In which Our Henry once again abandons Thucydides and Killer of the IPA has a fast train vision ...

 

Friday. Must everything be 12 again?

A few months ago, the musician Patrick Cosmos shared a “new unified theory of American reality” that he called “everyone is twelve now”—an attempt to explain an executive branch that endorses AI-generated videos of the president dropping poop on protesters from a shiny jet, and that replies to official press queries with the words your mom. Everyone is 12 is a strikingly effective summary of contemporary politics, but it also helps us understand why a good amount of popular culture feels as brain-numbingly dense as it currently does. Why is Nicki Minaj throwing insults at one of Cardi B’s children and generating images of her as the purple dinosaur Barney? Everyone is 12. Why is Kim Kardashian the star of a fur-swaddled drama about Bentley-driving divorce lawyers with seven-figure clothing budgets? Everyone is 12. Why has Emerald Fennell adapted one of the more chasmic and ambitious tragedies in English literature into a poppy, gooey, thuddingly literal work of sexy fan fiction? Everyone is … you get it.

Yes, the pond gets it, and it's actually an old Cosmos meme, having emerged last September,  (Cosmos by name, Cosmos theory by nature), but thank you Sophie Gilbert in The Atlantic, Why the Wuthering Heights Movie Is Infantilizing

If you want her opinion on the movie, follow the link. This is a clue ...

In some ways, that Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is this vacuous and one-dimensional feels like progress. Male directors get to make big, unserious epics all the time. (“How many times have you watched Top Gun: Maverick?” I asked my husband last night. “This month?” he replied.) Fennell, whose film made $83 million at the global box office during opening weekend, is at least proving, with sticky aplomb, how starved we as a culture are for romance. Margot Robbie, the movie’s co-star and one of its producers, has shrugged off mixed reviews; she told Vogue Australia, “I believe you should make movies for the people who are going to buy tickets to see the movies. It’s as simple as that. I love working with Emerald because she always prioritizes an emotional experience over a heady idea.” In other words, Wuthering Heights is simply giving the people what they want. And the people are 12.

The pond had thought the audience was supposed to be 14, but on second thoughts, being about 12 to read the reptiles in the lizard Oz (or watch the movie) seems about right ...

There's a remarkable amount of infantilizing going on this day, so thumbs at the ready, for the sucking thereof ...

Whenever Friday rocks around and Our Henry rolls around, the pond reverts to being 12 again.

Memories flood back, as the well-named Mr Battle instructs the class to get out their Bembricks so that we can manage to understand the pleasures of Caesar's Gallic Wars in the original Latin. Or perhaps a little later some Ovid, evoking romantic love.

Imagine then the searing disappointment at seeing Our Henry revert to reptile stock in trade with his latest rambling agonising about the Liberals.

Where's a little Thucydides, or even Tacitus, or just for the scandals, a serve of Suetonius when they're3 badly needed?

The big squeeze, like some sordid title for a Raymond Chandler novel? Or going low rent, Mickey Spillane?

The header: Can the Liberals survive the big squeeze? The history of major parties shows that, while they rarely disappear, fighting a war on two fronts can leave them too strong to die, but not strong enough to thrive.

The caption for one of those dire Emilia collages. Will she never learn to blame AI?: Angus Taylor, Pauline Hanson, Barnaby Joyce, Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella

How the pond had hungered for a dash of Thucydides, or at a pinch Apuleis's Asinus Aureus, or at least the sort of contest of ideas promised in recent lizard Oz advertising ...

Mmm, that's a disturbingly bearded, ethnic figure in that ad - as if the reptiles wanted to pose as the way ahead for 12 year olds wanting to explore the world by using a phone - but never mind, on with the pond's bitter disappointment.

The contest of ideas reduced to yet another contemplate of the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, never the sharpest set of blades in the shearing shed:

Although Angus Taylor is beginning to make his mark, the Liberal Party’s predicament remains severe. On any objective measure, its decline is structural – embedded across almost every state and territory and steadily eroding the likelihood of a near-term return to government.
That is not to suggest imminent collapse. As Alan Ware demonstrated in his The Dynamics of Two-Party Politics (2009), it is rare in two-party systems for once-dominant major parties simply to disappear.
But while major parties seldom die, they can, like old soldiers, fade away – gradually forfeiting the organisational cohesion and electoral reach required to function as an effective opposition, let alone as a credible alternative to an entrenched governing party.
If the history of democratic politics teaches anything, it is that the danger peaks when three conditions coincide: a party’s core constituencies are threatened from both flanks of the left/right divide, making it hard to protect one flank without aggravating losses to the other; political conflict centres on high-profile issues that cut across its own ranks and cannot be indefinitely fudged; and social and demographic change erodes the electoral foundations on which it once relied.
That pattern was evident in the disintegration of the American Whigs, torn apart by slavery in 1856. It reappeared in the marginalisation of the British Liberal Party after the First World War. The Liberals had been the beating heart of Victorian politics; by the early 1930s, they were a spent force.

The pond does appreciate that the hole in bucket man was trying with those historical references, but the reptiles had to ruin the moment by dragging in Nigel, busy making plans ... Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaking during the weekly session of Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons in London. Picture: AFP

Talk about ways of chilling any notion of a contest of ideas. 

Luckily Our Henry didn't immediately revert to populist demagoguery, he stayed with 20th century history ...

The immediate pressure was a two-sided squeeze: Conservatives to the right, Labour to the left. The deeper cause was structural. As elite cohesion weakened and politics became more polarised, Liberal indecision proved unsustainable.
Electoral reform accelerated the decline. The Representation of the People Act 1918 and the Equal Franchise Act 1928 transformed the electorate, enlarging the working-class vote and enfranchising women (who by 1929 formed an electoral majority), with neither group having natural Liberal attachments.
Boundary redistribution magnified the impact, eliminating smaller county seats that were predominantly Liberal while multiplying the industrial constituencies that became Labour strongholds and the suburban constituencies that underpinned a resurgent Conservatism.
The consequence was not merely electoral setback but organisational fracture: rival leaderships and searing divisions that could be patched over but never resolved. That fragmentation emboldened the challengers on both flanks, reinforcing a vicious cycle of mutual recriminations, internal discord and electoral decline. The 1924 election, in Labour minister Sidney Webb’s phrase, marked “the funeral of a great party”; by 1929, any prospect of resurrection had evaporated.

The pond gamely hung in, but the reptiles kept on flinging in very distracting snaps of posing geese, One Nation SA leader Cory Bernardi, One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce doing a tv cross at the One Nation SA’s official campaign South Australian election launch. Picture: Kelly Barnes

The pond always has a conniption when Tamworth's ineradicable, eternal shame is always flung into the mix. It even sweeps away memories of Cory showing off his muscles.

Choose the nightmare you'd prefer, it's Boeuf either way ...

Our  Henry didn't help matters by shifting to contemplating the Canucks.

How they're hurting, what with ice hockey being their religion, ruined by a MAGA clown party, dancing away the night with Keystone Kash, but Our Henry didn't care and ploughed on regardless:

The same dynamics operated with even greater violence in Canada. For much of the 20th century, the Progressive Conservatives could win federally only by forging an uneasy coalition of western conservatives and disgruntled Quebecois. However, by the time of Brian Mulroney’s prime ministership (1984-1993), sustaining that coalition required concessions that satisfied neither while antagonising both.
The coalition splintered, spawning two effective rivals: the Reform Party on the right in the west and the left-leaning sovereigntist Bloc Québécois in Quebec. Caught between them, the Progressive Conservatives were annihilated in 1993, collapsing from 156 seats to two.
But neither in the UK nor in Canada were these outcomes preordained. Parties fail or succeed not only because of the structural forces they face, but because of how they respond.
Thus, before 1914 it was entirely plausible that the Conservatives – not the Liberals – would fracture on Britain’s centre-right. They appeared close to disintegration, divided between “diehards” and pragmatists, traditionalists and advocates of adaptation. Without the political genius of Stanley Baldwin, the outcome might well have been different.
Baldwin did more than restore discipline. He strengthened the party’s organisation, rebuilt its supporting networks and decisively curbed the “diehardism” of the Edwardian and post-Edwardian years. In its place he articulated a “New Conservatism” aimed at “the binding together of all classes of our people in an effort to make life in this country better in every sense of the word”.
He therefore repositioned the party to appeal to the suburban middle class and the aspirational working class, aligning rhetoric and policy – including sweeping social reforms – with that broadened base.
The Liberals, by contrast, remained mired in internal conflict. Personal animosities and strategic divergences paralysed the party’s machinery and squandered its intellectual advantages. A movement rich in ideas proved incapable of converting insight into votes.
Leadership proved equally decisive in Canada, where the Reform Party absorbed the remnants of the Progressive Conservatives and reconstituted itself as the Conservative Party. Its leader, Stephen Harper, built a disciplined, highly centralised electoral apparatus, replacing Canada’s long tradition of regional brokerage – which had contributed to the previous collapse – with coalitions formed by micro-targeting key constituencies.

Sheesh, couldn't the hole in bucket man at least have referenced Caesar overthrowing the Republic by way of civil war? 

Must the pond endure yet another populist sighting? Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni attends a ceremony marking 97th anniversary of Lateran Pact with Vatican, on February 17, 2026. Picture: AFP

Sheesh, what next? A treatise on the perils of being Pauline?

Just as importantly, he recalibrated the party’s ideological stance, softening some of Reform’s polarising commitments while stripping away the Progressive Conservatives’ lingering ambiguities. As Harper put it, there were “two things you have to do”. The first is “to pull conservatives, to pull the party, to the centre of the political spectrum”. But “if you’re really serious about making transformation, you also have to pull the centre of the political spectrum toward conservatism”.
Executing that dual movement is exceptionally difficult. Without strategic clarity Harper could not have succeeded. And that same clarity is evident in the other movements that have travelled from the right’s fringes to the centre of power.
Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National are cases in point. Both Meloni and Le Pen were determined to be more than rabble rousers. Much as Nigel Farage is trying to do in the UK, each spent years normalising and institutionalising her party – subduing internal “diehards”, consolidating leadership authority and methodically expanding and professionalising grassroots organisation. That allowed them to compete effectively with the previously dominant centre-right parties they then squeezed to near extinction.
It is precisely those ambitions – and the skill to realise them – that Pauline Hanson has yet to demonstrate. That is not to denigrate her resilience. The heroine in Pearl White’s The Perils of Pauline weathered fires, kidnappings and sabotage; our Pauline has weathered expulsions, bankruptcy, imprisonment and repeated anathemas.

If the pond had wanted that level of insight, it would have gone with a cartoon ...

Not this ...

... but this ...

The reptiles made things even more dire by flinging in a snap of the lying little rodent with a Canuck, Former prime minister of Canada Stephen Harper with former prime minister of Australia, John Howard.

Our Henry concluded his pack of bromides with a dullard summary:

But confident that protest votes will guarantee One Nation a Senate foothold, she has opted to ride periodic waves of discontent instead of undertaking the exacting task of building a conventional political party.
That choice heightens rather than mitigates the risks confronting the centre-right. Because One Nation poses no credible claim to office – and because the electoral system partially insulates the Liberals from the forces eroding their base – complacency becomes seductively easy. Internal fractures are tolerated, strategic decisions postponed and structural frailties left to compound.
If that complacency endures, incremental losses – to the teals on one flank and One Nation on the other – will steadily accumulate, reducing the Liberals to a diminished remnant of what was once Australia’s most electorally successful political party.
That, unless Angus Taylor can arrest the drift, is what lies ahead: an ageing party, sustained by a narrowing cohort of older voters, locked in a two-front contest it cannot win. At a time that cries out for clear direction, it would continue to falter – a fading presence of glories past, too strong to die, too weak to thrive.

Not even a line or two from Sir Henry Newbolt's Vitaï Lampada, and the need to play up and play the game?

How could the pond be twelve again in that dismal fading of the light?

What else? 

With Our Henry at last failing in his Zionist duties, the pond was pleased to see that the reptiles had rushed in the lesser Leeser to provide reinforcements.

Uni leaders must own their failures on antisemitism
For too long people in leadership dismissed the need to take strong measures against antisemitism. That includes people in the leadership of our universities.
By Julian Leeser

Sheesh, the pond had personally supervised that placement in the intermittent archives, only to get to the end and see it was an extract of a speech freely available outside the hive mind paywall.

That's more than enough of that then.

And for some perverse reason - what with his beat being Thursday - Jack the Insider was around sounding like he had read Sir Henry ... (the poet, not the pundit, the one where the Gatling's jammed, the square's broken, the sand runs red with blood).

If Pauline and Barnaby win the next battle, Labor wins the war
Lying doggo is not an option. Policy work is needed. The Coalition needs to get its hands dirty and take the fight to One Nation.
By Jack the Insider
Columnist

Nah, there they were again, the triptych of terror ...

The pond personally supervised that listing in the intermittent archive but having been there and done that with Our Henry, thought a teaser trailer would suffice ...

Will the reptiles ever own up to the way that their migrant and black bashing, and Islamophobia, and hostility to woke, and DEI and women and the whole damn thing have paved the way for Pauline?

And so these perilous times have a lot to do with their feckless ways? Just like Faux Noise on a King Donald steroids overdose?

Probably not, though it might help explain them going quiet on the Tame matter. The pond had organise a couple of gags but they turned out to be useless ...

And so off to what, bizarrely, perversely, turned out to be a Killer delight ...

The header: It is easy to dismiss Australia’s $90bn high-speed rail dream, but it’s worth a crack; Building a high-speed rail network might give an increasingly depressed nation something to look forward to and be proud of. I’d rather governments ‘waste’ money on capital works than handouts too.

The rather dull caption for the rather dull snap: Anthony Albanese addresses the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

You could have knocked the pond down with a four minute read of the Killer of the IPA feather.

Killer had done a pond and caught the intercity train - an experience the pond is planning to replicate again at the end of this financial year - and as a result he'd had a most un-Killer transformation.

He'd had a vision, a veritable dreaming.

The pond didn't want to intrude, just wanted to luxuriate in the grand plan: 

In early January I took a train from Melbourne to Sydney for the first time. I had plenty of time on the 11-hour trip to consider the state of Australia’s rail infrastructure given the train had no wi-fi. Even in first class not a power point in sight.
Surely, with federal and state debts approaching $1.7 trillion, modernising carriages or even improving the track, so the XPTs could travel their potential 160km/h, could have been easily affordable? There is a distinct 1990s vibe about the features on the Sydney-Brisbane line too.
Australia is terrible at public infrastructure, paying too much for the wrong things, for the wrong reasons. Snowy Hydro 2.0, which the Turnbull government said would cost $2bn, is expected to come in at $20bn, if it’s ever finished. One shudders to think of the final cost of Victoria’s Suburban Rail Loop, which has already blown out to an estimated $216bn.
Dan Andrews quashed a proposal from a consortium to build a high-speed rail link from the airport to the city, which would’ve cost Victorian taxpayers only $5bn.
So, yes, it is easy to dismiss as fanciful the latest proposal for high-speed rail between Sydney and Newcastle. Politicians of all stripes have been banging on about high-speed rail for decades, and we haven’t even done medium-speed rail. According to a 300-page report, released this week, for $90bn we could, by the late 2030s, have 200m trains travelling over 300km/h an hour between NSW’s two biggest cities.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap of an old, if somewhat slow, friend, A High Speed Train operating between the two main Australian cities, powered by renewable energy, would replace the slow and inefficient diesel-powered service. Picture: iStock

It was such a bizarre switch - the joy of replacing grubby diesel with electric power (possibly renewables?) -  that the pond drifted off into conspiracy theories.

Did the IPA see the chance for a private sector boondoggle, a chance to suck on the government teat in a bigly way, and make out like rorting bandits? Could this be the next Malware malfunctioning NBN?

And yet the dream was alive ...

“Even if you believe what they’re saying, it’s far-fetched,” University of Sydney professor David Levinson told the Financial Review, which questioned the rosy patronage assumptions and the claims that over 160,000 new homes could emerge along the route.
Big projects typically cost far more than originally planned for reasons of deliberate bias, hubris and planners’ intrinsic naivety about the hard resource constraints related to labour and skills that ultimately determine costs.
From rail lines to nuclear power plants, the West has forgotten how to build major infrastructure cheaply, suffocating the process with countless series of bureaucratic approval processes. Oxford University academic Bent Flyvbjerg even came up with the Iron Law of Megaprojects: “Over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again.” Rail projects are typically among the worst, running at least 50 per cent over budget, he found.
On that rule of thumb taxpayers would be looking at $135bn straight up for just the Sydney-Newcastle leg of what would eventually be similar services between Melbourne and Brisbane via Canberra and Sydney.
That’s a lot, but we could afford it. It’s easy to dismiss government spending projects as inherently wasteful but this is one of the few areas where even conservative economists should agree government should play a major role.

The pond did appreciate the way the sly IPA dog had slipped in a reminder of the need to nuke the country to save the planet.

But it was just an aside, and the dreaming survived.

The pond was knocked down by that feather again, as the reptiles flung in a snap to keep the vision alive, another old friend, A Eurostar train emerges from the Eurotunnel in Coquelles, northern France. Picture: AFP

The pond never went full Tim Fisher, but has always had a soft spot for trains, and catches them wherever possible, having begun early when the pond learned that the train was a reliable way to escape Tamworth's never-ending shame ...

Been there, done that, looked down from the footbridge and yearned for the big smoke, but enough with being 12 years old, on with Killer's vision:

The federal government alone already spends over $60bn a year on National Disability support, part of a broader social security budget of well over $300bn a year. It’s a matter of priorities. The perception we could do much better on rail infrastructure is probably accurate. Australia ranks 22nd in the world on infrastructure, according to IMD World Competitiveness Rankings – well behind the US (11th) and Canada (5th).
To be sure, those large nations enjoy greater population densities than Australia, whose vast distances are often forgotten by the inner-city dreamers who want French-style public transport, ideally without the taxation. France, a bit smaller than NSW, is home to 70 million people. Building a high-speed rail network between the eastern capitals might give an increasingly depressed nation something to look forward to and be proud of. It would make housing more affordable too by reducing demand for Sydney dwellings close to the city.
I’d rather governments “waste” money on capital works than handouts too. The Sydney Opera House was 1400 per cent over budget, the third-biggest overrun in history, according to Flyvbjerg (the Suez Canal at 1900 per cent topped his list). Similarly, Eurotunnel, the consortium that built the underground tunnel linking Paris and London, went 140 per cent over budget. No one would seriously argue they shouldn’t have been built.

The pond had to pinch itself one more time. 

Spend, spend, spend. Blowout, blowout in a bigly way. Abandon fiscal responsibility, embrace the new IPA ...

A costly national project might make it easier for politicians to argue against even more wasteful handouts. “Government alone will not be able to fund this, so part of the development phase is to look for those private sector partners to also bring some of that private capital into investing in high-speed rail,” Infrastructure Minister Catherine King told the ABC this week.
But government would have to fund almost all of the proposed Sydney-Newcastle line given the massive uncertainties surrounding its commercial viability.

The reptiles even slipped in a snap that seemed positively benign, Catherine King during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It was the cue for Killer to embrace Big Australia and Big Australian dreaming, though the pond suspects that it will well and truly have passed over before there's the remotest chance of catching a Shinkansen in country (what a sublime experience that was, racing past Mount Fuji, waiting to devour the ekiben):

Jill Rossouw, chair of the High-Speed Rail Authority, said the project would “prepare us for the significant population growth – vastly outpacing many of our OECD peers – that the coming decades will bring”. But will it?
The economics of such a rail line is predicated on very rapid population growth, which might be about to dissipate, especially if the surge in One Nation support proves lasting. Moreover, as AI threatens to upend the white-collar world, will commuting to the CBD even be a thing by the time the trains are ready?
Before the pandemic the need for more and better infrastructure dominated the political debate. It’s understandable we’ve become cynical about government-backed infrastructure projects given our poor track record.
If the Big Australia advocates win the looming battle over population, we should put our understandable cynicism aside and get serious about high-speed rail.
Adam Creighton is Institute of Public Affairs chief economist.

Sold, the pond is fully infantilised, genuinely 12 again, dreaming of catching the Tamworth flyer (hopefully not catching fire at Murrurundi), and the pond has just the man capable of delivering the dream ...

And not a moment wasted thinking about the King! 

The long absent lord, save the speechifying King!

In which the reptiles try to distract with ISIS brides and a Press Council war, but King Donald doing a Castro has the floor ...

Today the hive mind returned to the ISIS brides jihad ... but remarkably the reptiles missed an opportunity to have a go at a genuinely offensive aspect of fundamentalist Islamic thinking.

Perhaps it was because the ABC had picked up that angle in Suspected serial offender linked to Islamic State walks free over filmed gay bashing and Gay and bisexual Sydney teenagers lured and bashed on camera in IS-inspired attacks.

It was picked up by the Star Observer, ABC Investigation Finds Multiple Gay and Bisexual Teenagers In Sydney Have Been Bashed In Terrorist Inspired Attacks 

...but any hint of pink always inspires revulsion in the hive mind, a trait shared with Islamic fundamentalists. There's simply no room in the Australian Daily Zionist News for that sort of angle.

Instead this EXCLUSIVE was at top of a page designated "news"...

EXCLUSIVE
ISIS brides camp chief reveals existence of two more ‘extremist’ Australians
Syria’s Roj camp director has revealed two additional Australian ISIS brides classified as ‘extremists’ are held separately from the 11 women and 23 children denied repatriation.
By Amanda Hodge, Mohammad Alfares and Mohammed Hassan.

Off to the intermittent archive with them, and ditto petulant Peta, who followed immediately below ...

Commentary by Peta Credlin
Labor has nowhere to hide on ISIS repatriation saga
The government is hoping Australians don’t work out that Albanese’s tough talk is just a facade, that he and his ministers are up to their eyeballs in rolling out the red carpet for these terrorist groupies.

And over on the extreme far right, Hodge was briefly top of the hive mind world ma, with ...

PM’s tough talk on ISIS brides hides a simple truth
The federal government has boxed itself into a corner by issuing passports to ISIS brides and their kids just as the country reels from the Bondi terror attack. Time to stop the tough-guy talk and show some leadership.
By Amanda Hodge
Asia-Pacific correspondent

No interest in gay hate mongers, but devoted to bashing children? 

Only in lizard Oz la la land ...

The reptiles were also at war with Shane Drumgold and the Press Council, a deeply sordid defence of the deeply sordid behaviour of Dame Slap.

‘Put crisply’: Shane Drumgold disgraced, Press Council discredited
Two of Australia’s most respected silks declare Shane Drumgold ‘wears the consequences’ of damaging misconduct findings, but the Press Council sides with ex-DPP against expert opinion.
The Australian

The Australian?

Yes, the reptiles couldn't even find a name to attach to that reprehensible bile, but just below that big splash, the meretricious Merritt joined the fray ...

Commentary by Chris Merritt
Press Council missed crucial legal truth
Shane Drumgold may have won a Press Council ruling, but the seven damning findings about his conduct still stand and no amount of procedural manoeuvring can rewrite what the ACT Supreme Court decided.

The reptiles will never be able to escape the shameful behaviour they exhibited backing the wrong horse in the Lehrmann matter, fuelled and driven by Dame Slap's bizarre obsessions.

The pond didn't follow the reptiles on the Lehrmann matter or track Dame Slap - the whole affair was a sordid descent into the Liberal underworld - but did think it would be droll to link to the Press Council's statement, dishing out a mild slapping with a warm lettuce leaf ...enough to get the snowflake reptiles sobbing into their cereal...

Such sooks and cry babies they are ...

At least it saved the reptiles from brooding about the former Prince ...

What a relief to be able to leave all that nonsense to the intermittent archive and turn instead to the reptile take on King Donald's latest, record-setting, demented ramblings.

Amazingly, Joe, lesser member of the Kelly gang, could only manage two minutes, though perhaps that's the standard for an Australian reptile ...

Joe managed to be impressed and respectful ...

...Likewise, on Iran, the President kept his remarks brief despite the prospect of a potential US strike against the regime at any time. Trump instead chose to elevate his credentials as a peacemaker.
“My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy,” he said. “But one thing is certain: I will never allow the world’s No.1 sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon.”
The real point of the address was to launch a sharp pitch to American voters, especially younger people, struggling with the cost of living.
This was Trump’s effort to refocus on domestic priorities ahead of the mid-terms amid sinking approval ratings and growing voter frustration with his handling of the US economy after devoting significant time to foreign policy and trade matters.
The address was an opportunity to show Americans that he was listening. The question is whether he convinced them.

The reptiles interrupted with a few carefully curated moments ...President Trump said Democrats were to blame for making the high cost of living an issue, speaking in Washington during the State of the Union address.

Joe carried on, cautiously hinting that it might not have been so fine, in spots at least ...

Yes, there were a grab bag of measures in the speech to protect the dream of home ownership, keep energy prices lower, grow 401(k) retirement balances and codify lower US drug prices into law.
But there were no new major programs likely to reset the national debate in a decisive way, with the risk being that voters will respond to the speech as simply more of the same.
Despite the trademark bravado from the President, the address may come across to many Americans as more defensive than visionary.
Trump also relished the opportunity to finetune his political sales job, speaking for nearly two hours in the longest ever State of the Union address and running through a shopping list of accomplishments.
He reminded the nation about his key strengths including his sweeping tax cuts, the reduction in illegal migration, the negotiation of a ceasefire in Gaza as well as his efforts to drive down drug prices.
By weaving in the personal stories of many Americans, the President was able to more effectively demonstrate the human impact of many of his policies.
His speech leaned in heavily to the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, with Trump promoting his presidency as part of a broader push to revive American greatness as well as Christian values.

Ah, Xian values, so it must have been great.

The reptiles then took the big plunge, all 2:0819 of it ...US President Donald Trump has delivered his annual State of the Union address to Congress at Capitol Hill.

As if the pond was a mug punter of the novice kind up for the sucker punch of two hours lost, and never to be regained.

Instead it was left to Joe to celebrate what the pond had missed:

To complete the comparison, he skewered the Democrats as saboteurs of the American experiment.
This political characterisation was highly effective as he repeatedly blasted his political opponents for refusing to stand in support of key policy positions – at one stage labelling them “crazy” and intent on “destroying our country.”
One of Trump’s key challenges is holding together a fracturing MAGA base which is already splintering over the economy, the Epstein files, the Venezuelan military adventure and the prospect of a further attack on Iran.
Yet the speech proved he can still rally them the old-fashioned way, by turning the Democrats into the enemy.

Apparently it was yet another oratorical masterpiece, designed to  dazzled hive minds ...though the pond can remember ancient times when the disunited States used to mock hapless Cubans, whenever they were compelled to endure an endless bout of Castro speechifying ...

Now they stand and applaud:

The pond must confess its response had been clouded by other reports ... such as Susan B. Glasser's in The New Yorker under the headers Donald Trump’s State of the Union Was Long and Wrong But at least the President thinks everything is going great.

Enough of all that - the pond has always been a sucker for TruCoat (at least the Fargo version) - and so must stick to reptile coverage.

Luckily Cam was also on board, throwing out word salads under the "classic" rubric - you know, classic Edsel, classic Tesla Cybertruck, classic Leyland P76.

At least Cam could grind out three minutes, which was nowhere two hours, so the pond bit ... if only because this dish served by King Donald was allegedly "fiery" ...

His second?

He already had a fine track record ...

... and now he's beaten them all, but do go on ...

He was also speaking just days after the US Supreme Court declared his tariff regime illegal, throwing into flux the President’s signature policy. Trump took aim at the Supreme Court justices sitting in the chamber, bemoaning their “very unfortunate ruling” as Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump appointee Amy Barrett, who both helped to vote down the tariffs, watched on impassively.
He claimed, however, that he would find a “solution” to the setback and find a new way to levy protectionist tariffs, which he predicted would one day substantially replace income tax.
Trump highlighted his success in slashing illegal arrivals across the Mexican border, one of his most successful and popular policies. He also focused strongly on crimes committed by illegal immigrants but he avoided the controversy over the overreach of ICE agents, which has led to the high-profile deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Those deaths have turned immigration from a positive into a net negative for him.

Again there was a carefully curated moment ... President Trump said Democrats were to blame for making the high cost of living an issue, speaking in Washington during the State of the Union address.

Cam confessed to a little surprise ...

Surprisingly for a president who is likely just days or weeks from ordering a military campaign against Iran, foreign policy was not discussed until well into his more than two-hour speech
On Iran he hinted at the possibility of military action, saying that he would never allow Iran, the world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism, to have a nuclear weapon. He said he hoped diplomacy would persuade Iran to abandon its “sinister” nuclear weapon ambitions, but warned “no nation should ever doubt America’s resolve”.
He also warned that Iran was developing long-range missiles which could potentially hit America. There was nothing in his comments that would give comfort to the ruling Mullahs of Iran. If anything, his comments only reinforced the probability that Trump will soon order an attack on the ­repressive regime.
On other foreign policy issues, he claimed that the next phase of the peace plan in Gaza was “just about there”, and that the US “was working very hard” to secure peace in Ukraine. But he said nothing more about Ukraine despite it being the fourth anniversary of Europe’s largest conflict since World War II. Trump also boasted about his success in persuading Europe to lift defence budgets and about the successful capture of former Venezuela president Nicolas Maduro.
Trump focused much of his speech on persuading Americans that the economy and cost of living – the two issues which polls say have most disappointed voters – were improving.
The US economy slowed to a 1.4 per cent annualised rate in the last quarter of 2025, the slowest in nine years, while inflation has fallen to 2.4 per cent, but remains stubbornly above the Federal Reserve’s 2 per cent target.
Concerns about the economy have been the main driver of the fall in Trump’s approval ratings, raising fears about the ability of Republicans to retain their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate in the midterm elections in November.
Trump’s speech was interrupted repeatedly by angry Democrats interjecting, prompting Trump to declare at one point “these people are crazy”.

The reptiles did allow a little moment of dissent... Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar heckled President Donald Trump as he gave the State of the Union address in front of Congress on Tuesday, February 24. C-SPAN footage shows the moment the congresswoman screams, “You have killed Americans” at Trump while he is speaking. Omar started heckling the president as he asked for “the end of sanctuary cities that protect the criminals.” The congresswoman has previously addressed the “terror Donald Trump unleashed on Minnesota,” referring to the killings of US citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good in January 2026, as well as the arrests of documented Americans. Omar also criticised “unlawful tariffs and sky-high prices” affecting businesses, as well as the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files. Credit: C-SPAN via Storyful

Cam eventually shafted the King by ending on an ambivalent note ...

The speech was full of very Trumpian moments, describing his wife Melania as a “movie star” after her recent documentary and claiming America in just 12 months had gone from being a ‘dead’ country to being the ‘hottest” in the world.
He praised the assassinated conservative commentator Charlie Kirk as a “martyr” and condemned all forms of political violence just days after an armed intruder was shot dead at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
As Trump left the podium to the cheers of Republicans and the stony silence of Democrats, his wide-ranging speech was a reminder of how much has already happened in just one year of this novel and volatile presidency. There are still three years to go so we should all strap in because, as Trump warned in his speech, “you’ve seen nothing yet”.

"Novel and volatile"?!

That's one way of putting it, but at least the endless obfuscation served a sublime purpose, up there with the UFO files ...

Perhaps this was all to set the stage for the bewildered swishing Switzer, who seems to have set up Thursday shop in the lizard Oz as a key part of his rehabilitation campaign ... though admitting he was completely clueless at the get go didn't seem a strong way to start:

A tour de force of bold assertions?

Is that what they call lying in swishing Switzer land? 

But perhaps best to leave the fact checking to the likes of the Graudian, or PBS recycling PolitiFact, or the Beeb, just some of many to be found outside paywalls.

Just don't expect the reptiles to join in that sort of coverage.

The pond must stick to a narrower rut, though the reptiles followed the opening gobbet with a snap designed to gladden the heart of the bromancer ...The USS Abraham Lincoln sails in the Arabian Sea on February 11. Picture: US Navy/AFP

But the bromancer has been MIA since 24th January, and until he returns the pond won't have a clue about the need to bermb, bermb, bermb Iran ...

The swishing Switzer was a tad dubious, as if there was anything wrong with a man who had torn up an agreement, then decided he'd bomb the mad Mullahs back into that agreement ...

Meanwhile, Trump must recognise the political foundations for war are fragile. Public support for military action against Iran is thin. Just 27 per cent of Americans favour a war, according to an Economist/YouGov poll; Trump’s own MAGA coalition is divided.
He has built much of his political brand railing against costly foreign entanglements and so-called forever wars.
The broader strategic climate is equally complex.
American public opinion – especially among younger voters – has grown more critical of Israel, now virtually alone in openly pressing for military action. Key Sunni partners in the region, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, have signalled opposition to a US-Iran war.
Yet, despite these constraints, the drift towards confrontation still feels real. Is Trump prepared to defy public caution and act? Or will he search for an off-ramp?
One can’t help but think that Trump realises he has boxed himself in – caught between his Israeli and Sunni Gulf allies; between his “America First” instincts of restraint and selectivity and his determination to impose his will on a thuggish regime that one of his predecessors labelled part of the “axis of evil” in a famous State of the Union address nearly a quarter of a century ago.
The so-called 12-day war that Israel and the US launched against Iran last June was initially aimed at destroying Tehran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. If the mission was truly as successful as the conventional wisdom suggested, why is the US even contemplating another strike?
Unlike in June, any US military intervention would almost certainly provoke Iranian retaliation. Tehran is believed to possess about 2000 mid-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching across the region, including Israel.
It also maintains substantial stockpiles of short-range missiles that could target US bases in the Gulf and naval vessels transiting in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most strategically vital maritime checkpoints.

The reptiles introduced an AV distraction ...Turning to Iran during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday (February 24), Trump said: "They've already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they're working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America."

For some reason, the pond was reminded of the weird bifurcated world that Iraq hawks of the Bill Kristol kind now find themselves in, as in The Nation's Those Sometimes-Trump Neocons Are Returning to the Fold Over Iran; As the president backs Israel’s long-awaited war with Iran, his neoconservative critics find themselves in an awkward position. (Sorry, paywall)

That's some 8 months old, but still not stale, as the swishing Switzer stayed bewildered:

Why would Trump risk being drawn into the kind of prolonged conflict he has long decried?
Let’s remember some history. The misguided 2003 invasion of Iraq was justified, in part, as a preventive strike against weapons of mass destruction. Its consequences were catastrophic, not least because the invasion unleashed chaos and civil war across Iraq.
It shifted the regional balance in Iran’s favour, enabling Tehran to establish new Shia proxy militias, and created conditions in which Sunni jihadists coalesced, eventually giving rise to Islamic State.
True, Iran causes regional disruptions, but it poses no direct threat to American security, despite Trump’s claims to the contrary in his address.
It’s also true the clerical rulers of Iran’s Shia theocracy are ruthless and have committed serious human rights abuses against the many thousands of courageous protesters. But if the regime were removed, what would follow? Does Trump really want to risk turning Iran into a failed state – or, worse, a haven for jihadists, as Iraq and Libya became after American intervention?
During his first term, Trump boasted that he had started no new wars. And during the past year his interventions have been limited in scope.
He should follow his instincts and try to reach a diplomatic outcome. Unfortunately, his State of the Union address offered no clue how to avoid a course that could plunge America into unnecessary and potentially catastrophic conflict.

At last came the real point of it all:

Tom Switzer is presenter of Switzerland, a podcast about politics, modern history and international relations.

As for the rest, did King Donald sway hearts and change minds, or did he simply do a Castro?

Who knows, because the Trumpstein files and the swamp still seem as interesting as ever ...

In which the pond does a survey of the lizard Oz headlines, and consigns the reptiles to the intermittent archive, Dame Slap and Niall included ...

The pond can't begin to count the number of columns produced to commemorate the invasion of Ukraine by Vlad the sociopath, usually with the 22nd February as the date on which the war started, and which has now outlasted the German invasion in the second world war (Stalin delayed the start of that war by doing a deal with the Nazis, worth remembering when the Russians get high and могущественный about ancient Ukrainian flirtations).

Full respect to Ukraine, which has seized the moment to highlight Vlad the Sociopath's war mongering, but the pond prefers to date the start of the war to Vlad's seizing of Crimea starting c. 27th February 2014, though there are arguments that the war started earlier, with "patriots" being funded by the Ruskis, and some turning up in disguise to help create instability.

That dating also encompasses the war crime of shooting down of a Malayasia Airlines 747 on 17th July 2014, with the loss of 298 lives, including 38 Australian residents.

Some might say that the Ukrainians didn't fight back at the time, but what could they do? Obama stiffed them, so did the Europeans, so did the British, with a feeble array of sanctions all that was on offer.

 There were lots of word stews, like the one cooked up by China:  "We respect the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine". A spokesman restated China's belief of non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations and urged dialogue. (The whole sorry story is in the detailed wiki on the conquest and annexation).

So the pond is jumping the gun by a couple of days on the real start, a tale of a country gone rogue under an authoritarian leader (and providing an excellent role model for King Donald and the disunited states, which is busy arranging yet another foreign adventure to distract from the Trumpstein files).

Whatever the date, it was a never no mind to the reptiles at the lizard Oz.

The closest the reptiles got was this effort by Niall.

Wake up, Australia: AUKUS is good, but where’s plan B?
The war in Ukraine is the first drone war, a new kind of revolution in military affairs. But Australia has not fully adapted to this change in the nature of conflict.
By Niall Ferguson
Columnist

Actually Niall, AUKUS is pathetic, and so, ancient colonial remnant, are you. 

Rely on the UK and King Donald for help in a pinch? 

Maybe the former prince and the King are good for a pinch on the bottom, but not much else.

It was with some amused relief that the pond read Trump Tower developer Altus Property Group's David Young has twice gone bankrupt.

Now there's a man truly credentialed to do business with King Donald, only a few more bankruptcies for the apprentice to match the master ...

Sorry Niall, if the pond wants help for the war with China, it will patiently wait the return of the bromancer, still MIA since 24th January, as if in the grip of long service leave. (Thank the long absent lord that China has been discreet while he's been away).

As usual, the pond was distracted by John Hanscombe in The Echnida (newsletter, no link) wondering if we've seen the start of a world war (the theme of all that Russian state media propaganda in recent times as Lord Haw-Haws of the Vladimir Solovyov kind urge the nuking of the world if Vlad the sociopath isn't placated)...

...Even if it's not World War III as we might have imagined it, the conflict has been globalised.
"North Korean troops on the ground. North Korean troops in Ukraine," Ukraine's ambassador Vasyl Myroshnychenko told reporters in Canberra on Monday. "Can you even imagine that North Korean troops are fighting in Ukraine? How far is North Korea from you here?"
Myroshnychenko also claimed the Chinese and North Korean militaries were being trained to use Russia's advanced weapons systems, which might one day be turned on Australia.
North Koreans fighting in Ukraine is startling enough but Al Jazeera's website reports that more than 1000 Kenyans have also been recruited to fight on Russia's behalf. Citing a report released by Kenya's National Intelligence Service, Al Jazeera says there are 89 Kenyans on the front line, 39 in hospital and 28 missing in action. Many of these Kenyans were lured to Russia with job offers, only to discover they'd actually signed up for Russian military service.
In November, Ukraine's foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said nationals from 36 African countries were fighting for Russia in Ukraine. South Africa's president Cyril Ramaphosa said 17 of its citizens were fighting in Ukraine after being lured there with offers of lucrative employment.
There's an echo from history in this. Among the first Wehrmacht troops captured in the 1944 Normandy invasion were Koreans, who had been pressed into military service with the Japanese, captured by the Soviets, then "liberated" by the Germans, who also forced them into military service.
As well as troops, the supply of weapons has also been globalised. Ukraine claims almost 40,000 Iranian Shahed drones were launched at it by Russia in 2025. With technical help from its Persian ally, Russia is now thought to be manufacturing 1000 drones a day based on the Sahed design.
According to former assistant director of the CIA for weapons and counterproliferation Amy McAuliffe, many of the components needed to get the drones to their targets - the engines, fuel pumps, GPS and semiconductors - get around international sanctions by being sourced in places like India and the UAE via Iran's brokerage network.
"I believe use of Iranian technology has helped Russia develop a fleet of sophisticated drones able to erode Ukrainian air defenses and strain the country's resolve," she wrote in article published by The Conversation in January.
Of course, Ukraine's allies have also globalised the conflict by supplying weapons and ordnance, including Australian Bushmasters and Abrams tanks. At least eight Australians are believed to have been killed fighting for Ukraine since 2022.
There are also opaque signs of the conflict leaching out of the conflict zones, so-called "grey zone" attacks across Europe, with Russia suspected but not confirmed as the culprit. These have ranged from acts of sabotage to mysterious drone overflights of western European airports, arson and kidnappings.
In December, the new chief of Britain's foreign intelligence service MI6, Blaise Metreweli, warned that the front line was everywhere and that "Russia is testing us in the grey zone with tactics that are just below the threshold of war".
Fingers crossed that threshold isn't crossed because if it is Zelenskyy's grim assessment might ring horribly true.

As for the rest of the hive mind pack, the pond has been hitting the reptile books pretty hard and has decided to take an intermittent archive holiday...

If you want more than this from Dame Slap, you'll have to head off to the intermittent archive ...

Just the sight of that uncredited opening illustration produced a profound nausea in the pond.

Sure, it matches the comic book level of insight on offer from Dame Slap, but is that a good thing?

And Dame Slap's ongoing obsession with women is deeply weird.

Having noted it for the umpteenth time, the pond wanted to move on quickly ...

Want to read Ben, packing it in his usual way?

Procrastinating PM’s Andrew stunt is nothing more than a distraction
Anthony Albanese’s pre-emptive offer to help Britain remove Mountbatten-Windsor from the line of succession says much about the way he plays politics.
By Ben Packham
Foreign affairs and defence correspondent

Nothing more?

If it's just a nothing burger, if it's so distracting, why couldn't Ben's graphic artist minions resist that photo as the opener?

And if there's smoke, perhaps there's some King Donald fire?

To be fair, Ben did attempt to hint at what was being distracted from, including King Donald, only to answer his own question with an "of course", so stupid it was ...

It’s no coincidence the move drowned out questions on trickier subjects, like what the government is doing about the ISIS brides trying to get back to Australia. Or will it cut the capital gains tax discount, as it has hinted. Other hard issues fall by the wayside, like responding to Donald Trump’s invitation to join his Board of Peace. Unlike his intervention on the royal succession, Albanese has kept Trump waiting on whether Australia will back his alternative to the UN.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s spokeswoman told The Australian that the invitation was still “under consideration”, even after the board’s first meeting last week. Of course, there’s no way Australia will join the board, which costs $1bn a seat and will be chaired “for life” by Trump.

Get on with the corrupt King's self-serving appointment for life? 

Do not pass Go, do not collect some loose change, go directly to Niall for help ...

As for the brides affair, Golding had some advice ...

Meanwhile, Cameron was left as the sole contributor to the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

Bell’s focus on antisemitism is certain to be challenged by Palestinian activists
Royal Commission launches to unmask rise of antisemitism behind Bondi terror attack
The stakes are enormous and Commissioner Bell will need a cool head and clear set of priorities to ensure that the royal commission achieves its lofty and important aims. Let the hearings begin.
By Cameron Stewart
Chief International Correspondent

One thing's certain. No one will ever get the lizard Oz reptiles to focus on the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, and the Huckster's handing over of the middle East to Israel because that's what the Old Testament says, and in the meantime, it'll be months before the reptiles get to parade their indignation and disappointment at whatever findings finally emerge.

The pond is happy to wait.

And as for this goose ...

AUSTRALIAN VALUES
Labor left urged to step to the right on Australia Day and extremism
Labor frontbencher Julian Hill has warned progressives risk losing ground to extremists unless they stop ‘sneering’ at Australia Day celebrations and address real migration concerns.
By Sarah Ison

Bye bye, Julian. Are you really so needy that you need to score top of the lizard Oz digital world ma, wrapped in the flag and blathering about "Australian values"?

Inevitably the pond was reminded of Yes, Minister, and some desperate, pathetic assistant minister trying to find a space in the sun.

No, minister. That sort of pandering, that desire to fellow travel, is what ensures there's a Tweedledumb and Dee approach to politics that makes the lizard Oz seem like a respectable publication.

You want to do the "there are good people on both sides" routine? You really want to be in Charlottesville with King Donald?

Undercover neo-Nazis led crowds at an anti-immigration rally through Melbourne’s CBD on Australia Day, breaking into racist chants and small skirmishes as a larger crowd gathered for an Invasion Day protest nearby.
One Nation candidates joined associates of recently disbanded neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Network on the steps of Parliament House to give speeches at the March for Australia rally, at times railing against Australia’s immigration policy from a podium built by a neo-Nazi. (L'Age)

Take a tip from an atheist, it's easy to slag off all religions, including Scientology, even if that's a more explicit scam than some of the others, and it's easy to avoid the both siderist notion that there are good people on both sides.

And that's it for the day.

The pond did think of featuring the Brown-out featuring the pasty Hastie, but decided that it was off to the intermittent archive with him, and that a look at the opening gobbet was more than enough ...

How could anyone expect the pond to get past this snap which immediately followed that gobbet?

The pond made it as far as the weird notion of "building more coal" and gave up ...

"Building more coal"?

Ye ancient howling dogs and mewling cats, the pond wept in despair. 

This creationist young earth spawn is a V8 short of a couple of pistons ...

And that's the pond's survey of the lizard Oz headlines, with only the immortal Rowe wanting to go deeper ...

Remember Petey boy being dragged out of some moth-saturated closet yesterday to star in the lizard Oz? In his own words?

The immortal Rowe did ...

A final joke. 

Of late one of the pond's email addresses has fallen into the hands of US spammers, and they contrive to avoid the pond's spam bucket.

So the pond is gifted with this sort of treasure ...

Dersh is the hook? He's this Sun's secret weapon, and a spammer's delight?

Does everything always return to the Trumpstein files?