In which the Caterist gives the lettuce yet another shot in the arm ...

 

There's a depressing sameness and monotonous familiarity to the start of each week in the hive mind.

Do the reptiles realise that repetition dulls the senses, in much the same way that smoke is used to induce a soporific state in bees?

It seems some days only obituaries provide a distraction, but the pond isn't going to waste time on those who added little to the world, whether it's Laws...

Golden mic falls silent
‘Australia’s greatest ever broadcaster’: Radio icon John Laws dead at 90
The talkback king, who only retired last year, has been remembered as a ‘towering figure’ after his death on Sunday.
By James Madden and Graeme Leech

If he was the greatest, the long absent lord help broadcasting ...

Or the Swiss bank account man ...

To Richo, you were loyal, or you lost your head
Graham Richardson had a compassionate side which he displayed more than once during his period as Minister for Social Security.
By Stephen Loosley

He was the worst of the little mates club ...down there with the Lionel Murphys of the Labor world, and so naturally found a home amongst the reptiles.

What else? 

Well simpleton Simon showed yet again that the reptiles know how to get someone coming and then going ...

Our Governor-General dives into murky waters on Dismissal
Governor-General appears to have a contentious view of her powers
‘The holder of this office is there to protect the Australian public against the potential of irresponsible government.’
Sam Mostyn has offered a new interpretation of what she regards as the role and responsibilities of the monarch’s representative. She clearly has a more expansive view of the job than any before her.
By Simon Benson

Political analyst

Ancient Troy sought her out, as part of his tome promotion tour, the reptiles splashed her response far and wide, and now the fuss can be kept alive by clobbering her yet again ...

And there's never a moment not to offer fear, doubt and querulousness to the very small world of TG folk ...

Ex-judge admits doubts over landmark ‘pro-trans’ ruling
The former chief justice who led Australia’s Family Court when it green-lit liberalised access of puberty blockers to gender-distressed children in the 2010s reveals she now has doubts about the ruling.
By Bernard Lane

The pond's TG friend, who was subjected to electric shock treatment, sustained systematic abuse at the hands of shrinks and priests, and an uncomprehending Catholic family might disagree.

But as always the pond must dredge something from this day's ruck of reptile odiousness.

It won't be an item from the Australian Daily Zionist News or its leading correspondent, Major Mitchell ...

Anti-Semites lack even basic grasp of facts
It’s obvious from the large audiences of social media influencers in the US that many media consumers have little understanding of WWII, Nazism, anti-Semitism or the Holocaust.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist 

The Major mentioned the ethnic cleansing of Gaza just once, thereby performing a singular, Herculean feat of distraction ...

The Major did mention Tucker, spawn of Faux Noise, Nick Fuentes and that mob, serial couch molester JD ... and Ross Douthat ...

The pond only mentions that mention because of a glorious moment in The Graudian in Arwa Mahdawi's Everybody panic – the workplace has become too ‘feminized’!

...And now, because the right has been so successful in rewriting reality, you can see gender grifting splashed all over the homepage of the New York Times. On Thursday, the Times published a transcript of a recent episode of the conservative columnist Ross Douthat’s podcast Interesting Times. This very interesting (in the British sense) piece was originally titled: Did Women Ruin the Workplace? The headline was then changed to the more nuanced: Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?
Douthat generously invites two women into his own workplace: the podcast features two critics of liberal feminism, Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant, in conversation about “what a right-wing politics of gender should look like.” Andrews apparently caught Douthat’s eye because she had just written an essay for Compact called The Great Feminization, which argues feminism has failed because it has driven masculine virtues out of our institutions. The word “woke” or “wokeness” was used unironically 11 times in the piece: a failsafe sign you should not take anything in it seriously.
Andrews continued to just mutter wokeness, wokeness, wokeness in her conversation with Douthat (variants of the word were used 25 times in the conversation), explaining that “the pathology in our institutions known as wokeness is distinctively feminine and feminized … in a very literal sense, our institutions have gone woke because there are more women in them than there used to be.”
The conversation unfurls exactly as you’d expect. Carefully cherrypicking examples, Andrews explained that #MeToo was woke, college campuses are too woke, and “the law is currently lopsided in favor of punishing male vices and allowing feminized vices totally free rein.” In response to a question about what constitutes “feminine vices”, Andrews explains that women like “gossiping” and have an “inability to deal with conflict directly”.
Sargeant, who has some valid critiques of liberal feminism, does her best to push back against some of this nonsense, but Andrews does most of the talking. Hilariously, towards the end of the conversation Douthat asks Andrews: “What do you like about women, Helen?” She seems unable to answer that question.
I know that this is just one man’s podcast rather than, say, a piece by the editorial board, but putting a piece like this on the homepage of the New York Times in 2025 is certainly an interesting decision. Taking the sort of misogynistic nonsense that you see on Fox News and repackaging it as a pseudointellectual debate in a prestigious publication imbues these arguments with a dangerous validity. (If you want a proper intellectual interrogation of gendered inequality and supposedly traditional values, by the way, I suggest you read Angela Saini’s The Patriarchs.)

Gender grifting is the pond's newest favourite grift.

And there was this ...

Mexican president pressing charges after being groped
“This is something I experienced as a woman, but it is something that all women in our country experience,” Sheinbaum said after being groped in the street. “If I do not file a complaint, where does that leave all Mexican women? If they do this to the president, what happens to all the other women in the country?” The incident has felt like a personal affront to many women in Mexico, where violence against women and femicide are major problems. But you have to ask yourself, don’t you: has feminism gone too far?

So much more fun than regurgitating the Major.

And so it was that climate science came around yet again, and landed atop the reptile magickal faraway tree ... in the form of yet another EXCLUSIVE, though the pond could have sworn that on Sunday The Insiders had offered Andrew Bragg, that shadowy opposition figure, bragging about net zero ...(as the cardigan wearers gave up transcripts, the pond has given up quoting) ...

Take it away Brownie ...

EXCLUSIVE
Moderate Libs push ‘Australian way’ to save net zero
Moderate Liberals have launched an eleventh-hour bid to save the party’s net-zero commitment by focusing on pragmatism, technology and gas as conservative MPs warn of ‘Armageddon’.
By Greg Brown

The most remarkable feature of this alleged EXCLUSIVE was the way that the Brown out was limited to just the opening snap: From left: Moderate Liberal Andrew Bragg, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, and conservative Liberal MP Tony Pasin.

The remaining four minutes - so the reptiles clocked it - was a visual wasteland, but the pond had to pay attention, because each day the pond must check on the odds riding on the lettuce, with poor old Susssan standing in for the war on Xmas, which has been very slow to crank into gear ...

Moderate Liberal MPs are pitching Sussan Ley’s potential climate policy as net zero “the Australian way”, in an 11th-hour bid to sway the partyroom towards retaining a watered-down version of the ambition that focuses on pragmatism, technology and gas.
But conservative MPs argue the push from the moderates to negotiate on a net-zero commitment has come too late, claiming the majority position of the partyroom has shifted in the past month from supporting a version of the ambition to opposing it completely.

And sure enough, then came the EXCLUSIVE, an EXCLUSIVE report on the ABC ...

As leading Liberal moderate Andrew Bragg on Sunday threatened to quit the frontbench if the Opposition Leader vowed to leave the Paris Agreement and junk net zero, The Australian understands there is a fierce internal campaign being waged to convince MPs to back a version of the carbon-neutral target by redefining it as an “Australian approach”. 

The pond understands that the reptiles watch the ABC, which is perhaps just as well because the pond didn't, having given up the habit some time ago, settling for watching the 'toon and snap segment when it lands on YouTube ... but do carry on ...

This includes an in-principle aspiration to net zero without a specified time frame, a focus on supporting technological innovation rather than subsidising green energy, and an exemption for agriculture.
The moderates are backing a “technology-neutral” Capacity Investment Scheme, which would see coal, gas and nuclear projects be eligible for taxpayer underwriting. Liberal MPs supportive of net zero also believe it is fair to benchmark interim emission targets to the carbon reduction achievements of other comparable nations, while backing the dismantling of domestic laws requiring the nation to achieve carbon neutrality.
The moderates want the party to be supportive of renewables while recognising the need for a larger role for gas.
One conservative MP warned there would be “Armageddon” if Ms Ley adopted the compromise being pushed by the moderates, amid concerns it was being seriously considered ahead of a crucial meeting of Liberals in Canberra this week. But a leading conservative on Sunday told The Australian it was unlikely the Coalition would retain any net-zero ambition in its policy platform, despite growing pressure being put on Ms Ley from moderates who are key to her leadership.
Conservatives are opposed to the Coalition proposing any aspiration to net zero under the Paris accord, rejecting an argument from moderates that it was required under the international agreement. Some moderates were highly optimistic a version of net zero would be retained while others said it was “in the balance”.
Conservative Liberal MP Tony Pasin said he was not convinced of the internal push for an “Australian approach” to net zero.
He said Ms Ley would be “ill-advised to advocate for a position that supports net zero”.
“We need to make the next election a referendum on electricity prices, not a nuanced debate about differing versions of net zero,” Mr Pasin told The Australian. “A number of my colleagues keep talking about Labor’s net zero and the need to approach this from an Australian perspective, presumably a Coalition Australian net zero.
“I think that is a pathway to failure.
“I don’t understand how you can have a different version of net zero to Labor’s version. Any version is going to harm the economy, industry and households.”
Liberal senator Andrew McLachlan said the global endeavour of net zero should be tackled “with an Australian target and Australian policy settings”.
The South Australian senator took a thinly veiled swipe at leading conservative Angus Taylor, who has dropped his support for net zero despite being the energy minister who committed Australia to net zero by 2050.
“Reaching a net-zero emissions target should not be feared. When we were in government and Angus Taylor had responsibility to meet this target, we were on track,” he told The Australian.
“Angus Taylor demonstrated that not only could a net-zero target be achieved but that we could do so and leave no one behind in poverty. 
“We have already proven the pathway that some call the Australian way. We did that when we sent our prime minister (Scott Morrison) to COP to give our solemn commitment to the world and subsequently worked hard to successfully reduce our emissions.”
Liberal MPs will meet in Canberra on Wednesday, with the Liberal shadow ministry to finalise the party’s position on net zero on Thursday.
A committee of three Liberal and three Nationals MPs will work through the differences in the respective policies and propose a joint Coalition position at a special partyroom meeting on November 16.
The Australian reported on the weekend that senior Liberals were brawling over whether to endorse a vague ambition for a carbon-neutral future under the Paris Agreement after Ms Ley’s expected axing of a net-zero target by 2050.

By golly, with that level of word salad, they really will need to give the lettuce a go ...

Subsidies 'r us ...

The moderates are backing a “technology-neutral” Capacity Investment Scheme, which would see coal, gas and nuclear projects be eligible for taxpayer underwriting.

And then back to the nub of it, the EXCLUSIVE report on the watching of the ABC ...

This push – being resisted by top conservatives – would see the Coalition go to the next election vowing to maintain an “aspiration” under Paris to hit net zero while refusing to tie it to any date, and having no domestic policies to hit the goal.
Senator Bragg, a key supporter of Ms Ley, rejected claims from conservatives that the party could stay in the Paris Agreement without retaining an aspiration to net zero in the second half of the century.
“You can’t have a fatwa on two words. I mean, it’s ridiculous,” Senator Bragg told the ABC.
“It is in the text of the agreement so I don’t see how you can create your own standard.
“It doesn’t talk about net zero in those exact terms but it talks about net zero in a functional sense.”
When asked if he would quit the frontbench if the party either left Paris or walked away from any net-zero aspiration, Senator Bragg said “sure”.
“But I don’t imagine we will ever leave Paris,” he said.
“We are a party of government, we are not a fringe party. We are not fringe-dwellers.
“Most Australians want us to play our fair role in terms of emissions reduction, so I just don’t think we are going to be leaving the Paris Agreement.
“Net zero, if done properly, could reduce power prices and will reduce power prices over time.”
Senator Bragg said leaving Paris would put Australia in a grouping with the “baddies”, Iran, Syria and Azerbaijan.

What else?

The pond notes that in one way or another it has mentioned all the reptiles on parade on the extreme far right early in the morning, save one.

Is it necessary to mention him at all?

Couldn't the pond just end with some fun? The latest movie to hit town?

Or perhaps a 'toon, featuring an exotic whiff of musk?

Sorry, life was meant to be sleazy, and the quarry-whispering Caterist was at it again, giving the lettuce a real shot in the arm, or should that be the leaf? 

The header: Even in the cheapest countries, renewable power is subsidised, If renewables are cheap, why have electricity prices risen more than 20 per cent since the Albanese government came to power?

The caption: As Environment Minister, Sussan Ley rejected the Lotus Creek wind farm proposal on remnant native forest with its koala population. Picture: AAP

That could just as easily have been headed Even in the cheapest countries, fossil fuel power is subsidised ... How much in subsidies do fossil fuels receive?

The pond knows that this fine tradition is being urged on ...

The moderates are backing a “technology-neutral” Capacity Investment Scheme, which would see coal, gas and nuclear projects be eligible for taxpayer underwriting.

Sadly those figures are for 2021, but note the healthy orange glow down under ... enough to get any Nat fired up on the joys of agrarian socialism.

Sure there's a large distinction between major fossil fuel producers and very poor countries, with some trending to zero, but still it's a depressing picture, as usual ignored by the flood waters whisperer ...

Cat herding is an indispensable skill for a Liberal Party leader. All being well, Sussan Ley will have managed to coax, prod and cajole her caucus into the pen by Wednesday evening, ankle-deep in dust and nursing a few scratches, but with her leadership intact.
Only then can she embark on the real art of politics – the art of persuasion – by convincing voters that wind and solar are neither cheap nor good for the environment.
Ley may be tempted to run dead on environmental and energy policy, as Scott Morrison did in 2022 and Peter Dutton did earlier this year.
At best, that will secure another term in opposition. More likely is that the Liberals will be condemned to irrelevance as a stand-for-nothing party jumping at its own shadow.
The road to recovery begins by exposing the most fraudulent policy inflicted on Australians in living memory. Ley must take on a renewables-industrial complex, which will throw more money to stop her becoming prime minister than her party will have to spend.
The Gretafication of environmental policy, utilising tens of billions of dollars in murky overseas funding to defend renewables, has become an even more corrupt force in Australian politics than the trade unions.
Perversely, it has also set back the cause of natural conservation as practical measures to protect biodiversity have been sidelined in the cause of saving the planet.

The reptiles decided to remind the world just why the Liberal party is currently in such a dire pickle, Should Sussan Ley follow Peter Dutton’s lead and run dead on environmental and energy policy risks a further descent into irrelevance. Picture: Richard Dobson

Rather nasty, really, to revive the mutton Dutton, and put hapless Susssan alongside him - it's almost enough for a defamation action - but the lettuce will take any break it can get ...

The Liberal Party must attack the glaring contradiction in Labor’s energy policy. If renewable energy is cheap, why have retail electricity prices risen more than 20 per cent in real terms since the Albanese government came to power?
Why the continued need for subsidies? It was not unreasonable to assume that as the price of renewable energy infrastructure decreased, it would reach a point where the transition away from fossil fuels could be justified solely on the grounds of price.
That fallacy was baked into the policy Labor took to the 2022 election. It gave the party the confidence to set ambitious emissions reduction targets, in the expectation that once renewables became more affordable the market would take off.
Yet it hasn’t. Investment has not been occurring at anything like the level required by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen to meet his 2030 targets. Financing remains the ultimate chokepoint.
The government’s attempts to ease investment decisions with subsidies have been only partially successful.
And few are naive enough to imagine that subsidies can go on forever.
The unfortunate truth is that without government handouts, the renewable sector can’t survive, however low the price.
Nowhere in the world is wind and solar energy operating subsidy-free. Not even in India and China, where the cost of building renewable infrastructure is the cheapest.

Would it be a genuine reptile outing without a terrifying snap of whale-killing windmills? 

Sorry, the pond meant to ask would it be a genuine reptile outing without a terrifying snap of Satanic solar deep frying the country? Nowhere in the world is wind and solar energy operating without subsidies. Picture: Neil Fenelon

Then came a truly odd and shameless moment ...the Caterist quoting Brett Christopher.

According to Randeep Ramesh, reviewing his 2024 book in The Graudian, this was his intent ...

...It was political economist Karl Polanyi who introduced the distinction between real and “fictitious” commodities. Electricity, says Christophers, is an example of the latter, a resource fundamentally unsuited to being priced up and traded. Such an insight might have helped the high priests of green finance realise that the elaborate market structures being erected to produce a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sit on unsound foundations.
Only the state, concludes Christophers, has “both the financial wherewithal and the logistical and administrative capacity” to deliver the trillions of dollars in annual investment in solar and wind that could keep the planet from burning up. The message is that active involvement in shaping the future is crucial, and such a task is too important to be left to markets. Or, as Lenin put it, “sometimes history needs a push”.

Argue as you will, observe the way that state interventions provide never ending relief to fossil fuels, but please marvel at what the Caterist makes of all this ...

Brett Christophers explains the paradox in his new book, The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.
Christophers argues that while the price of renewables has indeed tumbled, the profitability for private investors has not increased. The key metric for the financial market is not price but profit – the ability to forecast a stable return on investment.
He points out that most renewable projects must achieve stable, satisfactory returns over decades and that without government support they do not.
That is a more honest admission than governments are willing to make. Bowen repeatedly reassures us that the energy transition will cost less than business as usual.
Bowen’s optimism overlooks the fact that private investors still demand risk premiums.
Christophers, by contrast, embraces the inconvenient truth: if renewables are to scale, they require permanent government support.
By accepting that the state must underwrite returns – either via regulation, public ownership or long-term contracts – Christophers forces us to recognise that the transition is not purely about cheaper electricity; it’s about paying for that transition. In other words, renewables may be more affordable to produce than fossil fuel generation today, but turning them into a reliable, risk-managed low-carbon system remains more expensive and capital-intensive.
The implication for future energy prices is clear. Renewable energy carries an unavoidable premium price. Whether that cost is passed on to customers or offset with government subsidies makes no difference to the downward economic spiral.

Um, sticking with fossil fuels carries an unavoidable premium price, but the reptiles, and the flood waters whisperer in particular, have never much minded a volatile planet carrying on like a heat-stricken dog or English person out in the Tamworth noon day sun ...

For no particular reason, the reptiles then slipped in Labor MP Matt Thistlethwaite with Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen in 2022. Picture: AAP

Could it possibly be a Caterist outing with an invocation of Ming the Merciless?

Of course not ...

The Liberal Party must do more than regain its traditional advantage on economics if it is to win this or any argument. It must revisit the wisdom of Robert Menzies, who saw the party’s mission as more than looking after pounds, shillings and pence.

And so to a further reminder of why the lettuce is still hot favourite, with the Caterist pretending that he's suddenly become a caring environmentalist.

Remember the days when the likes of little Timmie Bleagh mocked those expressing concern for poley bears?

Now it's the caring Caterist all torn up about the fate of koalas ...

Practical care for the environment was a strong suit for the Coalition until the early 1980s, when Labor began to see the potential of the tree-hugging vote.
Graham Richardson’s passing reminds us of his achievements as environment minister, notably in Tasmania and the tropical far north, where rainforests received permanent protection as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Such practical measures were abandoned under Kevin Rudd, where pragmatic environmentalism was subsumed by climate change, the great moral issue of our time.
Nowhere is the conflict between saving the planet and protecting the Earth more apparent than in the carnage created by grid-scale renewables.
Ley understands the tension better than most. In June 2020, as environment minister, she rejected the Lotus Creek wind farm proposal on remnant native forest in Central Queensland, ruling it “clearly unacceptable” under national environment laws. Her decision was reversed by her Labor successor, Tanya Plibersek, who gave the green light to the bulldozing of old-growth forest on the Clarke-Connors Range, including 341ha of known koala habitat.
The Coalition should seize the opportunity to address the gap in biodiversity, adopting a strategic approach to combating invasive species for the benefit of the natural environment in general and agriculture in particular.
The threat of fire ants spreading from southern Queensland into NSW is real, yet funding has been patchy and inadequate. Fire ants attack crops, livestock and equipment. They chew through electrical wiring, irrigation systems and even machinery. They can reduce farm productivity by up to 40 per cent.
Yet on the list of government priorities, eradicating feral ants, goats, deer and pigs comes a distant second to climate goals. The Liberal Party should capture the vacated ground, not for the sake of symbolism but out of the conviction that sound land management is key to successful agricultural policy.
Environment and energy policy alone won’t win the next election, although it will be a more potent issue than most if tied to the cost of living.
The first party to level with Australians about who pays and why will own the future of energy policy. That could still be the Liberals.

Deeply weird. F*ck the planet (*blogger bot approved), but care for the environment.

Go lettuce ...

... you have to ask yourself, don’t you: has feminism gone too far?

In which Polonius goes there, Shanners gives the lettuce a fighting chance, and garrulous Gemma goes back to the biblical future ...

 

Et tu Polonius?

The pond had resolved to spend a Gough-free weekend, but has a soft spot for the pedant, especially as the reptiles cast him in a minor supporting role, a kind play on that Stoppardian riff, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Tossed out on a Friday, buried, dismissed, without any fuss about the dismissal.

His effort, a walk down memory lane, was entirely stripped of distracting snaps.

This is how it looked, sans opening snap, sans opening flourish...

What a miserable presentation.

How cruel, and yet probably fair, because the text had a faint whiff of doddering mustiness, a bit like Joe remembering his Scranton days, or the pond recalling Peel street, a kind of mind-numbing form of navel-gazing and fluff-gathering ...

...In November 1975, I was a senior tutor in the La Trobe University politics department. Among my colleagues, I was closest to Hugo Wolfsohn. We were two of the few political conservatives in what was a typical social sciences faculty of the day, replete with left-of-centre and leftist types. Nice people for the most part but many were quite naive. Like most Australian campuses then, academics and activists were overwhelmingly opposed to the Dismissal and hostile to Fraser and Sir John Kerr. Some academics reported the event as a constitutional crisis from which Australia might never recover.
At the time Max Teichmann, a left-wing academic at Monash University, put out a pamphlet titled Don’t Let History Repeat Itself. He maintained that Kerr’s dismissal of Whitlam had similarities with the events that occurred before Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933. In his rant, Teichmann made reference to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels before predicting that if the Coalition were elected in December 1975 it would establish a dictatorship.
The Monash academic’s political hyperbole annoyed Wolfsohn. On December 4, 1975, The Age published a joint letter signed by Wolfsohn and Rufus Davis, who was professor of politics at Monash University. They were well equipped to identify political hyperbole in a modern democracy.
Wolfsohn was a Berlin-born Jew who fled his country of birth as a young man in 1937 and arrived in Australia some time later. Many of his family died in the Holocaust. Davis was a Jewish Australian of Ukrainian background who arrived in Fremantle as a young boy in 1927 with his family.
The duo expressed concern at the pronouncements of academics containing alarming statements about a crisis in democracy and references to a coup d’etat. They wrote: “Australian democracy is neither in crisis nor has it come to an end.” They said “coups d’etat are not usually followed by elections” and dismissed comparisons of Australia and Nazi Germany as “merely comic were it not for the fact that these people are occupying responsible teaching positions in our universities”. Australia was merely facing a “temporary technical difficulty in the working of our parliamentary system which lacks adequate provisions for the satisfactory resolution of deadlocks between the two Houses of Parliament”.
Looking back after half a century, the Wolfsohn-Davis analysis holds up well. Australian democracy survived the events of November 11, 1975. Whitlam lost to Fraser again in December 1977 and stepped down as Labor leader. He was replaced by Hayden, who won seats from the Coalition at the October 1980 election.
Labor was back in office, under Hawke’s leadership, in March 1983 – and won five elections in a row. Howard led the Coalition to victory in March 1996 and won four elections in a row. Sounds like an efficient functioning democracy, don’t you think?
In the event, Australian politics was mugged by reality. The Fraser government was adversely affected by the way it came to office. A general feeling emerged within the Coalition that attempting to block supply to force an early election was not worth the trouble.
For its part, Labor refused to acknowledge that, when in opposition in the late 1960s and early 70s, Whitlam had advocated blocking supply to bring down the Coalition government. Whitlam had advanced such a tactic in his budget-in-reply speech on August 25, 1970.
As it turned out, the main victim of the Dismissal was Kerr, who was forced to resolve the dispute. Whitlam became a Labor hero. This hid the fact, despite high intelligence, Whitlam was a failed leader who was incapable of dealing with economic downturns that afflicted Australia in 1974 and 1975.
There was some political violence in late 1975 and into 1976. Fraser and Kerr were the main targets until the former stepped down as governor-general in 1977. From the mid-80s Fraser became a critic of the Liberal Party that had made it possible for him to become prime minister. In time Fraser became a hero among the leftists who had hated him years earlier.
But the important point is that Australia escaped virtually unscathed from the political crisis of October-November 1975.

And that was that, and the pond had done its Gough duties, and stayed true to Polonius, and best of all, the old codger's outing contained not one mention of ancient Troy's tome. 

Good old Polonius hadn't even been distracted by any attempt to be present in the new world ...

... or by the terrible doings of those cardigan wearers at the ABC.

Sure there was a plug for Sky Noise down under, but Polonius was so restrained he didn't mention that Ughmann was to be the star ...

To mark the 50th anniversary, Sky News Australia will premiere an exclusive one-hour documentary, ‘The Dismissal: 50 Years On’, presented by award-winning journalist and Sky News Political Contributor Chris Uhlmann on Tuesday 11 November at 7.30pm AEDT.

Now there's a date the pond can be guaranteed to miss, but oh, there was a breathless hush in the reptile crowd ...

...Chris Uhlmann said: “Like every Australian old enough to remember, I know exactly where I was on the afternoon of 11 November 1975.  I was a 15-year-old Canberra schoolboy walking down the third-form corridor on the way to class when a breathless friend ran up to me.  'Whitlam’s been sacked,' he said."
"That night on our black-and-white TV I saw for the first time the words and images that would echo through time.
“This November Sky News will wind back time to revisit the Dismissal and relive the day that split the nation and left a scar, a legend, and a lesson that endures fifty years on.” (the pond doesn't link to Sky)

And if that doesn't give you a clue as to the failing lizard Oz's demographics, nothing will.

Cue a tip of the hat to Christopher Warren in Crikey ...

Touting Trump, losing readers and shedding advisers: Welcome to Lachlan’s troubles at News Corp
Fighting off a shareholder challenge, losing another loyal adviser, and revenue drifting sideways — it’s hard times at News Corp for Lachlan Murdoch. (sorry, paywall)

...To understand Lachlan’s challenge is to understand that Lachlan’s business is not his father’s: Different power play. Different content. Different business.

Rupert built advertising-supported monopolies with mass audiences that threatened governments with their apparent power to move votes via the dark arts of journalism, while always (well, usually) pulled back by the hard constraints of pesky facts. Now, the family media are in the opinion business — distributors of talking points and ideological hard-men for the Anglophone right. Now, “news” is harnessed to the service of political outrage — like this week’s New York Post horror at the communist takeover of the city. 

It leaves Lachlan Murdoch with more of a second-hand power, with the strutting family media now more like cut-price street-corner touts for the larger-than-life personalities with real power on the right, like Trump in the US or Nigel Farage in the UK — or whoever emerges to fill that gap in Australia.

Not all the elements of the father’s business retain their value for the son. Last summer, the Foxtel network that the Murdochs shed blood to get off the ground back in the 1990s was swapped out for a small shareholding in the Saudi-backed sports streaming play DAZN. According to News Corp’s mid-year report, the big city tabloids like Australia’s Herald Sun are sliding, with subscription numbers well back behind their Nine competitors The Age and SMH, their audience, all too literally, dying.

Getting the siblings out of the company has left Lachlan in a weakened position, with control of just a third of the voting stock and lacking the hard-earned reputational heft of his father. The ISS-recommended vote against the reelection of sitting directors is just one pointer to Wall Street unease. News Corp shares are down about 15% since the family buyout seemed to take the company out of play.

But since the collapse of Project Harmony 12 months ago, the minority voting shares in the company have leapt in price relative to the majority non-voting shares, after about five years of the two moving in step. On Wall Street, pricing is messaging in an arcane insider code — so what’s the market saying?

The big buyer of News Corp shares is, well, News Corp. Earlier this year (and confirmed again this week), the company announced that it would be spending up to US$1.3 billion to buy back shares this year — that’s just under 10% of the total market value of the company. Still, might be a small price to pay to keep share prices up and the Murdochs in control.

After years of chasing, Lachlan has locked his teeth onto the bumper of the family car. But with all his worries, the siblings might just be happier to be walking away with the cash.

Couldn't happen to a nicer feller...

 ...but that doesn't help the lettuce ...

For that, the pond turned to the bouffant one for another dalliance with the greengrocer.

Usually Shanners could be relied to turn in 2 or 3 minutes of copy, but somebody up stairs must have told him to improve his productivity, or else AI, so this day he managed a goodly, bigly 6 minute read ... (or so the reptiles clocked it)...

The header: Liberals are quietly withdrawing support from Sussan Ley, hoping she’ll quit, There is even a suspicion that some Coalition MPs are ‘running dead’ to speed up the process as they abandon their first female leader.

Apologies, this is the only way this sort of errant misogyny could make it into the pond: Cartoon by Johannes Leak (so now they're ogling 71 year olds?)

The pond should say up front that it has absolutely no interest in any of this, save insofar as it helps promote the lettuce's cause ...

There is a growing gloomy expectation, a forlorn wish and an unlikely hope within Coalition ranks that Liberal Party poll support will sink through the bottom of the barrel, that resignations of Liberal Party branch members will persist and that opposition parliamentary tactics will continue to fail so Sussan Ley will resign as leader.
There is even a suspicion that some Coalition MPs are “running dead” to speed the process: not going to question time to leave vacant seats behind the isolated Opposition Leader; publicly not backing her personal attacks on Anthony Albanese; sitting sullen and silent when she is ridiculed; and simply becoming engrossed on smartphones and tablets instead of being actively involved.
Labor ministers who have lived through similar experiences even posit that some of Ley’s “friends” are complicit in letting the ship sink under her.
With only one scheduled parliamentary sitting week before the Christmas break in this 2025 election year it is likely that a slow implosion of Liberal leadership will see Ley limp into next year.
All of this is based on two assumptions: first, that Ley’s leadership is doomed and it is only a matter of time before she is replaced; and, second, it is better for the party and her successor, whoever that may be, if the first female federal leader of the Liberal Party is not removed in a bloody political killing season.

To be fair, it's also not about ancient events of the Gough kind, even if it sounds repetitive and tedious, Victoria Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson discusses the upcoming Liberal Party meeting regarding net zero as well as the future of Sussan Ley’s leadership. “I can’t pretend things are good,” Ms Henderson told Sky News Australia. “We’ve had a dire Newspoll result … things are not travelling well. “I do think Sussan is losing support, but I do believe in miracles.”

So much navel gazing, and yet every bit helps the lettuce, though the pond was shattered at the bouffant one's time line, what with the pond plunging heavily on a New Year makeover ...

The first assumption would seem to be correct; few MPs say they believe Ley can survive until the middle of next year and some think she could be replaced well before based on when the critical policy decision on a 2050 target for net-zero carbon emissions is made and how it is received.
With a series of Liberal and Nationals meetings next week, the Liberals plan to make a net-zero decision and Coalition position announcement on Sunday, November 16, a full week before the return of parliament for the last week of November.
It is expected that the Liberals will dump the net-zero target – which already has been dumped by the Nationals – but with some caveats.
All this week, as expectation turned to anticipation of a dumping of the 2050 target, Ley made it clear that she had always said “No net-zero target at any cost”, but the process has made her seem captive to the Nationals and conservative Liberal MPs.
“I said when I became leader that we would not have a policy that was net zero at any cost. When it comes to cost, this government has got it all wrong,” she said. “I’ll sit down with the Nationals and we’ll work out a Coalition position together because the objective of this is to hold this government to account for its trainwreck energy policy and right now.”
Some conservatives who support the dumping of the net-zero target have started to argue that Australia’s reduction of carbon emissions of 28 per cent below 2005 levels – a reduction far ahead of most of the rest of the world, including our major trading partners – should allow for a pause to reassess the impact on the economy, especially agriculture, that can’t even be attempted until there is a policy declaration.

Again there came more middle of the year year talk in the caption, Few MPs say they believe the Opposition Leader can survive until the middle of next year. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Why wait 6 or 7 months? If it were to be done, best do it quickly, and give the lettuce its moment of fame and glory ...

This week opposition finance spokesman James Paterson urged a settlement as soon as possible so the Coalition “will be able to scrutinise the government’s failures on energy, which are manifest and significant, as soon as we lock in our own policies and positions on these issues”.
Liberal MP for the Melbourne seat of Goldstein Tim Wilson, the only Liberal to gain a seat in the May election – and from a teal independent – also recognised the need for a decision to be taken to shift the focus from the Coalition and back on to Labor’s energy policies.
“While we are in Coalition, we have our own identity, we represent cities, suburbs and rural and regional Australia. The National Party explicitly says they are there for regional Australia, that’s their slogan,” Wilson said.
“We’re there to build the whole of the country and we have to reflect the full diversity of Aus­tralian opinion in how we’re going to build out the future of this country.”
Either way, Ley is not guaranteed support as her own mistakes, splits between the Nationals and Liberals, divisions within the Liberals and a record low 24 per cent primary support for the Coalition and a net personal approval rating of minus-33 for the Liberal leader as well as poor parliamentary performances spur discontent with her leadership.
After three days of ineffective Coalition tactics and strategy in parliament Ley faced the humiliation of a dressing-down from house Speaker Milton Dick and a lecture for beginners on politics and parliamentary procedure.
On Wednesday, the opposition hit a nadir in question time. There were poorly framed questions, name calling, ignorance of parliamentary procedure and pointless points of order.
This led to the first refusal of a point of order by a Speaker in more than a decade.
These silly interjections allowed an already dominant government to get away with murder. Manager of opposition business Alex Hawke, Ley’s biggest supporter, failed the leader on the floor of the parliament and angered even moderate Liberal MPs with poorly crafted questions that let ministers off the hook and wore out the Speaker’s tolerance.

The reptiles even made the bouffant one do telly work, Dennis Shanahan joins Claire Harvey to break down an eventful Question Time.

The bouffant one sounded like he was on the verge of tears ...

In the dying hours of Thursday’s parliament Dick became even more exasperated as Ley unsuccessfully tried to take on the Prime Minister. Dick sat her down and once again lectured the opposition on politics and procedure.
Ley misused a point of order, after asking a question on food for the poor that gave Albanese room to drive a truck through. “Sledges don’t feed people,” she declared. “Can the Prime Minister give a straight answer?”
After weeks of frustration, forbearance and courtesy beyond the call of any Speaker, Dick told Ley her behaviour was “absolutely unacceptable” and “We just can’t have question time descend to where people just get up and say what they feel like”.
“I’ve been trying to deal with this all week in terms of appropriateness of points of order and I’ve been more than generous with the Leader of the Opposition,” Dick said as he pointed to the failure of the question to limit the Prime Minister at all in his response.
“No more frivolous points of order,” he said the day after refusing Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan the right to a point of order.
But even with this run of losses and inability to get colleagues to back her political stunts – calling for Kevin Rudd to be removed as ambassador to the US or suggesting Albanese was wearing an anti-Semitic T-shirt – the record low polling, divisions and the nightmare of settling a climate change dilemma, the second assumption of Liberal MPs that Ley may resign and avoid a bloodletting is probably wrong.
Liberal MPs concede that removing the party’s first female leader will damage any male successor – and there are only male pretenders – and fervently hope Ley will resign under the weight of failure.
This quiet departure is akin to the removal/resignation of Alexander Downer after a similarly short, tumultuous time as Liberal leader in 1994 when an agreed settlement, implemented over the Christmas break of 1994-95, saw John Howard’s return to the Liberal leadership in early 1995 and election victory in 1996.

As expected, the only solution was to turn to brooding about the past, John Howard celebrating his election victory in 1996. Picture: Michael Jones

As the pond joyously, happily never stops noting, the man who not only lost government, he managed to lose his seat ... as the bouffant one kept trying to spoil the lettuce's Xmas fun ...

This remains unlikely in the Christmas break of 2025.
A likelier scenario is the messy process of the removal of Malcolm Turnbull that began 16 years ago this weekend, an anniversary perhaps more relevant than a 50th political anniversary next Tuesday, where Turnbull’s support for Rudd’s climate change emissions trading scheme led to a revolt in the party room and mass resignations of Liberal members.
Turnbull rejected his party room’s wishes and insisted on supporting the ETS.
Former Nationals’ leader in the Senate Ron Boswell told Inquirer that he had reported mass defections of Liberals to the Nationals and warned the Liberal leadership that Turnbull’s support for the Labor policy would leave them without a party.
“I warned Tony Abbott after the meeting that the issue was turning people off, the Liberals would be left without a party and that he had to stand as leader,” Boswell said.
Despite the party room revolt Turnbull held on, fought two ballots in two weeks and lost to Abbott in a party room that endorsed the dropping of the ETS.
Abbott went on to almost win in 2010 and to return the Coalition with a landslide victory in 2013.
Whichever course the Liberals follow on climate change policy and subsequent leadership choices and challenges, it is likely to be a messy political landscape and an ugly leadership showdown, although Abbott proved it was possible to turn things around in two elections.

Did the pond note a snooty note of dismissive haughtiness in the bouffant one's tone? an anniversary perhaps more relevant than a 50th political anniversary next Tuesday

Ouch ... perhaps another step to the right, and a chance to give the spawn of a creationist young earth home a chance?

Here's a little help from caring neighbours ...

And so to a bonus.

The pond realises that it dismissed garrulous Gemma out of hand yesterday, but today felt in need of an inspirational text to boost its Sunday meditation offering ...

The header:  A ‘Fortress Australia’ mindset still shapes national policy — and holds us back, What will it take to bring down the walls and return to being risk-takers and innovators?

The caption for a snap designed to downplay Covid: Public health and policy advice imposed on us all during Covid, for the most part, was bunkum. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

Grating Gemma went full Killer of the IPA for her opening, as if all those deaths pre-vaccine were just a dream provoked by government ...

I lived through Covid in the great state of Westralia. The almost, would-be sovereign nation of Westralia, for those who remember. A time when the name State Daddy was coined for Mark McGowan and at least one person publicly and proudly admitted to getting the premier’s face tattooed on their calf. Tell me you’re from WA without actually telling me … Years later it has been confirmed what many of us suspected at the time. That public health and policy advice imposed on us all was, for the most part, bunkum.
Pure politics, polling, power and fear. Weaponising it. Turning Australian against Australian. Queensland hospitals are for Queenslanders. The worst of us, on so many levels. Sadly, though, most people were blissfully happy with life in Fortress Australia.
That name spoke of a physical barrier but I’ve come to believe Fortress Australia remains. We are open, we can come and go at will, but are we one and free? Not on your life. Not if you’re talking about freedom of thought, enterprise and industry; openness of mind, attitude and world view.
Australia may no longer be impenetrable in a physical sense but Fortress Australia remains as a state of mind.
Let me give you a couple of practical examples, starting with energy. I’m not talking about net zero (though everyone else is). I’m talking about this government’s ideological prison that is driving productivity, affordability and stability off the end of a cliff while the rest of the world has wised up.

When reading this, it's best to put aside all attempts by the reptiles to mount a valiant defence of fortress Australia.

As soon as the bromancer goes MIA, this is what happens.

Luckily, this being a reptile outing, there was a compleat lack of irony about fortress Australia, what with the garrulous Gemma preoccupied about ways to power the fort.

Inevitably there was going to be talk about nuking the country to save the planet, though devoted readers of the lizard Oz will know that climate science is a hoax and a fraud - a religious cult only practised by zealots - down there with masks and social distancing - but will be relieved that the back orders of an SMR in every back yard will soon  be fulfilled, at least if gabby Gemma has her way ...

Last week, some news broke that proves my point. Reuters reported that nuclear power was on track to become China’s fastest growing source of clean energy between now and 2040. Is it any wonder? The unstoppable demand for 24/7 power in the age of artificial intelligence and data centres can’t be met without it. Meanwhile, here in Fortress Australia, we’re mowing down prime agricultural land in Victoria’s King Valley to put up solar farms and our government scoffs at nuclear with arguments that are as dated and unsophisticated as the “evidence” on which it relies. The government protests that 10 to 15-year timelines to develop nuclear power are too long. By that logic, best we immediately stop funding all medical research.

There's a world of lies embedded in that unlinked, unreferenced, un-footnoted line quoting Reuters ...nuclear power was on track to become China’s fastest growing source of clean energy between now and 2040

Check out this graph ...

Instead of any of that, the reptiles reverted to an old favourite, Satanic Solar, We’re mowing down prime agricultural land in Victoria’s King Valley to put up solar farms. Picture: Catherine Sutherland/Tourism Victoria

What's dumb about this? 

Everybody and his back yard dog knows that anybody with half a clue, and the cash for solar and a battery, represents the real surge in solar ...

Sure it's tough if you're old or poor or live in an apartment block, but the suburbs - supposedly the place where dinkum lizard Oz hive minds dwell - have already spoken with their rooftops, leaving garrulous Gemma to squawk in some mindless bizarro world  ...

In my mind’s eye I imagine Australia’s energy policy being written to the soundtrack of Midnight Oil’s hit song Blue Sky Mine. It’s turned up to 11. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a banger, but it’s in the past. The world, the science, the technology – they have all moved on.
Not in Fortress Australia. Here, it’s still 1990.
Australia must deliver the cleanest, most affordable mix of energy available to us that supports the economy and doesn’t plunge people into energy poverty and cripple industry – mix being the most important word.

The next caption pretty much summed it all up, Our government scoffs at nuclear with arguments that are as dated and unsophisticated as the ‘evidence’ on which it relies. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Meanwhile, in another country ...

It's hard to resist the notion that the lizard Oz consists of stupid people writing silly things for hive mind readers ...

Luckily at this point grating Gemma got off the nuke the planet bandwagon, in order to nuke child care ...

And while energy offers one of the most potent examples, there are so many others.
Let’s look at childcare. The federal government is wedded to a policy that is out of step with the rest of the world. It prefers a one-size-fits-all, institutionalised, ideally nationalised approach that punts every kid into a cracked and cracking childcare system from the age of three.
This policy does not empower families with choice. It doesn’t recognise the vaults of data, including the government’s own, that acknowledge parents and primary caregivers are a better option. It removes parental agency and options. It doesn’t insulate children from risk.
Throughout Europe, namely Scandinavia, France and Germany, parents are allowed to choose how and where they spend their childcare subsidies. Not here in Fortress Australia. Here, we are not for turning. Here, we stubbornly refuse to adopt a flexible approach that gives parents choice. Perhaps it has something to do with it being a heavily subsidised $22bn industry. Call me a cynic, but I don’t think current policy has anything do with what’s best for children.

The caption showed of the blithe way that Gemma has with generalities, The federal government is wedded to a childcare policy that is out of step with the rest of the world. Picture: Tony Gough

At this point grave Gemma turned deeply philosophical ... and went back to the future by reverting to Nate Silver in 2012 ...

It’s hard to hear the truth from the noise. So much noise from politicians, from invested interest groups, from so many sources. It’s hard to get a read on what’s real. It’s especially difficult when the collective mindset is set like Roman cobblestones, firm and immovable in the Eternal City 2000 years after they were laid.
So much of current policy relies on flawed predictors, ideology and the like. They come with noisy fanfare and are established as truth. Based on what though?
American author Nate Silver, in his book The Signal and the Noise, spoke about how predictions get it wrong and why. Silver primarily spoke of the use of economic data and financial modelling but the broader principle holds. He wrote that silencing the noise requires scientific knowledge and, critically, self-knowledge.
“The signal is the truth. The noise is what distracts us from the truth,” he said.
Never has Australia’s social and political discourse been so calamitously noisy. There’s a dearth of measured, fact-based, intelligent conversations on issues that matter; an abundance of shouting. Sadly, all too often it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the most oil.
Here’s another example. Last week, research published by peak body Meat & Livestock Australia painted a very different picture about Australian attitudes to red meat than the noise would have us believe. In my day job we work with the cattle industry, but not with MLA directly (disclosure is important), so I found this research especially interesting.
Noise would have us believe that Australians don’t want red meat and overwhelmingly blame red meat production for environmental harm. Wrong. That’s just the noise. The signal is in the data, which found there are fewer non-meat eaters than ever, and that of those who shun it overwhelmingly (60 per cent) blame cost-of-living pressures. Only 5 per cent reference environmental concerns. Even less, animal welfare.
So much noise on so many issues, how to turn it down? Perhaps it’s because of our geographical isolation that his noise seems so easy to amplify. Has Australia become one gigantic echo chamber?
Once we were a nation known as risk-takers and innovators. I absolutely believe that is still wired into the Aussie DNA, but we are contending with a pervasive, close-minded, almost bunker mentality.
The sunburnt country has become the subsidy country, a land of sweeping reliance on government funding. Of rugged, mountainous resistance to new ideas. Of droughts of courage, initiative and ideas. Resistance to change that comes in like a flood. Can the metaphorical walls of Fortress Australia fall like those in the biblical story of Jericho? In that story the Israelites marched in silence around the walls for seven days. Not a word was spoken. Based on that, it would seem that drowning out the noise is the first step to take.

The pond said it yesterday, and will say it again today.

If an ancient Dorothea Mackellar poem and a reference to an ancient biblical story about a town for which no physical evidence exists is the best that Gemma can come up with as an alternative to an alleged pervasive, close-minded bunker mentality, then the pond is content to stay in the bunker...

How weird is it to jump from this ...Roman cobblestones, firm and immovable in the Eternal City 2000 years after they were laid ... to blather about the walls of Jericho c. 1550 BCE?

That's your futurism? That's your advanced thinking? An even bigger regression?

The chance of any risk-taking or innovation coming out of that brand of ludditism is down there with those who fancy Susssan over the lettuce ...

And now, in closing, this, yet another tribute to Ken Burns...

A short guide for suffering reptiles...

And a little fun with the mini-Vlad sociopath, doing it live ...

In which the pond refuses to go Gough, and so gives the lettuce a chance with Brownie and the dog botherer ...

 

All this to flog ancient Troy's tome?

They were all at it, though the early weekend headline story was a merciful 3 minutes ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘I wouldn’t do it’: Governor-General’s Kerr verdict
In an interview conducted in the study at Government House where Gough Whitlam was dismissed, Sam Mostyn reflected on the constitutional crisis 50 years ago and the resilience of institutions.
Troy Bramston

Ancient Troy again, for a full, unnerving 18 minutes ...

Australia’s constitutional earthquake: The day that shocked the nation
An hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute, account of John Kerr’s dramatic dismissal of Gough Whitlam and installation of Malcolm Fraser as prime minister 50 years ago.
Troy Bramston

The clue?

This is an edited extract from Troy Bramston’s new book, Gough Whitlam: The Vista of the New (HarperCollins).

Nah, thanks, but no thanks, not really, but at least there's no need to buy the book now ...

"Ned" rambled for an unholy 11 minutes ...

Who really won in 1975?
From Whitlam to Albanese: the remaking of Australian politics
Labor’s journey from Whitlam’s humiliation to Albanese’s record majority reveals the most dramatic reversal in our political history.
Paul Kelly

"Ned's" outing was full of astonishing insights...

Whitlam’s failures are not Albanese’s

Really? Do the Everest climb for that sort of revelation?

Over on the extreme far right, there was even more ...

The Ughmann joined in, another five minutes of torture ...

How Gough Whitlam’s long shadow still looms over Australian politics
His ‘crash through or crash’ leadership not only reformed Labor, it embedded left-wing ideals and a centralising regulatory culture that reshaped Australian governance.
Chris Uhlmann

On the upside, it took the unreformed seminarian's mind off climate science denialism?

Was it only a profound sense of irony that led garrulous Gemma to feature with ...

Why Australia remains a fortress of outdated policy thinking
What will it take to bring down the walls and return to being risk-takers and innovators?
By Gemma Tognini
Columnist

Just to prove the monstrous madness of the reptiles this day, gormless Gemma proved how up to date her thinking was ... by mangling Dorothea Mackellar's c. 1908 poem and citing an event in the bible commonly dated to late 15th century BC, though no trace of this Jericho remains ...

...So much noise on so many issues, how to turn it down? Perhaps it’s because of our geographical isolation that this noise seems so easy to amplify. Has Australia become one gigantic echo chamber?
Once we were a nation known as risk-takers and innovators. I absolutely believe that is still wired into the Aussie DNA, but we are contending with a pervasive, close-minded, almost bunker mentality.
The sunburnt country has become the subsidy country, a land of sweeping reliance on government funding. Of rugged, mountainous resistance to new ideas. Of droughts of courage, initiative and ideas. Resistance to change that comes in like a flood. Can the metaphorical walls of Fortress Australia fall like those in the biblical story of Jericho? In that story the Israelites marched in silence around the walls for seven days. Not a word was spoken. Based on that, it would seem that drowning out the noise is the first step to take.

The pond immediately drowned out shouty Gemma ...

The pond doesn't know about fortress Australia, but when it comes to fortress hive mind lizard Oz, it's a fount of outdated scribbling obsessed with long ago events, either in the service of flogging a book or dwelling in a biblical fantasy land.

Well, the pond has outlined and linked to the resources, and yet again there's no sign of the bromancer, nor any of the reptiles focussing on King Donald and the slide of the disunited states into authoritarian anarchy.

This viral snap will have to do all that work ...

Talk about being in the right place at the right time to catch a framing which evokes memories of Rembrandt Van Rijn in its elegant capturing of metaphorical poses ...

And now the pond, righteous in its offerings, can turn to other matters, with the Brown-out starting that other conversation, the goodly, bigly chance of the lettuce winning ...

The header: Liberals’ vague aim to exit death spiral over net zero, Liberal MPs have exposed deep divisions over dumping the party’s net-zero target as a senior senator publicly declares Opposition Leader Sussan Ley is ‘losing support’.

The caption for a Susssan looking startled by a lettuce hovering into view: Opposition Leader Sussan Ley is expected to axe the 2050 net-zero target. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The Brown-out offered a full 5 minutes of agonising ...

Senior Liberals are brawling over whether to endorse a vague ­ambition for a carbon-neutral ­future under the Paris agreement after Sussan Ley’s expected axing of a net-zero target by 2050, as MPs warn the Opposition Leader is in a “death spiral”.
Key allies of Ms Ley say a compromise with the moderates was being considered under the plan to dump net zero, which would see the Coalition go to the next election vowing to maintain an “aspiration” under Paris to hit net zero while refusing to tie it to any date and having no domestic policies to hit the goal.
This would allow city-based MPs to argue the Coalition is technically committed to net zero even if the term is junked from Ms Ley’s policy platform.
But this is being resisted by top conservatives, who are pushing for the Coalition to have medium-term emissions pledges under the international agreement without any long-term net-zero goal.

Could it be a reptile story without a snap of terrifying whale-killing windmills, and some toad from the deep north? Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman says net zero is a path to “economic destruction”. Mr Newman told Sky News host Steve Price that it will deliver a “lower standard of living”. “To fewer jobs in this country.”

The pond has no idea where they dig up this Noddy, this Voldemort, this "can't do" Campbell, but it's yet another reminder of why the pond never watches Sky Noise down under...

After that irrelevance, the tale of woe continued ...

Conservatives are rejecting an argument by moderates including Andrew Bragg that the Paris agreement requires signatories to aspire to hit net zero in the second half of the century.
Ahead of a crucial meeting ­between Liberal MPs next ­Wednesday to finalise the party’s position on net zero, Victorian senator Sarah Henderson put leadership tensions on the radar after claiming Ms Ley was losing the support of the party room.
“I can’t sit here and pretend everything is OK; it’s not OK,” Ms Henderson told Sky News on Friday. “I do believe she is losing support because of what’s happened since she became leader.”
Conservative MPs played down the prospect of a leadership change this year, but told The Australian it was only a matter of time before she was challenged.
”She is in the death spiral … it is coming but not now,” one Liberal MP said. “We want to avoid the suggestion that we didn’t give her an opportunity.”
Another MP said: “Most people think she won’t make it to the election but she needs more time.”

Elbows up, lettuce, stay strong, as the reptiles introduced the alternative, the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, Angus Taylor is considered the most likely alternative as Liberal Party leader. Picture: Martin Ollman

No wonder Labor apparatchiks are dreaming of a thousand year Reich, though they should remember what happened to the last one ... and let's not forget the pastie Hastie ...

Opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor is considered the most likely alternative leader, while West Australian MP Andrew Hastie would put his hat in the ring if there was a spill.
Liberal MPs including opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan, moderate senator Jane Hume and conservative MP Tony Pasin on Friday denied Ms Ley’s leadership was under threat.
Mr Hastie said he was more ­focused on his campaign against net zero than on the leadership of the Liberal Party.
“Until we sort that out, it doesn’t matter who leads the party – we’re not in the fight,” Mr Hastie told 2GB radio.
“Our focus has to be getting cheaper power prices for Australian families, businesses and ­industry. If we don’t do that, our country is just going to keep going backwards.”
Mr Pasin told Sky News he believed the term “net zero” would be dumped.
“I, for one, am perfectly comfortable with us maintaining a commitment to Paris, but I can’t commit to net zero,” Mr Pasin said.

Thick as a Pasin brick, here have a rustic chatting with Danica, Nationals MP Michael McCormack says the Coalition needs to “make the call” on net zero and hope the moderates “find some common ground”. “People need to know where the Liberals stand … get on with it,” Mr McCormack told Sky News host Danica De Giorgio. “Time is of the essence. “Get on with prosecuting this government and their bad agenda for Australia.”

Okay, it's only a screen cap, but think of the brain cells saved ...

Ms Ley said on Friday every Liberal MP agreed that “Labor’s net zero is failing Australians”.
“Our energy policy will be predicated on two fundamentals: that we have a stable, reliable grid to provide affordable energy to households and businesses and that we do play our part internationally in reducing emissions,” she said.
When asked if her days were numbered as leader given Senator Henderson’s comments, Ms Ley said she was “not going to comment on commentary”.
“Every one of my team is absolutely united behind the focus that we have right now, which is to hold this Labor government to account for an energy policy that is destructive of households, businesses and indeed harming the economy,” Ms Ley said.

Go lettuce, Senator Dave Sharma removes himself from the spotlight at the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra on Friday. Picture: Martin Ollman

The reptiles helped with the notion that, while climate change never sleeps and is already on the way to wrecking the planet, the best strategy by far is to stick head in sand, thereby avoiding sun burn ...

A new OECD report shows wealthy nations are not on track to reach their 2030 emissions-reduction targets, bolstering claims from Coalition MPs that achieving net zero is unachievable.
The report of the Paris-based group led by former Liberal finance minister Mathias Cormann found Australia was one of only 30 nations with a legally binding net-zero pledge, while momentum was slowing globally on taking action on climate change.
“Global climate action expanded by just 1 per cent in 2024 – confirming a slowdown in progress observed since 2021,” Mr Cormann wrote in the forward of the Climate Action Monitor report.
“This loss of momentum can no longer be attributed solely to disruptions from the Covid-19 pandemic or economic shocks.”
The momentum against net zero within the Liberals shifted early in the week when factional powerbrokers Alex Hawke and James McGrath joined leading conservatives Mr Taylor, James Paterson and Michaelia Cash in opposing the target in a leadership meeting.
The meeting was hours after the Nationals partyroom unanimously agreed to oppose any net-zero goal, leaving top Liberals concerned about adopting a position that was too hard to reconcile with the junior Coalition party.

The lesser Leeser made the cut, Julian Leeser in Canberra on Friday. Picture: Martin Ollman

Now to explain the difference between carbon neutrality and net zero ...think neutered ...

Moderates are refusing to concede the term will be junked from the Coalition’s policy agenda, warning Ms Ley will fail to win any city seats if she walks away from the ambition.
While a senior MP has described net zero as “dead, buried and cremated”, opposition frontbenchers are divided over whether the Coalition should retain a goal to carbon neutrality under the Paris agreement.
The Australian understands the Liberals are likely to back including coal and gas in the Capacity Investment Scheme as part of a plan to make the underwriting program “technology neutral”.
The party is also expected to water down and rebrand the safeguard mechanism, while vowing to repeal the Climate Change Act that enshrines net-zero by 2050 in law.

Susssan made a final appearance, Sussan Ley says she won't "comment on commentary" as the Opposition Leader brushed off concerns over her leadership amid growing pressure over divisions regarding net zero policy. Ms Ley attempted to bat away mounting speculation her leadership is under threat, after Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson declared she "could not support things the way they are" and the leader was "losing support" within the party. Ms Ley said she is proud of her team and said a meeting to discuss net zero policy will be held next Wednesday.

It all bodes well for the pond's plunge on the lettuce ...

The Coalition is likely to drop subsidies for low-emissions products and instead encourage new technologies through deregulation and investment in research and development.
There is also significant support for the Nationals policy of tying medium-term emissions-reduction ambitions to the average abatement achieved by OECD nations. The Nationals policy would lead to Australia aiming to lower emissions by 30 to 40 per cent of 2005 levels by 2035, about half of Labor’s 62 to 70 per cent target.
The Liberals are opposed to the Nationals’ proposal to revive Tony Abbott’s Emissions Reduction Fund, which paid businesses to reduce their carbon output.
With moderate MPs arguing staying in Paris would effectively tie Australia to a net-zero ambition, Nationals senator Matt Canavan said this was not the case. “The Paris agreement does not impose a net-zero requirement on any nation,” he said. “What it says is that the signatories should aim for a global result of net zero. Because it is expressed as an aim, it is not actually a legal, binding obligation on any party or country.”

The upshot? Much carry on about nothing, necks on assorted blocks, while the government gives lip service to net zero without actually doing much about it ...

As if only Americans know how to do it ...

The dog botherer was also in the same turf, though being woofy, it'll be hard to get him to stay focussed ...

The header: Political fantasy world is the backdrop in which Liberals and Sussan Ley must find a better way, Chasing the zeitgeist is endless folly but sticking to the facts can help embattled Sussan Ley and the Liberals cast a new mainstay on climate and energy.

The caption for Susssan looking downcast: Sussan Ley is facing a leadership backlash over the party's net-zero climate policy. But the job of the Liberal Party is to ignore the politicking, social media fashions and ideology.

The dog botherer immediately got distracted ...

For all the absence of conviction, poor judgment and lack of cut-through that Sussan Ley has displayed in the past six months, the Liberals are kidding themselves if they think merely changing leaders will fix their woes. If only a reset in national affairs were so easy.
The dilemma is far deeper and wider – so consequential we see it even in New York City, where the home of Wall Street has just elected an aggressive, inexperienced and openly socialist new mayor.
If Zohran Mamdani’s divisive, dead-end politics can make it in the Big Apple, they might make it anywhere.
Fuelled by the mind-shrinking algorithms of social media, we have become societies of forgetfulness. History and its lessons are unremembered. A populace with unprecedented access to all the information and wisdom of millennia chooses digital flim-flam instead. We run with the meme of the moment.
Winston Churchill said: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to its pants on.” Now a lie is shared globally in milliseconds and before anyone has a chance for rebuttal it becomes accepted wisdom.

It was becoming one of those general Ginsbergian dog bothering howl of pain, all set off by New Yoikers, The home of Wall Street has just elected democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. Picture: Alejandro Granadillo/AP

That sighting was enough to set the dog botherer right off, and remind the hive mind that they were deep in the usual work of the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

Studies show a higher percentage of people in Western countries use social media and watch pornography than read books. Many do all three, no doubt, but books and even newspapers trail digital distractions by a wide margin. Evidence abounds of this dumbing down, from falling education standards to copycat crimes. Politics is far from immune; it is infected.
Hence New Yorkers can vote for a hard-left populist promising state-run supermarkets, free transport, free childcare and higher taxes on the rich. Anyone with a pre-Instagram memory knows this is all too good to be true and will end in tears.
We suffer in the same way here. Social media ignorance filters into the mainstream, especially through the green-left media.
Paradoxically, the information age sees misinformation and straight-up lies embedded like never before. Half the world, for instance, makes the hateful and absurd allegation of “genocide” against Israel, tellingly dropped after the peace deal revealed a Gazan reality that could not sustain the lie. We regularly hear unsubstantiated claims that natural disasters in our land of “droughts and flooding rains” are the work of climate change. Politicians and activists tell us that fiddling with Australia’s 1 per cent (and shrinking) share of global emissions will change the weather.

Not Dorothea Mackellar again! 

A fortress of wretched poetry references, as a new threat sauntered into view, Senator Lidia Thorpe at the march for Palestine held in Melbourne CBD. Picture: NewsWire/ David Crosling

The dog botherer was no on a familiar roll, ranting away, the odd bit of foam flecking the nose ...

The lack of logic and reason is embarrassing. But the narrative sticks and overwhelms the facts.
Juvenile slogans from the anarchist left, once scoffed at by an informed electorate, are amplified and normalised. If you doubt this trend, let me remind you that the senator for Victoria, Lidia Thorpe, last month threatened to “burn down Parliament House” in support of Palestinians, Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi blamed Australia for disastrous floods in her native Pakistan and another Greens senator, David Shoebridge, described Mamdani’s campaign as an “inspiration”.
It is in this political fantasy world that the opposition and Ley must cast a new mainstay on climate and energy. It seems a diabolic challenge, but I would recommend a simple and old-fashioned approach: Ignore the spin and stick to facts and logic.

How low did the Australian Daily Zionist News go? 

Think Godwin's Law, German troops lead Jewish civilians from the Warsaw ghetto to their execution during WWII. An example of ‘misinformation and straight-up lies embedded like never before’ is the genocide charge against Israel, believed by many in the world.

On with the howling, into the wilderness of despair ...

Politicians, like the rest of us, must retain faith that the truth will out, eventually. As people see Hamas executing Gazans in the Middle East, more of them must grasp reality. We were told Tony Abbott could not stop the boats (it would trigger a war with Indonesia, said Kevin Rudd) and Donald Trump could not secure America’s southern border. The right policies are routinely decried, not only as wrong but also as immoral or impossible.
So it is that Ley and the Liberals must approach net zero. Forget trying to placate the gallery or other interest groups, or tailoring policy to presumed demographics according to opinion polls.
Weigh the options, costs and benefits, and advocate the best policy. This will not be racing ahead of the world in a renewables-plus-storage experiment. The right policies will be vindicated because the wrong policies will fail. Chasing the zeitgeist is endless folly.
When Abbott became opposition leader in 2009 and promised to block Rudd’s Orwellian-titled carbon pollution reduction scheme, the Canberra scribes foretold the end of the Liberal Party. They “will face humiliation at the polls”, said Laurie Oakes, and confront “electoral oblivion” according to Peter Hartcher – yet the Coalition all but won the 2010 election and romped home in 2013.
Little more than a decade later, it is all unlearned as the same media organisations, sometimes the same journalists, predict the same reckoning they falsely forecast back then. This is either obtuse or wishful thinking.

Oh the poor boy, still brooding, still yearning for a little onion munching, as Susssan made a familiar appearance, Sussan Ley says she won't "comment on commentary" as the Opposition Leader brushed off concerns over her leadership amid growing pressure over divisions regarding net zero policy. Ms Ley attempted to bat away mounting speculation her leadership is under threat, after Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson declared she "could not support things the way they are" and the leader was "losing support" within the party. Ms Ley said she is proud of her team and said a meeting to discuss net zero policy will be held next Wednesday.

And then it was done, and the pond did enjoy drinking the dog botherer's tears, though they were a little too salty ...

“The damage to the Liberal Party will be profound, keeping (the Coalition) out of office,” Shaun Carney said in The Age this week. The ABC’s Patricia Karvelas said “it will solidify an existing view in the cities that the opposition lacks commitment on this issue”, and in The Sydney Morning Herald Jacqueline Maley said if the “commitment to net zero is abandoned, then what is left?”.
Tellingly, most of the commentary and even the partisan barbs are focused on politicking. Critics seem unconcerned that slowing Australia’s emissions cuts will lead to more droughts, floods or fires.
Even Climate 200 founder and teal svengali Simon Holmes a Court sticks to politics over the environment. In these pages on Thursday, he wrote: “The lesson from the past two elections should be blindingly obvious: Australians will not back a Coalition that refuses to take climate change seriously.”
Nice of him to worry about the fortunes of his political foes but surely Holmes a Court remembers the Coalition supported net zero by 2050 at the past two elections. Besides, shouldn’t he be more worried about the planet?
This obsession with politics over the environment gives the critics’ game away. For all their alarmism and deceitful claims about Australian policy improving the climate, they know the science says that whatever Australia does will not alter the climate.
If it did, they would be attacking the Coalition for contemplating an act that will swamp our coastal suburbs and cook our farmland. Revealingly, they stick to politics because that is their game – not science or economics but ideology.
The job of the Liberal Party is to ignore the politicking, social media fashions and ideology.
Stick to the facts and offer a rational approach for national prosperity and security.

Oh yes, the way forward ... endless, mindless prosperity, with marble bathrooms, gold gilt toilets and a great taste in ballrooms and cars...

And so to a special bonus.

It's nine minutes, so long the reptiles deemed it needed sub-headings, but who could resist Cameron asking questions ...

The header: Is Zohran Mamdani good for the Jews?, A third of Jewish New Yorkers voted for Israel hater Zohran Mamdani as NYC mayor. Will they regret it?

The caption for a wisely uncredited, truly pathetic collage: Zorhan Mamdani is not a Palestinian but has been a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause all his life, having co-founded a chapter of the Students for Justice for Palestine at college.

The pond won't interrupt much, the point here, a bit like supping on dog botherer tears, is the pleasure to be derived from watching a reptile writhe on a Mamdani stake ...

For many of America’s 7.5 million Jews, the landslide election of the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli Zohran Mamdani as New York mayor must have felt like a punch to the gut. Yet for others it was proof of a generational shift away from the once unbreakable bond between American Jews and Israel, a trend that threatens to reshape US politics and foreign policy.
The crushing victory by the 34-year-old Muslim democratic socialist has launched a plethora of predictions from political pundits about what it means for the Democrats, for Donald Trump and for New York.
But for America’s Jewish community, the questions raised by Mamdani’s victory are deeply personal. For some, there is disbelief that New York City, with 1.3 million Jews – the second largest Jewish population of any city behind Tel Aviv – has elected a mayor who believes Israel is a genocidal state that does not have the right to exist.
Mamdani has accused Israel of committing apartheid as well as genocide in Gaza and has been reluctant to condemn the phrase “globalise the intifada”. He is not a Palestinian but has been a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause all his life, having co-founded a chapter of the Students for Justice for Palestine at college.
Many Jews fear his victory will turbocharge the anti-Israel American left and will further fuel the surge in anti-Semitism that has brought a raft of violent attacks including the murder of two young employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington.
Why did Jews vote for Mamdani?
Yet exit polls in New York on election day indicated that no less than 33 per cent of Jewish voters – one in three – cast their ballot for a Muslim who doesn’t believe Israel should exist.
For America’s Jewish community, this is the bigger story of Mamdani’s victory. The war in Gaza increasingly has led a younger generation of Jews, especially in progressive cities such as New York, to question and to criticise Israel in a manner that once would have seemed unthinkable. Within many Jewish families, parents and their children now hold very different views about Gaza and about Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
Of course, Jews in the US, like elsewhere in the world, populate all sides of the political spectrum. In New York, exit polls suggest that roughly two-thirds of Jews cast their vote for Mamdani’s pro-Israel opponent Andrew Cuomo.
But the US Jewish community is broadly seen as more politically liberal than most – including Australia – with seven in 10 Jews in the US traditionally voting Democrat.
As such, the Democrats traditionally have stood side-by-side with Republicans in their fervent support of Israel.

Just to reassure the hive mind, the reptiles slipped in a reminder that readers were still safe in the Australian Zionist Daily News ... A man goes about his day in the Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Williamsburg in New York City. Picture: Getty Images

It's an Islamic conspiracy ... the hordes are gathering at the walls of Jericho, or some such ...

Joe Biden as president was mostly supportive of Israel in its war on Hamas in Gaza after the October 7 massacres. Trump has followed the traditional pro-Israel Republican stance by lifting that support to new levels. This has ensured that the US is far and away the most important and loyal ally to Israel when the latter has rarely been more isolated internationally over the conflict in Gaza.
But Democrat voters overall, including many Jewish Democrats, have been increasingly critical of Netanyahu’s coalition government over its actions in Gaza. It is a notable shift that almost certainly will transform the Democratic Party’s future approach to Israel. If a Democrat succeeds Trump in the White House, it could have direct implications for US-Israel relations and Middle East policy more broadly.
How many Muslims live in New York?
The sizeable number of Jewish voters who cast their ballot for Mamdani in New York did not sway his election. New York also is home to the nation’s largest Muslim population, about 1.5 million, which would have voted for him overwhelmingly, quite apart from his popularity with the broader electorate.
But the exit polls in New York, which showed one-third of Jews backed Mamdani, reflect a new-found willingness from these Jewish voters to tolerate those such as Mamdani who are openly critical of Israel.
Of course, for many of these voters Israel was not on the ballot. A lot of the Jews who cast their ballot for Mamdani no doubt did so because of his manifesto of tax the rich and help the poor, rather than because of anything to do with Israel. But it speaks volumes that they did not particularly care that their mayor-elect did not believe their spiritual homeland had a right to exist.

Even The Times of Israel couldn't pin that last charge on him...

Israel’s right to exist
During the long mayoral primary campaign, Mamdani repeatedly said that Israel has a right to exist, though he has not said it has a right to exist as a Jewish state. He usually qualifies the statement by adding that Israel is flouting its responsibilities under international law, based on its treatment of Palestinians.
He has been asked if Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. As he stated at the town hall with the UJA-Federation, he feels it should exist “with equal rights for all.”
He later said on a local Fox channel’s morning show: “I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else.” He echoed those comments many times subsequently on the campaign trail.

Well yes, in many parts of the world there's a disavowal of theocracy and an attempt to separate church from state, though it's been failing in recent times in the disunited states.

But when it comes to smearing, the reptiles just love their theocracies... Supporters celebrate Zohran Mamdani’s win during an election night event at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater this week. Picture: AFP

So to quoting King Donald ...

Trump obviously thought this to be odd, writing on Truth Social: “Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!”
Yet polls suggest many US Jews have moved largely in tandem with the American public – and public opinion in many Western nations including Australia – to become steadily more critical of Israel as the civilian death toll in Gaza has grown. A Washington Post poll of Jews in the US conducted in September, before the ceasefire and the release of the hostages, revealed American Jews had become sharply critical of Israel’s conduct of the war.
It found 61 per cent believed Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza while four in 10 believed Israel was guilty of genocide. Even so, American Jews still overwhelmingly blame Hamas, with 94 per cent saying Hamas had committed war crimes against Israelis.
The same poll also revealed a growing generational divide, with 56 per cent of American Jews saying they were emotionally attached to Israel, but this dropped to just 36 per cent among those aged 18 to 34. These younger Jews are also far likelier than older Jewish Americans to say Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza – a demographic trend reflected in the broader non-Jewish community.
Jewish Democrats’ shift away from Israel
However, polls show that this year white, college-educated older Jewish Democrats also have moved in large numbers to distance themselves from Israel.
As such, the divide between Jewish Democrats and Jewish Republicans is starker than ever, with more than eight in 10 Jewish Republicans supporting Israel’s military actions in Gaza, compared with roughly three in 10 Democrats. The drift in support for Israel among many Jews is reinforced even more within the broader Democratic Party.
A New York Times poll in September found the sympathies of Democrat voters, which were evenly split between Israel (34 per cent) and Palestinians (31 per cent) two years ago, are now sharply lopsided, with 54 per cent saying they sympathised more with Palestinians compared with just 13 per cent for Israel.

A reminder of the elected fiend, incarnate, and his terrifying companion, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, right, and his wife Rama Duwaji.

Then came more meditations on the wilful destruction of Gaza ...

Prominent Jewish left-winger senator Bernie Sanders accused Israel in September of committing genocide in Gaza after carefully avoiding making such a claim for almost two years.
When all Americans – including Republican voters – are polled, the country is evenly split with 34 per cent saying they side with Israel and 35 per cent with the Palestinians. However, this is a significant shift from the days after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, when 47 per cent sided with Israel and just 20 per cent with Palestinians.
This drift from Israel has frustrated and alienated senior traditional Democrats who believe their party should stick side-by-side with Israel as it once did.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New Yorker and the most senior Jewish politician in the US, has pointedly refused to endorse Mamdani.
“Senator Schumer has had to balance the energy that Mamdani has inspired with young voters with the reticence older voters and the business community have felt toward the mayor-elect, with Israel being another complicating factor,” Ben Tulchin, a Democratic pollster who worked for New York mayor Eric Adams’s 2021 campaign was quoted as saying.
Leading house Democrat Hakeem Jeffries held off endorsing Mamdani until last month and says he does not see him as the future of the party.
“(Mamdani) will have to convince folks that he is prepared to aggressively address the rise in anti-Semitism,” Jeffries says.
What do America’s rabbis make of it?
Concerns about what the rise of Mamdani means for anti-Semitism in the US prompted more than 1000 rabbis, cantors and rabbinical students from around the country to sign a petition last month to oppose “rising anti-Zionism and its political normalisation”.
“As rabbis from across the United States committed to the security and prosperity of the Jewish people, we are writing in our personal capacities to declare that we cannot remain silent in the face of rising anti-Zionism and its political normalisation throughout our nation,” the petition said. “When public figures like New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani refuse to condemn violent slogans, deny Israel’s legitimacy, and accuse the Jewish state of genocide, they, in the words of New York Board of Rabbis president Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, ‘Delegitimise the Jewish community and encourage and exacerbate hostility toward Judaism and Jews’.”
Mamdani’s victory has made him a target for Trump, who derides him as “my little communist mayor” and predicts his win will lead to social and economic disaster in New York. But Trump will also use Mamdani’s win to contrast the President’s “unwavering” support for Israel with that of Mamdani and the Democratic Party.
It is ironic, given that American Jews overwhelmingly support the Democrats, that Trump, a Republican, has done more to help Israel and Middle East peace than any other American.
Trump’s peace plan has resulted in the release of all 20 remaining living hostages from Gaza and has led to a ceasefire that, although tenuous, continues to hold and raise hopes that the war in Gaza is over.

Here's where the fluff gathering and navel gazing gets beyond the valley of the incestuous, with the dog botherer turning up again to talk with Lord Downer ... Former foreign minister Alexander Downer says socialism has never made any “economic sense”. Mr Downer told Sky News host Chris Kenny that socialism has been tried for hundreds of years in all “parts of the world”. “And every time it’s been tried, it ended in tears. “So, expect New York to push back eventually against this socialist experiment.”

Meanwhile, Uncle Leon lines up for a trillion dollar pay out, and Lord Downer nods and smiles approvingly ...

Yet Trump is also facing fractures within his own MAGA movement over Israel.
A conference of America’s leading Jewish Republicans in Las Vegas this week lurched from what the Times of Israel called “jubilation over a tenuous ceasefire in the Middle East into a clarion call to stem the spread of anti-Jewish voices within the party”.
Conservative American Jews have been horrified by the anti-Israel attitudes of some prominent MAGA identities. These include conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson, who welcomed Nick Fuentes, a far-right Holocaust denier with anti-Semitic views, on to his podcast last week and refused to vigorously challenge him.
“We are at this point in what I consider sort of the early stages of an undeclared civil war within the Republican Party, as it relates to Israel, and anti-Semitism and the Jewish community,” Republican Jewish Coalition leader Matthew Brooks said.
Reactions in Israel to Mamdani’s victory in New York have ranged from horror to a quiet resignation.
“The Big Apple has fallen,” said Avigdor Liberman, the leader of a right-wing opposition party and former foreign minister. He urged “New York Jews who want to survive” to emigrate “to where they belong – the land of Israel”.
Why did he win?
Amichai Chikli, a right-wing Israeli minister whose portfolio includes the Jewish diaspora and combating anti-Semitism, claimed Mamdani was “someone whose positions are not far removed from the jihadist fanatics who murdered 3000 of (New York’s) people” in the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
“New York is walking with open eyes into the abyss into which London has plunged,” he said in reference to London’s Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan.
David Horovitz, the founding editor of The Times of Israel, had more thoughtful observations, writing: “There’s an argument to be made that Zohran Mamdani’s decisive victory in the New York mayoral elections is all about local issues, and that his hostility to Israel is largely irrelevant.
“Some (New York Jews) doubtless chose Mamdani in part because they endorse his strategic delegitimisation of an Israel to which they were never connected or from which they are increasingly alienated. But others, who are troubled by his stance on Israel, backed him nonetheless because they are more preoccupied with the day-to-day problems of the city they live in, and believe he will do a better job of alleviating them than (Mamdani’s opponent) Andrew Cuomo would.

“Yet Mamdani has left no doubt that his support of the Palestinians and refusal to accept Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state are central to his identity and purpose … it is anti-Semites who will be encouraged by his victory.”

Actually the pond would prefer to quote Haaretz ...

And again ...

...In any case, it doesn't seem that our tiny country will be high on his list of concerns. With all due respect to Israelis convinced the world revolves around them, Mamdani cares more about kindergartners in Manhattan than the overgrown toddlers in the Knesset.
In fact, it's actually good for Israel that the world stops ignoring its deranged behavior and starts demanding accountability for its actions. Only international pressure on the government has succeeded in bringing about the return of hostages and halting the war, and only such pressure can save us from the abyss toward which it's driving us.
Zohran Mamdani is not dangerous to Israel; he's dangerous to the lie Israel tells itself. And the truth is, without freedom and security for everyone, there will be no good life for either side – only more death, more destruction, and more news broadcasts scaring us with imaginary threats so we won't have to face reality.

And so on, as Cameron wrapped up ...

Despite his views on Israel, Mamdani vowed in his victory speech to “build a City Hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of anti-Semitism”.
It remains to be seen whether he is willing to take up that fight in the robust manner in which he promises.
There is good reason to be sceptical. For many American Jews, Mamdani’s election as mayor of the country’s most Jewish city is not only a deeply worrying development. It is also a stark illustration of how America’s Jewish diaspora is fracturing over Israel and the war in Gaza.
Cameron Stewart is a former New York correspondent for The Australian.

Um, perhaps take a look at the likes of Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson and all the others in line behind King Donald? 

You know, the good people on both sides crowd?

But if the Jewish space laser lady can see the light, perhaps there's hope ...