In which the pond seeks as many distractions as possible, but at the end is still left with prattling Polonius and nattering "Ned" ...

 

The pond has started the year doing a lot of apologising, and with good reason. 

The pond isn't responsible for the dross served up by the reptiles, but it is responsible for exposing sane members of the world to the dross ...

In an alternative universe, the pond would much rather be starting off its Sunday meditation by referecing Ariel Bogle's piece for The Graudian, The Australian who ascended to the helm of a Republican-linked fundamentalist Christian group ...

Everything about it was beguiling from being reminded that Ken Ham, the man who contends dinosaurs and people roamed the earth together, was once a science teacher at Dalby state high school - "seek the truth" is the school motto - to his connections with the Speaker of the House ...

Johnson’s relationship with Ham and AiG has been a particular focus in the US press since the Louisiana congressman was elected Speaker of the House in October 2023. In 2015 Johnson represented the Ark Encounter in its fight against Kentucky’s tourism cabinet for refusing to grant it a tourism tax incentive, and has personal ties to Ham.
As well as blogging for AiG and hosting Ham on his podcast, Johnson has praised the Ark Encounter as a “strategic and really a creative means to defend and advance the truth of scripture”.
“It’s one way to bring people to this recognition of the truth that what we read in the Bible are actual historical events,” he said.
In April the House Speaker and his wife are due to speak alongside Iles at an AiG conference titled Answers for Women.
Johnson’s creationist beliefs as well as his attitude to environmental issues and the climate emergency are another area of alignment. Ham has written that climate action is “a false religion with false prophets” and Iles has echoed such views. In 2019 he made a video for the ACL in which he said “climate change alarmism is one of the many suits of clothes being worn in the modern west by Marxism”.

And so on, and so Creationism, and so a young earth, and so dinsoaurs romping with humans, and so a fun Sunday read.

Or the pond could be mentioning Cathy Young's coverage of the phoney Russian presidential election in The Bulwark, To Putin's Surprise, an Opponent is Rising ...

Apart from being an astute observer of the scene, she managed to drag in a couple of references to some favourite pond movies, Galaxy Quest and Roberto Rossellini's General Della Roverera, wherein a Gestapo-appointed small time crook shifts from posing as a resistance leader to being the real thing ...

Or the pond could be discussing how for once Marina Hyde, with her famous Hydeings, missed a trick. 

Sure in When Mark Zuckerberg can face US senators and claim the moral high ground, we're through the looking glass, she scores a couple of palpable hits ... on Zuck himself and on the likes of the fist-pumping Josh Hawley and Miss Lindsay ...

But she didn't cotton on to Tom Cotton's truly wondrous return to the 1950s days of Joe McCarthy, noted even in the mainstream press, as in NBC's Sen. Tom Cotton faces backlash for repeatedly asking TikTok's CEO about his citizenship. 

As Tim Miller noted in a Bulwark segment, the cotton-picker did more for TikTok than Shou Zi Chew might dare to dream of doing ...so inept was the questioning, so incapable of actually nailing the question of Chinese government influence ...

The pond might even have spent a little time basking in the afterglow of that trial, with Eric Lach in The New Yorker scribbling Nine Regular People Tell Donald Trump To Shut Up and Pay Up (paywall).

...On Tuesday, the networks called the New Hampshire Republican Party Presidential primary for Trump the minute the polls closed. The political reality is that Trump has a grip on the G.O.P.’s voting base—but the legal reality is that Trump is in increasingly deep shit. When will these two realities collide, and what will happen when they do? Does Trump even have $83.3 million? (Letitia James, New York State’s attorney general, is currently seeking three hundred and seventy million dollars from Trump in a separate civil case, related to the Trump Organization’s shady business practices.) In the meantime, there’s Carroll. She may wind up being a hero in American history. Most people don’t know who she is, but she was once a pretty big deal. She got the idea to sue Trump from George Conway—the conservative lawyer who was married to the Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway—whom she spoke with at a party in the summer of 2019, a few months after her article ran in New York magazine. A few months later, Elle ended her long-running advice column, “Ask E. Jean.” She was in her mid-seventies at the time, and the President of the United States was publicly hoping that something horrible would happen to her. She now sleeps with a loaded gun next to her bed.

It's old news, but the pond has been a reader of the magazine for a long time, and could still imagine what the reaction of Harold Ross or William Shawn might have been to the deployment of "deep shit" in a story ...

Enough already, the pond has filibustered far too long and must get down to it, with another apology for doing so, but someone has to step into the sewers to see the deep shit floating there ...

A Martian stumbling on this blog might wonder why the pond is cynical, said Martian never having read Polonius before. Isn't he just deeply interested in the safety of children, your friendly uncle Martin Martian asks?

But if Polonius really cared about education, he'd be tackling one of the greatest issues creating turmoil in Sydney ...

The pond keeds, the point of this Polonial outing is to celebrate the wonders and glories of the Pellists, though it'll take another gobbet to get there ...

It's just as well Polonius doesn't do detective work regularly because inference isn't evidence, but never mind, could we have a rousing snare drum, Bolero style, to celebrate the true point of the exercise. 

A celebration of the Pellists incredible response to the depravity inside the Catholic church ... (no, it wasn't don more frocks, it was to organise a response that did little for victims and unravelled in all the wrong ways).

Yes, it's easy to focus on pedophilia in religious institutions, but surprisingly, Polonius never does it, or if he does, it's only so he can mount a manly defence of the Pellist frock-lovers (not that there's anything wrong with a love of frocks, it's more the grievous mistreatment of children that's the issue).

The pond has seen this deflection, distraction and dissembling many times before, and typically it came the same weekend when the dog botherer was moaning about being asked to conform to safety requirements for children in sport, moaning on abut being asked for a "working with children clearance". Given half the chance, the pond would forbid the exposure of children to any reptile until they were 18 years old and ready to vote  ...

And so to the next apology, and that's the pond's insistence on offering the Everest climb known as "Ned" ...

But what choice did the pond have? Look at the alternative ...

It's the old Ron DeSanctus problem, when vying with the mango Mussolini for attention. 

Why would anyone accept a dose of the oscillating fan, when they could have a serve of the old codger himself, rabbiting on endlessly in his usual way ...

Now at this point the pond decided to adopt its usual weekend strategy. 

The pond has not the slightest interest in Chicken Little "Ned" shouting at clouds and running around the chook yard in a sackcloth and ashes frenzy, frothing and foaming at the mouth ...

The reptiles have already done the tax frenzy to death, and the pond is well over it.

So the pond thought that in compensation for its errors, it would, together with "Ned", offer a cartoon-led recovery, with the infallible Pope providing the definitive word on what's to follow ...

Then people could embark on the Everest climb in good heart, and leave base camp to set off into the rarefied air. world of the well-known, and often repeated, and routinely regurgitated ..

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a snap of a fearsome Satanic beast or an ogre or that great big ugly troll, with eyes as big as saucers and a nose as long as a poker ...

This would usually scare the aged demographic shitless, in something of a New Yorker deep shit way, so to speak, and the pond thought it could help by adding to the fear ...

Terrifying, but perhaps not as terrifying as enduring "Ned", still rabbiting on ...

At this point the reptiles introduced a genuine Queensland plod of billy goat gruff kind ...

Well, come along! I've got two spears,

And I'll poke your eyeballs out at your ears;

I've got besides two curling-stones,

And I'll crush you to bits, body and bones. (the gruff goats are here)

Strangely at this point all the pond could think about was the mango Mussolini ...

It came as something of a shock that there was still much more of the undermining "Ned" to go ...

On the upside, the pond didn't have to mention climate science, genocide or domicide or whatever ...

Say what you will about "Ned", a few random shells won't distract him from his endless mission to spread as much FUD as possible ...

Speaking of leadership, for some reason the pond was reminded of Nikki Haley, adept at own goals. You could find the yarn in TNR's Nikki Haley Makes Her Bizarro Texas Secession Comment Even Worse ..

That reminded the pond of the dispute that started Nikki off on her secessionist path...

By this stage some might be feeling their rage machine cranking into overdrive at the thought that there's still two gobbets of "Ned" to go ...

But relax, they're relatively short ...

The public deserves a better debate about tax and the ned (need if you will) for tax reform?

So even "Ned" admits his blather is a complete waste of time and he's incapable of delivering a better debate because he just wants to spread FUD, preferably filling up his column to portentous lengthy by borrowing quotes from others.

The pond realised it had left its coverage of the pending US election a little late, but better late than never ...

And that's how the pond gets through a "Ned" natter these days.

Others might have different solutions, some might even want to comment on the FUD, but it works for the pond ... and at the end there's just one short shout at passing clouds to go ...

In short, if you can't get them when they're going, get them when they're coming, and in the best of all worlds, then you can get them coming and going ... and meanwhile, the chance of returning to bed for a Sunday morning nap has been exponentially improved ...

And so to a few more cartoons to wrap things up, first with a serve of TT ...

And then with an epic outing from Sutton ...