In which the reptiles descend into a state of chaos and confusion, and head out the back to go a bit of the biff ...

 

The reptiles are in a fair old state of chaos and turmoil, and not just internationally, though over in the US of A it didn't take long for this October posting to seem prescient ...

It's hard to talk about hate speech without recycling hate speech, but it is possible to note the work and deeds of facilitators, enablers and lick spittle fellow travellers ...

Of course like unhappy tweets, all that disappears into a memory hole, an abyss roughly equivalent to a galactic phenomenon ...

Yes, it's been a bad couple of days and speaking of Orwell, this is how memory loss works ... (WaPo paywall) ...

But enough of all that, because confusion and chaos also reigns supreme at home ...

The pond can't begin to count the number of reptile stories elevating Jacinta Price into the realm of the gods ... or the number of reptile stories and columns raging at the very notion of a voice ... and now the dog botherer has a problem ...

Being inclined to cut off the very worst reptile rants, the pond has paid no attention to Price, and it began opting out of reptile bashing of uppity, difficult, tricky blacks and the voice some time ago ... you end up being a facilitator, and an enabler and a lickspittle lackey ... but this howl of pain from the dog botherer was simply too rich to ignore ... because at one point it turns 'mano a mano', or 'reptile a reptile', as it were ...

You see? For some reason, the dog botherer has stayed loyal to Noel Pearson and the old guard, and now must warn of flying too close to the sun, and proposes public support for the voice is strong, apparently unaware that his fellow reptiles have been gunning for the voice from the start ...

For now, he's just handed out a warning, hinting at a parking fine, let loose a few crocodile tears of the "it would be a great pity" kind, which some might recognise from the old routine of "nice political career you have there, be a shame if something were to happen to it" ... apparently unaware that Price is the current house pet, much loved and patted by his fellow reptiles ...

Ah poor old Ken ... but the pond has already covered that, or at least the infallible Pope did ...

You can see the dog botherer's problem building and building ... until he can take no more and begins to take down his fellow reptiles ... though it's not just 'mano a mano', it's also 'mano a femano', as it were ... (the pond understands that 'mano' is actually feminine, but anything for a bit of word play, down there with cosplay) ...

Yep, there's Dame Slap given a spanking, and after a little more Dame Slap bashing, it's time for a bizarre shot at the bromancer ...

Why bizarre? For some peculiar reason, the dog botherer seems to think that the bromancer is a liberal practising liberalism, which is to say a Tuckyo sitting down to have a chat with Ye about Nazis ...

Those last two pars are so sublime, it makes the pond feel exceptional good. 

As Charlie Sykes himself might have said, when confronted with "A conservative approach looks for pragmatic ways to deliver those liberal ideas of equality", all that's left is "da fuq?" And so to a final gobbet of da fuq he talking about ...

The pond never thought it would be saying this, but good luck to the dog botherer with all that. 

Apparently he's only just discovered what his fellow reptiles have been up to, yet in his day he was part of the marauding pack of malign ratbags intent on destruction, hate, and FUD ... not to mention hefty doses of climate science denialism, and suddenly he's bleating "it just might help make a difference."

The only difference the pond can help with is the bankruptcy of News Corp in Australia. The moral bankruptcy has long been apparent, but an actual physical bankruptcy would be a nice boost to sensible debate ... and there's always the hope that it might just help make a difference.

And so to "Ned", where the same confusion and chaos reigns.

Yesterday, the pond sat through a turgid attempt by the indefensible hole in the bucket man to defend the indefensible and in particular, the carry-ons of the cavorting liar from the Shire  ...

Today, the pond must let all that slide down the ladder into that memory hole once reserved for 1984 ...

From Henry's defence of the indefensible to "the liar from the Sire brought this on himself"?

It's too much ... and all the pond could think to do was to trot out another infallible Pope ...

By golly, the pond doesn't think it could make it through a reptile session these days without a cartoon to hand ... but "Ned" has barely begun to warm to his task of boring the stockings off the pond ...

Did someone forget to tell the hole in the bucket man that the report was balanced and valid? 

Come to think of it, did "Ned" himself pause for a second to consider the implications of putting party above principle, with the fatuous excuse that he should be able to keep sitting in parliament so that his shame might continue as a reprimand to the impotence of the wretched mutton Dutton?

So much confusion, so little regard ... and yet "Ned" tries to dig a little comfort out of the mess, contending the only blunder was not to make the carry-on public ...

Sheesh, it's wretched stuff, boring and tedious, and down there with Faux Noise labouring to hide its love of Nazi lovers ...

And the result for the pond is that it barely has time to touch on other issues, or even celebrate this kind of sublime cartoon ...

That blather reminded the pond of its own German blut, but you can see how cartoons can make a sojourn with "Ned" pass more quickly ...

So finally we got to "The saga remains beyond weird" and the "scheme was folly", not to mention pointless and unjustified, but deeply typical of a man who got booted from tourism, and exercising the Peter principle, got booted upstairs, with the reptiles acting as cheer squad in their usual way ... until the cheering started to sound beyond weird and a deep folly ...

And speaking of deeply weird, please allow the pond another distraction...

And yet there's still two gobbets to go, though that line about the liar from the Shire "project managing it himself" does manage to capture some of the narcissist grandiosity and sense of self-importance and infinite capacity for humbug involved in the caper ...

The pond has done its best with distractions, and thankfully can now limp through the last "Ned" gobbet without visual aids handy ... though with the memory of our Henry's defence of the indefensible still ringing in the pond's ears ...

Thank the long absent lord someone can note dryly and with brevity, and usually that would be it, but our Gracie is back, and those with a memory that lasts a week (count the pond out), will remember that our Gracie was extremely agitated at the state of Victoria, and so she was again today, and so surely she deserves a place in the sun this day, as the reptile chaos and confusion continues, and our Gracie ravages certain "media types" ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, did our Gracie take a swing at Sky after dark? But the dog botherer is on Sky after dark, and this day he's been taking a swing at Dame Slap and the bromancer ... and "Ned" has been putting the boot into Henry, though possibly not realising it, what with them being fierce rivals in the 'too turgid to read' category of reptile scribblers ...

Is this the sort of dog fight the pond used to see in the heat of the noon day Tamworth sun?

Even worse, our Gracie seems quietly pleased at the dog fight, and righteous that the HUN was ignored and Victorians voted quietly as they pleased ...

The pond has celebrated all this many times before ... it has after all become a meme the pond never tires of ...

But somehow it seems as if our Gracie is verging on treachery and betrayal, or at least sounding indecent in her crowing at her fellow reptiles ...

Who are these "media types" she rants about? Who are these "media circles" that need to reassess? Who are these hinderers in the media? What is this talk of rejecting toxic media?

Sections of the media, which they regard as toxic? 

Could this possibly include the HUN? Could this be the final straw? Could our Gracie, calling from inside the house, be ravaging News Corp, just as "Ned" ravaged our Henry,  and the dog botherer took aim at Dame Slap and the bromancer, and all the pond could think of was an unseemly pack of brawling dogs in the noon day heat in Tamworth ...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The shouting reptiles cannot hear the chairman;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Is there a cartoon to help conjure up the madness and provide a closing visual?

That'll do for the moment. It wasn't a dog fight the pond was watching, it was the reptiles out the back of Maguires, with the beer flowing freely and tempers short, and deep unhappiness and recriminations and chips on shoulders abundant ...

In which our Henry fails the Thucydides test again, the emetic prof offers Tolstoy, and cackle-headed Claire omits the glory of Twitter in its heyday ...

 

Unfortunately News Radio has become a plague zone of late. As soon as the pond hears a Dorothy Dixer from the back bench, along the lines, "Will Ms Wong explain to this wonderful Senate how the government's wonderful policies are making this wonderful country even more wonderful?", it's ring the bells time, the pond is leaving the house.

The pond exaggerates but only a little, and now the pollies are gone, perhaps the station can get back to the business of recycling the BBC. How else to keep up with the latest absurdity in world affairs?

The domestic arena is full of trivial tragedies and is increasingly hard for the pond to take as we head into the holyday month. 

This very day, it seems the hole in the bucket man has entirely abandoned Thucydides and the classics canon for a Beckettian absurdist, or perhaps Artaud surrealist, attempt to defend the indefensible, in the process sounding like a walking, talking, furiously scribbling Dorothy Dixer...

Pathetic really, and all the more so because inordinate in length and begun with a snap of a lackey allegedly checking the health of SloMo ....

Meanwhile, the pond gets the impression that the hole in the bucket man is most agitated by the thinking of that dreadful hussy, sorry former High Court judge for impugning a man laughably said to have had integrity ...

He really should get back to arcane discussions of the Peloponnesian war, as for some reason, the pond was reminded of this old infallible Pope and the rabble gathered in the diner ...

At some point, even the old codger will have to admit that the bucket was fucked, and sure enough ...

Thar he blowed: "it is true that Morrison's 'dormant' powers might worry a member of the public."

But how? The entire point was a vexatious and entirely pointless furtive secrecy, and any attempt to walk around that could plausibly be viewed as jettisoning Thucydides in favour of embracing stupidity and arrant nonsense ...

Nobody, including his colleagues, knew what was going down, not parliament, not the public, and to what avail, and how much better it would have been if the hole in the bucket man had done a disquisition on Locke or Burke or anything else?

And thar, after all this blather, he'll blow again: "None of that justifies the lack of disclosure, particularly to close cabinet colleagues".

What's the point of this entirely pointless piece, except to propose the hole in the bucket man's skills as a Sophist, in the dictionary sense of "any of a class of ancient Greek teachers of rhetoric, philosophy, and the art of successful living prominent about the middle of the fifth century b.c. for their adroit subtle and allegedly often specious reasoning" has gone missing, or perhaps is too palpably present, though in a way that defames the best of sophistry ...

That, tragically, is all you're going to hear about ancient Greece in this sublimely tendentious offering ...

Sorry, invoking von Clausewitz simply doesn't cut it. The only fog that's apparent to the pond is the fog in SloMo's thinking, and the fog in the hole in the bucket man's defence, though the pond was reminded of another old infallible Pope cartoon, speaking as he did of fogs and war ...

What else? Well the reptiles were rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of all the advertising money that was going to save their business model ...

And that reminded the pond that Wilcox was drawing away ...

And so was the infallible Pope ...

And that's more than enough of that conversation ...

What else? Well the sociology prof was out and about to remind La Trobe of its shame, and to do yet another autopsy, or should that be an obituary, and the pond never thought it would say it, but really routinely supping on reptile tears can get tedious and boring. Is it possible to have too much champagne? Sadly when what you're offered is a Ben Ean moselle with the occasional spritzig bubble ...

The lockdown had been more punitive thanks to higher Covid death rates? How about the Covid pandemic had been more punitive, thanks to higher Covid rates ... not to mention the difficulties governments faced getting vaccines and masks out and about, no thanks to the likes of the Killer and his reptile chums ...

As for the rest, it's just another serve of coulda, woulda, shoulda, and a reminder of just how spectacularly the HUN and the rest of the reptiles failed in their unremitting campaign to demonise comrade Dan ...

What a lesson in impotence ... but all this was days ago, with the Graudian offering Victorian Liberal party left shellshocked after another heavy election defeat and L'Age ‘Disaster upon disaster upon disaster’: Liberals assess damage.

But all that feels like an eternity ago, and the fall Guy has gone ... and yet still the reptiles brood, though at least we get a serve of Tolstoy, a reminder to our Henry that he really must lift his game and that a stray Clausewitzian shot simply isn't good enough ...

Here the La Trobe man misses a trick. He really should have added that it reminded him of Xi and white paper, or perhaps Western Australian deciding to secede, and apparently happy about it ...

As for the rest, the best our emetic sociology prof can come up with is, "gad sir, it's about time you resigned" ... because railing in the lizard Oz and the HUN seems to have had no discernible effect ...

Retire, resign, whatever, but talk about missing a trick. Surely that should have read that a leader as ruthless and as hubristic as Comrade Dan shows all the signs of becoming a Victorian Emperor in the manner of Xi ... and yet still for some arcane reason too obscure for the La Trobe prof to understand, he romped home ...

And there you have it, the confusion and the chaos in the reptile ranks. After listening to our Henry's valiant defence of the indefensible, the emetic sociology prof decides that SloMo now sits as a "lonely figure of untouchable embarrassment" ...

But at least there was a serve of Shakspere, a reminder that our Henry should start watching Upstart Crow so that he might seem as relevant and in touch as 2016 ...

Or perhaps enjoy an immortal Rowe ...

What else? Well the pond has indulged the reptiles for far too long this day, but this was delectable ...

Where was chuckle-headed Claire going with all this? That talk of guns on the bedside table did remind the pond that Xmas in America is approaching ...

But the big reveal is that even those right wing loons who like to blather in a libertarian way about free speech and such like are wondering at the point of it all.

Not ever having been a twitterer, having stayed an old school blogger trapped in the noughties - never made it into Facebook or the meta universe either - the pond only knows the place as the source of cartoons and the odd bit of trivia ... or perhaps a chance to catch up on the latest Herschel joke ...

Now there's a test ... because these days it seems any level of unreality is possible ...

And so on to the big reveal, though the header did give away the idea that cackle-headed Claire was giving the bird the bird ...

Only on another planet, that blather about "hitherto left-wing bias", as if vilifying trans people was in the natural order of things, and never mind the bizarre thought that Murdochians and Faux Noise shine the light of unbiased truth out of their collective arses ...

And only now have they discovered the bleeding obvious ...

What broke Twitter, and what broke America? 

Well that began long ago with the mango Mussolini ... but you won't find any of that in cackle-headed Claire, who apparently thinks that Twitter is still limited to 280 characters, when you can in fact fit in all sorts of goodies ...

Sorry, sorry, the pond still finds that one irresistible, and in a way will be sorry to see Twitter go, if only for those occasional moments when the reptiles might be handed a quick and sharp spanking.

There can be a lot more in a tweet than in chuckle-headed Claire's notion that truth might be discovered in a lizard Oz column of a thousand words or so ... and so to yet another sullen moment with comrade Dan, which might just as easily have been written as "during the height of the campaign season, we saw HUN headlines saying 'Dictator Dan must go', but as we saw earlier this week, HUN headlines do not translate into electoral success at all ...

The rest of the planet might remember what happened to the platform and to the United States, and is still happening, but please allow the pond to celebrate with a reminder that it wasn't all about the left side of politics, it was about a canker at the core of Faux Noise and the GOP ... and that canker is still there, even if he now has his own platform and has joined cackle-headed Claire in spurning his chance to rejoin the platform ... at least until Truth Social goes bust ...

In which the pond is endlessly diverted, before celebrating the start of summer with a Hawaii-style shirt...

 

The pond thought it would be winding down for the summer holyday season, but it has been hitting the reptiles hard of late. 

The pond now knows more about Nick Fuentes than the pond can ever forget, and then there was Elon dancing with the far right in the LA Times, here at Yahoo, and this offering by Tim Miller to Ron fan boys, (Bulwark), with these immortal lines ...

Dear Residents of DeSantistan,
It’s nice to hear from you. I notice you have had some harsh words for Mr. Trump of late. You might even think he’s a Bad Orange Man? Concur! So lucky for you to have been awoken from your torpor on this matter at the most convenient time imaginable.
Before we get to the meat of my correspondence, I do have to mention that we missed having you on board these past few annums: During the 2016 general election, Impeachment One, the 2020 Republican primary, the 2020 general election, the alarming interregnum, the 2021 Georgia run-off, Impeachment Two, opposing the Trump election deniers in the 2022 midterms, and the recent FBI raid on the former president’s home.
Better late than never.
It’s especially nice to hear that your candidate plans to challenge and defeat Mr. Trump once and for-all. Though you might forgive a bit of tepidness in our anticipation for this event given that he hasn’t actually done anything yet and we’ve been disappointed by your ilk so many times before (see above).
You also might forgive those of us who have spent seven years fighting Trump if we are not super thrilled to jump on board with someone described by Rich Lowry as being not just from the “Trump Wing” of the party but the “Trump fuselage, wing and landing gear.” (This was intended, I believe, as a compliment).
Bearing all that in mind, I want to put forth what I, as a charter Never Trumper, will do and not do in order to provide the aid and comfort you are demanding for your chosen candidate’s campaign against the former president.
We’ll start with the will nots (natch).

• I will not be a human shield for Ron to protect him from all the hard (and not so hard) questions about Donald Trump. For example, you might feel like it is not strategic for him to state clearly that it’s bad for the man he supported for president twice to have had dinner with one of the nation’s leading white supremacists. I, for one, am not certain that this convenient silence is good strategy. Maybe it’s true he might need the votes of anti-semites, maybe it’s not. But I am sure that it’s not too much to ask a prospective president what they think about it.
• I will not give him a pass when he refuses to provide an answer, any answer, about whether or not he thinks Donald Trump’s coup attempt was a good thing or a bad thing. Given that his only comments to date were supportive of the coup, it feels like his updated views on the matter are something we should hear about before we give him the keys to the kingdom.
• I will not practice strategic silence while he exhibits every single behavior of enablement and collaboration with the crazy that got us to Donald Trump in the first place....

And so on ... there's a lot more, and The Bulwark has become a fun place because those ex-GOPers know where all the bodies are buried ... so many bodies ...

And then there was this exceptional marketing ploy by Balenciaga ...

The pond enjoys bondage as much as the next prevert, but kids with bondage teddy bears? That would have been a big hit in Tamworth back in the day ...

By the time the pond turns to the reptiles, all the comedy had been done and dusted, and so it was terribly easy to resist poor petulant Peta, so ravaged by recent events ...

Just that thumb with snap was more than enough, and the pond drank deeply on the petulant one's tears.

What need to read further? Please, keep on trotting off to the barking mad fundamentalist loony land of the extreme right and the Xian fundamentalist, such a winning formula ... but it did allow the pond to throw (careful not to throw up) to a snap of a recent portrait launch,  as noted by a correspondent ...

How did Albo manage to land himself in that snap, smirking like a goose? And as for that macho pose by the failed strutting peacock and onion muncher ... clueless to the very last daub of mediocre oils ... (oils ain't oils, ya know) ...

It's the sleeves rolled up, belt-slumped, cock-jutting, preening of it all, without the slightest shred of self-awareness,  that had the pond rolling jaffas down the aisle, and heading off to the The Betoota Advocate way back when in 2015 ...

You have to read it to understand that visual satire never dies, it just transforms and transmutes and the next thing you know the pond has sprung a leak ...

Hang on, hang on, the pond can hear some murmuring in the trenches. Isn't this a blog about the lizard Oz? What's all this leaving of the train tracks with Tootle?

Well apart from petulant Peta - and sipping the tears of her sorrow is more than enough for the pond - look at the rest of the line-up ...

What on earth were the reptiles thinking to allow that blather about the voice not belonging on the cultural battlefield? Of course it does ...

Are the reptiles having second thoughts? As well as trying to stir up trouble between states and feds, the top of the digital page discovered  that there might be an alternative to Price ...

Dear sweet innocent Oz coal ... and that's why the pond ended up visiting the ghosts of Xmas's past ...

Note the incredibly discreet, subtle, nuanced and kind way that simplistic Simon avoids naming names, the splitters and the rats in the ranks ...

"Bar two", but don't you worry about "bar who" or even bah humbug ... though the pond did wonder if having a "Bid" in the ring might have raised conflict of name issues for the no conflict of interest man. Could the Bids be confused? Better to keep the Bids out of it ...

The best they could produce was brother Paul? 

Meanwhile, over at the AFR, the rats in the ranks were spilling into the streets, or at least spilling into the ear of the savvy Savva and so into Joe, celebrating his besties ...

Christmas is nigh and there is no more reliable stocking filler than election books. And there is nothing more tempting for revisionists than an election post-mortem. Whoever said history is written by the victors?!

Six months since the defeat of his government, how terrific it is to see the greatest enablers of Scott Morrison’s prime ministership forsaking him with reckless abandon.

Enter Niki Savva, father confessor to the brave and censurer of all Liberal prime ministers bar the ones who employed her husband.

According to Morrison’s own numbers man in the Liberal party room and cabinet minister, Alex Hawke, the former PM “didn’t really take advice from people” and “wasn’t the greatest listener”.

Hawke reckons Morrison’s vacation in Hawaii during the Black Summer bushfires was so disastrous he would’ve been removed as leader if not for the immediate onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also says Morrison “probably” would’ve won the election if he had called it before Christmas 2021. That’s called having a bob each-way.

Better yet, Hawke told Savva that he advised Morrison not to install anti-trans activist Katherine Deves as the Liberal candidate for the NSW seat of Warringah.

Even if that’s true, Hawke conveniently omits the damning context. Morrison was only able to handpick a candidate in Warringah by state executive decree because Hawke, Morrison’s representative on that body, helped him stall grassroots preselections – over the outraged cries of local Liberal branches – until it was too late to hold them.

Hawke was only too happy to do this – indeed, he was the tactic’s author and chief beneficiary – because he didn’t have the numbers to win his own preselection in Mitchell, a seat so safe even Deves would have won it.

That’s right, the prime minister’s numbers man couldn’t even marshal the numbers in Baulkham Hills.

One might reasonably surmise that if Hawke had stuck to low-altitude branch recruitment drives, instead of graduating to the high commission of Morrison’s grand accomplice – today the Liberal Party would “probably” not be so completely f---ed.

Morrison’s other closest ally, Stuart Robert, meanwhile, told Savva “Scotty’s a friend as much as one can have a friend in politics”.

Malcolm Turnbull dumped Robert from the federal ministry. He was untouchable. And from the backbench we now know he was helping contractors score government contracts out of the kindness of his heart.

This is someone so intimate with Morrison that they regularly prayed to God together, including on the morning that Morrison was elected leader. And Robert now calls him “a friend as much as one can have a friend”. How easily he slips into the sandals of Judas Iscariot. Has conservative politics ever produced a more grasping, faithless character?

Josh Frydenberg provided Savva with a carefully crafted statement describing as “extreme overreach” Morrison secretly swearing himself in as co-treasurer after his treasurer had been “loyal to a fault”.

Frydenberg has every right to feel aggrieved by Morrison’s betrayal. He could not have been more devoted, bunking with Scotty at the Lodge, sharing microwave dinners, and episodes of Yes, Prime Minister.

When it suited him, Frydenberg laboured their closeness. It requires no courage to distance himself from ScoMo now. Where was he when Morrison was captaining the ship into the rocks? Standing beside him at the wheel.

Frydenberg wasn’t merely duped on the secret ministries, he was duped full stop. This is the lethal truth for Frydenberg, even if he manoeuvres himself back into parliament. He was conned by the most conspicuous charlatan in modern political history. The rest of us worked it out when Morrison went to Hawaii (or earlier), but Morrison’s deputy still couldn’t. He just clung on.

Or Frydenberg conned himself, and he knew what he was doing because he was one out, one back, hoping Scotty would fall over and he could claim the prize. If he had said that to Savva, you’d totally pay it.

The original version of this article said “bar the one who employed her husband”. This has been changed to “ones”.

It's not often that the pond strays into the AFR but that was too delicious, and those who want to to more straying could head off to Samantha Maiden in the softer reptile site for Are you sure that‘s a good idea?’: Scott Morrison’s biggest mistake...One of Scott Morrison’s longest serving lieutenants, who sits next to the former PM in Parliament, has unleashed an extraordinary attack on his ally.

Scott Morrison was “addicted to power” and his disastrous decision to fly to Hawaii was such a debacle he would have been dumped as leader if the Covid pandemic hadn’t arrived.

In an extraordinary attack, one of Mr Morrison’s longest serving lieutenants, Liberal MP Alex Hawke, has joined his former staff in admitting Hawaii was his biggest mistake.

As Parliament prepares to censure the Prime Minister for the secret ministries mess, Mr Hawke has unloaded in a new book.

And it’s likely to make for some awkward moments for Mr Morrison and Mr Hawke in Parliament tomorrow, where they sit next to each other in question time.

"He got addicted to executive authority,” Hawke told veteran political journalist Niki Savva in hew new book Bulldozed.

She writes that Mr Hawke believed “Morrison should have quit parliament almost immediately after the election, rather than stay and risk becoming bitter and twisted”.

And then ... yes, there's a closing 'and then '... beyond the valley of the bitter and the twisted ...

Former frontbencher Karen Andrews also told the author that when she asked her three daughters — aged 18, 22, and 26 — why people “hated Mr Morrison so much”, they told her it was because he went to Hawaii during the fires.

“He should have been back here,’” Ms Andrews said. “The optics were awful.”

In the book, Savva argues that “everything that flowed from that fateful decision — the secrecy, the lies surrounding his whereabouts, his protest that it wasn’t his job to hold a hose.”

She argues it was a moment that “provided piercing insights into his character and his judgement that reverberated all the way through his term as prime minister, right up until election day, 21 May 2022, when posters of him wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a frangipani headdress were plastered around polling booths in targeted electorates by his opponents.”

The poor reptiles, and with only simplistic Simon and shameless Shanners ready to stand up and be counted, and never mind that all would have been better if the liar from the Shire had retreated, took a job in a church and began talking in tongues to his imaginary friend...

Yet he still sits there, like that bloody Raven above Poe's door, still croaking away, and forcing Shanners to croak with him ...

Time to move on? Partisan? He got dumped by the country and even the reptiles at news.com.au couldn't resist digging up old comedy items to celebrate the season ...

The pond did its best to move on, remembering that it really did once rent a house in Mcdougall street in Kirribilli, and so has a connection to the Caterist, though finding a park was an ordeal as bad as the pond's time in Paddington, and there were these bloody trees that kept on dropping things on cars ...

Begone baleful biscuit tin sight, just look at that line of vehicles and think of all the wretches turning up to gawk at them and take a stroll in the park, and pity the poor residents.

Sure, any home to Caterists, should suffer, but there should be a limit.

Sorry, sorry, time to move on, and the pond still has a few Shanners tears to sup, with the bouffant one also desperately trying to move on ...

Time to move on? Yeah, nah, not while it's fun ... perhaps only after the pond has had a Shylockian moment or three ... and so, if the pond might paraphrase ...

The reptiles weren't merely duped on the secret ministries, they were duped full stop. This is the lethal truth for the reptiles even as petulant Peta sheds her copious tears. They were conned by the most conspicuous charlatan in modern political history (with the possible exception of the onion muncher). The rest of us worked it out when Morrison went to Hawaii (or earlier), but Morrison’s deputy and the reptiles still couldn’t. They just clung on.

Or the reptiles conned themselves, knowing they'd backed and kept on backing a dropkick loser, hoping Scotty would fall over and the reptiles could still keep aloft the glittering prize for their mates. If Shanners and simplistic Simon had confessed and scribbled that, that they'd been willingly conned by a con artist, so they could keep on conning their readers, you’d totally pay it.

As it is, the pond isn't interested in moving on, so much as moving over to end with an infallible Pope ... and how soon before the holyday season saves the pond's sanity?