Is the gun ready? Time to fire off a One PM salute to the reptiles ...

 

Below grade ore not fit to mined ...

Adelaide Writers’ Week
Are writers weeks like Adelaide now pointless?
Why Adelaide Writers Week and others are in danger of extinction
Distinguished South Australian writer Stephen Orr argues Adelaide Writers Week has transformed from an exciting literary discovery into tedious ideological battlegrounds that have lost their original purpose.
By Stephen Orr

How desperate, pathetic, needy and unseemly it is to join up late to a lizard Oz jihad?

Wondering who this Ore is, desperate to step into the limelight and join the current lizard Oz jihad? The reptiles provided this thumb ...

Stephen Orr is a writer based in South Australia. His first book was shortlisted for The Australian’s Vogel prize; he has also been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Miles Franklin Award and the International Dublin Literary Award. His new novel, The Night Parrots (Wakefield Press), is due in May 2026. Set in Hermannsburg Mission in 1922, it tells the story of fifty-year-old Pastor Martin Gerlach, his wife Alma and their fourteen-year-old son Benno.

More to the point:

So what now? Are we condemned to an eternity of intercol football, mega-utes and shiny new petrol stations? Endless photo ops for the Suits? The unholy communion of politics and populist media. Writers braying in the lizard Oz while narcissistically seeking attention? (Or some such, the pond might have added that last line).

Good on her ...

Furious Nine cartoonist Cathy Wilcox draws the line at an apology
Sorry certainly seems to be the hardest word for the award-winning Cathy Wilcox … expletives on the other hand? Not so much.
By Steve Jackson

Was it just another excuse to run the 'toon, which allegedly was extremely offensive and insulting and should never again see the light of day?

Tell us, jerk off Jacko ...

It was, it was ... look what the reptiles trotted out ...allegedly the shame that should never be seen again ...

Just like Bill Leak and his lesser spawn, you braying jack ass Jacko?

And good news via Mumbrella ..

Here's a suggestion. Stop pretending to be a faux leftie while running with the reptiles, and instead do something useful with what's left of your life ...

A cratering Caterist addendum to the day's reading ...

 For those wondering where the Caterist went ...

Why completely up himself, as is his wont, as he joined in the latest reptile jihad ...

Sorry, PM: You can’t engineer grief
Albanese reaction to Bondi has been to appeal for national unity at every opportunity. Yet no amount of determination can command it into existence. National unity and social cohesion cannot be created in a vacuum.
By Nick Cater 

The pond didn't have, still hasn't, got the stomach for it. Despite years of inuring itself to nausea, there has to be a limit... but the intermittent archive link is there for anyone able to swallow this sort of rabid, jingoistic nonsense ...

There is a precedent. In the US after 9/11, the Stars and Stripes became a symbol of resistance. Sales of flags and poles surged. The flags painted on the side of carriages on the New York Subway are a legacy of that period. The NSW government might like to think about taking up that idea for its trains, ferries and buses.

Sure ...provided you fly the flags the right way, How frogs went from right-wing meme to anti-ICE protest symbol 

In which the reptiles of the lizard Oz are a comprehensive jihadist bust, but the pond tries to offer links and distractions ...

 

Lately, what with assorted reptile jihads going down as befits the Australian Daily Zionist News, climate science denialism seems to have taken a back seat, and the consequences of the recent wild weather gone unremarked.

The reptiles at the Nine rags have tried to compensate ...

Global warning: Trump’s war on the planet heats up (*archive link)
Nick O'Malley
Environment and Climate Editor

King Donald makes an easy target ...

Married to readings of average temperatures, which lag but waltz ever upwards in harmony, the Keeling Curve is the world’s most simple and transparent illustration of climate change. The curve, and the field of climate science it accelerated, is not only one of the US’s great achievements and gifts to the world, but a demonstration of the efficacy of long-term and dedicated scientific practice.
Naturally, the Trump administration wants to destroy it.
In March, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency said it could save $US150,000 by ending the observatory’s lease on an office and in the administration’s midyear budget proposal, it flagged ending the organisation’s funding. The assault on the Mauna Loa Observatory is part of a far wider attack on climate science and action mounted by the Trump administration over the past year.
Some highlights: In April, the administration disbanded the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which had once been home to the climatologist James Hansen, whose 1988 testimony before Congress was key to introducing the world to the climate threat.
In August, Trump ordered a halt in the construction of the near-complete $US4 billion Revolution Wind project, a wind farm of 114 turbines off the coast of Rhode Island that by next year would have been providing enough electricity for 350,000 homes if the developer had been allowed to finish the job. Courts intervened, though days before Christmas, Trump again sought to force a halt to Revolution, and a second project called Empire Wind, also nearing completion.
Trump has raged against wind energy ever since turbines were built near his golf course in Scotland. “I’ve studied it better than anybody I know,” he said in a 2019 speech. “I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. They’re noisy. They kill the birds.”
In September, Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly devolved into a rant against climate science and renewable energy. “This ‘climate change’, it’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” Trump said. “All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong.”
Trump told world leaders, who listened in silence: “I’m really good at predicting things. I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true. I’ve been right about everything. And I’m telling you that if you don’t get away from this green energy scam, your country is going to fail.
“Radicalised environmentalists,” he said, wanted to “kill all the cows.“

And so on, and Bianca joined in ...

Climate whiplash: We can no longer pretend this isn’t a crisis (*archive link)
By Bianca Hall

What will it take for policymakers to take this more seriously?
That’s the question a desperate-sounding Jeremy posed on local ABC talkback radio as he drove through central Victoria, which has been ravaged by bushfires for the past week, while his family was on the Great Ocean Road trapped by floodwaters.
Queenslanders have been warned to brace for further flooding and heavy swells in coming days, as another cyclone threatens to form off the coast – even as recovery from ex-cyclone Koji continues.
In both NSW and Victoria, authorities on the weekend warned people to limit the time they spend outdoors to reduce exposure to bushfire smoke. That smoke, it should be remembered, contains toxic particles from everything incinerated in the fires – not just trees and grass, but buildings, factories, vehicles, and more.
Communities in southern New South Wales have been hit by fires. Communities in Queensland’s central highlands were urged to evacuate on Thursday morning as the Mackenzie River inched ever closer to its peak. Large areas of Western Australia remain gripped by severe heatwaves and fires.
Hundreds have been made homeless by the Victorian bushfires. Many more are now homeless – tourists, thankfully temporarily – due to the flash flooding that swept through the Great Ocean Road and Gippsland on Thursday.
These are not just “weather events”, and it’s not like we haven’t been warned. Climate scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades about the devastation that unchecked fossil fuel production and consumption, and the resulting warming, will bring.
They have warned that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which exacerbates sudden storms, just like the one that smashed through the Great Ocean Road.
And yet, there is a maddening tendency to treat each environmental crisis that climate change throws at us as another isolated incident.
Surely, that pretence must now fall.

There was even a graph, in approved  ABC Finance report style...

It's all a bit late.

Not that the pond is bitter, but see how that graph was performing back in 2010?

The pond remembers the glory days when the Nine rags, then under the name of Fairfax, hosted ratbags of the Paul Sheehan kind ...

Beware the climate of conformity (that's an intermittent archive link back to 2009)

...The subject of this column is not small. It is a book entitled Heaven And Earth, which will be published tomorrow. It has been written by one of Australia's foremost Earth scientists, Professor Ian Plimer. He is a confronting sort of individual, polite but gruff, courteous but combative. He can write extremely well, and Heaven And Earth is a brilliantly argued book by someone not intimidated by hostile majorities or intellectual fashions.
The book's 500 pages and 230,000 words and 2311 footnotes are the product of 40 years' research and a depth and breadth of scholarship. As Plimer writes: "An understanding of climate requires an amalgamation of astronomy, solar physics, geology, geochronology, geochemistry, sedimentology, tectonics, palaeontology, palaeoecology, glaciology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, ecology, archaeology and history."
The most important point to remember about Plimer is that he is Australia's most eminent geologist. As such, he thinks about time very differently from most of us. He takes the long, long view. He looks at climate over geological, archaeological, historical and modern time. He writes: "Past climate changes, sea-level changes and catastrophes are written in stone."
Much of what we have read about climate change, he argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modelling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive". Errors and distortions in computer modelling will be exposed in time. (As if on cue, the United Nations' peak scientific body on climate change was obliged to make an embarrassing admission last week that some of its computers models were wrong.)

And so on, and that's when it mattered, and that's when things might have been set in motion.

Instead the Nine rags went all in on click bait trolling with the likes of Miranda the Devine...

Green ideas must take blame for deaths (*archive link)

The Devine was in her prime back in February 2009:

So many people need not have died so horribly. The warnings have been there for a decade. If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.

Devine flourished in those days:

Planet doomsayers need a cold shower (*archive link)

...As a University of Adelaide geologist, Dr Ian Plimer, writes in his new book, Heaven And Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science, scientists are usually "anarchic, bow to no authority and construct conclusions based on evidence … Science is not dogmatic and the science of any phenomenon is never settled."
His dense book, crammed with 2311 footnotes, is a comprehensive scientific refutation of the beliefs underpinning the idea of human-caused climate change.
"It is meant to be an overwhelming demolition job," said Plimer on the phone from Adelaide where he is preparing a field trip this weekend to Broken Hill to study rocks.
He wrote the book, "for those out there with an open mind wanting to know more about how the planet works. The mind is like a parachute. It only works when it is open".
From the geologist's perspective he says our climate has always changed in cycles, affected by such variables as the orbit of the planet and our distance from the sun, which itself produces variable amounts of radiation. One of the lessons of 500 million years of history, he says, is that there is no relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature.

Sorry Nick, sorry Bianca, it's long way past too late, and how much better if young Warwick had driven your rag  into bankruptcy and oblivion. 

Your rag helped pave the way for the onion muncher and his kind, and now the Devine panders to King Donald, climate science denialist in chief. Your rag was an enabler, complicit in the folly, for which we now see the fruits.

Of course your rag struggled to match the out and proud loonacy of the lizard Oz, and characters of the Lloydie of the Amazon kind. Cf Crikey ... (sorry paywall, but this is all of it):

Back to reptile studies and the reason the pond did that extended Tootle is that today is a comprehensive bust.

The pond should note that yesterday rabid Zionist Our Henry was out and about, gambolling in company with Gawenda ... 

The pond will do no more than provide intermittent archive links ...

This is more than just a storm in a teacup. Our culture is being shredded;

Adelaide Writers Week hypocrisy shows how our intellectual class is betraying Australian tolerance
In demanding a platform, Randa Abdel-Fattah seeks to convert into a right what is merely a privilege: a privilege whose sole condition is the mutual respect she has repeatedly rejected.That ought to be uncontentious.
By Henry Ergas and Alex McDermott

The pond only notes it for diligent students and for those wanting to have a chortle at a rabidly intolerant bigot ranting about the need for tolerance in relation to this storm in a lizard Oz jihad teacup.

Another notable Zionist was also out and about and was still hanging around like a bad smell this morning ...

Conspiracy, hypocrisy: how Adler burned down Writers Week house
How Louise Adler burned down the Adelaide Writers’ Week house
Is this the biggest fiction? Louise Adler resigned over ‘Jewish lobby’ influence. Yet she allegedly tried to cancel a Pulitzer Prize winner herself, exposing contradictions in her free speech stance.
By Michael Gawenda

Is there anything lower or more intellectually debasing than joining in a lizard Oz jihad? While alleging that apparently the board had no agency whatsoever in the matter? 

One thing's certain - Jew on Jew action can be as wild as ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

As for debasement, Dame Slap blowing in from Planet Janet above the Faraway Tree was on hand to provide a definitive answer:

It’s setting norms, not laws, that will purge Jew hatred
Powers and mandates mean nothing without courage. No law – current or new – is a substitute for guts.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Remember when the reptile jihad was all about legislation and the quicker the better to pander to the Zionist lobby? But remember, the reptile spirit is to get them coming, and then going, and then coming and going again...

Have at her if you will, but the pond suspects that changing the behaviour of the current genocidal government of Israel might help.

As for the rest, the reason it's a bust is that this day's fare is what the pond calls headline nodders...

You read the headlines, and you nod, and perhaps say, "ah, so and thus", and then move on, knowing that all you need to know was embedded in the headlines ... while perhaps wondering, "is the lettuce still in with a shot?"

For some weird reason the reptiles have taken to encouraging chairman Xi and his minions on the Taiwan matter...

Note to DFAT: There’s no room for compromise on Taiwan question
Taiwan is a province of China, just as Tasmania is a state of Australia. This is the only correct understanding of the ‘one China’ principle.
By Xiao Qian

Dredging up China's ambassador like a cat gorged with platitudes gives the reptiles a chance to boast of an EXCLUSIVE

EXCLUSIVE

Prepare for ‘reunified China’, envoy warns

China says Australia must accept Taiwan reunification or face ‘no forgiveness’

Beijing’s ambassador has delivered a stark message comparing Taiwan to Tasmania while threatening Australia faces a choice between Chinese trade benefits and supporting Taiwan’s status quo.
By Anthony Galloway

The pond likes to imagine that back in the 1930s the reptiles would regularly have provided space for Herr Joachim von Ribbentrop advising "prepare for reunified Germany, envoy warns". 

What EXCLUSIVES those would have been...

How King Donald's Greenland putsch has empowered rogue states ...

The best the reptiles could muster was a mild clucking and tut-tutting from the lizard Oz editorialist buried deep in the commentary section ...

Perhaps the bromancer will surface later in the day, perhaps not.

As for the current lizard Oz jihad on Albo, his hate speech and gun laws, the reptiles continue to get him coming and going, but did he have to make it so easy for them?

Yet again the pond was reminded of that quote from The Wire:

Royce's ex-chief of staff, Coleman Parker, to Norman: "They always disappoint. Closer you get, the more you look. All of them."

Never mind, the pond always believes, with Scarlett, that tamarrah will be a better day ...or at least another one.

And so to end this day, the pond could have indulged in a survey of fine King Donald tweets ...

"The Fact That They Would Even Try To Pass Such A Bill Should Tell You Everything About How Much They Hate You": 34 Of The Very, Very, Very Best Political Tweets Of The Week

But that's for the likes of BuzzFeed.

Instead a note by a correspondent sent the pond haring off to cartoons in ancient 1950s times ... where McCarthyism suggests King Donald isn't the exception, so much as the rule ...

There were a couple of sites worth a squiz ...Let Me Finish ...

I checked out the third volume of Walt Kelly’s Pogo strips, Evidence to the Contrary, which runs from from 1953 to 1954. As acknowledged in the notes at the back of the volume, this is when the strip started getting political, satirizing Joseph McCarthy and the fervor for weeding out communists. McCarthy is caricatured in Simple J. Malarkey, a rather sinister wildcat introduced as a cousin of occasional villain Wiley Catt.
He’s assisted by Mole MacCarony, an extreme germophobe who walks around with a Flit gun that he sprays at just about everybody and everything, and later takes issue with migratory birds as well. He’s also incredibly near-sighted, as befits his species. He’s based on Patrick McCarran, an anti-communist senator from Nevada who supported limiting immigration and denying visas for ideological reasons.
The two of them join Deacon Mushrat’s bird-watching club, with Malarkey taking it over by threatening the Deacon with a shotgun, and starts casting suspicion on everyone.
The two are assumed to have killed each other in June 1953, but they both later reappear at a time when McCarthy was no longer being taken as seriously. MacCarony receives a taste of his own medicine when Albert accuses him of kidnapping with absolutely no evidence, and then starts a bomb scare when he mistakes a young woodchuck’s gibberish for subversive foreign speech. In August 1954, Malarkey shows up in the company of a badger named Charlie. He was named after someone called “Indian Charlie” whom McCarthy cited as his childhood mentor, but is drawn to look like Richard Nixon.
Malarkey, MacCarony, and Charlie all wear sacks on their heads a few times, and while of course McCarthy wasn’t affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, Kelly wanted to point out the similarity of their paranoid prejudice. The satire is silly and absurd, yet would presumably have hit close to home when the strips first ran and McCarthy was surprisingly popular. After all, if you DIDN’T support him, he was liable to brand you a communist.

A few more samples ...

Truth to tell, back in the day, the pond was more MAD magazine, though not as early as this sample ...

In that panel you can see Roy Cohn whispering into McCarthy's ear, and the ghost of Roy is still whispering into King Donald's ear to this very day ...

Re Herb Lock, here's a few cartoons, found at PBS ...

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was ...

A final word on climate science.

Anyone interested in those ghastly days can refresh memories with a Kiwi academic paper, available in pdf form for download:

Climate Change in the Media: Climate Denial,
Ian Plimer, and the Staging of Public Debate
Angi Buettner
Victoria University of Wellington

And so to keeping ancient cartoon spirits alive ...

In which the pond offers a Baker's dozen from The Times before turning to Polonius's writers' festival prattle...

 

The pond admits to overdoing it yesterday. 

It was a tougher climb than doing a dozen or or so "Ned" Everests...

And yet there was plenty more climbing that could have been done.

Once the hive mind gets into one of its monomaniacal rages, there's no respite.

As well as cackling E-Claire (always be stealing), grating garrulous Gemma was also on the case...

If you spoke up on Gaza but are silent on Iran, you’re a fraud
As thousands are slaughtered in Iran’s brutal crackdown, the silence from Western governments and feminists who had so much to say about Gaza is deafening.
By Gemma Tognini

Actually grating Gemma might have done us all a favour by talking about Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and his award-winning film It Was Just an Accident.

The pond has watched all of Panahi's low budget guerrilla outings and they stick in the mind ...

...All Panahi's films are banned in his home country, with the Iranian leadership accusing him of "propaganda against the system", because his often darkly comic, always socially conscious filmmaking challenges the status quo.
Enduring house arrest and even going to prison in 2010 for his art, Panahi refuses to back down. In December 2025, he was tried in absentia for "propaganda activities" and now faces a year in prison and the resumption of his travel ban.
While imprisoned, Panahi was brutally interrogated while blindfolded. He's poured this traumatic experience into the riveting screenplay of It Was Just an Accident.
"When you are interrogated, blindfolded, your sense of hearing sharpens," Panahi explains.
"You become so sensitive to the sound of the person behind you, and you get curious about who they are. How old is he? How tall?"
The film features a group of similarly persecuted people, including mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), photographer, Shiva (Mariam Afshari) and a newly married couple, Goli and Ali (Hadis Pakbaten and Majid Panahi), who form an unlikely band of vigilantes. (ABC)

Well yes, why not celebrate a triumph snatched from the jaws of the malignant Mad Mullahs?

Truth to tell, the last thing the world needs is the Australian Zionist Daily News doing the same thing to Palestinians attempting to draw attention to the ongoing Gaza genocide and the endless ethnic cleansing, but here we are with the lizard Oz editorialist...

Groupthink is not free speech
The next few weeks are not the time for tirades against Israel
The Adelaide Writers Week meltdown isn’t a victory for free speech but a case study in ideology trumping judgment, exposing how far the cultural elite is from the national mood after Bondi.

It gets the pond every time ... whenever the reptiles blather about groupthink, the pond realises it's projection ... because every day is groupthink day in the hive mind. 

Whenever they carry on about cultural 'leets, the pond is reminded how they nestle in the 'leet bosoms of the filthy rich Murdochians.

But the pond knew what this also meant. 

The pond's Sunday favourite, prattling Polonius, would also go there, not least because he loathes all writers' festivals, because of the way they disrespect him, one of Australia's most astonishing writers, at least if you're astonished by tedious pedantry.

Before going there, please allow the pond a few Tootles, but where to go?

Nah, not old Nick ...

Everyone needs an Iced VoVo and a cuppa: what hate-laws debate tells us
If we can’t do 90:10 politics, no hate law will deliver the cohesion all sides claim to want.
By Nick Dyrenfurth

The pond would rather do in the liver with a Bex, a cup of tea and a nice lie down than go there.

And the pond wasn't going to go with the disgraced putz Pezzullo, still seeking his redemption via the reptiles ...

The warning signs of impending violence were there long before Bondi Beach
‘Kill the Jews’ echoed at the Opera House in October 2023. The terrorism threat level was raised to ‘probable’ in August 2024. Iranian agents directed attacks against Jewish Australians. Yet when asked if he’d imagined such an attack, the Prime Minister said no.
By Mike Pezzullo

The lizard Oz hive mind is always a gravy train for adept grifters and snake oil salesmen ...

Nor could the pond visit Planet Janet above the Faraway Tree ...

The airline that made me fall back in love with Qantas
Oh Air Canada, what a long dreary trip it’s been. Cracker rationing. Vanishing luggage. Cabin crew who wouldn’t know a smile if it boarded in first class. After 14 hours in business class that felt more like steerage, I’ve learnt an expensive lesson: never take Qantas for granted.
By Janet Albrechtsen

Elbows up Canada, and here's a tip. 

If you spot Dame Slap roaming wild-eyed in the street, likely without her celebratory MAGA cap on (she's dumb, but not that dumb), fix eyes on a bottle of maple syrup or stare off into the distance.

Even King Donald says you're on the right track ...

Trump says Canada should do trade deals with China

President Trump said Friday that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney should be making a trade deal with China, an economic U.S. adversary the president has been going after during his second term.
“That’s OK. That’s what he should be doing. I mean, it’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal. If you can get a deal with China, you should do that,” Trump told reporters in response to a question about what he thought of Canada and China announcing a trade deal between the two countries.

Just think of all those cheap EVs that the silly climate change inducing Yanks won't have.

And maybe when Dame Slap tips her filthy Murdochian paycheck into the Canadian economy, it might just help tip the balance.

With all those contenders ruled out, the pond hates to go there again, into the land of King Donald, but there must be room for a Baker's dozen..

Sure it was a four minute trawl over the same ground as that covered by the bromancer and jittery Joe yesterday, but you need at least three pundits to construct a camel.

At least he's an import, and how fitting is that for a foreign owned corporation very canny about paying taxes in Australia:

The header: Does Donald the Lame Duck await Trump?; The second year of second terms has tripped up many presidents – there are four challenges the 47th must overcome.

The caption: There are signs that Donald Trump’s vice-like grip on the Republican Party is slipping. Picture: AFP

This Baker sounded gloomy, as if elbows deep in lumpy King Donald dough:

The second year of a second term has typically been the most perilous for an American president in the modern era. Richard Nixon was forced from office in 1974; Ronald Reagan was undone by the Iran-Contra scandal in 1986; in 1998 the world learnt the name Monica Lewinsky, and Bill Clinton’s history was forever changed. George W. Bush’s presidency sank irretrievably in 2006 as Iraq descended into full-blown civil war.
The second year of Donald Trump’s second term starts next week. We have seen enough over his career to know the old rules don’t apply. In the past 12 months he has overturned the political order at home and abroad. In just the first few days of 2026 he has already shown – from Venezuela to Greenland and Iran, from the streets of Minneapolis to the halls of the Federal Reserve – that he intends to double down on his second American Revolution.

The reptiles seized the chance to throw in AV distractions: US President Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell the protests in Minnesota. The Insurrection Act authorises the president to deploy military forces within the US to suppress rebellion, domestic violence, or to enforce the law. The protest in Minnesota escalated after an ICE agent fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis. Since Good’s death, a second non-fatal shooting has occurred in Minneapolis against a man wielding a shovel. The president also labelled the politicians of Minnesota “corrupt”, claiming they “don’t obey the law”.

The pond freely admits it overdid the 'toons yesterday, and might well make the same mistake again, because it's a sure way to cure a hangover ...

The bromancer might well have been startled by the tone:

Given his success in disdaining the conventions of US politics, only a fool would bet they would now apply to him. And yet there are signs that all the conditions of his political mortality are asserting themselves.
His approval rating is near his lowest since he first took office in 2017. His vice-like grip on the Republican Party, achieved through the sheer force of personality and his cult-like following among supporters and the fear they strike into fellow Republicans, is slipping. The Supreme Court, until recently relatively pliant in its oversight of his various executive power grabs, has recently shown signs of resistance.
While no one thinks the man who turns 80 this year is close to following his predecessor, Joe Biden, into rambling frailty, he is starting to display evidence of physical and mental deterioration. He faces the inevitable constraint on all second-term presidents imposed by the 22nd Amendment that limits incumbents to two terms: the looming end of his presidential rope. It seems the oldest of Washington cliches is beckoning with nominative aptness: Donald the Lame Duck.
But the tumultuous year ahead is shaping up to be a struggle between two laws of physics: momentum and gravity. Will Trump and his MAGA allies be able to maintain the pace of radical change so his new order emerges before the laws of political gravity reassert themselves?

The reptiles followed up with a sublime AV distraction, blessed with a sublimely out of date caption: Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado met with President Trump at the White House, where she offered him her Nobel Peace Prize, but did not confirm if he accepted it.

Did not confirm if he accepted it?

Oh come on, there was a great exchange of swag ...

The hapless Baker carried on his brooding:

Four factors threaten Trump’s presidency.
The first is policy; specifically the two policies most responsible for his victory in 2024: immigration and the economy. Trump has had unparalleled success in curbing illegal immigration, as voters wanted him to do. But that very success means the focus of public attention has shifted from border protection to the removal of the millions of immigrants here illegally. Polling shows voters are increasingly uneasy at the spectacle of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on the streets of cities, bundling brown-skinned people into unmarked vehicles. The killing last week of Renee Good, who was protesting at the scene of such a raid in Minneapolis, has shocked Americans. Trump’s support among Latino voters especially – crucial to his 2024 victory – is cratering.
While economic growth remains strong, voters are concerned about “affordability”. Inflation soared under Biden, and Trump promised to bring down prices. But while the inflation rate has indeed fallen, prices continue to rise. The president’s apparent insouciance – he describes concerns over affordability as a Democratic “con job” – adds insult to injury.
Unease about his policies translates into weakening public support. Trump’s approval rating stands just above 40 per cent, similar to that of his two two-term predecessors, but low enough to signal a big political setback for Republicans in the crucial midterm elections in November.
This sets the conditions for the third and most important downgrade in Trump’s political authority: a widening crack-up in the MAGA coalition and the first real evidence of Republicans standing up to him. It began last year with Jeffrey Epstein and fury over Trump’s failure to deliver on the promised vast conspiracy imagined by the MAGA right. But it has steadily escalated.

The reptiles slipped in a distracting prof, Deakin University Islamic Politics Professor Greg Barton analyses US President Donald Trump’s patterns in the last 12 months to predict the President’s next moves concerning Iran. “His pattern these last 12 months is sort of quick, decisive actions that are sort of largely air-based, so no boots on the ground,” Dr Barton told Sky News host Steve Price. “Venezuela was exceptional.”

Be fair, it's worked out tremendously well thus far ...

This Baker still sounded as flat as a soufflé or clafoutis that fails to rise ...

In the past month growing numbers of Republicans have put their heads above the parapet: over his plans for redistricting in key states, and over Venezuela and threats to Greenland. Last weekend his justice department announced a criminal investigation of Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve (the politically independent US central bank) over alleged cost overruns. Trump has been furious with Powell for not cutting interest rates fast enough and this latest intervention was condemned by a succession of Republican senators.
The last challenge is personal: Trump’s own physical and mental health. While the man’s personal foibles have long been central to his character, there are some in Washington who think they detect a clear age-related decline in his cognitive capacities.
Policy failures, electoral jeopardy, internal party dissent, the challenges of age; none of these are new for a second-term president. They represent vectors of political gravity that would doom most leaders. But you don’t have to like him to know that Trump is not like any previous president.
We can expect more tension between the conventional and radical realities. Trump seems increasingly intent on doing things that in normal circumstances would consign him and his party to oblivion. Polling shows large majorities of Americans don’t want him to invade Greenland, take over the Federal Reserve or fill city streets with paramilitary units. But his calculation seems to be from the classic revolutionary mindset: establishing the new reality creates its own authority. As the once unthinkable becomes routine, the new order acquires its own legitimacy. This will be the defining clash of the age.
The Times

Take heart, it's all working out tremendously well ...

And so, after giving correspondents a chance to flee with that 'toon parade, on with the most tedious chore of the day ...

The header: Diversity of views never occurred on Louise Adler’s watch as Adelaide Writers Week director; Louise Adler’s defence is revealed as plain delulu, given the pile of evidence pointing to how Adelaide Writers Week functions have been leftist stacks under her watch.

The caption: Louise Adler appearing on 7.30 following her resignation from Adelaide Writers' Week. Picture: ABC

Yes, he went there, as the pond predicted and expected, and the pompous pedant was full of the worst kind of prattle ...what with the withered old wretch, a veritable Ebenezer more at home in Kidnapped pretending that he was with it, he was with vulgar youff ...

When Louise Adler appeared on ABC TV’s 7.30 on Tuesday, she certainly threw the switch to delusional – or delulu in modern-day slang. 

Oh come on, it would have been much more in the Polonial spirit to talk of argot. Or maybe not. In his cantish way, Polonius doesn't have much time for the perfidious French.

As usual, it was the ABC that got Polonius going:

The former director of the Adelaide Festival’s Adelaide Writers Week was interviewed by Michael Rowland about the decision to cancel the 2026 AWW and her choice to step down as its director.
As is well known, Adler invited controversial Macquarie University academic and writer Randa Abdel-Fattah to this year’s AWW. The invitation was withdrawn by the festival board, some of whose members resigned when the majority decision was made.
Eventually all independent board members resigned and a new board was chosen by the South Australian government.
Attention had been drawn to some of Abdel-Fattah’s social media posts, which included messages such as “If you are a Zionist, you have no claim or right to cultural safety”. The definition of a Zionist is someone who believes in the establishment of a Jewish state in the ancestral lands of the Jewish people. Namely, Israel.

Inevitably Polonius was going to go the full Morry, what with this still already having done the reptile rounds ... Publisher Morry Schwartz, centre, accused former Adelaide Writers Week director Louise Adler, left, of deliberately ‘wounding’ the festival by programming controversial academic Randa Abdel-Fattah.

Carry on Morrying ...

In the wake of the Bondi Beach terrorist massacre aimed at the Jewish community, it is understandable why some members of the festival board initially believed that this was not the time for platforming a speaker who has written that Zionists (Jews and gentiles alike) have no claim or right to cultural safety.
Adler, who is Jewish, is an avowed critic of contemporary Israel. Since she took up the position of AWW director in 2023, she has provided speaking opportunities to opponents of Israel (including the occasional Jew). In other words, there has been scant viewpoint diversity in the program on the Middle East, among other issues.
Adler’s decision was supported by 180 speakers who were scheduled to appear at the 2026 AWW and withdrew before the event was junked, including Australians such as Helen Garner, Jane Caro, Peter FitzSimons, John Lyons and so on. You get the picture. They, along with Adler, maintained that their gesture was a statement in support of freedom of expression in a democratic society. But was it?
Adler defended her position on 7.30 by accusing the Adelaide Festival board’s decision as an act of “cultural vandalism” that had been brought about by “the pro-Israel lobby”. She asserted that Abdel-Fattah had not been invited to the AWW “because of her social media feed” and that, in any event, “they’re certainly deleted”. A convenient cop-out, don’t you think?

Inevitably the reptiles dug into the dirt ...A 2023 social media post by Ms Abdel-Fattah.

Never mind, Polonius has always been offended by the way that writers's festivals have ignored his genius, and it was payback time...

But there was more. Adler went on to claim that “this is a moment where freedom of expression matters and that’s what’s at stake here”. What absolute tosh. Adler’s AWW functions have been essentially leftist stacks – as I documented in these pages on February 25, 2023, and March 22, 2025. The 2024 and planned 2026 events were no different. In a cover story for The Spectator Australia in April 2011, I defined writers festivals as occasions when “a group of leftists invite their leftist friends to perform before an audience primarily made up of inner-city leftist luvvies, at the taxpayer’s expense”.
In recent times, the most egregious examples of writers festivals as leftist stacks have been at the Sydney Writers Festival and the AWW. But the overwhelming majority reflect the Sydney and Adelaide events. If freedom of expression really mattered to Adler, she would provide a diversity of views – on Israel, Gaza and more besides. But this never occurred on her watch.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a couple of familiar faces guaranteed to get the hive mind buzzing ...Peter FitzSimons withdrew before the event was junked … as did Jane Caro.

(Tip to reptile graphics department. Always pick snaps that demean and ridicule, or look grim).

Could it get any worse?

Of course it could. See how Polonius invites Lord Downer and his spawn to the feast:

Writing in Adelaide’s The Advertiser on January 11, Adelaide-based Nicky Downer (an arts administrator of long standing) and Alexander Downer (the former Australian foreign minister) described the AWW as “a conservative-free zone” devoid of “viewpoint diversity”. A bit like the ABC. The Downers wrote that, when donating to the AWW in 2024, they asked Adler “about the lack of representation of more liberal/conservative views” in the program. Adler responded “that when she did ask someone from the right, they would invariably decline her invitation”, they wrote.
The Downers added: “Another (Adler) excuse was that people on the right just don’t write books; we suggested a few names, but when it came to settling the program, none were featured.” Adler’s excuse is simply false; political conservatives do write books.

Implicit in that? 

Polonius writes books too, but when have they given the old codger a fair crack at the sauce bottle, but do carry on ...

Morry Schwartz, publisher of The Saturday Paper and Quarterly Essay, is no conservative.

Say what? He might purport to be a leftie but his Zionism has caused something of a fuss ...

Journalists urge 'improved' coverage of Israel-Hamas war in open letter ...

And then ...

Morry Schwartz resigns as chair of Schwartz Media, says Gaza coverage not a factor ...

And then ... as already noted by the pond, Morry's an extreme Zionist, out, loud and proud, an enthusiastic devotee of the killing fields:

At this point the reptiles flung in a distracting post to bolster the Polonial cause  ...A 2024 social media post by Ms Abdel-Fattah.

Note that Abel-Fattah references "cultural safety".

Is that any more problematic than the cultural abuse offered each day by the Australian Daily Zionist News? Which offers a safe space for many reptiles to espouse their ethnic cleansing Zionist ideology?

Polonis followed with more Morry ...

He blames Adler for the disaster that has befallen AWW.
In a letter to The Australian on January 13 Schwartz wrote: “Adler knew well that including Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah … would endanger the institution. But it mattered nil to her – her obsessive cause is more important to her than our precious 66-year-old writers’ festival.”

Sydney business figure and arts aficionado Tony Berg (who was a member of the festival board) wrote to The Australian on January 15 in the following terms: “I am now utterly astonished at Louise Adler’s statement in her resignation letter in support of free speech. I am likewise surprised by Randa Abdel-Fattah’s invocation of free speech and her outrage at being ‘cancelled’. They both exhibit hypocrisy in defending free speech for some, when I observed them both to stridently oppose free speech during my time on the board.”

More on that in a moment ... first the pond has to get two snaps out of the way ...Thomas Friedman … deplatformed...Tony Berg … ‘utterly astonished’.

Polonius then went full Friedman ...

Berg reported that Adler and Abdel-Fattah succeeded in having New York Times columnist Tom Friedman deplatformed with respect to the 2024 AWW. This has not been denied.

This should give an idea of how incestuous the hive mind is, because that Polonial link didn't lead to Friedman, it led to this, as a way of keeping docile minds inside the hive ...

Now in actual fact - Polonius has rarely been troubled by the facts of a matter - there have been denials of a kind. 

Per the Graudian ...

...Adler responded to Berg’s allegations by accusing the former board member of breaching board confidentiality.
“I consider discussions of the board table to be confidential,” she said in a prepared statement.
“I’m rather surprised that a former CEO of Macquarie Bank has breached those confidences. It’s indicative of the way the former board operated, and I believe will make for a rich case study for future management students.”
Abdel-Fattah disputed Berg’s claims that she, along with Adler, led the charge to cancel Friedman.
“I was one of 10 Indigenous and academics of colour who wrote a researched letter with references and footnotes about the harm of racial tropes,” she said in a statement to Guardian Australia.
“What is missing in this is the question of power. We write letters on Google Docs to boards. The people who want to cancel us have premiers intervening.”
Since last Thursday, the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, has denied any direct interference, insisting the board acted independently.

We know that the mendacious Malinauskas was all in, and has stayed all in, and Friedman's appearance was just by way of a video link ... but it was passing strange is that the indignant and righteous Berg didn't bother resigning in relation to the Friedman matter ...

At the time, a group of 10 academics had signed a petition demanding Friedman’s removal due to a controversial column he had written in the New York Times days earlier, which compared the Middle East conflict to the animal kingdom. The Palestinian author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah, who was uninvited from this year’s writers’ week, was among the group.
When Friedman was notified, the academics were sent a letter by the board saying that requesting the cancellation of an artist or writer was an “extremely serious” issue.
“We have an international reputation for supporting artistic freedom of expression,” the letter signed by the board’s chair, Tracey Whiting, said.
“Thomas L Friedman was programmed to contribute online from New York. However, I have been advised that due to last-minute scheduling issues, he is no longer participating in this year’s program.”
Whiting resigned as the chair of the festival board on Saturday. Guardian Australia has been unable to reach her for comment.

Instead ...

Berg’s letter was tendered on 22 October to Whiting, South Australian arts minister Andrea Michaels and the Adelaide festival’s executive director, Julian Hobba.

“I cannot serve on a board which employs a director of Adelaide Writers Week (AWW) … who programs writers who have a vendetta against Israel and Zionism,” Berg wrote in his resignation email.

“That the director programs pro-Palestinians and anti-Zionists is well known. The Board has encouraged her to program writers who might have a different perspective. She resolutely fails to do so.”

He waited an unseemly amount of time to act ... and yet he claims to have seethed at the treatment of the malodorous Friedman.

Perhaps Polonius should have provided, or been provided, with a link to that malodorous Friedman NY Times outing...

Never mind the way that Benji cultivated that trap door spider, feeding it Qatar cash. Cf Le Monde ...

All that insufferable, insulting entyomology provoked a right royal fuss, and Friedman tried a tactical retreat and a half-baked wannabe apology ...

The miracle, considering Friedman's form, was that he was ever given an offer to visit that Moscow on the Torrens where maiden aunts sit on verandahs and croweaters fail to do olives the Don Dunstan way, but then the both siderist NY Times always dresses up its toads as important figures and keen pundits without any ideological bias (if the pond might continue the biological metaphor):

Thomas Friedman: Dehumanisation par excellence amid a genocide ...

Inter alia, from that AlJazeera opinion piece...

Say one thing for Polonius, at least he allowed the pond a chance to take a look at yet another disreputable NY Times figure ...

But in his final thrust Polonius invokes Sharri, and, despite offering full disrespect, the pond simply can't go there ...

As Elizabeth Pike reported in these pages on January 15, Abdel-Fattah was one of several high-profile figures who revealed personal details of 600 Jewish creatives. She commented at the time that the list provided “critical insight into how Zionists organise and operate in so-called progressive arts, academic and media spaces”.
Moreover, as Sharri Markson revealed on Sky News last Wednesday, when interviewed on the We Used to be Journos podcast on January 14 Abdel-Fattah declared that “Zionism should not be platformed”.
In announcing her resignation in The Guardian Australia on January 13, Adler opined that South Australia’s “tourism slogan could be ‘Welcome to Moscow on the Torrens’ ” – ignoring the fact that, from 2022, in Russia 30 journalists have been imprisoned, one of whom was killed. This makes Adler’s Adelaide/Moscow description somewhat delusional.
The same description can be applied to those who consider Abdel-Fattah a hero of the free speech cause.

Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

One of whom was killed?

The pond doesn't mean to discount the deeds of sociopathic Vlad the Impaler - by some counts he's up to 13 murders since taking charge and many more journalists have been forced into exile -  but Adler probably should have referred to Israel ... Gaza named deadliest place for journalists in 2025 RSF reports on dangers facing media globally ...

And with that cheery thought, time to close by celebrating the state of the disunited States ...

And here's that other summary:

In which the braying bromancer and jittery Joe offer to waste more than 20 minutes of your life...

The pond usually doesn't like to parade stupidity of the first water, nor debate with twits who take the wrong lessons from recent events.

So anyone wanting a word with cackling Claire will have to head off to the intermittent archive ...

How Adelaide Writers Week collapsed under the weight of its own hypocrisy
Writers Week 2026 imploded because it replaced literature with politicisation.
By Claire Lehmann
Contributor

In a way only an inept cackler of the first water could manage, the clownish Claire seems not to understand that the politicisation took place with the banning of a Palestinian writer simply for the thought crime of being Palestinian.

It turns out that Claire is the sort who thinks that censorship and celebrating the Moscow of the Torrens is the way to go ...

Having free speech in a democratic society such as ours means the state does not imprison you for your ideas but it does not mean every institution must celebrate, promote or subsidise them. Every cultural institution engages in gatekeeping. Otherwise we would not have editors or curators. The contested question is where an editor or curator draws these lines – and whether they do so transparently and honestly.

What a way to irredeemably soil the notion of "honesty".

As for the conclusion, pumped up to eleven?

Let this year’s collapse of Adelaide Writers Week serve as a warning to Australia’s cultural leaders: a culture of free expression is not endangered when a single extremist is uninvited. It is endangered when only one side of a debate is permitted, when moderates are intimidated into silence, and when the loudest and most aggressive voices enforce ideological conformity.

If the reptiles aren't the home to the loudest and most aggressive voices enforcing ideological conformity (while refusing to mention the ethnic cleansing going down in Gaza at the moment), then the pond must be missing something. 

Oh okay, there are regular esteemed reports from the fringes suggesting that the Quad ranters are better at it, but those ranters don't purport to be part of mainstream journalism.

But what to do? Which reptile to study in place of cackling Claire?

The pond wasn't interested in going there again with Shelley ...

Facts or friction: culture’s radical darlings get it oh so wrong again
Josef Stalin … the Black Panthers … the Hollywood Ten: the intelligentsia has long championed dubious causes. The Adelaide Writers Festival debacle is no different.
By Shelley Gare

The insistence on replacing thought with a mindless listicle litany (in their day both FDR and Winnie were fellow travellers with Uncle Joe); the relentless stupidity; the reminder of the way that the loudest and most aggressive voices enforce ideological conformity, the hive mind working assiduously together, was only confirmed by the tag ...

Shelley Gare is a former deputy editor of The Australian and is currently writing a book about post-war America.

How silly did supercilious Shelley manage to sound?

It all proves philosopher Karl Popper’s contrary advice: if you want a tolerant society, you must be intolerant of the intolerant.

Oh so it's okay to be intolerant of silly Shelley and cackling Claire?

And again ...

Thank goodness Princeton University Press has just published a 20th anniversary edition of Harry G. Frankfurt’s genius little 2005 book On Bullshit. It opens: “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.”
A hardback edition is $19.99. Perhaps South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas could afford to send a copy to everyone involved in the Adelaide mess.
He should be doubly sure a copy goes to each member of the new board.

And don't forget an autographed copy to himself, to Shelley and to the lizards of Oz. 

So much BS, so much navel-gazing and fluff-gathering, so little time.

As for that proposed book on postwar America it should be MAGAnificent.

But that still left the pond with a dilemma. 

There was no way the pond could go there ...

BONDI AFTERMATH
Liberals warned not to cede high ground on hate speech
Legal scramble as Liberal Party warned … don’t cede high ground on hate speech
Parliament’s intelligence committee faces an avalanche of opposition submissions as Anthony Albanese’s hate speech laws hang in the balance with just days until a crucial vote.
By Ben Packham, Sarah Ison and Thomas Henry

Admittedly it's rich turf, there are the reptiles screeching about hate speech and the urgent need to ban hate speakers allegedly speaking hate, and celebrating the malaprop Malinauskas, whose ability to abuse the English language is remarkable:...

“The views that I put, I carefully thought through. I formed an opinion based on fact, the facts have now been proven, my principles haven’t changed and my views haven’t changed,” Malinauskas said.
“Other people have changed their opinions but not me. I’m in favour of inclusivity, I’m in favour of consistency, making sure all voices are heard.” (SMH archive)

...but there's only so much irony available to hand around on the weekend, and what could the pond add to the immortal Rowe?

Luckily the bromancer rode in to rescue the pond ...and for one sweet moment early in the day, he was top of the reptile world ma ...

Just look at it, a veritable Jimmy Cagney, top of the reptile world ma ...

The pond deeply regrets not being able to convey the swirling headlights of the cars at night, or the jumping aircraft carrier in an inept gif insert - the archive version  failed to copy this uncredited display of the enormous decline in the lizard Oz graphics department - but never mind this is a bigly 10 minutes of the bromancer in his post holyday prime, and surely that's more than enough.

The header: Trump’s new playbook: hit hard, scare enemies, then deal; Trump has transformed from an isolationist into a globalist militarist, selectively intervening with precision strikes and deal-making to reshape America’s approach to international affairs.

The text appended below the failing graphic department's exhibit: As Donald Trump considered whether to launch another blistering military assault on Iran, the world waited with bated breath. There was only one real swing factor: Trump’s personal decision.

And so the pond stood by with baited breath for the bromancer's astonishing wisdom and insights.

And what makes the bromancer so compelling? 

Well he's more than MAGA curious, he's MAGA hot and occasionally MAGA cold, and it makes for a wondrous read.

Even the NY Times couldn't manage this level of both siderism, though it seems to the pond that King Donald scores 90% of the both sides, as befits a recipient of the Nobel peace prize (poor María Corina Machado, so pitiful, so needy, so desperate, so delusional).

Norway stunned after Machado gifts Nobel Prize medal to Trump

Oh FFS, they gave it to hardened war criminal Henry Kissinger in 1973 and it's been a joke ever since. 

Harden the f up, and stop interrupting with your Tootling off the tracks ways, this is prime bromancer time:

This is how Trump likes the world, with him at the centre of the action and the centre of attention. But the fate of millions of people, especially 92 million Iranians but lots of others too, waited on Trump’s calculations.
The battered, bruised, bloody, brutal and creaking regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has come to resemble a Shia North Korea. It shuts down the internet, isolates its people from the world, murders its citizens in large numbers and can no longer deliver the basics of life. It’s good at only two things: killing its people and clinging to power.
The transformation of Iran from a menacing regional power, formidable militarily and with a stable of deadly proxy forces at its beck and call, to its present broken-backed state owes everything to Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
As Iran seethed with the biggest anti-regime demonstrations since the Islamic revolution in 1979, its leaders exhibited signs of desperation. Its hapless President, the ineffective Masoud Pezeshkian, declared at the start of the demonstrations that while the government needed to address the people’s economic misery, he had no idea what to do.
The Iranian government cannot deliver reliable water and electricity to the residents of Tehran, who are much better off than most Iranians. Yet it remains determined to pursue nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment that can be useful only for producing nuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles. Trump won’t have it.

The reptiles quickly interrupted with a snap: Iranian protesters demonstrate in Tehran, Iran. If Trump really has convinced Tehran, which executes more people per capita than any government in the world, to stop killing people for a while, then he has won something for the demonstrators. Picture: Supplied

The question arose, would the pond also be tempted to interrupt with 'toons? Would the pond add to the length of an interminable read? Do reptiles make excellent hand bags?

Does a Tamworth dog routinely p*ss into the wind? (*google bot approved).

Carry on bro'ing...

As the week drew to a close, Trump declared that Iran had stopped killing protesters and had decided not to execute any of the thousands of those it has arrested, some of whom have already been tried and convicted, especially the photogenic 26-year-old Erfan Soltani, who was supposed to be executed on Wednesday.
The Iranians are scared of Trump. This was evident in Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi going on TV to declare: “There is no plan for hanging at all. Hanging is out of the question.” If that’s true, it’s entirely because of Trump’s threats.
Earlier in the week Trump had made an extraordinary promise to Iran’s demonstrators, calling them patriots and urging them to keep demonstrating, to take note of the names of the people persecuting them. And most important of all, he said “help is on its way”, meaning US aid or military intervention.
He had previously said the US was “locked and loaded” and had strong military options against Iran. Those words terrified the mullahs and inspired the demonstrators, but by now everyone knows that Trump often says one thing and does another.

Apparently that makes King Donald adorable to the bromancer, who has been known to blow each way like Melbourne weather in a day,  Protesters dancing and cheering around a bonfire as they take to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown, in Tehran, Iran. Picture: AP

One good turn and visual flourish deserves another ...

Here no chooks, here plenty of bro excuses ...

Just before the US struck Iran’s key nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan last June, Trump, to mislead Iran, said at a G7 meeting that Washington would take another two weeks to decide.
This time, however, the US has no aircraft carrier battle groups in the Middle East. These can launch withering attacks and thicken the missile defence cover for US bases and allies in the region. Iran has lost all or most of its long-range ballistic missiles but still has plenty of short-range missiles. Tehran has said if it’s bombed it will retaliate against US bases and personnel in the region, and perhaps against Israel. The US withdrew some personnel from its Al Udeid air base in Qatar. The British withdrew their embassy from Tehran. For some hours Iran closed its air space. Then, suddenly, the tension eased.
There was criticism that Trump might have led demonstrators to needless death in the expectation of US support. But the demonstrations had peaked before Trump’s intervention. And if Trump really has convinced Tehran, which executes more people per capita than any government in the world, to stop killing people for a while, then he has won something for the demonstrators.

Sheesh, so many snaps, Anti-Iranian regime protesters during a rally outside the US Consulate in Milan. Picture: AFP

So many chances to celebrate things not mentioned by the bromancer:

Back to the bromancer worshipping his King:

For until Trump’s threat, the Iranians had been ruthlessly killing protesters, often shooting people in the head at point-blank range. Iranian human rights sources suggest 100 forced confessions have been shown on Iranian TV. People confess to being agents of Israel, of Mossad, of the Americans, of ethnic insurgencies or terrorist groups, of committing unimaginable crimes. And the clear knowledge of everyone in Iran was that all these people would be executed.
Now the Iranian government says it never had any intention of hanging anyone. The idea was all a plot by Israel to get the Americans involved.
Ehud Yaari, Israel’s most sagacious strategic analyst, tells Inquirer that if Trump does strike Iran he will want targets that are both “symbolic and of substance”. The most obvious choices would be headquarters and facilities associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Australia has designated as a terrorist organisation, and its hated Basij militia.
There is said to be strong sentiment within CENTCOM, the US regional military command covering the Middle East, to hit Iran. There’s hope that it could shake an Iranian general into taking over and running a less ideological government. But all the US’s regional allies other than Israel are asking it not to strike, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq.
Whether the US acts imminently or not, Trump isn’t finished with Tehran.
For the presidency of Donald Trump 2.0 is developing in strikingly unpredicted ways. Far from becoming an isolationist, as Trump’s Make American Great Again movement has often been misinterpreted, the administration has gone in a new direction.
Trump has become a globalist, a militarist, an interventionist, a selective defender of human rights, a peacemaker, a territorial revisionist, not so much a nation-builder as a national territory builder. More than anything, he’s a President who scares America’s enemies.
As we approach the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, his confrontation with Iran is merely the latest in a string of astonishing international interventions.
As in everything with Trump, there’s tremendous good and tremendous bad.
In the past six months, Trump has had three dazzling international successes, even as other aspects of his foreign policy remain troubling or confused or downright counter-productive. The successes have involved, or arisen from, US military power.
First, last June, Trump authorised Israel to bomb Iran’s military and nuclear facilities. That was a huge break with Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Then, even more decisively, Trump joined the Israeli mission and the US directly attacked Iran’s main nuclear sites with the biggest, most powerful non-nuclear bombs ever made.

Another two snaps, US President Donald Trump is seen in the Situation Room of the White House on June 21, 2025 in Washington, after the US military carried out a ‘very successful attack’ on three Iranian nuclear sites. Picture: AFP

A satellite picture taken on June 24, 2025, shows air strike craters on Iran's Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP), northeast of the city of Qom. Picture: AFP

Another chance for a visual celebration:

On the bromancer rolled ...

Trump also supported, and supplied many of the weapons for, Israel to degrade or destroy Iran’s proxy forces, notably Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, as well as conducting a campaign against the Houthis in Yemen.
Once the government of Bashar al-Assad fell in Syria, Israel destroyed the Syrian air force. Almost all Iran’s proxies are gone, rendering it much weaker.
Again in great contradiction to Biden and Obama, Trump ratcheted up sanctions. But straight after the June attacks, Trump also offered Iran a deal. Give up nuclear enrichment and the US would remove sanctions. Iran could recover its economy. Trump is still offering that deal, but now he wants Iran to forgo long-range missiles as well.
The second big Trump success was forcing a ceasefire in Gaza in October last year. Trump’s peace plan offered Gaza US-led development in exchange for Hamas disarming and pursuing peace. So far that hasn’t happened, despite Trump’s envoy this week proclaiming that stage two of the peace deal would soon be implemented.
Instead, Israel still directly controls a large chunk of Gaza and Hamas, which refuses to disarm, controls most of the rest.
It’s a mess, but it’s much better than the two years of relentless fighting that preceded it. Netanyahu needed an off-ramp. Only Trump had the strength, and standing with the Israelis, to provide the off-ramp and force both parties to take it, at least for the moment.

Time for peace, or at least a piece of this, that and a hefty amount of oil money off to a private account in Qatar, US President Donald Trump at a world leaders' summit on ending the Gaza war on October 13, 2025 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Picture: Getty

So much winning ...

The bromancer sat down to sup at his King's cankled feet ...

Then on January 3 Trump authorised a military raid of astonishing technical virtuosity in which American forces flew to Caracas and apprehended Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro faces charges in a New York court of drug trafficking and associated crimes.
The Maduro operation perfectly illustrates the new Trump template. In his first presidential term, from 2017, Trump was not an isolationist but was extremely dubious about most proposed uses of US force. The MAGA movement hated the “forever” wars America was involved in, wars that went on for a very long time and that America didn’t win. Afghanistan was the most searing case. The US invaded in 2001 to get rid of the Taliban and evacuated 20 years later, and the Taliban rode back into power.
So how come MAGA, for the most part, is happy enough with Trump’s military interventions? As Vice-President JD Vance puts it: MAGA supporters have no objection to America occasionally punching its opponents in the face.
After the Americans took Maduro into custody, they didn’t try to overthrow his whole regime, odious and dictatorial as it is.
Instead, having removed Maduro, terrified his colleagues and shown what can happen to America’s enemies, Trump offered the Venezuelan government a deal. Venezuela is no longer to participate in the China-Russia-Iran axis, no longer to smuggle drugs or people into the US or to supply Cuba with cheap oil. It has got to get into bed with Washington over oil trade. If it does all that and doesn’t behave too badly towards its own people, it can see sanctions lifted and be free from US military harassment.
Trump says he’s finding dealing with Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, fine. The two talk regularly on the phone. She’s co-operating with Washington on oil and she has released a swag of political prisoners.
This is all a big change for Trump and a big change for the US. Think tank analysts call it regime management rather than regime change.

Is that what think tank analysts call it? Captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, arrive at the Wall Street Heliport in Manhattan before being transported to New York City on 5 January 2026 to appear in federal court. Picture: Getty

The pond calls it giving away your booty and getting a swag bag in return ...

And then, post picture parade, it was time for the bromancer to do a lengthy wrap-up ...

The US has often made a mess when it has tried regime change, though occasionally it has worked out well, as in Panama, which the US briefly invaded in 1989-1990.
In some ways, this sort of intervention is less idealistic than previous American efforts, there’s a less obvious stress on trying to promote democracy and improve the lives of the citizens of the countries concerned. But Trump could persuasively argue he’s avoiding war while achieving a strategic outcome and inevitably softening the dictatorship’s behaviour.
It’s way too early to judge whether the Trump operation in Venezuela will be a long-term success. But almost everything Trump does is designed to create negotiating leverage for himself and for the US.
Indeed, Trump has a kind of genius for creating leverage out of nothing. He often seems to believe that if he says something often enough this alone will create a new reality.
Sometimes that works. When it doesn’t he just moves on to a different approach, as for example when he ditched the far-fetched idea of making the Gaza Strip a new coastal holiday resort.
Trump’s wanton imposition of tariffs has been less about raising revenue and much more about creating negotiating leverage. Now Trump has two preferred tools. One is tariffs, the other is short-duration, low-risk, precision military strikes against weaker targets that can’t effectively hit the US back. Straight after the strike, Trump tries to make a deal.
Trump’s intimate relationship with every aspect of journalism and the media played a role in his development of this innovative military tactic. Journalist Robert Armstrong in The Financial Times coined the term TACO, Trump Always Chickens Out. Armstrong applied this to Trump’s numerous threats of tariff Armageddon. Other commentators quickly applied it to Trump’s foreign policy. It will surely turn out to be one of the most influential columns in journalistic history, for nothing could have been more perfectly engineered to provoke Trump to prove that he didn’t “always chicken out”.
Now he has a taste for the use of precise, short-term but potentially devastating military strike. He has a taste for using it and for threatening it. For both using it and threatening it serve the same purposes: to create leverage, to reinforce deterrence, to scare America’s adversaries.
The Albanese government shows no sign of working out how to respond or what to say.
The two most revealing and important Australian responses to Trump’s Venezuelan operation came from former prime minister Scott Morrison and former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade head Peter Varghese. Morrison interpreted the move as strengthening Western deterrence, reducing Chinese and Russian influence in Latin America, demonstrating unique US military capability and strengthening American power. All of which is good for Australia.
Varghese argued that it further weakened the international rules-based order and that small or medium-size nations such as Australia could not rely on brute power alone and needed such an order.
Morrison and Varghese are both smart foreign policy practitioners and both have a point. But the bottom line is that China, Russia, Iran and many other nations now co-operate with the rules-based order only when it suits them.
Yet democracies find themselves entrapped in often counterproductive multilateral webs. Thus Britain cannot control its borders because European courts make this impossible. This is undemocratic, so it diminishes democracy, and therefore human rights, within Britain. And it partly enfeebles Britain as a geostrategic power.
It’s an inconvenient truth for Australia’s foreign affairs class that almost anything that enhances US power also enhances Australian security. Trump says nothing can stop him but his own morality and sense of restraint. His chief adviser, Stephen Miller, says the world is not governed by rules but by power.
Even if you accept that, whether good or bad, this is broadly true, that doesn’t mean Trump should do anything he likes. A democratic leader, especially the American president, should be governed by the laws and rules of his own nation and by the fundamental morality of the Judeo-Christian-formed civilisation of which he is leader.
Thus it would be better all around if Greenland were indeed part of the US instead of Denmark. But there is not the slightest conceivable justification for Trump to take military action against a NATO ally and fellow democracy to achieve this outcome. Nor has Trump covered himself in glory in his dealings with Ukraine and Russia.
But Trump is always going to be a mixed grill, both good and bad. His use of tariffs, for example, has got the US some good deals but has gravely damaged the idea of Washington leading a co-ordinated allied response to China on trade rules and technology.
For all that, Trump stopped the fighting in Gaza, enhanced the US position in Latin America and has greatly reduced the power, strength and threat of Iran, the chief sponsor of international terrorism, the leader of hateful Islamist extremism and the rogue nation most likely to acquire nuclear weapons.
Can he keep on like this? Who knows? But that’s quite a bit to be going on with.

By golly, it's as if the bromancer has been reading the right sort of texts ...

But wait, there's more.

Joe, lesser member of the Kelly gang, was out and about, and as if to prove he was up to replacing "Ned" and matching the bromancer at his game, his offering ran a bigly 11 minutes!

Sheesh, the pond might have been better off with those aunts on their Adelaide verandahs ...

The header: America’s global break-up: Trump’s revolution up-ends the world order it built; The world’s most powerful democracy has abandoned its mission to ‘make the world a better place’ in favour of raw power politics, with allies now needing to devise a ‘plan B’.

The caption for that snap of the axis of weevils: US President Donald Trump with Vice President JD Vance, left, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, in the East Room of the White House. American leadership has crossed a point of no return. Picture: AP

This was Joe in WSJ mode:

On the eve of the 250th annivers­ary of the American Revolution, Donald Trump is leading another great revolution with conseq­uences that will reverberate across the 21st century. Except this time it’s a “revolution against the world that America made”.
This is the considered assessment of Carne­gie Endowment for Inter­national Peace senior fellow Stewart Patrick, director of the global order and institutions program, who says American leadership has crossed a point of no return. “There is no snapping back,” he says.
In the year since his inauguration, the US President has dramatically reconceived America’s global role by abandoning liberal internationalism, free trade, unipolar supremacy and the shouldering of forever burdens.
A readjustment of US power was inevitable and necessary, but Trump’s decisions are propelling the American experiment into bold new territory from which it may not return.
Trump now stands for the reassertion of individual state sovereignty over supranationalism, ascendancy over the Western hemisphere rather than the globe, the settling of outstanding conflicts as a demonstration of US power, and the defence of Western identity, values and culture from malign forces. The US is prepared to act more aggressively in its own region, coerce its neighbours, seize their resources, seek territorial expansion and threaten its friends in the process. This is a powerful foreign policy formula that, while not entirely coherent, has managed to grip the American imagination and appeal to large parts of the nation while unnerving the rest of the world.

Would the pond keep on matching snap with 'toon? Ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro pictured arriving in New York after he was captured by US forces in a snatch and grab operation in Venezuela. Picture: Supplied

Would the pond resist the chance to do a back to the future moment?

Joe did a "Ned" by turning to experts to bolster his analysis, which seemed to be a little WSJ jaundiced:

Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, tells Inquirer that its biggest impact “is on allies who are questioning whether the United States is a reliable partner or whether it is over. And we don’t know the answer to that question yet.”
Former US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell, architect of the US pivot to Asia, says it is “so obvious that we are embarking on, really, a departure from the norms and values that have animated American engagement”.
“Many of the dominant elements that have led to purposeful American engagement on the international scene have been laid to waste,” he told The Asia Group podcast this week. “The real truth is that it is the United States itself that is challenging the system that we ourselves helped establish.”

At this point the reptiles decided to turn to that font of deep nude fakes, as if to remind the pond that Uncle Leon once cancelled his Netflix subscription because of the level of filth it offered.

Irony can never die ...

Anyone wanting that short can head off to YouTube, and immediately regret doing it ...(unless they're turned on by aged men in suits).

In the next gobbet, Joe got so prolix that the reptiles decided that sub-headers were needed:

The 2025 national security strategy frames this shift as a necessary “correction” to a world order that had eroded America’s character, hollowed out the industrial base, saddled taxpayers with defending allies and ensnared the nation in foreign conflicts while weakening US power and wealth.
In the past year Trump has unveiled a new America: more ambiv­alent about security commit­ments, openly hostile to multilateral institutions, deferential to autocratic powers and inclined towards resource imperialism and intervention closer to home.
This is a retreat from US post-World War II leadership and perhaps an attempt to consolidate power through a process of managed decline from the heady days of what American political scientist Francis Fukuyama called “the end of history”.
Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating told this paper in December that Trump was “removing America from its 80-year role and burden as global hegemon to reassert itself as the dominant power in the Western hemisphere”.
Since early 2026, Trump has captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, reaffirmed his intention to acquire Greenland and declared his commander-in-chief powers to be constrained only by his “own mortality”.
“It’s the only thing that can stop me,” he told The New York Times. “I don’t need international law.”
At the time of writing, Trump was weighing an intervention in Iran to support anti-government protesters, a move that could further redefine the balance of power in the Middle East. These developments represent a new chapter for the world.
Since his inauguration one year ago, three themes have emerged that can help explain Trump’s unfolding foreign policy revolution.
1: Unravelling the post-World War II order
The 2025 national security strategy questions the value of the international order that worked to preserve relative global stability across the past 80 years.
“The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,” it warns. “The affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.”
In other words, the benefits of maintaining the existing system are outweighed by the costs. Trump’s America is effectively breaking up with the world.
Kupchan notes that the US once saw itself as an exceptional nation with a mission to “make the world a better place”, but he warns this is changing. “The US was always an idealist power navigating a realist world … And if you look at Trump, you could come to the conclusion that the world changed America instead,” Kupchan says.
“The United States is now just another normal power and it has abandoned the idea of making the world a safer and better place.”

The level of delusion in that is remarkable. 

Gone Vietnam, gone Afghanistan, gone Iraq ... all follies of the first water, all self-interested and self-serving, and now matched by the same singular level of policy insights...

Back with Joe, zero slumming it...

Allies, he says, must now have a “plan B”.
Patrick describes Trump’s approach as purely “zero-sum”, with no concern for shaping an order where others benefit. “The thing that separates leadership from dominance is followers,” he tells Inquirer. “Leaders require followers and countries follow a more powerful nation when that nation can be trusted to act in their interest as well as its own.”
During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, French president Charles de Gaulle famously said he did not need to see photographic proof of Soviet missiles in Cuba and remarked it was sufficient to have the word of the US president.
Those days are gone. Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller offered a cynical assessment in a recent interview with CNN following the capture of Maduro.
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in the world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Miller said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Somehow that vampire made it into the story as an AV distraction...White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller insisted that Greenland should be part of the US, after CNN host Jake Tapper asked Miller about a Saturday X post by his wife, Katie, that de…

Sorry, the caption just tailed off, but at least there's time for a quiz...

On to the next sub-header:

Identifying Trump’s key flaw, Patrick says the US President is “aware that alliances cost things”. But Trump is “not sufficiently appreciative of how much the United States has actually obtained in terms of a predictable world order that’s largely in conformity with its interests”.
Yet the gate is not fully shut. Trump has not disentangled America from the world, withdrawn the US from NATO; more than 80,000 US troops remain in Europe and forces have been retained in Japan and South Korea.
Kupchan points to strong elements of continuity. “The national security strategy may talk about the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. But it also talks about freedom of navigation in the Pacific in the first island chain and Taiwan. That sounds pretty familiar. And Trump has bombed Iran and Iraq and Syria and Nigeria and Yemen and Somalia and more recently Venezuela.
“I would say the jury is out. This is undoubtedly an inflection point. There is no going back. But is the post-World War II order gone? No. Not yet … We just don’t know where we go from here.”
2: Anti-globalism and a revived Monroe Doctrine
The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine – the quest to restore American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere – is the central innovation of the 2025 national security strategy.
It foreshadows a return to 19th-century spheres of influence while repositioning America ideologically, with no prioritisation of championing democracy – the 20th-century’s guiding principle.

Sorry, already been there and done that ...

All the same, the sight of a bully with a big stick seemed to upset Joe:

The strategy casts doubt on the trans-Atlantic alliance and criticises Europe for civilisational erosion, a surrender of sovereignty, mass migration and inadequate defence spending. Yet Moscow receives no serious warning while NATO’s long-term survival is openly questioned. Strengthening collective defence by ensuring allies step up is a positive development, but the strategy does something different – it questions whether Europe is worth defending if it remains on its current path.
In his January 8 foreign policy speech, French President Emmanuel Macron sounded the alarm.
“We are in a world where great powers are deeply tempted to carve up the world,” Macron said.
“The United States is an established power, but it is gradually turning away from some of its allies and breaking free of international rules.
“The great risk we face … is a weakening of all the bodies in which we could settle common issues. We reject this new colonialism and new imperialism.”

The reptiles decided to slip in a snap of a cheese-eating surrender monkey, planning to send troops to Greenland, French President Emmanuel Macron warns of a world where great powers are tempted to ‘carve up the world,’ as the US turns away from allies and international rules, risking a ‘new colonialism.’ Picture: AP

What was that about irony never dying, not even with the French in the paddy fields of Vietnam in the 1950s? (though to be fair, eventually we got a Vietnamese baking industry in Australia, as the pond's Vietnamese podiatrist noted the other day).

By this point the pond had begun to run out of 'toons ...or more to the point, the desire to interrupt.

Just make it end Joe ...

Trump’s revamped Monroe Doctrine appears rooted in a sense of American resentment towards its traditional allies, a conviction that it received a raw deal and should respond by prioritising its own region while disengaging from global commitments and norms.
Campbell says Trump’s world view is “very powerful in terms of arguing that the system that has been operating for the last several decades has not served the interests of a certain group of American people.
“There is a view that almost 19th-century imperialism is the order of the day.
“It is in many respects this return to elements of the Monroe Doctrine but much more bombastic and threatening.”
Trump’s Venezuelan adventurism proves the point, with the US President turning to gunboat diplomacy and saying America would “run” the country for years, control its oil sector “indefinitely” while continuing to work with a corrupt regime instead of prioritising the liberation of its oppressed people.

Then came yet another snap, Protesters participate in a demonstration supporting protesters in Iran, in front of the US Consulate, in Milan, Italy. Picture: AP

Hey Joe, cut it short, gun that lady down ...

Diplomat Charles Shapiro, the US ambassador in Caracas from 2002 to 2004, told the BBC the Trump administration had “gone for stability over democracy”.
“They’ve kept the dictatorial regime in place without the dictator. The henchmen are still there,” Shapiro said. “I think it’s risky as hell.”
Assessing the response in Beijing and Moscow to America’s new trajectory, Kupchan suggests “the Chinese and the Russians are probably partly happy with what Trump is doing in the sense that it is a kind of ‘might makes right’ foreign policy.”
Yet the embrace of a revamped Monroe doctrine has not prevented Trump from leaning into new ways of projecting US power.
The President has shown a fondness for precision military strikes, leader-to-leader deals and the elevation of Washington as an international peace broker. The reshaping of the Middle East through the partial settlement of the Hamas-Israel conflict and Trump’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites – building on Israel’s military victories – stands as a major foreign policy achievement. Ukraine looms as the key test for Trump.

Not another snap of King Donald with a scrap of paper? Doing his Chamberlain impression one more time? US President Donald Trump with the signed agreement at a world leaders' summit on ending the Gaza war on October 13, 2025 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Picture: Getty

Oh well if Joe and the reptiles must, then the pond must ...

Joe kept going, determined to prove he was the new "Ned":

Any settlement that betrays Kyiv will endure as a monument to America’s changed character and abrogation of its role as a global democratic champion.
It is also possible that Trump’s success in capturing Maduro may embolden him to conduct more military operations abroad, a further change in Washington’s modus operandi.
Such missions are likely to be carefully targeted and avoid exposure to prolonged ground occupations. The risk is they fall short of delivering genuine strategic victories for Washington and stand merely as demonstrations of US firepower.
The exception is Greenland. Denmark’s Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, has warned if the US chooses to “attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO and thus the security that has been established since the end of the second world war”.
Campbell suggests that America’s closest partners in Europe and Asia are unlikely to “stay with us if we are embarking upon an effort to militarily seize Greenland”.
3: A new relationship with China
The coming century will be shaped by the strategic rivalry between Washington and Beijing, and 2026 looms as a year of profound importance. Trump will meet Xi Jinping several times, including during his April visit to Beijing.
Trump has taken a different approach to Xi. Of concern to Australia, the US President rarely uses the language of strategic deterrence and his non-ideological approach means it is unclear whether he views competition with Beijing as a contest between political ideologies or a test of the durability of democratic values.
Patrick says “it’s not an ideological contest any more … What Donald Trump’s policy is doing is muddying the waters between who are the good guys and who are not the good guys … I think that it is turning the US-China confrontation into a more traditional struggle between great powers.”
While many in Australia view Trump as a China hawk, this is a flawed assumption. Trump has already been forced into a pattern of concessions after Beijing – the sole nation to retaliate against his trade war – bested Washington after threatening to tighten its control over rare earth supply chains.

Say what?

Where was the bromancer and his war with China?

At last there came a final visual distraction: The coming year of high-level engagement with Xi provides China with an opportunity to chip away at the US President. Picture: AP

Oh the coming year is going to be a doozy ...

And so to a final burst of Joe-isms, channelling "Ned" by channeling others:

In December, the administration greenlit the sale by Nvidia to China of its H200 chips in return for Washington clawing in 25 per cent of the revenue – a move derided by analysts as a mistake.
Nishank Motwani, a senior analyst at the Washington-based branch of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, says it was a case of “raw capitalism overriding national security considerations”.
Campbell says there is a “deep ambiguity at the very core and heart of US strategic thinking about China in the Trump administration”, arguing the administration is deeply divided.
“You have some senior officials who believe we can cut really good deals with China,” he says. “And you have others that believe that China is a transcendent, existential threat to our way of life.
“I am concerned that the ultimate trend is towards either a rapprochement or an acquiescence to China that I do not believe is in our strategic interests.”
He says the grand bargain between Trump and Xi emerging ahead of the US President’s April visit to Beijing is a “profoundly bad one” that looks to “ease US restrictions on US technology to China”.
The knock-on effects for Taiwan are “very dangerous” and “if they felt like the United States was no longer backing them, it would have terrible consequences”.
“I fear … what the President really wants is very short-term gains,” Campbell says.
However, in December the US approved $11.1bn in arms sales to Taiwan and on Thursday local time Washington and Taipei signed a major trade deal.
This slashed tariffs on the island territory to 15 per cent while providing the US with credit guarantees of at least $250bn to facilitate investments by Taiwanese companies in US chip production. Still, the key question remains: how personally committed is Trump to a free Taiwan and will his diplomacy with Beijing lead to a softening of US policy? The coming year of high-level engagement with Xi provides China with an opportunity to chip away at the US President. Already there are indicators that Trump has weakened the US position. In his October meeting with Anthony Albanese, Trump conceded that AUKUS was a deterrent against China but he added a key qualification – it wouldn’t be needed.
This was a remarkable admission but one that was largely ignored in Australia.
Reflecting on the October White House meeting, Mira Rapp-Hooper, a partner at The Asia Group, makes the obvious point.
“From my perspective, if I see President Trump say that he doesn’t believe that China will invade Taiwan in 2027, even if there is some truth to that, I worry that what that does is erode signals of credible deterrence,” she says.
“It suggests to the Chinese side that the United States does not believe that they’re going to take some kind of dramatic action like that and may open up room for mis­calculation or misinterpretation by the PRC about the United States’ commitment.”

Is there no hope, is there no way to provoke King Donald?

And after all that, correspondents will perhaps forgive the pond for not summoning the strength to deal with Jennings of the fifth form, though he was blathering on mightily on a related matter.

Add five more minutes to over 20 minutes already spent with the hive mind? Forget it Jake ... the pond has already spent too much time in hive mind blather town:

Forget ambassador, it’s our Washington tactic that’s wrong
Albanese’s ‘small alliance’ strategy risks Australia’s critical relationship with the US
Anthony Albanese’s insistence on a ‘small alliance’ posture will make pursuit of Australia’s interests in the US difficult at a crucial time for national security.
By Peter Jennings
Contributor

That's an intermittent archive link for anyone who cares.

The pond was well past caring but will offer this teaser trailer, which being the last few words, is also a spoiler:

...There is little that needs urgent fixing in our Japan relationship, but the US relationship could go horribly wrong if it is mishandled.
Whoever is made ambassador, the next few years will be difficult pursuing Australia’s interests in Washington because of Albanese’s insistence on a “small alliance” posture when the US is asking its allies to do more.
We may get the right ambassador but, unfortunately, Albanese is backing the wrong strategy. We need closer engagement with the US, not more distance, and an honest public explanation about northern defence co-operation rather than Albanese’s evasive language about the sovereignty of Australian decision-making. 

Jennings of the fifth form wants us to bend the knee, tug the forelock and perhaps walk away with a swag bag full of expensive, never to be delivered subs?

He wants us to run with this karnival of klowns?

Nah, elbows up Canada, elbows up Oz ...