Featuring some news deemed not fit for the lizard Oz, and Mein Gott, just "Ned" and Mein Gott to do the groaning ...

 

The pond has started to whine about the things it misses out on as a result of its herpetology studies. 

The pond does try not to whine - it's so reptile - but tries to slip in the odd mention of. things happening outside the hive mind.

Minutes arising from the last pond meeting.

Diligent readers will recall the pond noting the bromancer yesterday trying to craft a column out of SloMo's memoirs launch. It was pathetic, feeble stuff.

What a difference a day makes. Cue Catriona Menzies-Pike in Crikey (sorry, paywall):

...That Morrison is not a gifted prose stylist will come as no surprise. Repetition, cliché, malapropism, daft diction, plodding syntax, more cliché, and bucketloads of sentimentality? This book has got it all. As James Ley wrote of the former PM’s rhetorical abilities in 2022, “He has never shown any interest in what words actually mean, or even the conventional ordering of their syllables.” If you prod Morrison’s aphorisms hoping for a sign of life, they fall apart.
Have a go with this one: “God is not a vending machine where we insert our faith and expect to receive the comforts of life in return. We don’t always get what we want, but we do always get God.” A careful reader might baulk at the transformation of faith into a coin here. I don’t think Morrison did. The Scottification of Biblical stories is one of the expected discomforts of Plans For Your Good: 
“In the last chapter we talked about Daniel and his experiences in Babylon. He wasn’t the only one to face trials and persecution there. He had three really good friends who came with him from Judah. In Australia, we would call them Daniel’s mates.”
I suspect this book was not written at all, but rather recorded and transcribed. Read a few sentences aloud and you can hear the cadences of sermons and the influence of Morrison’s pastors. You can also hear, well, Scott Morrison — without all the bothersome interruptions and interjections from an audience who wishes to hold him to account. 

Oh there's a whole lot more and sadly the pond can only do another sample ...

...Usually, when Australian authors take a book to the US market, they’re asked to make changes so that local usages can be grasped by American readers. The edition of Plans For Your Good that I read retained Australian spellings, but otherwise no deference is paid to Australian readers. A sheep station is a bit like a ranch, you see, and we say, “how good is such and such” when we want to say how good it is. It’s a sign of Morrison’s indifference to his Australian readers, and to the expectations of the office he once held, that he didn’t insist on removing this stuff for the local edition. Presumably Harper Collins Christian Publishing anticipated selling sufficient copies of the book in Australia to make it worth releasing but the numbers weren’t there to mandate small editorial changes for the local market. 
To say that Plans For Your Good is a patchy account of Morrison’s political career is an understatement. There’s naught here about Morrison the minister for Immigration and border protection, the architect of the punitive Operation Sovereign Borders regime, not even a smug little joke about the disgraceful “I Stopped These” trophy he reportedly kept in his office.
The one-time minister for Social Services has nothing to say about welfare, is silent on poverty, and when he uses the term “social justice advocates”, it is to deride his critics. He does not mention robodebt. We hear nothing about either climate change or Morrison’s loyal support for the resources sector. Nothing about the 2019 bushfires. Morrison showers himself with praise for leading the nation through the difficult years of the COVID-19 pandemic — and yet there is not one word in this book about the secret ministries palaver. Morrison is a marketing executive at heart and he’s trying to reach a new audience with Plans For Your Good — why would he bother surfacing these old accusations?

But the pond must close yesterday's minutes and go on to the business of the day, noting that if you just rely on the top of the lizard Oz's digital edition for the news that matters or splatters, you'll rarely find a mention of Ukraine, where things are getting ugly, or the actual details of the messy genocide going down in Gaza, and you certainly won't find a mention of the trial of the century (thus far, and if only because it's the first US prez to go before the beak).

The pond has also been titillated by examples of the orange Jesus slipping into dementia - it was on Morning Joe and on endless rotation on MSNBC for awhile and the likes of Colbert had a go at it - but there's no way you'd find any mention of it in the lizard Oz.

It came as a relief to find that Jonathan V. Last had the same sort of gripe in The Bulwark, only this time it was The New York Times and Hannibal Lecter ...

...On Saturday afternoon, a former president who is currently the defendant in one criminal trial while facing three other felony cases, gave a speech in Wildwood, New Jersey.
This man—who leads most polling and is at least a 50-50 shot to be the next president of the United States—spoke for 90 minutes. Here are some of the things he said:
"Silence of the Lamb. Has anyone ever seen The Silence of the Lambs? The late, great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? “Excuse me. I’m about to have a friend for dinner.” As this poor doctor walked by. “I’m about to have a friend for dinner.” But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations, the late great Hannibal Lecter. We have people who are being released into our country that we don’t want in our country, and they’re coming in totally unchecked, totally unvetted."
Surely this is newsworthy, because it suggests that Donald Trump is either suffering from aphasia or is non compos mentis. And at the risk of belaboring the point: This man could well become president.
Here is the front page of the New York Times—the nation’s paper of record—on Sunday morning:

There's no point replicating that front page, it's nicely large at the link, and it featured the solar storm and a story about the mango Mussolini's disputed accounting and assorted trivia, and it set Last off ...

Ahhhhh, the Northern Lights. Gorgeous, gorgeous. Also, I’m very sad that the Chuck E. Cheese band is being retired. And how good of the Times to inform casual readers that Ross Douthat appears on Page 2 of Sunday Opinion.
But the once and future president tumbling into nonsense about Hannibal Lecter?
Nothing.

So it goes and all the pond can add is ... Jimmy Connors, because Last didn't mention the Times' yarn about Mormons sharing the gospel getting a revival nor other orange Jesus tidbits, which meant they missed out on the news that Jimmy Connors had once been the president of the United States. Instead: 

'Later on, Trump did his usual schtick about windmills “killing all the birds,” while also doubling down on a previous false claim that offshore ones are killing whales.' (Beast paywall)

Another thing. The pond has sworn never to indulge the reptiles in their talk of cancel culture, woke and such like, but it's worth heading off to Popular Information to read Judd Legum's The real cancel culture.

It also features the NY Times and Bari Weiss and NPR and Uri Berliner, and a scoundrel by name Chris Rufo, and NPR CEO Katherine Maher and it will all seem familiar to anyone who has watched the reptiles incessantly assault the ABC for thought crimes. A sample:

...Later in the lengthy piece, Rufo admits there "is no way to discern whether Maher was an agent, asset, or otherwise connected with the CIA." But Rufo claims this is irrelevant because Maher "was undoubtedly advancing the agenda of the national security apparatus." 
Having acknowledged that his core claim about Maher's connections to U.S. intelligence is pure speculation, Rufo then turns his attention to unsubstantiated gossip about Maher's personal life. In her 30s, Rufo writes, Maher "had her sights on powerful men in the tech sector." But Maher "considered finding someone lesser as she approached 40." This, according to Rufo, somehow helps prove that Maher is "a vessel for power, with few original thoughts." 
The incoherence of the argument underscores the reality of the political moment. There is a relentless right-wing operation seeking to inflict pain on their ideological adversaries. Some, like Rufo, are the political equivalent of street brawlers, willing to say or do anything to achieve their objective. Others, like Weiss and The Free Press, give the movement a more journalistic and professional sheen. But no one involved is a supporter of free expression or an opponent of cancel culture. Rather, they are the cultural force aggressively pursuing cancellation.

And so to today's digital edition of the lizard Oz to check out the reptiles' assorted errors and omissions and cancellations this day.

As expected, it was budget obsessed, with Mein Gott on the far right, and a pompous montage of portentous pundits parading in a reminder of just how pathetic the once proud graphics department has become ...

The pond looked at the pontificating pundits, and was startled. 

No sign of Dame Groan ... and down below the Groaner also went missing ...

The pond was shattered.

What on earth did this portend? Why had the old chook gone missing, and instead of her tributes to Hanrahan about us all being rooned, why was it left to the usual braying of the in-house loons to pass comment and wind?

Speaking of things missing, here's another one ...

And for a bit of light entertainment, what about this one as images of King Chuck proliferate on local coinage? (Beast paywall)

What about news of Georgia or the trial of the century (so far)?

Sorry, those are links to the Graudian, not to the navel-obsessed reptiles.

One contemptible thing had been present since yesterday ...

Still blathering on about the freedom to protest, insisting that there should be freedumb for some, but not for others?

Moral courage would actually involve noting what was currently going down in Gaza ... or at least the current action in the ICJ regarding same ...

The pond was reminded of a note from an esteemed correspondent ...

What changed it (Biden's mind) were the grotesque actions of Israel itself. A campaign of indiscriminate bombing. The casual slaughter of thousands of civilians. Complete destruction of Gaza's buildings and infrastructure. The routine murder of journalists and aid workers. The forced starvation of Gaza's people. A plan to continue doing all this in Rafah with no apparent goal other than bloody revenge. And all of it without even a rhetorical pretense that Israel gives a shit about 21st century humanitarian concerns in the slightest way.

No one needs a bunch of protesters to draw their attention to any of this. It's all in broad daylight. Any decent person—and Joe Biden is a decent person—would be having second thoughts at the very least by this point. The reality of what Israel is doing changed both public opinion and Biden's mind. Protests likely had nothing to do with it.

The problem is the idea that broad daylight can change minds by exposing the canker at the core. 

Some keep blathering about moral courage, without the slightest hint og giving a shit about humanitarian concerns or showing the moral courage required to admit there's a genocide going down ... so it's a red card for Dame Slap ...

And with that the pond supposes it should at least pretend to care about the reptiles' budget hysteria,  perhaps in the same way that Melania cares about her orange Jesus.

The pond selected only two reptiles for the budget coverage.

First up is "Ned", as usual running around like Chicken Little, shouting at the way the sky is falling ...

There were a couple of novelties ... the first being that the old codger didn't even warrant a snap at the start of his hysterical meltdown ...

The second will become apparent to anyone who makes it through the first gobbet ...

Nah, don't worry about that note, the reptiles are just up to their old tricks. 

That was the web version, this is the web version.

What's truly astonishing is that "Ned" had only one more gobbet of fear-mongering in him ... sure it was relatively long, but two gobbets?

That's not a "Ned" Everest, that's a leisurely stroll up the boardwalk to the top of Kosciuszko ... be careful not to step off the boards and get tangled in the mush and verbal slush ...

Surely there should have been a joke about a conga line of Chicken Little reptiles, but never mind, here's an infallible Pope as consolation ...

Yep, there's a yarn you won't see featured in the lizard Oz ... because we love our war criminals, we really do ...

And so to Mein Gott, simply because he's there ... and it's notable that the reptiles favoured him with an opening snap ...

Mein Gott the pond has endured a lot in its herpetology studies, but this is pushing the limits, but please, spare a thought for those left out in the cold ... shareholders for Coles and Woollies.

Think the pond is kidding?

Once again the pond was tempted to look elsewhere for news of the day ...

Sheesh, the pond is still in the lock-up with Mein Gott, but up against a five year stretch, it doesn't seem so bad ...

What's funny about Mein Gott ranting about the government and unions and the budget? 

As promised, in the last gobbet he turns socialist and demands action ... not government action, but corporate action, the kind that sees Scrooge, haunted by the ghosts of Xmas past, tamed and exuding charitable love ...

Relax, that note is just the reptiles playing funny buggers, that version is the web version, it just suggests it's not the web version, so you go searching for the web version ...

Just enjoy the way that Mein Gott ended a cry of pity for the shareholders in the big chains, and the suggestion that perhaps they might do the socialist thing themselves and spread the joy among suppliers and customers and shareholders, and perhaps to Xians and atheists and ... 

...and if you can swallow that one, the pond has a copy of Das Kapital to sell you for a squillion ...

Oh sheath the feral claw of money-grubbing and spread the charitable joy ... in Mein Gott's view that's all that's needed ...

And so the immortal Rowe of the day ... featuring news banished from the lizard Oz ...

And speaking of banishing, the pond saw another cartoon, which required a little lead-in ...

Clarence has of late been providing great fun ...

Such as Dean Obeidallah's Clarence Thomas has had enough of ‘hideous’ DC. The open road is calling the justice ... reviving an old joke, a running gag ...

...here’s the great news for the beleaguered Thomas. This past Monday, Oliver appeared on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” where he re-upped his offer. As Oliver stated directly to Thomas, in case the justice was watching, “If you want to get in touch and open up the negotiations again, I still have the contract in the drawer in my desk, and I’d be willing to do that.”

And Oliver said he was not kidding. It even has legal experts talking about whether Oliver can make such an offer. “Honestly, I’d open it up again,” Oliver said, adding, “As long as he gets out before they’re doing the June decisions. I would be willing to open discussions again.”

This couldn’t have come at a better time for Thomas. On Friday, Thomas even said he liked to visit other places where people “don’t pride themselves in doing harmful things merely because they have the capacity to do it.” Well, what better way to visit these other places than in the brand new $2 million-plus RV with $1 million in your pocket?!

As Oliver stated on his show in February summing up his offer to Thomas: “A million dollars a year and a brand new condo on wheels, and all you have to do in return is sign the contract and get the f–k off the Supreme Court.” For the good of Thomas’ psyche — and for the good of America — let’s hope he takes it.

What an inspiration to the five years in the clink tribe for daring to mention war crimes ...

And again ...

Matt Ford's Clarence Thomas Hates the “Hideous Place” That Made Him Rich....

...The Atlantic’s Emma Green noted in 2019 that this vast network of clerks may be one of Thomas’s most lasting legacies: At that point, roughly one-fifth of all people who had ever clerked for him had served in the Trump administration or been nominated to a federal judgeship. It is telling that when Ginni Thomas’s involvement in January 6 first became public, she apologized not to the American people but to the close-knit fraternity of former Thomas clerks for having “likely imposed on you my lifetime passions.”

Ginni reportedly had used the clerks’ email listserv to share her pro-Trump views during and after the election, angering some of them. “My passions and beliefs are likely shared with the bulk of you, but certainly not all,” she wrote. “And sometimes the smallest matters can divide loved ones for too long. Let’s pledge to not let politics divide THIS family, and learn to speak more gently and knowingly across the divide.”

The Thomases do not eschew public life; they relish it. Thomas is not a reluctant participant in D.C. politics; he enjoys being the hub around which it revolves. Thomas’s votes in cases on voting rights, partisan gerrymandering, campaign finance laws, and anti-corruption cases have helped make American politics meaner, crueler, and more partisan over the past three decades. And along the way, his billionaire patrons have allowed him to enjoy a lifestyle far beyond what he could otherwise afford on a justice’s salary. This is not as heartwarming or inspiring as the mythology that Thomas prefers—and that is exactly why he prefers it.

And so to a closing, celebratory cartoon, one of many items not mentioned in the lizard Oz ...

In which the pond misses a groaning and has to call on Mein Gott, and mein gott, there's also the bromancer...

 

Devastated yet again. 

The pond had steeled itself for a serve of Dame Groan, groaning away about the budget and how we'll all be rooned, but early in the morning there was no sign of the groaning ... and it was left to others to explain how we'd all be rooned ...

There was also no sign of the trial of the century or Michael Cohen. The Graudian might be doing it live, but the reptiles prefer to stay deep in the catacombs, or if you will, the hive mind...

There was Tom proudly occupying the far right space and the AJN dominating the centre space - never mind the genocide - but one item did intrigue, as the pond slipped down the page ...

The pond read it and decided that yet again the reptiles had missed the best of the yarn ... if you read the Graudian version, there was a great pay off ...

In August 2023 the ACT chief minister, Andrew Barr, accused Sofronoff of breaching “good faith” obligations after the former Queensland judge leaked his own report to an ABC journalist and The Australian newspaper columnist, Janet Albrechtsen. The report was given under an agreement the outlets would not publish until Barr officially released it.
The Australian published a story about Sofronoff’s findings ahead of its public release but denied breaching any embargo. It said it would “not reveal” its sources.
The integrity commission specified its investigation would look at whether Sofronoff’s decision to prematurely hand the final report to two journalists was a breach of the requirements of the Inquiries Act 1991 and if it constituted corrupt conduct under the Integrity Commission Act 2018...
...At the time, Barr said Sofronoff had explained he believed it was “possible to identify journalists who are ethical” and that he judged neither of the pair would “take the serious step of betraying his trust by behaving unprofessionally”.

Dame Slap? The lizard Oz? Ethical journalism? 

The pond doesn't need any inquiry to realise that Sofronoff is either a knave or a fool, or perhaps both ...

While doing housekeeping the pond should apologise for not noting Penni Russon's piece in The Conversation, Gender Queer was the last book an Australian council tried to ban. It’s still being appealed in federal court.

It would have been relevant yesterday, but the magic reptile land above the faraway tree has moved on.

Outside reptile la la land, the pond is slow in its reading and slow to catch up, but it really must record Amanda Yen recording Miss Lindsey explaining why Benji's mob should nuke Gaza, just to get the job done... (possible Beast paywall).

“So when we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima, Nagasaki, with nuclear weapons,” Graham began.
The senator continued to call the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “the right decision” by the U.S. That decision ended the war with Japan, but killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians between the initial blasts and the deadly radiation that followed.
“Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose, and work with them to minimize casualties,” Graham insisted.
It was unclear how he believed the U.S. and Israel could work to “minimize casualties,” since bombs tend not to discriminate between civilians and militants upon detonation.
Graham’s comments were so extreme that even Welker was taken aback, unsuccessfully attempting to interject as the senator talked over her.
“Can I say this?” Graham continued. “Why is it okay for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why is it okay for us to do that? I thought it was okay.”
Of course, the presumption that the U.S. was justified in nuking Japan to end World War II has been contested by historians and other critics for decades. Those bombs also decimated nearly all of Hiroshima’s and Nagasaki’s medical infrastructures, making it nearly impossible to deliver aid to the injured and dying, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Graham’s comments came as Israel appears poised to launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah, which the U.N. and the Biden administration have warned would be catastrophic for the 1.4 million people sheltering there. On Sunday, as Graham went on national television to suggest incinerating Gaza, the U.N. secretary general pleaded once more to prevent the area from spiraling into all-out devastation.

You won't read that sort of marvellous logic in the lizard Oz ... and instead there was a disappointing mob clustered below the fold ...

Deprived of a damned good Groaning, the pond knew what must be done. 

The pond simply had to make a gesture towards budget day, and ancient Troy and the bouffant one and the lizard Oz editorialist wouldn't cut it ...

Nor would nattering "Ned", as the pond breathed a silent prayer of relief that he'd been turned into a podcast ...

No need to go there, but it left the pond with a dilemma. If the portentous pompous bore had been reduced to a podcast, Dame Groan was likely to be venting her spleen on the morrow, what on earth to do?

So the pond does what it always does in a crisis ... reached for a serve of Mein Gott hysteria. Sure, it was a day old, and a little stale, but you need someone to cry out for the rich, and a dot form bulletin is almost as good as a listicle or a PowerPoint presentation ...

Indeed, indeed, the pond is furious that its super balance is only three squillion, and so was vastly relieved that Mein Gott was on hand to take up the cause ...

Say what? He's just regurgitating his readers, and they're furious at Jimbo, and does flinging together a column get any easier.

There was even a shot of the mark of the beast to serve as a punctuation mark in the dot point ramblings ...

Well it'll have to do as a reason for a break, and it's a good excuse to slip in the infallible Pope of the day ...

Then it was on with a final gobbet of Mein Gott reader rage ...

Mein Gott,  what a humdinger ending. Never mind the slackness of Mein Gott doing dot points, mourn at the suffering of a hundred mill in super ...

Oh the injustice and the indignity of it all, the inhuman suffering ... and Mein Gott, what an excuse to slip in the Rowe of the day, still haunted by dragons ...

And that concludes the pond's budget coverage, but there should be a bonus, and who better, what better, than the bromancer celebrating SloMo?

It's passing strange that the launch wasn't done at Hillsong, but never mind, this is a gripping read about a gripping read ...

The pond should note that to introduce some gravitas as well as thugby league into the proceedings, the reptiles slipped in  a clip, and a snap of Alfred Deakin, and bizarrely former Chairman Rudd with the axis of weevils man ...

Sing along ... it's an old ditty, but a good one ...bomb, bomb, bomb Iraq ... and eventually they'll blame the gays.

Of course the snap of Deakin would have come dirt cheap, as would that snap of Chairman Rudd bonding with the axis of weevils man ...

Meanwhile, the bromancer was besotted, and having a whale of a time ....

The pond was almost tempted to believe there was a god, even if She has been long absent, because the pond missed the whole affair, thanks be unto Her, though it did have a great laugh thanks to the bromancer's comedy stylings ... "Nonetheless, in the attempt, its achievement is remarkable."

Could there be a better, more succinct explanation of why the tome is a total waste of space?

Not content with that remarkable summary, which in its attempt to convey the flavour of the book, is a remarkable achievement, or at least a remarkable attempt at an achievement, the bromancer carried on regardless ...

Yep, the pond isn't sure it would even bother to pick it up for free at the local street library, where it's sure to land, when some Xian loon from the deep west drops it off as a way of converting Newtonians to the faith ...

As for that entire par dressed up as a link, something always truly, deeply weird happens when the pond clicks on a reptile link.

Instead of some information about Deakin, this is what popped up ... evidence of the liar from the Shire in top form ...

It carried on, with the liar from the Shire protesting that he wasn't a liar, but wait, there's more ... and if you like, you can get a Robodebt serve along with with the pieties ... the bullshit and the knavish lying come easy and cheap ...

That's the Xian thingie in a nutshell ... 

The royal commission report found Mr Morrison allowed cabinet to be misled, provided untrue evidence and pressured departmental officials over the scheme.

Meanwhile, on with the spiritual insights of a notorious liar ...

The pond regrets that in all this a family were dragged into the affair ... and so downsized the snap to minimise the pain ...

What joy for an atheist that there's no bothersome business of having to forgive ... not even the humbug way that the bromancer drags in others to spruce up a notorious liar and egotistical, narcissist humbug, dancing with imaginary friends ...

At the very least the pond could repress the nausea by ending with a helpful Wilcox green guide ...

Oh dear ... more nausea ...

In which the pond notes some matters, before taking up with the Caterist, another craven Craven, and the bro ...

 

Not on the pond's watch, Mr Coleman, not on the pond's watch.

Yes, the pond is going to start the week off on a querulous, awkward note because Josh Taylor produced this yarn in the Graudian, Price, speed and Elon Musk: why some Australians are ditching the NBN. In part ...

....Despite the NBN being only a few years past completion, between the end of June 2022 and the end of April 2024 the number of customers in the most common category of services declined by more than 65,000.
This category, also known as brownfields, covers 7.1m active NBN broadband services to homes and businesses that existed before the NBN was built and is a mix of fibre-to-the-premises-type connections as well as connections made under the Coalition’s revised plan that used existing copper and cable connections (which predated the NBN and was used mostly for pay TV).
The Coalition’s communications spokesman, David Coleman, said this month the decline was a “troubling sign” for the company and the government had questions to answer. But others blame the Coalition itself.
In February, the company’s outgoing chief executive, Stephen Rue, told Guardian Australia those shifting away from the NBN were largely customers on fibre-to-the-node – the Abbott-Turnbull-era technology that uses legacy copper phone lines, where speed and quality decreases the further away your home is from the node.“The main reason for that is service and a desire for faster speed … customers who are at the end of the FttN line ... they get 25 megabits per second, but they can’t experience a faster speed and obviously there are some copper lines that have unreliability,” he said.
NBN has embarked on a massive full-fibre upgrade to premises in the fibre-to-the-node “footprint” – effectively rebuilding most of the network to the type planned by the former Rudd Labor government in 2009 before changes made under the Coalition after 2013.
The company has projected that 5m premises will be upgraded by the end of 2025. Over 200,000 premises have already been upgraded in these parts of the network to improve speeds and to keep customers on board, but the effort has not yet halted the decline in customers.
Associate Prof Mark Gregory, of RMIT’s school of engineering, said the “copper debacle” was the cause of the company’s woes but more attention needed to be paid into what the company is offering to keep customers and how.
Cost seemed to be a major factor moving customers away, he said. “The current NBN charges are too high and this means that customers are looking for alternatives.”
Aiding customers hunting to reduce their internet bill are cut-price 5G home internet plans, which some retailers market at a lower cost to their own NBN plans. They are able to do this due to the lower cost in supplying internet over mobile, compared with the wholesale prices NBN charges.
This is reflected in recent financial statements from the two biggest retailers, Telstra and TPG. Both companies admit a customer decline in fixed-line services; TPG reported losing 109,000 NBN customers in its last financial results, while Telstra reported losing 58,000 in the first half of the 2023-2024 financial year...

Troubling, Mr Coleman, you're troubled, it's a troubling sign? 

Shouldn't you be saying Mission Accomplished ...

Yes, Mr Coleman, your mob, most notably Malware, but let's not forget the role News Corp and its minions played in it, demolished the NBN. 

There were plenty of warnings at the time how fibre could only stay competitive if it went directly to the home, and that there would be plenty of competition in due course, though few anticipated the extent that vulgar youth would seek to die by motor vehicle with head down, watching a 70mm movie on a postage stamp while crossing the road ... a disease which has now spread to the elderly, even the pond. 

As for Uncle Elon, solar flares and all, he's risen because the original plan abandoned the bush, and in some locales the only way to get any sort of connection is by satellite and the NBN satellite service is beyond risible...

So here we are Mr Coleman, here we are, take credit, be proud, mission accomplished, and within the lifetime of the pond ... but damned if the pond will forget those ancient wars, and those responsible for them, and the half-baked, multi monster that erupted from them, Malware in deed, thought and name ...

Meanwhile, the pond would like to hand out its newly created "woke" reptile of the week award ...

Splendid stuff, Natasha, woke in both the headline and then used as the very first word. 

You have won the pond's inaugural reptile "woke" of the week award ... wear it with pride ...

Pease don't take it personally Natasha, the fact that you're a fuckhead is a badge of honour in reptile la la land ...

Speaking of how Murdochians soil just about everything, the pond can't spend any time on it but Clive Irving in the Beast wrote a story about how WaPo publisher and CEO Will Lewis found himself contaminated ...(possible paywall).

The nub of it?

“Mr Lewis gave approval for the deletion of all emails from 2007 on 3 February 2011 (one week after the start of Operation Weeting) which deletions were completed on 8 February 2011, the day before NI [News International] met the MPs to discuss what data was available, and the Claimants contend that this was a deliberate plan by Mr Lewis… to prevent the MPs from obtaining evidence of phone-hacking, other unlawful activity and the cover-up that took place in 2007. The Claimants rely on the fact that Mr Lewis withheld from the police the fact that millions of emails had been deleted since 14 January 2011, for 6 months.”

The level of sordidness?

According to the claims statement, some emails were not deleted and were transferred to a laptop that became known as “the extraction laptop” where they were subject to further selective deletion. The document claims: “Later, in July 2011, the hard drive was found, together with another laptop, during a search by the MPs in a floor safe hidden under a vanity unit in the annexe to Rebekah Brooks’s office.”

These claims will not be tested in open court if the remaining litigants settle with NGN. The NGN lawyers have witness statements already made by the Murdoch executives cited, including Lewis, at a time when it seemed some of the cases would go to trial. Darren Elemes has also made a witness statement for the claimants.

A source with deep knowledge of the cases told me: “The claim documents are not the actual documents underlying the allegations. The real danger for NGN comes when there’s a trial because then the media can see it, the police can see it, the victims can see it.

“That’s the evidence. People will have given evidence on oath. And then the judge could say, as he did in the cases involving the Daily Mirror, I find the News Group witnesses were lying.”

Would criminal prosecutions follow?

A vanity unit? Oh the vanity ...

The sadness of it?

The latest claims reflect the fact that more than 200 journalists, executives, and private investigators have been deposed, filling in many of the gaps—but far from all of them—in the search for truth.

Hacking was a brainworm that poisoned British journalism over a long period. It was incubated in a Murdoch newsroom where it quickly became contagious. It spread widely, corrupting editors who saw in it an irresistible source of scoops that violated the privacy of many hundreds of people, high and low. And it is part of the malignant legacy of Rupert Murdoch and a tabloid newsroom culture that he uniquely created and oversaw.

It's a bit like the associates of orange Jesus ... everything and everybody that comes into contact with News Corp is soiled, contaminated, laid low ... a malignant legacy that endures ...

And speaking of contamination, it's time for the pond to soil itself ...

What, no Major Mitchell at the top far right of the digital edition, just the usual bromancer bromide?

Down below the fold the Major was still MIA ...

Ah, the Caterist ... as usual, News Corp isn't content fucking the NBN, and ruining the lives of those who did dirty deeds cheap for the Chairman Emeritus, they also want to fuck the planet ...

There's a profound irony here, not least the way that the Caterist's lobby group has received hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer dollars over the years, while the IPA has received oodles from Gina, and from others who have stayed under wraps...

But the reptiles insisted on demonising dastardly solar panels yet again, and certain rich folk swimming against the Gina and Caterist tide ...

The pond wanted to get those images out of the way, because all that left was the usual threadbare floodwaters in quarries whispering Caterist and his malicious mendacity ...

Why is the pond always reminded of that Moving Pictures' song, what about me, it isn't fair, the Caterist never gets enough, now he wants his share, can't you see, he just wants to fuck the planet, but these billionaires give to others more than they give to him ...

Enough already, you get the gist,  the whining and carping and the endless carrying on ...

So it's soft headed to care about the koala bears? Can anyone bear it? 

The pond is too tired to go through the usual counter-programming, like that story in The Graudian, 'The stakes could not be higher': world is on edge of climate abyss, UN warns ... or that story Brutal heatwaves and submerged cities: what a 3C world would look like, or tales of recent flash floods ...

Afghanistan – which had a relatively dry winter, making it more difficult for the soil to absorb rainfall – is highly vulnerable to climate change.

The nation, ravaged by four decades of war, is one of the world’s poorest and, according to scientists, one of the worst prepared to face the consequences of global warming.

The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said on Twitter/X that the floods were “a stark reminder of Afghanistan’s vulnerability to the climate crisis”.

“Both immediate aid and long term planning by the Taliban and international actors are needed.”

Planning? Forget it Jake, denialism is still the go in Caterist la la land. He's planning a planetary NBN...

The pond isn't going to bother listing the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Australian taxpayers have forked over to support the Caterist and his ilk at the Menzies Research Centre. 

All it will note is that for some reason the reptiles decided to leave out the tag revealing that he's still fellow travelling with the lobby group, and they're still after your money ...

Make a difference? Is that another way of saying fuck the planet? The pond wouldn't piss on the MRC if it was on fire ...

Yeah, yeah, break the taboo and all that, denialism dressed in drag, and the pond recommends Nuclear power makes no sense for Australia - but it's a useful diversion from real climate action ...

And so to a useless diversion, yet another craven Craven, not far fallen from the craven tree ...

The pond only offers this as a diversion, the long absent lord help us, because the bold and brave one turned out to be comically craven, as craven Cravens are wont to be.

First the pond must get the craven snaps out of the way ... all guaranteed cheap and designed not to cost what was once a graphics department more than a ha'penny ...

Now on with the comedy ... and the cravenness ...

You see? The craven Craven, or the reptiles, didn't have the courage of their convictions. They could be so bold as to mention "negre" because it's foreign and French and sounds arty, and never mind NPR We Don't SayThat ...

But they baulked at the "n" word. Now the pond can't write it, because google would ban the page, but what's stopping the craven Craven and the reptiles? They're allegedly their own masters, free libertarian spirits who would stop at nothing in their quest for freedumb. Except they didn't ... they deployed the dash, as if to disguise a good old-fashioned deployment of the humble asterisk ...

As for wearing evil homosexuality, there was a comical story the craven Craven might have mentioned, but of course he's too craven ...

It was left to others with an interest in the topic to take it up ...

Freedumb? Only freedumb for some, not freedumb for others ...

Sorry, the pond will leave the curious case of Christou to the link, because there's another classic bit of craven Craven looming ...

Oh it's bold and brave stuff, re-litigating the 1930s, and Lady Jane and all that jazz, but once again the reptiles baulk at the 'n' bit ...

What are we to do with a Craven so craven he can't even spell out the country joke, which last the pond checked still appeared in Shakspere, which is more than you can say for the "n" word in a reptile piece comically fulminating about censorship ...

And so to end with the bromancer simply because he's there and Major Mitchell seems to have gone MIA, at least when the pond was paying attention...

As usual with the bro, there was a lot of padding and distractions ... and for some inexplicable reason the bro is still haunted by the onion muncher ...

By golly, not that you can tell, but the OM is looking his age, and a bit like a boiled lobster at that ,,,

In passing please also note the usual cunning contrivance by what's left of the graphics department, the way that the Wong is downcast, while Captain Spud is allowed to pretend he's human.

Meanwhile, on another planet ...

The pond couldn't help but note that illustration in the Graudian ...

Of course there's more work to be done to render Gaza completely uninhabitable and open it up to real estate opportunities, but relax, the current Israeli government had good teachers in the matter of genocides and how to eradicate troublesome ghettoes, and just as in the old days, there was a Henry Ford to urge on the killing, so now we have the Murdochians and the bromancer ...

Meanwhile, as the cynical bromancer reduces it to the most tawdry form of domestic politics, on another planet ...

Hamas doing its black knight routine and Benji's mob doing their Dalek routine, and the long absent lord help the million plus civilians in the middle of it all, and all the bromancer can do is turn the carnage into cheap point scoring ...

Meanwhile, on another planet ...

Yes, the pond had to go the 'toon for fear that its profound contempt for the bromancer might be too much to bear ...

Meanwhile, on another planet ...

And with the help of the 'toonists the pond made it to the final bro gobbet, a more than usually contemptible offering from a thoroughly contemptible man ...

Once again no mention of the way that a fundamentalist Jewish assassin did his work, once again the distortions and lies, but then the pond noted how the entire mission of News Corp is to soil and to wreck, and Gaza is just a wrecked and ruined footnote in the wrecking of the planet ...

But at least there are laughs to be had, and it would be remiss not to note Kudelka in The Saturday Paper as a way to close out the day's offering ...