In which the pond heads back down the US rabbit hole with nattering "Ned", jolly Joe Hockey and Dame Slap ...

 

The pond woke with an impending sense of dread. The pond's spam filter - blame Blogger - is playing up and the pond's own logarithms have been flooded with MSNBC doing endless coverage, to the point of nausea and tedium. 

John Hanscombe scribbled for The Canberra Times' newsletter The Echidna this plea (subscribe and you get the infallible Pope early)...

...not all media have gone down the rabbit hole - mercifully, most local papers are covering important local news. But the main media players have and, thanks to time zones, the live channels of their websites look a little silly. Not much happens in the middle of the night in America, which is when those channels are live on Australian websites. So what we get are live channels that appear dead - or at best on life support.
The whole thing reached peak absurdity last week when the ABC broadcast Trump's acceptance speech in full. The producers were probably expecting an hour maximum but what they got was 92 minutes of mainly rambling nonsense with cutaway shots of supporters sporting panty liners on their right ears in sympathy.
So here's a plea to our news organisations. Refocus on the domestic issues that have been consigned to the background. The worst road toll in a decade. The ongoing domestic violence epidemic. The nuclear energy debate. The housing crisis. The cost of living (not helped by the global olive oil shortage). The use of AI by the Queensland LNP to create a fake video of Labor Premier Steven Miles - a new low point in our political discourse.
Refocus, too, on the other important stories from around the world overshadowed by this dark America comedy. Gaza. Ukraine. Sudan. Bangladesh. Oh, and the Olympics.
We still have more than 100 days of this American farce to play out. It will be fascinating. There will be more moments of craziness. We will be exhausted by it. But we should not allow it to become a smokescreen for all the issues here that need and deserve attention.

Yes, yes, and yes, and luckily because the pond doesn't watch the ABC, it missed the orange swamp monster's speech.

But when the pond turned to the lizard Oz this day, there it was, more of the farce playing out and more of the commentary dedicated to the farce ...

Sure, down the bottom Alexi Demetriadi, former employee of the Fulham Football Club, did his best to evoke Islamic extremism, and that lesser member of the Kelly gang, the valiant Joe, had yet another go at the greenies ... but as for the rest?

Please don't blame the pond for this sample of leading lizard Oz "thought leaders"; please excuse the pond for beginning with nattering "Ned", always an Everest, this day more like a mountain on Mars ...

It would, of course, be droll ironically amusing if not mindlessly numbing and tedious. "Ned" perforce has to speak in code when blathering about the "pro-Trump populist right" and "its mindless cheering" because if forced to name names, he would have had to mention Sky News and its gang, and all the local lickspittle lackeys of the Chairman Emeritus at work in the lizard Oz and his local tabloids, not to mention the rabble at work abroad at Faux Noise ...

The snaps were no better, with Ronnie Raygun dragged back from his dementia and death to make an appearance ...

 

The only upside to this anxious hand wringing and Chicken Little carry on was that the prolix "Ned" was - for him - relatively brief ...

Apparently "Ned" has also forgotten he's scribbling in the Catholic Boys' daily, with the usual remit the bemoaning of the decline and fall of Western civilisation, so it's a bit rich to be bagging Vance for doing what the reptiles have done for years ... but here we are, and on we go ...

Huh, might as well hope to shun Faux Noise, but we've arrived at the last gobbet of hand wringing ...

Suddenly "Ned" is alarmed? Suddenly "Ned" is blathering about mindless cheering? Here have a cartoon for making it to the end ... it'll come in handy if you have the fortitude and nerve to make it to Dame Slap's offering ...

Next up is - the pond almost fainted as it typed the words - jolly Joe Hockey ...

It did remind the pond that it's been a long time since Joe made regular appearances, and in a way that showed he was the perfect coach for Kamala ...

There were the usual illustrations offered as distractions ... this time the reptiles dragged in Nancy, the Clintons, the Queen, a different jolly Joe and LBJ ...

Stripped of the interstitial snaps, jolly Joe offered a series of short gobbets best tossed off with a drizzle of olive oil (lordy, lordy, how dear it is these days) and croutons, a kind of panzanella ...

Yep, a classic jolly Joe word salad. In the spring the garden will grow and in November the path will be unpredictable... and if the roots are not severed, she can energise the base, and all will be well. Campaigns grow, but first they must wither, trees have to lose their leaves in order to put forth new leaves and to grow thicker and stronger and taller...

As a famous American seer once said, it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.

Here, have a cigar, or better still, an immortal Rowe cartoon as a reward for making it to the end...

It's always in the detail with the immortal Rowe and that detail this day was something else ... some form of shortlegs in the ceiling ...as alarming as any daddy longlegs you might see ... (in cinemas near you).

And so to the bonus, though really calling Dame Slap a bonus is an insult to bonuses everywhere ...

The pond did hesitate to give Dame Slap a place, what with her being a dedicated racist and sexist, and willing to run out the trope that blacks only get jobs because a white person has blessed them.

But the pond did so want to run, for the nth time, where "n" represents an infinite number, a reminder of Dame Slap in her prime ...

Once you realise where she's coming from it's easy not to be distracted by the usual set of snaps, provided by the struggling remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department ... incapable of showing figures sniggering into MAGA caps in the manner of the departed cult master ...

 

With those out of the way, we can get on with Dame Slap fellow travelling with all that's vile and obnoxious in the American body politic ...

In the pond's fantasy world, Harris would be given five minutes in the ring with Dame Slap, though she might be genteel enough not to observe that Dame Slap is a privileged blonde female with Germanic leanings ... and anyway that point's already been made in relation to the Dame's spiritual buddy...

Hmm, perhaps bleach is unfair, perhaps the Dame is naturally blonde in the stereotypical Germanic way... sorry, Dame Slap always brings the pond down to the LCD of childish abuse.

That little bout of bigotry, emanating from Tennessee, naturally found a home at bigots down under HQ ... but it is what it is, and the pond must now stick the bigot's course ...

The safest way for bigots to proceed in this tricky terrain is to just be asking questions, and naturally Dame Slap was JAQ of the finest rhetorical kind ...

That celebration of the deeply corrupt - and deeply activist SCOTUS - Dame Slap is usually out and about deploring judicial activists - was the cherry on top of this serve of classic vanilla thought leadership ...

Meanwhile, what a relief that blondes can find a steady form of work at Faux Noise.

Washing off the stench, the pond should note that at least the infallible Pope turned to other news, and what a relief it was, if only because it was a different kind of baseball bat to head and planet ...

And so to a bonus to the bonus, a tribute to Dame Slap and MAGA and bandage wearers everywhere.

It must be accompanied by a warning, because it features George Carlin and is scabrous and completely unfair, in the Carlin way. 

If you don't like his comedy stylings, here mangled for another purpose, stand well clear. If you've never heard of Carlin, the pond pities you and urges you not to take the click ...

The pond's only excuse is that its bloody logarithm has a mind of its own, and keeps throwing up these sorts of distractions, and if the pond must suffer, it must share the suffering...