Perfidy abounds in an 'anything goes' culture, as Moorice slams the rough Brough, Malware's copper NBN, private education rorters, and chairman Rupert's warped media empire ...

(Above: and more Pope here and on Twitter here).

Usually Friday is a slow day at the pond as the reptiles prepare for their big weekend issue ...

But today there was much to see and do ...

The memesters have been busy ...

... but that referenced a news.com.au story, so the pond moved on, because the rough Brough was producing some splendid ironies for Malware ...

And this ...

... required this ...

Yes, it's always the fault of the regulators, all the rorting and the carry-on, because after all, if you can get away with phone-tapping, why that must surely be the fault of the regulators. It surely doesn't discredit the idea of illegal phone-tapping as a grand industry suited to private competition ...

Or some such thing. So deep in the mire of the rorts and the rip-offs, the hapless reptiles don't have a clue ...

Meanwhile, the pond took a rare walk down the rich business lane wherein the expensive-to-acquire AFR dwells ...

Oh Joanna, Joanna ... here's the thing. The pond is just the work of an eccentric blogger and if the punters don't like the typos and the errors, they can just go away.

But the AFR seeks a premium price for "a whiff of inevitably."

Now the pond loved it, and clapped hands with glee - what a splendid malapropism - but there's a certain inevitability - the pond is unable to avoid or evade or escape the unalterable conclusion - to the notion that you're young.

Please Joanna, the pond blames the education regulators for failing to notice the Murdochian-led education revolution that's been going on these past few years, but the result is that you and your sub make the pond feel it can run up any number of typos in a day, and so anarchy is unleashed on the world ...

But all this is as nothing, just a passing whimsical zephyr in the days of our lives because this very day Moorice has unleashed a withering epistle to the reptiles ... (well who else reads the rag these days?)

Now the pond is aware that this will produce consternation. The world's greatest climate scientist is being distracted from his chosen task by his desire for a strong leader to be lodged back in the Lodge.

Who will stand firm against the flim flam climate scientists trying to pretend that this year has to date been the warmest on record? Lathering up this nonsense in preparation for Paris ...

Abject peasants without a shred of understanding of Moorice's massive intellect, you have once more failed to understand his genius.

See how he gently weaves together his heart-rending tale of terrorists of Islam and climate science terrorists ...

Indeed, indeed. How soft and malleable is Malware ... why he's just like copper piping.

The pond blames the Left intelligentsia, because it's in the interests of secularists and atheists like the pond to join forces with Daesh, so that they might enjoy the pleasantries of a personal beheading.

And so to the obligatory celebration of strong man Tony, and the fiendish conspirators who laughably suggest that climate science might produce some minor matters of occasional concern:

Of course Moorice also contends that there is no credible scientific evidence to support the absurd proposition of anthropogenic climate change. 

Of course this might be a delusion, cloaked in the moral superiority of a delusional ranting old man shouting at clouds, and his love of strong man Tony might exemplify what is wrong with conservatives in Australia, but let us move along quickly to Moorice's stunning conclusion, because the first pars below just about brings it all together in a cosmic apocalypse of cultural chaos:

Actually the pond draws the line at Moorice's ineffable stupidity as the clouds keep on floating by ...

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden ranting Moorice dills;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Presiding on a reptile hot rock proud,

Fluttering and dancing

And shouting at the clouds

Evaporating in the climate science breeze ...

And with that outrageous ravaging of Wordsworth - luckily the sweet man isn't around to see the pond do a Joanna - the pond is pleased to provide evidence from a New York correspondent, transmitted by copper wiring this very morning, that the war on Xmas is heating up in New York, as everyone gears up to celebrate refugees seeking to overcrowd the world by giving birth in a stable when really they should have been fitted with a surveillance tag and shipped back home to be slaughtered. Why strong man Tony himself will tell you Jesus got it wrong!

Oh and the pond apologises for anyone who took seriously that header about Moorice slamming Chairman Rupert and all the others. The pond is practising its click bait skills and there's a whiff of inevitably about what that produces ... 

Not so much a chocolate cake conspiracy as a gathering of Chicken Little turkeys gobbling away?

Talk of a chocolate cake conspiracy reminded the pond of George Bernard Shaw and Arms and the Man and chocolate soldiers, and the unfortunate use of the term chocos in relation to the troops in New Guinea, which swept up one of the pond's uncles, as tough a shearer as you might care to find ...

But there are some chocolate cream soldiers who melt in the sun, or worse are a white-anting, corrosive presence in our midst,...

Naturally that's a throw to the Bolter, who was out and about again today, at his corrosive, white-anting worst ...

And no matter how News Corp might try to cut it, the unguided missile wasn't aimed at Daesh, it was aimed at Malware ...

Look at the illustration in the splashes ...

It never matters to the Bolter how pathetic or weak or silly or argumentative and stupid he sounds, he just keeps rolling out the arguments in support of his 'boots on the ground' mate ...

Uh huh, but let's not stop there, just before we head below the fold.

Why not head off to wiki, here, and discover a lot of other figures ...

There's a lot more, and that's not to reckon with the many displaced, the many unknown, the many wounded, damaged or uprooted by the violence ...

And so to below the fold ... and it becomes clear that the Bolter isn't really that interested in the killing, so much as alarm and panic in the streets and the air ...

Why is the Bolter so interested in talking up Daesh?

What's to be gained in making them appear strong and an existential threat?

Why then you need a strong man, a Churchill, or even, if you will and are carefree about Godwin's Law, an Abbott... or a Hitler.

But what's the result of this worshipping of the 'strength' of Daesh?

If you put on suitable clothing and waved a black flag and read out all of the Bolter's furious scribbling - in a proper fanatical "Hello eekbear" voice - you could well be construed as a Lord Hee Haw doing the propaganda work of fundamentalist ratbags ...

But then the Bolter is a fundamentalist ratbag, and there is a synchronicity of aims and desires between fundamentalists everywhere ...

Still, now you know where to go to get your "Daesh is strong" propaganda from ... the HUNsters, Boris's Daily Terrorists, and the rest of the Murdochian gang ....

Perhaps the Bolter could head off to re-education camp and stop referring to IS as an Islamic State.

That's the ultimate accolade, the ultimate tribute.

Why doesn't he try Daesh, Dahis, Daeick, Dahish or Fahish ... (here).

Oh wait, Fahish is being popularised by Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia (white Daesh) is the father of Isis, says writer ...

Never mind, perhaps the Bolter could just agree to avoid lathering up hysteria in a 'foaming at the mouth', frothing way, and to avoid conflating terrorist activities in other countries with the actual war in Syria and Iraq. Perhaps read a fact checking story on the war here ...

The pond feels vaguely guilty about wasting time with the Bolter. Why not try NYRB's The Syrian Kurds Are Winning!?

How about NYRB's How She Wants to Modify Muslims?

Yes, they're currently outside the paywall, and agree or disagree, any signs of intelligence and life, as opposed to fear-mongering, is a healthy corrective to a diet of simplistic Bolter blather ...

One thing's certain ... it seems as if the Bolter almost devoutly wishes that Daesh keep on with its terrorist activities ... because that will keep the Bolter in business with lots of easy copy and rich indignant anger, luckily in an armchair and a keyboard at some distance from more immediate harm's way ...

Even worse, as a result, Daesh has stepped up and distracted the world's greatest climate science from his urgent duties, just as the pond is in receipt of the news of the world's apparent and alleged heating ... well, it surely feels hot this day in old Sydney town.

No doubt the Bolter will step up to the breach in due course, but that reminds the pond of another epic use of numbers to distort reality and truth ...

Australia is meeting its minimum goal via accounting rules – most forecasts show its emissions will rise by 2020. The latest analysis by research firm RepuTex shows Australia’s actual emissions will rise 4% by 2020 compared with 2000 levels, and 6% compared with today. 
But Australia will be able to count “carry over”, under the accounting rules governing international emissions calculations, because it “overshot” or did better than the special deal it received at the Kyoto meeting for its first climate change pledge to 2012. (Unlike most developed countries, Australia was allowed to increase its emissions by 8%.) 
Emissions have fallen due to the drought, the slowdown in the economy, the decline in manufacturing and to a small extent the impact of the renewable energy target and other climate policies such as the emissions reduction fund. (more here).

But that's enough of base villains, rogues and wiki-loving walri knaves for this day ...

Time for a Rowe cartoon, and perhaps the Bolter could share a turkey with Vlad. Or is Abbott turkey enough?

And remember, Academy-framed Rowe - how the pond approves of proper visual framing - can be found at Rowe's twitter account here.

Did someone mention Optus, Malware and the budgie smuggler's media mates?

Is there anything that can distract the pond from the reptiles, or the spectacle of the rough Brough, hopefully slouching towards a reckoning, or even world-shattering events elsewhere?

Well Fairfax knows how to hit the pond's funny bone, strike a raw nerve, prod a sore spot, jab where it hurts ...

The Optus cable TV and broadband network bought by the National Broadband Network for $800 million is in such poor condition the NBN is considering replacing it entirely. 
Replacing the network would see costs blow out by up to $375 million and 600,000 premises forced to wait until 2019 before connecting to the NBN, according to documents obtained by Fairfax Media. The NBN's Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) rollout will use existing pay TV cables to deliver high-speed broadband to Australians. 
The leaked briefing presentation, dated November 3, 2015 and marked "confidential", canvasses moving to a "Plan B" for the HFC network, rather than upgrading the Optus network as had originally been planned. 
The "Plan A" HFC rollout would see existing Optus infrastructure used for 470,000 premises. 
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has spruiked the importance of Telstra and Optus' existing HFC networks to the Coalition's multi-technology mix NBN rollout. 
In December, Mr Turnbull hailed the "landmark agreement" to buy the Telstra and Optus cable lines, saying: "The agreement allows NBN Co to take progressive ownership of the Optus HFC cable network and use this infrastructure in the NBN rollout, at no additional cost to taxpayers." 
But the internal NBN documents state the Optus network is "not fully fit for purpose" and some equipment is "arriving at the end of life" and will need to be replaced. Other parts of the network are oversubscribed and don't have sufficient capacity to support NBN services. 
According to the documents, building over the Optus HFC network with Telstra HFC or a mix of other technologies would deliver better results than upgrading the current network. 
But it would require a peak funding increase of between $150 million and $375 million and see NBN miss its rollout targets by approximately 300,000 premises in 2017 and 330,00 in 2018. 
It means these premises would not receive the NBN until 2019 at the earliest.

And so on. Fairfax has the leaked document here, with forced video, not that it any of it comes as a surprise to the pond, which is served - we use the word in lieu of more accurate terms like fucked - by Optus on a daily basis ...

Now the pond is equal opportunity here. Much of the stupidity began with Stephen Conroy and the planning of the roll out, such that now private businesses can cherry pick high density, likely high usage areas, such as fibre to the basement in apartment blocks, while the NBN studiously rolled out in godforsaken areas where take up was slow and the business model was sure to suffer ...

But at the same time, when Malware took over, he deliberately fucked over the sensible models for the NBN, on behalf of his then master, and now, not so slowly, the news of all his compromises and stupidities are beginning to appear in public...

Being blessed by a teflon coating,  there's a good chance that a lot of it will slide away, but like the rough Brough, some day there will be a reckoning ... though hopefully not at the hands of the chief villain in the mess, Tony Abbott, and his cheerleaders at News Corp, a company which has done as much as reptilianly possible to thwart, degrade and defeat a decent broadband service ...

Meanwhile, these very same reptiles continue to offer advice to Malware ...

Actually the last two years were squandered totally and completely thanks to the reptile cheerleaders ... and so we see another body blow to the notion of an agile, mobile nation.

Meanwhile, some of the reptiles have turned to cheering on Malware ...

Well of course, anybody who would want boots on the ground in Syria or Iraq at the moment, given what's going down, would have to have rocks in his head ...

Speaking of a man with rocks in his head ...

Well yes, stupidity is contagious, and Abbott's entire imperium was marked by paranoia, resentment, bully-boy tactics and gung ho machismo.

And  Luke Simpkins is clearly a man afflicted by the stupidity bug, but that mention of the coterie reminded the pond of this bit of appalling Joe Aston gossip:

Just look at that gallery of rogues, thieves, knaves, brigands and reptiles. 

Why it's the the very commentariat that features on a daily basis in these pages ...

Lick spittle fellow travellers the lot of them, always ready to head off to the trough with the farmer, and by golly, by end of meal, it would have been hard to pick the difference between the farmer and the pigs ... and the climate scientists and Moorice ...

But enough of the Orwell breach - relax, the swear jar is full to overflowing - and please this is absolutely not the time to mention Global warming and El Nino set to make 2015 the hottest year on record, WMO says ...

You know how that sort of idle chatter gets Moorice and the Bolter, and Tony "climate change is crap" Abbott going ...

The UN agency's provisional statement on the status of the climate also declared the five-year period between 2011 and 2015 the hottest on record. 
 Professor Matthew England from UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre said the global air average temperature record had been "absolutely smashed in 2015". "This warming blows away the record-breaking 1997-1998 El Nino by a massive 0.2 degrees Celsius," he said. 
"The cause of this difference between two similar El Nino years is record levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. "This should be a huge wake-up call in the lead up to Paris for urgent and binding deep cuts in fossil fuel emissions." 
Dr Karl Braganza, the head of climate monitoring at the Bureau of Meteorology, worked on the report and said the heat would likely continue next year. "Australia saw record spring temperatures in 2013, again in 2014, and this may well continue for a third consecutive year," he said. 
"These are significant changes for the climate system, with a likelihood that these are the warmest temperatures since before the last ice age, and the highest levels of carbon dioxide in more than two-and-a-half million years."

Amazing, and there was the pond fully briefed by Moorice and the Bolter that there'd been a pause these past 18 years

Now, as a matter of politeness, we should complete the offering by the bouffant one, who has the cheek to talk about dangerous divisions:

What a goose. We already know that News Corp is stuffed to the gills with treacherous white-anting hard core Abbott lovers who'd sit down at the drop of a hat to share the fear, hate, loathing and paranoia ...

Talk about entrenched and corrosive. Does it get any more entrenched and corrosive than Boris, the pompous one, the bromancer, Akker Dakker and the Bolter? Though wait, why were Dame Slap, Dame Groan and l'eau Devine missing? 

Ah, already too many women at the dinner ... of course, how silly of the pond not to realise ...

Meanwhile, thanks to his bovver boy boofhead ways, the wretched Abbott has handed Malware a number of poisoned chalices, from the NBN to climate science to a macho stance that's going nowhere in the middle east ... while to get to power Malware relied on the helping hand of the rough Brough ...

And then Elizabeth Farrelly had to come along yesterday and give Malware the certain Medusa-like kiss of death with Why Malcolm Turnbull will be our longest serving PM since Robert Menzies ... (with forced video).

Ah, the eastern suburbs is strong in that one ...

And so to a Pope cartoon, more Pope here, which eerily reminded the pond of the culture of the country under Abbott and the conduct of News Corp under Murdoch ...

Yes, the pond blames itself for deeming the reptiles a fitting subject for study ... why it should have continued with its long ago abandoned thesis on the causes of world war one and the rise of Hitler ...

When the lies get so big and the fog gets so thick ...

(Above: pond favourite David Rowe scores a place in the top ten here).

Lately the pond has been drawn back to the old days - Zappa, Burroughs' cut-up technique, heck even William Blake in the NYRB here, currently outside the paywall, hurry there, don't keep reading here ...

From Eisensteinian montage, from juxtaposition, might come insight and understanding, and so the pond felt the need to run Dame Slap up against the l'essence Devine to  see if the heat generated any light at all, to see if the sparks could light the torch of liberty ...

The pond began to get a glimmer of light and understanding. Catholic fundamentalist bigotry is good, but Islamic fundamentalist bigotry is bad ...

Would the Devine help in this quest?

Yes, it seems that dinkum Aussie - oi, oi, oi - bigotry is good, except when it's Jacqui Lambie, and then it's bad, but when it comes to Reclaim Australia, and Xmas being under threat, why dinkum Aussie - oi, oi, oi - bigotry is wonderful ...

So this is how to pick the cherries and choose the grapes ...

Can Dame Slap explain even further? Of course she can, at great and tedious length:

Yes, remember fundamentalist Islamic bigots, what you do is a bad thing. But dangerous radicalisation and bigotry involving the Catholic church is okay ...

But speaking of stifling orthodoxy, as we sometimes must do, does the Devine sound like Dame Slap, or two peas in a pod, or merely Dum and Dee?

Yes, that's a fine dribbling line, doing the apologist thing for the Catholic church and RA, but doesn't that line have all the hallmarks of Murdochian jihadism at its finest ...

... most of the hatred and division is sown by self-regarding enforcers of political correctness who will not countenance alternative world views ...

Of course you could re-phrase that ...

... most of the hatred and division is sown by self-regarding Murdochians spouters of bile, who will not countenance alternative world views ... while offering up a most peculiar form of intolerance and political correctness of a fundamentalist right wing kind, 

They are not interested in tolerance and understanding. They inflame hate, fear and loathing and love the notion that certain creeds may continue their intolerance with impunity, maligning gays and women's rights, as if somehow, magically, this intolerance wasn't precise and exact fit with the intolerance of fundamentalist Islamics and other barking mad religions ...

And as a result they push people into the clutches of extremists and dangerously radicalise the pond and send us back to Zappa...

They got lies so big 
They don't make a noise 
They tell 'em so well 
Like a secret disease 
That makes you go numb 
With a big ol' lie 
And a flag and a pie
And a mom and a bible 
Most folks are just liable 
To buy any line 
Any place, any time 
When the lie's so big 
As in Robertson's case, 
(That sinister face 
Behind all the Jesus hurrah) 
Could result in the end 
To a worrisome trend 
In which every American 
Not "born again" 
Could be punished in cruel and unusual ways 
By this treacherous cretin 
Who tells everyone 
That he's Jesus' best friend 
When the lies get so big 
And the fog gets so thick 
And the facts disappear 
The Republican Trick 
Can be played out again 
People, please tell me when 
We'll be rid of these men! 
Just who do they really 
Suppose that they are? 
And how do they manage to travel as far
As they seem to have come? 
Were we really that dumb? 
People, wake up Figure it out 
Religious fanatics 
Around and about The Court House, The State House, 
The Congress, The White House Criminal saints 
With a "Heavenly Mission" - 
A nation enraptured 
By pure superstition 
Do you believe in the Invisible Army? 
(Yes, indeed!) 
When the lie's so big 
And the fog so thick 
And the facts kept forgotten 
Then the Republican Trick 
(Ketchup is a vegetable!) 
Can be played out again 
People, please tell me when 
We'll be rid of these men!

Time for another Rowe, a portrait of a tragic and pitiful figure:

And so to a little Zappa ...

 

In which the pond goes shallow to get deep ...

(Above: and more David Pope here).


Being deeply superficial - choke me in the shallow waters before I get too deep - the pond loves an irony, and rarely needs to look beyond the headlines ...

Like these two on the same day in Fairfax ...

I'm not aware of too many things, I know what I know, if you know what I know, joke me in the shallow waters before I get to sleep ...

Okay, it's just another misheard song lyric, and what a twit the walri man is, in a deeply personal way, but how about this wonderful juxtaposition this day?

Well yes, every redundancy is a personal trauma, but the pond didn't notice the reptiles shedding crocodile tears about the forced redundancies at the ABC, SBS or the CSIRO for that matter. Instead there was dancing in the streets and in the headlines.

There's another reason at least one reptile deserves a sacking, the one that trotted out the line "SBS mocks commercial job losses."

Commercial? That's the very reason people are being made redundant, the resolutely uncommercial and unappetising and unappealing failed business model the reptiles are pursuing, and continue to pursue ...

Dross and hardline lumpen gruel, they aren't goers, dog botherer apologist lackey ...

Besides, if we can't have an open discussion about the uncommercial business model of the lizards of Oz, then we have no freedom of speech or liberty or the capacity for undergraduate humour.

No doubt the discharged reptiles can go on to do useful and honourable things for society and themselves, which is more than can be said of the remnants still defiant in the bunker - though on the pond's personal experience, some of News Corp's former employees are inclined to take the bullying culture out into the wider world ... or are so battered that they need some extended personal recovery time ...

Just suck it up dog botherer, suck it up ... he that lives by the Murdochian sword inevitably dies by it ...

Meanwhile, speaking of headlines, the monarchist denialist Devine scores a double today ...

But enough of the Devine's love for the monarchy and climate denialism, come together in perfect symmetry, because it always bemuses the pond when a professional bigot steps up to the plate in search of "real bigots" ...

Yes, that piece turns out to be a heroic defence of the tranquil political aims of Reclaim Australia ...

Oh joke me in the shallow waters, before I gently weep ...

Inter alia the Devine wonders why Jacqui Lambie gets away with her rants, while everybody pays attention to the professional bigotry of folk like the Devine and the RA bigots.

Oh maybe she didn't quite put it that way, but according to the Devine, the explanation's simple - it's because Lambie is against Tony Abbott ...

It doesn't occur to the Devine - professional bigots are inclined to be as thick as a bit of robust four be two - that Lambie goes hand in glove with Reclaim Australia ...

That must be a spoof, surely it's a spoof - the pond found it on twitter with no link back - but what a lovely bit of work ...but, ah, at last the war on Xmas and Xians is warming up ...

But enough of all this deep stuff, let's get really shallow, and back to that Pope cartoon at the top of the page, which sets the tone for the morning's follies ...

The pond was inspired by James Massola's report Angry Liberal MPs question Tony Abbott's 'resistance movement' and Monkey Pod lunches ... (with forced video).

Yes, the rats lurking behind the arras actually meet in a room with a handsome timber table made of monkey-pod, a tropical hardwood tree, and apparently a gift of the Northern Territory government ...

In the past fortnight, conservative MPs including Mr Abbott, Kevin Andrews, Andrew Nikolic and Michael Sukkar have spoken out on national security issues such as Mr Dutton's exclusion from the national security committee and the need for Australia to consider "boots on the ground" in Syria. 
At the same time Mr Abbott, Mr Dutton, Mr Nikolic and Mr Sukkar all attended the latest lunch on Tuesday, with the former prime minister bringing cake for his colleagues. 

Let them eat cake!

It was the comments that gave the pond the chance to display a wry, ironic smile:

The overwhelming view of those MPs is that, as one minister put it, Mr Abbott's supporters were "hanging on to the last vestiges of the Abbott days, when conservatives thought they could do or say whatever they liked". 
"Government is actually functioning well again after the last two years, we are actually focusing on things that matter. Some of their comments on national security show an enormous naivety. We aren't concerned by these clowns." 
A second minister, who backed Mr Abbott in the spill, said that Mr Turnbull should have kept more conservatives on the frontbench when he instituted a major reshuffle after taking power but that, regardless, "the reality is this has happened and most people have moved on". 
"These are people who have time on their hands and they are agitating. Tony is in a zone where he can't accept what has happened, but the reality is, his destiny was in his own hands. For those who supported him, who are pragmatic, the reality is now Malcolm and wishful thinking will not change that." 
A third asked: "How long will it take for Tony to realise he isn't coming back?" 
And a fourth minister said there was, in effect, an "Abbott government in exile" and that "they actually believe the public wants Abbott back". 
Meanwhile, the lunches in the so-called Monkey Pod room, which started years ago at Timmy's Chinese restaurant in Canberra's inner south soon after Kevin Rudd became prime minister and originally included conservatives such as Bronwyn Bishop, Sophie Mirabella, Alby Schultz, Don Randall, Mr Dutton and, on occasion, Mr Abbott, have set Liberal MPs talking. 
After the Coalition won government, the semi-regular Tuesday sitting week lunch was for some time held in Ms Bishop's office while she was Speaker. 
One MP familiar with the lunches said the attendees included hardcore supporters of Mr Abbott and was "underground", but that some of the younger MPs who had attended recent lunches had been surprised that "they were talking about the resistance". 
"The young ones remember how shit it was," the MP said, referring to the former Abbott government's political misfortunes.

The resistance, the maquis, the white mouse, the mouse that roared ...

Naturally the pond turned to the reptiles to provide this revolutionary movement with requisite gravitas as they hastily tried to catch up with Fairfax and assigned the bouffant one to do the job...

Oh yes, spill the beans bouffant one ...

Indeed, indeed, it's as if no one is allowed to be as stupid as Cory or as George Christensen ...

(more here)

But back to the moaning, whining, keening, carping conspirators and plotters intent on comforting the delusional and the deluded ...

Actually bouffant one, the last thing the Coalition needs is Tony Abbott in parliament, but you and your fellow reptiles can't bring yourselves to say it, can you ... as the cleansing and the cleaning out goes on ...

If Abbott stays on there'll be much more monkey business, but if the reptiles can't have their boots on the ground war, at least they can have Canberra games for their failing business model ...

Well it's true that the pond misses the old days of enormous stupidity and mind-numbing slogans ...

... but only a cartoonist could see the fun of having him still gibbering and jabbering from the trees ...

How to ruin a business plan with a baseball bat ...

The pond prides itself on its capacity to pick losers, drop kicks, and fear-mongering old doddery codgers shouting at clouds ...

But, but, you say, anxious to recycle a billygoat joke for the umpteenth time, surely that's as easy as clicking on the reptiles, and so spending a nanosecond at the lizard Oz ...

And it's true it's that easy. No one seems to know where they come from in their hordes, or why they're there - it certainly can't be for the business model - but it's as easy as going to an old tailings heap and stumbling on an abundance of quartz, or perhaps a little iron pyrites - fool's gold was always a lure to the pond when mullocking around at Bowling Alley Point - and never a hint of anything metallic worth more than a ha'penny.

But that's the pond's lot in life, and lordy lordy, what a dud this Peter Baldwin is turning out to be. Can we score a mention of George Orwell in the first gobbet?

Yes, we did, we did, and along it, a truly noble gherkin who takes at face value that which Daesh asserts ...

Now others might have wondered about Daesh boasting about how it's already inserted thousands in Europe, given the few creating mayhem that have been discovered so far ...

But that would be to reckon without the mathematical and statistical skills of a Baldwin:

And so with a leap and a bound, we have Daesh's terrifying status confirmed, and 130,000 Daesh sympathisers in Europe this very year, most of military age, with extensive military training and combat experience.

Of course the pond can play this game with skill. Let us recall that in April 2012, Marie Le Pen scored some 6,421,426 votes in the French presidential election. Using a modest 10% guide, it would seem that there are therefore at least 642,142 crazed, fundamentalist, heavily armed French right wing extremists ready to do battle with Daesh fundamentalists ...

And they say the pond can't make figures dance like Bob Ellis ...

One can imagine Baldwin waking at 2 am in the grip of a serious fever, shouting the apocalypse has come ...

And sure enough he announces the apocalypse in the pages of the lizard Oz ...

Two Orwell sightings in a single piece! With bonus apocalyptic nightmare!

And what is the reality of the situation we must face? Well the obvious one is that doddery old codgers shouting at clouds will conjure up an invasion of Europe by Daesh in vast numbers, and the stupid reptiles of Oz will publish the ramblings and the fear-mongering, somehow thinking it will assist in calculations and in the debate ... simply because the old codger once served under Hawke and Keating way back when ...

Why if being a Labor minister was any sort of qualification, the pond might have to take the likes of Gary Johns seriously ...

But on a more serious level, this sort of alarmist carry-on gets in the way of anyone wanting to have a sensible discussion about fundamentalism, terrorism and what might be done about it ...

Thank the long absent lord the virus is confined to the reptiles and devoted reptile watchers ...

Do these dodderers have any idea of how they harm the Labor brand with their ramblings?

At a time when Bill is the Mr 15% man, because Turnbull has undercut him - and Abbott - on just about everything, this sort of hysterical fear-mongering does no good to anyone, and especially the reptiles' business plan.

The pond can already sense the clicks on the pond dropping like flies. Not Peter Baldwin again. Sheesh, may as well get out the baseball bat and give the head a right royal Balmain boy pounding as read it ...

What else? Well it seems Bruce Billson is about to swell the ranks of potential reptile contributors, while over at David Rowe's twitter account here, the infallible cartoonist takes a view on the rough Brough.

How soon will he be scribbling for the reptiles and helping with their business plan? (But who is that mysterious figure posing as a lamp shade?)