In which the bromancer tackles the issues of the day with an eye to appeasing his mango Mussolini god ...

 

The reptiles were, naturally, wildly excited, veering between hysteria and hope at the start of the weekend ...

Oh dear, that twirling globe thingie, more of that anon, but first to check out those in residence at the extreme far right of the rag, top of the Murdochian world ma ...

Bouffant Dennis can be safely ignored, as he features the sort of boosterism that will be a reptile feature until election day, as will the ongoing effort by the reptiles to whip up anti-Semitism as a potent weapon for the mutton Dutton.

Quoting the mutton Dutton on the cliff top man as the worst PM since Gough is manifestly unfair, and the pond felt indignant. Really? How quickly they forget.

What about the onion muncher, what about the liar from the Shire? No thought for that turning, twisting, gyrating man always full of bull? 

Didn't Juliar and former Chairman Rudd have fair claim on the title? So many reptiles argued so long into the night to promote their cause ...

Such a glib dismissal of so many contenders, some much favoured by the reptiles in the past, but bouffant Dennis did remind the pond of a recent infallible Pope cartoon ... even if in the process he defamed foxes ...

Of course the pond was going to go with the bromancer and his twirling globe thingie illustration, even though the reptiles threatened that it was a ten minute read. 

Whenever the pond wants to know what is exactly the opposite case, the pond turns to the bro ...Trump isn’t waiting for the world — he’s already taken power, The returning president created the Hamas-Israel ceasefire and will transform the globe for better ... or for worse.

The read began with a diabolically bad gif featuring the tangerine tyrant twirling a globe, accompanied by text ...

“If those hostages aren’t back, I don’t want to hurt your negotiation, if they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East. It will not be good for Hamas, it will not be good for anyone. They should’ve given them back a long time ago. They should never have taken them. If the deal isn’t done before I take office, which is now going to be two weeks, all hell will break out in the Middle East.” – President-elect Donald Trump, January 7

The pond frequently comments on the lack of quality in what was once the lizard Oz graphics department, but this was a new low, completely abysmal, most uniquely and totally awful and seemingly without any awareness that it's been done before, and in the context of another monster ...

It did remind the pond you could find that sequence on YouTube...

If the pond had wanted a visual joke as a starter, it came with Colbert's riff on the gruesome official photo ...

Enough already with the distractions, it's time to get it on with the bro ...

When Donald Trump was president the first time, he produced more peace agreements between Israel and its Arab and North African neighbours than any previous US president. He hasn’t yet taken office this time but Trump already produced a ceasefire deal.
The ceasefire deal seems to have survived a series of late scares. But Trump’s election has transformed the dynamics of the Middle East.
The world is waiting for Trump to take office. Trump isn’t waiting for the world. He already has taken power. There’s lots more to come.
Two factors have transformed the Middle East, one created by Benjamin Netanyahu, one by Trump.
US President Joe Biden first proposed almost an identical ceasefire agreement back in May. The Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, had his problems with it.

Just to remind the punters in the hive mind, there came a couple of early snaps ... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Picture: AFP, US President Joe Biden. Picture: AFP

On the upside, they avoided being turned into pathetic gifs ...now scribble turkey, bro...

Now here's the pond's methodology. The pond isn't going to argue or debate, the pond is simply going to allow the bromancer to rant, only interrupting occasionally with a cartoon ...
However, as US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, said: “In the last five or six months, it was Hamas that wasn’t willing to negotiate. Hamas was undoubtedly the main obstacle.”
Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said in a farewell interview that every time Hamas saw Israel under pressure, diplomatically isolated, with distance between Jerusalem and Washington, it pulled back from a deal. It wanted to prolong Israel’s discomfort, hoping international pressure would defeat Israel in a way that Hamas itself couldn’t.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar instructed his negotiators to hold out for an agreement that involved permanent Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and provisions for Sinwar’s own safety.
Netanyahu had other ideas. The Israel Defence Forces finally killed Sinwar last October. That shook Hamas. Worse was to come. Israel dismantled or destroyed much of the so-called Axis of Resistance, the Iranian-sponsored Middle East terror network of which Hamas was part.
It started with Lebanon’s Hezbollah. In a series of assassinations, plus technical, bombing and missile attacks, Israel devastated Hezbollah’s military capabilities, killing its leaders and destroying its missiles.
Meanwhile Turkey supported a group of Syrian Islamists who deposed Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. Israel had so weakened Hezbollah it couldn’t come to Assad’s rescue.
Iran last year twice launched missile attacks against Israel, something it had never done before. In retaliation, Israel destroyed most of Iran’s air defences. Tehran’s nuclear facilities are thus more vulnerable to being bombed than they have been for many years.
This regional revolution hurt Hamas. It struck Israel hoping to isolate the Jewish state and start a region-wide war against it involving Iran and all its proxies. The only Iranian proxy still firing at Israel are the Yemeni Houthis.
Trump was the other revolutionary change.
Showing that sometimes populist reaction embodies more wisdom than elite diplomacy and pollie waffle, Trump understood that in a conflict between a savage, Islamist terrorist cult and Israel, the region’s only democracy, he should choose Israel.

Indeed, indeed, there's nothing like having an erratic man in the grip of dementia in debt to a billionaire oligarchy to make a difference ... if nothing else, it's a nice job being a hood ornament mascot ...

It's going to be a glorious time for cartoonists ... while the bromancer provides his own inimitable comedy schtick ...

Biden made essentially the same choice, backing Israel from day one. But Biden was bedevilled by anti-Israel sentiment in the left of his own party and its activist base and youth wings. The left labelled Biden “Genocide Joe” for supplying Israel with weapons.
Biden’s diplomatic style is antique and no longer effective. He’s multilateralist, feeble, wishy-washy. He doesn’t scare anybody. The idea of the liberal international rules-based order has broken down because huge players such as China, Russia, Iran and others don’t abide by its rules and norms.
Further, many Western governments have become so woke they’re no longer trying to enforce basic human rights but to universalise California gender ideology. No one in Asia, not many people in eastern Europe, pretty well no-one in Africa, signs up to the San Francisco social model.
Defenders of the rules-based order are also now ineffectual in their methods. Biden wasted an entire term trying to entice Iran into a multilateral nuclear deal. Disastrously, this empowered Iran by freeing up money that, under Trump, was frozen under the sanctions regime.
Biden’s instinct in every conflict is to de-escalate. But some conflicts must be won.
The same feebleness is evident in the Albanese government, which condemned Israel even for the exploding telephone pagers with which it attacked Hezbollah commanders when Hezbollah, a proscribed terrorist organisation under Australian law, was relentlessly firing missiles at Israel.
Trump’s style, purpose and demeanour are the polar opposite to Biden. In his first term Trump was often crude, he needlessly trash-talked alliances and he did some counter-productive things. But overall his foreign policy was much more successful than Biden’s, especially in the Middle East.

At this point, the reptiles interrupted with a snap, and a tag, Donald Trump’s style, purpose and demeanour are the polar opposite to Joe Biden. Picture: AFP

Who could argue with that? Talk about polar opposites and oligarchs ...

The upside is not having direct experience of the current and impending follies. 

The pond was reminded of this in a story by Alec MacGillis for ProPublica, On a Mission From God: Inside the Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Religious Schools

The New Yorker liked the story so well that it re-badged it as How Religious Schools Became a Billion-Dollar Drain on Public Education, A nationwide movement has funnelled taxpayer money to private institutions, eroding the separation between church and state.

Of course, it's possible to do a more succinct summary - education in the United States has been stuffed, and will be even more stuffed, and the Catholic church (not to mention evangelicals) have helped to stuff it, with an unhealthy quest for mammon, aka taxpayer dollars...

Apologies for the distraction, back to the bro, in fine uxorious form ...

The rules-based order had life only when overwhelming American power mandated it. Now, everywhere except Europe, nations are generally more comfortable dealing with Trump’s straightforward interests-based approach.
One of America’s national interests is its allies. But in Trumpworld, allies must show that they add value, that they pull their weight in defence, for example (something Australia conspicuously doesn’t do).
Trump scares Iran which, as veteran Israeli strategic analyst Ehud Yaari explains in an important piece in The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, is painfully rethinking the cost-benefit equation of investing so much in all these proxy forces, most of which have recently suffered setbacks and want a lot more Iranian money.
Trump also scares Hamas. His whole administration is going to be much more supportive of Israel. This undercuts the Hamas idea of isolating Israel diplomatically. You cannot be isolated if the US is your strong ally. It undercuts any idea that Israel might be denied some weapons. And it further undercuts the idea that Israel will be subjected to US pressure not to react if Hamas or Hezbollah breaks a ceasefire.
Trump’s commitment to Israel gives him a lot of influence in Jerusalem, as evident in Trump’s Middle East envoy, Florida property magnate Steve Witkoff, convincing Netanyahu to go for the ceasefire.

At this point, the reptiles interrupted with another snap, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets US President elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff in Jerusalem on January 11.

The pond would have preferred a visual foreshadowing of what was to follow ...

Back to the bro, wildly excited at assorted nominees ...

The people Trump has chosen for his cabinet, agency heads and the like, are a mixture of four broad categories: mainstream conservative Republicans; Make America Great Again, America-first nationalists; super-wealthy friends of Trump; and of course a quota of gargoyles and nut jobs.
Trump’s first pick for attorney-general, Matt Gaetz, was the stellar gargoyle. He was so spectacularly unsuitable even the Republican Senate would have rejected him. He withdrew his nomination and sensibly resigned from congress.
These different tribes often have conflicting policy agendas. Elon Musk favours skilled immigration, Steve Bannon opposes almost all immigration. Trump intentionally picks conflicting advisers to create policy tension. He gets to adjudicate every dispute. Messy, but potentially effective.
Yet in each of the main policy areas, there are a few core Trump positions everyone holds. Everyone on Trump’s economics team supports lower taxes. Everyone concerned with immigration wants to seal the southern border and stop illegal immigrants.

Indeed, indeed, and the pond doesn't mean to distract from the bro, but there was a great read by Helen Lewis in The Atlantic on the matter of Peter Thiel MAGA’s Demon-Haunted World, Peter Thiel is the latest pro-Trump luminary to take a conspiracist turn.

Once folks realise that the oligarchy means lower taxes for billionaires, tariffs won't reduce the price of eggs, and illegals do a lot of the hard yards in agriculture and other tough jobs, and anyway that the border was sealed in the mango Mussolini's first term, and Mexico paid for it, there's going to be a lot more of this ...just a sample, maestro ...

...Until recently, I had assumed that the anti-establishment sentiments promoted by Thiel and others were merely opportunistic, a way for elites to stoke a form of anti-elitism that somehow excluded themselves as targets of popular rage. Thiel has always made a point of entertaining provocative heterodox opinions, but he has also demonstrated himself to be eloquent, analytical, and capable of going whole paragraphs without saying something unhinged. But reading his Financial Times column, I thought: My God, he actually believes this stuff. The entire tone is reminiscent of a stranger sitting down next to you on public transit and whispering that the FBI is following him.

The correct response to uncertainty is humility, not conspiracy. But conspiracy is exactly what many of those who are influential in Trump’s orbit have succumbed to—everything must be a product of the DISC, or the deep state, or the World Economic Forum, or other sinister and hidden controlling hands. The cynical Tucker Carlson of the Dominion era has given way to a more crankish version since his firing from Fox. When Carlson first went independent, he seemed to be hosting kooks for clicks. On his live tour, for example, he looked faintly embarrassed as Roseanne Barr told him that Democrats “love the taste of human flesh and they drink human blood.” And maybe he didn’t really believe the former crack user who claimed to have had a gay affair with Barack Obama, or the historian who asserts that Winston Churchill—not Adolf Hitler—was the “chief villain” in the Second World War. But at a certain point, I started to take Carlson at his word. Recently, he claimed that he’d woken up with scars and claw marks after being attacked by a demon in his bedroom. A few days before this, he said that America needed a “vigorous spanking” from Daddy Trump, and a few days after, Carlson revealed that he thought demons had invented the atom bomb. He’s clearly working through some stuff.

What can we learn from this kind of credulity? First, that maintaining an appropriate level of skepticism is the intellectual discipline needed to navigate the rest of the 2020s. Yes, the legacy media will get things wrong. But that doesn’t mean you should believe every seductive narrative floating around online, particularly when it’s peddled by those who are trying to sell you something.

The second lesson is that, no matter how smart a person might be in their business dealings, humans are all prone to the same lizard-brain preference for narratives over facts. That makes choosing your information sources carefully even more important. If you spend all day listening to people who think that every inexplicable event has a malevolent hand behind it, you will start to believe that too. The fact that this paranoia has eaten up America’s most influential men is an apokálypsis of its own.

Speaking of lizard brains, back to the bro ...

In foreign policy, everyone is an ardent Israel supporter. Former Florida senator Marco Rubio, set to become secretary of state, a completely orthodox conservative Republican, said in his Senate confirmation testimony: “How can any nation-state on the planet coexist side-by-side with a group of savages like Hamas?”
Trump’s pick for defence secretary, the much married former Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth, who also had some time in the military but has no political or administrative experience and represents a completely different corner of Trumpworld from Rubio, told his Senate confirmation hearing: “I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.”
Trump will never come under pressure from within his administration or party to undermine, isolate or abandon Israel. Trump’s disposition, plus the geo-strategic transformation that Israel’s military campaigns have brought about, give Netanyahu greater political room to manoeuvre and mean he can contemplate taking the risks the hostage deal entails.
In the first phase of the proposed hostage deal, across six weeks, Israel gets only 33 of its hostages back, and some of these may be dead. It gets mainly the elderly, the sick and women. In return, it has to release 1000 Palestinian prisoners, including many serving life sentences. Those who have engaged in terrorism will not be released back into the West Bank or Gaza but offered exile in whatever nearby Arab or Muslim nation will take them.
Israel has done these prisoner deals before. Sinwar, who put together the whole October 7 atrocity, was released from an Israeli jail in just such a prisoner-hostage swap.

Uh huh, that worked out well, Yahya Sinwar, who put together the whole October 7 atrocity, was released from an Israeli jail in a prisoner-hostage swap. Picture: AFP

Still, they all have an excellent role model ...

At this point, the bromancer made a valiant attempt to sort out the middle east (or the far west if you prefer) ...

During this first phase of the ceasefire the IDF will withdraw to the edge of Gaza and get out of most of the heavily populated areas. Israel will get its 33 hostages only a few people at a time. There will be much more aid flowing into Gaza for as long as the ceasefire holds.
In phase two of the ceasefire agreement, Israel is meant to withdraw more fully from Gaza. At that stage Hamas still may have another 60 or 65 Israeli hostages. It’s meant to gradually release these people, or at least those of them who are still alive. Probably more than 30 are already dead.
This is the only way Israel can get some of its people back. Whenever Israeli forces get near to hostages, Hamas kills them. So Netanyahu presumably feels that with Trump’s backing he can get this deal done and at least recover some dozens of living Israelis.
Analytically, it’s very difficult to see phase two, much less phase three, which is meant to produce permanent peace and complete Israeli withdrawal, ever coming about.
In phase two, Israel is supposed to hand over complete control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the border between southern Gaza and Egypt. It’s across this border that the lion’s share of smuggling into Gaza, especially of weapons, historically has taken place. If Israel doesn’t control that corridor, it’s overwhelmingly likely Hamas will eventually be able to resupply itself with weapons, missiles and explosives.
The Israelis have been insistent that the IDF retain freedom of movement across Gaza so if any terrorist threat reconstitutes itself the Israelis can take swift action.
Fatah, the Palestinian faction that through the Palestinian Authority runs the West Bank, recently denounced Hamas for the absolutely needless suffering it brought on Gaza Palestinians by attacking Israel. In Fatah’s view, this was purely in the service of Iran’s strategic interests. Fatah was determined not to let Hamas establish itself on the West Bank and bring similar carnage to West Bank Palestinians.
But here are the contradictions that the peace ceasefire doesn’t address. Who governs Gaza once the Israelis have withdrawn?

Hmm, tricky, what to do? Why blame Albo of course ...

Anthony Albanese says Hamas can have no role in the future governance of Gaza. A wise remark. But at every point the Prime Minister has opposed any actual action by Israel to prevent Hamas from exercising power. Talk about the comfort of irresponsibility.
Even today, Hamas is still in a position to steal aid, especially food, intimidate the Palestinian population and recruit new fighters to partly replace the old. The Gazan public is desperately keen for a ceasefire, desperately keen for some shred of normality to return to life. But for this to happen Hamas has to commit to not attacking Israelis again, or Israel has to stay in some kind of occupation.
There’s airy talk about getting peacekeeping troops in from neighbouring Arab countries. This seems extremely unrealistic.
There are no circumstances in which such troops would shoot on Hamas members or other Palestinian terrorists to prevent them attacking Israelis. And if such attacks are carried out the Israeli military will respond with great vigour. The Arab troops then would simply have to get out of the way or leave altogether. It’s hard to imagine any neighbouring Arab nation signing up for that.
But Trump had great success in the Middle East last time and might have similar success this time, notwithstanding the tragedy and mess of Gaza. Trump is a bully and a narcissist (like a lot of leaders). But as others point out, he’s also a deal-maker, a ruthless seeker of outcomes, and he likes the adulation of international statesmen and of history. And he tends to follow the money, in diplomacy as well as business. These instincts can lead him astray but they often work very well.

Then came a final snap, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with US President-elect Donald Trump and thanked him for his assistance in advancing the release of the hostages. Picture: X

The pond was more inspired by that bro talk of following the money ...what a cacophony already ...

Okay, okay, it's the bromancer's duty and obligation to put his best gloss on things ... and he struggles valiantly in his task ...

Trump created a clear, coherent structure in the Middle East last time he was president. He fully backed Israel and therefore had great influence with Israel, and he fully backed the Gulf Arab states that were against Iran, especially Saudi Arabia, creating a de facto US-Israel-Arab alliance against Iran. Trump nearly achieved a Saudi-Israel peace treaty. He will certainly seek that again this time.
Netanyahu told me once his strategy for the Palestinian issue was to solve it “outside in”. That is, if Israel can normalise its relations with most of its neighbours, over time this can lead to a normalised situation with Palestinians.
The rest of the world hopes such normalisation could lead eventually to a two-state solution, which Netanyahu has supported in the past.
Labor’s claim, frequently echoed in bizarre editorials on the ABC, that it is only backing traditional two state-policy and Peter Dutton has abandoned the two-state solution is completely dishonest and untrue.
Dutton’s position is exactly the same, as was John Howard’s and in fact all pre-Albanese prime ministers.
He supports a two-state solution that is negotiated fully by Israel and the Palestinians and includes the absolute disavowal of terrorism and the end of all claims on Israel by Palestinians. Albanese and his Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, in contrast, support forcing a two-state solution on Israel even if Palestinian leaders don’t commit to the things necessary for peace. That could be disastrous.

Really? Still peddling a meaningless two state solution? But we've already seen this tribe in action ...

If they can do that for LA, imagine what they can do for the world.

The bro did attempt one last note of hope ...

Trump won’t be obsessed by the two-state solution or anything else. The biggest question for Trump in the Middle East is whether he will back Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities or whether these could be addressed by truly hard-headed negotiations. Trump very much likes the idea that wars don’t happen when he’s president. Iran could be a special case.
In any event, the Trump presidency will transform the Middle East, as it will transform the world.

Cunning, admirable really in its own dissembling way. There are all sorts of transformations waiting in the future ...

And so to a chaser, more of the same, but three minutes lite, provided by John Lee in Sorry, PM, but Dutton is more a Trump kind of guy, There is a huge gulf between the Labor government and the incoming Trump administration on personality, policy and values.

Lee seems to think that being a Trump kind of guy is a selling point, Donald Trump is more likely to find common ground with Peter Dutton than Anthony Albanese on many issues, from attitudes to renewables, fossil fuels and nuclear to the approach taken to the Middle East and China.

A snap went with the pitch, and thank the long absent lord, it wasn't a gif, just a feeble collage ...

Perhaps Lee is right, perhaps it is a selling point, perhaps mindless graffiti and idle abuse is the way forward...

Well there's no point arguing with Lee, much as there was no point debating the bro, so the pond will keep on with a cartoon-led response...

Anthony Albanese claims he is better placed than Peter Dutton to work constructively with Donald Trump as he has established good relationships with Asian leaders. Canada’s Justin Trudeau had good relationships with Western European leaders but that didn’t stop Trump trolling him mercilessly and threatening Canada with tariffs.
Dutton countered that it was “comical” for Albanese to run this line. He is correct. One wonders why Albanese went there in the first place.
Unlike with the Coalition, there is a huge gulf between the Labor government and the incoming Trump administration on personality, policy and values.
Who is better placed and how best to deal with Trump is an important question. The world can’t stop talking about him because he will be disruptive and transformative in his second term. Whether it is for better or worse depends on one’s perspective. This gets to the point of why Albanese and not Dutton begins at a disadvantage.
It is clear from my interactions with some Trump nominees across several years – two of whom are nominees in his national security cabinet, one for a senior defence role, and another a personal adviser to him in the White House – that Australia does get outsized attention at the highest levels. It is a problem for Albanese.
I was in Washington when reports of Kevin Rudd’s derogatory comments about Trump surfaced. The current conversation is whether Rudd will hold on to his ambassadorial role. What Trump thinks about Rudd is less important than what he thinks about our Prime Minister and his government. Shortly after the Rudd comments emerged, I was shown a sheet of paper by a loyal Trump adviser with degrading comments made in the past by not only Rudd but also Albanese and some of his ministers. I was subsequently informed those comments were shown to Trump.
Trump’s capacity to hold grudges and exact personal vengeance is well known. Put that aside as he has more burning personal targets than the Australian Prime Minister. The problem is how Labor’s denigration of Trump was interpreted.

Indeed, indeed ...

Now for a bit of climate science denialism ...

According to some of Trump’s closest advisers, the Labor denigration is no different to the snobbishness and nastiness of elites in the Democratic Party seeking to brand Trumpian perspectives as stupid, illegitimate, and even evil. Hillary Clinton notoriously referred to Trump supporters as belonging to a “basket of deplorables” and the Labor comments are seen in the same light.
As Albanese is arguing in claiming he can best manage Trump, strong positive connections at the highest levels of power have enormous implications. In this sense, Albanese begins from an awkward place. What about policy and values? On many issues of substance separating Labor and the Coalition, Trump is likelier to side with Dutton rather than Albanese.
Several of the individuals about to play a key part in the Trump administration have cast doubt or heaped scorn on Albanese’s outsized reliance on renewables and rejection of fossil fuels and nuclear as critical sources of power. Allowing unions such an influential role in shaping Labor’s industrial relations policies has been critically noted. Albanese’s approach to Israel and the Middle East has come in for scathing condemnation. The Prime Minister’s formula of “co-operating where we can, disagree where we must, and always engage in our national interest” when dealing with China is seen by key Trump nominees as cover for a timid approach that merely avoids rather than manages difficulties in that relationship.

Indeed, indeed, such scorn, such a good way forward ...

The pond understands it's all about sanewashing, and providing some sort of hope, and somehow Lee manages to imagine that a plucky mutton Dutton will wrangle the tangerine tyrant and all will be well...

Moreover, Trump and his inner circle are filled with individuals who loathe identity politics and related diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Albanese’s advocacy for the voice for Indigenous Australians was seen as an extreme consequence of this mindset. It simply did not make sense to Trump’s Republicans – and to many Democrats for that matter. The point is that on most policies and values that divide Labor and the Coalition, Dutton is much better positioned to find common ground with Trump.
There are elements that will be difficult for Albanese or Dutton to deal with. Trump’s inclination to disrupt extends to breaking or weakening institutions and conventions that he believes are not in his interest. Sometimes it will be to further narrow US interest and other times necessary for the greater long-term good, including ours. For example, his criticisms of global economic rules and China’s exploitation of them are valid.
Trump wants to change the structure of global production. Our problem is that as a commodities exporter we benefit disproportionately from China’s state-directed political economy based on unhealthy levels of fixed investment and over-production.
Or consider Trump’s demands that allies pay and do more. This is necessary for the future of a healthy alliance system but means pain and sacrifice for whoever is in the Lodge.
In any event, Trump might not make political life easier for Dutton. But it does seriously complicate things for Albanese.
John Lee is a non-resident senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC. From 2016 to 2018 he was senior adviser to the Australian foreign minister.

Oh yes, just answer the questions the right way, and life will be a whole lot easier ...

In which a hothouse climate allows our Henry to flower, neigh to blossom, into his usual nightmare blather...

 

Teaser trailer:

Tocqueville’s nightmare had an immense impact on liberal thinkers, beginning with John Stuart Mill.

First half of the matinee:

The reptiles were wildly excited this day ...

...but when the pond looked over on the extreme far right, there was neither hide nor hair of our Henry ...

Sorry, bromancer, with your desire to maintain the reptile anti-Semitic carry on; sorry Alex, urging the pond to rejoice in ethnic cleansing and genocide... 

The pond's natural tendency to exuberance about all that was dampened by the immortal Rowe of the day ...

Just to emphasise the point ...

Besides, if the pond wants to stray into that turf, it needs full pomposity and learned classical references. It's Friday, when the classical gods of Rome and Greece are let loose to roam the earth ...

Such was the shock of our Henry not being visible on the extreme far right that the pond dropped in on Colin Packham, offering this Australia’s 2035 emissions target timetable up in the air as agency considers the Trump effect, Labor is on course to head to the federal election without a 2035 emissions reduction target as the agency tasked with providing advice considers the likely effect of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Col began with an AV distraction:

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has spruiked the Coalition's nuclear power plan during a pre-election pitch as he hopes to combat "exorbitant" energy costs. "Exorbitant energy costs are causing inflation across the economy – food, goods and services are all costing more," Mr Dutton said. "We will replace the existing coal generation network with zero emission nuclear technologies on those sites of the seven retired coal-fired power plants."

Sure enough, the pond was immediately distracted, and reminded of a rant in Crikey by Bernard Keane and Glenn Dyer, Dutton’s new nuclear nightmare: construction costs continue to explode, The latest massive cost blowout at a planned power station in the UK demonstrates the absurdity of Peter Dutton's claims about nuclear power in Australia. (paywall)

Peter Dutton’s back-of-the-envelope nuclear power plan has suffered another major hit, with new reports showing the expected cost of the newest planned UK nuclear power plant surging so much its builder has been told to bring in new investors.
The planned Sizewell C nuclear plant in Suffolk, to be built by French nuclear giant EDF in cooperation with the UK government, was costed at £20 billion in 2020. According to the Financial Times, the cost is now expected to double to £40 billion, or $79 billion.
The dramatic increase in costs is based on EDF’s experience with Hinkley Point C, currently being built in Somerset, which was supposed to commence operations this year but will not start until at least 2029. It was initially costed at £18 billion but is now expected to cost up to £46bn, or $90 billion.
So dramatic are the cost blowouts that EDF and the UK government have been searching, with limited success, for other investors to join them in funding Sizewell.
Meanwhile across the Channel, France’s national audit body has warned that the task of building six new nuclear reactors in France — similar in scale to Peter Dutton’s vague plan for seven reactors of various kinds around Australia — is not currently achievable.
The French government announced the plan in 2022, based on France’s long-established nuclear power industry and its state-owned nuclear power multinational EDF, with an initial estimate of €51.7 billion. That was revised up to €67.4 billion ($112 billion) in 2023. It is still unclear how the project will be financed, with little commercial interest prompting the French government to consider an interest-free loan to EDF.

Put it another way ...

Do carry on ...

The cour de comptes also noted the “mediocre profitability” of EDF’s notorious Flamanville nuclear plant, which began producing electricity last year a decade late and 300% over budget. It warned EDF’s exposure to Hinckley was so risky that it should sell part of its stake to other investors before embarking on the construction program for French reactors. The entire program was at risk of failure due to financial problems, the auditors said.
That France, where nuclear power has operated for nearly 70 years, and where EDF operates 18 nuclear power plants, is struggling to fund a program of a similar scale to that proposed by Dutton illustrates the vast credibility gap — one mostly unexplored by a supine mainstream media — attaching to Dutton’s claims that Australia, without an extant nuclear power industry, could construct reactors inside a decade for $263 billion. Based on the European experience — Western countries that are democratic and have independent courts and the rule of law, rather than tinpot sheikhdoms like the United Arab Emirates — the number is patently absurd.
Backed by nonsensical apples-and-oranges modelling by a Liberal-linked consulting firm that even right-wing economists kicked down, the Coalition’s nuclear shambles is bad policy advanced in bad faith by people with no interest in having their ideas tested against the evidence. The evidence from overseas is that nuclear power plants run decades over schedule and suffer budget blowouts in the tens of billions — and that’s in countries with established nuclear power industries and which don’t suffer the kind of routine 20%+ infrastructure cost blowouts incurred by building even simple roads and bridges in Australia.
But good luck finding any of that out from Australian journalists.

The pond certainly didn't learn any of that from Col ... instead Col gamely carried on ...

Australia is on course to head to the polls without Labor setting a 2035 emission reduction target, as the agency tasked with advising the government is yet to appoint an expert panel, amid expectations US president-elect Donald Trump will slash US climate change ambitions.
Labor had promised to deliver its 2035 targets by February, in line with the Paris Agreement, but it must first receive advice from the Climate Change Authority, which is now chaired by former NSW Liberal treasurer Matt Kean.
Mr Kean late last year insisted that advice was on course to be delivered to Labor by the end of 2024, but the election of Mr Trump as US president saw the CCA rethink its timetable.
Mr Kean said the agency would need to re-examine its modelling in the wake of the election of Mr Trump.
During his first term, Mr Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement and during the recent campaign he said he was likely to do so again, putting global plans to fight climate change into disarray.
With the inauguration of Mr Trump less than a week away, The Australian understands the CCA has yet to finalise its technical expert advisory panel.
The delay will see Australia technically fall foul of its Paris Agreement target, but analysts have said it could be advantageous to head to the polls without a contentious target that could focus voter attention on the cost of reducing emissions.
Because of the delay, Australian voters may not know the intentions of the major parties on emissions beyond 2030.

Actually Col, we have a pretty good idea of the government's policies...Australia expands four coal mines despite warning of climate ‘death sentence’

a betrayal of global climate commitments.

Anthony Albanese’s government on Thursday approved the Boggabri, Caval Ridge Horse Pit, Lake Vermont Meadowbrook and Vulcan South coal mines to extend or expand their operations.

Analysts said these mines could release over 850 million tonnes of CO2 over their lifetimes, double the annual emissions of Australia.

“To put it plainly – it’s a death sentence for us if larger nations continue to open new fossil fuel projects,” Tuvalu’s prime minister Feleti Teo said.

This is the seventh coal mine expansion approved by the Albanese government in less than 90 days. The continued expansion of coal mines comes even as Australia pushes to host the Cop31 climate summit in 2026 on behalf of the island nations.

“The nation intends to co-host COP31 – the 2026 UN Climate Talks –but ongoing expansion of coal and gas risks jeopardising relationships in the region and Australia’s legitimacy as a climate leader,” Reverend James Bhagwan, general secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches, said.

Joseph Sikulu, Pacific managing director of the advocacy group 350.org, accused the Albanese government of hypocrisy, adding that the emissions from these projects would dwarf those of the Pacific region.

“These mines will emit 7.5 times more carbon than all Pacific island nations produce in a year,” he said. “This makes a mockery of the ‘family’ Australia claims to call the Pacific.”

And so on, and it's much the same with gas ...Japan and Australia’s gas-fuelled obsession endures under Asia Zero Emission Community

Australia is giving away its gas for free to the Japanese gas industry to profit from. The status quo contributes to delaying decarbonisation across the Asia-Pacific. If Japan and Australia are serious about climate action, they cannot allow projects involving fossil fuels and unproven technologies to go forward under the guise of AZEC, at the expense of everyone but the gas industry.

And so on, and on, but do carry on Col ...

Labor has set an aggressive target of reducing emissions by 43 per cent from 2005 levels by the end of this decade, a target that the Coalition has aggressively campaigned against, arguing it is unachievable. The Coalition has said it will not offer an alternative plan before the election.
Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen insists Australia is on course to meet its 2030 target.
“Because we are working with industry and business, there is a clear understanding of what needs to be done over the next five years to reduce emissions in their sectors for Australia to meet its legislated 2030 emissions reduction target.”
Mr Trump has poured scorn on attempts to cut emissions, in contrast to his predecessors.
The outgoing Biden administration last year announced a US target to cut emissions by between 61 and 66 per cent by 2035, but Mr Trump intends to drop this.
Mr Trump has pledged immediate action to bolster fossil fuel production and limit government support for both electric cars and renewable energy.
It is unclear whether Mr Trump can or will overturn Mr Biden’s signature energy transition legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, which offers a wave of sweeteners to bolster clean energy generation.

“Our robust reforms and pragmatic policies are delivering what we’ve always said – Australia’s 43 per cent target is ambitious but achievable,” a spokeswoman for Mr Bowen said.

At this point, Col and the reptiles discovered a truly banal image and a startling notion, Australia is one of the world’s largest per capita emitters of carbon dioxide.

Neither the image or the news about the emissions - how we love to emit - stopped Col from carrying on ...

The looming election, due by mid May, is expected to be a referendum on the country’s economy, which is buckling under a cost of living crisis and high inflation that saw the Reserve Bank lift interest rates 13 times to a 13-year high.
The voter focus is in contrast to the 2022 election, when emissions were front and centre in the minds of voters. The 2022 election saw the Greens pick up their largest share of the vote and several independents were elected to parliament on a platform of environmental action.
Labor moved quickly to set a target of having renewables generate 82 per cent of the country’s electricity by 2030, substantially reducing emissions. Labor also implemented the Safeguard Mechanism policy, which requires Australia’s largest polluters to reduce emissions by about 5 per cent a year.
But a cost-of-living crisis, fuelled in large part by a surge in utility bills, has seen a swing – particularly against the Greens.
A record number of Australians have been unable to pay their utility bills. Supporters of the energy transition insist the rollout of renewables is putting downward pressure on bills.
The federal government in May 2024 offered a series of sweeteners, headlined by a $300 energy rebate that has helped temporarily lower inflation. Those rebates are set to end within months, though there are widespread expectations that Treasurer Jim Chalmers will extend them.

Meanwhile, no thanks to the LA fires, over at The Conversation, Climate change is forcing us to rethink our sense of ‘home’ – and what it means to lose it.

Perhaps there are other ways forward ...

Indeed, indeed, what a worthy aspiration, and our Henry is up to the challenge.

You see, he was just hiding, displaced, marked down, sent to the cornfield, off to the outside dunny, a sign that even the reptiles were well over him ...

But he was lurking, and the pond dug him up ...just so the pond could offer the regular Friday treat of pomposity and portentous pretentiousness, with the hole in the bucket man offering up Principles of freedom crushed by intolerance, Of course, ostracising the voices with which one disagrees is nothing new. Indeed, Alexis de Tocqueville, who was fully familiar with its antecedents in classical Greece, foresaw the danger of a new form of ostracism emerging in a world increasingly shaped by public opinion.

The reptiles began with an image, Nina Sanadze at home surrounded by her sculptures and drawings. Image: Lillie Thompson

Then our Henry began a sorry tale ...

As this paper reported last weekend, Nina Sanadze, a well-known Australian sculptor, has been hounded out of Melbourne’s Gertrude Studio for refusing to denounce Israel and endorse the massacre Hamas perpetrated on October 7, 2023.
The move follows a concerted campaign launched after the “doxxing” in January last year of a group of Jewish creative artists by a reporter from The New York Times.
Fuelling that campaign was a statement, issued by the National Association for the Visual Arts, asserting that “armed attacks on October 7 by Palestinian people cannot be de-contextualised from 75 years of settler colonialism”. While never even naming Hamas – much less mentioning its atrocities – the statement urged artists to act in whatever way they could to “stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza”.
With Sanadze being identified in the doxxing as one of the five most prominent Australian Jewish artists, Gertrude came under enormous pressure to exclude her from its facilities – pressures to which it eventually succumbed. Unfortunately, Sanadze’s “cancelling” is only the latest instance of a far broader assault on artistic freedom.

The reptiles have been giving Sandadze an unseemly amount of space of late, with Sandze seizing the moment to promote a new gallery and blathering about "uncancelling" politically censored, silenced and muted voices...though strangely not some voices...

Never mind, the pond doesn't intend to get in those weeds, especially not the talk of animal behaviour, or other tedious explanations...

In another leaked, private message, Sanadze said she was ­“facetiously” referring to Hamas exploiting humanitarian aid when she described captured Palestinian men, stripped to their underwear by the Israeli Defence Forces in December 2023, as “overweight”. She also wrote that “Israel was arresting them (the men) not executing”. (sorry, another lizard Oz story in the redemptive campaign, so no link)

What a sublime joke, what hilarious comedy stylings, and they were so good, they sent our Henry off into an ever expanding rant, as is our Henry's wont...

Historically, artists campaigned for the right to create unhampered by social and political pressure. Works were to be judged strictly on their merits, not on the basis of the views or character of their creator; and equally, creators were not to be prosecuted, punished or proscribed merely because their works offended some and appalled others. In short, the artistic and literary arena was to be one in which all artists and works could contend.
Now, those principles have been buried. Echoing the fatwa the ayatollah Khomeini issued in 1989 condemning Salman Rushdie, some 7000 writers called last October for all the creators who had not “publicly recognised the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law”, or who were in other ways “complicit” with Israel, to be effectively erased from the public sphere.

At this point, the reptiles interrupted with another image, “Zio Dogs” graffiti at Gertrude Contemporary the day artist Sanadze was moving sculptures for an exhibition.

Then came the required dose of portentous pomposity:

Of course, ostracising the voices with which one disagrees is nothing new. Indeed, Alexis de Tocqueville, who was fully familiar with its antecedents in classical Greece, foresaw the danger of a new form of ostracism emerging in a world increasingly shaped by public opinion.
Already at the beginning of the 19th century, Hegel had warned about the ambivalence of public opinion’s sway, describing its immense force as deserving to be “despised as well as respected”. Some years later, Tocqueville, witnessing the attacks being launched in the US by the Jacksonian populists against their political opponents, feared that public opinion’s overwhelming force would inaugurate an age in which dissidents were banished into oblivion.
“The master,” he wrote in one of Democracy in America’s most chilling passages, “no longer says: think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do; but from this day forth you shall be a stranger among us. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they too, be shunned in turn. No, I will not take your life; but the life I leave you with is worse than death.”

Whatever else you might say, the life that has been left in Gaza, no thanks to Hamas or a fundamentalist Israeli government intent on extermination, might well be worse than death ...Gaza in rubble and ruin, After a year of conflict, two-thirds of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed, leaving behind 42 million tonnes of rubble and a mountain of health risks.

Israel’s military campaign since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack has devastated the Gaza Strip, leaving an estimated 42 million tonnes of debris piled where houses, mosques, schools and shops used to stand. In April a U.N. estimate reckoned that this would take 14 years to dispose of, while the U.N. official overseeing the problem said the clean-up would cost at least $1.2 billion.

Tackling the debris crisis will be harder because it is spread across so much of the Gaza Strip, and because there are so many areas of intense destruction. The volume of rubble is immense and continues to accumulate rapidly. Adding to the complexity is the large quantity of unexploded ordnance (UXO) as well as risks from asbestos and other contaminants, especially in refugee camps, and the large number of bodies still lying in the rubble.

The World Health Organization said large amounts of dust released from destroyed buildings are releasing hazardous materials that float into the air or seep into water supplies, risking serious health problems for Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

According to a damage assessment from UNOSAT, 163,778 structures were damaged in the Gaza Strip based on images taken on Sept. 3 and Sept. 6 amounting to 66% of the total. Of these, 78% were completely destroyed or severely or moderately damaged.

Yep indeedy do, and that was back in October, and since then much has been done to add to the picture ...

Put it another way ...

A nightmare landscape, which makes our Henry's blathering about nightmares something of a nightmare ...  but please, do admire the way he manages to expand his ranting vision ...

Tocqueville’s nightmare had an immense impact on liberal thinkers, beginning with John Stuart Mill. Especially when it is whipped into a frenzy, Mill grimly noted, public opinion can impose “a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself”.
And whenever that “spirit of intolerant mediocrity” was allowed to prevail, irresistible impetus would be given to the “ever-flowing current of human affairs toward the worse”.
There is, nonetheless, a crucial respect in which our current predicament contradicts the 19th-century liberals’ projections. The risks public opinion posed, they believed, lay in the uneducated masses, who were less likely to be moved by reason than by emotion. That is why Mill considered it essential to ensure the “intelligent” could resist the “democracy of mere numbers” by granting greater voting power to “the more educated, more intrinsically valuable members of society” – at least until universal education had made “the lower classes” less vulnerable to fanaticism.
But the lynch mobs that now dominate the public sphere are not populated by the least educated majority of the population. They are, on the contrary, largely comprised of a narrow minority of graduates, who – according to the classical liberals – ought to be immune to madnesses such as anti-Semitism. Yet the statement demanding that authors publicly renege their support for Israel is blatantly anti-Semitic, as it is plainly targeted at, and overwhelmingly intended to intimidate, writers who are Jewish.
Nor is anti-Semitism the only madness to grip the products of our academic institutions, and notably of the (increasingly misnamed) humanities departments. Rather, it was their calls that resonated most loudly in the persecution of Cardinal George Pell, the excesses of the #MeToo movement, the demonisation of “climate deniers”, the attempted suppression of dissenting opinion during the pandemic and the vilification of those who advocated a No vote in the voice referendum.

Oh sheesh, scare quotes for demonised "climate deniers", a nod to the Pellists, a ritual abjuring of the #MeToo movement, a glib tossed salad note about dissenting opinions in the pandemic, and the routine bashing of uppity difficult blacks?

Does that mean our Henry is a climate science denier; loves the way that the Catholic church molested thousands of children and refused to face up to it; turned full RFK Jr/Killer Creighton and refused all vaccines and urgings to wear masks, on the basis of his own expert medical opinion, taking to Ivermectin like a stallion; and thinks locking up ten year old black kids in adult prisons will be jolly good and teach them a lesson?

Who knows, because our Henry didn't expand on his litany, and instead rambled to a close ...

No one more astutely grasped the nature of that phenomenon than Theodore Adorno, the founder of Critical Theory, particularly after students he considered “red fascists” shut down his philosophy lectures for being “irrelevant” in 1968 and 1969.
Those students, he argued, exemplified the “neo-stupidity” of the “half educated” – they were instructed but not cultured, sufficiently learned to be arrogant but not sufficiently learned to understand the limits of their knowledge. They had, in other words, never understood how to be righteous without being self-righteous, to judge without being judgmental and to be moral without being merely moralistic.
Today’s situation is even worse than that. Too often, on issues that range from climate change to gender, and from Australian history to Indigenous policy, young people are taught answers, not questions. Little wonder then that the question mark, which is the hallmark of an open society, has vanished from their keyboard, if not from their vocabulary; and little wonder too that the spirit of tolerance, which is the spirit of liberty, has vanished with it.
There is, no doubt, more the government could and must do to protect those such as Nina Sanadze, who are bearing that trend’s awful consequences. In the end, however, Judge Learned Hand was right when he said “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women – when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; while it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it”. As we celebrate Australia Day, preserving liberty’s embattled spirit deserves to be the greatest priority of all.

Oh sheesh, a final Oz day huzzah ... a cry for freedumb in a way only our Henry can manage...

Sadly, the pond had already used up the infallible Pope of the day, but be reassured that liberty's embattled spirit is in fine fettle...

In which the pond needs help identifying complacent centrists, because they sure ain't in a serve of Dame Slap's bigotry and bile ...

 

Sad, really, that news of a ceasefire and arguing over the credit should push way down the page a classic reptile story about bosses baulking at Dutton's January 26 election vow. 

According to the reptiles, some large businesses will allow staff to work the national day, and take another day off, as flexibility around public holidays takes hold... which verges on treason.

No doubt those treasonous bosses will surface again as we march towards the war on Oz day.

Regarding credit for the Gaza truce, the pond doesn't mind who wants the photo op ...

As for the extreme far right of the rag, Dame Slap strutted forth, back as bold as brass, top of the reptile world, ma ...

What tiresome contributions to the recitations of the reptile follies.

Being extremely perverse, in the pond way, the pond wanted to wind back time to yesterday, when Daniel Finkelstein flew in from The Times to explain Uncle Leon, in Complacent centrists are to blame for Musk, Tech billionaire’s bromance with Trump is a response to the inability of established parties to reform failing institutions.

Foolish pond, it had always thought of Uncle Leon as being welcomed into King Donald I's court to fund his campaign, but apparently complacent centrists conspired to produce that result ...

Still, the pond had complained of the reptiles failing to pay attention to the circus, that epic carnival of clowns, and however feeble, this was a start, especially as it was blessed with a splendid opening collage, Musk's political observations seem sometimes to come from another planet and it is probably not a coincidence that one of the things that drives him is the prospect of living on Mars.

Now to go on the hunt for those complacent centrists ...

“Musk went through periods when he oscillated between depression, stupor, giddiness and manic energy. He would fall into foul moods that led to almost catatonic trances and depressive paralysis. Then, as if a switch flipped, he would become giddy and replay old Monty Python skits of silly walks and wacky debates, breaking into his stuttering laugh.”
Walter Isaacson’s portrait of Elon Musk in last year’s biography is of a man living on the edge of (and sometimes over the edge of) insanity. A troubled man driven to extremes, who never takes a holiday, couch surfing or sleeping under his desk. And expecting others to do the same.

Handily the reptiles gave a plug for the book, Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson.

Still no sign of complacent centrists, but the pond hung in ...

He is someone quick to deploy to his employees the insults his father once hurled at him, calling them idiots and berating them before firing them. Someone it is almost impossible to say no to, even when what he is asking for is impossible. So people stop telling him things that he needs to hear. This doesn’t sound like the perfect collaborator for a president who employs the slogan “Trump was right about everything”, sometimes in capital letters, echoing the posters in fascist Italy that insisted “Mussolini is always right”.
Donald Trump, too, is given to abruptly terminating professional relationships and then abusing those who once worked for him. Like Musk, he falls in love but his most enduring love affair is with himself. Musk, by contrast, seems like someone who would quite like to split up even with himself if that were physically possible.
So the prospects for a lasting Musk-Trump political partnership do not seem great, even if one assesses it only by observing their personalities and working styles. But I think the prospects are grimmer than that, for reasons that are politically interesting.
As well as being manic and difficult and offensive and spectacularly ignorant about British politics, Musk is something else: brilliant. Visionary, in fact. His professional achievements have been truly impressive and real advances for humanity - commercial reusable rockets, financially viable electric car production, a revolution in satellite provision - have come from him sleeping under his desk.

Ah, it's actually about the Poms, as if they mattered ... and then came a snap, Elon Musk speaks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump at a viewing of the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024. Picture: Brandon Bell/Getty Images/AFP

But what of the complacent centrists? They seem to be missing so far. Could these be they?

Just asking for a Finkelstein.

Silly pond, of course not ... let the hunt for the complacent centrists continue ...

His political observations seem sometimes to come from another planet and it is probably not a coincidence that one of the things that drives him is the prospect of living on Mars. But he doesn’t merely dream about this, he is working on it and making progress. When he fires people it is not, as it almost always is with Trump, merely about his ego. He does it because he refuses to let his projects fail, since he (with reason) regards them as essential for the survival of human consciousness.
As Isaacson reports: “[Musk had] a life vision that he would repeat like a mantra. ‘I thought about the things that will truly affect humanity,’ he says. ‘I came up with three: the internet, sustainable energy and space travel.’” In pursuit of this vision he relentlessly battles obstacles. He spends hour after hour, day upon day, on the assembly line of his projects, working to speed up processes, getting across the detail, quizzing the people directly responsible. His approach to any step in production that isn’t strictly necessary is always “delete, delete, delete”. Rules are always to be questioned, with the only limits to questioning being the laws of physics.
All three parts of the Musk method are distant from that of Trump. First, Musk’s obsessions are not Trump’s. The Tesla founder wants to save this planet and establish a base on another planet as back-up. Meanwhile, Trump was pulling out of the Paris accord on climate change, a move that prompted Musk to resign from the presidential councils during the last Republican administration.
Second, Musk’s obsession with detail and process is, to say the least, not shared by a president-elect with little interest in detail of any kind. Musk’s sale of all his properties so he could live a simple life in a small house near his production facility could not be more alien to Trump’s style and preoccupations. Musk wants brilliant people - even if they are immigrants, as he is himself. Immigration, like climate change, divides him from the Trump base.
Thirdly, Musk’s impatience with all limitations except those imposed by the laws of physics is not shared by Trump. Because Trump doesn’t make an exception for the laws of physics. He prefers his own reality.
So yes, there are things both men can do for each other, that is for sure. And they are both transactional. But I nonetheless believe their relationship to be doomed. In rather the same way, and for similar reasons, that the relationship between Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson was doomed.

Talk about taking a winding road down an eye test to complete irrelevance, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings in 2016. Picture: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP

We started off looking for complacent centrists, and somehow we ended up with Bojo the clown and onetime sidekick Dominic? Ah, that allows Finkelstein to strut in to the Finkelstein tale:

I remember meeting Cummings while he was still in No 10 and he explained, compellingly, what he thought was wrong with the way Britain was governed: our inefficient processes, our hopeless procurement, our poor hiring and management of public servants and the layers of rules and bureaucracy that prevented effective provision of services. I told him I found this all pretty persuasive and a project for government - but why did he think the charismatic, creative but cheerfully chaotic Johnson was the right leader of it? Cummings smiled ruefully. He was out within months.
The projects of the right-wing populists like Nigel Farage and Trump and the techno geeks like Musk and Cummings are not the same. They will not produce durable alliances. This is not only because they have a tendency to think others are fools, although that doesn’t help.

Um, surely there's a slight difference between Uncle Leon and Dominic, if only in terms of billions? 

Never mind, it's all our fault, nothing to do with the assorted billionaires and fellow travelling flakes who have flocked to sundry altars to worship, protect their billions, and make more billions, People like Farage and Trump are the beneficiaries of our failure. Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images

Would it be fair to suggest that people like Farage and Trump are the beneficiaries of the largesse of the Emeritus Chairman and his favoured spawn?

Sorry, they're the beneficiaries of our failures.

Or perhaps it's just that the Murdochians are yesterday's lickspittle fellow travellers, and are feeling at a loss at being out of the limelight.

Perhaps that's why it turns out that it's all Daniel's fault ...

Cummings posits a start-up party to be run by the brightest people who operate at technologies’ cutting edge. Yet his political appeal has always been to people who left full-time education when they finished school. Those who ran this start-up party would have entirely different sensibilities and attitudes to those who voted for it. I don’t see how this can possibly work.
At least part of this is my fault. Or people like me. The reason why people like Musk pair with Trump and people like Cummings pair with Johnson is because Trump and Johnson are disrupters. Their alliance with these unsuitable partners is a cry for help. It is a protest against a centre that has been too complacent and institutions that are falling short. People like Farage and Trump are the beneficiaries of our failure.
A really brave approach to government and public service provision is required, an ambitious determination to stay up at night, going machine by machine down the government assembly line, saying “delete, delete, delete” to every rule that isn’t necessary and to every obstacle to getting the job done.
We need to sleep under our desks until we get it right.
The Times

Sleep under the desk? Get Faux Noise and the Oz and UK and US tabloid trash right?

Nah, the pond will stay sleeping in bed, knowing that Daniel and his ilk are completely clueless, useful idiots working for the man ... 

King Donald I didn't manage those skating skills without a lot of help from his Faux Noise chums ...

And so to the usual serve of bigotry and bile from Dame Slap, with the reptiles promising it will take some five dreary minutes to plough through Blowback on DEI as the world finds its voice, Like a rock band that’s gone off the rails, the entire DEI team is being disbanded. Those who value fairness will be celebrating.

The piece opened with a prime example of just how wretched the lizard Oz graphics department has become ... It shouldn’t take a High Court ruling or a Trump-like figure in Australia for companies in our own country to choose fairness over a misguided policy that is anything but fair, writes Janet Albrechtsen.

Really? That's the best the reptiles can do these days? Cheap arsed graphics that litter the interube

The pond is beyond tired at grizzling at the graphics department, and as for Dame Slap, such is the ennui, there's no grizzle left, but plenty of indigestible gristle ...

If 2025 is not the year when Australian companies come to their senses, put that down to a new class of rent-seekers on company boards and in management.
When it comes to deceptively named diversity, equity and inclusion policies, the people responsible for running our big companies have put their heads in the sand. If they read the tea leaves – or even consulted a safe space for progressives such as The Guardian – they’d realise that it’s high time they chose common sense and fairness over fads and ­ideology.
Earlier this month, Facebook’s parent company announced that it is rolling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. AXIOS broke the news of an internal Meta memo that announced to staff the termination of DEI programs in the company’s hiring, ­develop­ment and procurement practices.
“The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” wrote Janelle Gale, vice-president of human ­resources.
“The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signalling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms longstanding principles that discrimination should not be tolerated on the basis of inherent characteristics. The term ‘DEI’ has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others,” Gale wrote.

Great, the reptiles can return to bashing difficult, tricky, uppity blacks and other minorities. And don't get Dame Slap or the rest of the howling mob started on trans folk...

Oh wait, they never really stopped ...and now it's time for an AV distraction and a little cross promotion.

Sky News host Liz Storer slams Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg after he appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast and praised masculinity while shutting down global DEI operations. “Who is falling for this? We all know it’s the Trump effect,” Ms Storer said. “The winds are changing, and now he wants to be in the cool club.”

The cool club? King Donald I and a UFC boofhead are the cool club? Surely Zuck the incredible cuck suck just wants to protect his billions, make more, and stay out of clink, where King Donald once threatened to send him ...

And if Liz Storer is aspiring to be a member of the cool club, count the pond out.

Better to bung on a ball for the monarch, like a fawning cuck of the Zuck kind would do for an epic suck ...

Back to the bashing of minorities ...

Announcing the end to DEI, Gale said that “having goals [for race or gender] can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender”.
You don’t say. Gale told employees that diversity stipulations for suppliers have ended too, along with equity and inclusion training programs. Indeed, like a rock band that’s gone off the rails, the entire DEI team is being disbanded.
Those who value fairness will be celebrating. Meta’s decision to mothball DEI signals a strong trend towards sanity among other big American companies; McDonald’s and Walmart are also rolling back diversity initiatives. Indeed, every week in America another company or university is ditching the DEI fad that has served only to undermine sound and fair employment and education practices.
To be sure, the US Supreme Court decision last year in Students for Fair Admission v Harvard helped American companies see the light, ending employment policies that preferred gender, skin colour and other traits over merit. Donald Trump’s election in November punched a few more nails into the coffin of this misguided progressive shibboleth.
It shouldn’t take a High Court ruling or a Trump-like figure in Australia for companies in our own country to choose fairness over a misguided policy that is anything but fair.
Alas, the single biggest impediment to sanity and fairness in Australian corporate life is a new class of rent-seekers. Those companies with the most iniquitous DEI policies – whether formal or informal – have boards full of DEI beneficiaries whose main recommendation is possession of one or more DEI characteristics.
Just as turkeys never vote for an early Christmas, let alone one at all, a woman who owes her elevation to a quota in favour of XX chromosomes will not be likely to support an end to quotas and other DEI paraphernalia. It might put their own position, and future ones, at risk if the whole DEI shebang is unravelled.
Fuelled by a mushy-minded ­affection for identity politics, Australian corporates have mandated a class of professional directors, frequently with mediocre to non-existent business careers, who filled, and then reinforced, DEI categories. The old-style ex-CEO types who used to populate company boards were derided as male, pale and stale relics of a past age. Competence, experience and strategic knowledge became ever so passé. Proxy advisers, union-dominated industry super fund investors and professional service firms who grow rich on ever increasing regulatory burdens all conspired to force the new DEI religion on Australian corporates.

Classic Dame Slap ... those who value fairness, fuelled by a mushy-minded affection for identity politics ...

And so on, and in Dame Slap's world, gays would still be in their closets, and uppity blacks would be back in the missions, and it's time for another AV distraction ...

Sky News host Liz Storer discusses McDonald’s Australia retaining it’s DEI pledges, despite the US headquarters announcing it will roll back diversity initiatives. “We’re usually behind them in these moves,” Ms Storer said. “Australia is just going to take a few years to catch up. “Also, we’re just lacking the strong leadership here.”

By golly, Liz Storer must be some sort of rising star of bigotry and bile in the Murdochian stable ...

And poor old Daniel Finkelstein wondered who emboldened the likes of Uncle Leon and King Donald I ...

Dame Slap just loves the hate, the bigotry, the fear and loathing, the chance to insult anyone and everyone, should they somehow offend ...

So it was on with the insults in a last, interminable gobbet ...

The ASX Corporate Governance Council, stuffed to the rafters with these DEI zealots, have ensured that the ASX’s Corporate Governance Guidelines are only a tad shorter than the Tax Act, and far less sensible. OK, I exaggerate the length and complexity of the ASX guidelines, but it’s clear these new “guidelines” where companies risk being shamed for not complying has enriched this new class of DEI devotees.
And with what results? Corporate Australia is regarded as a rather feeble joke by voters, and by both sides of politics. For example, voters were assisted mightily to understand that the voice was a terrible idea when corporate Australia outed itself as a vociferous, and bullying, supporter of the proposal to insert a permanent race-based body into our Constitution. Another example: the ALP pulled the ultimate swiftie on the gullible dopes running big Australian companies when it promised industrial relations moderation and instead delivered a trade union nirvana. Meanwhile, big business abandoned any financial or other support for the Coalition and treated its supporters as unenlightened troglodytes.
Is it any wonder corporate Australia is completely and utterly friendless. Apart, of course, from their fairweather friends in the big four accounting firms, the ASX Corporate Governance Council and the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
The return-to-sanity revolution happening in the US right now can’t get to Australia soon enough. 

Oh yes, it's an epic return to sanity ...

Do finish off, please finish off quickly ... there are so many people waiting to be insulted, derided, downgraded and tossed on the scrap heap, so that the rich, the strong, the privileged and their fellow travellers can prevail ...

The ASX Corporate Governance Council has ensured that no entrepreneur in his or her right mind, or with any alternative, would list on the Australian stock exchange. If you can raise money from private capital, why submit yourself to the accumulated regulatory excesses of the ASX? That’s why private markets are rapidly supplanting the public markets. Entrepreneurs are voting with their feet.
Another culprit in the process of entrenching DEI is the AICD. This body needs a complete overhaul. Rejigging its leadership team isn’t enough. Enlightened directors who choose fairness over fads will need a new body to help reinstate these values inside companies.
While an overhaul is enough at the AICD and the ASX Corporate Governance Council, dismantling DEI’s reign of terror will require the complete abolition of its key instrumentalities of division. For example, two entities that simply need to be permanently consigned to history are the Orwellian Workplace Gender Equality Agency and the separatist Reconciliation Australia.
The WGEA is an ambitious ­bureaucracy dedicated to a proposition that neither it nor anyone else has ever proved: that the fact men in aggregate are paid more than women in aggregate stems from inequality rather than deliberate choices. Its claim there is a gender pay gap ignores the fact that it is and has been illegal for nearly 50 years to pay a woman less than a man for the same job because she is a woman. It invents a bogus pay gap by using aggregate figures applicable in a workplace and ignoring pay comparisons on a like-for-like basis. It deliberately offers no clear definition of “gender equality” because that subterfuge enables it to continue to claim women need a leg-up permanently. It wants “gender equity” to remain an ever-receding mirage to entrench its existence and its ability to demand ever larger concessions for its constituents.
Reconciliation Australia is another example of good intentions paving the road to DEI hell. It pursues an agenda of separatism and Indigenous sovereignty under the guise of reconciliation. It wants two Australias, not a single reconciled Australia. Reconciliation action plans foisted on corporate Australia are Trojan horses for division and race-based preferences. Australians have shown that while they

Division? The entire reptile model is based on division, hate, bigotry and bile, and Dame Slap is an expert practitioner of the art of the hurled insult... as you'd expect of a privileged blonde, unassailable in her Murdochian ivory tower, living above the magic faraway tree on planet Janet ...

There's really not that much distance between her intolerance and the intolerance of the Taliban or the intolerance of the foaming, frothing fundamentalist Xians that litter the US and the GOP, or the intolerance of the sociopathic Vlad the Impaler, who provides an end note thanks to the immortal Rowe ...