Say what? Bucket-hole fixing on a Thursday, with an ample supply of straw? 

The pond had to check the date quickly, but it wasn't a Friday,  our Henry had bolted from the gate early, such was his sense of impending doom and grotesque depravity ...

But before getting there, the pond must pause to note and honour the correspondent who drew attention to SloMo's wretched performance before the Robodebt inquiry. 

You won't find any of that at the lizard Oz because the reptiles have lowered the volume on their coverage to the point of invisibility so the pond thought it might celebrate with a meme that's been doing the round. If anyone's seen it, never mind, just pass it on ...

And with that done, the pond can move on to the hole in the bucket man, and once again, we must forsake Thucydides and all the rest of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but perhaps a trip back to the time of Gough might be allowed, if paranoia and hysteria are to remain supreme ...

Only the reptiles could start a column by the hole in the bucket man with a click bait video suggesting that "siding with workers" is all you can expect from a Labor government.

It suggests that the reptiles think siding with big business, rent seekers, profit gougers and fuckers of the planet are the way to go, but the pond already knew that ...

More important was the sort of illustration that the reptiles decided to use, and instead of shots of baleful Satanic windmills or an array of hideous solar panels, the reptile picture editor decided to produce a snap of pleasing gas burning in the sky, helpfully warding off the winter chill ...

As for the nub of our Henry's argument, the pond is quite content to ignore it all, because it's heard it all before. Santos must have got in touch with Dame Groan, who got in touch with our Henry and so he bolted from the gate on a Thursday, because dammit, it's the business of the reptiles to make life tough for workers and mug punters ...

Here, have another click bait video about poor, hapless coal and gas producers and the great things they're doing for the planet ... oh wait, the pond always neutralises these things, but at least you can catch the drift ..

At this point, the pond began to wonder if it had chosen wisely. but no, Dame Slap was still off rabbiting about the Higgins matter ...

She'll never give up on Higgins or the Voice, but seeing how her MAGA cap days worked out, perhaps there was no other choice.

Meanwhile, in the rest of reptile la la land, gas was all the go, and our Henry was just doing what had already been done in the tree killer edition ...

There was also a mention of that rogue, ratbag, rabid anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist turned cop killer ... must have been following the deeper thoughts of  Ron DeSanctimonious, or perhaps Killer ...

Meanwhile, our Henry wasn't winding down ... with a snap of the anti-Christ himself designed to whip him into a lather ...

Yes, but how desperate are things? So desperate that in his last gobbet, as foreshadowed, the Greek and Roman man was forced to take a trip to Gough times, as a way of heralding the arrival of the apocalypse ...

Ah, the pond believes that's a reference to Psalm 146:3-5, so it seems that at last Henry is calling on an imaginary friend, the God of Jacob, for help ...

The pond will call on a Wilcox ...

And so to a bonus, and it wasn't a big set of choices ...

Reptile Goff was in a frenzy and so was comrade reptile Dimitri, and the pond has absolutely no interest in Harry and Meghan and all that jazz, and so it had to be Killer ... though the pond thought it might start with its own bit of musing about history.

What with all the booing that he copped just recently, and the patently nonsensical lies he told about it, as Elon's lickspittle lackeys tried to get the footage taken down wherever they found it, some have begun to wonder how Elon can be such a gigantic tool and so filthy rich at one and the same time, albeit with the riches fading a little.

The pond was reminded of the example of Henry Ford, a fierce anti-semite and Hitler tool ...

Henry did wonders for the production line, but he used his riches to spread anti-Semitism as far and as wide as possible, and it fell on the fertile ground of Adolf's sociopathic madness ...

There's a good Q and A about it at PBS here...

What kind of things did Henry Ford blame on Jews? 
Throughout The Dearborn Independent, Ford published articles that would refer to Jews in every possible context as at the root of America and the world's ills. Strikes: It was the Jews. Any kind of financial scandal? The Jews. Agricultural depression? The Jews. So "the Jew," in a way, became the symbol of a world that was being manipulated and controlled.
To me, that's one of the really crucial forces in this rhetoric -- that things didn't just happen; but rather somebody is orchestrating these developments, and it's the Jews who are doing it for their benefit. They're doing it in order [to] gain the twin-linked goodies of power and wealth.
Ford also republished the Protocols of the Elders of Zion -- what is that? 
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a notorious forgery that originally came from Russia, and [was] translated into English. [It] claimed the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy -- that a group of Jews got together and basically planned the fate of the world, be it financial catastrophe, be it war. The world was controlled by this little cabal of Jews. [This forgery was] printed in The Dearborn Independent as a factual piece. And so someone reading it would take this to be the news.

And so on ... there's a lot to cover, and many stories and that Adolf connection is also covered here ...

Numerous historians have noted that Ford is the only American mentioned in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” memoir. After asserting that Jews were increasingly exerting control over American labor, Hitler wrote, “one great man, Ford, to their exasperation, still holds out independently.”
Experts on Hitler have noted Ford’s literature influenced Hitler’s writing in “Mein Kampf.” Reading “The International Jew,” which became a hit in Germany after being published in German in 1922, helped push Hitler further into “conspiratorial anti-Semitism,” Thomas Weber wrote in “Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi.”
“Henry Ford is important for having provided to Hitler confirmation, coming from the very heart of America, of an idea that had been brewing in his mind,” Weber wrote. The idea was that Jews’ control of global finance was behind the world’s problems.
“Henry Ford thus turned into an anti-Semitic icon for Hitler.”
In summer 1938, with the German Wehrmacht having marched into Austria, and despite years of deflecting charges he was an anti-Semite, Ford accepted a 75th birthday present from Hitler. It was the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, the highest award the regime bestowed on foreigners.
The golden Maltese cross, surrounded by four small swastikas, was presented to Ford in Ford Motors’ Dearborn offices by Fritz Haller, the German vice consul in Detroit.

The pond has never had much time for Fords, or Führer wagons, though the pond will concede that if you went down the list and struck off all the collaborators, you'd have to add BMW, IBM, Mercedes and dozens of other abiding businesses to the list.

As for that mention of Mein Kampf, the pond can hear the rustle on the bookshelf, with some wondering why there's no mention of Ford in their edition ... but it was only in the early edition and you should have read an annotated copy ...

How is it possible that the newspapers of a Northcliffe, who were the faithful shield-bearers
in the British battle against the German Empire, suddenly broke ranks and chose a path of
their own? 

(This idea and much of the following about America came from carmaker Henry
Ford’s newspaper, Dearborn Independent. Hitler was very interested in Henry Ford’s
theories. Northcliffe was a title Baron Northcliffe bestowed on Alfred Harmsworth, a 
newspaper magnate who was also called Lord Northcliffe. He controlled the Times and other
papers and was known for influencing propaganda against the Germans in the First World
War.) 

The British did not seek the destruction of Germany; that was a Jewish interest.
Today, the destruction of Japan is not in the political interest of England, but it does match
the desire of the Jewish leaders and their longing for a Jewish world-empire. While England
over-exerts herself to maintain her position in the world, the Jew is organizing an attack in
order to conquer it.
The Jew already sees the present European states as tools in his fist, controlled by either the
indirect means of western democracy or in the form of direct control through Russian
Bolshevism. The old world is not the only one that he holds in his net. He also threatens the
new world with the same fate.
The Jews rule the financial powers in the American Union. Each year they become more and
more the master, controlling the working power of one hundred and twenty million people.
Today, there is one great man, Ford, who has preserved his independence and is still
irritating the Jews. 

(Later editions of Mein Kampf omitted the name Ford, which referred to
carmaker Henry Ford. This reference may have been removed at the request of Henry Ford
due to social and political pressure he received because of his anti-Semitism; however, it is
more likely it was removed by order from Hitler because of a public apology Henry Ford
made to the Jews in 1927, which was issued after he was forced to shut down the
newspaper, and in court Ford claimed he had no idea what his anti-Semitic newspaper had
been publishing.) 

In short, it's possible for a very rich man to be both filthy rich and a complete tool, and so the pond has set the stage for Killer to do his thing ...

Okay, okay, the pond gets the joke: "Muckrakers would have been all over the Twitter Files", and Killer is all over the Twitter Files and ergo, Killer is an exemplary muckraker ...

Here have another cute example of a sub-editor at play ...

Now at this point, some might be wondering why the pond is wasting time on a very rich idiot who has gone down the rabbit hole, and exposed his narcissist attention-seeking to the world, and so is naturally celebrated by a muckraker of the Killer kind, when it might be celebrating SloMo, but the immortal Rowe has taken good care of that, and has that tool in hand, or at least in chair, and not a hose in sight ...

And so the pond can indulge the Killer, what with Killer fancying that once again he's delivering some killer paranoid hysteria lines ...

Indeed, indeed, speaking of the far left, what we need is Marshall Law ...

The pond is only here for the entertainment, and others might find the Graudian entertaining, or MSNBC,  or Vanity Fair,  but please, the Killer has some great routines of his own, not least labelling Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss as "centrists", though the pond supposes this might be true if the comparison were to Genghis Khan or perhaps Adolf himself ...

A playful tweet? We've just seen how that rabbit-hole madness plays out in the deep north, and yet the Killer plays the madness of Elon down as playful?

And for that "self-evidently, my employer is a laudable exception", what to say, except to propose that the Killer is even more up the fundament of the Chairman than his own, and amazingly still thinks his and the Chairman's shit doesn't stink ... or that they haven't over the years, done their level best to distort, ruin, fuck up and destroy the public conversation.

But enough already with Faux Noise ... the pond's only hope is that Killer doesn't go even further down the rabbit hole with Elon, because then a truly epic delusion on a Fordian scale beckons ...

And so, because self-evidently, the pond can't cover the comedy of SloMo, what with the story having been shadow banned by the reptiles, a few more cartoons ...

And then there was an infallible Pope, for those who haven't already forgotten every word scribbled by the hole in the bucket man ...

As usual, it's the detail that delights, and as our Henry and the reptiles deal with their PTSD,  one of those witches is worth a closer look ...

In which the pond is left with a prize RN maroon and nattering "Ned" ...

 

The pond is both bemused and in awe at the devotion shown by Dame Groan cultists, even though the old biddy is just carrying on as if she was still the Chair of Santos and still delivering speeches of the 2009 kind, still celebrated by gas lovers in search of the gaseous.

As for the pond, it's inclined to be more severe, and has no problem cutting a reptile dead if the tedium gets too much to bear. 

The pond won't even offer a little finger as a handshake to an offending reptile - the pond always had a lot of time for Becky Sharp - and so today the pond won't even bother giving Dame Slap the finger...

Fie, still blathering on endlessly about the voice, still bashing difficult, uppity blacks? Talk about Janet one note, though when you consider her contributions to the Higgins matter, she sometimes manages two ...

Yeah, nah, and that's how the pond ended up with a lightweight tosser of the swishing Switzer kind, proposing one of those turgid listicles only a reptile could deem a form of thinking ...

When the pond steps into this kind of gutter, it looks for the use of key words to indicate the level of moronic thinking, and there were rich pickings, though if "woke" gets mentioned even once, the pond might be tempted to leave the room to indulge in a screaming fit ...

Ah, "the four fronts", which immediately whisked the pond back to the "four pests" campaign ...

Straight into the heart of stupidity, and for anyone wanting even more, as usual there's a wiki listing a whole range of them, from the hundred flowers campaign, through the great leap forward, to the destruction of the four olds and the campaign to denounce the gang of four ...

What is it with the number four, given that the Chinese deem it unlucky, and sometimes treat it like a missing 13th floor when putting up a building?

The pond thinks it's because it's a number which stretches limited intellects when engaging in analysis. 

The number can't be five, because that's way too many, and yet the number can't be three, because that suggests an insufficiency, and so the number must be four ... and so the listicle begins ...

Oh fucketty fuck. The pond will leave others to deal with that extremely stupid explanation of the causes of inflation, because the pond must leave the room for a little while to lift a window and scream to the world, "I'm as mad as hell and I can't take any more crap about the 'woke' and Xianity and western civilisation and family units and all that shit any more."

Sure, it's nice to know that the level of analysis isn't going to get any higher than an Elon tweet or a mango Mussolini speech, and so deserves nothing much more than idle abuse, but the pond reckons that even the pictorial department were taking the piss by inserting a shot of King Chuck III as a example of all that we should value ...

You know, huzzah for talking tampons and mother fixations and all that ... even though the doddering old fart is dedicated to quackery in many forms ... not least the Gerson regime, wherein fruit juices, coffee enemas and weekly vitamin injections will cure the cancer that ails you ...

What's all this about King Chuck?

Well the pond was foreshadowing a snap of western civilisation's finest flowering, and now we're on to that snap of the talking tampon ...

By the by, the pond doesn't do links, but should really note that reference to a prominent classical liberal journalist was actually to the bromancer, a fundamentalist tyke, thereby guaranteed to produce a gale of laughter in reptile devotees.

It was followed by another link to the very same ratbag doing a Dame Slap about the voice, and the shock and hostility was poor old Noel Pearson, who once was a reptile favourite, until they discovered that they preferred to pay a higher Price ...

Still, it was so rare for the reptiles to invite readers to step out of the walled garden, that the pond was in some kind of shock, and almost forget to note the obligatory mention of "zealotry" and "eco-zealots", the usual form of idiotic abuse offered by useless climate denialist idiots in lieu of any constructive suggestions as to how to deal with the effects of climate change ...

You might at least have hoped for some mention of fusion as being the new fix ...

Well as a pond correspondent noted, there's no need to stay on the pond when news is afoot elsewhere ... though the game changer is likely years away from when it might matter ... and meanwhile ...

Strangely, there was no mention of catastrophist thinking by the RN hack, but that was because the swishing Switzer is inclined to be a catastrophist himself, and so to the last in this painful listicle ...

 

Um, what was that "It should be a wake-up call for the governments of nations whose way of life is under the greatest threat"?

But didn't the pond just read of the doom induced by "a growing belief that it is the state's place to sort out every problem a society faces"?!

What a maroon, as Bugs might say, and if anybody wonders why the pond never bothers to listen to RN these days, there's your answer. You've got the swishing Switzer as a presenter, and the only listener seems to be prattling Polonius, so he can get agitated about all the leftists in the place ... as if a loon blathering about the woke and snowflaking for governments to fix it could pass as a leftist ...

And what of a bonus as the pond prepares to wind down for the holyday season?

Well as there's no Dame Slap - here, have a shake of the pond's little finger - there's nothing for it than a dose of nattering "Ned", though the pond does warn the gainfully employed of nodding off mid-week when there are targets to reach and the quarter is drawing to a close ...

It's just "Ned" doing his usual Chicken Little routine, looking at the sky, alarmed at the sight of clouds and running about squawking, but here the pond must interrupt to express some disappointment.

It's true that the reptile faithful will be appropriately alarmed by that snap of the great Satanist at the head of the piece, but where were the windmills, or at least a snap of a row of solar panels?

Surely in the great tradition of a reptile column about energy, there should be demonic windmills or perhaps a gratuitous, meaningless shot of a power station, or something to do with energy ...

Oh wait, the pond interrupted too soon, showed too little faith in the abundant skill of a pictorial department charged with making "Ned's" natter sound interesting ...

The pond has its own ideas of a visual companion for "Ned's" natter ...

And so on with the natter ...

Sheesh, the pond is finding it extremely hard to stay awake, and it's not the weekend ... 

Perhaps a coffee enema?

No, something much better ... there's an infallible Pope to hand and it's on topic...

And as the infallible Pope was offering apologies to Matisse, presumably he was referencing this well-known study of the Dance ...

Now that's exactly the sort of break the pond needed, before turning to yet another snap of the demonic Satanist getting the reptile faithful agitated...

Did the pond ever think it would be referencing Taylor Swift?

Cause baby, now we got bad blood

You know it used to be mad love

So take a look what you've done

'Cause baby, now we got bad blood (hey!)

Now we got problems

And I don't think we can solve 'em

You made a really deep cut

And baby, now we got bad blood (hey!)

Of course the pond could have referenced Creedence, but didn't want to give away its age ...

I see the bad moon a-risin'

I see trouble on the way

I see earthquakes and lightnin'

I see bad times today

Don't go around tonight

Well it's bound to take your life

There's a bad moon on the rise

I hear hurricanes a-blowin'

I know the end is comin' soon

I fear rivers over flowin'

I hear the voice of rage and ruin

Don't go around tonight

Well it's bound to take your life

There's a bad moon on the rise, alright

Hope you got your things together

Hope you are quite prepared to die

Looks like we're in for nasty weather

One eye is taken for an eye

That's more than enough of that, and the pond can only think that the bad blood and big trouble coming arises from the bizarre notion that Australian citizens own Australian resources and should use them, in a thoughtful way, to improve their lot ... and that looting and pillaging the country is a privilege with a price, not a droit de seigneur to fuck the country on a whim in the quest for a massive profit ...

But when you scribble impotent nonsense for a foreign owned company you might well have difficulty with such a simple concept ...

Speaking of the old system being ready, is it too soon to forget the old system at its finest? Yes, even as the pond types, the old system has some explaining to do ... not that you'd ever know any of it was happening if you stuck with the reptiles ...

The Braidwood Times turns up before the lizard Oz on a google search?

Never mind, being ACM, they've also got a paywall, so the pond will close with a cartoon celebrating the old system at work ...

In which the pond tries to work out where Barners, the Groaner and the bromancer sit on the traumatisation mythologies meter ...

 

The pond was very attracted to this recovering Republican's traumatisation scale, featured in Salon ...

It would need some tweaking to turn into a reptile traumatisation scale, but the basic elements are sound. It omits, for example, fear of masks and vaccines, and a reluctance to treat a pandemic as a pandemic ... still lingering below the fold in the comments section ...

Allysia """ Finley and the good old vile 'leets, and perhaps in the body of the text, she joined Elon in demanding Fauci's immediate arrest - Elon Musk Sets Medical Twitter on Fire After ‘Prosecute’ Fauci Tweet - but the pond didn't bother finding out, because meanwhile the reptile tree killer edition was screeching to the high heavens ...

Yes, it's still a thing, and surely vaccines and masks shouldn't be demonised, but if you walk in the streets with a mask on, you're likely to cop random abuse from a stranger. 

The pond is reminded of the time it first visited Japan, and it was deemed polite and a common courtesy that if you had a cold, the sniffles or the flu, you should mask up while on a train or out and about in public ...

Speaking of Asia, keen eyes will have noted that Barners was out and about this day ... and of course he had to be made the pond's top feature. We Tamworth folk must stick together, and Barners' ability to mangle the English language is legendary, and as usual there was a surprise ...

Smarten up! The pond hasn't heard that one since the days it attended Tamworth Primary and students were always being urged to smarten up, or look smart, or be smart about it, or get ship-shape, and be quick about it ...

Still it was an important message from a politician who routinely manages to look like a beer-swilling slovenly slob, and the pond took it to heart ...

Oh yes, heaven forbid that anyone should do climate change research, though if that's a complete waste of time, why was time researching SMRs, when, after all, there is nothing to worry about ...

As for food, never mind that the Nationals turned Gina's mob and have turned into the National Mining Party, and presided over the destruction of the Hunter Valley, and were quite happy to do the same to the Liverpool plains, following the mantra of dig it up and ship it out... you know, back in the days of unbridled romantic naivety, and a deep, abiding love for clean, innocent, dinkum Oz coal ...

But enough of the brooding, Barners can alway s talk about the realities underpinning the new global Gina power paradigm ...

And so to the final gobbet that pleased and delighted the pond, and spoiler alert, the pond will spill the beans before presenting it ...

Barners had gone full Confucian and is compelled by the Confucian ethos ... (please make sure to confuse Asia and China and Buddhist and Islamic countries ... just lump them all together as a "them", it's the dinkum way) ...though the pond senses that some vulgar youff might have difficulty treating Barners' as a respected elder, what with him blathering about respect for family, and some still having enough memory cells to remember Barners' actual behaviour when it came to family ...

Ah, yes, the perils of an all-inclusive culture. If you remember that scale, the needle might be hovering somewhere between 5-6 and 7-8 at the thought of all those threats to the likes of Barners, but enough already, if you can't savour the poetry in that last line, you must surely be a heathen or a philistine ...

It was just as well Barners was to hand, because this day's Groan was dull and predictable, and the pond's heart sank the moment it saw the teaser at the top of the digital page ...

Yes, snowflakes it's apocalyptic disaster Tuesday time, and the usual epic catastrophist groaning ... but to be honest, the only question for the pond was whether the reptiles would use a snap of demonic, satanic windmills as the opening image ... only to be disappointed by the ongoing lack of imagination in the lizard Oz's much reduced pictorial department ...

Just an indeterminate shot of a power station? Really reptiles, is that the best you can do?

Please pay attention, elsewhere in the digital edition there was a valiant warrior at work ...

What a heartfelt plea, what a rigorous pleading for dinkum, clean, innocent, sweet, virginal coal ... and the pond felt replenished and in good cheer as it returned to the apocalyptic catastrophist urging terror and FUD on the land, as a way of teaching snowflakes how to be truly anxious, nervous nelly snowflakes ... watch out, there's a snap of an actual Satanist in the next gobbet ...

The pond will, of course, follow the golden rule when it comes to the Groaning and not mention climate change or its costs ...

If you can get around the WaPo paywall, you could read about the latest in cloud research ...

The new cloud research indicates that the lower estimates for warming are highly unlikely. Instead, the recent papers estimate that CO2 levels of 560 ppm would probably result in at least 3 or 3.5 degrees of warming.

That doesn’t mean that the world will definitely hit 3 degrees of warming — if countries continue to shift to clean energy, CO2 in the atmosphere could be stabilized at a level significantly below 560 ppm. But it does mean that the most optimistic estimates for how warming will unfold have been taken off the table.

Or you could read dangerous talk of state-owned facilities and be confronted by a demonic snap of windmills at the Beeb ...

Plans for a publicly owned energy company could see bills reduced and renewable supplies directly benefit communities, a minister has said.

The proposal is for a joint venture between the Welsh government and developers.

Profits would be used to construct wind turbine sites owned by communities.

Climate Change Minister Julie James says "it sticks in my craw" that foreign governments get profits from wind farms in Wales. 

Why that's just one step away from the long march through the institutions and the sort of Marxist Leninist thinking that could reduce a reptile to tears, or lead to an even louder groaning, and a jump way up the traumatisation meter ...

In short, there's nothing for it, but to return to coal, or in lieu, ramp up the reptile devotion to gas, or perhaps nuke the country by introducing an SMR in each state by Xmas ... and meanwhile, just carry on groaning ...

Oh the bastards, the heartless bastards, first coal, then gas, where will it all end? Well, likely it does mean that the most optimistic estimates for how warming will unfold have been taken off the table.

Meanwhile, the immortal Rowe has a cartoon designed to cheer up the Groaner ...

Range anxiety!

And so to the bromancer.

The pond realises that this makes for a long post, just as the pond is preparing to take time off for the holyday season, but it takes immense power for the pond to resist the bromancer, the sort of energy requirement that could fuse the grid. 

Better to give in with good grace and go with the flow. It's a long one, five fathoms full, but rich with the fear and paranoia that would see it rate well on any reptile scale you might devise ...

Foreign interference in Australia pervasive?

It was at that point that the pond realised it was reading a column in a newspaper owned by a foreign crime gang syndicate, always intent on interfering in Australia in an insidious and pervasive way ...

The pond took a leap back in time to the keen Keane at Crikey ... (possible paywall)

....No satisfactory discussion of the present state of the Liberal Party is possible without looking at its toxic dependence on News Corp, a company that, by Kelly’s own admission, is aligned with the Coalition.

Why is the Liberal Party seen as the party of climate denialism? Why is it seen as a party hostile to women? Why is it regarded as a party obsessed with culture wars rather than real issues for working households? The answer in each case involves News Corp, and not peripherally, but in a way intrinsic to the current functioning of the Liberals. That’s happened in two ways.

The first is that News Corp — by acting as the in-house media organ of the Liberals, both MPs and members — has shaped what is regarded as acceptable policy within the party, and who is seen as an acceptable leader. News Corp was crucial to the ousting of Malcolm Turnbull in 2018. It has been crucial to attacking any serious climate action. Its own obsession with culture war issues has meant the Liberals felt either emboldened or obliged to prosecute them. And it provided the Liberals, up to and including Scott Morrison, with a parallel universe within which to live and operate, ultimately to their downfall.

In the News Corp universe, climate action was the obsession of a few inner-city soyaccino drinkers, trans people were enemies to be smitten hip and thigh as a first-order matter of public policy, gender and workplace issues were a minority obsession foreign to the experience of ordinary Australian women, and Morrison was a political genius and master tactician. Sadly, May 21 2022 confirmed this parallel universe had minimal overlap with planet earth.

The second is that News Corp is a fundamental part of the Liberals’ campaign strategy, just as it is for the Tories in the UK. News Corp is crucial for amplifying Liberal attacks on Labor, for demonising opponents, and for using its staff to harass the Labor leader on the campaign trail.

This isn’t just a case of fellow travellers working toward shared goals; News Corp’s role is planned and relied upon by the Liberals’ campaign strategists, drawn from the ranks of CIT Group and its alumni.

Again, May 21 2022 showed News Corp struggling to deliver for its partners. As in the Victorian election, its attacks on Labor appeared ineffective, and may have even blunted the impact of more legitimate negative coverage by actual media outlets such as Nine.

The reader searching for a comprehensive account of the current state of the Liberals in News Corp publications will look in vain: the role of News Corp in the disastrous state of the party is never mentioned. Its commentators operate — again, as in a parallel universe — as if they are thoughtful, independent analysts, when they are defeated players whose own performance should be examined along with the politicians now the subject of their commentary.

Yes, that sounds like a foreign owned company routinely interfering in Australia, but never mind, on with the bromancer, doing his best to distract by fear mongering about other FUDs ...

Oh dear sweet long absent lord, did the pond just read that about the lizard Oz? Is it true that the paywall isn't enough and that assorted reptile campaigns about climate science, pandemics, masks (please a tip of the hat to Killer), trans folk, and such like misinformation and disinformation campaigns still spread like viruses through the communities, especially as the ABC spends a lot of time recycling foreign owned News Corp stories in lieu of doing it for themselves?

Would this be mentioned, perhaps even the way the most intimate details concerning the Higgins matter have been blazed across News Corp publications, with ritual humiliations and misinformation offered on a daily basis?

Not bloody likely, as they used to say in musicals ...

And there's a clear connection between authoritarians and authoritarian-loving companies ...

It took them so long to kick the habit, and only then when it began to look and sound like it might be terribly expensive ... Is Dominion’s $1.6bn defamation lawsuit a death blow for Murdoch and Fox News?

The pond can only hope, but suspects that, much like that wascally wabbit, the foreign interventionists will keep on intervening ...

Hmm, was that the bromancer railing at the globalists? Should the pond bother to decode what that actually means, should it check with MTG, or  should the pond just put it somewhere on the GOP turned useful reptile traumatisation scale?

Meanwhile, a final gobbet from a scribbler for a company with a globalist reach and a habit of interfering in the governing of each country within which it resides ...

A zeitgeist radical? Blathering about foreign activism and with the bromancer too modest to claim a spot as a diligent worker for a foreign owned, profoundly activist company?

At this point the pond would usually reach for an infallible Pope, but he's too slow this morning, and instead this Wilcox will do the trick ... what with globalism copping a mention ...