s LGBT education policies — a move criticized as anti-business by some center-right commentators in the U.S.

Asked if Britain’s Conservative government should use state powers to change corporate attitudes to social issues, Badenoch said flatly: “There is a role for government in terms of shaping culture — government needs to set out the vision for the way society will be. But we must again be careful of overcorrecting. If you license government to step into every single situation, what happens when it’s not a government of your choosing?”

Matthew Lesh, director of public policy at the libertarian Institute for Economic Affairs think tank, said Trumpite Americans have “turned away from free trade,” but that “this disease has not quite filtered through to the United Kingdom and Australia in the same way.”

“ARC speakers have talked about human flourishing, prosperity, and safeguarding Western civilization,” he observed. But he warned: “This will ultimately depend on free exchange, entrepreneurial innovation and globalization.”

Conversations with attendees throughout the week all seemed to raise the same point — that ARC represents a coalition of people who all agree on at least something, but who don’t yet have an aligned strategy to turn that into a governing platform, or shape opinion beyond the room.

Others sounded more hopeful — if a little high-minded.

Edward Dutton, an academic in attendance, said attendees should be striving to create a “neo-byzantium” in the face of “civilizational decline” across the West.

“We see civilization as being in decline and it has a lot of problems and we want to arrest that and make things better,” he said. “What I suspect is that there will be among the elite a tip back. I think this is kind of already happening, of more conservative traditional ways of doing things.”

ARC’s founders will hope that rings true.

Neo-byzantium?

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees,

—Those dying generations—at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium. (the full Yeats' poem here)

A few movie titles in that one.

Meanwhile, there had been more talk of 'leets, and this time they're tipping back? 

Stand back and stand by baristas of Surry Hills, there's going to be much tipping ...

But the pond doesn't mean to distract from "Ned's" comedy stylings ... and remember there are snaps of the 'leet too gathered in convocation, poor humble people mapping out a path for poor humble people ...

Ah, the woke agenda. Thank the long absent lord someone mentioned it. Is it a bit like the mind worm, the woke disease that Uncle Elon keeps blathering about, often in company with Joe Rogan?

For those wanting more coverage, there's always the Graudian, doing John Howard says he 'always had trouble' with the concept of multiculturalism, as white nationalist bigots are want to do ... no woke there, just an eternal, spiteful, malicious, malign slumber ...

But on with the parade, and more snaps ...

Ah young girlies, always a problem, and of course secularism is always the problem too. Truth to tell,  instead of all that secular liberalism, how much better off young girlies would be in a traditional society preserving traditional male values, traditional religion and such like ... say Afghanistan, or Iran, or in a Southern Baptist town ...

Back to "Ned", with his set warming up with the arrival of Jordan ...

Whenever Jordan gets a mention these days, the pond can't help but revert to Lindsay Beyerstein's piece for the New Republic back on March 10th 2020 under the header What Happened to Jordan Peterson?

The Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson has been described as “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world.” He is an exponent of the Jungian concept of the hero’s journey, in which an ordinary person heeds a call to adventure and goes out into the world to struggle and suffer, only to return with heightened self-knowledge. (He has described himself, without apparent irony, as being “raised and toughened in the frigid wastelands of Northern Alberta.”) His stern ethos of self-help and bootstrapping has made him a darling of the so-called intellectual dark web, and a gateway drug for countless budding right-wingers who have stumbled upon one of his lectures on YouTube.

So it was something of a surprise to learn, in early February, that Peterson had spent eight days in a medically induced coma at an unnamed clinic in Russia. Peterson’s daughter Mikhaila, a 28-year-old food blogger, posted a brief but dramatic video claiming that she and her father had traveled to Russia in early January seeking an unorthodox treatment for his physical dependence on the drug clonazepam. Dependency goes against the core tenets of Peterson’s philosophical brand: stoicism, self-reliance, the power of the will over circumstance and environment. “No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life,” he admonished in his bestselling self-help book 12 Rules for Life. 

According to Mikhaila, he nearly died several times during his medical ordeal. After weeks in intensive care, he was unable to speak or write and was taking anti-seizure medicine.

The news was met with bafflement by doctors and laypeople alike. What was Peterson doing in a drug-induced coma in Russia? Based on interviews with medical professionals and a close reading of various statements that Mikhaila and Peterson himself have made on podcasts and social media, it is clear that Peterson ended up in Russia after an extended battle to wean himself off clonazepam. And it seems likely that Peterson, a self-proclaimed man of science, succumbed to the lure of a quack treatment—with devastating consequences.    

Peterson’s saga has mostly been covered in conservative news outlets, which have relied almost exclusively on a disjointed narrative put forth by Mikhaila, a nutrition “influencer” with no medical credentials who claims to have cured her idiopathic juvenile arthritis, clinical depression, and a C. difficile infection by eating nothing but meat, salt, and water. Peterson promoted his daughter’s snake oil diet and even embraced the program himself. In July 2018, he told celebrity podcaster Joe Rogan that he’d been eating nothing but beef, salt, and water for two months at his daughter’s suggestion, following a year of eating almost nothing but steak and salad. It’s unclear whether Peterson continued to follow this extreme diet. 

Peterson’s health problems first surfaced in September 2019, when his family announced that he had undergone a stint in rehab in upstate New York. According to Mikhaila’s update from Russia, he was prescribed the sedative clonazepam, a benzodiazepine, by his family doctor in 2017 for anxiety stemming from a “severe autoimmune reaction to food.” Peterson’s doctor allegedly increased his dose after Peterson’s wife was diagnosed with kidney cancer in April 2019. Peterson supposedly didn’t realize he’d become dependent on clonazepam until he suffered agonizing withdrawal symptoms when he tried to quit the medication cold turkey during the summer of 2019...

But the pond doesn't mean to interrupt "Ned's" comedy with junkie tales ... next thing you know you'd be down with the mugwumps and William Burroughs ...

Didn't put climate change at its heart? That'll come as news to the onion muncher ...

Then the pond was hugely excited to see that the beefy boofhead, Mr Windmills himself, was also a feature, not a bug ...

The Price is Wrong was there, and so was the Canavan caravan, and Dan the man Tehan, and the hastie pastie and the lesser Leeser and it all began to sound like a collection of wayward loons on the lookout for a junket to the mother country, what with the Price is Wrong being such a big fan of colonialism ...

The pond could have settle for "Ned" going on endlessly, but sadly all good things must end, and this was the final gobbet ...

Ah yes, it's up to the 'leets to save the day and show the way. How foolish was the pond to listen to the reptiles this past decade railing at the filthy, deprave 'leets. Now apparently it is up to elite institutions and elite leaders to fix up everything.

Much like a broken clock, "Ned" did manage to get one thing right - it's guaranteed to become the butt of ridicule, whether progressive or simply anyone with a sense of humour about a mob of clowns following a junkie off to a Russian clinic for a detox ...

Readers are invited to join in the fun - there was simply too much for the pond to note and award an honourable mention, but for now, thanks to Kudelka, a cartoon celebrating the deeds of 'leet leadership ....

And so to the bonus ... and for a moment the pond was hoping to bring a double barrelled Shanners broadside, but when the pond went to read the Angelic one, the link was broken and it produced a typically comical lizard Oz 404 ...

It goes without saying that the pond was devastated - the Angelic one lost in the reptile wilderness - but deadlines are deadlines and so the pond simply had to plough ahead. 

Rest assured, however, that the pond will keep a careful watch, and should the link be restored, and should the Angelic one's musings be discovered by the reptiles and returned to the world, the pond will be there to report ...

Meanwhile, the pond had to make-do with the thoughts of the lesser Shanahan ...

Really? Canberra and California? Really? Is it because they both start with "C"? 

Is it because Shanners has been reading too much propaganda from Florida?

Haven't things been made good in the USA?

Yes, the pond usually indulges in US cartoons on a Sunday, but the pond was catching a whiff of Catholic fundamentalism in the air, so felt like it might be some comfort to Shanners in his hour of need ...

Shonky builders? There's a crisis of capitalism in the capital?

At this point, the pond made one last attempt to link up with the Angelic one, but bummed out again ...

All the pond could do was offer a cartoon by way of apology ...

Ah, so California is safe after all, and so is the entire country ... and so to a final gobbet ...

Could this see the Shanners tribe leave Canberra? Is there anywhere safe for them in this wretched country? Possibly not Newtown where the pond resides, and Surry Hills might be home to the 'leet lizard Oz, but hardly is the right place for the Shanners tribe ...

UPDATE:

It was the pond's fondest hope to have been able to present the dream team together on a Saturday, and a little later in the day the reptiles got the link to the Angelic one working ...

Should the pond hold over the Angelic one, knowing that a few early readers might miss out on the dream team.

No damn it, the pond had a moral obligation to present the dream team together ... and so it came to pass, two Shanners in one blow ...

Immediately the pond realised it was right and proper. A married couple together, happily shouting together at the clouds in the sky.

Let no blogger keep them apart, let their voices be raised in unison ... and sorry for those early birds who missed this worm, but they really had to be joined at the hip ...

Splendid stuff, but the pond realised that there was something missing from the Angelic one's catechism ... the suffering of Calvary, the mortal wounding on the cross.

How could the pond have doubted, how could the pond have shown such a basic lack of faith. Lo, there came Calvary, and it was good and seemly ...

Excellent, Big Brother stalking the Angelic one and so the pond like an exile from an Orwellian nightmare.

It seemed like the Angelic one was also heartily sick of the joint and sounded ready to scarper.

The pond knew it should try a different ending, but why bother? The one for the first Shanners was right and fitting, and it would serve just as nicely for the Angelic one, appropriately walking three paces to the rear ...

Could this see the Shanners tribe leave Canberra? Is there anywhere safe for them in this wretched country? Possibly not Newtown where the pond resides, and Surry Hills might be home to the 'leet lizard Oz, but hardly is the right place for the Shanners tribe ...

Thoughts and prayers and solutions are urgently needed, though perhaps a shift to the China bureau of the lizard Oz can be ruled out ...