More weekend readings in the Australian Daily Zionist News, aka the lizard Oz ...

 

When the pond signed up to the Murdochian Institute for Herpetology Studies (an affiliate of Trump University), the pond didn't expect to get a bonus subscription to the Australian Daily Zionist News.

As a result, the pond's studies have of late taken a dire and beyond tedious turn.

If it's not lectures on antisemitism and the joys of Zionism, it's extended bursts of Islamophobia.

As an atheist, this puts the pond in a difficult position. Once upon a time, the pond could berate all religions as stupefying nonsense.

But these days it's necessary to step in when stupid people carry their innate, drug-addled stupidity too far:

FACT FOCUS: Kennedy’s claim that Arabs ‘don’t produce science’ meets a Nobel Prize reality check

“There’s 500 million Arabs in the world and yet they don’t produce science,” Kennedy said on the campaign trail Monday. “They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”
The health secretary’s comments — widely condemned overnight by critics as untrue and racially biased — were made while campaigning in a state with a large Arab American population...
...Arab refers to an ethnic and linguistic identification, while Muslim refers to a religious identity. So while Arabs can be Muslim, Christian, Jewish or of another faith, the vast majority of Muslims worldwide are not Arab.

There followed a list of "Arabs", who had won Nobel and Field Prizes.

Others get to read exciting stories, including wizard crypto heists ...

North Korea is likely culprit behind $6.3bn crypto hack, ‘largest heist in history’
Binance exchange says it will cover customer losses as it scrambles to freeze affected assets, with about $3bn located so far

No such luck for the pond. These days the lizard Oz is just mind-numbing and unnervingly repetitive and boring.

Take Nick, please someone take Nick ...

Israel’s electoral diversity tests myth of apartheid
Israel’s citizens have argued, organised and voted for competing visions of their future. Palestinians deserve precisely the same freedom.
By Nick Dyrenfurth

The pond tried to summon up interest, but just couldn't be fagged (in an Etonian sense) ...it being just an elevated form of drivel ...

 At the very end Nick tried a little both siderist balancing act...

...Israel is not a perfect democracy. Netanyahu’s disgraceful, Trumpian claims on X this week that the election was “stolen” by Arab parties, the influence of religious extremists, settler violence and the unresolved Palestinian question are serious challenges to its future.
But democracies are not defined by rancorous debate or imperfections. They are judged by whether citizens can challenge authority and replace their rulers. That power belongs to every Israeli citizen, regardless of religion or ethnicity.
Which returns us to Vayera. Abraham’s challenge to God reminds us that justice demands questioning authority, however legitimate its claims. Israel’s citizens have argued, organised and voted for competing visions of their future. Palestinians deserve precisely the same freedom.

Do they Nick? Netanyahu's Son Says Arab Citizens Are Israel's 'Greatest Threat' After Nuclear Iran (* intermittent archive link)

... which brings the pond back to Luis Bunuel. 

Thank the long absent lord, the pond is an atheist ...

Immediately the pond spotted garrulous Gemma's contribution, it knew where it would be heading...

European riots a wake-up call for West
A pattern of co-ordination shatters the myth that the recent violence is about cost of living.
By Gemma Tognini

The rest of this abomination is in the intermittent archive, so the pond can cut to the bog standard Islamophobia ...

...While the French have form when it comes to burning stuff to the ground, the recent riots felt and looked different. I never bought the “children demanding better education” line because of the many clearly non-school aged people involved in the violence and destruction.
The second giveaway was the prominence of the Palestinian flag. Like the Holy Spirit, it is beginning to appear omnipresent. The third was the looting. Nothing says “give us better funding” than smashing a window at luxury designer boutique and running away with a late season bag...
...You may not want to accept it but extremist political Islam wants to destabilise Western democracies. It’s the playbook and they don’t hide it. Read the charter of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Actually if the pond wanted to read about attempts to destabilise Western democracies, it would just read Murdochian publications or ruin eyeballs watching Faux Noise, or perhaps indulge in a study of mad King Donald and his GOP minions, as good a set of planet wreckers as any currently doing the rounds, but do finish up ...

There are undoubtedly cost-of-living pressures among some cohorts in Italy and France, but the vague umbrella of “economic and education concerns” as the central motive for the riots is a false flag.
It makes me fear for the naivety of this country; we can’t rely on our “she’ll be right” attitude any more. This week in Australia, ASIO confirmed that the Iranian regime, the greatest sponsor of proxy terrorism, targeted my colleague Sharri Markson and political figure Michael Kroger. The action was real and sophisticated. It should terrify us.
We are not immune. Bondi told us that. Torched synagogues taught us that. An expelled Iranian ambassador showed us how serious it is. This past month I have been close enough to these riots to smell the smoke.
“Europe is lost. The UK is gone,” a friend said to me over drinks in London last week. I don’t agree. It’s not in my nature to be fatalistic. But neither do I have my head in the sand. We must wake from our apathy, lest we end up with the kind of society others are prepared to riot for.

Or perhaps just send a dinkum Aussie to take out as many Islamics as he could find?

New Zealand mosque attack suspect faces 89 charges

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The man accused of carrying out the Christchurch mosque attacks will face 50 murder charges and 39 attempted murder charges when he makes his second court appearance, New Zealand police said Thursday.
Police had earlier filed a single, representative murder charge against 28-year-old Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant. He is due to appear via video link during a brief hearing on Friday, and won't be required to enter a plea.
Fifty people died in the March 15 attacks on two mosques and another 50 were injured.

Waddya kno. Same message as you get in the lizard Oz ...

“In 2100, despite the ongoing effect of sub-replacement fertility, the population figures show that the population does not decrease in line with the sub-replacement fertility levels, but actually maintains and, even in many White nations, rapidly increases,” the alleged killer wrote in his manifesto. “All through immigration. This is ethnic replacement. This is cultural replacement. This is racial replacement. This is WHITE GENOCIDE.” (New Zealand Terrorist Manifesto Influenced by Far-Right Online Ecosystem, Hatewatch Finds)

For the love of the long absent lord, a KitKat or a 'toon break ...

Okay, you suggest being a mug and giving the pond a chance to segue, surely the heart of darkness, the lizard Oz editorialist, wouldn't confirm the pond's feelings?

Hold the pond's beer ...

Oh dear, that looks ominous, and yet entirely befitting the Australian Daily Zionist News, out and about on its regular jihad ...

Any chance of getting a balancing Haaretz editorial?

Sure thing ...Netanyahu Is Making Arab Israelis' Right to Vote a Crime (* intermittent archive link)

What was that you said Nick? Just asking for a friend ...

What supposedly irredeemably authoritarian society inspires such extravagant democratic fidelity?

Oh that ...

Please, please, a 'toon break to celebrate western democracy in action, and at its finest ...

And that inevitably brings the pond to Polonius's prattle for the Australian Daily Zionist News this weekend.

On the upside, the piece allowed Polonius to indulge in his chief passion, ABC bashing (down there with Snake Day bashing), though the pond did wonder if it would include his many repeated assurances that not a single conservative ever appears on the ABC...

Huzzah, it seems that the savvy Savva passed the Polonial conservative smell test, but there was more bad news to follow ... what with it being important to downplay the impact of Islamophobia.

Say what? Polonius in praise of faux ranga Pauline? To be fair, she really does encapsulate the lizard Oz agenda ...

...In November last year, Pauline Hanson, an Australian senator and leader of One Nation party, wore a burka in parliament to push for a ban on the Muslim garment. She was suspended for a week. Then, earlier this month, she was again censured by the Federal Senate after she made comments questioning whether there were 'good' Muslims.
Community leaders like Kheir say that politicians like Hanson have legitimised racism - and that there's evidence in the numbers of threats his mosque and community face.
"We're talking astronomical figures," he said. "We're talking about women being spat on in the street. We're talking about women whose scarves have been pulled off.
"Our Facebook posts used to have five to 10 comments. [Now] we're getting a thousand plus comments of the most bigoted, vile, racist comments. People feel empowered and emboldened because [politicians] like Pauline Hanson have enabled this sort of racism to be rampant and normal."
Experts say the issue isn't treated seriously enough.
"Imagine [if Hanson] said the same thing for Jews in Australia – that there are no good Jews in Australia," said Dr Zouhir Gabsi, senior lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Deakin University and author of Muslim Perspectives on Islamophobia: From Misconceptions to Reason. "There would be a huge backlash."
Kheir agrees not enough is done to rein in racism.
"The fear that I have is Pauline Hanson and her dog whistling has such an effect on the Labor and Liberal Party that they are too scared to take the defence of the Muslim community, because it's political suicide for them," he said. "So we're left to fend for ourselves."
A cumulative effect
Earlier this month in the Australian city of Ballarat, a man who declared himself "far-right" allegedly threatened children outside a community hall where Muslims were enjoying Iftar. The man proceeded to barge into the hall and hurl racist abuse - but, controversially, was not immediately arrested and has not been charged.
Days later, in the same city, a man racially abused staff at a pharmacy, yelling Islamophobic and racial remarks including "go back to where you came from".
According to Malik, the Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia, these attacks all have a cumulative effect.
"Each impact reinforces a sense that Muslim identity is not welcome, nor part of Australia's social fabric," he said last week, in a speech to mark UN International Day to Combat Islamophobia. "This has the immense danger of reducing institutional legitimacy and fraying social cohesion." (BBC)

Oh please, don't worry about any of that, Polonius will do his best not to help out by diminishing, distracting, and amplifying the very worst people ...

The answer is: Don't ask the Australian Daily Zionist News about bigotry, hate and fear mongering. It's their main mission ...

And now, as the pond has featured the lizard Oz editorialist, and as the pond couldn't be bothered to hang around waiting to see if the dog botherer turned up to contribute to the Australian Daily Zionist News, more inspired lizard Oz thinking ...

Is it only the pond that thinks this talk of a magical shield is mystical nonsense of the mad King Donald kind?

It's not just the Maginot Line or the Great Wall of China. 

History is littered with military strategists and strategies designed to halt invaders, but defending the castle has never been a top notch strategy, from the walls of Jericho to nimble Greeks bringing gift horses as a way to trick and treat ...

Good luck with that, as if we haven't already flung enough AUKUS dung against the wall.

Will anyone at all in the lizard Oz pay attention to the way that the much smaller Ukraine has held off Vlad the sociopath's wannabe colonising Russia? 

And this little outing caused much mirth ...

They should pay their way? 

Talk about insolence and cheek

Time for another reminder of the keen Keane's contribution in Crikey, News Corp celebrates more than a decade of paying zero tax in Australia, News Corp continues to make serious money in Australia while paying no tax:

Despite its pretensions to lecture Australia about its values and how it should be run, the Murdoch family’s News Corp really has nothing to do with Australia. It is a foreign company, and it serially pays no tax here, despite earning billions in revenue on our shores.
In 2024-25, according to the Australian Tax Office’s corporate tax data released today, News Australia Holdings — the official name of News Corp’s Australian subsidiary — racked up 10 years of paying precisely zero tax. For that year, it earned $1.89 billion in revenue, made more than $300 million in profit (a record for the past decade) and paid nothing in tax.
Indeed, there’s a peculiar steadiness to News Corp’s tax dodging. For the past four years, it has earned around $1.8 billion in revenue and paid no tax on around $300 million in profits in 2023-24 and 2024-25, and $200 million in profits in 2021-22 and 2022-23.
You can go all the way back to when the first corporate tax transparency data was released for 2014-15 — the result of a Rudd-Gillard government initiative (opposed by the Coalition) — and find News Corp’s main company has paid no tax across those years, on revenue of, in total, $23.9 billion and profits of $1.38 billion.
The only News Corp entities to pay tax in that time were an investment company, which paid $200,000 (sic) in 2017-18 on $291 million in profits, and a pay TV financing arm, which paid $8 million in 2015-16. Real estate listing oligopolist REA Group, which News Corp part-owns, paid $246 million in tax.
Otherwise, News Corp’s only contributions to Australia are social division and the fostering of hate and resentment.

Oh yeah, they must pay their way.

And so to close with another visual celebration of western civilisation and democracy in action ...

Crucial insights. May be applied to the understanding of domestic Murdochians ...

On the other hand, there's Tom. Everyone loves meme Tom ...

Presenting the Bromancer and the Ughmann...(patent for title pending, way better than Thunderbolt and Lightfoot) ...

 

Sad.

Russian society being ‘systematically crushed’ says Novaya Gazeta as newspaper announces closure

The pond urgently needed an uplift, and not from the usual sources, agreeably, richly comical though they were ...

Liberal senator admits mistake after grilling ABC execs about Gaza journalist’s ‘Hamas’ ID
Amanda Meade

The pond realises that timelines means this is already an old, much featured and loved meme, given an outing on Kimmel and endlessly on the likes of MS NOW, but dammit, if only one correspondent missed it, then repeating it will be worthwhile, especially as it involves Faux Noise...

“You mentioned the rally getting started here in Rock Hill,” Fox correspondent Lucas Tomlinson said during The Faulkner Focus. “We’ve got Tom right here, kind enough to answer a few questions. Tom, why are you here this morning?”
“Well, in the late ‘70s, I was a little too young to get involved and, um, go to South America for the Jonestown Massacre, but this is as close as I’ll ever get, so that’s why I’m here,” the man replied.
Tomlinson was caught off guard by the man’s candid response referring to the mass murder-suicide orchestrated by Jim Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project cult, in 1978.
“Wait, the Jonestown Massacre?” the reporter asked.
“That’s right,” Tom confirmed. “There’s nothing like seeing a cult right up front, man.”
Tomlinson, visibly embarrassed, immediately scrambled to find another MAGA supporter to save the segment.
“Alright, so maybe—maybe this is not a Trump supporter right now,” he said, patting Tom on the shoulder and walking away. “See, there are some, uh, pro—anti-Trump here people now.” (Fox News Duped by Anti-MAGA Troll at Trump Rally)

As a coda?

Fox News Host Appears Embarrassed by Trump Rally Attendee Who Says He's There to ‘See a Cult

One critic, riffing on the comparison to the Trump rally and the infamous Brian Jonestown Massacre, said,"The only difference between Jim Jones and Donald Trump is that Trump would charge his followers money to drink the poison."

And what better way to introduce the bromancer, regular sipper of kool aid, for this weekend's domestic hive mind entertainment?

The header: Greg Sheridan Foreign Editor
The US midterms herald ugly rise of far-left Democrats

The cry to listen to the bot: Listen to this article
9 min

Fulfilling a minimum reptile demand for any reptile column - a snap that makes a politician look as much like a noisy, shouty harridan as possible: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at a campaign rally. Picture: Getty Images

The plea for attention to be paid by the mighty G: Make us preferred on Google

Deep down the bromancer is more than MAGA curious, he's MAGA friendly, so, whatever the outcome of the pending midterm elections, how pleasing it is to see him writhing on his own spit of bile and bigotry ...

These tumultuous, gripping US midterm elections will decide much more than just which party – Republican or Democrat – controls the Senate and House of Representatives for what will be an action-packed last two years of Donald Trump.
They will profoundly influence the political evolution, even the identity, of each party. The Democrats, benefiting from Trump’s epic unpopularity, could see a big chunk of their party enact a dismal red-green alliance – Islamic-themed activism focused on Palestine and antisemitism in partnership with ideological leftists. This combination is poisoning Europe and has its nasty counterpart in Australia.
Meanwhile, the Republicans, heading for defeat in the house and trouble in the Senate, are making feeble progress at best towards a viable post-Trump program.

The bromancer tried to carve out his own angle, his own truly unique approach, but truth to tell, it was just a way of serving up his reliable brand of patented fear mongering ...

This column will be one of few on the midterms not focused on which party wins but, rather, who wins within each party.
As election results emerge on Wednesday Australian time, focus on four key Senate races: Michigan, Maine, Texas and Kansas.

One of the few? 

How he treasures his delusions.

First came the demonising of the Islamic, following on the ugly tradition of racism in the GOP:

In Michigan the Democrats chose Abdul El-Sayed as their Senate candidate. He’s a doctor and former health official. He’s also as near to an outright antisemite as modern, mainstream elective politics in the US has produced. He reacted to a terrorist attack on a Jewish synagogue in Michigan initially by saying: “Hurt people hurt people … violence is a cycle.” He declares Israel as evil as Iran. He wants to end the US’s small aid funding to Israel (which goes entirely on Israel buying US military equipment). In his own rhetoric he has ludicrously implied the US can’t afford necessary social spending because it’s spending too much money on Israel. He’s also suggested US foreign policy is controlled by Israel.

But, billy goat Zionist butt, that last line just happens to be true, what with mad king Donald falling into line with Benji, and bermb, bermb, bermbing Iran, as instructed, and now to enhance the fear ...Michigan Democrat senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed speaks at a midterm campaign rally. Picture: AFP

Inspired by that snap, the bromancer ran hard on the fear ...

Recently a political committee supporting his candidacy, controlled by friends of his, has run a TV ad in which a wife tells her husband: “You’re going to have to put those eggs back. We have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.” The husband in the ad comments that Israelis get universal healthcare, don’t they, “we probably pay for that as well”. This is pure conspiracy-laden, Jews are to blame for everything, nutty and deranged classical antisemitism.
El-Sayed’s campaign says it has nothing to do with the ad yet won’t denounce or criticise it. El-Sayed routinely issues instant, extravagant, almost endless moral judgment about everything else. But he won’t stand up against even the most outrageous, dishonest and blatantly antisemitic advertisement in modern mainstream politics, supporting his candidacy.
El-Sayed campaigns in the Senate race mainly on universal healthcare and cost of living, but frequently intrudes Israel. He strikes a macho pose, does a lot of sub-Pete Hegseth fitness posing and knows how to get noticed on TikTok and social media.
Three important things about his Jewish/Israeli obsessions: they have been part of his entire political life, they were important in his Democratic primary victory, and they will define his foreign policy approach if he gets to the Senate.
He’s always been on the far left and for years held Barack Obama’s presidency in contempt from a left standpoint.
This latest offensive ad has been denounced by numerous senior Michigan Democrats. But Obama campaigns enthusiastically for El-Sayed, as do Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other senior Democrat leftists. None of the candidate’s extreme and prejudiced positions and past actions have ruled him out of mainstream politics, as, say, support for the Ku Klux Klan would automatically and rightly rule out a Republican candidate. That’s bad news for Democrats, and for America.
The Michigan Senate seat was held by a Democrat who is retiring. The Republican candidate, Mike Rogers, is a perfectly respectable former congressman and former FBI agent. If El-Sayed wins a big battleground state such as Michigan, it will convince Democrats they can win the presidency in 2028 with a far-left politician like Ocasio-Cortez.

Perfectly respectable?

Mike Rogers spent years voting against priorities now championed by MAHA

Michigan paper declares it won't seek comment from Mike Rogers due to 'lies and bigoted attacks' on El-Sayed

Eek, not the appalling Cheesecake Factory man: Barack Obama speaks at a rally in support of Abdul El-Sayed in Detroit, Michigan. Picture: Getty Images

Time for more lies, distortions and warped realities ...

For an almost exact reverse of all that, look at the Senate race in Maine. This is a state that normally votes Democrat. But it has a long-term incumbent Republican senator in Susan Collins. She’s stubbornly independent and decides issues as she sees the merits of each case. She is one of very few Republicans to maintain her independence from Trump. 

Susan Collins stubbornly independent? 

Must the bromancer force the pond to hie off to the both siderist NY Times?

In the Senate, Collins Often Defies Trump but Rarely Stops Him (*intermittent archive link)
A New York Times analysis of Senator Susan Collins’s voting record shows that she frequently breaks with Republicans but more seldom changes an outcome. 

A New York Times analysis of Ms. Collins’s voting record over the last decade paints a more complicated picture. It shows that she breaks with her party more than any other Republican senator. It also reveals that her defections — which frequently helped Democrats block parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda during his first two years in office — have rarely thwarted the president during his second term.

Read the whole thing. It's more informative than the soothing bromancer nonsense doing his best to help out Collins:

She has managed at times to moderate Trump policies, a rare and precious skill in his increasingly undisciplined second term.
Her Democrat challenger, Troy Jackson, is from the left. He has all the left obsessions on Israel, wants to abolish immigration enforcement and favours wildly unrealistic government spending. If Collins survives in Maine, it’s a great fillip for common sense and reality in US politics.

As for Talarico, the only question is whether the bromancer would toe the vegan line, and spew on about his devotion to meat, aaah, but he discovered easier paths to tread ... "a little bit left" and "weird" is more than enough to damn that pasty-faced wimpy Texan in the minds of lizard Oz readers:

A different equation applies in the Texas Senate race. Trump campaigned against a sitting Republican senator, John Cornyn, and helped Ken Paxton unseat Cornyn in the Republican primary. Paxton is the Republican candidate from hell. To describe all the scandals he has been involved in would take up all the words in this column. Trump didn’t care about that. He just wanted a toadying loyalist.
The Democrats chose a smart candidate, James Talarico. He’s a little bit left, and has in the past said some weird things on gender issues. But he’s also a teacher studying to become a Presbyterian pastor. His version of Christianity allows him to support abortion up until birth and other progressive social positions.
But Republicans have made such obvious political use of Christianity, with even Trump himself claiming to follow Christian policies while dishonouring the Christian ethic every day, that they certainly have no serious grounds to question any Democrat’s Christian faith.
Texas is the second-most populous state in the US. With Florida, it’s the heart of Republican politics, as important to Republicans as California is to Democrats. If Paxton loses to Talarico it will demonstrate yet again that in picking sycophants Trump imposes the very worst candidates on the Republican Party. The road to post-Trump Republican recovery will run away from Trump. When Trump leaves the White House, his backing will surely count much less in primaries.

Eek, another shocking sight: Bernie Sanders speaks in support of Wisconsin Democratic Congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin. Picture: Getty Images

The bromancer's deep Xian streak continued ...

Talarico can speak in a plausible conservative dialect. That’s clever politics, the opposite vibe to the red-green alliance in Michigan. Talarico is also a member of an important, growing class, Democrat pastors. The most fascinating of these is Adam Hamilton, the Democrat Senate candidate in Kansas. You could hardly imagine a more solidly Republican state than Kansas. But the incumbent Republican senator, Roger Marshall, is very unsympathetic. He seems to spend much of his time in Florida. He was formerly a medical practitioner famous for suing patients who couldn’t pay their bills, charging them 18 per cent interest and getting them arrested.
He never expected to face a competitive contest. His Democrat challenger, Hamilton, is a Methodist megachurch pastor. He’s on the liberal side of Christianity but there’s no serious dispute about his religious convictions. If Democrats find that Christianity is a winning political credential for them, that would be good for American politics. It would surely at least keep them away from antisemitism. For Republicans, if they can’t hold Texas and Kansas, they’re in a world of pain.

How weird and offensive does this line get?

GOP’s Moreno targets El-Sayed with a religious test that even many Republicans can’t pass
Steve Benen

The closer we get to Election Day, the more hysterical Republican rhetoric has become when targeting Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee in Michigan. Donald Trump, predictably, has helped lead the slanderous charge, condemning the candidate as a "jihadist" who "should not be allowed to serve in our Senate."
As is too often the case, the rest of the party has followed the president's lead and headed for the gutter. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said El-Sayed "sleeps in a bin Laden jersey." Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaigned in Michigan this week and thought it would be good idea to trash the scientific and literary accomplishments of a half-billion Arab Muslims. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas this week explicitly said that "there is a very real risk that Americans will die" if El-Sayed is elected and serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
But it was something Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio said during a Wednesday night rally that stood out as unusual.
Making the case to Buckeye State voters who can't cast ballots in Michigan's Senate race, the GOP senator suggested that El-Sayed should be disqualified from serving in the chamber because he does not accept divinity of Jesus Christ.
"This character, Abdul El-Sayed, can be nowhere near Washington, D.C.," Moreno said. "Do you think he understands that concept, that our rights come from God Almighty? That Jesus came here for our salvation? He should be nowhere near Washington, D.C., and [Republican candidate] Mike Rogers is going to kick his ass on Tuesday."
So, a few things.
First, whether Moreno understood this or not, he was speaking at a rally that was intended to generate support for the GOP ticket in Ohio — a ticket led in part by Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republicans' gubernatorial candidate, who is Hindu.
Second, when Moreno was sworn in as a senator, he swore to support and defend the Constitution, which includes Article VI, clause 3 — a provision that says "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
And third, as Moreno really ought to know, roughly 1 in 3 Americans are not Christians, and the idea that they should be disqualified from congressional service because of their beliefs is plainly insane. Indeed, let's not forget that there are Jewish Republicans in Congress and the White House Cabinet who would disagree with the senator's belief that that "Jesus came here for our salvation."

All that and more, but always, the bromancer remained tone deaf and clueless, as in closing he attempted his own form of pitiful and pathetic bothsiderism:

It goes without saying that Trump and other Republicans make personal attacks on their opponents as dishonourable as those of the left Democrats. Bad behaviour flourishes on both sides. But while the worst of MAGA seems to be unravelling (with some of its good bits remaining), and Republicans must find a new synthesis of traditional values and contemporary policies, the Democrat far left is accelerating.
American politics, and the whole world, need decent Republicans and decent Democrats, which, policy differences notwithstanding, we mostly had until the past 10 or 15 years. The battle within each party is as important as the battle between the parties. I’d rather see a Marco Rubio v Gretchen Whitmer (successful Democrat governor of Michigan) presidential contest in 2028, than an Ocasio-Cortez v Tucker Carlson match-up. Just kidding about Carlson being a possibility, of course, but you get my drift.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

Marco Rubio, that lickspittle quisling, spineless, cynical fellow traveller who sold his soul to Trump long ago is the hill on which the bromancer wants to die?

Principles jettisoned, is former Trump foe Marco Rubio playing the long game?

Now what sayeth the hive mind? For once there seemed to be a little confusion ...

Scary stuff ...

What else? Well the reptiles were all in on Jess early this weekend ...

The pond heaved a sigh of relief. 

No need to go all the way with Galloway and Jess ...

Jess Wilson vows to take fight to Anthony Albanese, saying Victoria has been ‘embarrassing’ at national cabinet
By Anthony Galloway Victorian political editor

The pond could catch up on this parochial pothole-driven jihad when it mattered ...

State of play: can Jess Wilson restore Victoria’s political clout?
Consumed by spiralling debt and Covid’s aftermath, Australia’s second-largest state has turned inward.
By Anthony Galloway

What else? Well the reptiles have cannily taken to holding back their big guns - the Ughmanns, the dog botherers, even "Ned" - until later in the weekend.

That just left the likes of snappy Tom following up on a bog standard jihad ...

Labor loses public trust as economic growth takes a hit
A $6m golf club grant exposes ‘grey corruption’ – and Anthony Albanese’s admission could cost Labor far more than votes.
By Tom Dusevic
Columnist

And the Angelic one getting agitated about breeding issues, in the way of fundie tykes ...

The childcare subsidy is an economic money pit
Why is it normal that some babies and children spend more of their day in these places than with their parents?
By Angela Shanahan
Columnist

Go trad stay at home wife!

The pond did its duty - the pair are there in the intermittent archive for masochists interested in a read - but decided to cheat, because how could they possibly compete with the Ughmann, sneaking in to deliver his standard climate denialist sermon?

The Ughmann bobbed up just in time...

Splendid stuff. It's all the way with stuffing the planet. 

Can Vlad the newspaper-suppressing, Ukraine invading, sociopath help out? Sure can ...

Yes, yes, let's all muck in, let's dirty the planet bigly. What could possibly go wrong?

Oh it's all great fun. What's that? More alarmist nonsense?

Fiddlesticks. As if the Ughmann cared for any of that nonsense ...

Now let's hear it for the cockroaches, because all Minnsy were the borogroves ...

Thank heavens for that snap of satanic coal mills looking good, but here the pond came to a dilemma.

The pond wanted to honour the way that the reptiles managed to drag in a bog standard snap of windmills looking truly evil and threatening ...

... but at the same time the pond wanted to honour the dog botherer's role in spreading more FUD about EVs ...because, you know, who better to talk about it than the flood waters in quarries whispering Caterist ...because, you know, who could have heard about using solar power to charge your EV for free?

Having nuked the country to save the planet - as if the planet needed any saving - it was time for a last gobbet for the unreformed former failed seminarian ...

The pond might have missed out on the recent lizard Oz BoM jihad, but when it comes to stuffing the planet, there's a new reptile contribution coming along with monotonous reliability.

And now it being the season ...

It was entirely fitting that the Graudian labelled him an "acclaimed thespian" because no one could match that voice ...and he fought the good fight ... Before his death, Patrick Stewart had considered becoming a U.S. citizen so he could do more to oppose Donald Trump.

May it be made so in a few days time in honour of his memory ...

The pond realises this has already done the rounds, but it's just still in season ...

In which Our Henry goes full Thucydides and Killer sheds a tear for billionaires ...

 

The pond appreciates that some studious and diligent herpetology students are inclined to be completists - how else to discover the lizard Oz is getting weirder by the day? - so it behoves the pond to note what it missed from Our Heroic Homeric Henry last week, when the brave lad abandoned his Zionist duties to frolic with the perfidious French ...

The political edifice Macron built to remake France is dead and buried
No stranger to street rebellions, this time the republic is facing an existential problem with no obvious solution.

Did the pond say he abandoned his Zionist duties? 

Of course not ...

...That symbiosis brought a darker dimension to the violence. The Islamists’ entrenched antisemitism is part of the milieu in which these youths have grown up. Palestinian flags, and those of Hamas, were widely displayed; a synagogue in Paris’s 19th arrondissement was pillaged and desecrated; Jewish stores in Marseilles were reportedly singled out for attack.
As they ransacked luxury stores, jubilant looters cried “Bismillah” –“In the name of Allah” – over spoils ranging from handbags to electric scooters, now being sold on eBay.
And the wider challenge to republican authority is stark: in a survey published last November, 57 per cent of French Muslims aged 15 to 24 said that respecting Islam mattered more than respecting the laws of the republic.

And so on and so forth, and in much the same spirit, the "we wuz robbed" spirit inspired by mad King Donald has been taken up by Flávio Bolsonaro, and by Benji, with great enthusiasm ...

Eisenkot Says Netanyahu Leading Influence Campaign to Undermine Election Results

...The Joint List said Netanyahu is trying to steal the election, and they "will not be deterred by incitement and attempts to undermine the results."
The party said right-wing figures are making "vile lies and baseless" accusations that demonstrate their fear of the Arab community. "This is a coordinated campaign, funded by Likud figures, that began many months ago and is aimed at undermining the election results and their legitimacy," the party said in a statement Thursday.
The Joint List further called on opposition leaders to "stop cooperating with Netanyahu's vile lies and the racist Kahanists, to stop being puppets on Netanyahu's strings, and to stop advancing his campaign of incitement."

It's only free and fair if you win, and it's always second class citizens in an apartheid state, with no one daring to form an alliance with the "untouchables".

But the pond made the mistake of looking back, when huzzah, Our Heroic Heraclitean Henry was back this Friday and in top ancient Greek form ...

The header: By Henry Ergas
ALP’s moral weakness breaks our civic bonds

The plea for a bot voice to deliver the goods: Listen to this article
8 mins

The caption for the high art: The School of Athens by Raphael shows Plato and Aristotle (centre) in discussion. (Here)

Cry out to the mighty G: Make us preferred on Google.

The pond has tried to steer clear of the Haines tragedy - on the Polonial principle of avoiding politicising and making judgements until the facts are known, even if Polonius and his reptile companions only establish such principles in order to evade them.

But the pond couldn't help noticing this ...

Alleged Helen Haines attacker Brendan Nugent was likely in psychosis, prison report says

A prison assessment of the man who police allege deliberately rammed federal MP Helen Haines has found no indication of extremism or links to political groups or ideologies.
The ABC can reveal an initial evaluation of Brendan Nugent, taken in the days after he was arrested, said he held delusions of being persecuted and was most likely in a state of psychosis...
...A source with knowledge of Mr Nugent's assessment said it also indicated he had a "significant mental health disorder". It is understood schizophrenia is currently being considered as one of the possible diagnoses.
"So far nothing is indicating extremism," the source said.
"There's no group, no ideology, no intention."
They said that "conspiratorial" social media posts unearthed in the days after the alleged attack — referring to Israel, Gaza, climate change, the Kremlin and notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein — were more likely a symptom of paranoia and his mental health deteriorating.
"Persecutory beliefs are the most common kind of delusion, and they often latch onto whatever in the news. So you see Ukraine and the CIA turning up alongside fears about his own safety."
The source said the assessment did not rule out that Mr Nugent had a grievance.
"She'd been a friend of his family for more than 20 years, and she was his local member. That's not a random choice. When paranoia takes hold, it usually pulls in the people around you."
Mr Nugent has been withdrawing from alcohol and cannabis since being in custody.

Bear that in mind when reading this patented, prize piffle and tosh ...

There were few things the Greeks feared more: the internal strife, called “stasis”, that tore the polis apart as the restraints that made civilised life possible collapsed.
Plato gave it an unforgettable image: sailors who cast aside the pilot, seize the helm, throw their rivals overboard and fall upon the stores, threatening their own survival.
So, too, stasis wrecked civil governance, opening the way to ruin, foreign subjugation and the extinction of freedom.
The attack on Helen Haines brings that ancient fear into Australia’s present. Coming after three years of unprecedented antisemitic vitriol and violence, it forces us to confront the erosion of what the Greeks called civic friendship: the bond that made a shared political life possible despite searing disagreements.
It was that bond the self-governing cities of Renaissance Italy sought above all to preserve.
Machiavelli called it the “vivere civile” (living civilly): a fellow-feeling that fell short of friendship but imposed an obligation to settle disputes through the laws. It rested on civility, understood not as mere etiquette but as a branch of morality.

Just to affirm Our Henry's devotion to classical references, as a way of attempting to sanitise his thinly disguised bigotry, the reptiles flung in a visual confirmation of his "dictionary of quotations" ways ...A statue of Machiavelli near Florence.

More flowery references flowed from the quill ...

If the word “civility” came from the city, the moral discipline came from the cloister: from the rules that let monks and novices, strangers in close and permanent proximity, live together without quarrel or violence. Erasmus, an Augustinian canon, made those rules into a civic code. “What else is a city,” he asked in 1518, “but a great monastery?”
Propagated through the new medium of printing, civility’s moral code proved essential to England’s recovery from its blood-soaked civil wars. By forbidding “hatred, contempt, insult and arrogance,” wrote Hobbes, it could sustain a “constant civil amity”. And while the laws, Edmond Burke observed, “touch us but here and there, now and then”, the norms of civility work by “a constant, steady, insensible operation, like the air we breathe in”, making self-restraint a habit.
Nowhere did that habit take deeper root than here in Australia. An isolated society thrown together from convicts and gentry, soldiers and squatters, was obsessed with mutual respect: not everyone could eat with aristocratic elegance, writes historian Penny Russell, “but most understood, only too well, when they were being insulted”.
What the colonists rejected was undue deference, not courtesy. Australia, John Hirst argued, was culturally democratic long before it was politically democratic: the respect for ordinary people that others had to fight for was secured in a “democracy of manners” whose essence was not to obliterate difference but to overlook it.
However, a parliament cannot overlook difference; its business is to peacefully channel and resolve it. That is why the colonial legislatures immediately and enthusiastically adopted the rules of the House of Commons Thomas Erskine May had codified in 1844. Address the chair, not your opponent; attack the argument, not the man; avoid and withdraw offensive words: together, historian Judith Brett showed, those rules allowed the sharpest disagreement without enmity, so that the weapons of debate, as May put it, were “wielded according to the laws of a more civilised warfare”.
Nor did those rules stop at parliament’s doors. The union branch, the debating club and the hospital auxiliary all ran on simplified versions of Westminster procedure. “The smallest and the greatest meetings of the land,” Brett wrote, “were linked by their shared deliberative procedures.” Universal too was the expectation that those who sat in parliament would behave at least as well as those who ran the local fete.
But that expectation rested on a habit, and from the late 1960s a generation set out to unlearn it. Self-restraint was recast as repression, to be renounced in favour of authenticity, expressive freedom and jouissance; politics became the onstage performance of behaviours once confined backstage.
From performance, it was a short step to violence. “The great lesson of May ’68,” a French Maoist declared in 1970, “is that violence pays.” And “fascism” was transformed from naming a movement into an all-purpose licence: if your opponent was a fascist, civility was appeasement and violence a duty.

Did Our Henry just attempt to absolve and disappear "fascism" from the discussion? Rioting students block Lussac Street in Paris in May 1968.

The lesson that the pond took from that is that cavorting in the streets has been an intrinsic part of French life since the great days of the late 18th century.

Was it wrong to also remember Herr Adolf in this context? If your opponent was a Communist, a socialist, or just a Jew trying to get by in the Weimar republic, civility was appeasement and violence a duty.

Could this wretched Henry be any more offensive? Never underestimate his seemingly infinite capacity for bigotry, fear and loathing ...

Long confined to the ultra-left, that cult of violence has found new carriers in the “progressive” left’s alliance with the Islamists. Within hours of October 7, 2023, Jews were being taunted on the steps of the Opera House; last October, while keffiyeh-clad protesters pelted Melbourne’s police with bottles filled with shards of glass, Hamas’s flag was cheered as the Australian flag was burnt. The blood was scarcely dry at Bondi before a taxpayer-funded artist refused to “mourn fascists”, placing a murdered Jewish child beyond the reach of civic compassion.

At last there came what all have yearned for ... a return to Thucydides ...

Hatred thus acquired the mantle of virtue and the refusal of civility became a badge of righteousness. That inversion recalls what made stasis so terrifying in Thucydides’s account: the corruption of the language in which citizens judged one another’s deeds. People “altered, at their pleasure, the customary significance of words to suit their deeds”, reducing speech to barbarous nonsense.

What has any of this got to do with Haines, though that's what set Our Henry off? 

Not much. We're now well into standard litany mode ...

Social media has made that corruption into a business model. A study of 1.3 million posts by members of the US congress found that their incivility rose by almost a quarter between 2009 and 2019. The rewards were substantial: by the decade’s end, the most viciously uncivil posts drew some 15 times as many reposts as civil ones. Nor are our parliamentarians far behind, as Labor’s co-ordinated assault on Linda Reynolds so graphically proved.
The restraint being unlearnt on social media does not stay there; and our governments and public institutions have done nothing to stand in the vitriol’s way. In July 1846, when a mob stormed a Melbourne hotel flying Orange banners and shots were fired, the Legislative Council immediately banned processions inciting religious and political divisions. If people “are to be allowed to annoy and insult others because they differ in opinion”, a Melbourne newspaper asked, “where is peace and order?”.
That question was still being asked, and properly answered, more than a century later. Faced with violence on our campuses in the late 1960s, vice-chancellors did not merely name and expel the offenders; they were charged and convicted, and those who reoffended were jailed.
Today, the world’s highest-paid vice-chancellors have allowed threats, harassment and intimidation to persist for months on end, rarely chastising offenders they did not dare name, much less credibly punish. Meanwhile, as violent antisemitism escalated, Labor offered pious hand-wringing instead of leadership, treating each outrage as an aberration and each warning as an over-reaction.
Yet the warnings could not be starker. The Director-General of Security now ranks political violence alongside espionage among ASIO’s gravest concerns, and has felt compelled to plead for civility.

Again the pond felt compelled to wonder.

Precisely how did all that portentous pomposity relate to the Haines tragedy, and a man reportedly in the grip of psychosis? 

Apparently if you throw in Plato and Machiavelli,  the offensive circle of patented bullshit is compleat...

The attack on Haines should lend his words even greater force. For Plato’s parable still rings true: the sailors who seized the helm never meant to sink the ship; they simply stopped caring whether it stayed afloat. That is what the collapse of Machiavelli’s “vivere civile” does to a democracy anaesthetised by complacency and crippled by its leaders’ moral weakness.
The laws cannot transform a fractured society into heaven. They can prevent wreckers transforming it into hell. Unless our government shows the courage to confront them, it will not be the Greeks’ fear that awaits us; it will be their fate.

Every so often the pond thinks it should go into therapy as a way of understanding why it's so addicted to this completely addled inability to understand any discernible form of reality ... but perhaps it's best (certainly cheaper) to exorcise it by way of a blog post ...

But there's clearly a market for this sort of swill, with the hive mind of the lizard Oz a living, breathing, seething sea of hostility. See a sample of Our Henry's comments ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, cleanse the palate with a couple of Golding 'toons ...

And so to other notes on the jihads and early this morning the Australian Daily Zionist News was in full swing ...

FINDINGS
‘Pervasive progressive hate’, antisemitism envoy’s new blueprint
‘Most pervasive’: Jillian Segal calls for sweeping crackdown on progressive antisemitism across institutions
Special envoy Jillian Segal has sharpened her aim on antisemitism to target its ‘modern, progressive’ element in an updated report covering universities, health, media and the arts.
By Lucy Carroll and James Dowling

Maybe ending the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and the West Bank might help? Or even just accept into the system the Arab parties that played the election game? You know, instead of a full blown theocracy ...

CRIME AND COURTS
Segal’s strategy to combat hate
Antisemitic hate crime victims to receive court anonymity under proposed legal overhaul
Special envoy Jillian Segal’s newest report suggests new education for police and judges after a contentious judgement took aim at her preferred definition for antisemitism.
By James Dowling

And the other jihad bubbled along nicely, thanks to the cranny Crantson ...

EXCLUSIVE
Demands grow for audit of Albanese and Chalmers spending
The PM refused to commit to net savings in the upcoming mid-year budget update, despite spending reaching a 40-year high outside Covid.
By Matthew Cranston

The totally unbiased sources making the call from inside the house?

Inter alia ...

Robert Fisher, a head of state departments such as welfare under both Labor and Liberal governments, said he would back a version of the 2014 federal commission of audit, of which he was a commissioner.

Tony Shepherd, who chaired the Abbott government’s National Commission of Audit, agreed another audit was required.

Peter Crone, chief executive of the last audit’s secretariat, said there was no doubt Australia’s current economic situation and levels of government spending meant an audit was now required.

The lizard Oz editorialist, perhaps peeved that nobody could be bothered diving beneath the fold to read their rants, turned up over on the extreme far right to back the jihad ... and early in the morning it was top of the digital world ma ...

THE AUSTRALIAN’S VIEW
Economic critics from all sides, but are you listening Mr Albanese?
In slamming ‘partisan’ critics of Labor spending, the PM is trying to deflect attention from homegrown inflationary pressure.
By OUR EDITORIAL WRITERS

That's more than enough of that. As usual, the immortal Rowe did it better ...

Besides, what the pond was really yearning for was a strident defence of the wealthy, the filthy rich, the tech bros struggling to get by on their last few billion, though still with enough billions to try to buy an American election.

Who better to pander to theirs and the pond's needs than Killer Creighton of the IPA?

The header: By Adam Creighton
Politics of envy driving wealth tax campaign

The chance to hear it bot style: Listen to this article
5 min

Let's hear it for the mighty G: Google co-founders Sergey Brin, left, and Larry Page at their company headquarters in Mountain View, California, in 2004.

Say it again for the mighty G: Make us preferred on Google.

Killer was on an anti-tax crusade worthy of the IPA:

Even John Maynard Keynes, renowned champion of bigger government, conceded an economy couldn’t thrive with taxation more than 25 per cent of GDP.
Yet today, state and federal governments combined extract taxes well in excess of 35 per cent of GDP, and their combined spending is brushing up against 40 per cent, according to the IMF Fiscal Monitor.
So it’s disappointing to hear that familiar if obnoxious clarion call to increase the GST – as if rejigging the tax base is our biggest problem amid the biggest increase in spending since the Whitlam era.
Peter Costello, who introduced the tax in 2000, is right to warn against lifting the rate beyond 10 per cent. Consumption taxes are a stealth tax, making them easy to gradually increase. Lift an income tax rate and workers’ take-home pay very noticeably falls. Lift a GST to 11 per cent and people barely notice. The Rudd government in 2008 even made it illegal to show prices exclusive of GST.

Cue a snap of Keynes ... British economist John Maynard Keynes.

Killer was heartbroken at the sight of billionaires on the run, refugees suffering from rampant persecution ...

Is it any wonder France, which pioneered the rollout of consumption taxes back in 1954, is wallowing in government spending equivalent to 57 per cent of GDP!
The misguided clamour for more tax amid a global spending crisis has taken an even more ridiculous form in California, where voters next week face a ballot that would impose a 5 per cent, supposedly one-time, excise tax on the state’s billionaires. Economist Thomas Piketty, the eminence grise of the global wealth tax movement, prefers wealth taxes up to 90 per cent annually.
Polls point to a knife-edge result for what’s known as Proposition 40, less than a week out from US midterms that might see the Republicans lose control of both houses of congress, laying the groundwork for similar mad-hatter proposals at the federal level.
The mere whiff of a Californian wealth tax has already slashed the $US100bn ($142bn) projected revenue to $US30bn, according to new research by Stanford University economists Benjamin Jaros and Joshua Rauh. Seven billionaires, including PayPal’s Peter Theil and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have decamped to other states, taking almost $US540bn, or nearly 30 per cent of the alleged tax base, with them. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who would face a $US11bn charge under the possible regime, has told the SEC he is considering joining them.
California’s billionaires already contribute between $US3.3bn and $US5.8bn in state income taxes alone, and the perpetual loss of some of that revenue would leave the state’s total tax take almost $US39bn lower, Jaros and Rauh estimated in their October National Bureau of Economic Research paper. “Billionaire departures, and the fact that new founders would think twice about locating to California, have significant potential economic effects if the location of jobs and innovation shifts elsewhere,” they added.
That the already disastrous proposal has been pushed by fellow Frenchmen and Piketty acolytes Gabriel Saez and Gabriel Zucman is bizarre, given their native France’s own failed history of wealth taxation.
The chronically underperforming debt-riddled economy has been hobbled by a wealth tax since the 1980s – another, if less “successful”, French tax innovation. By 2008 it had driven €200bn ($316bn) in wealth out of the country and was costing the French government twice what it raised in other forgone revenues, according to a well-known study by Eric Pichet. “In an open world, the (French) wealth tax impoverishes France, shifting the tax burden from wealthy taxpayers leaving the country on to other taxpayers,” he concluded. And the world is even more “open” than it was then.
Even if wealth taxes didn’t drive the wealthy away, they wouldn’t solve the public spending crisis – there’s simply not enough rich people to prop up the fiscal largesse. Last year the left-wing Australia Institute advocated a 2 per cent annual wealth tax on Australians with more than $5m in assets excluding super and their primary home, suggesting it would raise (laughably) $41bn a year, about half as much as the GST.

At this point the pond became seriously alarmed, not so much by Killer's devotion to the interests of the wealthy, but at the sight of Petey boy ... Former treasurer Peter Costello has warned against raising the GST rate. Picture: John Feder

That chin, talk about a picture of a kind of Dorian Gray - couldn't the reptiles have found a kinder snap?

Never mind, Killer's karing for the kavorting billionaires was a remarkably short outing, as he made a final plea for understanding and sympathy ...

The federal government alone is facing a headline deficit of around $60bn this year.
“Even if the annual wealth tax was restricted to the 200 households on the (AFR) rich list, it would raise around $12.5bn per year from their $625bn wealth,” the Institute’s economists naively estimated, by incredibly multiplying 0.02 by their total wealth.
If the government truly wanted to raise more revenue it would slash spending to get inflation and ever-rising interest rates under control. A major recession will clobber revenues, whatever tax rates and bases are set.
Wealth tax advocates should read some more of their favourite economist Keynes, not only on the maximum taxation countries could bear, but also on the wisdom of wealth taxes themselves.
In the late 1920s he referred to them as a “new and disturbing form of taxation” that might only be used to lower income tax rates on ordinary people. Such a rational argument appears lost on today’s wealth tax zealots, who appear to be motivated by envy as much as anything else.

How refreshing. Usually the "zealots" in lizard Oz parlance are climate change zealots in the grip of a religious cult. Now it seems that they're also "wealth tax zealots".

So much zealotry, so much zealous projection.

Please, let the rich run wild and free, and should you happen to find yourself in the vicinity of one, remember to tug your forelock, and do a Uriah Heep and announce that you're "ever so very 'umble" and that Killer sent you to lick their boots and kick your last bit of change into their bulging purse... lest you appear a zealot...

Once again the hive mind was Killer's kaptive krowd ...

Ah, the dreams of being a clever billionaire, dodging taxes and following Rafferty's tax rules.

Now just for the balance ...

Against Oligarchy, Part II: Wealth Taxes
Going where the money — and the power — is
Paul Krugman

Say no more, the rest can be found via the link, though it ends in a paywall, at which point Abbie Hoffman types might head off to the intermittent archive.

The pond can't always be serious. Paul Krugman often ends his posts with a musical link, and dammit, if Krugman can do it, so can the pond, though perhaps the music might not be to Krugman's taste, and certainly done without a Nobel prize as proof of taste (though Killer lacks that credential too) ...

 

 Ah, wot the hell Archy ...