The new business plan model ... zero tax and a fundamentalist Christian crusader war continues ...

A certain observable tendency ...

Well it passes for humour in some quarters and for an on-going tragedy at the pond, but speaking of visual cliches and stereotypes, the pond commends this image from Walkabout to the attention of Mr Leak ...

But enough of good-hearted humour, because the pond's duty is to the reptiles of Oz and their immediate concerns, and as always, their concern is to fortify the rabid and the outrageous. The more the fear and the terror, the more trees can be killed.

None of this cool things down, quieten, settle, get around behind ...

Not bloody likely!

Yep apart from paying no tax - that'd be zilch, zero, nada, nihil, nothing - the business plan relies on prodding the ant's nest, stroking the fires, fuelling the flames and a dozen other stereotypical metaphors that would form the basis for a very funny cartoon about blacks making fire by rubbing sticks together.

Ah, those stone age blacks, so richly comic ...

But the pond got distracted.  Let us return to lizard reality:

No, Australia's tranquility hasn't been jeopardised by the fundamentalist Christian crusaders conducting a war against Islam, without paying the slightest bit of attention to the sizeable mote in their own eye.

Yes, today's bête noire is a naughty, secretive, furtive military man and spy, down there with that drunkard Spry - and don't expect prattling Polonius to jump in to defend this regrettable military man, as he did with the drunkard Spry.

You know how it goes, almost without needing to read the text, but hey nonny no, never mind, here we go:

Yes, if you make a bleeding obvious point - that Abbott is a disruptive, devious ratbag, using terror as a way of drawing attention to himself, and perhaps in due course using it as the basis for an insurgency which sees him return to power - at the cost of sounding more Hansonite than Pauline - you're sure to cop a shellacking from the reptiles, and satirical comments about the mindlessness of the military.

Of course if anyone else dared to mock the mindless military, they'd be hung, drawn and quartered by the reptiles for high reason, but the wondrous thing about the reptiles is the way they can bite their tail to form a perfect circle of hypocrisy:

Oh okay, the pond was wandering through an old favourite, The Man Who Would Be King last night and getting re-acquainted with the doings of Masons and the Illuminati ...

Ah the Shield, what a way to organise your AV data, except when trying to access fraudband and watch Colbert's current crop of excerpts ...

(Yes the pond subscribes here).

Back to the reptiles, tedious chore that it is, as bad as feeding the chooks on a forty degree day in Tamworth, wherein it will be noted below that the editorialist cites Sheridan who speaks of national security figures but doesn't mention any of their names.

The pond of course talks regularly its own security figure, if only to point out that at the moment the resident rat is eating the slug killer left out in jam jar lids ... perhaps a little rat killer might be more to the point?

We digress, we digress, because staying focussed on reptile rage is so hard ... but it must be done because the country's security is at risk, and somehow it all stems from the Spycatcher trial ...

And there you have it.

As barking mad as a history lesson from old Polonius himself. Feel free to assemble absurdities in whatever Lego patterns that appeal.

For example, as someone who once generated their very own ASIO file, the pond was gob-smacked with awe and admiration at the news that ASIO was and is an apolitical agency.

It's even more remarkable that ASIO could imperil this status by pointing out that the rabid ravings of an embittered PM might be more unhelpful than useful, as might be ranting contributions from Cory, George and others stumbling across an Halal certification authority and into the arms of Pauline ... Oh dance, crusaders dance, dance as if the world might end tomorrow ...

But what was most pleasing to learn was that the reptiles remain on side with a creationist crusader, who in terms of science is as barking mad and as fundamentalist as any Islamic fundamentalist you might care to mention lurking in this fair land ...

And just like this very poor show, the reptiles want the right to continue on their own way, using inflammatory rhetoric and producing bold, divisive front pages ...

All of which reminded the pond of a very useful reader comment ...

If we teach our kids that West is best and to hell with the rest, and Muslim countries teach their kids that Islam is best and to hell with the rest, won't that increase the chance of war between the two? 
Of course if China teaches its kids that Chinese is best and to hell with the rest, we'll all be toast. (sorry, the pond pays no royalties and since we rip off people regularly, we run no advertising either).

And speaking of ex-PMs, and Bill Leak, might the pond note another tendency?

You know, the best place for a woman is on her knees ...

So sad, such a tragedy. And worse, not even funny. As Woody Allen might say,

“There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the cartoons at this place are really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and doled out in such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly, especially if you've wasted time on Bill Leak's cartoons.”

In which the pond gets more science from a packet of Kettle Chilli chips than from a reading of the lizard Oz ...

(Above: and more Popery here).

The memes and tweets have been running hot ever since the news was announced, though the Murdochian press has been eerily quiet on the matter.

There were oodles of richly comic routines along the lines of ...

It was only the Graudian who could afford to set that hare running ...

Of course if you clicked on Do you pay more tax than Australia's biggest companies?, it turned out you didn't have to pay much in the way of tax to pay more than 37.88% of Australia's companies.

There were many ironies to the game, perhaps top of the list all the pathetic bleating about the onerous impact that the company tax rate had on business, but the pond was vastly relieved to see that its favourite reptiles were also included in the game:

Great stuff reptiles, and the pond promises to take seriously every word you write about the onerous burden of the company tax rate and the unfairness of it all, and the need for a fair deal ...

What else?

Well the pond knows that Leigh Sales has some supporters, but last night became a contest of the unendurables. 

The pond has no time for Bill Shorten, actually less than no time, the man is as depressing as all get out, and shortly the pond will be spending time amongst a bunch of Shortenistas in a way guaranteed to ruin Xmas and tarnish the New Year, but what to make of this?

Fuck, it was just a fucking joke, and a feeble zinger at that, in the patented feeble Shorten zinger style. We all know what it was aimed at, class resentment, but why the po-faced harping?

Now we can't mock the rich, the truffle snorters in the eastern suburbs who fucked over and screwed up broadband in the country, or perhaps even the ones that get away with zero tax?

It takes a lot to generate even a shred of sympathy in the pond for the tedious bore known as Shorten - the man who will never be PM - but the humourless Sales easily wins the pond's award for the worst television interviewer of the year. Did naughty Bill make a cheap truffles joke about her favourite PM? The one she swoons over whenever he appears and smirks at her? Malswy walsy palsy ...

Now since the pond never watches commercial television or morning breakfast shows, the contest for worst television interviewer of the year is an unfair race, but what to say about a truffle joke greeted with pursed lips and frowning severity and all puritan seriousness?

A fucking truffle joke?

Enough. It's time for some real comedy, and some tremendous comedy stylings are at hand thanks to the reptiles of Oz, as they are on a daily tax-free basis, thanks be unto the Chairman ...

Come on down Matthew Canavan, who might pass for a brain surgeon if he didn't happen to be a rocket scientist:

Now others might want to have a go at the science on display, but the pond just wants to enjoy the wondrous conflation of witches and climate science, and the tremendously heart felt plea for public funding for denialists, because you know, the Koch brothers and the Heartland Institute simply aren't enough ...

Speaking of the military, that just happened to remind the pond of an excellent reader link, to The Fight of our Time:

As Navy officials told Kerry in an informal briefing aboard the San Antonio, the base was highly vulnerable to sea-level rise. Already, roads connecting the base to the city of Norfolk, Virginia, flood during major rainstorms. At high tide, water surges over the sea walls, threatening key infrastructure and inundating buildings. Kerry, dressed in a sharp blue suit and pink-orange tie, asked the officers about the life expectancy of the base. "Twenty to 50 years," Capt. J. Pat Rios told him. 
There was a slight but perceptible pause among the naval officers and State Department officials on the bridge. It was an extraordinary moment in the annals of American military history: A U.S. naval captain had just told the secretary of state that this strategically important base, home to six aircraft carriers and key to operations in Europe and the Middle East, would be essentially inoperable in as little as 20 years. Yes, they could shore up the sea walls for a while. Yes, they could raise roads. But without the massive influx of billions of dollars to fortify and elevate the city of Norfolk, as well as the roads and railroads that connect it to the surrounding region, the base was doomed. 

Oh dear, please, enough already with that red team analysis.

Let's get back to the real scientist scribbling furiously in the lizard Oz:

Wonderful, wonderful stuff. It takes a remarkable mind to talk of inane arguments and the rigours of science, and then trot out a comparison to pundits agreeing on the power of witchcraft in the 16th century.

Better yet, the notion of funding red teams who take a different view, even if that different view happens to be incorrect, because being stupendously and stupidly wrong would challenge the zeitgeist the way Matthew Canavan does ...

Luckily, Canavan produced a eureka moment in the pond, and led it to a remarkable scientific conclusion. 

There is definitely something in the water that they drink in Queensland, and it isn't fluoride ...

And now the pond joins Laura Tingle in a new year's wish ...

And if he could just take Canavan on his caravan as it wends its way off to the sunset, the scientific world would be richer for it, though the comedy world would mourn the loss of two great talents ...

How is Kevin Donnelly still a thing?

Perhaps the most vexatious and tiresome thing still doing the rounds is the ongoing war between fundamentalist Islamic and Christian crusaders ...

For instance, how is this illustration in the Daily Terror this day still a thing?

Kevin Donnelly has been banging on about this sort of stuff for yonks, and once he was a thing - back in the days when the wall puncher is a thing - but frankly the pond would rather be reading about Houdini and Mina Crandon and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, if we must talk of frauds and assorted superstitions (and you can read that story at the NYRB here if you can get behind the paywall).

Donnelly seems to have reached his natural level, scribbling for the tabloid Terrorist. Here he was a week ago ...

The pond is so over it, it's just so tiresome and tedious, what with all the harumphing and carry-on, it's the most radicalising thing the pond has ever managed to read ...

And here is Kev going over exactly the same tedious ground ...

Talk about a bee in the bonnet ... buzzing away, repeating the same mantra over and over again ... Here he is awhile ago ...

You get the impression that what makes western civilisation unique is jingo-istic blow hards ... because here he is again this week ...

What an astonishing pile of jibber jabber and superstition. It doesn't matter how you present it, cut up or sequential, it's just over and over the same sort of shit. Mindless fucking stupidity. As if the Romans and the Greeks hadn't developed the y'artz (or the Chinese or many other tribes - like Africans ripe to be ripped off by Picasso) without a bit of Christianity or T. S. Eliot ...

It's so tedious, such a brain fart, as if quoting one High Anglican poet with a deeply troubled personal life is the beginning and the end of the argument ...

Never mind.

When the rubber hits the ground, and the pedal hits the metal and that caricature is taken into account for the childish way it reinforces everything that's Donnelly-wrong, where does this champion of liberty and rights stand?

What's he got that's actually meaningful, as opposed to banging on like a door on a dunny in a gale about the wonders of Christianity and the evils of Islam?

Well if the pond wanted a spanking, there's no doubt an Islamic fundamentalist somewhere around who'd join with Donnelly to do the job ...

What about teh gays?

Well if the pond wanted a bigoted view of teh gays, no doubt there's an Islamic fundamentalist who'd join with Donnelly to do the job ...

How about jingo-istic displays of mindless spurious nationalism?

So freedom means compulsion and "must"?

Celebration is compulsory - you must be joyous - and war means peace?

Well actually pardon the pond, but it bears no allegiance to a foreign flag or a pommy Queen and we might get around to singing an anthem when they change it to Waltzing Matilda or come up with something better than the current dirge, which is so musically offensive, the pond leaves the room whenever its sounds can be heard ...

And then there's this ...

Actually, the pond is a secularist under threat from rampaging barking mad Christians and fundamentalist barking mad Islamics.

And yes, it's personal, because the Christians have infringed much more on the pond in recent times than any passing Islamic offering a nice tandoor chicken.

What's to be done? Well we must establish a pond secularist state forthwith which will see all signs of religion banished to private rooms ... 

Oh okay, one form of fascism is just as tiresome and as tedious as another form of religious fascism of the spanking kind ...

But we are on the march, we happy band of brothers and sisters, we growing tide of malcontents and dissidents who can't stand much more of this Donnelly-style crap for much longer  ...

There's what's to be done.

Fuck the Islamics and fuck the Christians, and the pond wouldn't mind if Donnelly took a vow of chastity or silence or something ... or just pissed off to the Catholic university and made students and staff at that venerable institution cop his rants over a cup of tea (allowing that he's willing to indulge in strong brews)...

And we thought the Abbott years were over.

What's astonishing was that at one point in those years, Donnelly held an influential position able to determine the shape and future of education in this country...

Never mind, those years are now a fit subject for study, and besides, we feel we owe Rowe a plug, for his many splendid portraits of those useless, wasted years ...

Forget about the weather, it's hard to pick the biggest threat ... the ABC, the Islamics or ASIO ...

It takes an exceptional strength not to mention climate change whenever strange weather patterns and record winds are sighted, but the reptiles are made of stern stuff and did their very best:

Well played reptiles, though the commentary section brought out the usual riff-raff of devoted denialist readers, which may be googled at leisure.

Of course the pond couldn't comment on such matters - enjoy your current, early for the season, heatwave crow eaters - but does suggest shifting the discussion to Miami and Elizabeth Kolbert's excellent report in the latest issue of The New Yorker, The Siege of Miami - currently outside the paywall.

Miami in recent years has been sinking into the water, or the water is bubbling up over it - take your pick - and a lot of people - most notably Republican - are in denial about it.

Kolbert has some telling anecdotes, and a bit of history:

Marco Rubio, Florida’s junior senator, who has been running third in Republican primary polls, grew up not far from Shorecrest, in West Miami, which sounds like it’s a neighborhood but is actually its own city. For several years, he served in Florida’s House of Representatives, and his district included Miami’s flood-vulnerable airport. Appearing this past spring on “Face the Nation,” Rubio was asked to explain a statement he had made about climate change. He offered the following: “What I said is, humans are not responsible for climate change in the way some of these people out there are trying to make us believe, for the following reason: I believe that climate is changing because there’s never been a moment where the climate is not changing.” 
Around the same time, it was revealed that aides to Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, also a Republican, had instructed state workers not to discuss climate change, or even to use the term. The Scott administration, according to the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, also tried to ban talk of sea-level rise; state employees were supposed to speak, instead, of “nuisance flooding.” Scott denied having imposed any such Orwellian restrictions, but I met several people who told me they’d bumped up against them. One was Hammer, who, a few years ago, worked on a report to the state about threats to Florida’s transportation system. She said that she was instructed to remove all climate-change references from it. “In some places, it was impossible,” she recalled. “Like when we talked about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has 'climate change' in the title."

And then there's the present:

To cope with its recurrent flooding, Miami Beach has already spent something like a hundred million dollars. It is planning on spending several hundred million more. Such efforts are, in Wanless’s view, so much money down the drain. Sooner or later—and probably sooner—the city will have too much water to deal with. Even before that happens, Wanless believes, insurers will stop selling policies on the luxury condos that line Biscayne Bay. Banks will stop writing mortgages. 
“If we don’t plan for this,” he told me, once we were in the car again, driving toward the Fontainebleau hotel, “these are the new Okies.” I tried to imagine Ma and Pa Joad heading north, their golf bags and espresso machine strapped to the Range Rover.

Now there's an image ... the new Okies ...

And so on. Have a read, because as usual, the pond must tend to the needs of the hysterical reptiles, and this day they are seriously besieged, not by water and flooding, but by Islamics, the ABC and ASIO, and it's hard to work out which is the direst threat.

All seem life-threatening, as the Islamic bashing so beloved of the reptiles has come under a teensy weeny bit of attack.

Where would this leave the likes of the rabid Donnelly going on and on today for the Terrorists about things he has gone on about for yonks, but is now outside the tent, with his beloved crusader, wall-punching master gone?

And then there was the ABC.

Talk about a threat to the business plan:

Indeed, indeed. The pond bitterly regrets the ABC's move in to radio, and television. If the corporation had only stuck with courier pigeons to reach the nation, then the pond's grandfather's scheme to supply the birds would have worked out, and we would have been filthy rich.

This new technology. How dare they. Restrict the ABC to the speed of the pond's Optus connection and all will be well. Dial up on a good day ...

Alas, even cardigan wearers aren't as fuckwitted as the reptiles when it comes to a little competition in the new world. Harden the fuck up, reptiles ... a new world has dawned, you've never got it, and it seems you never will ...

Lordy lordy, they's got the fear ...

Yes, even before she turns up to work, they's got the jitters and the desire to jibber jabber ...

No wonder there's ongoing talk of the need for an insurgency ...

But who'd have guessed that the real problem this day was ASIO's love for teh Islamics, and the dire threat it posed to the legacy of the burnished insurgent?

It led the pond to an agonising choice ...

Gorge on the delicious creamy fruit loopy delicacy known as the Oreo biscuit, or contemplate the bizarre sight of the bromancer sobbing into his keyboard as he performed an act of treason against Australia's national security agency?

It was tough - hardened criminals have been reduced to tears given much easier choices - but in the end, the pond had no way out, because an assault on the insurgent wall puncher is an attack on the essence, the heart, the soul of the country. 

Or at least on the reptile kool aid machine and its faithful lackeys.

Now it's clear enough here what's going on. Moderation, in any form whatsoever, is anathema to the reptiles. The right to portray Indians as mango chutney munchers and Islamics as foaming, frothing fundamentalists goes to the heart of the business model.

Where would the sweet things be without a goodly dose of hysteria? Why like an NT croc in a waterhole without the sighting of a German tourist for weeks on end ....

What does the pond find hysterically funny about this?

Well you could start with that recycled, endless blathering about the need for a reformation - since it was the Protestants that bunged on that do, not the tykedom of Sheridan and Abbott - and the talk of the enlightenment, since the reptiles have routinely decried climate science and cheered when a crusader creationist was elected to federal parliament - but the capper for the pond was talk of the need to develop acceptance of the separation of church and state ...

School chaplains anyone? Fund religious schools of all persuasions anyone? Refuse to tax the churches anyone? And so on and on, and all at the heart of the wall puncher's love of the Catholic church's ponzi scheme, which must be supported, even as other religions hop on for the ride ...

Throw in chatter about the need to accept pluralism - just try getting the reptiles to blather on about the joys of gays and gay marriage, before moving on to women's rights - and you have a quadrella of nonsense.

Has there ever been a more conformist bunch of lookalike monoculturalists than the lizards of Oz, as alike in the pod as the notorious Tweedle Dee and Dum?

Pluralism? That's only useful for nouns in the world of the reptiles ...

Of course the real crime of that ASIO man was his implication that Abbott was something of a table-smashing dummy, since that would clearly implicate Sheridan as a bromantic lover of table-smashing dummies.

So on the bromancer went, getting more and more agitated in his paid by the endless word way ...

Yes, there's the crime the thought police spotted in an instant. The slapping down of Abbott and the other insurgent Liberals who wanted to have a piece of teh Islamics, bold, brave monoculturalist crusaders that they are ...

And so to the wrap up, which naturally included tears of the 'more in sorrow than anger' kind ...

Do they still scribble "very poor show", these days, in reptile land?

Well as you've seen, they clearly do. What ho, Bertie, eh gad that was a very poor show chaps. 

Now it would help if you were sitting in a creaking leather chair with a glass of port in hand before dashing out to kick over the Spitty motor - feel that Roller roar - to get the mindset perfectly located, but here's the pond's idea of a poor show:

But what a wonderful sight that hurricane Sheridan makes doing loop the loops, as he tries to reconcile a profoundly admirable man in general performing very poorly for pointing out the bleeding obvious ... and thereby somehow politicising security, as opposed to the insurgent doing his level best to use terror to mount a comeback and the reptiles using terror as the foundation of their current crusader business plan ...

Time then for a cartoon ... and more Moir here ... as the desire to wreck the joint continues unabated ...

The pond's readers will know that the reptiles are deluded ... to suggest otherwise would be, well, as offensive as the lizards of Oz ...

So this, in due course and inevitably leads to ...

... this kind of apologetics, aka a profound level of self-delusional rationalising ...

The trouble of course with donning papal infallibility and admitting no error is that the racist trolling can continue, though strangely the defence of "freedom of speech" offered to Crikey, here - he might be a doofus, but he's free to be freely doofus -  has been replaced by the bizarre notion that Leak was being sensitive and caring ... which sits rather oddly with the portrait of the funny mango chutney munching Indians.

The notion that the cartoon was mocking the patronising attitude of rich nations is just another remarkable example of the reptiles' insular capacity for delusion, as was the line in Crikey that "Our readers would have - and, in fact, have - understood this."

Well please allow the pond to be offensive. The cartoon was racist, it wasn't making an incisive and sensible point, and outside the kool aid paywall, it aroused the ire of Indians ... amongst others, as its trolling was intended to do ...

Besides, as the pond has noted before, it wasn't funny.

A cartoonist who has lost his funny? Yep, you won't find a single humorous note in that reptile defence of him, except for the whole preposterous comedy of the defence on offer ...

And so onwards and upwards, because it's the pond's solemn duty to offer tedious old farts brooding on the subject of climate science, and who more tedious than Paul Kelly (not the singer)?

Here in Sydney Cronulla has been battered by a tornado and monster hail stones (you can also be battered by the forced video), so what better time to talk of challenges?

Of course the main challenge is to actually get to the end of a Kelly piece without feeling the IQ slip sliding away ...

Note the way the pompous pedant introduces the subject of actual carbon trading, and remarkably sheets it home to the master of carbon trading, the wall puncher himself.

Naturally this brings tears to the eyes of the walrus, and we too must clap fins with glee and profound gratitude. Or at least Malware should ...

Is there nothing the door-opening, wall punching hasn't left behind as his legacy?

More prejudiced souls might note it takes a wondrous pulling up by the bootstraps to shrink from a carbon tax, while applauding the cleverness of spending oodles on international credits. Such a nice way of not mention actual sordid trading in carbon ...

So this is how reptiles and angels dance on the head of a pin, if you can imagine this prattling Polonius doing any jig other than the jig of hypocrisy ...

And so to a sad book end for those who might have missed it:

 

The thought police?

So that's what they call Indians these days?

Nope, not enraged, but even worse, absolutely not funny. Just sad. 

Really sad that somehow Leak thinks that he's funny, except maybe to Shane Warne and Sam Newman.

Even worse that he imagines he stands in Lenny Bruce's corner. Talk about a fucked in the head angry old man shouting at clouds and making jokes about mango chutney.

What was that Lenny?

The role of a cartoonist is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every 15 seconds ...

What about a cartoonist who has lost the funny?

Take away the right to say fuck, and you take away the right to sake fuck the Murdochians, but if he can take the hot lead enema, then Bill Leak can cast the first stone, rather than spit the dummy and use words when his stock in trade is supposed to be images.

Damn right ...