In which the pond discovers Baxendale is quiet on oppression, and prattling Polonius feels oppressed ...

Others have observed the recent war going down amongst the more vicious and repetitive and simple-minded reptiles, as in Meade here ...

...Lisa Oldfield, one of the cast members of the Foxtel reality show The Real Housewives of Sydney, has to be a frontrunner. Australia needs more feisty outspoken people like Yassmin Abdel-Magied David Stephens Read more Appearing as a panellist on Sky News’ Paul Murray Live this week, Oldfield said the young woman was not ignorant but was a “bitch”. “At the end of the day, I don’t like what she said, I was offended by what she said, but I still support her right to freedom of speech, and my right to be able to turn around and say ‘Lest We Forget Yassmin, that you are brown, you are Muslim and you are a girl and it’s the only reason you have a job at the ABC’.”

And then there was Ackland scribbling about the Yassmin Abdel-Magied bash-a-thon ...

Baxendale is just the latest cab off the rank in this particular reptile bash-a-thon, a conga line of abuse, but with the abuse of a particularly pathetic kind, since it's framed in the usual "when did you stop beating your wife" way ...

Here's how it's done.

The pond heads off to Baxendale's recent pieces for the lizard of Oz ...

The pond is astonished. There's not a single piece about the oppression of women in North Africa, the Middle East, Australia, the hapless complimentary women of the angry Sydney Anglican church, or Catholic women wanting to control their reproductive rights ...

There's a couple of pieces about the 26 year old, but absolutely nothing about oppression ...

The pond does a spot check by heading off to the wittering, twittering Baxendale, here,  and after a cursory inspection, as shallow as a couple of the latest few tweets, concludes that Baxendale hasn't recently tweeted on the oppression of women.

Sadly, and with a great deal of sorrow, the pond concludes that Baxendale is "quiet on oppression" ...

She also drinks way too much kool aid ...

Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Who knows, and who cares. That's the whole point of a persecution, of a reptile style witch-hunt. Just do it ...

How does she live with herself? The pond has no idea, but then the pond has no idea how any of the reptiles justify their lives ...

Of course Baxendale's behaviour is made even more piquant when eyes scroll down to look at prattling Polonius's contribution for the day ...and what do you know, he's moaning about a witch hunt against churches, though with a marvellous irony, Polonius himself will do a witch hunt against the Uniting churches ...

Presumably this can be justified because they're in dire theological error and are off to hell quik stix ...

Perforce the pond must ask why an enraged Baxendale didn't scribble a rebuttal to Polonius's piece, and demand it be published forthwith ...

Sadly, and with a great deal of sorrow, the pond must conclude that Baxendale is quiet on the oppression of children in the Catholic church ...

As for prattling Polonius himself, it's a reminder of what great lengths truculent tykes will go to, in the business of distraction and the art of deflection, refusing to accept responsibility, while doing level best to blame others for all the woes that have befallen the Catholic church  ...

Before beginning the usual tedious journey, the pond should pause to mention the "he (or she, or they) did it too" syndrome ...

It's possibly worth expanding a little on the idea, as found here:

The tu quoque fallacy is committed when it is assumed that because someone else has done a thing there is nothing wrong with doing it. This fallacy is classically committed by children who, when told off, respond with “So and so did it too”, with the implied conclusion that there is nothing wrong with doing whatever it is that they have done. This is a fallacy because it could be that both children are in the wrong, and because, as we were all taught, two wrongs don’t make a right. 
Example 
(1) The Romans kept slaves. 
Therefore: 
(2) We can keep slaves too. 
This argument commits the tu quoque fallacy because it assumes that if someone else does a thing then it’s okay for us to do it too. It does not follow, however, from the simple fact that the Romans kept slaves, that there is nothing wrong with keeping slaves. It is plausible to think that the Romans acted immorally in keeping slaves, and that we would act immorally if we followed their example. The conclusion of the argument therefore does not follow from its premise.

Now to an extended bout of Polonius shouting, but they did it too ...and it's even worse at home, because they do it too there ...

If it takes on the tone of a surly child talking of others doing it too, please, remember, it's Polonius in his dotage ...

Now in a sensible world, Polonius wouldn't go around saying blacks do it too, and they do it at home, and it's all the fault of the liberal media and so on and so forth ...

Better just to take the lumps and acknowledge not just shocking "allegations" but actual real, certified, proved cases of shocking abuse ...

But that's the classic way of ameliorating and sustaining the lie ... as if "allegations" were all that were to be found ...

Then comes a classic tyke gambit, with the talk of an obsession with Catholicism, as if there's no reason to be deeply interested, in a legal sense, in all that's gone on in this bizarre, and in this matter at least, appalling institution ...

This is as good an example as any of the continuing level of denialism that runs rife through the Catholic church - the resentment, the unwillingness to accept what happened, the desire to blame others, even the kitchen sink, for things that occurred within the church ...

The funny thing is that when the pond was attending Catholic school acceptance of personal responsibility was all the go. It was considered a necessary pre-condition for change and reform.

Polonius, deep in the "they did it too" syndrome of seeking absolution, isn't much interested in acknowledging the past as a way of beginning to change or reform.

Instead, Polonius sinks the slipper into other churches ...as noted, seeing the Uniting Church as a small, but juicy target, offering a wonderful chance to distract and deflect ...

The pond knows these lyrics well ...

There's a little Polonius waiting at the counter of the corner church

He's been waiting down there

Waiting half the day

To see if the Uniting Church copped a good bollocking

And gets pushed around

Like the hapless long suffering tykes have been pushed around

Knocked to the ground

So he gets to his feet and he sings

What about them

It isn't fair

They did it too

They're worse than us you see

Not that you'd know it watching the ABC

I've had enough now, the Uniting Church should get its share

Can't you see

I wanna be left alone

But the liberal media just takes more than it gives ...

Maybe the pond disremembered the lyrics in their precise original form. No doubt Rachel Baxendale will provide the exact text when she stops being quiet about oppression of children and women ...

For your sins my child, write ten columns about the angry Sydney Anglicans, and oh, say ten Hail Marys, that should do it ...

Meanwhile, Polonius delivers a final prattle, and did anyone guess, did anyone have the faintest clue, that the ABC would be in his sights ...

At the end of all this, the pond wasn't left with a desire to argue, so much as a desire to ponder a metaphysical question.

Does prattling Polonius think this is the road to heaven? Heck, does Cardinal Pell imagine he's on the road to heaven?

Does anyone imagine that the "he did it too" defence is a goer, and like Icarus will soar into the sky?

Does all this talk of fallible memory and Paul Bongiorno absolve the church of the many actual crimes, as opposed to allegations, that have been recorded by the very necessary and useful Royal Commission?

There's also the 'billy goat but' fallacy ... embodied in those last lines ...

Needless to say, genuine cases of historical child sexual assault should be followed up. But ...

No, there's no need for a "butt", Billy Goat, and there's certainly no need to resort to the deeply weird and increasingly strange Arndt ...

Just take your licks and drop the "butt" or even just the "but" ... 

Instead try to get better at life in the future. Heck it wouldn't hurt if the church tried to get a little better by attending to the words of Christ. The pond is aware that the church likes to select passages from the bible, but really, that line about "suffer little children" isn't a prescription insisting that children must suffer ...

If only there was an actual hell, it would be safe to say that the 'they did it too' and 'billy goat but' syndromes provide a fast track to said hell ... you think your Jesus would tolerate this sort of obfuscating crap? Look into your hearts ... heck, the pond knows that Rachel Baxendale has looked into hers and will no longer be quiet on oppression. Stand by for that Baxendale rocket, prattling Polonius ...

And so to something completely different, for an after-dinner mint refreshment, thanks to a different sort of Pope, with much papal enlightenment available here ...

Hmm, the pond has also been there before ...

In which the pond wonders what glory there is left in Cory ...

To say the pond is disappointed with Cory is an understatement.

There were the grand old days, with 50,000 signing up for his conservative movement and Cory fever about to sweep the country like cholera, or at least dengue fever.

What's it come to?

Tory scribbling about Cory, and the main interest for the pond the way that all the regional Murdochian mastheads are now packaged like rice crisps around the land ...

The HUN?

What a shame, what a tragedy ...

The 'Tiser reduced to servicing the mighty V and the Terrorists?

Croweaters in despair ...and for what?

So Tory can compare Cory speaking ...to a muppet dribbling?

Yes, the pond gets it. There's a HUN rendezvous, and a Terrorist one, and one for croweaters, and eerily, they all manage to look and sound just the same ...

But once there were giants that walked the political landscape, with hopes and dreams and human desires to repair everything ... and sort the world out like some super-duper Tory down under  ...

How Dame Slap held her tremulous breath in hope ...

It was a glory time for Cory, no notion of the gory time that would see him devolve into a regional politician, spurned by other regional politicians who couldn't believe their luck at the way the draw came out ...

Now all that's left to him is regional condescension and parochialism:

"For those of us who have been around politics for a long time, we can understand the consequences and implications of significant decisions like this," the Senator explained. "We got our head around it quickly but it is much more difficult for those who are new to the political environment."

There's not much to get the old noggin around.

The dropkick loser is taking on Nick X, and will be lucky to retain his own seat, let alone drag another Senator across the line.

Why sit in silence listening to Cory blather on as the fearless leader of a party of two,  as opposed to having a little fun on the cross bench?

Already the mocking has begun ... with Tory dishing it out to Cory like he's some sort of non-story ...

Room to grow, and soon there will be spring and summer, and then the leaves will yellow and drop in the fall and things will turn desultory near the end of the allegory ...

Yet once there were hopes and dreams that Cory would be the repository of Tory hopes ... see how Dame Slap saw the future celebrate Cory's broad church, before it turned out to be a small bunch of barking mad Xian fundamentalists ...

That was scribbled less than a year ago, and what's the best Cory has come up with?

An alliance with a bunch of fundamentalists who score the odd seat now and then, and put them in the hands of ratbags and bankrupts ...

Oh sure Tory does her best to put a gloss on the story ...

But blathering on about Aloysius and Snufflepagus shows just how hard it is to spin this bit of nonsense into anything meaningful ...

Cue the reptiles a few days ago sinking in the boot (behind the paywall, googling text required):

Mr Bernardi disputed claims by senior minister Christopher Pyne that the merger proved Australian Conservatives and Family First couldn’t survive alone, saying Mr Pyne’s analysis was “self serving”. “If there was no threat to Christopher Pyne he wouldn’t be making any comment,” he said. “These sort of trouble makers, or power brokers, as they like to style themselves, in the Liberal Party, they are responsible for the...disillusionment by the public, “People like Christopher Pyne don’t stand for anything and they are worried that a coalition government doesn’t stand for anything”.

Sure, Cory did his best to liven things up by having a go at the poodle ...

When asked whether he would consider merging with One Nation, Mr Bernardi said it wasn’t an immediate goal. “I will work cooperatively and positively with anyone,” he said.

No you won't you goose, you stormed away from your colleagues, and ended up with a bunch of loser dropkick fruit loops as your chosen new companions ... you don't have the first clue about working cooperatively and positively with anyone, unless they hail the fast-fading glory of Cory ...

Sure there were some who crawled out of the woodwork to deplore Tory's hoary inventory of hope ...

But the hard hats at the lizard of Oz had already written their derogatory admonitory story ...

Yep, two loser dropkicks get together to salvage what they can, and next thing you know Tory is scribbling a story about muppets not having much of a clue ...

Well the pond is now seriously reviewing its association with, and promotion of Cory. 

Let's face it, each day the pond has to associate with reptile losers and dropkicks. Having a total loser dropkick on the masthead, who thinks the party of Bob Day is a step up, is too rich even for the pond ...there has to be a smidgin of memento mori as things head down the lavatory ...

As usual, the final decisive word must go to a cartoonist, thanks to David Rowe, and more excellent Rowe here, where all stray cats and dogs are welcome...

In which the pond searches the reptile Catholic Boys' Daily Government Gazette in vain for some guidance on good and bad debt ...

The pond is nervous. The Donald doesn't have much more time to issue a one page summary of how he intends to deal with, sort out and solve all the issues confronting the United States and the world by the end of the year. 

Oh sure, he's fixed US tax system, and he's got until Sunday, if we count by Australian time, but still, the pond is nervous ...

Perhaps he should take a note from the local reptiles.

Confronted by ScoMo's bizarre attempt to sort out debt into good and bad, the reptiles naturally completely ignored it, and instead devised a hypocrisy storm for Bill's bus at the top of this day's digital page ...

If they'd wanted to, they could have devised an hypocrisy storm around a more modest truck - well Malware was paying for it, and even his dollars can only drive things so far ...

Was it only a year ago that the gibbering loon known fondly on these pages as nattering "Ned" was talking of moral challenges?

Doing the numbers is a moral challenge?

That's even worse than trying to turn climate science into a moral challenge, as opposed to being a singular challenge for politicians to attempt to sound sensible...

The numbers add up or the numbers don't. That's not a moral challenge, that's do the math (though the pond finds a calculator helps).

So where's nattering "Ned" this day as we learn the great moral challenge has turned into "good" and "bad" debt?

Can anyone find a lead story on the great moral challenge this day on the front digital page?

Nope, there's Coatsie, and Gra Gra on the Donald, and gas locked way, and a get the Muslim pice, and a click bait yarn about the new fast diet ...and so on and so forth ...

What about the tree killer edition? Did ScoMo score a front page hit with his revelation of good debt and bad debt?

Nope, there was a mention of debt in the digital edition, down the page ...

But the reptiles did their very best to ignore the story ... a quick look around the Murdochian empire suggests that the word went out that this wasn't a story ... though the reptiles of Oz could find space near the top of the page for the usual bit of urbane Urban nonsense, spooked by the spectre of feminism ...

What about the Oz columnists? Did nattering "Ned" or any of the other reptiles turn up to discuss ScoMo's revelations?

Fat chance ...

Nope, nothing there, nada, zilch, zero. Though there was a comedy item,  Making students allergic to ideas...

How about making readers allergic to ScoMo's stunning revelations?

The Currish Snail topped the comedy charts with this comedy front page ...

Well the government's got nothing on the reptiles when it comes to burying the dead ...ignoring ScoMo and cultivating a culture of secrecy about "good" and "bad" debt ...

Here's a little more of nattering "Ned" back in 2016 ...

Back then, "Ned" couldn't get enough of great moral challenges and moral duties ...

There's any number of other stories to be found if anyone is interested in a wasted life.

It wasn't so long ago that the reptiles and assorted sites were in a state of near hysteria about undifferentiated debt ...

These days the Aus debt clock ticks over, unmourned and unnoticed here ...

The foolish, unhinged, unschooled, uneducated clock was never trained to understand the difference between good and bad debt ... and it seems the readership of Oz will also take some time to be led by the nose to a deeper understanding ...

It made the pond marvel yet again at the cheekiness of the reptile banner ...

For the informed Australian?

So what's all this about good and bad debt?

Don't you worry about that. Here, have a little more chook food and get into a real moral panic ...

If there was ever a definitive day that the Murdochians abandoned any wet lettuce leaf attempt to pretend that the Catholic Boys' Daily wasn't also the Government Gazette, this is surely the day ...

Is it any wonder that the pond fervently believes the only way forward is a cartoon-led recovery?

More immortal Pope here, and more immortal Rowe here ...

And since the pond started off by mentioning the Donald ...why not share a couple of the logarithm-driven finds that so torment the pond these days ...

In which the pond returns to find the reptiles have wrecked the house, and the bromancer is doing Chance the Gardener impressions ...

What heartbreakers the reptiles are ... the pond only has to turn away for a moment, avert eyes for a nanosecond, and they're up to their usual mischief wrecking the joint, just like the schoolkids who once tortured the pond ...

And so, it seems, are the NSW plods ...

"Fixated persons unit"? That's the name you chose out of the many available, and without even considering for a moment the folly of it all?

Okay, okay, the pond is a little on edge, being a person fixated on reptiles and therefore known as the crazy of the neighbourhood.

But why couldn't you just have settled for something simple and not value laden or evocative of persecution, like "barking mad fundamentalist crazy howling at moon fixated folk we must neuter in our plod way"?

"Fixated," you dumb fucks? You really should have read a little Orwell, or perhaps watched a little Kubrick ...

There you go plods ... it's the unit for tracking the single-minded, fanatical, hung up obsessed weird fuckers who threaten to ruin everything... a credit for the pond would be appreciated ...

Never mind, the pond back to seeing the way the pond steps out of the tent for a moment, isn't gone for very long (just a toe or two lost to the frostbite), and returns to find the reptiles have gone mad ...

There's the stern Savva, writing more in sorrow than fixated anger ...

There's Gra Gra reminding the pond that sections of the Labor party have always been an enthusiastic supporter of jingoism and the White Australia policy ...

Oh go take a boat trip on the Gold Coast with a hooker, in the Australian way ...

And there was the usual climate denialist out and about strutting his fear-mongering stuff ... no, no, not a fear of climate science projections, a fervent fear for his fossilised future ...

And look, over at the Terror, all seems to be forgiven, and the young pup, barely dry behind his ears, ready to learn how to be a savaging hound, tearing the poor and the helpless from limb to limb ... because that's what young, self-satisfied dogs must do ...

Oh fuck, having enough cash to put food on the table and avoid camping out under the light rail is like heroin?

Why not bite off your own leg for a change, you useless self-satisfied Murdochian cur?

Given the many opportunities, it was perverse of the pond to resist all these temptations to settle on the bromancer ... but it's been such a long time since the pond has contemplated a bromancer yarn ...

That's the best we've got? The sun's still rising, and thanks to the climate denialists, it's still heating the planet to a fine old crisp?

Of course the google splash hinted at a deeper silliness ...

Say what? We've already reached the 100 days?

But the pond could have sworn that the Donald still had a couple of days left, in which he could fix everything and pass many exciting measures.

Why the wiki the pond Greg Hunted, "First 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency",  did this impeccable calculation:

The first 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency began with his inauguration as the 45th President of the United States, which occurred at noon on January 20, 2017. The 48th Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, was inaugurated the same day. The 100th day of Trump's presidency will be April 29, 2017.

So what's the date on the bromancer piece? Is it a couple of days out, and he just doesn't care about a day here or there, because he wants to get in early and fill a slot in the reptile rag?

Seems like it, but isn't this a classic Donald thing to do?

Never mind the accuracy, just count the millions of illegal votes and the billions who attended the inauguration and the squillions of this and the zillions of that ...

And so with the 27th transmuted into the 29th by reptile magic, who will save us from the Donald?

And there's the cunningness of the plan laid bare.

Given there's a crazy in the White House, we must turn to a fundamentalist Xian, who conducts his personal relationship with his wife like Billy Graham on steroids?

We must turn with relief to a barking mad evolution-denying, climate science-rejecting, women's bodies are mine to control and legislate on, wound-way too tight crazy, showing signs of being deeply fixated, for our salvation?

What could be more sensible, what could be more reassuring?

And then, as expected, this scribbler for an American proprietor explains how everything is shipshape with the Yanks, even if they have a few dotty uncles in the attic and one in the White House ...

Indeed, indeed, the changes in Syria have been astonishing. Assad given up, the Russians fled, and absolutely not interfering in the French election, and Erdogan turned humble democrat and refusing to enact the phoney result of his fixed referendum ...

Call it the Donald magic, and have another sip of the kool aid, and while you're at it, sob along with the Oz editorialist ...

Mate, mate, we luvs ya, we luvs ya sooh much ... we're such buddies mate. What a pity we couldn't go into the Philippines with ya ...another time mate, maybe North Korea later this year ...

Not to worry, it's time for another bromancer gobbet and then the pond is done ... diddled once again by these restless children, always ready to confuse the pond and make it lose track of the days, of time and fixated meaning itself ...

But it was worth the read to the end, it was worth getting confused and losing a couple of days here and there, just to get to those closing thoughts ...

...the very fact of so many reversals, many of them regarding China, calls into question again the value, or at least the durability, of any pronouncements Trump makes. For all that, the net assessment is that the Trump administration is getting better and that many of the President’s instincts are good.

Chance the Gardener couldn't have put it better. The sun will shine, the spring will come, and then the fall and the winter, and there will be growth, and if you watch a lot of television, it's all good ...provided the ratings are sound and you're not on the Ten network.

Does the bromancer ever listen to what he writes? Does he read it back to himself before sending it out? Or does he think writing with the style and flair of the naming department of the NSW plods will see him hailed for his genius?

Well there is an upside, and it's not that the sun shines except when it rains or disappears back into the Garden of Eden where Mike Pence hopes to live ...

It's just that the wackier it gets, the funnier the Pope gets, and if this isn't the most demented portrait of Cory to do the rounds, the pond would love to see the better one, because it would have to be deeply weird. 

At the mere sight of that glow in the dark Terminator figure consorting with that little old lady, the pond's hair stood on end, and the pond was down the stairs and out the house quick stix, but not before mentioning that there's more demented Pope here ...

No doubt a lot of people have seen the joke, an old one but a goody ...