In which Killer of the IPA sets the New Yoik pace, and the pond regrets digging out Our Henry in full fascist flight...

Vulgar, incredibly vulgar...

At least the intent of "Make Australian manufacturing great again" becomes a tad clearer. 

It's "Make Qantas Advertise in the lizard Oz again".

And squeezed into the top of the vulgarity?

Predictable, incredibly predictable, as once again the reptiles tried to help the lettuce ...

Internal drama
Ley’s day of net-zero reckoning revealed as Hawke condemned
Conservative MPs have branded Alex Hawke as Liberal Party’s ‘leader by proxy’ as Sussan Ley prepares to reveal crucial net-zero position.
By Sarah Ison

And over on the extreme far right, more disappointment ...

Wait, what's happened to the hole in bucket man? 

Where was the old bigot ranting away?

Did the reptiles really think the latest contribution to the Australian Daily Zionist News was a substitute?

In Israel, Australia’s betrayal is evident everywhere you go
We didn’t expect that every Israeli we met – private citizens, cab drivers, restaurant staff and shopkeepers – all knew the Albanese government had put Israel into the deep freeze.
By Peter Jennings and Anthony Bergin

In Gaza and the West Bank, the current government of Israel's genocidal intent is everywhere to be seen.

And did the reptiles think that kackling Klaire's kontribution would sort out Susssan's dilemma?

‘Spot reducing’ emissions is no way to fix climate
When dieting or exercising, the body leans out all over – reducing fat in one area, such as the belly, through targeted exercise, is a fool’s errand. The climate is the same.
By Claire Lehmann
Contributor

Cackling Claire was in the word salad camp besides Tamworth's enduring shame, and others who had Little to be Proud of ...

..Dumping net zero should not mean turning our backs on climate action. It should mean re-prosecuting the case for nuclear energy and practical solutions such as large-scale reforestation and carbon capture. Abandoning an unrealistic slogan does not signal a return to the past; it can mark the beginning of a more intelligent, future-focused approach – one where clean energy is also cheap energy. Real climate leadership isn’t about chanting catchy phrases. It’s about making the hard, rational choices that keep the lights on, the economy strong, and the air clean.
Claire Lehmann is the founder and editor-in-chief of Quillette.

What remarkably obtuse advice. How remarkably easy it was to ignore this sort of softcore climate science denialism ...

And it didn't get any better when the reptiles wheeled in Freedom Boy to help out ...

Don’t fall for false war over net-zero
After legislating a net-zero target, the teals voted with the government for new coal and gas subsidies. But the founder of Climate 200 doesn’t want to talk about this betrayal by his candidates.
by Tim Wilson

Wonder boy's solution in a sentence?

Minimising public risk and cost can be achieved through reverse auctions to maximise private investment and generation output. More importantly, a Liberal solution can build Australia’s clean reindustrialised future and deliver net-zero price increases and net-zero outages, and that’s the pathway to achieve emissions reduction too.

No wonder the lettuce is doing well, there are so many word salads in need of its services.

And was it wise for Geoff to chamber another bullet celebrating Tamworth's eternal shame?

Liberals and Nationals are bleeding money and members, and One Nation reaps the benefits
It is now probable Barnaby Joyce will take his money-making abilities to One Nation ahead of the 2028 election.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

Why are the reptiles pumping up the Barners straw man?

...While nothing lasts forever in politics, the conservative side of politics is currently on life support.
The challenge for Hanson and One Nation is whether they will squander the rising protest vote that they have attracted since polling day.
Hanson will hope she can ride a similar wave as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Coalition strategists who predict that disillusioned voters will flock back to them before the next election shouldn’t be overconfident.
It is true that One Nation over the years has suffered from organisational pressures, average candidates and a poor retention rate for elected parliamentarians, but if the winds are blowing in the right direction and Hanson attracts big donors and high-profile candidates, One Nation could wreak havoc in the regions and outer suburbs.
The Liberals and Nationals must get the show together – and fast.
After the first rise of One Nation in 1998, the Coalition had John Howard, Tim Fischer and Ron Boswell to lead the fight.
In 2025, it has Sussan Ley and Littleproud in the hot seats.
The contrast between 1998 and 2025 couldn’t be starker.

Why it's part of a subtle jihad to take Susssan down by Xmas.

And what's worse, where was the celebration of Bob?

Never mind, at least there was a killer kontribution, with Killer of the IPA standing in for the derelict bromancer ... (in the archive if you want to try the Killer links)

The header: NYV mayor Mamdani uproar is much ado about nothing very much; Republicans are furious over NYC’s new Muslim socialist mayor. Zohran Mamdani talks a big game, but like Clover Moore in Sydney, his limited powers to reshape a city mean managing garbage pick-up may be the height of his revolution.

The caption for Killer's cunning ploy of comparing feeble New York to mighty Sydney, centre of the cosmopolitan universe: Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, left, and New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani. Pictures: News Corp/Getty Im, ages (sic, so and thus)

Killer's sparsely illustrated attempt to downplay the mid-term results by making it all a meaningless affair ...

Would you really care if Sydney’s Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, threatened to ban gas exports or Melbourne’s Nicholas Reece demanded Australia dump the AUKUS pact?
From Donald Trump down, conservatives in the US have worked themselves into a rage over the election of the self-­described “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani as the mayor of New York City.
Trump, who has repeatedly called Mamdani a “communist who would ruin the city”, has threatened to withhold federal funds from America’s largest city, and even send in the national guard. But really, who cares? The 34-year-old Ugandan born Muslim talks a big game, praising efforts to “globalise the intifada” and threatening to put up income taxes by 2 per cent.
“We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about,” he declared in his election night speech. But Ronald Reagan needn’t turn in his grave, given that little thing called the US ­constitution.
Mamdani will have to channel his rage into zoning regulations and rubbish pick-up schedules. For all the undoubted glamour of the New York City mayoralty Mamdani is a local official subject to New York State law. For all the conniptions about income or corporate tax going up, the Democrat governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, has already explicitly ruled tax increases out.
Democrats did gain one extra seat in the city’s council, but only about a dozen are aligned with Mamdani’s Democratic Socialist of America faction; the rest know where their bread is buttered.
The city’s tax base is remarkably top heavy: the top 1 per cent of earners (around 40,000 people) pay almost half of the city’s personal income tax and more than the bottom 90 per cent ­combined.
Any significant flight of capital or rich individuals from the financial powerhouse would blow a huge hole in the city budget, making Mamdani’s promises harder to fulfil. And without its own central bank, there’ll be no modern monetary theory magic happening in City Hall.
Mamdani’s win doesn’t reflect some seismic shift in the national mood. New York City is politically, economically and culturally nothing like 90 per cent of the US.

You see? New York is a different country and they do things differently.

And just to help Killer, the pond was reminded of a recent effort by J. V. Last in The Bulwark regarding socialism ...Trump’s Nuclear Socialism, You’re worried about Mamdani? The real socialism is coming from inside the White House. (sorry, paywalled)

...If, before January 2029, the estimated value of Westinghouse is more than $30 billion, then the Trump administration can require BAM and Cameco to let Westinghouse go public via an IPO. At which point the government’s “participation interest” will convert to 20 percent ownership of Westinghouse.
Wait what?
Let me decode the back end of the deal for you.
First of all, you have to know that half of Westinghouse is owned by Cameco and the other half is owned by Brookfield Asset Management. Those companies purchased Westinghouse in 2023 for $4 billion.
The government has picked the winner for nuclear reactor construction—Westinghouse—by committing to infuse it with $80 billion in funding while also promising to alter regulatory structures to its benefit.2
In return, the government will take 20 percent of “cash distributions” after the first $17.5 billion Westinghouse receives and then, in 2029, if the value of Westinghouse’s business created by the government’s investment is over $30 billion, the government will require it to go public via an IPO and the government will then have a 20 percent ownership stake in the resulting company.3
In sum:

• The government decides that nuclear power should be built.
• The government selects the private company to build it.
• The government then extracts an ownership position in the company, whose value has been created by the government.

How is this different from the way the Chinese Communist Party operates?

Eek, we're all communists now. 

Mamdani is just swimming with the commie prevert tide begun by King Donald ...

Pause at this moment for the solitary visual distraction ... Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference at the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park after his historic victory to become the city's 111th mayor. Picture: Getty Images

Now back to downplaying it all, with Killer in top IPA form ... with nary a mention of those Governor contests, or that nasty Gavin's prop in California, or any of the down ballot results ... but with tired old 
"virtue signalling" trotted out in a way that only the virtuous at the IPA can do ...

Voters there – as in many of the world’s biggest and most important cities – have shifted markedly left over time, at least in rhetoric; the GOP candidate received barely more than 5 per cent of the vote. That’s because virtue signalling is a luxury good and last time I checked London’s similarly far-left and equally Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan hasn’t made a dent in that city’s income or wealth distribution.
Let me make some bold predictions: New York’s tax or regulatory regime won’t change significantly and there will be no discernible capital flight. Mamdani’s actual economic policies are the usual social-democrat populist gruel: cheaper childcare, free public transport, more affordable housing. About the only genuinely novel policy is to create a network of city-owned grocery stores that sell below market rates. The world has seen far worse left-wing programs.
His proposal to create a Department of Community Safety to take the growing burden of dealing with the army of homeless, mentally disturbed 911 callers away from the police might not even be a bad idea.
In fact, it was probably better Mamdani won on Tuesday with 52 per cent of the vote than the disgraced alleged sex pest governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo’s Covid restrictions terrorised New York and prompted tens of thousands of New Yorkers to emigrate to Florida and Texas. He is America’s Dan Andrews.
“Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up,” Mamdani teased during his victory speech.
But if the inexperienced Mamdani turns out to be as disastrous for New York as Republicans claim he will be, they could be very keen to draw attention to Mamdani later down the track. What better warning to the rest of America not to vote Democrat. If he’s not a disaster, then he’s just another attention-seeking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who unsurprisingly also hails from NYC.
Next year’s congressional midterm elections – at which Republicans will struggle to hang on to their slender majorities, as ­voters tend to swing away from the ruling party – is the far more consequential contest.

Oh yes ...

Mamdani, meanwhile, will have responsibility for the city’s police force, which he once accused of being “racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety”. Other kooky comments include “violence is an artificial construction” and that “real violence” happens when criminals are prosecuted.
Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik recently slammed Mamdani as “the definition of a ­jihadist”. To be sure, Mamdani hasn’t said complimentary things about Israel, and has taken a stridently pro-Palestinian line, but a third of New York’s huge Jewish population voted for him, so they can’t be too concerned about any Mamdani-induced increase in anti-Semitism.
The obsessive focus on Mamdani’s win might make sense if not much else was happening in the US politically. What’s far more interesting, in fact, is the vicious split on America’s right over Washington’s traditional support for Israel. But that’s for another day. For now let’s enjoy watching Mamdani “make NYC affordable for all”.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Time for an infallible Pope, joyless division ...

And then, feeling a tad undernourished, the pond went searching for Our Henry, and hallelujah, he'd actually turned up, hidden under, if not a lettuce, then at least a cabbage leaf.

Peel back  the leaf and you scored five minutes of defamatory ranting, entirely fitting for the Australian Daily Zionist News ...(in the archive if you want to try the links)

The header: Is Pro-Palestine protester Josh Lees Australia’s worst pest? In bending over backwards to accommodate the Islamo-fascists, courts and governments are confusing freedom with licence.

The caption: Josh Lees speaks to Pro-Palestinian supporters as they gather to march from Hyde Park to Belmore Park in Sydney last month. Picture: Nikki Short

The pond did wonder if it was wise to reproduce Our Henry's bile and bigotry, because it seemed enough to warrant a court action, but never mind ...the pond knew that Our Henry was in a suppurating rage because his references really didn't wander much from the twentieth century ...

Giving evidence earlier this year in the Supreme Court of NSW, John (Josh) Lees claimed that protests organised by the Palestine Action Group “have always occurred in a welcoming, inclusive and family-friendly environment”.
There was little sign of that this week as masked demonstrators draped in keffiyehs tried to storm Darling Harbour’s Indo Pacific International Maritime Exposition, a showcase for maritime weapons systems. Nor was a ­“family-friendly” spirit on display late last month in Melbourne, where an entirely peaceful March for Australia was attacked by protesters burning the Australian flag and brandishing Palestine’s.
The video footage leaves no doubt. At Darling Harbour, police were, in Superintendent Paul Dunstan’s words, “set upon by a pack of very angry protesters”, leaving several officers injured.
Victoria Police Commander Wayne Cheeseman’s account of the Melbourne clashes was starker still: “Bottles filled with shards of glass were thrown at police, bins set on fire, and police pelted with large rocks (by) issue-motivated groups on the left,” he said – before wearily concluding that “Melbourne has had a gutful”.
That policing protests by Hamas’s fellow travellers has already consumed over 24,000 police shifts in Melbourne alone, costing more than $25m, makes Cheeseman’s conclusion all the more credible.

The reptiles at this point flung in a graphic snap full of shocking violence, A blockade organised by the Palestine Action Group took place in front of Indo Pacific International Maritime Exposition at Sydney ICC this morning. Picture: NewsWire / Dylan Robinson

Meanwhile in Haaretz ...

Enough of that, on with Our Henry, intent on breaking Godwin's Law...and clearly in the school of "drive over the b*stards" (blogger bot compliant) ...

None of that, of course, stopped Lees from blaming the violence on “police brutality meted out to peaceful protesters”. James Dean – who at least exuded existential cool – was a rebel without a cause; Lees is a protester without a pause, vowing, after this week’s riot, to “keep protesting until Palestine is free”.
That tireless outrage would be merely puerile if it wasn’t so consequential. Indignation is, for Lees, not a reaction but an occupation; yet his success in persuading the courts to weaken restrictions on demonstrations is undeniable. And while NSW had to be prodded by the judiciary into indulgence, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has done so willingly – refusing to enforce the Unlawful Assemblies and Processions Act 1958, which could have prevented Melbourne’s descent into chaos.
Underlying the limp-handed responses is a familiar confusion. In an observation the NSW Supreme Court recently cited in Lees v State of New South Wales (2025), which struck down restrictions on demonstrations near places of worship, NSW Supreme Court Justice Michael Walton said that “the common law tradition is against the idea that freedom of political communication lies in the gift of the government.” But Justice Walton’s contention simply does not apply to public assembly.
In fact, the presupposition in the common law tradition has always been the opposite. As A. V. Dicey – the great late 19th century English constitutionalist – made clear, “there is no special principle of law allowing A, B, and C to meet in the open air for discussion.” Lord Hewart reaffirmed the point in Duncan v Jones (1936), noting that the common law “does not recognise any special right of public meeting for political or other purposes”, with a slew of Australian courts following suit.
The regulation of public assembly, conceived as a condition-laden privilege rather than an untrammelled right, was viewed as a cornerstone of peaceful democracy. No one expressed that better than Leonard Hobhouse, the author of the vastly influential Liberalism (1911), who praised “the organisation of restraint in the service of freedom”. For Hobhouse, “the orderly presentation of discontent is the very breath of a free society,” yet “the state must prevent the conversion of discussion into tumult, for only in order can discussion bear fruit”.
Far from an “anything goes” philosophy, the conviction was that “the state’s management of protest through legitimate policing is not the negation of freedom but its civilising condition” – a conviction that, until recently, lay at the heart of the liberal tradition of public order. Nor did that conviction undermine representative government; on the contrary, it strengthened it.
That was apparent in the interwar years, when violence – fuelled by and fuelling ever deeper social and political divisions – engulfed Europe.

Then it came, as the old fascist fogey, invoking the Godwin's Law clause to quash public dissent and protest, wheeled out ... Oswald Mosley

Guilt by visual association.

And what of assorted protests that could, would or should disappear under Our Henry's invocation of the fascist smear?

There are any number of listicles, but the pond must keep on with the smearing ...

As street protests spiralled out of control, governments on the continent responded by granting themselves sweeping powers to suppress extremist movements, notably under the Weimar Republic’s Law for the Protection of the Republic (1922) and France’s Law of 10 January 1936. Yet the remedies those laws provided were so draconian that they were rarely implemented – prompting historian Detlev Peukert, in his study of the Weimar collapse, to observe that “the Republic oscillated between impotence and over-reaction: either constitutional scruples paralysed it, or emergency powers hollowed out its legitimacy”.
In contrast, Britain’s Public Order Act (1936) did not proscribe fascism as a belief system or political ideology. It targeted the form in which fascism was practised – its performative, intimidatory and violence-laden modes, epitomised by the Mosleyites’ strategy of parading through Jewish neighbourhoods and staging inflammatory rallies outside synagogues. The act strengthened police powers to restrict or prohibit marches, banned political uniforms, and authorised the suppression of flags and banners likely to incite discord or ­disorder.
As Sir John Simon, the Conservative home secretary, explained when introducing the bill, “The bill is directed not against opinions, however foolish or extreme, but against practices which menace the public peace: it does not touch belief; it deals only with intimidation.” Labour’s Clement Attlee agreed, insisting that “where movements, whether Fascist or Communist, seek to intimidate, it is right that the state should intervene.”
The results were far-reaching. “Without martyring the fascists”, observes historian Martin Pugh, the act “deprived Mosley’s movement of the theatrics that had been central to its appeal”, halting its spread and hastening its marginalisation.
Those effects were noted in Australia, leading Robert Menzies – then federal attorney-general – to ask his department whether similar legislation was needed here. It was not, the department replied, because “the States already possess ample powers to prevent disorderly processions.” And they were not reluctant to use them.

And so to another visual breach of Godwin's Law,  Fascist leader Oswald Mosley inspecting members of the British Union of Fascists outside the Royal Mint in London, 1935.

The old bigot did really jump the shark and nuke the fridge this week, and the pond was pleased when it finally ended ...

The result of that “restrained firmness,” Andrew Moore concludes in his study of the period, was that while Australia developed no Public Order Act, the police and political establishment achieved the same outcome: the disappearance of street militancy by the mid-1930s, without the need to outlaw beliefs. By clamping down on tumult, dissent was channelled into speech, vote, and parliamentary rivalry, replacing harassment and violence by robust political competition.
But those powers have been steadily wound back, and the will to use them has eroded still further. The result is a permissiveness that mistakes liberty for licence – though only for the chosen few, as none are more eager to silence opponents than Josh Lees and his ­Islamist allies. Masquerading as champions of free speech, what they seek is the freedom to prevent others from enjoying the freedoms they claim for themselves.
Yes, Lees is a clown; but as the Islamo-Fascists, emboldened by judicial indulgence, revive Mosley’s old tactics of parading near synagogues, baiting real or presumed “Zios”, and attacking Jewish targets, the crippling of legal protections is no laughing matter. It marks the point where liberty, unmoored from order, begins to demolish its own foundations – and with them, the Australia it once defended and sustained. 

Phew, he really is finely attuned to fascism, or perhaps other one party states offering "restrained firmness", or as in Vlad the sociopath's regime, a timely ability to use windows for the odd defenestration.

And now it's time to lift the spirits and cleanse the palate by closing with the immortal Rowe ...

In which the pond reverts to a survey of reptile offerings, with only the Lynch mob left standing ...

 

The tax-dodging foreign-owned, foreign-controlled corporation was at it again this morning, with its minions giving poor old Susssan a hard time and boosting the lettuce's chance of a big win no later than the new year ...

The bouffant one was given bigly space to mouth off, and while the archive missed his AV presentation of Alex losing the plot, there was a general plotlessness in the air ...

The Liberals are the worst political performers I’ve seen in 40 years
WATCH | Badly written questions, pointless points of order and a lack of understanding of the parliamentary standing orders weaken Sussan Ley and make the Coalition look leaderless.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

...Parliamentary question time is seen as part of the Canberra bubble but, despite a lack of overwhelming public interest, the performances, machinations, victories, losses and even comic successes are important for the impression of leadership and capability.
Recent Liberal leaders and masters of question time John Howard, Tony Abbott and Peter Costello could all provide leadership and impact in parliament that was reflected in success and boosted morale in their ranks. The position of Ley and Hawke is that if one falls so will the other and perhaps that is adding to the sense of desperation at 2pm in parliament.

Ancient Troy was still promoting his tome ...

EXCLUSIVE
Kerr failed by not warning Whitlam: Fraser
In never-before-revealed papers, Malcolm Fraser came to the view that John Kerr was wrong to dismiss Gough Whitlam without warning and should have consulted him ‘more freely’ during 1975.
By Troy Bramston

That might appeal to the rag's aged demographic, but more news of the currish Kerr is as dulling as an early morning shot of rum.

Ben managed to pack in a standard bit of alarmism ...

EXCLUSIVE
Defence cuts ‘leave nation exposed’
Defence chiefs warn Australia’s military readiness is at risk as budget constraints force cuts to F-35 fighter jet maintenance program.
By Ben Packham

A quailing brown out managed yet another EXCLUSIVE...

EXCLUSIVE
Miners in appeal for a deal on environmental approvals
Mining giants are pressuring the Coalition to strike a deal with Labor on environmental approvals before Christmas, warning against any alliance with the Greens.
By Greg Brown and Jack Quail

Over on the extreme far right, the usual suspects trotted out the usual denialism ...

Petulant Peta was in full bitch mode ...

Liberals’ net-zero showdown now a question of survival
If Labor can dump the first female prime minister, then the Liberals can surely dump anyone driving them off a cliff, wearing high heels or not.
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

One line was all the pond could summon up the strength to offer ...

You’re either ready to stand up to the global climate alarmists or you’re not. 

Poor Susssan, but then the pond has backed the lettuce, so the cavorting of petulant Peta is just a morning spray to keep the lettuce feeling fresh for the fight.

All that did was remind the pond of John Hanscombe in The Echnida this morning proposing Divorce is tough but a bad marriage is worse ...

For the sake of the kids, for your own sakes, draw up the divorce papers.
Do it now. There's no future in this relationship. Everyone sees that except you, who cling to the vain hope that things will improve. That this is just a rough patch. That the good old days will return.
They won't.
It's not about whether the Liberals will drop their commitment to net zero. Or whether Sussan Ley can hold on to her leadership after a string of self-inflicted injuries. Or whether the tail is wagging the dog.
It's about whether reasonable people see a future partnered with neanderthals. Not just in the Nationals but in their own ranks as well.
Bit harsh, you say?
Then perhaps you didn't see Barnaby, beet red and blustery, fronting the cameras to claim credit for the chaos, frothing himself for setting the agenda from the far back paddock. This was the bloke who signed up to net zero in the first place in an opaque deal with Scott Morrison, triumphant about making the Coalition more unelectable than it already was.
Or you missed slippery Ted O'Brien withdrawing his support for the Paris Agreement and net zero. Hardly helped his leader who was backed in with support from moderates who want the party to stick to its climate commitments.
Or maybe you missed the gang of Coalition silverbacks - Barnaby among them - trying to link reforms to paid parental leave, that would give grieving parents time off after a stillbirth, to late-term abortion. That stunt appalled a lot of people, none more so than the women in the Coalition. Labor didn't have to voice outrage. The Liberal women did it instead... (sorry, newsletter, no link, but free to subscribe)

Or, for that matter, petulant Peta in full dom mode, recalling the days when she cracked the whip and the onion muncher did what he was told, with the infallible Pope celebrating their warrior ways ...

The reptiles did dress in a 'Simon says' to purport a little window-dressing balance ...

Ley's moment of truth: stand up for climate values or roll over
The fact is, if the Liberal Party isn’t National Party-lite, it’s time to prove it – if it’s not already too late.
By Simon Holmes à Court

All that did was pile more pressure on the hapless Susssan ...

Of course she'll roll over, but will that help her beat the lettuce?

Stewie did note the dread arrival of terrifying Islamic communism ...

Socialist’s victory in New York will transform American politics
Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York mayor is a triumph for the American left but Donald Trump will be itching for the fight with his ‘little communist mayor’.
By Cameron Stewart
Chief International Correspondent

All that did was make the pond wonder what had happened to the bromancer.

He was last heard of, according to reptile records, back on 28th October, scribbling...

PM winning the politics but still losing the plot
Albanese is having a solid series of bilateral meetings in Southeast Asia – and that’s useful. But Australian policy is running on autopilot, with no sense of what’s ahead.
By Greg Sheridan

The pond had wanted a word with the bro, give him a little feedback after his Media Watch cameo, and is getting tired of waiting ...

So many bigly events happening stateside, and the bromancer goes MIA?

And it's left to Stewie and the WSJ to pick up the pieces?

Oh, and the immortal Rowe too ...

Funnily enough, the reptiles wanted the pond to provide some feedback this day ...

The 20th century corporation, still trying to make the business model work in the 21st century, andtheuy want the pond to tell 'em what parts are working, and where they need to improve?

The reptiles must be feeling the heat because this also popped up ...

"Trusted"?

Always the class clowns, always mucking about, anything for a laugh ...

Consider this the response.

Not good enough, reptiles, not nearly good enough.

After all that dross, after surveying all this morning's drivel, how else to explain the pond being forced to end up with the Lynch mob, discussing shotgun Dick?

The header: Five myths about Dick Cheney – the man who gave us Trump, What Cheney never understood was how far his botched occupation of Iraq and cheerleading of globalisation helped expand Donald Trump’s base. Cheney gave us MAGA.

The caption: Dick Cheney poses with some of the US Army troops stationed in southern Iraq in May, 1991.

The Lynch mob only managed a three minute obit, more than enough, and did it in dot form, so it went down more easily for the hive mind ...

Richard Cheney died on Tuesday AEDT, aged 84. He was vice-president to George W. Bush, 2001-09, and key, at least initially, in America’s response to the September 11, 2001, attacks.
He was basic to my experience of American politics. A friend of Wyoming, I am saddened by his death. But, like any significant leader, he has been subject to mythmaking. Here are my five.

● Myth No.1: He was Bush’s brain.

Oliver Stone’s 2008 movie W. popularised this idea. The 2018 movie Vice, starring Christian Bale in the titular role, cemented the myth that Cheney was Bush’s brain. The president from Texas was a dim frat boy, a nepo baby with dad issues. His vice-president was a Machiavellian bureaucratic knife fighter who pulled his strings.

To help with this point, the reptiles flung in a snap, Cheney gets a tour from then-New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani at ground zero of the World Trade Center ruins 18 October 2001 in New York.

Not so. Cheney’s Darth Vader-like influence was continually exaggerated. The left got stuck on this caricature and blamed everything on Cheney’s oil-obsessed imperialism. Halliburton (the energy company Cheney chaired, 1995-2000) became the one-word explanation for everything wrong with American capitalism.
In reality, Bush was a cannier operator. He came to trust his vice-president less and less. The president pointedly refused to pardon Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for obstructing a federal investigation. (It was Donald Trump who eventually offered a full pardon.)
Bush had his own brain; Cheney had no finger in it.

To be fair, George W. had a bigly brain ....

Do go on ...

● Myth No.2: Cheney was wrong about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.

The Australian metro left, with their comrades in Europe and the US, never really recovered from marching in defence of Saddam Hussein in 2003. If progressives couldn’t back the fall of one of the Middle East’s worst dictators, what was the point of the left?
But neither did Cheney escape his association with the Iraq war. He deserves some of the blame for how things went pear-shaped. He sold the idea that the discovery of weapons of mass destruction was inevitable.
This was a tactical misstep. The wider strategy, however, was sound: that after 9/11, any US president had an obligation to be sure about the WMD capacity of his nation’s enemies. Invasion was the only way to be sure.
Cheney helped construct a Bush Doctrine that first freed Iraqis from a terrible regime and, second, helped prevent a second 9/11 with worse weapons.

Ah, the myth that the Iraq war had something to be said for it.

Do go on ...

● Myth No.3: Cheney was a neo-conservative.

I have taught my students to treat sceptically the claim that the Bush administration had a neo-conservative foreign policy. Raised in the global war on terror, these young men and women often think in binary terms about its character and purpose: it was bad and it was a neo-con plot.

He has students? Why did he have to remind the pond that there were real life consequences to the University of Melbourne continuing to defame its reputation?

As if to quickly distract the pond from thoughts of tortured souls sitting in a dimly-lit lecture theatre, the reptiles offered a snap... Cheney watches as George W. Bush speaks during a press briefing.

Cheney was not a neo-conservative. He was a national conservative, a natcon, not a neo-con. Despite their political enmity, he agreed with Trump far more than he disagreed on foreign policy priorities: a big military, geopolitical supremacy, energy independence. If you want a template for how Trump might handle Venezuela, look no further than Cheney’s toppling of Panama’s Manuel Noriega in 1989 (when Cheney was secretary of defence under president George HW Bush). Cheney was Trumpier than Trump. Neither is a neo-con.

Then came a tricky moment ...

● Myth No.4: He was right about Trump.

Cheney voted for Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024: “In our nation’s 248-year history,” he said in explanation, “there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”
What Cheney never understood was how far his botched occupation of Iraq and cheerleading of globalisation helped expand Trump’s base. Cheney gave us MAGA. He didn’t change; America did. The Age of Trump was forged in the fire of government failure. Cheney was a key figure in that government for four decades.
September 11, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the onset of the Great Recession – Cheney was vice-president during all of them. Each disaster, separately and collectively, remade America’s partisan allegiances.
Trump was not the aberration Cheney claimed him to be after January 6, 2021. Rather, Trump was the logical consequence of a derelict political establishment that had forgotten how to represent the battling middle class, those Americans whose lives and livelihoods were extinguished in causes Cheney championed.

That left the pond a tad puzzled.

If Shotgun Dick was the disease, then King Donald is the cure?

The Mango Mussolini is a logical consequence?

No wonder the pond failed its course in logic.

No wonder the reptiles threw a curve ball distraction, Cheney throws out the ceremonial first pitch of the home opener baseball game between the New York Mets and Washington Nationals at RFK Stadium, April 2006.

One last bit of suffering ...

● Myth No.5: Cheney stands for a conservatism that will return after Trump.

No. Cheney was the old Grand Old Party. Trump remade Cheney’s party more completely than Cheney’s long government service ever did.
In 2022, I lived in Laramie, Wyoming, and watched the Trump-backed campaign to oust Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney’s daughter, from congress. Pro-Cheney lawn corflutes were a rare thing. His daughter’s political career ended that cold November.
As went Laramie, so went the nation. The anti-Cheney Trump controls all three branches of the federal government – a machine Dick Cheney supposedly had been a master at manipulating.
So, perhaps the final myth is to see Cheney as the great Machiavelli of American politics.
Rather, he was a key catalyst of Trump’s rise, which he died in antipathy toward, not unlike Nicolo, exiled from power in Wyoming.

Oh won't someone think of the suffering students ...

Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.

So went the nation, but so didn't go New York, turned terrifying Islamic Communist ...

Luckily TT was on hand this week to explain why King Donald is rampant. 

Quivering jelly fish, without a spine, atrophied into sullen compliance, the same stripe as University of Melbourne academics attempting to blame King Donald on hapless Shotgun Dick, now gone pheasant hunting in the sky, perhaps hoping to find a duck willing to apologise for getting in the way of his shot, as his hapless friend once did ...

In which Dame Slap and "Ned's" natter give the lettuce the inside running ...

 

Time to party like it's 1999... or perhaps 1925...

There's nothing like the sight of good Xian womyn doing it for their menfolk to stir King Donald's juices ...

Meanwhile, according to the NBN person who attended the burial rituals for the pond's lightning-strike-obliterated modem, it was a mass slaughter in the Newtown/Camperdown area.

In the interim, anyone who suggests pairing a phone to an iPad to do a Blogger post can join Malware in eternal communications hell.

The pond would dearly have loved to note Media Watch's celebration of the rampant hypocrisy of a tax-dodging foreign owned entity trying to make a quick buck out of a BS 'back Australia' campaign, in company with rogues of the Dick Smith kind, but it was too hard ...Faux Dinkum indeed.

...Last month News Corp filed its latest financial results and they weren’t pretty, with falls in circulation, advertising and subscription revenue and an after-tax loss of more than $27 million.
So whatever merit there might be in this patriotic feel-good campaign, let’s not mistake this for anything but a cash-grab by a 20th century newspaper business doing what it must to survive in the 21st.

Well yes, what else to say, except perhaps to note what a shameless whore Joe is in service to his foreign overlords. (Sorry, no defamation of honest whores intended).

The pond would like to have celebrated with the correspondents who came out to play in the pond's absence, but it was all too hard ...and so the pond sat in nunnish silence waiting for the NBN man, roughly akin to waiting for Godot.

Now to a tentative foot back in the water, with the pond resuming full coverage on the 'morrow.

Today the pond is content simply to honour Dame Slap in her bid to help the pond's huge plunge on the lettuce ...

Let’s face the bleeding obvious: Sussan Ley is no leader
No one likes being wrong. But I would be happy to be proven wrong about Ley. The Liberals need a strong and articulate leader to shake up the party – and the country. Alas, Ley has made no impact.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Always a prize-winning bitch when it comes to willing bitching about other women ...and never mind that appalling art work or the winner of the Melbourne Cup, what a win for the lettuce...

Go climate science denialist dame ...

And there's the problem in a nutshell. N

ot only do the reptiles want to pretend to be Faux Dinkum, they also want to stuff the planet ... with the brown out unable to hide the war that has unfolded as a result ...

EXCLUSIVE
Fight not over yet: Liberal Party moderates go to war on net zero
Moderate Liberals are warning Sussan Ley should not take their support for granted as they run an internal campaign to convince MPs the Coalition would be unelectable if it dumped net zero.
By Greg Brown

And so to the solitary reptile to make the cut this shortened day, nattering "Ned" in all his wimpy glory, still apparently unaware of News Corp's role in stoking the fires of the current follies... (here for those who want to use the archive to check out the links in "Ned's" piece)...

The header for this 6 minute mini-Everest of self-harm, akin to putting JD too close to a couch or a woman in leathers, wherein "Ned" offers even more hope for the lettuce: Liberals risk act of folly and self-harm on net-zero, What does the ­future hold? Is it ditching net zero, telling Middle Australia it must turn the clock back 20 years on climate policy, brutally overthrowing the party’s first female leader?

The caption for a woman an esteemed pond correspondent has suggested is in hot competition not just with a lettuce but with Lord Downer for shortest time in the leadership sun: Leader of the Opposition Sussan Ley during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond loves it when "Ned" entirely forgets the role that News Corp has played in driving forward the internal warfare provoked by revisionist energy policies ...

It is time to recall what Anthony Albanese did during the first six months after Labor’s devastating defeat at the 2019 election. Virtually nothing – he bided his time, concealed his hand and made his plans to re-position Labor to the political centre to deny Scott Morrison another negative campaign.
And it worked. The art of politics lies in timing, knowing when to hold your fire and when to strike. This art has deserted the Coalition parties in their forlorn yet frenetic crisis over net zero.
The Coalition, following its even more soul-destroying defeat at the 2025 election, has done the opposite of Albanese.
Spearheaded by its conservatives and its junior partner, the ­Coalition has lurched into an internal political warfare driven by the conviction that its revival depends upon a revisionist energy policy killing off net zero as part of its rush to maximise policy differences with Labor.

The reptiles immediately decided to interrupt with an archival snap from ancient times, Then Leader of the Opposition Anthony Albanese and Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Penny Wong speak to the media during a press conference in Canberra, May 2019.

All the pond will add is that while the pond might have gone down for the count, the cartoonists stayed on the game ...

So many details, too delicious, a year's caricatures in one 'toon.

Good old Barners, clutching at the pole, while Little to be Proud of and the Canavan caravan clutch each other, as "Ned" carried on the business of wringing his hands, worry warting and gazing anxiously up at the falling clouds ...

The upshot today is three consequences. First, courtesy of the National Party policy and the comprehensive Page Research Centre report, we know what net zero really means. It means changing the law to remove “net zero” as a target under the Paris Agreement, termination of much of Australia’s climate policies on the grounds they destroy living standards, the throttling of the renewable energy rollout, advancing nuclear, coal and gas, the stalling of emissions reductions (with a 30-40 per cent 2035 target compared with Labor’s 43 per cent by 2030), enshrining lower prices over clean energy as a formal policy goal, empowering local communities and landowners against clean energy initiatives, restoration of the Abbott government Emissions Reduction Fund as the key tool for abatement, abolition of Labor’s climate structure including the Safeguard Mechanism (a de facto cap and trade scheme) and the New Vehicle Efficiency Standards and defining success not by tonnes of carbon ­dioxide emitted but in jobs and ­industries created and retained.
It’s a top-to-bottom re-casting of policy and values that effectively buries climate change mitigation via meaningful emission reductions. There is much that will appeal in this sweeping blueprint, particularly in the regions. The ­Nationals did not sign up to everything in the Page Report but the ­report is their bible.
The message is simple and extremely contentious: opposing Labor’s policies won’t work unless you oppose net zero and then dismantle the entire edifice. It’s a thrilling and exciting idea, a bit like Fightback a generation ago. But the notion the Coalition has no option but to embrace this transformation is nonsense. There are plenty of ways of tackling Labor’s energy policy vulnerability.

The reptiles flung in a snap of the Satanic solar and windmill-whale-killer-worshipper, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen during Question Time. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

As if that sighting that could possibly compete with this one ...

So much winning ...

True-believing conservatives intend fighting Labor by offering an alternative vision in a radical leap to the right. Just six months after an election, they are desperate to make themselves the issue. And Albanese Labor is happy to enter the battle on these terms. As my colleague Dennis Shanahan wrote on Tuesday, Albanese is ­running soft on the Coalition ­dilemma, content with the likely outcomes.
The second consequence, flowing from the first, is that this version of opposing net zero cannot constitute a viable stance for the Liberal Party as an alternative government.

Just to remind "Ned" of the many News Corp flies in this ointment, the reptiles flung in petulant Peta, destabiliser in chief ... Sky News host Peta Credlin says the Liberal Party has “oscillated” in the way it's handling the climate issue, lessening its credibility and further confusing its climate policy. “The Liberal Party's Net Zero woes continued today – as they will every day until a policy position is finalised,” Ms Credlin said. “The National Party have said they're dropping Net Zero, no ifs, no buts, because why damage ourselves doing what no one else is doing, other than rhetorically. “The Liberals have oscillated between treating climate as a moral issue and treating it as an economic issue for almost two decades now. “Dumping Net Zero is less a problem for the Libs than an opportunity, if only they're prepared to grab it.”

Read that and gnash your teeth and clutch your pearls and mumble into your worry beads a little more "Ned" ...

“Dumping Net Zero is less a problem for the Libs than an opportunity, if only they're prepared to grab it.”

Yes, the woman who gave you the onion muncher is now serving up that, and showing just what a silly, stuffed hapless irrelevance poor old "Ned" has become ...

This is not a policy for Urban Australia. It is not a policy for Middle Class Australia. This policy, however, may suit the ­National Party representing the regions, and under attack from One Nation. It is, however, about something else – the playing out of a struggle within centre-right politics over core beliefs.
The centre-right is consumed about itself, in a fashion similar to the periodic bouts of factional warfare that once plagued Labor. And the trap is that the Coalition is a victim of itself – its grassroots, its media backers, its conservative wing, and its junior partner.
It is a prisoner of its 2025 defeat that saw the Liberals reduced to a rump in urban Australia, the danger being that its climate policy is the policy of a party weak in urban Australia and destined only to get weaker still.
Most of the public is disengaged from this struggle in the centre-right. It doesn’t have a horse in this battle between the Liberal moderates and conservatives. Perhaps it doesn’t even care. But it will care if the outcome is a Liberal Party that walks away from a tenable climate policy, leaves the perception it has been railroaded by the Nationals, and that its policy is all about itself and not about the nation.

It's media backers?

Faux dinkum, is he totally clueless or what?... as the reptiles slipped in huge snaps of News Corp's current heroes, Andrew Hastie; Jacinta Nampijinpa Price

The pond had thought of extending it's modem-induced break by a few days, but this was all too delicious, and a serious backlog of 'toons was to hand...

Poor "Ned"clucked and did his best to imitate a headless chook, in his inimitably ponderous way ...

The Liberals have forgotten that Albanese won his 2025 victory by depicting the Coalition as a risky proposition. He didn’t win by ­running a brilliant government; he won by exploiting the idea that the Liberals aren’t reliable, can’t be trusted, and aren’t in touch with contemporary Australia. For six months the party has only deepened this fatal perception.
Staging a massive, immediate, post-election public disruption about net zero is some of the ­weirdest, wildest politics seen in decades, letting Labor off the hook at the precise time its vulnerabilities are being exposed on energy prices, uncompetitive industry, the return of inflation, and spending excesses. In retrospect, the Coalition should have duplicated Albanese’s post-2019 tactics: stay disciplined, plot your revival, and let the government unwind.
Do you doubt for a second the polls would be significantly better if that approach had been adopted? We live in a bizarre world: Labor faces devastating and mounting governing problems but feels no political pressure. Go figure.
The third consequence is the leader is being disastrously weakened. This is partly Sussan Ley’s fault but it’s not the main reason. That lies in the undisguised conservative campaign against her in cahoots with the pro-conservative media, with Andrew Hastie and ­Jacinta Nampijinpa Price having quit the frontbench. Right now the conservative campaign to re-make the Liberal Party resembles a train wreck that won’t easily be repaired.
John Howard said last week that Ley should be supported. Howard is a realist; he knows her limitations. But Howard praised her ambitious statements on the economy – pledging a personal income tax cut at the next election, committing to smaller government and putting industrial relations back on the agenda, in contrast to Peter Dutton’s leadership. Yet nobody cares. It doesn’t matter.
In truth, these are some of the most ambitious in-principle statements made by a new opposition leader in the immediate aftermath of an election defeat that we have witnessed in many decades. You read that right. But we live in an age of cults – and the cult is that Ley stands for nothing.
She has made many mistakes. Perhaps the most serious has been her failure to send decisive signals to the conservative wing about her values.
There are three things she should have done: stood in front of the Australian flag as a patriot; ­declared for biological gender – this is a man, and this is a woman; and repudiated the state ALP pushes for Indigenous treaties as examples of divisive racial separatism and in defiance of the referendum’s sentiments.

TG bashing?That's the best the old bigot has got?

Oh and a bit of flag waving?

And a bit of black bashing?

And he's still wondering why the Libs are so stuffed?

After all that hand-wringing came a couple of other current News Corp heroes, an invitation to join with the man who has little to be proud of, or perhaps go for a ride on the Canavan caravan, David Littleproud; Matt Canavan

 

So many joyous 'toons, so little time ...

And so to a final 5°+ clutching of pearls ...

These stances would have been fully aligned with the party base and conservative beliefs while ­having overwhelming community support. In failing to take easier steps to appeal to conservatives, Ley might find she has to take far harder steps.
She now faces a diabolical ­dilemma. She must try to preserve the Coalition yet sufficiently distance the Liberals from the Nationals on net zero.
Is that possible? Can a compromise be found? Any notion she must ditch net zero just to save her political leadership would be a deeply flawed answer.
Here’s the question: who might lead a prolonged Coalition campaign against net zero fighting the onslaught from Labor, teals, greens and the progressive establishment branding the opposition as climate deniers? Neither Ley nor David Littleproud would have a hope in hell of prevailing in that political bloodbath.
The Liberals, penalised by the Nationals, have got themselves into a real fix – undermining Ley without having an alternative candidate at the ready. The only genuine alternative is Angus Taylor, a reality many conservatives thoroughly reject.
So what does the ­future hold? Is it ditching net zero, telling Middle Australia it must turn the clock back 20 years on climate policy, brutally overthrowing the party’s first female leader and expecting voters in urban seats to applaud with flowers and votes? But don’t worry, there will be plenty of conservatives assuring you things are playing out just perfectly.

Completely clueless, as always ...

Try this for an alternate ending:

...there will be plenty of News Corp commentators, columnists and 'faux dinkum' journalists assuring you things are playing out just perfectly.

Come back Dame Slap for a final word, just to remind "Ned" of the company he keeps on a daily basis...

...Liberal senator James Paterson said recently that the Liberals’ apology tour needed to stop. It pays to remember that in late January, barely 10 months ago, the Liberals were head-to-head with Labor. Paterson, by the way, has been in politics for half the time that Ley has. The difference is excruciating. Paterson has long had, and is known for, a set of firm beliefs. When he speaks, it’s with authenticity. It’s a shame he’s in the Senate. One might imagine that any attempt by Paterson to move to the lower house will be fought by some in and outside politics who think leadership is their birthright. That tells you something about Paterson, too.

There is zero joy in pointing out that Ley appears to be a ­plodder.

The Liberals could do with a terrific female leader. If that’s not available, a terrific leader will do. Right now, the pickings are slim. Ley can keep the seat warm, but that role shouldn’t go on for too long. A new leader needs time to rebuild trust with the electorate, to showcase their long ­commitment to principles and policies that will cement the ­country’s future.

Each day the pond grows more confident that its plunge on the lettuce is going to pay off, which is just as well because the pond absolutely refuses to waste money on horse races, dressed as "sport" ...

And for those wondering, the very last link in "Ned's" piece took hive minders off to get this message ...

Completely clueless, but also deeply cynical and Machiavellian in the traditional reptile way, dressed up as "pragmatism" ...and meanwhile ...

The pond is offline for a day or so…

No thanks to a nearby lightning strike, the pond’s NBN-supplied modem was completely fried, more fritz than a Mar-a-lago Halloween romp with Pauline, Gina, King Donald and saucy, scantily clad, deeply Xian women.

No worries, you propose. Malware’s mighty NBN will immediately spring into action and make things right.

And indeed they will. They have promised, Scout’s Honour, from the days when that meant something, to send along a fix in the next day or so, and make things right. Or maybe not, who knows?

Ah Malware, you’ve done it again. Why you invented the Optus internet! How lucky is the pond?!

The pond will return, but the precise timing is in the lap of the Malware gods, sadly by which time snaps of those cavorting, deeply Xian women will be a fading memory...

In which an unholy triptych - Lord Downer, the quarry whisperer and Major Mitchell - conspire to ruin Monday, and also the planet ...

 

First a framing...

(Apologies in advance, the archive continues to be hit and miss).

EXCLUSIVE
Newspoll: Coalition hits historic low, support worst in 40 years
As the Coalition slumps to a record-low primary vote, senior Liberal sources say that Sussan Ley will accelerate policy positions and is prepared to split from the Nationals.
By Geoff Chambers

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Soul-searching turns to fear and loathing for Coalition
Sussan Ley has virtually no public profile, is struggling to cut through with punters as fear spreads across the opposition’s dwindling benches.

Now a look at the overall picture, and that graph, surging downwards ...

Cue a little light relief, with a singalong for the still very competitive lettuce ...

Now to look at the source of the problem, and it doesn't require much looking ... just look over on the extreme far right of the lizard Oz ...

It's the usual line up of dismal reptile offerings, the same old rogues blathering away in the wilderness, tired, tiring, tiresome, beyond the valley of the tedious.

This is what the reptiles have helped produce, this is irrelevance central, and what better example than Lord Downer, this day offering a full five minutes of humbug and verbosity:

The header: Old parties of the centre must adapt or perish, Australia faces the same issues that are challenging traditional politics in Europe. If Liberal and Labor don’t address them, the 2028 election result could be dramatically different to that of 2025.

The caption: Housing affordability has been a key issue that has sparked widespread protests around Australia.

Lord Downer was in his "retreat from Russia" phase with Napoleon ...

Napoleon famously said “a leader is a dealer in hope”. For Australia to avoid the rise of damaging economic populism its leaders must inspire hope we can enjoy an exciting and prosperous future. If they don’t then populism will become rampant.
Throughout the liberal democratic world, the electorate has become highly volatile. The traditional adherence by voters to a party of the centre left or the centre right has atomised. Voters have lost hope. In Britain, the latest polls show the Labour Party and Conservatives each on 17 per cent and the Liberal Democrats – who are akin to the Australian Democrats of years gone by – on 16 per cent. The Greens are also on 16 per cent.
But way ahead of all of these parties is Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party on 27 per cent.
This is just an opinion poll but what’s noteworthy is how volatile the polls have been across the past 16 months since Labour was elected on 34 per cent.
This trend is replicated across most of democratic Europe. In France, the traditional party of the centre right, the Republicans, are polling 12 per cent. The traditional party of the centre left is similarly deeply unpopular. The leading party in France is the party of Marine Le Pen, who may be best described as neither left nor right but as a populist who tells the public exactly what it wants to hear. Italy was once dominated by the centrist Christian Democrats for decades after World War II. They simply don’t exist any more.

The caption for the visual interruption contained a witticism by His Lordship, If ‘reasonably charismatic’ politicians such as Barnaby Joyce defect to One Nation its support is likely to grow, says Alexander Downer. NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It's charisma all the way from Tamworth's deeply unedifying, seemingly eternal shame ...

Lord Downer carried on, in a way only His Lordship can do ...

In Germany, while the government is a coalition of the centre-right Christian Democrats and the centre-left Social Democratic Party, many voters are turning to the German populist party called Alternative for Germany.
Last week, the Netherlands held a general election. The largest parties were a resurgent liberal party called D66 and the populist party of Geert Wilders. But what’s interesting is that 15 parties won seats in the election and neither D66 nor Wilders’ Freedom Party came anywhere near winning a majority. And so the story goes on throughout Europe. The old stable formula of a centre-left and a centre-right party dominating politics has come to an end.
Then there’s the US. The Republicans have been completely overtaken by Donald Trump and his MAGA force. The Democrats have fragmented. New parties haven’t emerged but the traditional parties have changed dramatically from the parties of Ronald Reagan and more recently Barack Obama.
Why has this happened in almost every democracy in the world? Traditional politics was disrupted by essentially three events.

Oh dear, the pond could sense a listicle coming on, which might explain why the Irish - the cockroaches of migration, producing the pond down under, and a long way from Tipperary - decided to riot, Hundreds of anti-immigrant protesters clashed with Irish police outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Dublin.

So to the numbers and His Lordship kicking some familiar cans...

First, there was the global fin­ancial crisis, which undermined public support for liberal economics. For right or for wrong, the public blamed excessive liberalism as being responsible for the crisis, though my view is that it was the mandating by presidents and the congress of banks lending to low-income home buyers who in the end couldn’t finance their mort­gages as interest rates went up.
Second, there was the issue of climate change: parties of the centre left became wedded to making huge publicly funded investments in alternative energy, claiming energy prices would fall. In reality this has forced up the price of power, damaging the living standards of low and middle-income voters. Not surprisingly, the punters were more fixated on their declining living standards than they were on the theory that across the next century the planet would get warmer as a result of carbon dioxide emissions.
Third, there was the response to the Covid pandemic. The lockdowns and the compensation that had to be paid to workers led to a huge increase in public expenditure that was financed not only by borrowing but also by central banks essentially printing money. Not surprisingly, this was inflationary and the inflation once more led to a decline in living standards.
Added to this has been the issue of immigration. The public in liberal democracies has been dissatisfied with a huge number of migrants who have come into their countries and caused as a result controversy over social cohesion.

Cue a veritable flurry of visual distractions, with this the only way to seek relief from His Lordship: The leading party in France is the party of Marine Le Pen, ‘a populist who tells the public exactly what it wants to hear’. Picture: Alain Jocard / AFP; Geert Wilders’ party did well in the recent Netherlands general election; Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party is sitting on 27 per cent.

Then came His Lordship's keenest insights...

The way of life in these countries that has evolved across hundreds of years has been disrupted by migrants who have brought different conventions and beliefs. In some cases, large numbers of migrants coming in illegally and the failure of government to have rational and carefully calibrated immigration policies have angered the public.
There are other issues that have angered the public. One is rising housing prices, and in all of these countries they have an ageing population and that has placed massive pressure on health ser­vices. Injected into society at the same time has been the evolution of two things. One is a more educated public that doesn’t blindly accept the diktats of the elites in ways they once did. And then there is social media, which has spread more widely political antagonism.
In just about every case, the traditional parties have failed to resolve these problems and that explains why voting has atomised and traditional parties have seen their support whittle away.
Until recently, this electoral phenomenon seems to have bypassed Australia. We shouldn’t be too confident our own politics isn’t going to go the same way as the politics of other liberal democracies. Some claim that compulsory voting and our preferential electoral system will guarantee populist parties never really get traction. I think that’s wishful thinking.
Support for the One Nation party has grown quite significantly in recent months, and if articulate and reasonably charismatic politicians such as Barnaby Joyce defect to One Nation its support is likely to grow substantially.

There it is again, the charismatic one ...

And truly the ability to lie as p*ssed as a parrot in the gutter is deemed, in certain circles attending Maguire's pub, to be uniquely charismatic.

By way of contrast, the reptiles wheeled out a dullard, incapable of drunken cavorting and charisma, instead carrying on with the dog botherer ... Shadow Assistant Treasury Minister Dave Sharma explains the Coalition’s net zero infighting. “Our energy prices were once a comparative advantage for Australia. An area where we were highly competitive,” Mr Sharma told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “Energy is an input into every economic activity of human life. “High energy prices … are being felt by all of us and paid for by all of us.”

Luckily the end was night, with just enough space for the pond to fulfil its contractual obligations...

Wrap it up, your Lordship ...

The Greens have yet to eat significantly into the Labor vote but there is potential for that to happen on a greater scale than has been the case up until now.
This is the great challenge in particular for the Liberal and the Labor parties. For them to maintain their dominant positions in Australian politics they will need over the next two years to address those same issues that their counterparts in Europe have failed to address.
They need to demonstrate they have control of immigration, they need to address the issue of declining living standards and inject a new dynamism into the economy regenerating economic growth and rising living standards. They need to have an answer to high housing costs and in particular they need to convince the public they can reduce our extraordinarily high energy prices and stop the haemorrhaging of our major industries.
If they don’t do that, expect the 2028 general election to produce dramatically different results from the 2025 election.
For members of the Labor Party, they shouldn’t take for granted that because they it won a big majority at this year’s election they will easily win the next one. The public is far too volatile to make that assumption.
For the Liberals, their challenge is to recapture the imagination of the dissatisfied public with clear answers. The tried and true commitment to economic liberalism has built modern Australia.
I’ll let them debate the costly policy of net zero but make just one comment on it: it’s never going to happen.

And so His Lordship consigns the planet to disaster, presumably on the basis that nothing will ever disturb the Adelaide hills ...

Meanwhile a yarn from the brown out ...

EXCLUSIVE
Leading Liberals want Coalition split on table after net-zero move
Moderate Liberals want ‘viable option’ of Coalition split on the table
Dave Sharma has urged Sussan Ley to leave open the option of breaking up the Coalition after the Nationals dumped net zero.
By Greg Brown

Who to blame for this mess? 

Who to blame for always giving the lettuce a little nudge to the front?

Why not the Caterist?

The header:  Tomago falls victim to ‘green premium’ hiding in small print, We can no longer deny the glaring truth that while solar may be a viable option for the family caravan, it is no solution to powering the energy-intensive industrial processes we can ill afford to lose.

The caption for the familiar solar-loving son of Satan, Anthony Albanese and Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen (above) remain inveterate carbon price deniers. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It was just four minutes of the quarry-whispering Caterist, and yet it was so familiar, it went in one eye and out the other ...

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s hopes of meeting his 2030 emissions targets rose last week with news that the Tomago aluminium smelter is likely to close in three years.
Reducing the demand for electricity in NSW by 950 megawatts won’t solve all of Bowen’s problems but it will make it easier to close the Eraring Power Station, which will result in a reduction of about 10 million tonnes in our annual carbon footprint.
That prospect may explain the Climate Change Authority chairman’s sanguine response to the Tomago announcement. Tomago had to compete in international markets, Matt Kean wrote in The Australian Financial Review.
China had more than 70 Tomagos, most of which were newer and more efficient. “Any energy-intensive industry is ultimately more likely to be viable where it can access low-cost power,” Kean wrote.
His solution for saving the strategically critical industry is as glib as it is predictable: “more – not less – renewable energy”. Kean might have been able to get away with that lazy answer 15 years ago when the challenges of decarbonisation were less well understood and Chinese foreign policy was in the pragmatic and predictable hands of president Hu Jintao. Yet it should not go unchallenged today.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap of another demon designed to send the flood-whisperer right off, Climate Change Authority chair Matt Kean. Picture: Nikki Short

Even for a rote offering, the careening Caterist seemed listless and tepid, as if all the repetition had worn him out ...

The warning from Tomago that it will be unable to continue when its current energy contract expires in 2028 should prompt us to take Australia’s industrial future seriously. Bowen’s hopes of turning Australia into a world leader in the production and export of green hydrogen were dashed because private sector developers could not secure supply contracts for renewable energy at the quantity or price they needed.
Now, aluminium smelting has run into the same problem. Tomago’s only chance of surviving is subsidies.
We can no longer deny the glaring truth that while solar may be a viable option for the family caravan, it is no solution to powering the energy-intensive industrial processes we can ill afford to lose.
Tomago consumes as much electricity as a city of a million homes. Power must be supplied around the clock, since the molten aluminium running through the potlines cannot be allowed to cool. The technical challenges of running such an operation on intermittent renewables are immense, the engineering challenge of scaling up overwhelming, and the commercial challenge insurmountable.
Bill Gates’s reassessment of the correct response to climate change has been driven in part by the difficulty of decarbonising emissions-intensive economic sectors. The development of artificial intelligence has made the production of plentiful and inexpensive clean energy a matter of great importance to the tech industry.

How weird has it got? 

When Clippy has become the new hive mind cult hero ... Bill Gates talks of ‘the green premium’, the cost difference between clean energy and energy from fossil fuels. The government’s breezy narrative refuses to acknowledge the green premium at all. Picture: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Bloomberg Philanthropies

Please don't expect the pond to discuss any of this ... it's more than enough monkey business just to ruin the insights of the bots currently trawling and devouring the pond ...

In an open memo last week to delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 30th annual conference, Gates called for a “strategic pivot” away from the obsession with near-term emission reduction to the cost-effective improvement of human lives.
“When someone tells you they know how to curb emissions, the first question you should ask is: What’s your plan for cement and steel?” Gates asks rhetorically. He might have added aluminium and hydrogen also. “They’re hard to decarbonise on a global scale because it’s so cheap to make them with fossil fuels.”
Gates has been experimenting with ways to produce firm, or baseload, power using low-carbon technology. His company, TerraPower, is constructing an advanced reactor demonstration project in partnership with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy in Lincoln County, Wyoming, next to a retiring coal-fired power plant.
It will use a sodium-cooled fast reactor with a continuous output of 345MW, featuring an integrated molten salt energy storage system that can boost production to 500MW when needed, allowing it to manage intermittency from renewables. For Gates, the key to success for such a project is to get rid of what he calls “the green premium”, the cost difference between clean energy and energy from fossil fuels.
Gates publishes data estimating the green premium on concrete to be as much as 131 per cent. The premium for steel is 28 per cent and for jet fuel 317 per cent.
“Sustainable” is an overused and much-abused word. Yet if there is a sustainable solution to climate change, it must come with a green premium of zero or preferably less. Burying the green premium in subsidies, sneakily passing it on to consumers, or rationing power by making it expensive puts us on the fast-track lane to economic doom.
Yet the government’s breezy narrative that renewable energy is practically free refuses to acknowledge the green premium at all. The Gillard government at least conceded that there was an effective carbon price and referred to it as a carbon tax. The recent Productivity Commission report on the path to net zero acknowledges this by showing that there are cheaper ways to abate carbon than, for example, electric cars.
The Treasury recognises this, albeit tucked away in Technical Appendix C of its modelling of the government’s net-zero strategy, disguised as a “marginal abatement incentive”.

Sadly the reptiles insisted on dragging Susssan into this hot, steaming mess, another reminder of why the lettuce was doing so well, Opposition leader Sussan Ley after a meeting at Tomago Aluminium Smelter. Picture: Damian Shaw

At least T-shirts have been given a rest, as the quarry whisperer wrapped up ...

Anthony Albanese and Bowen, however, remain inveterate carbon price deniers. They assured us before the 2022 election that increasing the concentration of renewable energy would bring our annual power bills down by $275. Instead, our power bills have risen.
Anthony Albanese announced as recently as January that the $2 billion the Government would pump into supercharging the production of green aluminium would benefit both the economy and the environment.
“It will lower the costs and make them (the smelters) more competitive and ensure that these high-value jobs can continue,” he said.
Tomago chief executive Jerome Dozol stated the blunt truth in his statement last week. “Future energy prices are not commercially viable, and there is significant uncertainty about when renewable projects will be available at the scale we need.”
If Australia’s largest aluminium smelter continues to operate beyond 2028, NSW taxpayers will be paying the premium.
“It will ultimately be up to the Minns government in NSW and its federal counterpart to decide how much they’re willing to pay for a Tomago lifeline,” writes Kean. “It could be a lot.” Bowen’s refusal to release the unredacted departmental advice he was handed in May can only mean there are other inconvenient facts.
Scandalously, the Queensland government has refused to disclose the premium its taxpayers will pay to keep the Boyne smelter running in Gladstone. The deal was stitched up by the outgoing Labor government last year, which hid the details behind the fig leaf of commercial confidentiality.
Net zero has become an ideological goal sustained by wishful accounting, false narratives and official concealment. Every economic warning is brushed aside, every cost buried in the fine print, every failure redacted.

Ah, the old "science is ideology" routine...

Second thoughts, as if suffering that cratering Caterism wasn't enough, why not blame leading Zionist Major Mitchell for Susssan's position perched on the box seat?

If anyone knows how to put a cart before the horse, it's the Major trotting out that bog standard, deeply boring riff, "zealotry" ...

The header: ALP’s zealotry on climate has hurt Australia, Western governments are too eager to believe renewables investors with a vested financial interest and scientists whose funding is tied to claims about fires, floods, storms and a rising sea level.

The caption: Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen boasts Australia leads the world in emissions reductions, but why should it? Picture: Martin Ollman

Speaking of zealots and zealotry, the zealous Major has been a major reason for the current coalition disaster, but the pond is beyond debating or discussing anything with the Major.

When a loon trots out the like of the Bjørn-again one or Judith Curry as preferred and reliable sources - along with the Bennelong disaster - there's nothing to discuss ... there's just a need to summon strength to make it through a read the reptiles clocked at four minutes, but which felt like an endless inanity ...

Climate and energy policy in Australia has been a slow motion trainwreck since the election of Kevin Rudd’s Labor government in November 2007.
Rudd and the incumbent prime minister, John Howard, both took plans for emissions trading systems to that election.
But Rudd, like Labor Energy Minister Chris Bowen today, was a zealot who called climate change “the great moral challenge of our time”. Howard warned of the danger if Australia got ahead of the rest of the world in cutting emissions: it risked exporting industry and jobs to places with cheaper power.
Howard was right.

Sheesh, the lying rodent, in an accident worthy of Oscar Wilde, not only lost government, he managed to lose his seat, but please, show a snap, Former Australian prime minister John Howard has warned against cutting emissions too far and too fast. Picture: AAP

Does it ever occur to the reptiles that harking back to ancient times isn't helping?

Never mind, there's more aluminium to hand, because there's nothing this murmuration of starlings likes better than to crap on number one oval, or endlessly recycle talking points ... ...

Last week, it emerged that our biggest aluminium smelter, Tomago, in the NSW Hunter Valley, could shut in 2028, making a mockery of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s January claim that Rio’s smelter would be part of Labor’s “Future Made In Australia”. Tomago can no longer secure new power contracts at a price that would make production profitable.
The news came only weeks after Australia secured a deal with US President Donald Trump on joint efforts to develop rare earth deposits here. Soaring electricity prices will probably prevent most refining of rare earths here, but the Australia-US deal is important because the world cannot rely on China.
Remember, Labor has had to pump billions into keeping other refining operations open. It spent $2.4bn in February to rescue the Whyalla steelworks, $135m on Nyrstar critical minerals smelter proposals in Port Pirie and Hobart in August, and $600m on October 8 to keep Glencore’s Mount Isa copper smelter open for another three years.
Bowen claims all will be well when more renewables come online because, as he wrongly claims in most interviews, “renewables are the cheapest form of energy”.
The International Energy Agency has shown how prices around the world rise as renewables increase.
Power prices were a primary factor in last Wednesday’s sharp rise in domestic inflation. Freedom of Information documents reported here on October 27 show Bowen’s department warned him after the May election that power prices would continue to rise.

Even the familiar demons, trotted out to terrify the hive mind, have become tiresome ... Kevin Rudd called climate change “the great moral challenge of our time”. Picture. Gary Ramage

If the Major follows the Caterist, and trots out Clippy, the pond is likely to scream...

Yet Bowen boasts Australia is leading the world in emissions reductions. Why should it? No sane country should deliberately destroy its own manufacturing capabilities.
It won’t be just smelting. Fertiliser and cement manufacture rival aluminium production for electricity hunger.
Cynics suggest electricity market operators are privately relieved Tomago could close – at the cost of 1200 jobs – because it could reduce system pressure. It uses 10 per cent of all NSW electricity.
This is the Future Made In Australia – a nation off the grid, powered by rooftop solar and home batteries with no reliable grid-scale power for heavy industry let alone large data centres.
Environment journalists argue China is expanding its renewables investments, and it is. But Xi Jinping was explicit in 2022: China would not be shutting fossil fuel plants until it was certain it could transition without hurting its own industries.
Trump’s decision to leave the Paris climate accord has changed the world. While Australia in September announced its Paris 2035 commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 62 and 70 per cent on 2005 levels, 100 other Paris signatories have not made new commitments.
Canada has announced a 2035 target of 45-50 per cent emissions reductions but it is a hydro-electric superpower. Politico on October 27 reported 10 G20 nations would not offer new targets as required before the COP30 meeting in the Amazon city of Belem, Brazil, from November 10-21.
Sweden, home to Greta Thunberg, is ditching its commitment to 100 per cent renewables.
And last week one of the most powerful long-term voices for renewables, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, admitted climate change was not an existential threat to humanity.

He did, he did, Clippy gets yet another run, American philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has admitted climate change is not an existential threat to humanity. Picture: AFP

And so to the Major offering the Bjørn-again with a dash of curry...

Gates praised the agenda of COP30 for placing “climate adaptation and human development high” on its agenda.
This focus on resilience has been advocated by Copenhagen Consensus director Bjorn Lomborg and climate scientist Judith Curry.

Is that what they're calling themselves these days? Adapters? The pond thought it was just denialism in the form of delay ...

And so on, as the Major paused his time on the links to offer his take...

Western governments have been too eager to believe renewables investors with a vested financial interest and scientists whose funding is tied to outlandish claims about fires, floods, tropical storms and sea level rise – often built on flawed modelling.
Much of Labor’s orthodoxy on climate and power sprang from Ross Garnaut’s 2008 and 2011 reports for Rudd and his successor, Julia Gillard. The economist’s original 1989 report, titled Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy, provided the intellectual backing for the Hawke and Keating governments in opening up the Australian economy.
Sure, the economic theory that worked when we scrapped tariffs in the 1980s should in theory apply to first mover advantage on renewables.
But technology is trumping theory. Labor’s naive belief we can become a clean energy superpower does not sit easily with the failures of hydrogen manufacture, the collapse of offshore wind projects or system-wide power grid problems in Spain this year and in Texas and California for several years.
One country has climate science, economics and politics mostly right: China, which has ramped up its fossil fuel usage more than any other nation and accounts for a third of global CO2 emissions.

No wonder China is wiping the EV clock for the rest of the world, as the reptiles flung in a final image,  The threat to Tomago is a source of political pressure for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: Adam Yip

It was time to wind up this day's bout of reptile delusions ...

While China installed about half the wind and solar built globally over the past two years, it also made a fortune using coal, gas and nuclear power to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels sold across the globe. It dominates global production of EVs and lithium ion batteries.
China has spent 30 years building a near monopoly in the rare earths essential to EV manufacture, smart phones and most modern defence technology. And it did all that with abundant cheap electricity largely generated by burning coal, much of it from Australia.
Environment writers will argue half of China’s installed power infrastructure is now renewable. True, but it also remains true that coal accounts for 70 per cent of all electricity distributed.
This suggests the need for massive improvements in China’s network infrastructure to improve the reliability of its intermittent power.
So what is the real global position on power?
International Energy Agency surveys show renewables now outperform fossil fuels globally.

Oh that's going to need a Major billy goat butt, perhaps in the form of a yeti ...

Yet the IEA renewables category includes hydro power and biofuels, both of which still outproduce wind and solar.
Indeed, in electricity production globally, hydro outpaces all other renewables sources combined.
That will change as solar and wind installations grow rapidly.
What does the IEA say about coal and gas? Demand for oil, gas and coal will peak before 2030. Yet even in 2050 under its net zero scenario, annual coal demand globally is forecast at 500 million tonnes and gas at 900 billion cubic metres.
In Australia, the Coalition continues to makes itself the issue on net zero, unable to land a blow on a government out of touch with what’s really happening around the world.

And so the reptiles continue to help the lettuce, while hapless Susssan, ably assisted by Little to be Proud of, continues to drift into irrelevance, while the chance to score points is lost in the diggings ...

Now take the test to see if you can match it with those bunnies, His Lordship, the quarry whisperer, the Major and King Donald ...