Presenting the Bromancer and the Ughmann...(patent for title pending, way better than Thunderbolt and Lightfoot) ...

 

Sad.

Russian society being ‘systematically crushed’ says Novaya Gazeta as newspaper announces closure

The pond urgently needed an uplift, and not from the usual sources, agreeably, richly comical though they were ...

Liberal senator admits mistake after grilling ABC execs about Gaza journalist’s ‘Hamas’ ID
Amanda Meade

The pond realises that timelines means this is already an old, much featured and loved meme, given an outing on Kimmel and endlessly on the likes of MS NOW, but dammit, if only one correspondent missed it, then repeating it will be worthwhile, especially as it involves Faux Noise...

“You mentioned the rally getting started here in Rock Hill,” Fox correspondent Lucas Tomlinson said during The Faulkner Focus. “We’ve got Tom right here, kind enough to answer a few questions. Tom, why are you here this morning?”
“Well, in the late ‘70s, I was a little too young to get involved and, um, go to South America for the Jonestown Massacre, but this is as close as I’ll ever get, so that’s why I’m here,” the man replied.
Tomlinson was caught off guard by the man’s candid response referring to the mass murder-suicide orchestrated by Jim Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project cult, in 1978.
“Wait, the Jonestown Massacre?” the reporter asked.
“That’s right,” Tom confirmed. “There’s nothing like seeing a cult right up front, man.”
Tomlinson, visibly embarrassed, immediately scrambled to find another MAGA supporter to save the segment.
“Alright, so maybe—maybe this is not a Trump supporter right now,” he said, patting Tom on the shoulder and walking away. “See, there are some, uh, pro—anti-Trump here people now.” (Fox News Duped by Anti-MAGA Troll at Trump Rally)

As a coda?

Fox News Host Appears Embarrassed by Trump Rally Attendee Who Says He's There to ‘See a Cult

One critic, riffing on the comparison to the Trump rally and the infamous Brian Jonestown Massacre, said,"The only difference between Jim Jones and Donald Trump is that Trump would charge his followers money to drink the poison."

And what better way to introduce the bromancer, regular sipper of kool aid, for this weekend's domestic hive mind entertainment?

The header: Greg Sheridan Foreign Editor
The US midterms herald ugly rise of far-left Democrats

The cry to listen to the bot: Listen to this article
9 min

Fulfilling a minimum reptile demand for any reptile column - a snap that makes a politician look as much like a noisy, shouty harridan as possible: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at a campaign rally. Picture: Getty Images

The plea for attention to be paid by the mighty G: Make us preferred on Google

Deep down the bromancer is more than MAGA curious, he's MAGA friendly, so, whatever the outcome of the pending midterm elections, how pleasing it is to see him writhing on his own spit of bile and bigotry ...

These tumultuous, gripping US midterm elections will decide much more than just which party – Republican or Democrat – controls the Senate and House of Representatives for what will be an action-packed last two years of Donald Trump.
They will profoundly influence the political evolution, even the identity, of each party. The Democrats, benefiting from Trump’s epic unpopularity, could see a big chunk of their party enact a dismal red-green alliance – Islamic-themed activism focused on Palestine and antisemitism in partnership with ideological leftists. This combination is poisoning Europe and has its nasty counterpart in Australia.
Meanwhile, the Republicans, heading for defeat in the house and trouble in the Senate, are making feeble progress at best towards a viable post-Trump program.

The bromancer tried to carve out his own angle, his own truly unique approach, but truth to tell, it was just a way of serving up his reliable brand of patented fear mongering ...

This column will be one of few on the midterms not focused on which party wins but, rather, who wins within each party.
As election results emerge on Wednesday Australian time, focus on four key Senate races: Michigan, Maine, Texas and Kansas.

One of the few? 

How he treasures his delusions.

First came the demonising of the Islamic, following on the ugly tradition of racism in the GOP:

In Michigan the Democrats chose Abdul El-Sayed as their Senate candidate. He’s a doctor and former health official. He’s also as near to an outright antisemite as modern, mainstream elective politics in the US has produced. He reacted to a terrorist attack on a Jewish synagogue in Michigan initially by saying: “Hurt people hurt people … violence is a cycle.” He declares Israel as evil as Iran. He wants to end the US’s small aid funding to Israel (which goes entirely on Israel buying US military equipment). In his own rhetoric he has ludicrously implied the US can’t afford necessary social spending because it’s spending too much money on Israel. He’s also suggested US foreign policy is controlled by Israel.

But, billy goat Zionist butt, that last line just happens to be true, what with mad king Donald falling into line with Benji, and bermb, bermb, bermbing Iran, as instructed, and now to enhance the fear ...Michigan Democrat senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed speaks at a midterm campaign rally. Picture: AFP

Inspired by that snap, the bromancer ran hard on the fear ...

Recently a political committee supporting his candidacy, controlled by friends of his, has run a TV ad in which a wife tells her husband: “You’re going to have to put those eggs back. We have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.” The husband in the ad comments that Israelis get universal healthcare, don’t they, “we probably pay for that as well”. This is pure conspiracy-laden, Jews are to blame for everything, nutty and deranged classical antisemitism.
El-Sayed’s campaign says it has nothing to do with the ad yet won’t denounce or criticise it. El-Sayed routinely issues instant, extravagant, almost endless moral judgment about everything else. But he won’t stand up against even the most outrageous, dishonest and blatantly antisemitic advertisement in modern mainstream politics, supporting his candidacy.
El-Sayed campaigns in the Senate race mainly on universal healthcare and cost of living, but frequently intrudes Israel. He strikes a macho pose, does a lot of sub-Pete Hegseth fitness posing and knows how to get noticed on TikTok and social media.
Three important things about his Jewish/Israeli obsessions: they have been part of his entire political life, they were important in his Democratic primary victory, and they will define his foreign policy approach if he gets to the Senate.
He’s always been on the far left and for years held Barack Obama’s presidency in contempt from a left standpoint.
This latest offensive ad has been denounced by numerous senior Michigan Democrats. But Obama campaigns enthusiastically for El-Sayed, as do Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other senior Democrat leftists. None of the candidate’s extreme and prejudiced positions and past actions have ruled him out of mainstream politics, as, say, support for the Ku Klux Klan would automatically and rightly rule out a Republican candidate. That’s bad news for Democrats, and for America.
The Michigan Senate seat was held by a Democrat who is retiring. The Republican candidate, Mike Rogers, is a perfectly respectable former congressman and former FBI agent. If El-Sayed wins a big battleground state such as Michigan, it will convince Democrats they can win the presidency in 2028 with a far-left politician like Ocasio-Cortez.

Perfectly respectable?

Mike Rogers spent years voting against priorities now championed by MAHA

Michigan paper declares it won't seek comment from Mike Rogers due to 'lies and bigoted attacks' on El-Sayed

Eek, not the appalling Cheesecake Factory man: Barack Obama speaks at a rally in support of Abdul El-Sayed in Detroit, Michigan. Picture: Getty Images

Time for more lies, distortions and warped realities ...

For an almost exact reverse of all that, look at the Senate race in Maine. This is a state that normally votes Democrat. But it has a long-term incumbent Republican senator in Susan Collins. She’s stubbornly independent and decides issues as she sees the merits of each case. She is one of very few Republicans to maintain her independence from Trump. 

Susan Collins stubbornly independent? 

Must the bromancer force the pond to hie off to the both siderist NY Times?

In the Senate, Collins Often Defies Trump but Rarely Stops Him (*intermittent archive link)
A New York Times analysis of Senator Susan Collins’s voting record shows that she frequently breaks with Republicans but more seldom changes an outcome. 

A New York Times analysis of Ms. Collins’s voting record over the last decade paints a more complicated picture. It shows that she breaks with her party more than any other Republican senator. It also reveals that her defections — which frequently helped Democrats block parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda during his first two years in office — have rarely thwarted the president during his second term.

Read the whole thing. It's more informative than the soothing bromancer nonsense doing his best to help out Collins:

She has managed at times to moderate Trump policies, a rare and precious skill in his increasingly undisciplined second term.
Her Democrat challenger, Troy Jackson, is from the left. He has all the left obsessions on Israel, wants to abolish immigration enforcement and favours wildly unrealistic government spending. If Collins survives in Maine, it’s a great fillip for common sense and reality in US politics.

As for Talarico, the only question is whether the bromancer would toe the vegan line, and spew on about his devotion to meat, aaah, but he discovered easier paths to tread ... "a little bit left" and "weird" is more than enough to damn that pasty-faced wimpy Texan in the minds of lizard Oz readers:

A different equation applies in the Texas Senate race. Trump campaigned against a sitting Republican senator, John Cornyn, and helped Ken Paxton unseat Cornyn in the Republican primary. Paxton is the Republican candidate from hell. To describe all the scandals he has been involved in would take up all the words in this column. Trump didn’t care about that. He just wanted a toadying loyalist.
The Democrats chose a smart candidate, James Talarico. He’s a little bit left, and has in the past said some weird things on gender issues. But he’s also a teacher studying to become a Presbyterian pastor. His version of Christianity allows him to support abortion up until birth and other progressive social positions.
But Republicans have made such obvious political use of Christianity, with even Trump himself claiming to follow Christian policies while dishonouring the Christian ethic every day, that they certainly have no serious grounds to question any Democrat’s Christian faith.
Texas is the second-most populous state in the US. With Florida, it’s the heart of Republican politics, as important to Republicans as California is to Democrats. If Paxton loses to Talarico it will demonstrate yet again that in picking sycophants Trump imposes the very worst candidates on the Republican Party. The road to post-Trump Republican recovery will run away from Trump. When Trump leaves the White House, his backing will surely count much less in primaries.

Eek, another shocking sight: Bernie Sanders speaks in support of Wisconsin Democratic Congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin. Picture: Getty Images

The bromancer's deep Xian streak continued ...

Talarico can speak in a plausible conservative dialect. That’s clever politics, the opposite vibe to the red-green alliance in Michigan. Talarico is also a member of an important, growing class, Democrat pastors. The most fascinating of these is Adam Hamilton, the Democrat Senate candidate in Kansas. You could hardly imagine a more solidly Republican state than Kansas. But the incumbent Republican senator, Roger Marshall, is very unsympathetic. He seems to spend much of his time in Florida. He was formerly a medical practitioner famous for suing patients who couldn’t pay their bills, charging them 18 per cent interest and getting them arrested.
He never expected to face a competitive contest. His Democrat challenger, Hamilton, is a Methodist megachurch pastor. He’s on the liberal side of Christianity but there’s no serious dispute about his religious convictions. If Democrats find that Christianity is a winning political credential for them, that would be good for American politics. It would surely at least keep them away from antisemitism. For Republicans, if they can’t hold Texas and Kansas, they’re in a world of pain.

How weird and offensive does this line get?

GOP’s Moreno targets El-Sayed with a religious test that even many Republicans can’t pass
Steve Benen

The closer we get to Election Day, the more hysterical Republican rhetoric has become when targeting Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee in Michigan. Donald Trump, predictably, has helped lead the slanderous charge, condemning the candidate as a "jihadist" who "should not be allowed to serve in our Senate."
As is too often the case, the rest of the party has followed the president's lead and headed for the gutter. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said El-Sayed "sleeps in a bin Laden jersey." Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaigned in Michigan this week and thought it would be good idea to trash the scientific and literary accomplishments of a half-billion Arab Muslims. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas this week explicitly said that "there is a very real risk that Americans will die" if El-Sayed is elected and serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
But it was something Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio said during a Wednesday night rally that stood out as unusual.
Making the case to Buckeye State voters who can't cast ballots in Michigan's Senate race, the GOP senator suggested that El-Sayed should be disqualified from serving in the chamber because he does not accept divinity of Jesus Christ.
"This character, Abdul El-Sayed, can be nowhere near Washington, D.C.," Moreno said. "Do you think he understands that concept, that our rights come from God Almighty? That Jesus came here for our salvation? He should be nowhere near Washington, D.C., and [Republican candidate] Mike Rogers is going to kick his ass on Tuesday."
So, a few things.
First, whether Moreno understood this or not, he was speaking at a rally that was intended to generate support for the GOP ticket in Ohio — a ticket led in part by Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republicans' gubernatorial candidate, who is Hindu.
Second, when Moreno was sworn in as a senator, he swore to support and defend the Constitution, which includes Article VI, clause 3 — a provision that says "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
And third, as Moreno really ought to know, roughly 1 in 3 Americans are not Christians, and the idea that they should be disqualified from congressional service because of their beliefs is plainly insane. Indeed, let's not forget that there are Jewish Republicans in Congress and the White House Cabinet who would disagree with the senator's belief that that "Jesus came here for our salvation."

All that and more, but always, the bromancer remained tone deaf and clueless, as in closing he attempted his own form of pitiful and pathetic bothsiderism:

It goes without saying that Trump and other Republicans make personal attacks on their opponents as dishonourable as those of the left Democrats. Bad behaviour flourishes on both sides. But while the worst of MAGA seems to be unravelling (with some of its good bits remaining), and Republicans must find a new synthesis of traditional values and contemporary policies, the Democrat far left is accelerating.
American politics, and the whole world, need decent Republicans and decent Democrats, which, policy differences notwithstanding, we mostly had until the past 10 or 15 years. The battle within each party is as important as the battle between the parties. I’d rather see a Marco Rubio v Gretchen Whitmer (successful Democrat governor of Michigan) presidential contest in 2028, than an Ocasio-Cortez v Tucker Carlson match-up. Just kidding about Carlson being a possibility, of course, but you get my drift.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

Marco Rubio, that lickspittle quisling, spineless, cynical fellow traveller who sold his soul to Trump long ago is the hill on which the bromancer wants to die?

Principles jettisoned, is former Trump foe Marco Rubio playing the long game?

Now what sayeth the hive mind? For once there seemed to be a little confusion ...

Scary stuff ...

What else? Well the reptiles were all in on Jess early this weekend ...

The pond heaved a sigh of relief. 

No need to go all the way with Galloway and Jess ...

Jess Wilson vows to take fight to Anthony Albanese, saying Victoria has been ‘embarrassing’ at national cabinet
By Anthony Galloway Victorian political editor

The pond could catch up on this parochial pothole-driven jihad when it mattered ...

State of play: can Jess Wilson restore Victoria’s political clout?
Consumed by spiralling debt and Covid’s aftermath, Australia’s second-largest state has turned inward.
By Anthony Galloway

What else? Well the reptiles have cannily taken to holding back their big guns - the Ughmanns, the dog botherers, even "Ned" - until later in the weekend.

That just left the likes of snappy Tom following up on a bog standard jihad ...

Labor loses public trust as economic growth takes a hit
A $6m golf club grant exposes ‘grey corruption’ – and Anthony Albanese’s admission could cost Labor far more than votes.
By Tom Dusevic
Columnist

And the Angelic one getting agitated about breeding issues, in the way of fundie tykes ...

The childcare subsidy is an economic money pit
Why is it normal that some babies and children spend more of their day in these places than with their parents?
By Angela Shanahan
Columnist

Go trad stay at home wife!

The pond did its duty - the pair are there in the intermittent archive for masochists interested in a read - but decided to cheat, because how could they possibly compete with the Ughmann, sneaking in to deliver his standard climate denialist sermon?

The Ughmann bobbed up just in time...

Splendid stuff. It's all the way with stuffing the planet. 

Can Vlad the newspaper-suppressing, Ukraine invading, sociopath help out? Sure can ...

Yes, yes, let's all muck in, let's dirty the planet bigly. What could possibly go wrong?

Oh it's all great fun. What's that? More alarmist nonsense?

Fiddlesticks. As if the Ughmann cared for any of that nonsense ...

Now let's hear it for the cockroaches, because all Minnsy were the borogroves ...

Thank heavens for that snap of satanic coal mills looking good, but here the pond came to a dilemma.

The pond wanted to honour the way that the reptiles managed to drag in a bog standard snap of windmills looking truly evil and threatening ...

... but at the same time the pond wanted to honour the dog botherer's role in spreading more FUD about EVs ...because, you know, who better to talk about it than the flood waters in quarries whispering Caterist ...because, you know, who could have heard about using solar power to charge your EV for free?

Having nuked the country to save the planet - as if the planet needed any saving - it was time for a last gobbet for the unreformed former failed seminarian ...

The pond might have missed out on the recent lizard Oz BoM jihad, but when it comes to stuffing the planet, there's a new reptile contribution coming along with monotonous reliability.

And now it being the season ...

It was entirely fitting that the Graudian labelled him an "acclaimed thespian" because no one could match that voice ...and he fought the good fight ... Before his death, Patrick Stewart had considered becoming a U.S. citizen so he could do more to oppose Donald Trump.

May it be made so in a few days time in honour of his memory ...

The pond realises this has already done the rounds, but it's just still in season ...