In which our Henry becomes the Demosthenes of Robodebt and cackling Claire once again nukes the country to save the planet ...

 

Sheesh, the pond is so tired of the reptiles' obsession with the Lehrmann matter and the Voice. Is there a brave warrior to hand, kitted out in the heroic garb of a modern Thucydides, or perhaps a Caesar, ready to valiantly defend any attempt to expose the Robodebt scandal?

Not possible, not in this day and age of enfeebled journalism? 

Take that back, take it back at once, this is Friday, this is our hole in the bucket man day, and this day sees him in heroic defender mode, a blazing pillar of defiant glory ...

Oh yes, there's a billygoat butt to hand. Our valiant Henry isn't going to minimise the gravity of the issues. He's just going to minimise any mechanism whereby the gravity of the issues might be revealed, exposed, examined, judged or denounced outside the political tent. There shall be no pissing into the tent or out of it, nor even into the wind, and certainly no mention of stories such as Over 2000 people died after receiving Centrelink robo-debt notice, figures reveal ... why if you believe Kathryn Campbell, admittedly a stretch, there were absolutely no deaths at all, not a single suicide, not a single casualty, except perhaps the death of her credibility ... sure, Mothers who lost sons to suicide after Centrelink debts write heartbreaking letters to Senate, but what would they know?

Politicians are sacred beasts, moved in an Xian way, and above the fray. If you want to examine their workings, no matter how corrupt or scandalous, there is just one way ....that sort of thing is best left to cartoonists ...

And with a cartoonist to hand, what need of a Royal Commission?

Oh splendid, valiant Henry and at this point the lizard Oz reptile inserted one of two illustrations Put them where you will, when feeling triggered ...

The pond insists that its cartoon approach is much better than those wretched illustrations from the disembowelled corpse of what was once the lizard Oz graphics department ...

What's this, there's still more defending to do? Make way for our very own modern Cicero ...

Oh the suffering, and only a modern Demosthenes to hand to mount a valiant defence ...

And so to a last valiant word from the most valiant of the lizard Oz scribes ...

The message is clear. Let politicians run wild and free, and above all let them be unaccountable. It's the only decent thing to do ... you might get a chance to vote every few years, and by then it might well be a matter long gone and buried, especially if the same mob get back in, but that's your lot, and remember to thank our modern Demosthenes on your way to bury any chance of an inquiry into the matter ...

And so to another Friday regular, an outburst by cackling Claire, nuking the CSIRO yet again ...

Here the pond will concede that Graham and the CSIRO made a mistake. They took the bait, and were so concerned that they published the letter on their own site with the implicit suggestion that maybe it might not show up in the lizard Oz ...

But it did, on August 2nd, in this form, because angertainment is the reptile game ...

It was a mistake, because landing on 2nd August allowed cackling Claire to do a snipe of a kind familiar to those indulging in Ebay auctions ... and add to the angertainment ...

A better response would have been to adopt the pond's cartoon strategy ...

Meanwhile, cackling Claire can take potshots, without the slightest need to justify her position or show her own costs, or explain the how and why that nuking the country will make in terms of the climate science situation when it matters ... what a splendid distraction ...

Indeed, indeed ...

Perhaps instead of the pond's cartoon solution, some might prefer to point to offshore comparisons ...

There's a lot more at the link, but what a waste of energy, when cackling Claire, expert climate scientist, and expert climate economist is on hand ...

Actually if the pond might be sol bold, he surely wrote on X ... please, let us not devalue Uncle Elon's astonishing re-branding. You might still tweet, but when you go Twitter, you actually go X ...

As for Morrison, he's been running an endless thread on X mainly proving how great he is, but sadly the pond isn't an X'er and the reptiles interrupted with a snap ...

Surely they could have turned to a cartoon solution?

And that's about it, with Claire still cooking with gas, and there's one last fuel-injected gobbet to hand ...

If the claim is not based on evidence provided in the ISP and GenCost, what evidence does it rely upon?

Amazing really. The world and the full to overflowing intertubes is full of disputation on this very matter, and lots of evidence, one way and the other, but apparently that tremendous climate economist and devotee of nuking the country is singularly incapable of finding them...

Apparently including such caveats or taking notes of such matters might involve cackling Claire communicating responsibly, and the pond certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for that ...

Here the pond must pause to acknowledge the way that the reptiles delivered a double whammy this day in both the tree killer and digital editions in terms of reptile obsessions ...

 

They were on parade, the Voice, the Lehrmann matter, the Donald down the bottom and almost out of sight... but the pond only notes this so it can provide an excuse to run the infallible Pope dealing with one matter ...

... and the immortal Rowe dealing with the other ... and they say the pond's cartoon solution isn't a viable approach. As if ... Demosthenes would be green with envy ... or perhaps pale from an overdose of reptile CO₂ ...

In which the pond almost does an orange crayon, but settles for swishing Switzer and accomplice ...

 

The pond overdid it yesterday and so today decided to take it easy, and the reptiles helped because there's only a couple of issues at any time in the lizard Oz, and to mix animal metaphors, the reptiles buzz around them like bees in a hive mind ...

The tree killer edition was the first sign ...

That was closely followed by the digital edition ...

The Lehrmann matter yet again? Yeah, nah. Petulant Peta? Yeah, nah, the pond can only torture stray readers every so often. The Bearup blather yet again? Yeah, nah, more than a bear could bare ...

And then in the comments section there was a higher than average offering of dreck ...

Is it just the pond? The obsession with the Lehrmann matter and the alleged art scandal, and the Voice, and to cap it all, there tucked away, was Rosie and Sarah, who had done the "when did you stop beating your wife" routine yesterday about treaties now, and then today announced in much smaller print that the yes side insisted treaties were decades away ...

Meanwhile, the pond gave up watching MSNBC because of the relentless obsession with the Donald, with banks of talking heads, nearly matched by CNN ...

The pond began to devise a fantasy. The Donald gets the GOP behind him, wins the election via strategic corruption, pardons himself, removes all aid to Ukraine, thereby encouraging Chairman Xi to invade Taiwan, and the Donald declares an emergency and announces his reign as dictator for life. What a legacy that would be for Chairman Rupert and his minions ...

Back in the real world, only the lizard Oz editorialist seemed to notice ...

It sounds as if the lizard Oz editorialist cares, but it's actually just a bit of both siderist cover, and the alleged cartoon by an alleged cartoonist at the alleged lizard Oz gave the lie to all that ...

Really? The pond understands that back in the day Bill Leak had a fall and was never the same after it, but what happened to Spooner? Call the pond old-fashioned, but that just seems old, and also beyond the valley of the pathetic ...

As for the lizard Oz editorialist, there was a vague yearning for another world, with a rousing bit of both siderism to end it all ...

...says the minion of a discredited old man enmeshed in scandal, and facing serious questions about his never-ending quest for money and power, which has plunged a number of countries into crisis while the planet suffers mightily ...

The pond felt like bursting into song ... and even better the pond knew the de-lovely tune ...

The pond supposes that it should make at least a token gesture ... and paying attention to the swishing Switzer is about as token as it gets ...

Here the pond should note that there's a reason it left RN and headed to News Radio, though that's a bummer when parliament's in session. 

The pond could never second guess when the sounds of the swishing Switzer might emanate from the wireless speaker ... (the pond does so love the word 'wireless' and can still remember the joy of discovering that transistors and batteries had allowed radios to run wild and free - yes there's a wiki for everything) ...

He's quite the hero at the ABC and has quite a sinecure, not bad at all, and astonishing proof of prattling Polonius's assertion that there isn't a true conservative at the ABC ... instead there's just a smirking marshmallow, a salaryman dressed in a suit, with bonus banal tie, lacking in any Freudian resonance whatsoever ...

Oh okay another gobbet, a short one, to keep the swishing Switzer and accomplice flowing ...

Even the reptiles recognised this was a dud beat-up, an attempt to flog a book, and so they gaily bedecked the piece with assorted snaps ...

 

Strewth, as they used to say in Tamworth, stone the bloody crows, that one of Boris with his eyes closed and looking like he was waiting for the coffin was almost worth being enlarged, but the others were just visual space fillers, used to break up the verbal diarrhoea ... because the pond can't begin to count the number of times it's heard paranoid blather about the culture wars, and certifiable reptile insanity about progressive 'leets and the suffering of the Anglosphere ...

Oh yes, fancy that, fancy treating gay people as human, fancy not thinking that TG folk are the end of the world, fancy wanting to give Aboriginal people a voice, fancy thinking there might be something to the climate science that the scientists keep rabbiting on about ... (and a note on that for the closer to follow) ...

The pond was close to being triggered again and was only saved by an immortal Rowe being handy and conjuring up a real nightmare ...

It's always the details ...

That gave the pond the strength to return to another gobbet of the swishing Switzer and accomplice ...

Yeah, whatever ... shouldn't you mention a picket fence and the 1950s, and oh just cool it daddyo ... have an infallible Pope celebrating the current situation ...

It's always in the detail, and the pond loved that detail ...

... though that use of an ancient Volksie will likely upset the pond's partner, still dreaming of the days of carefree Volksies, not least the day when the battery caught fire ...

As for the swishing Switzer and accomplice, the pond has successfully filibustered its way to a final gobbet ... and a short one at that, revealing the true purpose of the mission, the flogging of yet another Connor Court book, no doubt coming to a street library near the pond in the near future, after some mug punter realises they've been dudded yet again ...

How to end after that tedious spray by the allegedly beleaguered swishing Switzer and accomplice, with the swishing Switzer still beleaguered on the ABC and with * for a ratings figure? Could the pond take a lesson from the crayons ...

Yep, though they seemed to be a little mushy and addressing young people's anxieties ...

But please, spare a thought for the orange crayon, just as Megan Herbert did ...

Relax orange crayon, everything's for the best in the best of all worlds ...

You won't be reading about that in the lizard Oz, orange crayon, though it's here, and in The Economist and elsewhere ...

And what good news it is for vulgar youff looking to a splendid, if a tad beleaguered, future ...

Never mind, vulgar youff, the swishing Switzer and accomplice has got you and the orange crayon covered, and you can rely on getting a freebie ... because this popped into the pond's inbox this morning ... and what an offer it is ...

Look on the bright side. That's how we take care of the sub situation, and help out the bromancer ...

Serendipity ...

 

The pond says it again ... serendipity ...

Early in the day the pond happened to mention in passing the gormless David Brooks ... with nattering "Ned" citing him as an authority. 

The pond did its best to ignore the folly, but while waiting to do a pick-up (no, not that kind),  the pond was reading Ankush Khardori - an attorney and former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Justice Department, and a Politico Magazine contributing writer, and his 1st August piece for Politico, Why Trump Was Indicted (Again).

The lede gave the game away: "You can thank the Jan. 6 committee."

Back at the lizard Oz, Killer was doing his best to downplay the latest indictment ... look, there he is, right next to his Killer climate science, well hidden by that lesser member of the Kelly gang, Joe ...

The pond pays as much attention to Killer on the Donald as it does to Killer on climate science, but back to serendipity and that prize wuss David Brooks ...

The pond was happily reading away when it came this this ...

...By the end of 2021, it appeared that the Justice Department was effectively giving Trump a pass. There was no meaningful indication that prosecutors were seriously investigating the former president; instead they were focusing their efforts on the people present at the Capitol. The department also allowed state-level investigations against Trump to proceed despite the fact that the department usually insists on taking the lead in high-profile criminal investigations in which the underlying conduct clearly implicates federal law enforcement interests.
Then came the hearings of the Jan. 6 committee last summer, which shook the political world. Many pundits panned the committee before hearings even began, but that was a serious mistake. More than 20 million Americans watched the first hearing in primetime, as committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney — a Republican who bucked her party’s leadership and eventually lost her seat in Congress over her decision to lead the panel alongside committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) — laid out a wide-ranging theory of the case against Trump.

A pundit got it wrong? 

Many pundits panned the committee before hearings even began, but that was a serious mistake

Who could it be? Which pompous, portentous, preening pundit made a serious mistake?

The pond clicked on the link, and who should turn up?

Serendipity came knocking on the pond's door.

Having mentioned the gormless David Brooks as a pathetic twit, it was indeed he ... (him if you will, they if you count them all)

This is the sort of loon the NY Times keeps around for balance ... and so ends up topsy turvy, with a deeply skewed view of the world ... how to conjure up the reliable folly?

Okay, it's transference, but we're talking about prize maroons here ... and "more Ron" seemed to suggest the futility of "more Davo" ...

Now likely it has a paywall, but the pond was so enchanted by this ancient history that it felt the need to read on here ...

How did the USA end up with a snake oil seller and con artist as its president? 

Look no more than the mindless stupidities of the likes of David Brooks ... so consistently wrong, that you can almost set your watch by it, and you can certainly score big win after win if betting is your thing ... just bet against anything Brooks scribbles ...

Remember Brooks was dissing the committee before it had even started its work ... and revealed what it revealed, and set a challenge for the DOJ which eventually revealed to members outside the cult just how deeply corrupt the mango Mussolini is ...

Will it alter the thinking of cult members? Likely not, that's as deep and as embedded as Excalibur, and one thing's certain. Brooks isn't the scribbler  to wrench it from the stone ...

If you want insights and answers, the only sensible solution is to avert your eyes from Brooks ... which is why he makes such a fine companion for nattering "Ned" ...

The pond is unlikely to revert to its old double post in a day past ... but this revisiting of history was irresistible ...

If you want a quick explanation of why the United States is comprehensively stuffed, keep reading David Brooks. Anything he writes is a symptom, never a solution, everything he scribbles adds a deeper understanding of how the GOP gradually shifted from a happy bunch of neo cons into a cult ... leaving washed-up members purporting to have a grasp of reality, like gull-pecked seashells on the sandy shore ... deeply irrelevant and deeply distraught at what their thinking produced, veritable Victor Frankensteins reduced to hand-wringing about what their GOP produced as spawn ... and lo, now the monster stalks the land, with not a clue what to do about it ...

On the upside, the pond has been able to catch up on some cartoons that would usually have been reserved for the weekend ...