The pond is taking a break ...

 The pond is taking a medically-inspired, though not inspiring, break ...

As to the pond's return, it's best to think of it as a Malware-devised NBN outage - in a day or so, in a week or so, or whenever ...

On the upside, the pond won't have to be watching Media Watch, which a correspondent noted was mentioned in despatches at the Weekly Beast ...ABC news staff hit back at Media Watch over coverage of trans issues, though to be fair, the pond had already noted that exercise in bigotry some days ago ...

Meanwhile, the pond knows that herpetological and loon studies will be vigorously pursued by correspondents, albeit without the aid of reptile gobbets surfacing on the pond like rancid scum ...

There will be much to research ... can Boris beat a lettuce, will Steve Bannon ever see the door of the clink, will the mango Mussolini answer the call to testify in the inimitable way that professional liars do, and how many more columns can the lizard Oz run advising that nuking the country is the answer to the allegedly non-existent problem of climate change.

All the best in that hunt ....

In which the pond does a history tour from ancient Greece to medieval times, taking in a nuking of the country, as you do when visiting the lizard Oz ...

 

The thing the pond loves about the hole in the bucket man is the routine serving up of sublime irrelevancy ...

There was the pond in a state of constant nerves, trussed up by its hourly Trusswatch and our Henry's way of coping was to head back to the ancient Greeks for a history lesson... (astute readers will be off with John Crace, advising that the lettuce won at a canter).

Meanwhile, on another planet, the problem that the pond apparently faces is not Boris and the Tories, but a fear of Boris and the Tories ...

That anxiety, that trauma was evoked by one panel in a triptych by Fiona Katauskas ...

Meanwhile, the determined to be quaintly irrelevant ancient one rabbits on in his interminable way, a way that has become far too familiar to the pond ...

There's no doubt Ukraine will find much to learn in this astute study, and Vlad the Terrible himself will appreciate that even sociopaths can gain much insight from the ancient Greeks ...

Why it's likely relevant in all sorts of matters ...

Sorry, the pond is finding it hard to stay with our Henry this week, having spent far too many years studying history and emerging none the wiser ...

Speaking of that, the pond was forced to turn to a Rowson to evoke the unspeakable horror of recent days ... though he had more of an Inquisition take on things, and the pond isn't yet ready to deal with medieval times ...

But happily that torture has ended, and now there's just a short gobbet of our Henry to go ...

As for Victory, there is much the hole in the bucket man could learn from fighters, not quitters ... bye ...

And so to a novelty item at the lizard Oz. Someone peddling nuking the country as a solution to all that ails us ...

The pond is, of course, being post-ironic, because such yarns keep turning up, sometimes on almost a daily basis ...

As usual, the pond likes to check up on the credentials, which could be found here ...

Forget the Hon ... he has a brief wiki listing here, back in 2019 giving up politics for a senior position with Australia Post, top notch credentials for nuking the country ...

Your correspondent for the day had this team entry ...

And with all that established, it's time for another gobbet of nuking goodness ...

What surprised the pond in all this talk of nuking the country was that the correspondent's web site seemed to suggest that hydrogen was all the go ...

Memo to team, update site to reflect the way that nuking the country will sort everything out ...

A Plan B that at least considers nuclear energy? 

All that bang, and then to end with a whimper, an "at least considers"? Oh Pericles, Pericles, what have we here ...

And so to a pond treat, because nothing has been genuinely eccentric so far in this post. Henry has always been Henry, and nuking the country has become a favourite reptile meme ever since the reptiles realised that climate science might be a thing, and they needed a new way to spread FUD.

Cackle-headed Claire decides to go the medieval witch route ...

Um, actually Claire, there are still people who gather each Sunday to devour human flesh and drink of human blood, and are thought to be normal members of society ...

The pond could go on and on about that ... there's the gold plate mob, the E-meter loons, the Hindu cow thing and so on, and the quest for salvation in Tories or MAGA types, and Tuckyo Carlson's latest documentary, which is weird even for him ... per the Daily Beast (possible paywall) ...

The pond loves bro science and commends it to all interested in nuking the planet.

Meanwhile, the medieval cruelty continues ...

Sorry, sorry, the pond is a trifle distracted, what with so many soy globalist conspiracy distractions to hand ... back to cackle-headed Claire ...

Indeed, indeed, but thankfully the fix is an easy one. If cops just go back to kneeling on necks for nine minutes, or until life is extinguished, the problem with the murder and crime rate will simply vanish, and the pond can turn its mind to contemplating the infinite wisdom of the infallible Pope ...

A woke yoga mat? That's possibly more dangerous than the soy globalist conspiracy ... and meanwhile, there's just a gobbet of the cackling to go ...

 

Indeed, indeed: "cascades that promote right-wing causes ... tend not to affect mainstream cultures."

Tell that to the MAGA mob and the storming of the capital and all the rest of it, and if you happen to be a little Englander, the delusion of Brexit wherein all your current woes began ...

The pond wondered why it settled for the kind diminutive "cackle-head" when "fuckwit" would have been just as appropriate.

But now as we're speaking of establishing a new equilibrium of the kind established just after the printing press - the kind that might be seen in the wars kindly listed by a wiki here for the 15th-17rh centuries and so on up to two world wars in the twentieth, because lordy lordy. did the printing press establish an equilibrium, or what ... (and if you want real comedy about the notion of the benefits of printing presses, take in Jim Waterson's Rightwing papers backpedal after helping Liz Truss reach No 10).

And now, speaking of a lack of equilibrium, let us end by turning to the dangers of taking a biking on the wild side, and of doing a Marlon Brando imitation, thanks to the immortal Rowe ...

In which it's just a serve of Killer, the lizard Oz editorialist and Gina's IPA ...

 

So here's a story at the top of the lizard Oz for which the pond could only muster a sigh of 'told you so' tired resignation ...

All those years the reptiles did their best to destroy the NBN to aid the Chairman and eventually money had to be paid out because of the third rate wretched really unique* (*ABC licensed) MTM foisted on the country by Malware after he failed to carry out the onion muncher's order to completely destroy it. 

Now that a fix is required, the reptiles inevitably resort to "spending fears", and so it goes ...

That's another reason the pond will be ignoring petulant Peta this morning ... she and the onion muncher did much to send Malware on his path as a wrecker, and yet she has the cheek to imagine she's "centre right" ...

What's the point of blathering about smaller government and freedumb? 

Check out the state of Britain at the moment, and you'll find freedumb and the slashing of government and it gets weirder by the day, with that ratbag ideologue Suella Braverman the shortest-serving home secretary at 43 days ... what a hoot, if you don't live in little England but can read Suella Braverman resignation letter: what she said and totally meant, or Suella Braverman’s fall would be astonishing at any other time. But chaos is the new normal or Welcome to the doom loop of Tory Britain: an austerity that kills, a democracy routed ...

A cartoon will help with all that ...

Talk about freedumb, but the pond, being in the business of herpetological studies, must turn to the gloating of the Killer ...

Splendid stuff - abortion, who cares, just slump into gloomy autumn reality, and whatever you do don't ask Killer for help with control of your body - and Killer naturally isn't worried about the wondrous qualities of some of the candidates ...

Back to Killer, and the pond has a pound to a penny that at some point Covid will enter the picture, with climate science also in the running, because Killer loves to help fuck the planet ...

Indeed, indeed, and if you happen to be a Killer on a Killer wage, what's 10.1% inflation or a planet fucked by climate change? Above all, don't worry about the quality of the candidates ... 

...instead feel the Covid fear ...

What's Covid to a brave warrior, what's this nonsense about climate science? The pond hesitated to run the next cartoon because Killer wouldn't see the humour or would identify with the wrong character ...

As for the rest, it is now routine and tedious for the pond to complain about the slim pickings below the fold in the lizard Oz...

Three lizard Oz editorials in a row early in the morning, because the chairman is too tight to spring for a loon festival...

Only one stood out and it wasn't the blathering Westacott, nor the lizard Oz editorialist suddenly realising that the UK was fucked ...

Whenever the pond sees "cancel culture" it reaches for its Glock ...

Meanwhile, over at another News Corp publication ...

Shocking stuff, but it got worse ....

And then came the standard reptile blather about not visiting the sins of the father on to the daughter ...

But this worm-laden apple didn't fall far from the remarkably deformed tree, and has funded the most wretched and regressive organisation in the country ...

Per Mike Seccombe in The Saturday Paper, and not so long ago, only back in July 2018...

It produces Killer's favourite bedtime reading, and at one time, Dame Slap was its chairman, and now maybe isn't, but who knows, it's such a furtive, secretive organisation, with so many regressive agendas it's impossible to keep count ...

Back in the day it was smoking, but now it's "what have you got?", with a love of coal and climate science denialism and infesting the Liberal party with far right loons all the go ...

Look at that baleful line-up of stooges and dropkick losers ...and that's as good a reason as any to realise there's some cultures that need cancelling ...

There's a lot of coal-washing going down in that sports funding ...

So when the lizard Oz editorialist scribbles this ...

... the pond remembers that this coal and iron washing produces this ...

And then there's the climate science denialism and the hate for renewables, and so on and so forth ... and all the pond could think was fuck the reptiles, fuck Gina and fuck the IPA, if only because they're at the centre of a freedumb loving campaign to fuck the planet ...

The pond apologises for this crunched infallible Pope, but it is on theme ...

And there was this from the immortal Rowe ...

And the pond couldn't resist this smell of Musk, because at any EV charger now you'll see Tesla owners looking not so cocky, and perhaps even a little brand-shamed ...

In which the pond offers a light serving of a discriminating Dame Slap and "Ned" offers a little self-correction, perhaps with bonus cilice

 

The pond absolutely denies that it hides out under a desk when heading to the reptiles each morning. At best (or worst) only a portion of the pond is under the desk ...

And so to another day with the reptiles, and as usual there's moral outrage at the top of the digital edition, with the bromancer leading the way ...

It was the same down below, with more uproar and outrage ...

Actually, reverting to a proper stance on Jerusalem showed some bravery in terms of the Israel lobby and the usual reflexive indignation of the reptiles ...

The pond has no issue with the move, and that's the end of that. 

It's not anti-Semitic to note that Israel currently runs a form of apartheid and several gulags, and consistently gets away with a land-grabbing theocracy in a way that evokes memories of the mad mullahs of Iran and the killer sheiks of Saudi Arabia ..  though contemplating all that did remind the pond that it would rather be elsewhere ...

For starters, today is Marina Hyde day, and she always produces a genuine bromancer-free doozy ...

If you’d told any of us this time a week ago that Jeremy Hunt would be chancellor – apparently in the German sense – then we’d have struggled to get our heads round it. I mean, he’s already died in two timelines (once in the 2019 leadership contest and once in the one earlier in the summer). In our new timeline, austerity is both still happening and about to happen all over again. The narrative threads of the current political crisis are now so completely nutso that you have to conclude the Conservative Cinematic Universe has officially entered its multiverse era. Only the true fanboys can explain it.
Of course, the key difference is that the long-term governing party is not on to a winner with this. Whereas Marvel have found a way to almost guarantee money from the notoriously unpredictable movie business, the Conservatives have managed to preside over a period from 2016 in which the UK economy contracted from being 90 % the size of Germany’s to now being just 70%. Eventually the sole remaining business in our economy will be the hipster trade in ironic In Liz We Truss mugs. I don’t know if this was forecast by any of Truss’s wingnut economists, but I guess it’s called growth? (Incidentally, speaking of Liz’s spirit economists and thinktank army, do now settle in for literally decades of them whining that the problem with their ideas was that they weren’t done properly, like communism or Brexit.)
Meanwhile, Westminster convention demands we style Jeremy Hunt as “a safe pair of hands”, even though he was health secretary at the time of a preparedness simulation into what would happen if the UK was hit by a pandemic, and failed to draw many of the necessary lessons. (If you’re watching the past three years on catch-up, I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but that does all turn out to be a bit of a pisser.) Primarily, this should put into perspective quite how unsafe all the rest of the hands are. Take the cabinet. This morning we learned from armed forces minister James Heappey that none of them even realised Truss’s mini-budget had the potential to backfire.
Or take Thérèse Coffey – the actual health secretary – who on Sunday admitted she has illegally shared her own supply of antibiotics with others, in an absolutely disgracefully deranged revelation she seems to have got away with simply because further disgracefully deranged things have happened after it. Has a senior minister blamed Coffey’s attempt to blow up years of public health messaging on “Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine” yet? – an increasingly gross reflex dodge that gets more distasteful as an excuse for any number of our domestic political failings every time they use it.

And then there was a cracking Crace, inter alia ...

...shortly before 7am, the junior defence minister was in the broadcast studios. It wasn’t a great success. First he told Sky News that everyone in the cabinet had signed off on Kamikwasi’s mini-budget. Are you seriously telling us that no one in government had any concerns, said Kay Burley. I could have understood if Kwarteng and Librium Liz had gone rogue and forgotten to tell you. But for all of you to sign it off with no OBR forecasts is an unprecedented level of dim.
Heappey nodded enthusiastically. It had been a huge honour to have participated in a decision that had cost the country more than £10bn and people with mortgages thousands of pounds each. He took the doctrine of collective irresponsibility immensely seriously.
By the time he made it round to the Today studios, Heappey could barely string a sentence together. Which bizarrely made him sound slightly more coherent and plausible. He did at least attempt some gravitas. Truss had made no secret of her desire to tank the economy. She had openly boasted of doing just that during the leadership hustings. So we should be congratulating her on a Mission Accomplished.
That just left the Prime Minister in Name Only a cabinet to get through. The end of the triple lock just another broken promise. Her shame was our shame. Her humiliation, our humiliation. The classic Trussterfuck. The People’s Republic of Trussia was dead. Long live the People’s Republic of Trussia.

The pond has left plenty of fun at the links, so there's no actual need to be here, but for those long suffering lovers of loonery who yearn for a reptile treat, the pond turned to Dame Slap a serve of the usual ...

"Miaow", as Robert said to Ghislaine, or perhaps "miaow miaow" as Ghislaine said to Robert, because Kelly being a woman and gay has nothing to do with anything.

If we're going to carry on like that, the pond might note that Dame Slap was born way back on 23.9.1966 (or so her wiki says), and has apparently been put out to pasture by the IPA,  an epic form of discrimination no-one has talked about and which remains a deep mystery to the pond ...

It couldn't involve her chosen set of sexual and gender traits, could it, because a reference to being gay as a "trait" is down there with the barking mad fundamentalism of IPA types, and the rest of her ideology is pure, distilled essence of mango Mussolini loving, climate science denying loonery ...

Questions, always questions, but as usual the aged harridan was only getting started, blathering on in the usual way about identity politics and the suffering of older blokes in board rooms ...

"To be sure"? Already a "to be sure"? To be sure there are blokes in boardrooms, and to be sure, old white men aren't doing so bad, and they've always got Dame Slap in their corner, tugging her forelock, kowtowing and doing her complementary woman thing/

To be sure, a 'to be sure' comes in exceptionally handy, especially when a discrimination diva inadvertently exposes what it's like to encounter a genuine discrimination diva gaily discriminating away ...

At this point, the pond had to interrupt. How on earth did Katherine Deves find her way into a reptile click bait video in the middle of a Dame Slap rant?

It triggered the pond, and sent it back to the good old days, as celebrated by Cam Wilson in Crikey ... (paywall)

Somehow the ABC is misleading the people and somehow Deves is still scoring a click bait video inn the lizard Oz?

"Miaow, miaow", and still the reptiles are still kicking the loser Deves' can down the road?

Never mind, back to the ranting Dame Slap for a final gobbet ...

Save that for another day? 

But we've already had a full serve, and it was a remarkable feat by the ageing, aged loon not to mention the age of her orange Jesus, or jolly Joe's age, and meanwhile, the pond could only mourn more opportunities missed, of the kind celebrated by the infallible Pope this day ...

As always, there must be a bonus, and as always, when in desperate reptile circumstance and indignation about land-grabbing Israel in the reptile wind, the pond turned to nattering "Ned" to deliver a goodly dose of terminal boredom ...

The pond gets it - the pond would dearly love emperor Xi to go away. But you can't exalt the situation in the US up against China by its ability to accommodate the current crop of Faux Noise inspired loonery ...

This is the season for peak loon in the US ... and transparency isn't the answer ... nor the notion that the democratic process works, because that delivered the mango Mussolini and Brexit and the current crop of Tories, and all you're left with are amusing columnists and cartoonists ...

Just because you can see it and run cartoons about it doesn't make it any better ... and it isn't likely to make Xi go away, though the pond is always pleased at the prospect of armageddon or the apocalypse, or perhaps the fire next time ...

Still quoting former chairman Rudd? The pink batts socialist is forgiven? 

So maybe after all there is hope and a way out of the reptile storm.

But while "Ned" tries to take the pond's mind off the US and its many woes, still the cartoons keep coming, full of con artists, hustlers, mountebanks and frauds ...

He's going to make a motza out of that faux martyrdom, while the pond is still stuck with "Ned", wishing and hoping Xi would go away ...

Indeed, indeed, and yet Vlad the Terrible and Xi had much cause for optimism, what with the GOP and Tuckyo Carlson and the Donald and Faux Noise all rooting for Vlad ... while the con artists keep carrying on ...

What a relief. The cartoons have done their job. 

It's early in the week for a cartoon-led recovery, and yet here the pond is, with just a gobbet of "Ned's" wishful thinking to go, and sssh, not a word about the chance of a MTG or a Herschel or any number of barking mad GOPsters at the helm come November ...

What sublime optimism, what drivel. Self-correction? Perhaps with bonus cilice, but if you happen to be poor in little England or the US at the moment, the self-correction might seem a long way off, and all you get to wear is the cilice ...

When autocrats want an example of how democracy is fucked, they only have to look at the recent events in the US, the coming election where assorted election deniers, supporters of the big lie, and devotees of Faux Noise are likely to be elected ... no thanks in small part to the workings of the Chairman's corporations ...

Luckily the pond these days is only here for the entertainment and the cartoons, and the chance to sign off with an immortal Rowe ... though it's hard to find much fun in the doings of terrorists, while Tuckyo Rose cheers them on ...