In which "Ned" wanders back into the past, while mein Gott stays weird, and Killer dwells in the alarming present ...

 

They came with the roaring of lions, but verily, they left with the baaing of sheep. 

Put it another way. They posed as ferocious reptiles, but settled for positions as handbags and shoes.

It was of course the great tax flip of 2024, and the pond looked for signs of tax war life, or any sign of dejection in the reptile ranks at the failure of the campaign...

Hmm, King Harry to the rescue, and "Ned" in the top far right corner of the digital edition purportedly blathering about tax reform, and the pond will have to go there ... but first the pond's eye was caught by this unlikely pairing of the rich ...

They had to drag Alston out from heavens knows where to do a number on Malware? And instead of scribbling furious letters to the ABC, now he's watching one of its shows so he can maintain the  internecine wars?

It reminded the pond of a cartoon ...

As for the frock lover dying with a lot of cash in hand, naturally the pond headed off to the Catholic Encyclopaedia for yet another lecture on humbug ...

Cupidity, vain glory, and excessive solicitude are, according to St. Thomas, the three obstacles which riches put in the way of acquiring perfection (Summa, II-II, Q. clxxxviii, a. 7). This abandonment of superfluities was the only way in which voluntary poverty could be understood before the introduction of the common life. The state of perfection, understood in its proper sense, requires also that the renunciation should be of a permanent character; and in practice this stability follows as the result of a perpetual vow of poverty. The warnings and counsels of Jesus Christ are valuable even to those who are not vowed to a state of perfection. They teach men to moderate their desire for riches, and accept cheerfully the loss or deprivation of them; and they inculcate that detachment from the things of this world which our Lord taught when He said, "Everyone of you that doth not renounce all that he possesseth, cannot be my disciple" (Luke xiv 33).

The pond still prefers Matthew 19:24, KJV: And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

On the front page of the tree killer edition, the tax war had been abandoned, and all that was left lurking was a resentful question, that's if you could get past yet another panic about Indigenous people ...

Down below, the reptiles did the best to cope with their loss ...

The best the "here no conflict of interest" man, aka simpleton Simon, could offer was the threat to carry on the war - apparently this is just the first round, though the pond had heard that Captain Spud had folded his tent and stolen into the night.

The best the bouffant one could do was offer blather about a pugnacious PM ...

Media Watch had returned to remind the reptiles of their perfidious ways with tax coverage, not least the recent tax war, when up against past treatment of policy promises ...

...to remind you, let’s spin back to this series of pledges by Tony Abbott on election eve in 2013:
TONY ABBOTT: No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS. - SBS News, 6 September, 2013
Tony Abbott and his Treasurer Joe Hockey broke nearly all those promises eight months later in the 2014 Budget including funding cuts to health, education and the ABC, and a levy on high income earners.
So, did the News Corp tabloids who have been so vocal this time around slam the betrayal? Surprisingly not.
The Hun celebrated the Coalition’s backflip with ‘TAX! AXE! FIX!’. The Courier-Mail gave Joe a muscle upgrade with ‘The Extreme Hockey Diet’. While the Tele praised ‘Dr Joe's Debt Cure’.
All pretty positive stuff and not one ‘liar-bility’ headline to be seen. Funny that. 
But it just goes to show, when it comes to double standards, it’s not just politicians who can’t be trusted. 

You have to watch the original to appreciate how dire and reprehensible those front pages were ...

So how did "Ned" cope with the reptile double standard, the rampant hypocrisy, the back flip and the loss?

Bizarrely, by resorting to history, and it was so bizarre, such an epic distraction, so wondrously funny, that the pond simply had to go there ...

It's a nonsense of course ... a way of fudging the recent reptile follies ...

...having shown that his word was worthless, the commentators fired their broadsides:

ANDREW BOLT: The Prime Minister is a liar and a thief … - The Bolt Report, Sky News Australia, 25 January, 2024

PETA CREDLIN: This is a low act from a poor government. - Credlin, Sky News Australia, 23 January, 2024

SARAH ABO: How does it feel to break a promise with the Australian people?  - Today, Nine Network, 25 January, 2024

CLARE ARMSTRONG: Why should Australians trust that you won’t lie to them again? - National Press Club, ABC, 25 January, 2024

Ouch. 

And the headlines in the News Corp papers were just as harsh, with their front pages slamming the PM as a deceitful, sneaky, ‘liar-bility’.

And next day the Tele produced a dictionary to help decode the Prime Minister’s spin:

LIE: A CHANGE OF POSITION 

BROKEN PROMISE: A RIGHT DECISION

BETRAYAL: GOOD ECONOMIC POLICY - Daily Telegraph, 26 January, 2024

These, it should be noted, are the same newspapers and TV hosts that have been bashing Labor for not doing more to tackle the cost of living. 

Are all these salvoes now aimed at Captain Spud? 

Of course not, time for "Ned" to continue his deep dive back into the past so that everyone can forget all that ...

It's about as convoluted a way of attempting to trash what's gone down in the past few months as can be imagined, and there were plenty of period snaps to go with it - anything to help the remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department's minuscule budget ..

.

Dear sweet long absent lord, how long has it been since the pond thought for a nanosceond about the Lynch mob?

The reptiles pretended that it was all still relevant by including a colour snap of Satan and his helper ...

The rest was special pleading by "Ned" that all this tax talk was futile and a waste of time ...

There is of course an elephant in "Ned's" room, but he'll never get there ...

Apparently we must now wait for that hollow ring, which is different to the ring of confidence ...

Well if "Ned" can wander pointlessly down memory lane ... especially as it's nihilism at ten paces ...

By the end, stripped of his old snaps, "Ned" was reduced to a few spluttering pars ...

That's it? That's all, he scribbled? It just goes to show, when it comes to double standards, it's not just politicians who can't be trusted.

 It was left to the immortal Rowe to remind "Ned" of what he should have been scribbling about, together with offering a mea culpa for the recent reptile follies ...

"Ned's" attempt at the shimmy by resorting to the deep past was sublimely tragic. 

Here's how he should have done it ... though perhaps if he'd managed to stick his head up his bum it would have looked even better ...

As Dame Slap has gone full white supremacist on the fush and chup folk across the dutch, the pond looked around for a little filler and luckily there was a mein Gott to hand ...

The pond realises that not everyone is entranced by the pond's recent fascination for mein Gott ... and no doubt will hold this outing against the pond, but hey ...

The real reason for the outing? It was a great chance for the failing graphics department to trot out the thing the reptiles love the most. Digging up the country and shipping it out ...

Stripped of the snaps, mein Gott just sounded deeply weird in the usual mein Gott way ...

The pond was none the wiser as to how (a) this might help climate science, and (b) this might turn mining into a technology business akin to mining for bit coin ... but always trust in mein Gott ...

But they'll still be miners doing mining, won't they, or is the pond missing something? Sadly, the last two pars offered no further clarification or insight ...

"New ideas will emerge". 

Ah, at last something familiar: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.... In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again....Spring and summer....Then fall and winter.  Yes! There will be growth in the spring! And there will be ground for the digging, and the miners will dig, and having dug, they will become technology companies ...

And so to wrap up with some badly needed reassurance from Killer, channelling a man who committed fraud, and is a con artist, a fruit loop, and a snake oil salesman of the first water...

So much for Ukraine ...but then the Emeritus Chairman has bequeathed many such rats to the world ...

...Carlson has since echoed many of the Kremlin’s talking points in its war against Ukraine, slamming Washington for its support of Ukraine while suggesting the west is to blame for the invasion.

In his shows on Fox News and X, Carlson has described the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as a “dictator” and “sweaty and rat-like” while once stating that he was “rooting for Moscow”.

His pro-Putin and anti-Ukrainian rhetoric has been lauded in Moscow where his clips have become a fixture on Russian state television, with local propagandists using them as evidence that influential people in the US are sympathetic to Putin’s military campaign. (Graudian)

It's hardly surprising then to see quisling Killer channelling quisling snake oil man Steve ...

We should be reassured by the thoughts of a man convicted of fraud, selling snake oil on behalf of the chief snake oil salesman? We should bow down and worship the tangerine tyrant, and join others in their faith?

Nah, not really, given half a chance, the mango Mussolini would sell anyone down the river in a heartbeat ... and nothing Killer comes up with suggests otherwise, as the rogues sell Ukraine down the river, while purporting to suggest that it's all about caring for Ukrainian kids ...

Ukrainian kids?

Veronika was one of nearly 20,000 children documented by Ukrainian authorities as having been taken from Ukraine to Russia over the past two years. The authorities believe the real number is probably 10 times that, while Russian officials have even boasted of moving 700,000 Ukrainian children to Russia.

Nearly two years into the war, there are growing fears that if no way is found to bring the children home soon, Russia’s systemic programme to “re-educate” Ukrainian children could prove devastatingly effective. Ukrainian officials are calling on international organisations and neutral countries who may still hold some sway in Moscow to put pressure on Russia.

Of the 19,500 cases for which Ukrainian authorities have names and data, only about 400, including Veronika, have managed to return to Ukraine so far.

“Russia is actively erasing their Ukrainian identity and inflicting unbelievable emotional and psychological damage,” said Latvia’s president, Edgars Rinkēvičs, at a conference devoted to raising awareness of the issue in Riga on Thursday. “What makes it even worse is that Russia proudly exhibits its actions,” he said.

Russia’s claims about the resettlement of children are one of the reasons why the issue formed the basis of the arrest warrant issued by the international criminal court last year for Vladimir Putin and for the Russian children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova. The warrant says Russia acted with the “intention to permanently remove” children from Ukraine, a war crime.

Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, said Russia’s actions were the largest-scale deportation of children in Europe since the second world war. “Russia is trying to destroy the Ukrainian nation, not only physically, but by severing familial bonds and erasing the Ukrainian identity of the deported children,” he said in Riga.

Russia has used different methods to bring Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, often citing security concerns and a need to remove children from dangerous areas of conflict. In some cases, Russian authorities moved entire orphanages or children’s homes to Russian-controlled areas. In other cases, children were separated from their parents, taken to Russia and given new names. (more at the Graudian)

That's what happens when you get into bed with sociopaths supported by a tangerine tyrant ... as that genocide continues ...

Meanwhile, speaking of dictators and wannabe dictators, it will be noted that the reptiles have already forgotten yesterday's news. 

That's what happens when you live by fearmongering, panic and angertainment, and all that's left as a reminder is a cartoon to jog the memory ...

That should resonate, because the distance between Xi and the mango Mussolini is short ...