In which the Caterist and the Oreo make the pond feel the new year is the same as the old ...

Steady, settle.

The pond has no intention of paying attention to the Graudian's EXCLUSIVE here … it's just that every so often, especially in a new year, the pond lives a rich fantasy life about an actual reptile - any actual reptile - dropping in on the pond.

What fun to greet them with a visual mind fuck, what fun to feature an EXCLUSIVE from an alternative universe …

The pond knows such alternative universes exist. A kind reader sent in a link to a piece by Bret Stephens in the NY Times, What Have the Elites Ever Done for Fox? With apologies to the People's Front of Judea …

Bret Stephens?! As if …

And yet the pond confesses that it enjoyed the read, with a fine old list of what the 'leets had done for Fox, including but not limited to financing and deregulation …

TUCKER: All right, but apart from capital financing, deregulation, access to global markets, a stable and predictable regulatory and legal environment, I.R.A.s and 401(k)’s, talented immigrants, global cities, good food, universities that are the envy of the world, record-making growth and a world in which there’s almost no chance of my children being conscripted to fight a war, what else have the elites done for us? 
PRODUCER 5: MSNBC’s ratings beat ours the other week for the first time in 18 years. 
TUCKER: My point!

Meanwhile, the slow learners enjoying the baristas of Surry Hills remain slow learners, and are still embedded in assorted culture wars …

Caterist day already?

Well we don't have to ask what the 'leets have done for the Caterists. They did it last year and the year before that, and likely will do it again this year …

Ah, those wicked Canberra 'leets, and now, as the Caterist has been blessed with a cult Lobbecke, looking even more weirdly cellphone than usual, it's on with the read ...

Somehow, that reminded the pond of another bit of Stephens' Python rip …

PRODUCER 3: Tech. 

TUCKER: Well, obviously tech. Goes without saying, doesn’t it? I mean, Sean here wasn’t exactly the comp-sci genius of his high-school class, was he? But apart from financing, deregulation, and technology. … 

PRODUCER 4: Global markets for our products. 

PRODUCER 5: Capital markets for our retirement accounts. 

PRODUCER 6: Stable and predictable legal and regulatory environments.

TUCKER: Yeah, yeah, all right. Fair enough. 

PRODUCER 7: Immigrants. 
TUCKER: Immigrants?! 
PRODUCER 7: William Lewis, the C.E.O. of Dow Jones, is English. Also Gerry Baker, the former editor of The Wall Street Journal. And Peter Rice, the 21st Century Fox president, now going to Disney. Robert Thomson, the C.E.O. of News Corp., is from Australia, along with Col Allan, the former editor of The New York Post. Rupert, too, obviously. 
TUCKER: Yeah, well, it’s not like they’re Hondurans or something. 
Australians aren’t a bunch of criminals. 

Embarrassed silence.

Well, it's not like the Caterist is from Honduras or something, or even China. Isn't he from England? The English surely aren't an imperialistic, colonial-mindset inclined bunch likely to send people to a distant land on prison ships, are they?

The thing the pond dislikes most about the reptiles and their walled garden approach is the way that they refuse to provide links.

It wouldn't have been so hard to provide a link to the people behind the Australian Population Research Institute here, or to their November 2018 report, pdf here, or their follow up report, also as a pdf here ...

Better to read the originals than read the Caterist recycling …

Indeed, indeed, and all western business leaders have shown admirable restraint by boycotting the Chinese economy …

Star's five satellite channels can be seen in 38 nations in Asia and the Middle East -- from Tokyo to Tel Aviv, from Mongolia to Malaysia, and all of China and India -- and can reach, by Star's estimate, 45 million people who have the necessary equipment. Hong Kong-based Star, Mr. Murdoch's most important acquisition since his debt-restructuring crisis in 1990, completes the arc of a Murdoch television empire that also includes Fox Broadcasting in the United States and half-ownership in British Sky Broadcasting, the largest satellite service in Europe. A Vast Asian Market Mr. Murdoch's willingness to risk half a billion dollars for a controlling stake in a two-year-old television service that has not turned a profit, and may not anytime soon, underscores the excitement in broadcasting circles about the possibilities of pan-Asian television. Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story "The potential in Asia is enormous," Mr. Murdoch said in announcing the deal for his News Corporation to buy 63.6 percent of Hutchvision Ltd., the parent company of Star. Hutchvision was founded by Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. and the family of the Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing.

Ah, the glory days, in the NY Times back in August 1993 here. 

Didn't work out, fell on hard times?

Embarrassed silence?

Never mind, it's natural for criminal Australians to consort with awful regimes - after all, they'd give away their citizenship for a few dollars more. And there are others always ready to follow such exemplary examples - here, have a complimentary tie …

 

And so to a final word from the leets, and the revelation of what this was all actually about …

The Ramsay centre!

Yep, the grievance and the suffering run deep and run long and run hard …

Ah poor Ramsay centre. The Chinese are allowed to fuck tertiary education, but not the Poms and their wondrous western civilisation. It's just not fair, this suffering of the 'leets ...

As always, the pond likes to check on sources, and that Chinese proverb sounded wonderful and intriguing. 

Just don't try to google it in the form provided by the Caterists …

As the Pythons say, before you read the 'leets, first think of the source, and then ask what the 'leets have done for you this week …

And so to the Oreo of the day …

Now seasonal folk will probably already have received their Oreo treat for the year …

Yes, back in November 2018, Oreo released a mini record player that would play actual music from a cookie, or so it said here …with copious links to prove the point.

But the pond has no need for such gimmicks, not when the Oreo is out and about in the new year, and singing for her non-feminist supper ...

Speaking of skeletons in individual closets, it was thanks to a reader last year that the pond learned that at one point in the early days, the Oreo ran with feminists …

It's still raw in the pond's mind …

  

The pond only heads back to the old days for the punchline that it provides to the Oreo's piece this day ...

Now it might seem that there were closer targets to home that deserved the Oreo's attention …

 

Funny how the reptiles cultivated the far right and climate science denialism and all the rest of it, and now, when the southern trees bear strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root, they get their knickers in a knot ...

Never mind, back to the Oreo.

The pond doesn't want to go all Freudian about this, but there seems to be something deeply obsessive about the Oreo's focus on ancient feminists and leftists...

Yes, yes, but now we must get the but, billy goat, butt moment, and the Oreo explaining that everyone did it, so what's the beef, and then the closing line which entranced the pond and made it all seem worthwhile ...

Talk about a killer closer ...

… because 21st-century feminism is no place for equality?!

Well the pond will have to leave it all to the Freudians. 

It looks like a bottomless pit of personal angst, and it's above the pond's pay grade to go there.

It seems something deep and dark went wrong for the Oreo and feminism, and readers of the lizard Oz must keep suffering for it each Monday …and meanwhile, right here, right now, Fraser Anning keeps doing his thing for equality ...

Phew, what a relief that's over.

The pond can't work out whether the new year sounding just like the old year is a good thing, but as the pond began with the Graudian, how about closing with a reminder that there's much fun to be had observing the English all in a tizz, with this cartoon evoking the latest bout of grand comedy …(here). 

Remember there's always treasure to be plucked from disaster ...

In which the pond does a Sunday meditation with the bromancer and a vacuum cleaner ...

The pond has spent the entire weekend worrying about the fate of Xians, though the thunderstorm that broke over Sydney yesterday came a close second …

In olden times, the pond might have spent its time worrying about spending time with witches (uppity women, feminists, the ones that dare to dance with joy, you know the kind), or perverted gays or irredeemable atheists, but happily they were never persecuted - they were just confined to solitary and assured of an eternity in hellfire for their damnable ways …

Before beginning this lengthy meditation, the pond should perhaps point out that there are other things worth in reading and doing … the pond for example, recently meditated on Peter Brown's A World Winking with Messages in the NYRB, but alas, it's inside the paywall, and so it can't contaminate the reptile paranoia with this sort of heresy …

…Rebillard shows that though they might be urged by their religious leaders,  in times of crisis, to stick to their Christian identity above all others, most early Christians were usually happy to get along in many roles unconnected with their religion - as members of families, as neighbours, as fellow workers, and as good citizens. The writings of the Early Church Fathers that urged a radical rupture with the pagan world lie heavy on the shelves of modern libraries. But at the time they represented the shutting of stable doors long after the horse had bolted.

This approach is particularly applicable to the study of early Christian art. In previous generations, the notion of the "Church of the Catacombs" predominated. Christians were thought to be frozen into a single, embattled identity. Christian art was held to reflect this defensive position …

But enough of heresies, it's off to the reptile battlements to person the defences, with the bromancer's EXCLUSIVE a good enough place to start …

Uh huh. Can anyone remember the reptiles getting into a lather about the fate of atheist bloggers in Bangladesh?

Greg Hunters can find a list of them here … and being proudly inclined to rampant atheism, their fate - their brutal murders - always struck a nerve with the pond. As did the rampant bashing and killing of gays in Sydney that nobody much seemed to mind, at least if they sat down to pray with the likes of Fred Nile …

But this is just the usual pond meditation, and so we must revert to the reptiles' sense of persecution ...

Of course in China the real story is surely the introduction of 1984, facilitated by digital surveillance and reporting, and the persecution of Islamic and other minorities (FP here) …

But forget early Xian mingling with the pagans, the rule is these days it's each for their own, and by the miracle of reptile transubstantiation, the bromancer turned from reporter to columnist to scribble furiously and at length at the dire fate of the Xians in the catacombs ...

Actually, damnatio ad bests shouldn't be tossed around lightly as a concept …

...Lions were rare in Ancient Rome, and human sacrifice was banned there by Numa Pompilius in the 7th century BC, according to legend. Damnatio ad bestias appeared there not as a spiritual practice but rather a spectacle. In addition to lions, other animals were used for this purpose, including bears, leopards, Caspian tigers, and black panthers. It was combined with gladiatorial combat and was first featured at the Roman Forum and then transferred to the amphitheaters….
...The use of damnatio ad bestias against Christians began in the 1st century AD. Tacitus states that during the first persecution of Christians under the reign of Nero (after the Fire of Rome in 64), people were wrapped in animal skins (called tunica molesta) and thrown to dogs. This practice was followed by other emperors who moved it into the arena and used larger animals. Application of damnatio ad bestias to Christians was intended to equate them with the worst criminals, who were usually punished this way.
There is a widespread view among contemporary specialists that the prominence of Christians among those condemned to death in the Roman arena was greatly exaggerated in earlier times. There is no evidence for Christians being executed at the Colosseum in Rome …

But enough of history, it's on to reptile tribalism and paranoia and a sense of persecution, and be damned to any gays or atheists who start singing that silly song, "What about me, it isn't fair, I'm all out of persecution and I want my share …"

For some strange reason, the pond was reminded of a story it read in the LRB on the way back from Melbourne, Tariq Ali's The Unseeables, about the hideous caste system practised by Hindus, and luckily the pond doesn't have to go into any details, because for the moment it's outside the paywall here ...

The far-right BJP government led by Narendra Modi deliberately misinterprets and distorts India’s ancient history to justify its cultural offensive against Islam and other minorities, aiming to create a monolithic Hindu narrative and an official Hinduism. School textbooks, university education, what is and what should not be stocked in public libraries are policed. The Hindu epics, long read and appreciated as literature, are now being characterised as history. When asked to explain the elephant god, Modi responded: ‘We worship Lord Ganesha. There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant’s head on the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery.’

Yes, stupidity is everywhere, but strangely the pond doesn't recall reading much about it in the lizard Oz ...

Um, join the club? Try being a gay or an atheist sometime and be surrounded by fundamentalist Xians or ravaging reptiles, and see how it feels …

Ah, the paranoia and the battlements and fortifications and the sense of persecution is the very best way to fear monger … and now, in that transubstantive way beloved by the reptiles, the reptile columnist must devour the lizard reporter, and repeat what has already been written ...

A willingness to speak up for atheists and gays would also be appreciated, but never mind, it's on with the fear and loathing ...

A hundred thousand? How about one million Uighurs? Why isn't that front and centre in Payne and bromancer thinking? (Go on, be a heretic, Aljazeera here).

There's probably a tribal answer to that question, but the pond must press on, because the bromancer is on a roll and simply won't shut up ...

The pond must have missed that story about 12,000 atheist bloggers being offered shelter from fundamentalist religious bigots with murder on their minds … but the good news is that the pond can stop tormenting itself and others because the bromancer has only one last paranoid gobbet in him ...

Is there any room at the inn to make the persecution of gays and atheist bloggers a regular and prominent part of the reptile dialogue?

Probably not …you know how it goes with hideous elites and identity politics, unless it happens to be Xian identity and then it's open slather …

But now, just in case the bromancer has darkened the mood, and left people feeling despondent, depressed and persecuted, the reptiles provided some weekend balance by running a celebration of Campion ...

"Liberal?" The pond realises that it simply doesn't understand the meaning of the word anymore … since when has the Catholic church been "liberal"? (And since when has Campion Education provided a good online shopping experience?) 

Joe de Bruyn is liberal-minded?

Edmund Campion was a bit of a kook, as martyrs must be, and this quote captures his spirit ..

I want to make it clear that these courageous men and women did not die for religious freedom, as is the common misunderstanding. They died because they loved Jesus and the Catholic faith he founded more than their own lives. It’s the difference between dying so a Hindu can worship false gods in his temple and dying because you love Christ and his Church and could never betray either of them.

Ah, so many false gods, so little time … no doubt She will sort it all out in Her own time ...

Don't get the pond started on religion and science … next thing you know we'll end up talking about the fundamentalist Catholic Boys' Daily and climate science ...

Actually what's extraordinary is that religions seem to think that it's up to the state and taxpayers to fund their business model, as if the Catholic Ponzi scheme had at last run its course, and now was in need of state aid … but how typical that the blather about taking from Caesar the things that Caesar taxed from the mug punter is quickly put to use …

And now, in a sure way to arouse enthusiastic support from fellow academicians, Heydon goes on to demonstrate how a 'liberal' practises his craft ...

Indeed, indeed, when it seems the entire point is to deliver an education in the name of barking mad Catholic fundamentalism … or perhaps a closeted gay incapable of coming to terms with his sexuality …

But don't get the pond started on Newman, and Catholic attitudes to sex - the gay priest in the extended family was in cheerful form over the Xmas break - or we could be here even longer. 

Best just to get the last gobbet of Heydon out of the way ...

So the main point of a Catholic education is to discover the secular insights of polytheists and pagans from ancient times? And the Catholics still keeping trading off on what they preserved of the ancient Greeks, forgetting at the same time how much they swept into history's dustbins?

Dear sweet long absent lord, the nausea is starting to kick in as the pond remembers its 'education' at the hands of Catholic institutions which never bothered to wishy washy notions of 'liberalism' … 

Quick, for damnation's sake, a few cartoons …and if anyone asks you why the lizard Oz is known as the Catholic Boys' Daily, remember you spent an eternity of suffering finding out why ... by eventually reaching this point in the story...

In which the pond begins the year proper with a splash of Polonial insights ...

An e-mail from Surry Hills, or perhaps Gambia:

“Dear Sir, Today at 9.22 I heard my first didric cuckoo and EXCLUSIVE report of world's highest tax under Labor from where I sit at home. Is this a record? There has been no coastal rain since June 3 but one hears that the weather in Melbourne is uncommonly unseasonal.” 

Say what?

It is a myth that this newspaper prints letters on the first cuckoo of spring and EXCLUSIVE reports of the world's highest tax under Labor, and one that upsets the people who edit The Times' letters, as dicussed in this space a few weeks ago. A study of their pages reveals no obsession with the family Cuculidae, but the legend remains intact. Hence the cheery e-mail from Clive Barlow, African ornithologist and occasional correspondent on recondite birding matters. It was a communication that took me straight back to Africa, and that time at the beginning of the rains when cuckoos start… 

Or some such thing. The cuckoos have started early in the Surry Hills government gazette this year …

The next best thing of course in the lizard Oz in terms of EXCLUSIVES is the work of brave crusaders and the ongoing suffering of Xians …

For some strange reason, the work of the bromancer was downgraded from EXCLUSIVE in another entry in the government gazette …

An ambassador for religious freedom? No doubt it will be matched by an ambassadorship for atheists …

Of course none of this hysteria stopped the reptiles from running a story about an Xian being persecuted ...

Silly Xian … he should have known that offshore processing isn't the first step to a Holocaust, it's the first step to a gulag, in the proud tradition of Stalinists, Maoists and lately Xi …

And with all that over - the pond must leave aside lizard Oz handwringing over quotas for Liberal women, simply because of the oxymoronic nature of the words - it's time to turn to prattling Polonius … though sadly he didn't make it to the top of the opinion section, because right at the top was an Xian CELEBRATION …

From government gazette to Catholic Boys' Daily in a flash. 

Sadly Dyson's eulogy is more suited to a Sunday meditation, but how the pond wept to read Polonius mourning the dead art of nuanced debate …

Why Polonius himself is an expert in the subtle art of debate, the clever parry and thrust that might draw a little blood on the cheek. See him at work in his last media study showing the lively art of debate at play …

What a rapier wit, how expertly lunged and photoshopped …

Polonius:
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks! I do know, 
 When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul 
 Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter, 
 Giving more light than heat, extinct in both 
Even in their promise, as it is a-making, 
 You must not take for fire. From this time 
 Be something scanter of your maiden presence.

And so to the Polonial text for the day, its maiden presence a thing of startling beauty …far removed from the shrill voice of photoshopped mockery ...

Polonius is too polite to say it, but damn it, the pond will.

The Liberal party has been rooned, absolutely rooned, since all these uppity women have started wandering around the corridors of power, swooning and sighing, as if politics was some sort of Victorian romance novel and Heathcliff was just around the corner, or even worse, some mistook Malware for the lad when he was really just a sook and a blubber fish cry baby, all wet around the gills, a disgusting sight, and impossible to fillet without a little blood and a splatter of scales …

Look how they agitate the hapless reptiles … as women come and go, talking of Michelangelo and quotas …

Is it any wonder that Polonius's noble brow is furrowed, that he feels deep distress, that he feels - the pond hastily adds, in a manly way - harassed and bullied ...

Indeed, indeed, here no bullies, no bullies here … and here no quotas, no quotas here, and come to think of it, here bloody few women pollies, but where's the harm in that?

And now, while it involves a spoiler, the pond would like to draw attention to a classic Polonial strategy, long ago immortalised as the 'but, billy goat, butt' line of argument …

It goes something like this …

It's true that women are under-represented in the ranks of the parliamentary Liberal Party. But, billy goat, Butt, Liberals are conscious of this and are working on solutions.

One sure solution is to mock any woman who displays an independent spirit, and instead praise unctuous time servers and compliant, acquiescent, amenable, tractable, complaisant, accommodating, adaptable quislings and lickspittle fellow travellers, who are certain to be admired and quite possibly promoted …

Now, with apologies for that spoiler, it's time to read on and get an undiluted blast of Polonius channeling Anne … because everything is for the best in Liberal world, and nepotism and referentialism of a belly button kind will out, and what's wrong with that in a world where fluff-gathering is king? 

And so, the pond humbly submits, Polonius, with his deep insights, summarises in a nutshell exactly why the Liberal party and the angry old men shouting at clouds in the lizard Oz have a problem with women …

It isn't just climate science denialism that runs deep … all kinds of denialism are welcomed and celebrated …and it seems if women are to get ahead, they must first learn the subtle uses denialism can be put to in nuanced debates … because if boasting about Enid Lyons is seen as being part of the solution, why then surely Polonius is part of the problem …

At the 1943 federal election, with the backing of the United Australia Party, Dame Enid Lyons was elected to the House of Representatives as the member for the Division of Darwin, which was located in Tasmania. In the same election, Dorothy Tangney, with Australian Labor Party endorsement, was elected to the Senate representing Western Australia, an office she held until 1968. In 1949 Enid Lyons became the first female cabinet member, as Minister without Portfolio, to enable her appointment to the honorary office of Vice-President of the Executive Council, an office she held until her retirement from parliament in 1951. (Greg Hunters go here).

Yes, even then, Catholics knew about the fine arts of tokenism and dissembling and honorary window-dressing, and still Polonius knows how to do a little jig of hypocrisy ...

And so to a cartoon celebrating the start of the year ...

In which the pond pays tribute to the bromancer for a Friday arvo special ...

The pond had resolved not to revisit missed reptile fodder, lost over the break, but decided that the bromancer's piece was so exceptional that the first new year resolution to be broken had to be the one about the Tamworth dog revisiting its vomit after a hearty meal of grass …

After all, as the immortal Lynyrd Skynyrd once sang …

Mr. Friday arvo special 
Bromancer's got a barrel that's blue and cold 
Ain't good for nothin' 
But put a blog six feet in a hole ...

Well it ran something like that - Ari Melber or Google would know for sure - but enough of childish justifications, because the bromancer needs no justifying …

If the pond had been asked to name three agents of chaos, it might have been Vlad the impaler, Fox and Friends and Chairman Rupert and his servile minions, but there you go, the pond always gets it wrong, which is why it always sits humbly at the feet of the bromancer and imbibes his infinite wisdom ...

Strange how the bromancer gets stuck into CNN … as if Fox and Friends had nothing to do with it.

Ah, but the Chairman owns Fox, which might help explain why the bromancer seems to lose all interest in objectivity, fairness, balance or proportion.

Perhaps a year watching Judge Pirro, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, with the odd dose of Ann Coulter for good measure, might be a suitable penance ...

It takes considerable cheek to compare the Donald with FDR - the bromancer is all cheek and front - but then Fox and Friends would probably think that it was insulting, since really when comparing the Donald with the imaginary friend known as God, how pale and worthless does that fictional deity appear...

And so all is well in the bromancer world, and how lucky that 2019 promises more of the same ...

If the pond might be so bold, all this talk of Leninism by the bromancer is a distraction. There's a direct line from emperor Qin Shi Huang - he of the famous mausoleum - to emperor Xi, and now thanks to the American love of presidential monarchy, there's a new emperor in town, as fickle and as off the wall as King George III, though this time, it isn't just losing a colony that's in play, it's losing a planet …if you happen to think that climate science is more than a cult religion …

But this is reptile holyday reading, so let's not have any talk of that sort of nonsense ...

And there you have the reason that the pond ran with the bromancer piece days after it was published …

The Western restoration under Ronnie Raygun, the Milk Snatcher and Karol Jozef Wojtyła  as the promised land …

Is that fucking weird, or is that weirdly mind-fucking, or what?

Some days the pond thinks it has dwelt too long in the land of the reptiles, wherein the one-eyed bromancer is king …

Then very circumspectly the pond began to climb. 
When sunset came the pond was no longer climbing, but was far and high. 
The pond had been higher, but was still very high. The pond's clothes were torn, its limbs were blood-stained, it was bruised in many places, but the pond lay as if at ease, and there was a smile on the pond's face. 
From where the pond rested the valley seemed as if it were in a pit and nearly a mile below. Already it was dim with haze and shadow, though the mountain summits around were things of light and fire... the little details of the rocks near at hand were drenched with subtle beauty — a vein of green mineral piercing the grey, the flash of crystal faces here and there, a minute, minutely-beautiful orange lichen close beside the pond's face. 
There were deep mysterious Trumpian, Murdochian shadows in the gorge, blue deepening into purple, and purple into a luminous darkness, and overhead was the illimitable vastness of the sky. 
But the pond heeded these things no longer, but lay quite inactive there, smiling as if satisfied merely to have escaped from the valley of the Blind in which the pond had thought to be King. 
The glow of the sunset passed, and the night came, and still the pond lay peacefully contented under the cold clear stars.

Or some such thing …the Wells' original can still be found here at Adelaide.edu.au, though the pond does wish that the university would fix up its site's certificates, so that they no longer played havoc with browsers ...

And so to the penalty.

For a moment there, the pond lay under the stars, and wasn't worried it had missed the Sexton's previous most excellent bigly bunch of insights ...

But today the Sexton is inside the cemetery again, and the pond's rules require that, after any detour into the dim past of reptile/bromancer thinking, there should be a burst of uniquely relevant up to the minute thinking...

 

Well it's not the same as the Sexton looking deep inside Mueller's mind and finding nothing, but it'll have to do, pig, it'll have to do ...

Indeed, indeed. The pond has long held the view that the Windsors and George Soros are deeply mired in a conspiracy with the Rothschilds and other Jewish bankers, and should be assassinated, the lot of them, and where's the harm in publishing that?

Why next thing you know, someone will be suggesting that limiting freedom of speech is limiting the rights of Daesh to radicalise young Islamics so that they might conduct a jihad against homosexuals, and where's the logic in that?

Simply put, it's perfectly acceptable for Catholics and evangelicals to demonise gays, but quite wrong for Daesh to ape them …that way lies anarchy and the decline of Western Civilisation, with perhaps only the Ramsay Centre surviving as an outpost in Wollongong … and where does that leave Port Kembla?

Clearly what's needed is an exemption for religious teaching, with an exemption that succinctly explains that some religious teaching full of bigotry and discrimination is preferable to other religious teaching full of bigotry and discrimination…

Or some such thing … because let's face it, schools must be made safe for the preaching of gay hate, but where to draw the line?

Should we allow for fundamentalist Islamic theology and Scientological insights? But then would we have to abolish all the intelligence agencies? After all, it seems you can get pinged for writing a notebook you didn't actually write (ABC here), or even worse, you can be made a citizen of Fiji, except that Fiji knows nothing about you being a citizen …(Graudian here).

It's all terribly confusing, but at least the mutton Dutton will guide the flock to safety.

And let's not forget that creationism should sit alongside that Darwinian fraud and nonsense in science classes …and perhaps there should be an hour a week dedicated to learning how to speak in tongues, surely much more important than speaking in climate science lingo …

But enough of the pond's perplexed confusion. The Sexton will sort it out ...

And so the pond begins the new year the same way it ended the old one, by suggesting that anyone can preach anything to anyone they like, and hire or fire according to their religious preferences … and for a very simple and very ethical price.

Do not preach like a Caterist, blathering about rent seekers and welfarists, while dipping the paw into taxpayer cash, but instead act like a true believer, and forsake the taxpayer dollar altogether …

And while being ethical, remember to pay up those proper and due taxes, as required for companies acting as a business, even if acting as a front for an imaginary friend or an E-meter …

And they asked him, saying, Master, we know that thou sayest and teachest rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest the way of God truly in Australian schools: 

Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto SloMo, or no? 

But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, Why tempt ye me? 

Shew me a penny, or better still, shew me a millennial who has ever seen a penny. 

Whose image and superscription hath it? 

They answered and said, SloMo's, honouring Gadfly's clever nickname, and not remembering it usually contained an image of the King or the Queen and a 'roo rampant. 

And he said unto them, Render therefore unto SloMo the things which be SloMo's, including taxes and an absence of bigotry and discrimination, and a forsaking of nonsensical fairy tales of the speaking in tongues kind, and render unto God the things which be God's, which is to say nonsensical fairy tales, bigotry and discrimination, preached upon in privately funded schools without a penny from SloMo. 

And they could not take hold of his words before the people: and they marvelled at his answer, and held their peace.

Held their peace?

How likely is that in this new year of the reptile …

And so to a cartoon  in honour of the bromancer, though the pond has already forgotten what was written ...