In which the Major picks at his feathers yet again ...

Here's a trick question, one that the pond is certain will fool even the most devoted follower of the reptiles.

What's the subject of the Major Mitchell's treatise for the day?

Is it:

(a) the failings of Comrade Bill (helpful clue, Simon Benson is scribbling furiously this day);
(b) a backflip on the failings of Comrade Bill (hint, the oscillating fan has suddenly discovered Comrade Bill is shrinking into his role);
(c) the tale of Pauline Hanson's woes, as One Nation supporters allegedly break with her position on company tax cuts (hint, the prolific Benson might have a hand in this, even as the rag publishes Hanson herself scribbling Big firms don't deserve tax cuts);
(d) another tirade about Victoria's gang culture beating the Vic police (hint, the Oz editorialist has got to have something to scribble about);
(e) a mocking piece about Tim Soutphommsane (clue, please reserve a spot for Cut and Paste to have a go at those bloody tricky Asians down under)
(f) the bloody ABC and its bloody bias.

Oh okay, the pond made it easy, it wasn't really a trick question, because if ever there was a tediously predictable old fart, it just has to be the Major …

A wily old bird? Sorry up Tamworth way, we'd just call him a galah or a cockie that's picked up a few words … and would find it easier to pick his feathers than to pick up the trail of an Order of Lenin medal …

Look, there he is, just below the Oreo's transcendent glory …and featured in twitter to the cosmic amusement of the few …

 

Well after that introduction, there's almost no need for a pond commentary, as the stars align in the Major's mind …

The Bolter concurs? The Bolter's an expert in bias?

The pond really does wonder sometimes what these birds do for brains.

What if they manage to get the ABC re-invented in the form of the lizard Oz?

What if the ABC toed the line on climate denialism, giving the banks a free ride, scrapping renewable energy and celebrating the return to government-owned five year planning for power generation using dinkum clean Oz coal, oi, oi, oi?

Where would that leave the useless bloody reptiles?

Speaking of Media Watch, just recently it quoted the humbug galah as conceding it was all a game, a kind of honeytrap form of click bait trolling for the faithful …

And so the dumb galah keeps on harumphing about the need to turn the ABC into the lizard Oz, perhaps in the hope that the reptiles might have somewhere to flee should the worst come to the worst for their business model ...

Climate science?

Well that's a bit of a stretch for the Major's brain …

You see, in the same Media Watch, the Major talked of the lizard Oz …

The pond rolled the jaffas down the aisle at that line about trying to explain "to the more sensible journalists there …"

Which is a dumbfuck way of explaining that the likes of the bromancer, the dog botherer, Dame Slap and the Major are about as sensible as baseball in Italian …(fair dibs, it was supposed to be H. L. Mencken who observed "Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian", presuming that baseball, like cricket, made sense in any language at all).

Never mind, it's the last gobbet by the Major and what a relief that is ...

Donald Trump?

Here's a curious thing. The logarithms on one of the pond's television sets has turned to sending assorted segments from Fox Business the pond's way.

The pond does its best to stop the recalcitrant logarithmic beast, but lately with news of the tariff war heating up, Fox has turned hysterical and alarmist, with the latest involving the US's major manufacturer of nails.

The Chicago Tribune has a story here …as the layoffs begin.

A couple of excerpts lumped together ...

"There's a lot of uncertainty and a ton of fear in Poplar Bluff," said Skarich. He voted for Trump and says he's "disappointed" and "sad" at what's happening to a town and company he loves. If Skarich had a minute with Trump, he says he'd tell him these tariffs aren't hurting China, they are hurting Missouri. The workers who lost their jobs on June 15 were contract workers paid about $10 an hour, but the next round of layoffs will hit longtime employees, many of whom are making $13 to $14 an hour plus benefits. That's a middle-class job in Poplar Bluff where the median income is just over $31,000 a year. Trump campaigned on "jobs, jobs, jobs." He promised to be the "greatest jobs producer God ever created." He and his team regularly argue that the tariffs are going to save jobs and even bring jobs back from overseas. But the vast majority of economists and business leaders have warned that many more jobs are likely to be lost than saved. The Tax Foundation predicts 48,585 job losses from the tariffs Trump has already enacted on imports of washing machines, solar panels, steel, aluminum and $50 billion in Chinese products. That figure would soar to over 250,000 job losses if Trump moves forward with tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese products, the Tax Foundation said….

...the situation in Missouri is a warning sign of how the tariffs are helping some workers and harming others, and that's tricky politics for Trump who looks like he is picking winners and losers. Workers in New Madrid County, Missouri are celebrating as Magnitude 7 Metals is restarting an aluminum product line, giving 450 workers back their jobs. But just an hour away in Poplar Bluff, 500 workers could be out of a job by the end of the summer. The president's focus has been on saving jobs that make raw steel and aluminum, but there are many more jobs that are harmed by the tariffs because they turn raw metal into something else like a car or airplane. The longer the tariffs are in place, the more companies are likely to have to make cuts. Experts have warned Trump that the tariffs are likely to cause more job losses than jobs saved, and the early signs of that are starting to play out in small towns south of St. Louis As the job losses mount, so may the pressure on Trump.

The pond realises that the Major Mitchell is a slow-moving old bird still infatuated with the Donald … but then if the pond wants actual news and insights, almost any news service is better than the lizards of Oz …why, they manage to make the ABC seem like an oasis in the desert of Murdochian silliness.

And so to a cartoon featuring the Donald, which seems to indicate that Rowe might be back - huzzah - after a long break, with this here …

And here's another one, just for the Trumpist Major …

In which the pond goes Chinese Oreo and scores a weird biscuit with complete memory loss ...

 

Many of the reptiles are employed this day doing dutiful and appropriate Murdochian tasks … celebrating dinkum Oz coal, oi, oi, oi, and skilfully finding many very unique* (*licensed from News 24) ways to avoid mentioning that Malware just lost another Newspoll …

Ever since the onion muncher faded into the distance, or at least on to 2GB so he and the parrot could console each other, the reptiles have learnt the art of spinning in ways that would shame your average crazy redback spider web … and today they're in overdrive.

The dreaded 30th Newspoll loss landed on 9th April, and here we are on 2nd July, and the reptiles long ago stopped counting, and now triumphalism rends the air …but for the record and for what it's worth, Malware is up to 35 straight losses ...

Luckily, the pond has become rat cunning over the years and knows Monday morning is not the time for this sort of reptile trolling … it's Oreo day!

Hmm, should the pond break the news now? You know, the way the Chinese have taken over the Oreo and made it their own, with flavours even weirder than your average Oreo …

  

But in a way a banana Oreo is quite metaphorical for what follows today …

Look, banana Oreo, don't talk to the pond, talk to the hand, or at least talk to your very favourite President, the Donald …

Oh it's just too sublime. Week in, week out, the Oreo attempts bizarre defences in relation to the Donald and then the sleepwalker awakes and suddenly scribbles furiously about the Chinese dragon …

It's just too silly for words, but it does help explain why Xi is doing the Donald and the United States slowly … and the pond now tries to curry favour by eating at the local Chinese takeaway at least once a week ...

Again… please don't aim the hysterics at the pond, go talk to the hand or the Donald …

Oh okay the pond has run that one before … but if repetition dulls the mind, speaking of Xi and North Korea, what to make of the Graudian's Trump: 'possible' North Korea nuclear deal may not 'work out' …

Donald Trump said on Sunday it was “possible” that a deal he claimed ended the nuclear threat posed by North Korea would not “work out”.  
A day after it was reported that Pyongyang has increased its production of enriched uranium at secret sites, Fox Business broadcast an interview with the president. Trump was pressed on whether he trusted Kim Jong-un, whom he met last month in Singapore and with whom he said he had “a great chemistry”, to make good on promises to destroy Pyongyang’s nuclear program. “I made a deal with him, I shook hands with him, I really believe he means it,” said Trump. “Now, is it possible? Have I been in deals, have you been in things where, people didn’t work out? It’s possible.”  
Trump’s words reversed his declaration upon his return from Singapore that North Korea had ended its nuclear ambitons. “Just landed – a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office,” the president tweeted on 13 June. “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!” 
Speaking to Fox, Trump also sought to shrink the perceived cost of the declared agreement falling through, seeking to frame his negotiations with North Korea as having been achieved without concessions. “We gave nothing,” he said. “Think of this. What did I do, really, when you think of it? I went there. So the papers say, ‘He went’, oh, meaning I went to Singapore. So we had a meeting. We didn’t do anything.” 
In fact, Trump agreed to end a range of joint military exercises with South Korea, meant to act as a deterrent against the North. In the interview with Fox, he said the exercises, “which I call war games”, were too expensive.

And so on. Talk about a patsy, and now an Oreo of the patsy kind wants to imagine the pond has forgotten all the nonsense and stupidities she's scribbled about the Donald as a master politician and deal-maker?

Sometimes the pond would dig back through old files and organise a shame parade, but there's still a large gobbet of current Oreo paranoia to go ...

Yes, there's an elephant in the room alright …

Here, have a few more cartoons and try to remember what you wrote about the Donald last week, or last month, or last year, you banana Oreo goose you …

In which the pond finally gets around to prattling Polonius ...

The pond left it as long as it could, but it finally had to get around to the current reptile excitement about the Oz political scene…

As previously noted, the excitement has nothing to do with the odious Star Chamber exercise currently being conducted by Malware's mob … it's all to do with the idea of comrade Bill having made a fatal blunder.

Oh sure the oscillating fan saw signs of life, or at least survival…

… but the likes of nattering "Ned" were in a frothing, foaming state of ecstasy, as close to signs of life in "Ned" as might be seen, perhaps only matched when the waiter brings him a port for sipping, as he sits in his leather chair at the club and broods at the passing clouds glimpsed through the window …

Yes, you won't see nattering "Ned" getting agitated at a Star Chamber …but damned if the pond could go there on a Sunday, with a Murdochian daring to talk about rotten foundations and populist crusading. What a first class futtock he is ...

And the rest of the reptiles were pretty much the same …

Who'd start a business now? Well the pond doesn't expect any of the reptiles to leave the Murdochian teat and manage the feat, with young people these days not that exercised by coal and steam and such like ...

But still, what a depressing set of opinion  pieces, and even worse, regarding comrade Bill, the pond is conflicted, because it's never had any time for Bill.

Anyone who's hung round with the pond's extended family, at least the ones that have hung around with comrade Bill, would instantly forgive the pond … and besides before Albo was cruelly snatched away from the pond's electorate, he was a genial local who actually helped out the pond on a certain matter which shall go nameless …

In all, it was a wretched situation, and the pond could have rectified the matter by heading off to the tabloids and scored some cheap, easy laughs with the likes of Miranda the Devine …

But the Murdochian tabloids are dead to the pond, and so the pond had to turn to prattling Polonius as the least worst option …with anyone wanting to know about the Star Chamber having to head behind the Crikey paywall to read Labor stands shoulder to shoulder with Turnbull on Timor Leste cover-up …

Oh heck, just a short taster …

Yes, Lord Downer at his finest … but you won't find any talk of the Star Chamber in the lizard Oz, and so to Polonius ...

Of course you won't read Polonius prattling on about how Malware's mob has become more negative, and at times incredibly hostile towards workers - restaurant workers can now be assured they'll struggle on their new post-July 1 pay-packets - while wages continue to be stagnant, and fat cats grow rich, because surprise surprise, the trickle down effect has been trickling down since Ronnie's time, often with a scatological motif …

 

 

But even the chance to run a trickle cartoon or four, and even Polonius dragging Miranda the Devine into the conversation didn't please the pond …

Well yes, big business and Malware's mob are waging a class war against the less well off, that almost goes without saying. It's in their nature, and the inequality between the rewards for your average worker and the big end of town is growing …

More here - and of course he wouldn't release the analysis, because if you just repeat the big lie often enough it'll roll around the Murdochian echo chamber for an eternity …

We've all been here before …

With more Wilcox here … but with unions now effectively degutted - the right to strike, what was that? - all that's left is polite chit chat …

And all that talk of a class war is just a way to startle the horses and scare the the mugs who think they have a chance at leaving poverty behind ...

Just as you can sell hope and delusions to all those lovers of lottery tickets, the rich have always peddled the idea that if everybody toes the line and tugs the forelock, why one day they too can sit in an institute in Phillip street Sydney and generate hysteria about class warfare.

That was the cleverness of Ming the Merciless, talking of class war while conducting warfare by stealth, and lo, generations later, the Commonwealth Bank sits before a Royal Commission as a deeply corrupt and corrupting institution.

So it goes, but the pond retains the impression - call it extended family warfare - that Albo might be able to conduct the kind of re-balancing needed by stealthy warfare a little more adeptly than comrade Bill … which brings the pond into some weird kind of alignment with prattling Polonius.

To be told that Albo is the News Corp candidate makes the pond thankful it's not a member of the Labor party ...

How upsetting and deeply disturbing is that!? Though perhaps not as disturbing as a Star Chamber and a lurch towards the behaviour of a police state...

Well the by-elections will sort out a few things, and then we'll see how the reptile triumphalists fare, and let the class warfare cards fall as they may, but if anyone thinks Malware gives a flying fuck about income inequality, the pond still has that refurbished harbour bridge for sale  …

Meanwhile, there's nothing like a few cartoons contemplating the fate of others to cheer the pond up …

 

A potpourri in lieu of a Sunday meditation ...

The pond always takes the time to check in with Amanda Meade's Weekly Beast at the Graudian - what an agile reptile handler she is - and what a hoot it was to read Who will fact-check the fact-checkers? Not Andrew Bolt …

The pond gave up on the Murdochian tabloids and the Bolter some time ago, and even though there came to pass a way to access them, the pond just felt an ongoing sense of relief - so that's what it's like not to do a Brian de Palma and send a power drill into the cranium on a daily basis …

But the result of the Bolter's adjustment to his original story was so sublime the pond simply couldn't resist mentioning it …

What a Roman holiday doofus, how hasty and stupid the correction, and how richly comic to see that sign "facts matter" …

And that's why the pond continues to develop a taste for honied mead …

Now, as this is a potpourri in lieu of a Sunday meditation, on  to a more depressing matter.

The reptiles are currently wildly excited by comrade Bill's recent trip of the tongue - bring on Albo, the pond says - but they have been strangely quiet, and gone either doggo or troppo on another matter which would usually have excited at least a few passing libertarians …

How often do the reptiles blather on about Orwellian matters, Star Chambers and the like, and yet Malware's mob are currently embarking on one of the most astonishing abuses of the legal system the country has seen at any time in its history, as a way to continue the outrageous cover-up of a dirty deed done cheap in little Johnny and Lord Downer's time.

A friend of the pond felt so strongly about it they decided they needed to breach the Crikey paywall to spread the news a little further …

Star Chamber trials in private on the specious grounds of national security, when everybody and his dog knows the original caper was to steal assets from the East Timorese, and the reptiles lie doggo, and the pond wondered why, and now there's talk of a 'strange omission' …

The stench from the Augean Murdochian stable grows stronger and stronger …

But this is Sunday, and time to catch up on other matters which exercised the reptiles during the week:

Yes, the pond was lured in, and it was only when it clicked through to the story - yes, folks, there is a way to avoid the reptile paywall - that the pond noticed that the reptiles had assigned a "social affairs" reporter to the case of the onion muncher.

Now the pond has nothing against social affairs, having had a few quite sociable affairs, but it struck the pond as passing strange …the pond could only begin to imagine the conversation that went around the newsroom:

The onion muncher's on the radio again, who's going to do it? Not me, not me, okay Rick you scored the short straw. But why Rick, what on earth could have seen him as a suitable fit?

Of course … who better to write about a homeless lost soul, troubled by his lost piety and his wayward hypocrisy, in search of some kind of religious salvation, and yet still addicted to the drugs of fame and relevance and addle-brained treachery …

Listen to the radio and transcribe the thoughts of the onion muncher?

Well it's a living, and it certainly doesn't dig up that messy business involving the East Timorese and the Star Chamber attempt to cover-up one of the most shameful times in Australia's relationships with its near neighbours…

But as the onion muncher raised his head yet again, the pond realised it hadn't quite mopped up all the matters in relation to the Ramsay centre.

First the pond should pause to admire the diligent Urban, still pounding away on her keyboard on Ramsay matters …

The pond was wandering through Sydney University the other day and was pleased to see recent graduates wandering around on the front lawn in proper gowns and mortars having their pictures taken, and with any number of excited parents wandering around.

A remarkable number were of Asian appearance, though the pond makes no guess as to nationality - they might easily have been from Cabramatta, Haymarket, Chatswood or Northbridge - but even so, a delicious frisson surged through the pond at the thought of Sydney University corrupting the youth of Asia with relativism and leftism and post-modernism …

Some think that the sciences, medicine, engineering and such like don't go there, but let's face it, the Theory of Relativity was the beginning of all this relativism nonsense …

As for the arcane attempts to maintain control of the SRC and its handy stipend, Honi Soit provided a wealth of details on the China lobby. (The paper's online here, though it doesn't quite convey the fun of the lift-out spoof of VC Michael Spenc's pad in Better Honi and Gardens).

Oh and the University is busy ruining the way that the old university buildings present to Victoria park - the pond is a bit Prince Chuck about Victorian architecture - with the ground turned on the Chau Chak Wing Museum …oh there's nothing like a museum as home for post-modernist lefty-ism ...

The pond also saw three nuns in full regalia marching through the grounds - a rare sighting these days - and the thought of these innocents corrupted and defiled by vile post modernist leftist thinking sent another delicious surge through the pond …

And in the circular way of things, naturally that encounter with Catholicism brought up the matter of the onion muncher again.

Here the pond has a sacred duty … to cover as much of the Ramsay matter in the lizard Oz as it can, so that it might be treasured as the Ramsay matter of reptile record …

Good old onion muncher. The pond wanted to highlight that gobbet, but it was part of a larger letter that the ANU folk sent to the reptiles, available at the ANU site here … and it ended this way …

And here the pond must do an Alice, because the thing that got the good profs agitated wasn't just all the disagreements they listed in their letter, but the reptile editorialist him, her or itself …

The pond should now run that reptile editorial … which it has to be said, with regard to the facts, is very Bolterish …

Oh that deserves at least a little excerpt as a right of rebuttal in a public forum, a bit more than is being offered by Malware's mob with its Star Chamber routine designed to hide some of the more egregious behaviour of the federal government in many a decade …

And now just to confirm the pond's status as the site for Ramsay centre gobbets, prattling Polonius was also out and about with a word or two on the subject …

Our man Polonius is a bit of a closet Trumpist and has always taken a dire view of the US studies centre - Fairfax the days of Switzer here before he headed off to suck on the teat of the ABC, having lost his chance to suck on the academic teat - but his agitation about Haines made the pond wonder how long the good prof had before he either (a) did a deal, or (b) headed back to Honkers …

It took the pond an inordinate amount of time to track down the Jordan Baker story, which was dated 22nd June 2018 and is online under the header The unenviable task ahead for Ramsay Centre boss Simon Haines …

The pond, of course, doesn't cover the Fairfaxians - the glory days are long gone since the days the magic water man ruled the roost - but here's Haines' thought crime …

Professor Haines won't say what went wrong in the talks, or why they broke down. He won't reveal whether he was surprised. But he does admit to being disappointed. "I am an academic, I have been an ANU academic, I would not have ever tried to introduce a course where I thought academic autonomy would be compromised," he says. Abbott didn't speak on behalf of the board when he wrote the article, says Haines, and was "mistaken" when he said the centre would decide on staff and curriculum. But he agrees Abbott's comments didn't help. "I realise that that article scared people at ANU and elsewhere and I wish that it hadn't." 
While the Ramsay Centre itself was in favour of Western civilisation - its remit was to promote community awareness - "that doesn't mean that the degree is like that", says Haines. "The degree is not meant to create a bunch of students that are triumphalist about how wonderful the West is. It's intended to give them a chance to read these wonderful books."

By golly, talk about a hanging offence, talk about a thought crime. The ANU might say that the onion muncher's comments didn't help, but woe to anyone else with the slightest interest in the real world. Off to the Star Chamber with him …

Naturally Polonius's laser-sharp mind turned to the biggest, most crucial matter in the entire report ...

No tip! 

Why the talk of a Crisis in Western Civilisation is spot-on. 

And how fitting that Polonius should play the role of Marie Antoinette. Yes, the notion of paying restaurant workers decent wages and penalty rates doesn't suit your average smug ponce, the ones that love to show their munificence and magnificence by generously doling out tips to the lumpenproletariat …no doubt our man Polonius is a generous tipper at Rockpool, just to show he's at one with the immigrant workers…

What a portentous, pompous old humbug he is … and now, this being something of a mixed feast, here's the Pope celebrating Malware's Star Chambers mob … with more papal reflections here ...