Thursday, December 11, 2025

In which Dame Groan delivers some musty, stale, repetitive air, while Barners' hunting season is now officially open ...

 

So here we are with this day's reptile chorus of complaints ... and sure enough, the whining, whingeing culture continues at the lizard Oz, with petulant Peta setting the pace ...

This perpetual grievance culture must end
Australia’s apology mania is wrong and must stop
We have created an Aboriginal grievance industry that needs to perpetuate victimhood to justify its continued existence, to build platforms of power.
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

Speaking of apologies ...



The pond doesn't want to be seen encouraging the  whinyblack bashing culture that's rampant in the Oz, so it was off to the intermittent, often failing, archive with her.

Ditto one note Dame Slap, still riding her latest hobby horse ...

Sally Dowling v Penelope Wass: This ugly public brawl undermines justice
The escalating war between Sally Dowling and Judge Penelope Wass has reached breaking point, with serious consequences for defendants and complainants caught in the crossfire.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Never mind the undermining of justice performed by Dame Slap in recent times.

As for Jack, the outsider on most issues, never mind the children, he was agitated for the parents ...

Social media ban to come at a cost for parents
Soon we’ll see what Albo’s zest for the social ban amounts to after parents catch on they have to fork out for the seven volume set of À la recherche du temps perdu and an oboe.
By Jack the Insider
Columnist

Luckily the pond had a Wilcox for that ...



Ah, mum, too much reading of the reptiles will always put you in a tizz ...why not take up social media, it could hardly be worse than the lizard Oz?

As predicted and expected, the "news" section carried on the latest reptile jihad ...



EXCLUSIVE
Farrell family flies almost halfway to moon on taxpayers … within rules
Trade Minister Don Farrell flies family using $90,000 of taxpayer funds
Fresh scrutiny of MPs’ travel entitlements reveals Don Farrell’s extensive use of taxpayer-funded family flights and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young’s 78 publicly funded trips for her lobbyist husband.
By Noah Yim and Jack Quail

Geoff chambered another round but could manage only a two minute rant ...

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Anthony Albanese runs ‘nothing to see here’ strategy and digs in behind big spender Anika Wells
Anthony Albanese’s defence of Anika Wells’s family travel expenses creates a stalemate where politicians accessing generous entitlements attack other politicians doing the same thing.

The only thing there to note was the yarn in another rag: 



Meanwhile the reptiles were agitated by another yarn featuring mad King Donald ...

Trump administration proposes mandatory social media checks for visa-free US travel
The Trump administration is proposing sweeping new travel rules that will impact Australian tourists.
By Joseph de Avila and Michelle Hackman



Relax, no need to travel, the madness can be safely observed from a distance...




And as well as the infallible Pope, there's always TT...



What a relief, a breath of stale air, to see Dame Groan out and about, burbling in her old biddy way about the usual ...



The header: Adding more renewables will not fix Australia’s energy price crisis; To Rod Sims’s way of thinking, the problem with our electricity prices is all about the cost of gas and our ageing coal-fired plants that are prone to break down.

The caption for Sauron himself, surrounded in the usual way by whale-killing windmills (you can see the whales on a daily basis on the Hume down Goulburn way): Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen

There was nothing new to see in the old biddy's rant. It was as stale as the pond's joke about whales being killed, but it took much longer, a full five minutes, running through the biddy's standard range of climate science denialist tricks ...

The pond merely catalogues it, so that it can join the pond's compendium of Groans ...

According to Rod Sims, former Australian Competition & Consumer Commission chairman, our high and rising electricity prices have nothing to do with the penetration of renewable energy.
To Sims’s way of thinking, the problem with our electricity prices is all about the cost of gas and our ageing coal-fired plants that are prone to break down.
Windmills, solar panels, batteries, hydro and a touch of gas can do the trick of achieving the holy grail of affordable and reliable energy while also meeting emissions reduction targets.
Not everyone agrees. There is a logical disconnect to Sims’s story because he omits the ad hoc expansion of subsidised renewable energy and the consequences it would have for the workings of the electricity grid and prices. It certainly wasn’t market forces.
While early interventions in the electricity grid were small-scale, across time the preference given to sustainability over affordability and reliability has led to an overdependence on weather-dependent generation, the intermittency of which has led to a series of problems.
These include the need for a massive overbuild of renewable installations and the requirement for expensive backup to cover situations when renewables, even with batteries, cannot meet demand.

The reptiles graced the apologist with a snap, Rod Sims addresses the National Press Club. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman



Sure enough that set off another bout of groaning ...

This is why the estimates of wind droughts, for instance, are so critical. The grid must be designed to deal with worst-case scenarios; averages are highly misleading.
By favouring renewable energy with financial backing and dispatch preference, the business model of the backbone of our electricity grid, coal-fired power plants, was quickly eroded.
In another scenario, these plants would been refurbished and/or rebuilt. Sims’s estimate of the cost of the new build of coal-fired power station is simply inaccurate. Using current sites and existing connections to the transmission system, Australia could have had a new suite of high-efficiency, low-emissions coal-fired plants that would have kept electricity prices competitive while providing free ancillary services that the grid requires.
It may be water under the bridge, but it is still worth thinking about what has been forgone.
It’s hardly surprising that China continues to build new coal-fired plants because they offer affordable and reliable power to service industry as well as provide cheap power to households.
Certainly, gas has increasingly become the price-setter in the east coast grid, the national electricity market. Open-cycle gas plants are a much better fit to provide backup to the uncertain flow of electrons from wind and solar than coal plants.
But it should not surprise anyone that the domestic price of gas has surged, given the strong antipathy of the Victorian and NSW governments to any new gas developments. For a long time, this aversion was shared by federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, although recently he has described gas as “the ultimate backstop in our energy grid”.
The fact remains many gas producers view Australia as a difficult place to explore for and exploit gas fields. Just look at the interminable delays in the development of the Narrabri project in NSW, the output of which is slated entirely for the domestic market. There is also insufficient infrastructure to support several potential gas projects, including in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Inevitably the dog botherer was enlisted to help out, Sky News host Chris Kenny says Chris Bowen’s solar share scheme is an “insult to taxpayers” as bills continue to rise.




On and on the old biddy ranted and groaned, her grief and sighing up there with the suffering of the Mock Turtle in Alice ...

The bottom line is the push into renewables has not gone well. There is a great deal of volatility in the market, with prices often hitting the maximum allowed. You see this particularly in South Australia with its high penetration of renewables. Bankrolling the installation of wind and solar farms, as well as promoting rooftop solar for households, has been insufficient to accommodate the planned exit of coal-fired stations. The owners of Yallourn, Loy Yang A and Eraring are all receiving substantial annual subsidies – in the ballpark of hundreds of millions of dollars – to keep the plants operating.
The construction of the new transmission lines required to link far-flung renewable installations also has been delayed and the costs have blown out. The transmission companies are hurriedly ordering synchronous condensers to provide the ancillary services that coal provides for free. These costs will be added to consumer bills in due course, along with the costs of the extra transmission lines and other infrastructure.
The net effect has been to dramatically push up electricity bills for households and businesses. According to the recent consumer price index figures, electricity costs increased by nearly 40 per cent across the year ending in October. Were it not for the rebates in place – yes, more subsidies – householders would have really felt the pinch. The decision by Jim Chalmers to discontinue the rebates next year could prove to be a courageous one.
In the meantime, energy-intensive operations – mainly smelters and refineries – have been operating at a loss, in part because of rising energy bills. Both the federal and state governments have stepped in with substantial subsidies to prevent their closure.
The point is that once upon a time we had affordable, reliable electricity where the market determined investment decisions. After two decades or so of forcing renewable energy – a very low-density form of energy requiring a great deal of land –the situation in which we find ourselves is dire.
Realistically, there is no prospect of green hydrogen or offshore wind filling the gaps, although that was the federal government’s plan at one stage.
Consumers are reluctant to sell electricity back to the grid and the take-up of electrical vehicles has been disappointing.
It is simply disingenuous therefore to suggest that the way out of this pickle is to install even more renewable energy – the Sims solution. Adding more renewables doesn’t overcome the problem of intermittency.

Cue Dan the man to help with the whining, the chorus of complaining, though it has to be said that a 'dozer on top of a pile of coal is a quaint way to illustrate the deep reptile devotion to sweet, virginal, clean, lovely and decent Oz coal ... Shadow Energy Minister Dan Tehan calls out Labor’s energy policies as Australians face “higher and higher” energy bills. “No one says pursuing 82 per cent renewables in your grid by 2030, which is completely and utterly ideologically driven, is a sensible way to do this,” Mr Tehan told Sky News Australia. “We are becoming more aware of the need for proper baseload power.”



A final round of complaints just about did it ...

In fact, wind has become a relatively expensive option and landowner objections to its installation are getting stronger, if anything. Several large-scale solar farms in New South Wales are going broke because the prices during the day are often negative due to the glut caused by solar rooftops.
The Australian Energy Market Commission is now walking back from its prediction that electricity prices would fall over the decade due to the penetration of renewables. The expectation is that real prices may rise by 13 per cent over the coming decade; there are reasons to think that this is an underestimate.
Victoria’s Auditor-General is also warning that the state’s grid is not well-placed to cope with the anticipated closure of the Yallourn coal-fired power station in 2028. The expectation now is that further subsidies will be required to ensure its continuation. The state’s plan for offshore wind is in tatters as the recent round of auctions had to be cancelled. In any case, offshore wind is a particularly expensive means of generating electricity.
As for the proposition pushed by Bowen and other cabinet ministers that renewables are the “cheapest form of new energy” – note the inclusion of new – it is becoming clear that when all the system costs are included, this assertion simply doesn’t stack up.
Add in the risk of total blackouts, such as the one that happened recently in renewables-dependent Spain and Portugal, and the case for a Plan B that is not based on the further expansion of renewables becomes compelling. It would be better for everyone if some of these coal plants were rebuilt rather than allowed to limp on.

Recent? She's still banging on about Spain and Portugal? According to AI and wiki, the last big Iberian peninsula blackout was back in April  but to the doddery old duffer, caught in a repetitive time warp, it probably felt like yesterday ...

Here, have a break, have a Golding in lieu of a Kit Kat ...



The pond wanted to end with a note that at last it's open season on that wascally wabbit Barners, Tamworth's eternal shame ...

Good old Ron - haven't heard from the old laggard in years - was out and about in the lizard Oz shedding crocodile tears ...

If you want to follow any of the links, you can do it via the intermittent archive.

The pond was mainly interested in the grieving, as if Tamworth's shame had ever been anything other than a blundering, deeply clueless Tamworth boofhead and git ...

The pond can never get over the undying stain of having been born in the same hospital as the boofhead ...




The pond resorted to the timeless Burroughs' cut and paste method as a way of continuing its war with roaming AI bots ...




Completely clueless ... but then Ron has always been that way ... 

At last it came time to wrap up with a final gobbet of whining and moping...




Dropping net zero? 

Old Ron wants to think that it's a good start? 

But then Ron has always been a completely clueless buffoon of the first water ...think way back to 2015 ...

Can a clueless clown of the first water carry any credibility berating another clown, or is it just part of a circus slapstick routine?




But this is Barners' hunting season, and the pond couldn't help noticing another attempt to nail Tamworth's shame in another place ... I take it all back. Barnaby is a fool, after all (*archive link)

Here it should be noted that anyone who didn't think Barners was a fool from the get go has to be marked as a most peculiar fool, sadly much like the town of Tamworth, repeatedly voting for the clown and then wondering why it was considered the country capital for an ongoing carnival of clowns ...




Barners was never politically dumb?

He always had the next 17 moves mapped out in 4D chess before anyone figured out he was playing 5D chess?

Who is this fool, this blithering, blathering idiot? 

It made the pond insatiable, the pond wanted more ...




If anyone wanted to understand why Tamworth kept voting for its undying shame, there's a more than fair clue buried at shallow grave level in this nonsense.

Suddenly they're going to ghost him, as if he never did anything worthy of a ghosting before bedding down with Pauline?

Ye sainted aunt's collection of Tamworthian stupidities ...



He's never, until now, been a fool?

Really?




Oh it's been a long time since Tony Windsor ...




What a remarkably obtuse and foolish piece about a remarkably obtuse and perennially foolish politician, whether pandering to Gina, or cavorting in his usual narcissistic, exhibitionist, attention-seeking delusional clown car way ... proving that a doctorate these days is an entirely meaningless measure, if the expectation is to read something sensible.

Well it's been a long Barners hunt, and the pond hopes that the wait for the immortal Rowe as the pond trudged through the thickets of north west slopes and plains stupidity (not to mention the follies of the northern tablelands) was worth it ...




Dammit, the pond can't remember seeing that critter in the movie ...





Wednesday, December 10, 2025

In which the bromancer, "Ned" and the onion muncher serve up a generous amount of blather ...

 

A big day for the reptiles, and not because of the ongoing assorted jihads ...

They won't let this one go until there's a scalp ...

EXCLUSIVE
Wells unrepentant as Greens catch family frequent flight fever
Anika Wells taxpayer-funded travel saga widens to include Greens Senators
WATCH | As Anika Wells refers her family’s travel to the expenses watchdog, Greens senators and Anthony Albanese himself face scrutiny over similar entitlements used for sports, music festivals, and protests.
By Noah Yim, Jack Quail and Liam Mendes

Speaking of which, how good is it to see Golding return after a short break?



Wells' actual policies were well down the page, and presented with proud defiance and comely enthusiasm:

SOCIAL MEDIA
We will stand firm against the tech giants: Wells
Communications Minister Anika Wells has vowed to defend Australia’s world-leading under-16 social media ban against tech giant legal challenges as the law takes effect.
By Sarah Ison

The lesser Leeser was on hand to help out ...

...The former High Court chief justice responsible for modelling SA’s draft social media legislation in 2024, Robert French, said the federal scheme would “undoubtedly be a work in progress” but he was “reasonably optimistic” it was an important public policy step.
“It will also provide a much needed support to parents who have concerns about social media based on their children from on the ground experience of its effects,” he said.
While some Coalition MPs have raised concerns over the workability of the social media ban, opposition education spokesman Julian Leeser said he was supportive of the policy and would also be open to initiatives to limit smartphone use, as proposed by the SA government.
“Social media has become a tool for bullying and worse, and too many young people are being harmed by what appears on their screens,” he told The Australian.
Mr Leeser revealed that in a show of support for the policy, he would stay off social media between Christmas and Australia Day.

That must be a huge relief to victims of the lesser Leeser's insatiable appetite for social media ...

And speaking of Golding ...





Meanwhile, the reptiles will always have an undying love for sweet, virginal, clean, innocent, decent Oz coal ...

ENERGY
Reality for ALP as coal will be needed until 2049, says AEMO report
Coal will be needed as an on-demand source to stabilise the energy grid until 2049 in an extraordinary 12-year-long extension threatening Labor’s 2050 net-zero target.
By Colin Packham and Richard Ferguson

Sing the song of coal Geoff ...

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Utopian forecasts pave way to net zero future

The energy regulator has delivered a $128bn bombshell that threatens to derail Chris Bowen’s promise of cheap, abundant renewable power for all Australians.

And there was still much love for poor, endlessly suffering Linda ...

Linda Reynolds: I haven’t received one cent after defamation case win against Brittany Higgins
Linda Reynolds is not giving up the fight to receive a defamation payout of more than $1m from her former staffer Brittany Higgins, who claimed the former senator covered up her alleged rape by Bruce Lehrmann.
By Ike Morris

Poor pitiful her, what joy is there in persecuting a rape victim if there's no cash in the paw?

The long absent lord alone knows what the suffering readership makes of this peculiar obsession.

 Meanwhile, over on the extreme far right, Dame Slap had abandoned Linda and found a new victim:

Sally Dowling’s battles are no good for justice 
How much longer will Chris Minns countenance a chief prosecutor – and her office – being at the centre of a war with sections of the NSW judiciary?
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

The pond tiptoed past planet Janet because the reptiles were also besotted by AUKUS.

Cameron was in the grip of a dangerous triumphalism, adrift with war criminals and grifters... 

Ringing endorsement sinks the AUKUS doubters
AUKUS sceptics need to get a grip and accept that Australia is getting nuclear subs after the Trump administration’s glowing endorsement of the plan
By Cameron Stewart
Chief International Correspondent
...Those who believe Australia should never have signed up to AUKUS, including Paul Keating, Gareth Evans, Bob Carr and Malcolm Turnbull, are entitled to their opinions. But this is now a debate for the history books, because the pact is going ahead.
The more important debate now is how best to manage AUKUS. How does Australia fund such an eye-wateringly expensive enterprise without starving funding for other parts of defence?
The answer, of course, is to lift defence spending, initially from 2 to 2.5 per cent of GDP with an aspirational target of 3 per cent.
That is a debate the government will have to have, even if it is currently in a state of denial.
The AUKUS enterprise is bound to have huge challenges and setbacks in the years ahead.
Australia will struggle to find enough nuclear-qualified workers, not to mention welders and shipbuilders, to maintain and eventually build submarines here. The program is bound to be over budget and late, as they always are.
But let’s cut to the chase: AUKUS is happening and it’s time we stop pretending that it won’t.

Not so fast Cam, the bromancer was also on the scene ...



The header: AUK-ward truth: the sinking feeling behind our subs pact; Australia has paid the US another billion dollars for submarine manufacturing capability despite AUKUS facing production delays and Britain’s naval crisis threatening the entire partnership.

The caption for the carnival of fellow travellers with toadies and war criminals: Richard Marles, left, Penny Wong, Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth at the AUSMIN talks in Washington. Picture: Instagram

It took just 3 minutes for the bromancer to produce some saucy doubts and fears:

This underwhelming AUSMIN meeting in Washington demonstrated a stark contradiction between the flim flam of happy talk, and the substance of nothing much happening.
I’ve covered a lot of AUSMIN meetings over the decades and I can’t recall one in which the American principals, in this case Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, wanted to exit the room before taking a single question on the alliance.
As AUSMINs go, it was a snooze fest, like Jofra Archer turning up to an Ashes cricket Test with a pillow. It’s still an Ashes Test, but there’s something fundamentally wrong – a mismatch between pillows and ashes.
The Albanese government is showing itself to be quite good at alliance diplomacy. It manages to get the senior Americans in the room, at least briefly, and they don’t beat up on us, in fact they say nice things about us.
But although Richard Marles and Penny Wong joined Rubio and Hegseth in declaring AUKUS is “full steam ahead”, the facts ­supporting that proposition are extremely thin on the ground.

The reptiles interrupted with an explanation of the wisdom of pouring vast sums of money down a black hole, Australia and the United States have agreed to go “full steam ahead” for the AUKUS pact during high-level bilateral talks in Washington DC. Defence Minister Richard Marles has refused to explain what changes President Trump’s team is seeking to make. “The review is essentially looking at ways in which AUKUS can be done better,” Mr Marles said.



The bromancer wasn't convinced by it all ...

The simple arithmetic of AUKUS just doesn’t match the declaratory policy.
History has a pretty bitter lesson here. When reality contradicts the declaratory policy, it’s reality that prevails, not policy.
The only really substantial announcement out of this AUSMIN was that Australia would pay the US another billion dollars to contribute to its nuclear submarine manufacturing capability. This is the functional equivalent of the donations the Australian colonies used to collect to subsidise Britain’s Royal Navy, in the expectation that it would look after us.
AUKUS is adrift, and even if everyone on the planet says “full steam ahead”, it doesn’t change the underlying realities.
In the years leading up to World War II, Australia was convinced that the Singapore strategy – relying on Britain’s “impregnable” naval base in Singapore – provided for Australian security.
It was used by Australian politicians as an excuse for radically underspending on defence.
Australia entered World War II in much worse shape militarily than it entered World War I. Fortunately, the Americans saved us. The Singapore strategy worked superbly until it was exposed that policy didn’t match reality.
Something similar is happening with AUKUS today.
The US companies involved have been stubbornly unable to meaningfully lift the rate of production of nuclear-powered submarines. By 2032, when Australia is scheduled to get its first Virginia-class submarine, the US will be gravely short of such boats.
Elbridge Colby, the Under Secretary for Policy at the Pentagon, is inclined to face that reality now and talk about it clearly. But doing that explodes the happy fantasies of AUKUS, which for now suit all the players. So Colby was overruled in the report he could write.
Britain, the third member of AUKUS, is in the midst of a shocking naval capability crisis.
Britain’s First Sea Lord, Marine General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, declared this week that Britain was closer to losing control of the Atlantic to the Russians than it has been at any time since World War II. Despite the Ukraine war, he said, Russia had invested “billions” into its maritime capabilities, which Britain can’t match.
This follows a devastating intervention in the debate by Rear Admiral Philip Mathias, who was at one time head of ­nuclear policy at the Ministry of Defence.
He said the UK was no longer capable of running a fleet of nuclear submarines.
The latest British nuclear sub to enter service, HMS Agamemnon, took a catastrophic 13 years to build.
Admiral Mathias said: “The SSN-AUKUS is a submarine which is not going to deliver what the UK or Australia needs in terms of capability or timescale.”
Acquiring nuclear submarines is prodigiously expensive, even for an economy as big as Britain’s.
The Albanese government’s defence budget is manifestly, wildly inadequate.
It’s also virtually inconceivable that the Brits will actually be building nuclear subs with Australia in Adelaide in the 2040s.
So why is the Trump administration appearing to be so relatively relaxed?
All that AUKUS provides for now is that we give the US several billion dollars for its submarine industry, send sailors to serve on their ships, create a maintenance base for them in Perth and slowly expand military co-operation in northern Australia.
All good, but nothing of a new capability of our own.
The US doesn’t even make a decision about providing a Virginia-class sub for us until 2031 or 2032 at the earliest.
Nothing much is happening in Pillar Two of AUKUS – defence technology co-operation.
Given how irrelevant we’ve become, the Americans are willing to continue to accept our money with good grace.
That’s the summit of Albanese defence achievement so far.

So we're just another grift, and king grifter King Donald is happy with the grift?

Before moving to the next reptile, perhaps a little holyday interruption from the infallible Pope?



Yes, he really did suggest starting a new sport, learning a new instrument or readinga book that's been sitting on your shelf for some time.

It's going to be a long summer, explaining to the partner that Albo wants new role models for teens.

Righto, it was time for nattering "Ned" to take the stand with a pompous, albeit modest, 5 minute rant channeling the thoughts of the French clock devotee ...



The header: Trump has one virtue alone – he may prevent a World War III: Keating’s assessment of new world agenda; Donald Trump’s national security strategy abandons global leadership for Western hemisphere dominance. Former PM Paul Keating hails it as a historic turning point terminating the post-World War II era.

There was no credit for the wretched collage, sensibly so, because who would take a credit when AI could be blamed? Paul Keating, left, and US President Donald Trump. Pictures: News Corp/AFP

"Ned" wasn't happy with King Donald but took seriously the notion that the US was now non-interventionist, even as assorted war criminals committed murder on the high seas and King Donald's minions plotted an assault on Venezuela ...

The revolution that Donald Trump and JD Vance represent is on brilliant display in two standout aspects of the US national security strategy – America’s abandonment of its post-World War II global leadership role and its cultural obsession about European civilisational decline.
Both testify to the Trumpian transformation, now formalised in a White House approved blueprint enthusiastically embraced by the wider MAGA movement.
Its heart, as this paper has highlighted, is the embrace of a “protect our homeland” Western hemisphere primacy – branded a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine in the same spirit as the “Roosevelt Corollary” under which president Theodore Roosevelt asserted unilateral US dominance of the Western hemisphere.
This is tied to a “predisposition to non-intervention” in foreign conflicts or setting “a high bar for what constitutes a justified intervention” – a repudiation of what Trump brands the obsession of past US elites to conduct forever wars and “to shoulder forever global burdens”. The policy denounces past “destructive bets on globalism and so-called free trade” that, it claims, hollowed out the US middle class and its industrial base.
The central idea is the renewal of American sovereignty, the elevation of the “America First” principle and the acceptance of the sovereign power of all nations against progressive post-national elites. It declares “the era of mass migration is over” and envisages an America that champions trade protectionism to rebuild its economic strength and its industrial base. It assumes a long-run global revolution.

The reptiles threw in a snap of King Donald, surprisingly with his eyes open ... US President Donald Trump’s strategy cements ‘America First’. Picture: AP



"Ned" offered a detailed synopsis - so much easier than searching for an original thought:

Pivotal to this blueprint is US energy dominance – cheap energy in the form of oil, gas, coal and nuclear – as an economic and strategic necessity. The policy repudiates what it calls “the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘net zero’ ideologies” that the document says have damaged Europe and subsidised America’s adversaries.
The overarching concept is that “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over”. This buries the previous vision of America as the “indispensable nation” for the global order.
On Ukraine, the document seeks a “strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass” but is devoid of any criticism of Russia or its manifest aggression. Likewise, on China – the strategy says America cannot allow any nation to “threaten our interests” but then runs with the massive qualification that the US won’t be “wasting blood and treasure to curtail the influence of all the world’s great and middle powers” – surely music in Moscow and Beijing. The implication: expand your power but don’t threaten America.
The document frames Trump as “The President of Peace” who seeks to stop regional conflicts “before they spiral into global wars that drag down whole continents”. He believes in the doctrine of “peace through strength” and therefore is pledged to ensure the US has the strongest economy, the most advanced technology and the world’s most capable military.
On Asia policy, the blueprint aspires to two ultimate goals – successfully competing against China in economic and technological terms but also strategic deterrence “to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific”. Significantly, it says allies and partners have a major role. Allies are expected to increase defence spending, with Australia specifically named.

Then came another reminder of the King, with a minor courtier, President Donald Trump speaks with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the Oval Office when the pair met in October. Picture: White House



Still strapped for an original thought, "Ned" sought out the French clock maker to help him with his natter:

The contradiction arises with a significant feature being the strong commitment to “deterring a conflict over Taiwan”, with a pledge to “build a military capable of deterring aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain” along with a warning that America “cannot, and should not have to, do this alone”, and allies expected to do “much more for collective defence”. So Trump doesn’t want a war over Taiwan but can’t let China win by incorporating Taiwan.
This document is probably the most lucid summary of the meaning of Trumpism. Like most inter-agency documents there is almost something for everybody. But what comes through is the sheer US domestic electoral appeal that radiates from every page along with the massive policy contradictions between the ends and the means. Actual delivery is improbable.
Keating’s view
There is a big message for Australia: America is changing; don’t think all this will be swept aside post-Trump. His ideas, good and bad, are taking institutional form. Don’t be fooled by the success of the Albanese government in dealing with Trump so far, and the dispensation he gave us on defence spending. America is heading into new directions that will profoundly challenge Australia and for which we are unprepared.
There will be many different Australian responses. One of the most interesting comes from Paul Keating. Long an advocate of Trump’s strategic transformation of America policy, going back to his first term, Keating hails the new US national security strategy as a historic turning point terminating the post-World War II era.
Keating told this column: “Just as Nixon alone was able to sign America up to an anti-Soviet strategy with China, Trump alone and by executive decision is removing America from its 80-year role and burden as global hegemon to reassert itself as the dominant power in the Western hemisphere, extending, formally and forcefully, its reach into Latin America.
“Trump, all by himself, is employing his mandate to alter America’s post-war strategic direction to both acknowledge and accommodate other great powers in a manner last comprehensively articulated by Franklin Roosevelt.
“Trump has one virtue and one virtue alone – he may prevent a World War III.”
Keating interprets the US security strategy as signalling Trump’s determination to avoid a future military conflict with either Russia or China. He has long argued that China’s immense strength as an industrial power means the US cannot defeat China in any war in East Asia or over Taiwan.

For helping out, the French clock lover scored his own snap, Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating. Picture: Getty Images




"Ned"was startled:

The second startling aspect of the strategy is its alarm about “the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure” in Europe – and the elevation of Europe’s changing character as a frontline strategic issue. The report sees Europe’s economic decline as tied to a far more serious demise of national identities and self-confidence, caused by migration policies, cratering birthrates, the prominence of transnational bodies and censorship of free speech. It doesn’t identify the Muslim issue but the point is obvious.
“Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognisable in 20 years or less,” the policy says. “As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.”
It says this demise of self-confidence is “most evident” in Europe’s relations with Russia.
European nations enjoy “a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure” (save nuclear weapons) yet “the Trump administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war”.

Apropos of all that the reptiles featured another lowlight, though it was only put together by anonymous hacks:

Donald Trump blasts Europe as ‘decaying’ with ‘weak’ leaders
The US President launched a scathing attack on Europe over migration, political correctness and the war in Ukraine.
by Staff writers and AFP

Between time in a French café in Paris and time with dozy Don in Florida, the pond knows where it would rather be.

Amazing that so much attention must be paid to a dozy Don deep into dementia, but the Putin sycophant was at it again ...and thanks to the reptiles, there came another reminder of his devotion: US President Donald Trump, right, reaches out to shake hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August. Picture: AFP



"Ned" kept experiencing anxiety attacks. 

Perhaps being kissing cousin with Faux Noise wasn't the best way forward ...

This document only reinforces the fear that Trump will sell Ukraine down the river.
It offers a patronising justification for US intervention in Europe’s domestic affairs, following the Munich speech by Vance early this year.
“Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory,” the document says. “America is, understandably, sentimentally attached to the European continent – and, of course, to Britain and Ireland. We want to work with aligned countries that want to restore their former greatness.
“Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European. As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the US, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.”
The document professes a concern to save Europe from itself while suggesting the foundations for NATO are eroding. That’s good news for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s distaste for much of Europe is visceral. He doesn’t see Australia as being contaminated by the European malaise. That’s good. But here’s a question for Australia: are we becoming more like Europe?

The question that might have been better to ask?

With all the neo-Nazi ratbags and lovers of authoritarianism currently out in the wild, are we becoming more like the United States, eager to be ruled by grifters, charlatans and epic liars?

The pond felt the need for a break, a little pacing, provided by the Wilcox of the day ...



Speaking of devotees of authoritarianism still getting away with it, the onion muncher was also out and about this day:



The header: Key to conservative revival: Drop climate change fixation, end mass migration; The conservative movement risks extinction as disenchanted voters flee to fringe parties, but strong policies and clear alternatives offer a blueprint for revival.

The uncredited caption for yet another wretched collage: Britain’s Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, Liberal Leader Sussan Ley and Republican President Donald Trump. Pictures: AP, Getty, Newswire.

It was a four minute read, but the poor lad is now so adrift in a sea of irrelevance, it was good to see the reptiles give him a home.

Then he could blather on about the "Anglosphere", and climate science denialism and Nige and Viktor and all his barking mad mates.

The pond only offers this time for the onion muncher so that correspondents can do a good hating,

Or not.

There are plenty of other ways to waste time than keep company with an irrelevant loon, his time long past, still shouting into the void, though others might like to think of him in his karaoke days, a time of low comedy ...




Stand back, let the clown sing his song, even though he's clearly lost his timing at this point in his non-career ...

Apart from in the US, it is not a good time for the main conservative political parties across the Anglosphere.
Australia’s Liberal-National Coalition and Britain’s Conservative Party have just crashed to their worst defeats; and in Canada a likely Conservative landslide turned into a narrow loss due to a downside of Donald Trump, namely heavy new tariffs on friends and allies. Some conservative voters are leaving the mainstream for disrupters, supposedly more truly conservative and untainted by failure.
There is no mystery to the conservative eclipse: revolving-door prime ministerships, careerist MPs, policy incoherence and a sense of impotence against the unelected and unaccountable administrative state. We have to face up to the fact it’s not our opponents’ brilliance but our own deficiencies that are to blame.

The US is a good time for conservatism? 

The US is a mess, but the reptiles just had to bring up Susssan v. the lettuce, didn't they? Former prime minister Tony Abbott comments on the Liberal Party’s recent meeting on net zero and the party’s leadership under Sussan Ley.




The pond isn't going to single out anything in the onion muncher playlist. We've heard this out of key tuneless harping many, many times before ...

One lesson we can learn from Trump is the need for strength; the need to have better answers to voters’ problems than the other side.

Oh FFS, that must be worth a mention. The need for strength? Dozy Don is strength? More like chaos ...

Then it was on to the usual denialism, and the rolling out of Tony Bleagh yet again ...

Indeed, that should be the mark of a conservative political movement: we address the issues facing our country and try to make what’s bad better, in ways that voters might be expected to support, in line with principles that have been proven to work.
It’s pragmatism based on values. Voters expect us to deliver more jobs with higher pay, lower taxes and better prospects for young people to buy a home and start a family. So, to succeed politically, our job is to stop what governments are doing to make that harder; to adhere to the cardinal principle of politics: First, do no harm.
Let’s start by dropping the climate change fixation and the commitment to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, which even former British Labour prime minister Tony Blair has said is “doomed to fail”. As the US Energy Secretary has said: “There is no climate crisis and there is no energy transition.”
Sure, we have only one planet and should pass it on in better shape to our descendants. And climate does indeed change, as shown by the ice ages, for instance. But why do we assume that mankind’s carbon dioxide is the only or even the main factor in climate change; and even if it is, why are we turning our economies upside down to decarbonise given that China, India, Russia and now America, too, have made no commitment to reduce their emissions to net zero by 2050?

Actually we're not turning our economy upside down, we're busy shipping gas and coal overseas at a jolly good price, but never mind, time for Nigel to make an appearance, bashing furriners ,...

Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage says a cluster of problems affecting the population of the UK has occurred under the Conservative government. “As I've been saying, dire economic problems, rising unemployment, persistent inflation … mass migration making us poorer,” Mr Farage told Sky News host Paul Murray. “And that was just under the Tories.”



How soon can we deport the onion muncher back to England, what with him making the IQ of the country diminish by the day?

This futile green gesture is driving up power prices, sending heavy industry offshore and making us even more dependent on China, which produces nearly all the solar panels and the wind turbines, disfiguring landscapes, supposedly to save the planet.
Then let’s end the mass migration that is driving down wages, pushing up housing costs, putting massive strain on infrastructure and services, and in some places making citizens feel like strangers in their own country.
Australia is the only country that has ended a wave of illegal migration by boat. Then there’s Hungary, under Viktor Orban, which has managed the harder task of ending a wave of illegal migration by land plus insisted that legal migration, too, be controlled so that Hungary keeps its culture.

The onion muncher's still showing his devotion to an anti-democratic authoritarian - he really does know how to sing for his Putin-loving supper - and yet the reptiles care so little that they won't put an accent in the right place? 

Orbán!

Why in some countries you might get flung into the clink for the want of an accent.

Back to the irrelevance ...

In becoming citizens, migrants to Australia have to swear that “from this time forward, under God, I pledge my allegiance to Australia and its citizens whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey”. They need not just say it but also mean it.
The migrants we should welcome are those who are committed to joining our team, not just taking advantage of life in a free country.
And as for the argument that migrants are needed to fill the jobs locals won’t do, then improve the incentives for work, through higher pay or ending virtually unconditional welfare payments.
As conservatives, we need to break the something-for-nothing entitlement mindset that is so corrosive of societies’ morale, as people in low-paid jobs deeply resent their neighbours earning almost as much from welfare as from work.
For people under 50 who had been unemployed and on welfare for six months or more, the Howard government in Australia introduced something called work for the dole – they had to do two days’ work experience every week to keep getting their money. It meant that younger unemployed people had to go back to work, preferably for a wage, but if not for the dole. And it distinguished our side as the real working-class party while our opponents – who hated it – were exposed as the welfare-class party.

Given the way that the reptiles have ghosted Barners and his new affair, it seems odd that they should have put Tamworth's shame into the onion muncher's rant, but there he was: Sky News host Steve Price questions whether One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson had told Member for New England Barnaby Joyce of her plan not to step down for another two terms. “I wonder if that was part of the negotiations that she was going to be in charge until she’s 83 years old and Barnaby’s going to hang around as her deputy,” Mr Price told Sky News host Sharri Markson. “The big problem here is for the Coalition and the conservative side of the Coalition. “It’s a disaster for the Coalition to lose Barnaby.”




It's a disaster to lose Tamworth's shame? 

No wonder Sharri scores full disrespect.

Meanwhile, the onion muncher had reached the end, with another gobbet of irrelevance:

It is conservatives who don’t really know where they stand and what they’d do differently that voters are over. It’s when political calculation stops us doing what we know is right that conservatives fail. Our challenge is to be a strong and clear alternative to the green-left parties that have exported manufacturing jobs to China, created vast ineffectual bureaucracies, made too many citizens dependants on government and let our armed forces run down to the extent that we can’t give the Ukrainians the weapons they need to fight for everyone’s freedom.
These are fraught times. But as Margaret Thatcher famously observed, the facts are conservative. Before the lights go out, people will wake up to the climate cult. Before passing new blasphemy laws, people will finally grasp the folly of mass migration. And right before the International Monetary Fund is called in, we’ll rein back the welfare state.
But in the meantime we’ve got to “fight the good fight, stay the course, and keep the faith”. If mainstream conservative parties keep failing, it won’t just be fringe parties of the right that supplant us. Unhappy voters will keep replacing incumbents even if it means jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. That’s why pluralist democracy under the rule of law needs its champions to be strong – that’s us – if it is to survive.

There came a final tragic note:

Tony Abbott was prime minister of Australia, 2013-15.

They didn't even have the time to mention his epic recent work, his history, his TV show? All his assiduously pathetic attempts to get back into the conversation, courtesy News Corp?

Mentioning his short, incompetent reign was all they could do? 

Remind us that he was kicked out of office way back on 15th September 2015, a good ten plus years ago, and since then has drifted around like a corked bottle, its message awash in a sea of indifference?

Time for the immortal Rowe to take up that blather about the need for strength in grifting, what with the latest grift well under way ...




Shouldn't there have been a credit for Jared too?

Never mind, each time he has a go, the immortal Rowe devises grand new images for this raucous, loud piggy ...





Tuesday, December 09, 2025

In which the pond opens with the bromancer, does a dismal dismissive survey of sundry reptile jihads, and ends with a bout of ancient Troy celebrating the head prefect ...

 

The keen desire of the reptiles for Australia to be aligned with a demented, narcissistic king took centre stage today in the lizard Oz ...



Amazing really that there was absolutely no room at the reptile inn for a little bit of Xmas joy ... Tamworth's undying shame, its eternal disgrace ...



Sorry, no guessing from the reptiles about how long the affair will last.

Instead Joe, lesser member of the Kelly gang, kept busy steaming ahead with the shame of the disunited States ...

AUSMIN
AUKUS to go ‘full steam ahead’ Washington vows
Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth have provided strong assurances about the future of AUKUS, arguing the Pentagon’s review was aimed at strengthening the security partnership so it works ‘for Australia, the US and UK’.
Joe Kelly

EXCLUSIVE
How Morrison, Rudd and Marles forced Pentagon rethink on its AUKUS review
Senior US officials and leading Australians helped steer the Pentagon’s AUKUS review away from threatening the landmark security partnership.
Joe Kelly

The pond ignored Joe's work to cut to the chase, the drum, the good oil, the right stuff, from the bromancer ...



The header: Harsh truths in Trump’s foreign policy ramble, but hardly a word on Russian aggression; The US President’s National Security Strategy is a strange mix. It’s an extremely personal distillation of his world view, which tries to make ‘America First’ a coherent doctrine.

The caption: US President Donald Trump waits for the arrival of Crown Prince and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, DC.

Remarkably in his 4 minute report card, the bromancer didn't sound entirely convinced ...

Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy is a weird mixture of the compellingly true, the somewhat reassuring and the deeply disturbing. Regarding Australia, the NSS repeated the strong call that we should spend more on defence. Australia is paired, oddly, with Taiwan.
Despite Trump being nice to Anthony Albanese recently, the US view of Australia is clear-eyed and accurate. When it comes to defence, we are bludgers, living off US security guarantees. In words so explicit even a government as impervious to reality as the Albanese government couldn’t misunderstand them, the NSS makes plain that allies, explicitly including Australia, must take primary responsibility for their own security if they want to benefit at all from the US alliance.
Overall, the document is a strange mix. Nothing like it has ever served as a US national security statement. It’s an extremely personal distillation of the Trump world view, which tries to make “America First” a coherent doctrine. As such, there’s a lot of MAGA rhetoric and political critique.
This is not to condemn it altogether. Much that it says is true, some parts sensible enough, some parts even reassuring. But, like the MAGA movement, like Trump himself, it’s self-contradictory.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap of the King and Kegsbreath ... Trump alongside Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth holds a cabinet meeting at the White House.




The bromancer did his best to like the result:

It provides what is really its overall intellectual view of American foreign policy: “President Trump single-handedly reversed more than three decades of mistaken American assumptions about China: namely, that by opening our markets to China, encouraging American business to invest in China, and outsourcing our manufacturing to China, we would facilitate China’s entry into the so-called rules-based international order. This did not happen. China got rich and powerful, and used its wealth and power to considerable advantage. American elites – over four successive administrations of both political parties – were either willing enablers of China’s strategy or in denial.”
That’s a reasonable interpretation of history, and also goes to Trump’s core view of America, politics and the world. The elites and their policies are hopeless. They stabbed America in the back in pursuit of ideology and vanity. Ruthless Trumpian pragmatism, transactionalism and national selfishness is the only chance to recover America’s position. But the passage above is almost the only passage in the entire document in which China is explicitly criticised. This is even more true for Russia, which is not criticised at all.
The document is in a sense delicious, as rich in quotable epithets – Europe risks “civilisational erasure”, and lapidary formulations such as: “The era in which the United States, like Atlas, upheld global order has ended” – as the best PG Wodehouse short stories.
I therefore recommend people read the whole thing. It’s only 30 sparse pages. But for analytical purposes you’ve got to try to see it as a whole.
The document has two quite startling qualities. It makes no criticism of Russia and says only that it wants to rebuild strategic stability with Moscow. Let’s be clear what this means. Russia, without provocation, justification or cause of any kind, brutally invaded the independent, sovereign nation of Ukraine in order to increase Russian territory and population, and re-establish as much as possible the giant territorial footprint of the old Soviet Union. Russia now poses a direct military threat to the smaller Baltic nations. It’s reasonable for Trump to try to bring the war to an end through negotiations and indeed to aim for a stable relationship with Moscow.

Delicious, Wodehouse, and the stabbing of Ukraine in the back?

It's all a jolly joke, a complete lark, amongst chums?

Well you must take your pleasures where you find them if you're a bromancer; not so happy if you happen to be the head of an invaded and betrayed state ... President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky looks on before his meeting with the President of Cyprus in Kyiv on December 4, 2025.




Then the saucy doubts and fears began to bubble to the surface...

But the idea that the NSS can’t even mention Russia’s aggression because this might disturb negotiations tells you that negotiations are so fragile as to be nearly worthless, or that Washington plans to make massive concessions to Moscow and conceding basic truths is part of that.
At the same time, the NSS is overcritical and dismissive of America’s European NATO allies. No Australian should take comfort from this on the basis that the US will abandon Ukraine and European security generally in order to focus on Asia. Alas, weakness begets weakness. The US is providing virtually no material support to Ukraine. It sells weapons to the Europeans, who provide them to Ukraine.
The NSS reads as though the US is the independent umpire between two squabbling football teams – Russia and Europe – and is completely neutral. It says that after peace is declared Washington can help rebuild Ukraine and assist its viability as a state. But that’s the only statement that could remotely be seen as pro-Ukraine. Ukrainian freedom, European democracy, a barrier to Russian militaristic expansion – none of these figures as an objective of the NSS.
No one could accuse this column of being a starry-eyed admirer of the European Union or establishment European politics. But the fact remains that the leading powers of Europe remain, after Japan, America’s most powerful and consequential allies. It’s true that the European NATO allies have been partial free riders on America, spending far less of their respective GDPs on defence than the US did. But lately they have massively increased their defence effort.

And to be fair, Europe's finest, devotees of the ugly game, did contrive to reward the King ...



At this point, the reptiles introduced a snap of a warmonger, Vladimir Putin attends his ceremonial reception at India's presidential palace, Rashtrapati Bhavan, in New Delhi on December 5, 2025.




Weird times, with the bromancer discovering the King and his minions might be dangerous and dumb ...

However, Europe remains a central part of the global economy and power structure. The EU, Britain and Norway together are a bigger economy than the US. Europe is underperforming woefully economically (like Australia) but has the power to recover. Even underperforming, it’s still wealthy and powerful, and increasingly capable militarily. In the long economic and political arm wrestle with China it’s a key swing bloc. It’s as if the NSS thinks America will still be able to mobilise Europe politically no matter how it treats it in the security sphere.
That’s extremely dangerous. And dumb.
There’s another shift that Australian commentators have not got hold of. This is not an Asia-first document, though it says good things about military deterrence. Rather, it’s a Latin America-first document, saying the US will reduce effort in Europe and the Middle East, not to focus on Asia but to focus on Latin America.
This is combined with a weird passage saying all great powers have their spheres of influence. Taken to its logical conclusion, this morally equates the US with Russia and China. Yet the US has not invaded Cuba as Russia has invaded Ukraine.
The NSS is internally inconsistent in countless ways. For example, it talks of transforming allies into an economic bloc, but how is this consistent with punitive and capricious tariffs, especially on nations such as India?
It talks of US military dominance but the US military budget is barely keeping pace with inflation and could drop below 3 per cent of GDP.
America remains indispensable, especially to Australia. But this challenging, confusing document points up the utter folly of our characteristic Micawber-like view that “something will turn up” to make things better.

Meanwhile, the King goes on his merry ranting way, with a pardon here and a pardon there ...



Deeply, deeply weird ... but hey, who doesn't love a crook or a drug runner?



Finding a bonus to accompany the bromancer was difficult. 

With Tamworth's shame apparently banned, rather than focus on what Anika Wells' was trying to do to the intertubes, the reptiles carried on with the usual about her expenses indulgence ...

EXCLUSIVE
Wells best on ground for largesse as Farrell joins saga
Anika Wells bills taxpayers $9000 for husband’s flights to three AFL grand finals as Don Farrell joins entitlements saga
It has been revealed Don Farrell logged more than 200 publicly funded family reunion flights, including a sunset dinner at Uluru, after earlier revelations Anika Wells billed taxpayers to take her husband to three AFL grand finals.
by Jack Quail and Noah Yim

Pox on pollies riding well-oiled gravy train
The Prime Minister faces mounting pressure to review parliamentary travel rules after Anika Wells’ expensive overseas trips sparked outrage among struggling Australian families.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

That's all Wells and good, but tomorrow the big ban kicks in, and the reptiles were silent about all that, what with their desire to have their enemies stymied, and so the gravy train woman suddenly becomes their ally.

There was a follow up to Jimbo's outing yesterday ...

Difficult decisions’ in Chalmers’ fiscal test
Labor should be watched like a hawk for all its claims of improving fiscal management. It has to manage debt levels, not just ­deficits.
By Matthew Cranston
Economics Correspondent

Watch him like a hawk? Doesn't he turn up to frolic in the lizard Oz pages?

Then there was another weird example of the reptiles giving space to dictator Xi's minions ...

EXCLUSIVE
Chinese envoy Xiao Qian blasts Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi over Taiwan call
Beijing’s top diplomat in Australia has cast Japan as an aggressive power after the country’s Prime Minister warned a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could trigger a Japanese military response.
By Ben Packham

That was followed by the source of the EXCLUSIVE ...

A warning on the rise of Japanese aggression
Once Japanese militarism revives, it would seek ruthless revenge, and the peoples of the Asia-Pacific would be the first to suffer.
By Xiao Qian

Are the reptiles trying to turn the lizard oz into the People's Daily?

Then there was the war on TG folk ...

In sport, trans guidelines deny women a chance
The Australian Human Rights Commission’s trans sports guidelines are an activist document, designed by and for the transgender lobby.
By Stassja Frei
Contributor

Stasia's claim to fame? Apparently she's the force behind a podcast with a meaningless title ...

Stassja Frei is the writer and producer of the documentary podcast series Desexing Society.

it sounded like Riley Gaines bleating about coming fifth.

The pond wouldn't have bothered with the podcast, and saw no reason to bother with the scribbles.

There was also an EXCLUSIVE in this jihad ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘Astonishing’: Judge slams hospital puberty blocker case
Royal Children’s Hospital faces claims it breached legal duties in child gender treatment case
A former Family Court judge has delivered a scathing assessment of the Victorian government’s dismissal of claims the Royal Children’s Hospital breached its legal obligations in a landmark gender case.
By Rachel Baxendale

And the lizard Oz editorialist joined in ...

ABC takes up transgender cause
The national broadcaster wastes taxpayer funds meeting ACON’s ridiculous workplace demands while failing to report growing medical challenges to gender-affirming care for children.
Editorial

Nah, so much energy expended to demonise and hurt a small minority, no reason for the pond to help the reptiles in their peculiar obsession.

That other ongoing jihad attracted yet more attention ...

VALIDITY DILEMMA
Reynolds’ bankruptcy push against Higgins could rewrite legal precedent
A Federal Court judge weighs whether bankruptcy papers can be served through lawyers rather than directly, as former senator Reynolds pursues almost $2m from Higgins.
By Paul Garvey

And there was another chance for the reptiles to get upset at uppity, difficult, pesky blacks ...

FEDERAL COURT
Secret bee business: judge rules Indigenous law trumps open justice in Blayney mine case
Federal Court judge has imposed extraordinary suppression orders burying key evidence from Tanya Plibersek’s $1bn gold mine decision for up to 30 years.
By James Dowling

Secret bee business?

Fully sick, and after doing that survey the pond did feel nausea, but at least correspondents could pick and chose, and fill their chunder bucket as they liked.

Dammit, and after all that, all that was left was ancient Troy examining the Fraser years, as if the pond hadn't had enough of the head prefect way back when ...



Yes, the slack pond had decided on one of its notorious emulations of Billy Burroughs' cut and paste method, partly as a way to beat the bots currently swarming all over the site, and partly because this was just another ancient Troy rehashing of ancient history ...

The next gobbet was blessed with a portrait of the head prefect ...




It's good the head prefect has ancient Troy in his corner, because all the pond can remember of those days is a sense of torpor ... with the head prefect not half as interesting as jolly John, who had at least seen a little military action as a way of roughing up his face ...



The last gobbet started off with Billy, a man famous for his going, as recorded in his wiki ...

On 26 June 1987, just hours after attending John Howard's election campaign launch, Snedden suffered a fatal heart attack at the Travelodge motel in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, while having sex with an ex-girlfriend of his son Drew, identified only as "Wendy". Melbourne newspaper The Truth headlined its report "Snedden died on the job", while the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Snedden was wearing a condom and that "it was loaded".

You won't get any of that in the final gobbet - why does ancient Troy always cut out the juicy bits? -  just talk of how his Gough guilt saw the squatter from Nareen turn more left than the lefties ...



Ah, at the very end, look there, it turned out that all this had just been a promo for another ancient Troy outing ...

Once again the reptiles had turned the pond into an all day sucker.

The pond might have been better off doing a deep dive into other Wells with the immortal Rowe ...




Now there's some dinkum ancient history in the details ...