In which the pond moves from the goose Switzer to cooking with the bromancer ...

(Above: and more essential Rowe here).

It's rare that the pond shouts at the television screen, but whenever Tom Switzer appears it's likely to turn into a shout fest.

Now the pond doesn't usually descend into Colbert's kind of joke - presented in the pre-show Q and A, and here for your entertainment - but Switzer was such a relentlessly stupid goose on last night's The Drum  that the pond felt like giving the fine joke another run (don't let your grandkids click on the link).

You see, Switzer reverted to the standard gambit that Trump was a jokester who was joking about Russia and the emails, and sounded like such a dissembling idiot in the process, that once the pond had shouted itself hoarse, life moved on, and the pond thought that it was the end of it.

If the pond might quote the clown, when asked to Julia Baird to "unpack this" - apparently it's some sort of suitcase, or if you will, a Tamworth "port" - Switzer responded:

"...well look I think this is much ado about nothing ... (hysterical laughter from other panellists) ... no seriously, it is ...if you watch the whole video of Donald Trump, it's clear that he's having fun about this ... and he's really joking about hoping the Russians will find the missing 30,000 emails ... and you know I think the media is so out to get him ..."

And so on and so forth, because the pond can spend only so much time transcribing so much pigswill.

And then, after thinking that was the end of it, the pond was browsing The Atlantic, and came across this from David Frum:

The first excuse for Donald Trump’s amazing press conference on Wednesday, in which he called on the Russians to hack and publish the 30,000 emails wiped from Hillary Clinton’s home server, was: He was only joking. 
That excuse almost immediately dissolved. When Trump was asked by CNN’s Jim Acosta whether he would call on Vladimir Putin to stay out of U.S. elections, the presidential nominee answered that he would not tell Putin what to do. After the conference ended, Trump tweeted out a slightly tidied up request to the Russians to find Clinton’s emails—but to hand them over to the FBI rather than publish them. 
The second excuse, produced on Twitter minutes later by Newt Gingrich, is that Trump’s remark, while possibly unfortunate, mattered less than Clinton’s careless handling of classified material on her server. That defense seems likely to have more staying power than the first—about which, more in a minute. 
But it’s important to understand that there is more here than one unfortunate remark. Over the course of his candidacy, Donald Trump has revealed a remarkably consistent attitude toward Russia—a subject he seems to have thought about almost more than any other in this campaign.

And so on, the rest is here, but it led the pond to an astonishing understanding in newly this topsy turvy world. David Frum made more sense than Tom Switzer.

Imagine that! And there was the pond thinking Frum never made any sense at all, not even when he attempted to recant.

It did help the pond understand why it's adrift in an existential crisis, and all the usual moorings have been rendered meaningless. But how useful is this for day to day living?

There is a solution of course, and that's to switch off The Drum whenever Switzer appears, and this will be done, but in the meantime, the pond has decided it's probably better not to have The Drum on at all ... or else the pond will end up agreeing with recanting American Republicans, and who knows where it will all end.

Well for starters, how stupid of the ALP to rail about the need to back former Chairman Rudd in his bid to rule the world.

They ejected him from leadership of his own party, and then, after desperately bringing him back like a zombie in search of a sequel, they dumped him again, as did the electorate. And this is the man they think should be given backing in a futile exercise involving delusion and grandiosity and narcissism?

Take any Labor heavy aside, and ask them honestly, if off the record, what they thought of Rudd, and after lighting taper, stand well clear. This isn't about conservative v progressive or the rest of the nonsense. It's about competence, and actually remembering events which would count as recent except for anyone trained by Murdochian media.

Go on, Frum up at News.com.au on Bill Shorten: The man who knifed two prime ministers. Frum down at the ABC with Labor's shadow men stuck knife into Rudd.

But why did they take him down? Because he was an incompetent control freak who made a mess of Canberra. And this is what we want to foist on the world? Because he's dinkum and in need of another fair swig of the sauce bottle?

Please, just take one Pope cartoon with a swig of Frum-brand cordial ...

And more Pope here.

Well to keep the international theme going, the pond headed off to the lizard Oz for the definitive views of the bromancer, a sure-fire way to avoid shouting at the TV, with genteel banter all the go ...

Immediately a question sprang to mind before the pond could get past the splash ...

Yes, was anyone listening to the bromancer? Does anyone care what he has to say? Could anyone be bothered reading him?

And then as the pond got into the re-hash, another question arose ...

Actually, it wasn't so much a question, as a re-treat of an old Woody Allen joke:

“There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort reading the bromancer in The Australian, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the commentary in this rag is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and 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 spent it reading the bromancer.”

Yes, whether anyone is still reading the bromancer is moot, but that's your small portion for the day, and for this they charge you? And when it comes to the key line, the wretched bromancer can't bring himself to state the obvious.

Which is that Obama was equating Trump's mindless home-grown demagoguery with communism, fascism and jihadism ...

Any other commentator caught the dog whistle immediately. The pond selected this bit from Vox at random, there being dozens of others (have the reptiles ever wondered why their business plan is in peril?)

Strong stuff bromancer? It's the apocalypse! (and the rest of Vox here).

The bromancer was so tedious - and so tediously short - and so like Switzer in print form, that to get its dose of fun, the pond had to head off to the comments beneath the bromancer piece, and amongst the usual bunch of angry old men shouting at white clouds, scored this ...

Oh Dan, Dan, Dan, you can't talk sense to reptile devotees, and really is the unhinged constituency only to be found in the comments section. What about the reptile commentariat? How about a complaint that this day there is no Moorice column to satiate the senses?

Never mind, come join with the pond, Dan, and let us shout at Tom Switzer on the television together ... there's no good talking sense to reptiles.

And so to an excerpt from a First Dog cartoon ...

The cartoon can be found in full here, and just to keep First Dog on theme ...

The pond plumps for 3.

It's certainly worked for climate change in Oz la la land.

That full cartoon here, and finally, this bit of social media montage caught the pond's eye ...

The Russians are coming, but thanks to Gary Johns, only Christian husbands and wives are allowed to come ...

(Above: and more excellent Rowe here).

There's no doubt that the US election exceeds any of the loonery to be found locally, and by a good Tamworthian rural mile ...

And so on, that full story at the NY Times here.

But the pond's beat involves the local reptiles, and it just so happens that yesterday the pond was out and about on the road yesterday, and heard Phillip Adams interviewing Julian Assange.

Well "interviewing" is a trifle grand, it was more like an Australian cricketer throwing pitiful underarm pitty pats down the wicket, mollygrubbing and fawning and scraping in the usual way, and avoiding all the hard questions and hoping New Zealanders wouldn't mind ...

No mention of Assange's avowed hatred for Clinton and his determination to stop her winning the presidency, a common enough story, as can be found at the NY Times here, and at Daily Kos here.

Now the pond can understand a deep fear and loathing of the Clintons, having done a bit of it, but then there's the alternative ...

It would have been interesting to hear Adams ask a penetrating question, say whether Assange preferred Trump winning to Clinton. The pond knows the theory, make it worse, let it all fall down, and after the cleansing revolution, all will be well again. It's the favourite notion of all the barking mad fundamentalists doing the rounds, millenarian and Islamic ...

That's the theory, and then there's the alternative ...

None of this troubled Adams, and he accepted Assange's fudge that the Russians had nothing to do with the hack, nor did he ponder on Trump's bromance love of Vlad the impaler, fellow prospective future dictator. If the pond happened to be in the Baltic countries right at the moment, or, while speaking of other dictators, South Korea and Japan, it would be shivering in its boots ...

Adams burbled, meandered and murmured away from it all, though he did follow it with an interview, where it became clear that perhaps the Russkis might have had something to do with the hack ...

In short, as an interview, it was an epic pandering fail, a reminder of why the pond never bothers with Adams. Instead, please allow the pond to commend a lengthy piece by George Saunders, entitled Trump Days in the tree killer edition of The New Yorker, but for the moment available outside the paywall online as Who Are All These Trump Supporters?

Saunders concluded on a gloomy note, though he provided plenty of evidence for his gloom:

“Donald J Trump a guardian angel from heaven,” reads a poster I retrieved from the floor of the Rothschild rally. “his spirit and hard work as president will make the people and America great again!!!” 
Although, to me, Trump seems the very opposite of a guardian angel, I thank him for this: I’ve never before imagined America as fragile, as an experiment that could, within my very lifetime, fail. 
But I imagine it that way now.

Listening to Adams interview Assange reminded the pond just how easily fragile experiments in probing radio could fail thanks to quavering, quivering, jelly-wobbling liberalism ...

But as always, to counterbalance the gloom, there needs to be a reptile feast, a fattened up goanna heaped on the barbecue of life, so that we might all enjoy the meal ... and what better meal than a Gary Johns?

Of course it wouldn't be a Johns piece if he didn't proceed immediately to make some typically wild Johnsian assumptions and assertions ...

But first please allow the pond to recall some recent fall-out arising from a Daily Terror front page, as recorded by Media Watch and already mentioned on these pages ...

And that's before anything has happened in relation to a plebiscite. That's just the noble, valiant work of the Devine and the Terrorists ...

Well suitably primed, it's time to read on ... and would you believe that Johns wants to get out the old quill pen and the inkwell and exchange correspondence in a gentlemanly way ...

Yes, it's all there, accusing others of wanting a digression, and then embarking on a hate-laden distraction, not least the notion that everyone must question their sexuality, and similar barking mad culture war notions, while at the same time deploring culture wars ...

As for posting letters ... there must be some fundamental anal retentive ye oldie worldly up his arse aspect to Johns that a Freudian would dearly love to explore. Or perhaps he's angling for a gig to make Australia Post relevant in this crazy modern world ... or perhaps his natural home is with pedantic prattling Polonius conducting courtly correspondence.

Never mind, it's about time for Johns to raise his own wild assertions, and add to the fear-mongering, with a plea: "won't someone think of the fundamentalist, bigoted, homophobic, anti-fornicating kind of Christian" ...

Forget the same sex aspect. The covenant forbids all sexual activity unless it's between a husband and a wife? You have to get hitched to have a fuck?

Where on earth would that leave Donald Trump? Stuck with his first wife?

Just think about this for a moment. Imagine Gary Johns in a state of utter despair because staff and congregation freely entered into a covenant which provided them with a one way ticket to Jonestown, and damned pesky liberals interfere with their right to drink the koolaid ...

Well it's perhaps an extreme example, but isn't that an interesting last par, because in his own indirect way, Johns suggests that the horrors of a plebiscite are heading our way ... no doubt blended with plenty of stories about long suffering Christian fundamentalists who just have some mighty peculiar ideas about sex, love and the whole damn thing. 

What's the bet that things might get a little tricky when a Muslim school insists that as a condition of attending it, the school demands that staff and students freely enter into a convenant to conduct jihad so that eventually they might have sex with an indeterminate number of virgins in paradise ...

Oh it's a funny old world, sure enough, and thank the long absent lord Pope can discover humour in anything, even the ACCC ... and more excellent Pope here ...

In which the pond wonders whither Soph and celebrates the idiot inane one more Micallef-farewelling time ...

It was of course not just the question on the pond's lips, but the question haunting everyone in the land:

You talk like Marlene Dietrich 
And you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire 
Your clothes are all made by Balmain 
And there's diamonds and pearls in your hair 
You live in a fancy appartement 
Of the Boulevard of  Colin Howarrrrd
Where you keep your Rolling Stones records 
And a friend of Sacha Distel 
But where do you go to my lovely 
When you're alone in your bed 
Tell me the thoughts that surround you 
I want to look inside your head 
I've seen all your qualifications 
You scribbled and screeched for the Punch
And the blame you lumped on the feministas
Your loveliness goes on and on, yes it does ...

And so on, but thankfully, instead of a song, the reptiles of Oz were on hand to answer:

  

It was devastating news for the pond. The senate is her obvious home?

Why not so long before, the pond had been salivating at the news that once more sweet Soph would return to a place in the pond pantheon, and become a hurler of dung ...

Thanks be unto the Bolter, and instead of consigning sweet Soph to the Senate, the pond was expecting an announcement within the week that the reptiles of Oz had hired her to talk on many matters, there being plenty of room. Or if not, perhaps a dog botherer or suchlike riff raff could be persuaded to fall on their sword and make room for the mighty Soph ...

She was still being exceptionally adept at hurling the dung, showing off her assignment of blame skills ...

Damn you left wing media, damn you filthy Herald Sun, you raving socialist loons, damn you Melbourne-based feminists and your siren song to the voters of Indi. Of course the cockies couldn't resist your hairy armpits and voted as you insisted in your overbearing matriarchal way ... this is why the country is heading to ruin, beguiled by dangerous feminists from Melbourne.

Perhaps the pond should provide a little context as to why it had lived in hope...

And then there was that singular lack of bitterness, that brave ability to cope and accept full responsibility that has always been a mark of the Soph in action ...

Yes, she added to the vote, and what a fine value addition it was, and what a fine vote, in much the same way as she's value added to the submarines ...

And there the matter rested, and the pond waited in anticipation. Sure, Abbott had gone silent and it was left to gorgeous George to provide some farewell material for the last Micallef episode ... (the pond will miss the lad, unlike The Chaser's last inglorious effort) ...

Oh dear, the pond completely forgot the Soph and her future. It seems that the bloody feminists and unionists and gorgeous George and Micallef are all disrespecting her and not paying attention ...

But the reptiles still care. They're still fixated and beguiled. Are they doing the dance? Can we expect an announcement soon, for this very day the reptiles had another go at Soph's future. Someone must have told them about the Bolter interview, and they finally caught up ...

Yes, that'd be the same Rick Wallace who only recently, with the help of his fellow reptile, had consigned the Soph to the Senate ...

300k dropped on a loser? Dear sweet long absent lord, but what of her future? 

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Talk about inscrutable. There was the pond thinking that "commentator" might actually mean "commentator".

But it seems that our Soph is a right old Humpty Dumpty and she pays her words overtime to make them mean what she wants them to mean, and only Rick knows what they mean. So "commentator" in its inscrutable, defiant way, actually meant she would simply not be involved as a participant any more ...

'Would you tell me please,' said Alice, 'what that means?' 
'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Soph looking very much pleased. 'I meant by "commentator" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'
 'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone. 
'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Soph, 'I always pay it extra, and give Rick Wallace a little on the side to write a lengthy explanation.' 'Oh!' said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark. 
'Ah, you should see 'em come round me of a Saturday night,' Soph went on, wagging her head gravely from side to side, 'Nick, and the words, for to get their wages, you know.'

Not to worry, the pond lives in hope. How soon before the reptiles of Oz come to their senses and make Soph an offer? How soon before she sits next to the Bolter and Peta in Sky glory?

Meanwhile, all the pond is left with are fond memories of inane idiots as celebrated by Micallef ... but while it's an old joke, strangely the pond never gets tired of the telling ...

Cue the idiot inane within a couple of hours ...

Oh yes, it gets the pond every time, tish boom, and you can farewell Micallef on iView here ...

In which the pond worries about the Devine's descent into madness but is saved by the bouffant one's safe pair of 'do nothing' hands ...

(Above: and more David Rowe here).

It's the business of the pond to measure the temperature in the herpetarium on a daily basis. Too much heat and the reptiles are likely to go mad. Too little and the blood begins to chill.

There are signs that the Devine is becoming increasingly rabid, weird and demented. Her response to the distressing NT footage?

Drug-addicted, hopeless mothers having babies they can’t look after to a string of feckless, often violent men, is a recipe for intergenerational disaster. It’s not as if radical solutions aren’t on the table. It’s just no one in government has the courage or interest in taking them seriously.

And what might these radical solutions be that we need to take seriously?

Jeremy Sammut, from the Centre for Independent Studies, made the moral case for adoption to rescue Australia’s abused underclass children in his book last year, “The Madness Of Australian Child Protection”. 

Indeed, indeed. What we need, above all else, is another stolen generation. That'll really fix things. Not that there's ever been a stolen generation, the pond hastens to add ...

In another searing recent book, “No contraception no dole: tackling intergenerational welfare,” former Labor minister Gary Johns, says the child abuse crisis is so urgent that contraception needs to be compulsory for those on welfare, “to help crack intergenerational reproduction of strife.” Both authors have made a serious study of how to arrest the seemingly intractable crisis of child abuse. Yet their prescriptions have been ignored or damned as illiberal.

Indeed, indeed, But when will the pond's prescription - contraception needs to be compulsory for those employed by News Corp - be taken seriously rather than ignored or damned as illiberal?

Just think about it. The reader abuse crisis is now so urgent that surely contraception needs to be compulsory for those living on Chairman Rupert welfare payments.

Both Gary Johns and the pond are only following in the immortal steps of Jonathan Swift's 1729 A Modest Proposal ...

If you're not certain about Swift's solution, might the pond suggest the addition of a little garlic, ginger, pepper and chili?

Somehow - it could only be done with a leap and a Devine bound -  we then move from events in the NT to the live cattle trade to the Devine rabbiting on about greyhounds, and won't someone think of the greyhounds and ...

It’s a sweet vocation to campaign for the welfare of animals. But we have distorted the soft-hearted compassion of teenage girls into a moral cause greater than any other, except perhaps climate change. 
The problem is that animal rights groups have moved into extreme territory where animal rights are equal to human rights, where animal life is as precious as human life, where animals and humans can have sex as long as it is consensual, where animals are equal to people.

So suddenly distressing events in the NT are conflated with climate change, and animals and humans having consensual sex?

The Devine ends with an impassioned cry, a howling at the moon ...

The burgeoning of animal rights law as an industry fuels this madness. The result is that outrages against human children rarely get the attention they deserve, and if they do, it’s all too late.

Indeed, indeed, it is simply impossible to chew gum and rub the tummy at the same time, and all this talk about animals and cruelty simply distracts attention from the munchkins.

Remember, if you happen to feed your dog or cat, it can only be done in a way that puts your mite in mortal peril ...

If that isn't full-blown weird, the pond would like better examples. And then, at the bottom of the Devine outing, came this defence of the Devine's most recent bout of epic madness - well she does toss around 'madness' like a Scot tackling the caber.

It should be remembered that the Devine was encouraged in that madness by the Terrorists, who featured her on the front page, backed her with an outraged editorial and lavish reporting ... and now her defence of that outrage comes down to this tragic dribble of pedantry ...

There's a joke in there somewhere, but is it wise or proper to make a joke about the Devine's gradual descent into madness, haunted by images of humans consensually fornicating with animals? You know, because climate change, because greyhounds ...

This is the sort of thing that sends the Devine into a frenzy ... (more in pdf form here)

And yet every day the pond applies these simple guidelines in relation to TG friends, and no doubt the reptiles manage to do the same to their new star columnist, Catherine "just call me Cate" McGregor ...

But where were we? Suddenly, thanks to the foam-flecked frothing of the Devine, we're jumping all over the bigoted homophobic place, when we started off in the NT ...

Thankfully, there was one solid, safe pair of reptile hands available to give a sensible response ...

Yes indeed, the pond always thought that the royal commission into child abuse in sundry institutions was a profound mistake, a classic example of politicians acting without a real appreciation of what they'd begun.

The subsequent suffering of the institutions has moved the pond greatly, and such suffering should surely be deplored ...

So everybody knew, for at least 18 months?

Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion says he was not aware of allegations of abuse within the Northern Territory juvenile detention system, because it had not "piqued his interest".

"I wish I'd known what I know today, or I knew yesterday afternoon, some time ago, but the facts of the matter were I didn't know," Senator Scullion told reporters in Canberra.

"Yes, this is my patch, and the last time, just for clarity, I can recall back in October vaguely last year, there was some commentary in the media about this, but it was all about 'this has all been taken care of', 'there is another investigation and we are adopting recommendations' and that sort of thing," he said. "And I made an assumption … that the Northern Territory Government were taking care of this matter and that I didn't take any further action in that. (And more here).

And so on and so forth. So everybody knew about it, except those who say they didn't, and nobody did anything, and the most appropriate course of action is to keep on doing nothing, because in time, with a bit of luck, it might all go away. Or it might not, but that'll be then, and certainly not now.

But at least the bouffant one got one thing right. By involving the NT government as a leading player in the inquiry, Malware has once again made a fatally flawed move.

Remarkably the NT News has this day decided to turn itself into a newspaper.

Well at least the reptiles of Oz have stayed solid, cluck clucking about how it's all the fault of the lumpenproletariat, and worrying that an actual inquiry might lead to unforeseen consequences. And anyway, where's the news, because everyone knew and nobody did nothing and that's the way things should stay.

Do something, anything? Next thing you know, institutions and politicians will be suffering, and how unfair is that ...

And so to a Pope cartoon, and more Pope here ...

In which the pond heads off to the lizard Oz for an obiter dicta referendum ...

Sad to say, the Caterist must be swept away from the top of the Faraway Tree, but what a way to do it, because the pond was mightily impressed by the bile and the hate and the foaming froth and fear generated by the vitriolic parfume of the Devine and the Terrorists ... and all from that humble front page ...

Well it wouldn't have done to splash Girls School Bans Girls, a bit too oxymoronic even for the Terrorists. 

The lizards of Oz are much more cunning in the way they go about their business.

How to stir trouble, how to create doubts and fears about a plebiscite already run out of steam?

Why that's easy, deliver a clarion call for a referendum!

What a clever ploy this is, and it instantly reminded the pond of the wise words of prattling Polonius.

Which in turn reminded the pond of Martin Flanagan's patient explanation that 'Martin' wasn't the same word as 'Richard' in Can you bear it? The confusion of Gerard Henderson ...  because you see, Polonius had started off this way ...

Well there's no good following that link to the Media Watch Dog, because it takes you to the latest issue ... and anyway, this dwelling on plebiscite v referendum was just an elaborate ruse on the pond's part to provide an excuse to link to the reader-inspired Richard Akcland report Hoist with his own pedantry, about Fr. Gerard scribbling for the Catholic Boys' Daily with no trace of sackcloth or ashes ...

Never mind, in all that fuss and confusion, the pond almost entirely forgot that we should be dealing with one Barry Maley and his own handsome attempt at fuss and confusion of a plebiscite v. referendum kind, so here we go ...

Now this is excellent stuff. It means that after a hard-fought, Devine- and Terrorist-led campaign of frothing and foaming fear and mis-representation, the entire result can be dismissed as a short-changed rush to judgment, a hasty misinterpretation and legally suspect ...

Of course Maley - who seems to think that marriage should an interminable life sentence, though perhaps not in the case of Donald Trump - is much loved and cited by the Pellists and other forward thinking types married to Christ - and it turns out that back in 2002 he was a finalist in a prestigious award ...

Or so it says at the ACU page here.

And the eminent scholar had his own splash at his CIS home ...

Hmm, a 2002 finalist with a 2003 book?

Never mind, on we go with the rest of the careful campaign to explain why even a plebiscite might be completely useless ... or even, if the pond might be so grand and Maley Latinate, obiter dicta ...

... though perhaps the pond should observe in passing that in its youth obiter dictum was a matter of some concern, as explained by the eminent John Henry Newman ...

Oh dear, dear, there's a lot more here, and what a distraction it is, when we really should be most concerned with the Maley-ian matter at hand where we might once again see obiter dicta in action ...

Well there was a pompous and portentous blast, as useful a bout of obiter dictum as even a Newman might love.

Of course the unstated hope - perhaps a hope better unstated - is that by imposing the rigorous definition of a referendum, whereby all states must be carried as well as the vote, a stringent requirement that has seen many more referenda fail than get up - it might well be possible to defeat the proposal.

Perhaps the Currish Snail could lead the way in Queensland? Might the west be carried and the outrageous proposal to undermine the catholic understanding of the nature of marriage be terminated?

Could Miranda the Devine and the Daily Terrorists sway the mob to hurl vile abuse at anyone in the vicinity?

Such is the way mischief is made by mischievous minds, facilitated by the reptiles of Oz ... and there will be a lot more of this as the plebiscite approaches, from the overt Devine Terrorists to the legalistic Maleys ...

The onion muncher has left Malware with a corker and the cork is now popping ...

And please, no insolent memes asking obvious questions ...

Let the mayhem begin ...