In which the pond does its best to avoid the mad King, and so gets lumbered with Polonial prattle, the Ughmann, Dame Slap and the dog botherer ...

 

The pond has been sated, saturated, is as full as a goog with the doings and disasters of mad King Donald and his cavorting minions, swimming in a feverish American swamp ...

There could be only one cure, one solace, plunge back into the icy deep end of the local reptile pool to refresh and relax with a burst of parochial hive mind news.

What a relief to return to the Polonial bosom. 

Even if the pond had not the slightest interest in the cavorting of assorted Libs or in the Victorian scene, it was better than contemplating details about ballots and voter suppression in some bum f*ck South Carolina or Mississippi county:

What a relief, turgid prose of a domestic kind, and a chance to marvel at Polonius's devotion to Bid, together with his tremendous, admirable desire to join the Canavan caravan. 

Bid has been in the news of late, what with having to apologise for failing to declare 16 flight upgrades - what's the point if you can't sit at the pointy end? 

She'd been off in London declaring a war on left-wing globalists - a veritable Trumpian down under - as well as being a stout-hearted devotee of guns (while curiously insisting we should shed a tear for the Bondi shooting, performed by loons armed with long arms) (Graudian her here).

The Canavan caravan is under attack from the faux ranga, who inevitably turned up in the second gobbet, as Polonius did a fair imitation of the departed vote whisperer Antony Green ...

Talk about devotion ... voting all the way down the ticket. 

Good luck with that, as Polonius wrapped up this outing by suggesting we all listen to Bid ...

Tremendous stuff, and after that induced slumber, the pond woke briefly to wonder if it had to give up all US jokes?

The pond did think of heading off to Nick, discussing the current lizard Oz Jimbo jihad ...

Jim-Junking Complex: tell ’em they’re dreaming
Criticism of Jim Chalmers obscures collective government responsibility. Instead of trashing the Treasurer, his Labor critics should try contributing to fixing the economy.
By Nick Dyrenfurth
Contributor

What a disgrace. It's a wonder the reptiles didn't drum him out of Surry Hills ...

The pond couldn't waste precious time on that sort of heresy. 

Does Nick have the faintest idea who he's scribbling for, who he's giving comfort and succour to?

The pond wanted a serve of standard size Jimbo jihad, and the Ughmann was just the unreformed former seminarian reptile to deliver the goods.

Just look at the snap of perplexed Jimbo that starts off this round of the jihad ...

Sheesh, even by the Ughmann's climate science denying standards, that was a desiccated coconut effort and it didn't get any better in what quickly turned into a "Ned" style Everest climb (forget trudging through the Amazon with a machete, we're in thin air territory) ...

The pond gets it. That comical snap of the open-mouthed, gesticulating, finger pointing Jimbo says it all.

It's a disaster, we'll all be rooned, and it's the fat cat cardigan wearers wot done it, but do we have to spend a bigly 12 minute bot read on the matter?

Is it so tedious that the reptiles felt the need to fling in the dog botherer as an AV distraction?

Second thoughts, once the unreformed seminarian reverted to his standard religious metaphorical mumbo jumbo, the dog botherer seemed like a sight for sore eyes ...

The pond asked for it, and it was given unto the pond ... the pond knocked on cardigan wearer doors, and they were opened. Every one who asketh will receive the news that we'll all be rooned ... 

He's into boiling bunnies? What a sicko, talk about preverts. 

If only a cleansing biblical flood would cleanse the earth of reptiles ...

At this point, Dame Slap hovered into view. How could the pond resist?

All good, but then the next gobbet took an ominous turn, as Dame Slap invoked the mad King ...

All good, but yet again the pond was reminded just how Dame Slap routinely manages to get things wrong.

Her donning of the MAGA cap is embalmed in the intermittent archive ... In a ballot box, nobody can see you vote ... but every so often the pond likes to drag it out of the mortuary for an inspection ...

Oh dear, the fallout took a long time to happen, but it didn't end well, and somehow Dame Slap, in the grip of a colander memory, can blithely talk of routs...

Why does she expect anyone to fall for her latest guff after that crazy MAGA cap-donning stuff?

Say some more ...

...A few days later, a few remarks from Donald Trump’s chief White House strategist Steve Bannon confirm the level of crazy that has settled into the US political landscape. “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Bannon tells The New York Times.
“I want you to quote this. The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand the country. They still don’t understand why Donald Trump is the President of the United States.”
Boom. “White House tells media to shut up”, raged the left-liberal media, proving in record speed Bannon’s critique of the media. That is a threat, roared The Guardian. The Huffington Post used Bannon’s remarks to accuse the Trump administration, barely a week old, of already looking like the worst of Richard Nixon. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour likened Bannon’s shut-up comment to the working of a totalitarian ­regime, quipping this is how you angle for an order of merit from the presidents of Egypt, Russia and Turkey.
Dear Christiane, Turkey locks up more journalists than any other country. The US doesn’t imprison journalists for doing their job, whichever way they want to do it. Yours sincerely, Janet.
Default outrage prevented the media from hearing Bannon’s real point: the media should listen more if they want to understand why Trump is President. Like the Upper West Side poetry group, the media still don’t want to listen and learn. Like the anti-Trump protesters, they still don’t want to understand Trump’s supporters.
We know the outraged left-wing press didn’t listen to Trump supporters because even the publisher of the NYT apologised to subscribers after the election for its coverage. The Washington Post tried to make amends by running letters from Trump supporters. Pity the Post wasn’t interested before the election.
We also know that sections of the left-liberal press openly adopted an oppositional stance to Trump because they admitted as much. Writing on the Daily Caller website last week, Rachel Stoltfoos reminded us that former National Public Radio boss Ken Stern advocated oppositional tactics because Trump is “an affront to American democracy”. Tellingly, Stern admitted the price: “The next time Fox News or Breitbart caterwaul about media bias, the claim will have substantially more bite.”
The bite marks of bias grow deeper and more grotesque the longer the left-wing media refuses to listen. At his first official meeting, Trump spoke at CIA headquarters in Virginia. He was given a standing ovation and cheered during his speech. Over at CNN, TV hosts hyperventilated about Trump’s self-congratulatory remarks while standing in front of the agency’s memorial to its dead officers. CNN’s TV stars didn’t report the audience cheering Trump because they weren’t listening.
Last week The Economist downgraded the US from a full to a flawed democracy. Its so-called Intelligence Unit explained the downgrade was due to a “further erosion of trust in government and elected officials there”. Using more intelligent criteria — say, the ability or failure to listen — the Intelligence Unit should have downgraded a media that failed to listen to Trump supporters, not to mention the woman who refused to listen to people she nicknamed deplorables. Where’s the flaw in a democracy when the candidate who listened most to those who are wary of DC politics won a democratic election and is now President?
While American left-liberal media outlets resume normal programming of blocking their ears, top-rating shows on Foxtel’s Sky News Australia will be leaving the studio this year to listen and report on grassroots issues from people outside the big cities. As Sky’s David Speers said: “It’s incumbent on us in the media to do a better job of listening to those people who genuinely feel they’re not being heard or genuinely represented by the governing class.”
Trump’s win is a wake-up call for our politicians to do the same or else feel the eventual backlash of shy voters emboldened by the privacy of the ballot box.

Oh yes, let's feel the backlash. Let's wake up to the woke. (Those were the days, with Speersie in his natural home before he headed off to white ant the ABC).

Back to the present, and the pond understands that all the reptiles at some point fall into litany mode, and so it was for Dame Slap this weekend ...

Maybe not so much a gaslighter as the mad King for whom Dame Slap donned the cap and bent the knee ...

The pond knew it would be hard to avoid contemplating the Unites States, and turned to the dog botherer for a final bout of domestic relief.

Surely he'd deliver what Nick had labelled Jim-Junking Complex, and Albo Derangement Reflex, and sure enough, just look at those wretched miscreants at the start of the show, all sepia and downcast, captured in inimitable hive mind fashion like cornered rats ...

The dog botherer was on fire ... and in the next gobbet the reptiles doubled down by showing him savaging the mad King for his Iran folly.

Strange, the pond can recollect back in the day that the dog botherer was very keen for Iranian action, as when he did a confab with that other Jimbo ... (saved to the other Jimbo's site)...

That was then, and this is now, and the jihads must continue. Do your work, colander ...

It was litany time, this variation reverting to an old reptile favourite, a pox on all their houses, with the usual standard "pox on renewables" as the default dog botherer climate science denying default position ...

Note the cheap jibe that somehow climate science is simply about improving the weather, because if you stopped paying attention to science teachers in third form, that's pretty much all you've got ...

Not just climate science, but a standard serve of the Australian Daily Zionist News.

At this point, the pond would usually wander off to Haaretz, or take in a report on actual climate science ...

Haaretz is easily covered ...

It's Clear – Israel Now Has a Plan for the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians From Gaza
Someone conceived it, there were discussions of pros and cons, alternatives were suggested, and all done in air-conditioned conference rooms. For the first time since the war of revenge in Gaza began, it's clear that Israel has a plan – and it's a far-reaching one
Gideon Levy

Adolf Eichmann began his Nazi career as the head of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration at the security agency charged with protecting the Reich. Joseph Brunner, the father of Mossad chief David Barnea, was three years old when he fled Nazi Germany with his parents, before the evacuation plan was implemented.
Last week, Barnea, the grandson, visited Washington in order to discuss the "evacuation" of the Gaza Strip's population. Barak Ravid reported on Channel 12 News that Barnea told his interlocutors that Israel has already begun talks with three countries on this issue, and the irony of history hid its face in shame. A grandson of a refugee of ethnic cleansing in Germany discusses ethnic cleansing, and no memory comes to mind.
In order to "evacuate" two million people from their country, you need a plan. Israel has been working on one. The first stage involves transferring much of the population into a concentration camp in order to facilitate an efficient deportation...

And so on, and on target, on course, on schedule, block aid, and deliver collective punishment, all part of the joy of a cleansing ...

All that's needed is a scheme to stay in power ...

Netanyahu Is Plotting a Final Power Grab for Israel's Democracy. His Loyalist Shin Bet Chief Is the Key

With moves lifted directly from the playbooks of dark regimes, the prime minister and his lackeys will do everything to undermine the election results – dragging Israel into its worst constitutional crisis yet

Amos Harel

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his closest associates, and his accomplices in Israel's security services and media outlets are swiftly dragging Israel toward what will be the most severe constitutional crisis in the country's history – and even this is too mild a way to describe the events that unfolded in recent days.

With moves lifted directly from the playbooks of dark regimes, Netanyahu is now actively trying to hold a regime coup: Evading recognition of election results, threatening violence, consistent and harsh incitement against minorities, and taking advantage of Israel's secret services.

On Wednesday morning, the Central Elections Committee published the final election results, saying that an examination of thousands of ballot boxes had found no evidence of irregularities or any compromise to the election's integrity.

Committee Chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg said that intelligence presented to him by the Shin Bet security service allegedly indicates a widespread phenomenon of money flowing into Israel from foreign countries, "originating from unknown parties with undisclosed and even hostile interests who intended to promote their influence." Sohlberg added that the suspicions involve enormous sums and "thousands of people, perhaps even more." The Shin Bet is expected to continue its investigation.

Even that, however, won't be enough to satisfy the right-wing bloc, certainly after the harsh allegations cast by Shin Bet chief David Zini.

On Netanyahu's main propaganda outlet, Channel 14, broadcasts titled "Ballot Box Terror" have been running almost nonstop since last week's election. Knesset members, panelists, and social media activists affiliated with Netanyahu have been preparing the ground for a clash over claims of voter fraud among Israel's Arab public...

And so on, and as for the climate - dog bothering weather if you will - how about a taste from Scientific American?

Earth’s ‘life support systems’ are breaking down, climate scientists warn
“The climate emergency is already here” (* intermittent archive link)
By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron

Earth faces “rapid destabilization” as a result of climate change, an international group of scientists find in the latest edition of an annual checkup of the planet’s “vital signs.”

“This is no longer a warning for the future; it is a diagnosis of the present,” the authors write.

The report, the latest in a series called the “State of the Climate,” measures 16 key markers of Earth’s climate. Seven of these have reached “record extremes,” says report co-author Christopher Wolf, a research scientist at Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates. These extremes include soaring greenhouse gas concentrations, melting sea ice and sea-level rise—driven largely by human activities.

“Global warming appears to be accelerating,” Wolf says.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a by-product of burning fossil fuels, has reached record-high levels (428 parts per million), as have other greenhouse gases such as methane (1,940 parts per billion) and nitrous oxide (340 parts per billion). The ocean has absorbed a record-breaking jump in heat, which, in turn, has helped fuel unprecedented sea-level rise. At the same time, higher temperatures have meant record losses in the Greenland ice sheet and glaciers.

“Earth’s life-support systems are being pushed beyond stable limits, with changes unfolding faster than our ability to respond,” Wolf and his co-authors write in the report.

Humans are in danger as a result: since September 2025 climate change has fueled myriad natural disasters, including floods in Albania, Bali, Brazil, Columbia, Greece, Indonesia, and Vietnam; heat waves in Europe, India and the U.S.; wildfires in Australia and Florida; and more, the report finds.

The future, the report warns, may be bleak.

“We are increasingly concerned about the risk of crossing climate tipping points that could lead to irreversible changes,” Wolf says...

But not the dog botherer. 

His climate change concerns and his understanding is about on a par with mad King Donald ... which is to say, much like a demented, doddering old ruler who imagines he somehow inherited his uncle's genes ...

Does this litany even take in a whiff of Covid and RFK Jr? You betcha ...

Such a loyal far right populist, always with a kind and optimistic word for the faux ranga ... and yet, just yesterday, the pond strayed into the mighty 'Gong's public library and picked up a copy of that other rag ... a rare experience, because the pond can't remember the last time it had a tree killer edition in hand.

‘They don’t have a clue’: Covert tapes expose One Nation turmoil, Rinehart influence claims

Nick McKenzie, Toni Ambrogetti and Paul Sakkal (*intermittent archive link)

One Nation’s former national campaign director has been captured on covert recordings warning that billionaire Gina Rinehart is secretly dictating party strategy and top adviser James Ashby may be using the political party to enrich himself.

Despite Pauline Hanson sacking loyalist Sean Black after the Coalition put pressure on her for employing the formerly jailed rapist in key One Nation backroom roles, he claimed on the tapes to have quietly continued working for the populist party after his removal.

Heard bemoaning the party’s lack of competence to wield the significant power it is chasing in upcoming elections in Victoria, NSW and federally, he warns that rampant nepotism could see Rinehart puppets or inexperienced One Nation insiders, such as Hanson’s daughter Lee, given key political or policy roles, or even elevated to governor-general if the party ever secured government.

“They don’t have a clue what democracy is,” Black, who served One Nation for eight years including as campaign manager between 2023 and April 2026, said on one recording.

In another, he cautions that Rinehart has disproportionate influence over One Nation and especially the party’s chief strategist, James Ashby.

“James’ view on policy is that the policy comes from Gina or Gina’s acolytes, and that is it,” Black states.

He also claims to be worried Rinehart is pulling One Nation’s strings using proxies such as Rinehart company chief executive and ex-Northern Territory chief minister Adam Giles.

Giles made a $500,000 donation to One Nation earlier this year, which he said in April was paid out of his bonus from Hancock. At the time, when other large donations linked to Rinehart including a plane were also publicised, Treasurer Jim Chalmers described Hanson as a “wholly owned subsidiary of Gina Rinehart”...

By golly, if we work hard at it, we might almost match the court of the mad King, if only in a small beer way ...

Maybe Gina's not up there with Elon in terms of wealth or patronage, but dammit, she's doing her level best ... and some day perhaps the faux ranga could match the king himself (in an alternate universe).

The reptiles must themselves resolve to do better, be best, aim higher as we used to promise at Tamworth Public School...

There is much to admire, and to imitate ...

MAGA-Curious CBS Boss Bari Weiss’ Side Hustle Admits Wild Mistake

William Vaillancourt

Bari Weiss' opinion news site, The Free Press, has acknowledged an embarrassing error in its coverage of Abdul El-Sayed, the nation's first Muslim senator-elect.

El-Sayed, who faced Islamophobic attacks throughout his campaign and opposition from pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, defeated Republican Mike Rogers. In his victory speech Tuesday, El-Sayed pronounced his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, and used three other Arabic expressions: "inshallah" (twice), "Alhamdulillah," and "habibi."

The Free Press blew that way out of proportion.

The site, which is marketed as "Honest," "Independent," and "Fearless," inaccurately claimed in a Nov. 4 post on X that El-Sayed "gave his victory speech in Arabic last night."

In the corresponding video, reporter and host Maya Sulkin made the same claim.

"So that is the first Muslim senator in American history giving his victory speech in Detroit—in Arabic," she said, with what appeared to be an air of skepticism.

X users called out the false characterization. One asked Grok to analyze what percentage of El-Sayed's approximately 20-minute address was in Arabic. Its answer: 0.27 percent.

About 44 hours after making the post, The Free Press finally replied to it with an acknowledgment:

"CORRECTION: This post and opinion video states that Abdul El-Sayed gave his acceptance speech in Arabic. That's not accurate. In fact, he said a few phrases in Arabic, but the majority of his speech was in English. The Free Press regrets the error."

Come on reptiles, come on, there's much more Islamophobia to explore and exploit, there's even more climate science and ethnic cleansing denialism to promote.

Truly demented dementia calls ...

Already the mad King's cries of electoral fraud are resounding around the land...

... and now he has his beloved enforcer to make it so ...