In which the bromancer lowers the tone and the swishing Switzer continues his rehabilitation tour and the rest is teaser trailers ...

 

Only in King Donald's America:

We were horrible in Vietnam until we did Thunder One – Rolling Thunder One and Rolling Thunder Two, and then we won.

We were horrible in Afghanistan and Iraq until we did surge ops, and then we won. Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) (Mediaite)

So much winning. If only he hadn't had those baleful bonespurs, King Donald could have been part of that glorious victory which produced incredible footage of the fall of Hanoi (recorded, it should be remembered, by Australia's own war correspondent Neil Davis, though for some strange reason he imagined he was the only western cameraman filming in Saigon in 1975).

Speaking of horrible ... the current excursion rolled on, but the reptiles were obsessed with the home front ...

They desperately tried to stay up to the minute by holding out hope that there was a new regime of moderates in power ready to do the deal, a deal, any deal, provided the deal was done quickly ...

The pond thinks King Donald's current strategy is positively Lincoln-esque or even Churchillian.

The pond vividly remembers the time when Lincoln made a national address advising the South if they just held on for a couple more weeks, victory would be theirs, and who forget Churchill's memorable speech advising Adolf they certainly saw no reason to fight them on the beaches or defend the English channel. (It's not just Americans who can warp the historical record for AI's benefit)

Naturally the bromancer invoked this spirit of Lincoln in his take ...

The header: This was no Gettysburg Address, more Dame Edna on a bad night; The Albanese government is as empty of policy ambition as any government we’ve ever seen in Canberra. It will never willingly pay any political price to secure a good policy outcome.

The caption: Anthony Albanese after a prerecorded address to the nation in his office at Parliament House, Canberra, on Wednesday. Picture: AAP

Poor bromancer. This day the lizard Oz's Reichsmarschall des GroßAustralisch Reiches could only manage a feeble two minute splutter ...

The Prime Minister’s address to the nation reflected the character of his whole prime ministership – short, tactical, small ‘p’ political, pretty hollow if not altogether vacuous, and nothing to offer but surface blandness and a fistful of dollars, or in this case 26c a litre off the price of petrol.
Apart from making sure the biggest number of people possible get to hear about the government putting cash in people’s pockets through the temporary cut in the fuel excise, it’s all but impossible to discern any real purpose in Anthony Albanese’s remarks.
A prime ministerial address to the nation should be a solemn affair, certainly offering reassurance but also a way forward in national policy and resolve. But the Albanese government is as empty of policy ambition as any government we’ve seen in Canberra.
This government will never willingly pay any political price to secure a good policy outcome.
The gravity of the national crisis we face is mocked by the bland emptiness of the PM’s address. The Iran war should necessitate four urgent debates – our lack of oil, gas and fertiliser security; our acute fiscal delinquency and exposure as increasingly a high-debt country; our general inability to mobilise as a nation in the face of any external crisis because we lack relevant capabilities; and our woeful lack of any defence muscle.

No mention of the real villains who have produced this grave national crisis, just a dumping on Albo ...The PM addresses Australians as the nation braces for what he describes as an unprecedented global crisis.

The Reichsmarschall couldn't do anything because of his lack of kit ...

Thus we couldn’t send navy ships to help clear the Strait of Hormuz if we wanted to because we don’t have modern warships equipped to handle simultaneous missile and drone attacks, much less modern mine-clearing vessels.

And what of King Donald and his minions, and their contribution to the new strategy of "we broke it, you own it"?

The pond couldn't help but scrape this from last night's Colbert monologue ...

Some days the pond wonders if the Pope's a Catholic, other days whether the bromancer is one of them, or just a war monger whose prayers for the kit to wage war in the straits should be rejected ...

These glaring inadequacies all reflect the supply side strangulation we’ve imposed across our economy.
We don’t produce our own fuel, we can’t transport our own cargo, we don’t process or transform the vast natural resources we possess, we are so expensive and suffer such dismal productivity that no manufacturing enterprise would locate itself in Australia without massive government subsidies.
This is completely unsustainable. And history teaches a bitter lesson – if a situation is unsustainable, it won’t be indefinitely sustained.
Yet the Albanese broadcast addressed none of this. There was not a speck of recognition of the deep structural reforms we need to undertake to build national resilience.
There is an embarrassing quality to this address – so bland and banal that you would think it had been written by Barry Humphries as a parody of Australian mediocrity. This was no Gettysburg Address, more Dame Edna on a bad night.

The complete cheek - scribbling that prepper isolationist tosh for a rag that's an outpost of an American corporate empire...

There's got to be a 'toon to celebrate where that sort of yearning for the chance to join in the excursion might take us..

Beyond the valley of the pathetic...

... but how lucky is the pond that the intermittent archive continues to be broken, and so the pond can avoid petulant Peta, always a Thursday blight ...

That's more than enough of a teaser trailer for those wanting to know what they missed.

The pond couldn't give two hoots about the hapless Victorian Liberal party, paying endlessly for their importation of bizarre far right Xians and transphobic warriors.

The nub of PP's piece was transphobia and bigotry, and naturally petulant Peta was deeply sympathetic to the bigot in chief, a troublemaking troll intent on destroying any hint of moderation (all the more comical because a moderate "liberal" in Victoria is usually to the far right of Genghis Khan):

...Deeming is the upper house Liberal MP who helped to organise a women’s rights rally in 2023 that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis; who was accused by her then leader, John Pesutto, of herself being a neo-Nazi sympathiser; who was subsequently expelled from the Liberal partyroom, only successfully to sue Pesutto for defamation; and who was then readmitted to the partyroom and promoted – only to be beaten last weekend for preselection by a serial candidate accused of ethnic branch-stacking. Who was then dumped as the endorsed candidate himself for giving a convicted pedophile a glowing pre-sentence personal reference despite knowing what it was for and subsequently denying that he’d done so.
You cannot make this stuff up, can you?
There are recent precedents where head office has simply endorsed candidates, but instead of doing this with Deeming – beaten by someone who should never have been allowed to run – the Victorian Liberal Party has now called for a fresh preselection with nominations to close at noon on Thursday.
Already, moderates are hitting the phones to marshal the ousted Dinesh Gourisetty’s bloc of votes against Deeming, so it is hard to see that she will face a fair fight. Gourisetty, it should be noted, donated to Pesutto’s legal defence, as disclosed in the latest parliamentary returns (as did Heath Williams and former MP Louise Staley, who both publicly abused Deeming online this week).
Right now, Deeming is considering her position, unsure whether to give the Libs one last chance to treat her fairly or to walk, perhaps to join One Nation, a party that would welcome her with open arms, as a conservative woman who has become a hero to everyone who thinks trans rights should not trump women’s rights.

Update: Huzzah, the intermittent archive is back. It's very slow and constipated, but it can help out those who want the whole bloody mess...

The pond usually avoids transphobic bigots, but couldn't resist this 'toon comment:

(More from Dudley Dursley at The Independent)

Speaking of the batty fair right, Jack the Insider attempted to cope with a cop killer in a bog standard way, by reverting to Ned, the real one, not the fake ones that scribble for the lizard Oz:

The pond apologises for the bittiness sans archive, but the pond has about as much time for sov cits as it does for Victorian liberal party loons.

Eventually Jack got around to noting that in fact it was a movement deeply embedded in the far right, and therefore in sympathy with Pauline, Barners and the lizard Oz's radical agendas:

...On ABC radio on Tuesday, Anthony Albanese faced criticism for stating it was “good” that Freeman had been killed.
Meanwhile, there was nowt but an eerie silence from Pauline Hanson and One Nation. The second rising of the PHON souffle has brought with it a substantial boost to the party’s membership.
Many of those self-identifying financial members of PHON were active on X declaring without evidence that Freeman was murdered by police or offering some twisted justification for Freeman’s calculated crimes.
A clear statement from the One Nation leader denouncing Freeman and offering support for police would be the best way to settle those concerns.
For much of the past seven months the media has attempted to define the sovereign citizen phenomenon, often in a confusing and unhelpful way. Suffice to say, those who hold these views have been taught that the state is illegitimate and its foot soldiers are the enemy. Often falsely described as doomsday preppers who largely keep to themselves, sovereign citizens sanction and promote violence against their communities.
The movement’s influencers use a grab bag of pseudo-legal concepts. Some argue Australia’s Constitution is invalid because it was not ratified by the UK parliament (untrue) while others claim the Australia Act (1986), which severed the remaining legal ties with the UK, was unconstitutional (also untrue). A lot of legal cherrypicking goes on. Some sov-cits cling to concepts in 17th-century Portuguese maritime law. Regardless, the view is that the state has no jurisdiction over the individual and thus taxes are not payable, fines can be ignored and, at its most deranged, police and members of the public are fair game.
The sovereign citizen movement began in the 1980s in the US midwest. 

And this is why you might be better off to reverting to the wiki on the subject:

The movement appeared in the U.S. in the early 1970s and has since expanded to other countries; the similar freeman on the land movement emerged during the 2000s in Canada before spreading to other Commonwealth countries.

Out by a decade or so Jack.

And again ...

The sovereign citizen movement originated from a combination of tax protester ideas, 1960s–70s radical and racist anti-government movements and pseudolaw, which has existed in the U.S. since at least the 1950s. The movement's belief in the illegitimacy of federal income tax gradually expanded to challenging the legitimacy of the government.
The concept of a "sovereign citizen" whose rights are unfairly denied appeared in 1971 within the Posse Comitatus as part of the teachings of Christian Identity minister William Potter Gale. The Posse Comitatus, whose name derived from the historical militias led by local sheriffs, was a far-right, anti-government movement that denounced income tax, debt-based currency, and debt collection as tools of Jewish control over the United States. The roots of the sovereign citizen movement were thus strongly associated with white supremacist and antisemitic ideologies. Gale's racist beliefs were far from unique, but he innovated by devising a "legal" philosophy about the government's illegitimacy. Posse Comitatus members used the term "sovereign citizens" to convey the idea that they were entitled to enforce their interpretation of the Constitution.
After originating in that particular group, the sovereign citizen concept went on to influence the broader tax protester and Christian Patriot movements. Until the 1990s, observers primarily classified the Posse Comitatus as a tax-protest movement rather than an outright far-right extremist group. The Posse Comitatus, Christian Identity, and militia movements did not fully overlap, but they shared members and influenced one another. (see the wiki for the footnotes)

Yes, it's the hippies and bloody weird Xians again, never a good mix.

And the Xians can now count the likes of the bloodthirsty Pete Kegsbreath amongst their white nationalist membership.

Jack tried to cope by ignoring the Xian component:

..It was a two-way con and remains so. Sov-cit influencers would travel from town to town charging susceptible and financially vulnerable people the price of entry to the town hall meetings. Those who chose to take up the legal mumbo jumbo then would be charged an additional fee to receive worthless documents and dismal instructions.
This led to a whirlwind of tax fraud, and desperate farmers in the US being convicted and sentenced to long spells in prison. In 2015 the FBI declared the movement a domestic terror group. Fraudsters and charlatans were replaced with gun-toting nihilists.
There are various hubs of the movement around Australia, including in the wheat belt district around Geraldton in Western Australia, 400km due north of Perth. Sov-cits bob up with alarming frequency in the courts in the Northern Rivers region of NSW, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland in Queensland and in Freeman’s old stomping grounds in Victoria’s Alpine district.
It is these people who radicalise others that police and intelligence agencies should be keeping an eye on. They are the nihilistic equivalent to Islamist hate preachers.
The Islamists may offer greater risks to the community but they have structure and organisation, making it easier to prohibit one group or another. The sovereign citizen movement is amorphous and dislocated. In some places the movement is restricted to relatively harmless idiots who choke up the courts with pseudo-law nonsense. Others demand violence in internet echo chambers directly to the gullible.
The greatest concern is not that Freeman may have received assistance from people of like mind in the sovereign citizen space but the sheer number of people who regard him in life and now in death as a hero.

Oh Jack, Jack, does that small bunch of weirdos in any way compare to the sheer number of people who watch Faux Noise, and have King Donald as their hero, a hero who accepts the advice of the Emeritus Chairman that an Iranian excursion might be a golly good vacation? (The archive clapped out again, please leave a link in the comments if you get it working

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Fwhy-sovcits-cast-dezi-freeman-as-a-hero%2Fnews-story%2Fc09baaaae91c8fdb77a94e75e1c7a433?amp).

And speaking of naughty boys, so to the swishing Switzer, who lost his cool this day, while still on his extended rehabilitation tour ...

The header: I love America but this President is a detestable figure; Rarely, if ever, has the US stumbled so swiftly to the brink of a disaster, and done so despite clear warnings of the risks involved.

The caption for the King: President Donald Trump answers questions from reporters after signing an executive order in the Oval Office. Picture: Alex Brandon / AP Photo

That image has to be worth a 'toon ...

The swishing Switzer was careful to make sure he didn't tread on too many reptile toes, and so opened by paying cautious homage to the bromancer ...

I have long admired America – its power, its ideals and its central role in underwriting the global order. I have no time for what Greg Sheridan calls reflexive anti-Americanism. I want the US to thrive. Its success matters to the world – and to Australia.

Oh dear, that could only mean a giant billy goat butt was coming, and the swishing Switzer let it rip ...

Yet I have reached a deeply uncomfortable conclusion: the current President is a detestable, pitiable figure whose reckless conduct over Iran will have damaging consequences. Rarely, if ever, has the US stumbled so swiftly to the brink of a disaster – and done so despite clear warnings of the risks involved.
The Iran debacle reflects not only Donald Trump’s poor judgment but also his impulsive intervention abroad, untethered from clear objectives or a coherent definition of success. This was a President who devoted barely one minute to Iran in a two-hour State of the Union address days before launching this war. Yet, when presented with a rare opportunity to strike at the regime’s leadership, he acted without any serious regard for the likely consequences.

And ditto the Emeritus Chairman who encouraged the excursion?

Let's not get too racial ... A resident weeps while talking on the phone near a residential building that was hit in an airstrike in the west of Tehran, Iran. Picture: Majid Saeedi / Getty Images

The pond always marvels at the way that the reptiles can ignore their US kissing cousins and cheerleaders in chief at Faux Noise ...

Before February 28, Tehran’s leverage over global energy markets was contained; it sat astride the Strait of Hormuz, controlling a mere 4-5 per cent of the world’s energy exports – essentially its own output.
Now the consequences may be far graver. Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz means its influence could extend over as much as 20 per cent of global energy flows. Factor in the Houthis’ ability to disrupt commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and close to a third of the world’s energy supply could fall under Iranian-aligned control – an astonishing and wholly avoidable strategic reversal.
Let’s be clear: the US-Israeli strike all but guaranteed retaliation. A regime that once exercised its leverage with caution is now acting as if it faces an existential crisis – which, from Tehran’s perspective, it does.
It is exploiting its strategic position to disrupt vital arteries of global commerce. And Washington’s allies, never consulted before the February 28 operation, are left to absorb the economic and strategic shockwaves.
Increasingly, Trump appears to be operating in a world of his own making. There are no direct talks with Iran, only faint, indirect contacts through intermediaries. And the Iranians, in no hurry to negotiate, are content to let Trump dangle in the wind – a spectator to a process he neither controls nor fully understands. At the same time, Trump is now so deeply enmeshed we are told he must stay the course, finish the job and topple the regime. If that requires ground troops, so be it.
The notion that the US could topple or subdue the regime with 10,000 or 20,000 troops is fanciful.

Switzer was interrupted by a snap of King Donald and war minion Kegsbreath ... US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and US President Donald Trump walk to board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. Picture: Jim Watson / AFP

Credit for this rehabilitation tour. At least the swishing Switzer didn't take the bromancer's easy way out with cheap jibes about Lincoln and Dames (as if the pond would ever joke about a Dame Slap or a Dame Groan) ...

Iraq required more than 200,000 personnel to conquer and occupy a smaller, less populous country. Iran, with a population of more than 90 million – nearly twice that of Iraq – and a landmass almost four times as large, would be an altogether more formidable challenge. To embark on such a venture without overwhelming force, clear objectives and any real public support in an election year is not strategy; it is madness.
Some have floated the idea of seizing Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil terminal. But even if tactically successful, it would solve little. Holding it would be difficult; destroying it – along with the desalination plants Trump has threatened to target unless a deal is reached before April 6 – would amplify the global economic shock.
Others point to precision raids to seize Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. But these facilities are buried, fortified and heavily defended – in many cases beyond the reach of conventional strikes. Any such operation would be immensely complicated and fraught with risk.
We should be angry. Trump is not our President; Australians did not vote for him. Yet we will bear the consequences of his reckless decisions: rising inflation, soaring petrol prices and the looming threat of fuel shortages.
We are paying for a war that was never properly planned. The goals – preventing Iran from going nuclear, perhaps even regime change – are noble. But to say again: there was no credible plan for what would follow the strikes, no thought for keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, no preparation for the economic shockwaves now rippling towards us.

Inevitably Albo turned up ... Anthony Albanese during Question Time. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

And the swishing Switzer had some splendid advice for him.

Keep tugging the forelock ... apparently on the basis of recent revelations about the quarry puppy killer's partner, King Donald might like a little cross-dressing of the bimbo or the Dame Everage kind ...

Yet anger is not a policy. Australia will soon find itself in a far more precarious position: short of fuel and increasingly dependent on others – the result of our crazy reliance on imported energy, compounded by our failure to reinvigorate domestic exploration and production.
Our Asian partners will help where they can but they cannot supply what they do not have. In a tight market, goodwill is no substitute for capacity. Our liquefied natural gas and coal will be in high demand, but any gains may be offset by the cost of securing the fuel we lack. Access will depend not only on our ability to pay but also on the willingness of key suppliers – above all the US – to prioritise our needs over others.
The cold hard reality demands diplomatic dexterity. However justified our criticism of the Iran misadventure, our leaders cannot afford to antagonise Trump. He is, after all, notoriously sensitive to slights and inclined to view alli­ances in personal, transactional terms. The national interest requires that we remain in a position to call on American support if circumstances deteriorate.
Australians are entitled to be upset by Trump’s conduct.
But these are not conditions in which we can indulge the comfort of outrage. In the end, prudence must prevail because we may yet find ourselves dependent on the power we most wish had acted differen­tly.
Tom Switzer is presenter of Switzerland, a podcast about politics, modern history and international relations.

Prudence, dear prudence is all ... won't you come out to play? Just ask the infallible Pope...

And so to a final teaser trailer because Marriott of The Times had been imported, and dressed up with a terrible stock photo opening image...

Because the pond was triggered by this, the pond decided to offer the rest as plain text:

...In my adolescence a smartphone was an incontestably glamorous object; the best indicator of prosperous and indulgent parents. And to teenagers in suburban Newcastle even a Twitter account signalled a certain cosmopolitan savoir-faire – what better sign of sophistication than an acquaintance with the moment-by-moment musings of Sir Stephen Fry?
Now everyone has a smartphone. And a social media habit, to judge by the popularity of the slang words slop and brainrot, no longer signals smart thinking. As we become more attuned to the deceits of online life, the kind of person who constantly posts about their holidays or career no longer seems desirable but rather desperate. A certain mysterious absence is the classier move.
After Christmas a friend remarked to me: “This year no one had their phones out at all and we talked about how this was something of a new decorum.” Some of his family, he suspected, now viewed mindless scrolling as “common”. Doubtless, many middle-class people are sincerely concerned about declining IQ and the teenage mental health crisis, but I think restricting your phone use may also work as a subtle status signal. Perhaps as a sign of willpower. Perhaps it shows you are in the know: you have read Jonathan Haidt; you subscribe to the kind of broadsheet newspaper that runs articles about “digital detoxes”.
Economically, at least, smartphone dependency is a sign of low status. It has sometimes been observed that the major divide in modern employment is whether you work “above or below the API” – the application programming interface.
Do you issue instructions to software or do you take instructions from software? Uber drivers, Deliveroo bikers and other workers in the digital precariat live at the mercy of their phones. The shrill ping of a delivery app is the 21st-century factory hooter. The higher you are in the economic hierarchy, the less likely you are to be fired if you don’t leap into action at the prompting of an app.
Importantly, middle-class status has long been defined by an ethic of ostentatious self-denial.
Think of those prosperous burghers of Amsterdam in the paintings of Rembrandt, the world’s first international capitalists, dressed not in purple robes but in sober black. In an age of abundant calories, you express your status more effectively through veganism and marathons than through obesity. It is not impossible to imagine that the statusful middle-class activities of the future will be book clubs, maths olympiads and tech fasts.
Even those middle-class parents who are unable to tame their own phone addictions now control their children’s screen time with hypochondriac vigilance. According to a recent New York Times report, you can lose your job as a nanny to an American upper-bourgeois family if you so much as look at your own phone screen in the presence of the child.
This environment is a major change from the atmosphere of unreflecting technological utop­ian­ism in which most adults were raised. It may be that in the coming decades the children of the upper middle classes will not be able to touch their phones without a twinge of the information-age equivalent of Catholic guilt. Another piece in The New York Times followed a cohort of university students giving up their phones. These students, obviously, were not studying at their local state universities but at an exclusive liberal arts college.
This is not to endorse snobbery, only to observe that status competition is an important driver of cultural change. Throughout history baby names, table manners and habits of dress have trickled down through society. The prospect of a zombified tech-addicted future is eminently possible.
But if we ever do manage to break the grip of the smartphone on human attention, I suspect the story will be as much about status as about legislation.
Though I suspect my own dream of an indoor scrolling ban remains elusive.
The Times

Good luck with all that, and this is probably not the right time to confess that the pond has never ever used Uber, and nor has it ever made a food delivery order of any kind.

Hold on a nervous tick, did the pond say that this was the last teaser trailer?

The pond should at least note that the meretricious Merritt was out and about ...

The pond won't go on with him, he's always a stupendous bore, and his conclusion was suitably boring ...

...There is one more issue. In support of its campaign, news.com.au cited the appalling treatment of Diane Lucas, administrator of the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre, who was jailed for refusing to hand over a rape survivor’s counselling notes when served with a subpoena.

But this predates Shaw’s 1997 legislation.

Robyn Gilbert, a senior solicitor with Legal Aid’s Sexual Assault Communications Privilege Service, outlined the Lucas prosecution for the NSW Judicial Officers’ Bulletin in February last year.

She wrote that after Lucas’s jailing in 1995, “calls for reform followed and in 1997 the (NSW) parliament created the sexual assault communications privilege”.

This history is important. Our criminal justice system has rightly addressed an imbalance that previously existed, where sexual assault survivors often faced aggressive cross-examination and significant barriers to conviction.

Now, we have a careful balance between the rights of accuser and defendant. Only by maintaining this equilibrium can we ensure our system is fair.

What's really notable about all that?

It's yet another attempt by the reptiles at the lizard Oz to pour cold water on a news.com.au campaign?

Note the way that the meretricious Merritt contends that the news.com.au campaign is "fraught">

Are the reptiles miffed about being beaten by the allegedly more "liberal" website? 

Is it another shot across the bows, in a war already noted by the venerable Meade last week in Murdoch mastheads at odds?

Whatever, and as usual, the pond will tune in to the Weekly Beast tomorrow to see what's what in reptile land.

For the moment, time to end with the news that Doonesbury still survives in a weekly format, and went on that march ...

Put it another way ...

The pond has no idea if anyone actually watches these on the deliberately smart phone unfriendly pond, but whatever, they amuse the pond ...

News from America ...

And news from Britain trying to cope with America ... wasn't Brexit an absolutely spiffing idea?

In which the Iranian folly troubles the bromancer, Baker of the WSJ, and Joe, lesser member of the Kelly gang, in different ways ...

 

Without wanting to sound like Our Henry, the pond came across this William Hazlitt quote while reading Andrew O'Hagan's Stay Classy in the LRB.(*intermittent archive link, very intermittent this day)

O'Hagan was giving a right royal bollocking to randy Andy, the man formerly known as Prince, and wretched Fergie, but given that we're living in the time of King Donald and his court of corrupt minions, it seems equally applicable...

...The goods of fortune, the baits of power, the indulgences of vanity, may be accumulated without end, and the taste for them increases as it is gratified: the love of virtue, the pursuit of truth, grow stale and dull in the dissipation of a court. Virtue is thought cribbed and morose, knowledge pedantic, while every sense is pampered, and every folly tolerated. Everything tends naturally to personal aggrandisement and unrestrained self-will. It is easier for monarchs as well as other men "to tread the primrose path of dalliance" than "to scale the steep and thorny road to haven" The vices, when they have leave from power and authority, go greater lengths than the virtues; example justifies almost every excess, and "nice customs curtesy to great kings." 

It's all the happier timing with the news that the two kings will still be meeting up to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the sundering of the two kingdoms ...

...The air of a court is not assuredly that which is most favourable to the practice of sefl-denial and strict morality. We increase the temptations of wealth, of power, ands pleasure a thousand-fold, while we can give no additional force to the antagonist principles of reason, disinterested integrity and goodness of heart. It is to be wondered that courts and palaces have produced so many monsters of avarice, cruelty, and lust? The adept in voluptuousness is not likely to be a proportionable proficient in humanity. To feed on plate or be clothed in purple, is not to feel for the hungry and the naked. He who has the greatest power put into his hands, will only become more impatient of any restraint in the use of it. To have the welfare and the lives of millions placed at our disposal, is a sort of warrant, a challenge to squander them without mercy. An arbitrary monarch set over the head so his fellows does not identify himself with them, or learn to comprehend their rights or sympathize with their interests, but looks down upon them as of a different species from himself, as insect crawling on the face of the earth, that he may trample on at his pleasure, or if he spares them, it is an act of royal grace; -- he is besotted with power. Blinded with prerogative, an alien to his nature, a traitor to his trust, and instead of being the organ of public feeling and public opinion, is an excrescence and an anomaly in the state, a bloated mass of morbid humours and proud flesh! 

And so on ... a time of writing it could be found in modern font here (the internet archive version is a little harder on modern eyes but reeks of authenticity).

How did the United States start off so grandly and end up a corrupt kingdom (or a banana republic, pretty much the same thing).

There's a clue in those two lines...

Virtue is thought cribbed and morose, knowledge pedantic, while every sense is pampered, and every folly tolerated. Everything tends naturally to personal aggrandisement and unrestrained self-will.

Welcome to the world of the Emeritus Chairman, and the land of the lizard Oz, feeding climate science denialism to the hive mind (knowledge pedantic), and tolerating every form of folly, dressed up as swill.

First up the pond must abandon the sort of sick and sorry revelations coming together courtesy of the tabloid combo of the Daily Beast......

ICE Barbie’s Husband Humiliates Her With Sick ‘Barbie Models’ Fetish
BARBIE WORLD
The Noems’ marriage is yet again under the spotlight after bombshell revelations. (sorry, the intermittent archive is playing up)

And the UK's Daily Terror..

Secret double life of Kristi Noem's crossdressing husband Bryon: The pouting 'busty bimbo' photos and trove of explicit messages

It's not that the pond doesn't appreciate any attempt to out-nero Nero, or crush Caligula with a clever modern variant - let anyone without a kink throw the first Barbie doll - it's just that the pond is dedicated to the hive mind of the lizard Oz, and the bromancer was out yet again today, attempting to grapple with King Donald's folly ...

If you didn't blink, you'd find him just below a reptile panic, as they dragged out Mike Baird, dusted off the mothballs and the dead moths and produced a set of headlines for the ages ...

The pond was tremendously reassured to discover that the reptiles still considered Baird a thing, but out of all that hysteria, the pond, as it always does, stuck with the bromancer ...

The header: Donald Trump’s chaotic Iran war gamble risks global energy crisis and US credibility; Trump’s contradictory Iran war statements have created global energy chaos, with the US President threatening to bomb civilian infrastructure while his own officials predict victory in weeks.

The caption for the meaningless snap: Commercial vessels off the coast of Dubai. Picture: AFP

At last it seems that the bromancer's loyalty to King Donald and his minions might be wearing a tad thing.

There might now be too many straws impacting this camel's back:

The global energy crisis arising from the Iran war has barely begun. It will get much worse before it gets any better. And it could well get catastrophically worse. Even if Donald Trump and whoever is now running Iran conclude a deal tomorrow, it will take months to re-establish anything like energy normality.
But an increasingly serious problem is Trump’s endless self-contradictory statements, declarations, deadlines, ultimatums and alternating suggestions he is finished with it all and will leave Iran in a minute, or that he plans to bomb Iranian society into terrible permanent humanitarian crisis and may well launch a partial ground invasion as well.
Trump remains an extreme risk taker and gambler. If, in alliance with Israel, he finally succeeds in dislodging the mullahs and destroying their nuclear program forever – and that is by no means impossible – then history may judge this a highly successful intervention.
But the chance that it ends in chaos, continued oil disruption, or even a wounded and in many ways diminished Iran with unprecedented control over the Strait of Hormuz and determined to rebuild for revenge, is equally possible.
No one can tell what Trump thinks will be an acceptable outcome because he contradicts himself several times a day.

Inevitably there came a snap of the king, US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One. Picture: AP

As usual, the pond felt the need to match it with a 'toon ...

The bromancer appeared to be trying to position himself as a voice in the wilderness, a voice outside the coterie of the King's loyalists ...

Trump loyalists paint this as a shrewd misdirection of the enemy, a crafty negotiating technique. But it has enormous costs. There are no allies beyond Israel actively working with the US in this military campaign. This is for three reasons. Trump doesn’t consult allies. He frequently insults them. And he hasn’t laid out any consistent military or strategic plan beyond the relentless bombing of Iran.
Trump’s administration can’t speak with consistency because Trump himself doesn’t speak with any consistency. At no point has Trump laid out to the American people a coherent rationale for what he’s doing. His approval ratings are at their lowest ever this term, and only a minority of Americans support the war at all. strong majority opposes it, while there is a huge consensus against using US ground troops.
You could write a thousand books tracing Trump’s contradictions on Iran. Consider just a couple of the most extreme. Trump posted on Truth Social that if he didn’t get a deal from the Iranians soon, which included fully opening the Strait of Hormuz as well as his other requirements of Iran abandoning uranium enrichment and limiting its missiles, the US would attack and demolish “all of their (Iran’s) Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells, and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinisation plants)”.
This is one of the most extraordinary statements ever made by an American president. To attack desalination plants as policy is a direct attack on life-giving, non-military, civilian infrastructure, designed to cause the death of ­civilians through the removal of drinking water. Washington has always rightly insisted it never intentionally attacks civilians. No one else in Trump’s administration talks like this.
But how does this square with other Trump administration statements this week? Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the war will be finished in “weeks not months”. Other White House spokespeople say the war is still on its original six- to eight-week timeline, which means a couple more weeks at the most.
Yet Trump has moved thousands of US marines and ground troops into the area. If the US took Kharg island, as Trump this week threatened, that would ensure a campaign of many more weeks. You can take Kharg Island, or you can leave in two weeks, you can’t do both.
Trump says he’s negotiating with new, more reasonable Iranians; Rubio says it’s opaque how decisions are made in Iran just now.

The exasperation seemed to be building, so the reptiles hastily flung in an AV distraction, Shahria Ahi, the former adviser to Reza Pahlavi, is one of the attendees at the Iran Freedom Congress, which aims to address a major problem for Iran that has now become a problem for the world.

The bromancer turned to the WSJ for guidance, though as that's a part of the empire that urged on King Donald to his Iranian folly, it might not help ...

The Wall Street Journal reports rump telling his closest aides he might declare victory and finish all bombing even without any deal on opening the Strait of Hormuz. The idea would be to put Iran under diplomatic pressure to allow free passage through the strait, or get Europe to take the lead.
More likely, Iran would favour ships from strategically friendly nations and charge a big tariff for others. It would terrify and blackmail the Gulf states.
That sort of exit not only flatly contradicts Trump’s Truth Social post, it could leave the Middle East, and global energy markets, in worse shape than when Trump went in. Whatever his war aims were, they surely didn’t include total Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz and permanent disruption to the global oil, gas and fertiliser markets, all of which are vital for economies, and indeed human life, around the world.
The credibility and reliability of the words of the American president have, since at least World War II, been a vital stabilising factor in global geo-strategic balances. It is not to suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome to observe that in needlessly ­sacrificing that, Trump is throwing away a precious asset for no benefit.
Nor is it sensible or sustainable for those around the world who strongly want the US and Israel to prevail in Iran to feel that they cannot criticise Trump. For the more politicians avoid reality, the more they too lose credibility.

Sorry, bromancer, this late turning and wheeling in the sky came far too late. You've never had any credibility, so worry not about any loss of it ...

In despair, the bromancer turned to berating locals, indirectly handing a sideswipe to the beefy performative boofhead ...

Both sides of Australian politics support the US action in Iran in principle. Neither side has made any significant contribution to the one overriding Australian responsibility – which is for Australia to be much more energy and fuel self-reliant, resilient and prepared.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said Australia should actively support US-led efforts to keep the Strait of Hormuz. However, he sensibly told The Australian: “The lack of investment in our naval fleet makes it much harder to offer any naval support.”
Andrew Hastie rightly observed on the ABC’s Insiders program that our ships can’t go to the Gulf because they don’t have the necessary self-protection capabilities. He’s the only senior politician I’ve heard make that fundamental point. Otherwise, all talk about supporting or not ­supporting activities in the Gulf is just performative blather, the kind of fantasy dialogue and avoidance of plain speaking which has helped destroy the credibility of mainstream politics.
There’s an unpredicted casualty of the Iran war for you.

Sheesh, grim days...

Over on the extreme far right, things got even grimmer, as Dame Slap carried on in a way that only someone on Planet Janet, situated above the Faraway Tree can do ...

Lady Justice conned again by ‘believe all women’ fad
In the ACT, the zealots are perfectly capable of taking not only an innocent defendant’s liberty, dignity and reputation, but his money too, leaving an innocent man shattered and on the edge of suicide.
Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Given the very intermittent behaviour of the archive - at time of writing it's consistently offering 504 Gateway Time-outs (a server side issue) - the pond thought it might just offer up the URL and anyone wanting to try later might have better luck.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Flady-justice-conned-again-by-believe-all-women-fad%2Fnews-story%2F530242d75b80e872076efe8450b90123?amp

Anyway, there was just one hoot line, which came right at the end.

When will the ideologues ever be satiated?

On her best days, Dame Slap can still produce tremendous one liners. Barking mad, but in her ideological battiness, occasional good fund.

Ditto for aforementioned Mike Baird ...

Australia’s debt is now shaped by our states
As we move towards the most important budget in decades, there must be an understanding that we’re running out of easy options.
By Mike Baird
Contributor

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Faustralias-debt-is-now-shaped-by-our-states%2Fnews-story%2F757845d67cfa5d0f2365dc6da8d2eb34?amp

Couldn't run a state, why do you expect him to write a  decent column?

And finally there was Nick, trying to redeem himself by appearing centrist:

Trump bump 2.0: voters look for the adult in the room
Trump’s global chaos has created an unexpected political lifeline for moderate leaders who stand up to him, with voters increasingly choosing stability over populist insurgency.
By Nick Dyrenfurth
Contributor

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Fthe-trump-bump-20-is-here-and-it-is-not-what-populists-were-expecting%2Fnews-story%2F32ffbe002942e4c666d576943cada367?amp

Nah, too late Nick ... Curtin's still rolling in his grave.

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, the poor old bouffant one was sounding just as gloomy, just as grim ... 

Unfortunately the intermittent archive was being more intermittent than usual - this might work or it might not - but luckily the gist of the whine could be summed up in just a couple of gobbets.

The pond trimmed out an unnecessary AV distraction, and flung in a distracting 'toon to reassure the bouffant one ...

And then with a final short gobbet, it was done...

Excellent stuff ... is it time yet to bring the lettuce out of retirement and put up against prime Angus, already showing signs of what a beefy beefhead out in the Goulburn sun for too long starts to smell like?

At this point, the pond should note that the reptiles have studiously avoided that further turning of a fundamentalist theocracy into a fascist state ...

That came from the UK Terror of all places ...and there was some attempt at push back from full fascism ...

Call for law to be annulled
The bill appears to conflict with Israel’s Basic Laws, which prohibit arbitrary discrimination.
Shortly after it was passed, a leading human rights group announced that it had filed a petition with the Supreme Court demanding the legislation’s annulment.
“The law creates two parallel tracks, both designed to apply to Palestinians,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said in a statement.
“In military courts – which have jurisdiction over West Bank Palestinians – it establishes a near-mandatory death sentence,” the rights group said.
In civilian courts, the law’s stipulation that defendants must have acted “with the aim of negating the existence” of Israel “structurally excludes Jewish perpetrators”, the group added.
The association argued the law should be annulled on both jurisdictional and constitutional grounds.
During the debate in parliament, Ram Ben Barak, an opposition lawmaker and former deputy Mossad director, expressed outrage at the legislation.
“Do you understand what it means that there is one law for Arabs in Judea and Samaria, and a different law for the general public for which the State of Israel is responsible?” he asked fellow parliamentarians, using the Israeli name for the West Bank.
“It says that Hamas has defeated us. It has defeated us because we have lost all our values.”

Meanwhile, the push for a Greater Israel - to the river in Lebanon - and the ethnic cleansing continued apace, as Ukraine receded into the distance, and Gaza became an afterthought.

The reptiles at war theme continued  in the lizard Oz with a truly wretched offering, apparently designed to make the local bromancer look good.

The header: You may already have won the Iran war; Someone will soon make a case that Operation Epic Fury is the greatest triumph of arms since Agincourt – or the most disastrous defeat since the Romans were out-generalled by Hannibal.

The caption for a gratifyingly amorphous and stunningly meaningless snap, a rich introduction to the word salad to follow: Israel is continuing to batter Tehran with air strikes. Picture: AFP.

Baker, this day of the WSJ, and therefore one of the employees of the Emeritus Chairman who encouraged the Iran War folly, tried his hand at a bit of both siderism worthy of the NY Times.

He played the role of a doubting Thomas, though his underlying faith shone through every verbal tic and conjunction:

“I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything.”
The plaintive observation, ascribed to the early Victorian British prime minister Viscount Melbourne about the acerbically self-confident historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, remains the motto of the thoughtfully sceptical man through the ages. Some of us still harbour doubt about the consequences of actions in a complex world. But we live in an era when instantaneous certitude about everything, an iron conviction in subjective judgment in the face of objective uncertainty, is the only guarantee of a hearing.
This is in part a corollary of the hyperpartisanship that characterises our modern political conversation. If you believe your side represents the only route to virtue and the other side the sure path to perdition, you’ve already taken a position of metaphysical certainty.
Such assuredness is acceptable from politicians. No one wants to hear a leader publicly fret over the range of possible outcomes of a course he’s chosen. But since the line between partisan engagement and independent observation has been blurred, similar devotion to the veracity of one’s own judgment is obligatory in the commentator class too.
So it comes as no surprise that less than a month into the latest war, almost everyone seems certain not only about the outcome of the war, but about what it means for decades to come.
Last week the Economist, a publication with a long and spotty track record of declarative certitude in the face of unpredictability, announced the war was an American failure. “A month of bombing has achieved nothing,” its cover thundered.
The academy is on the same page. Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, insists the war is a “longtime disaster” and the “most catastrophic failure of air power we have ever seen”.

Quick, bring in a chickenhawk and honour his service: Former US national security adviser John Bolton has suggested America focus on clearing the Strait of Hormuz as soon as possible which “may require military force”. “But I also think this is clear evidence we’re making progress on destabilising the regime,” he told Sky News Australia. This comes after Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed there were “some fractures going on there internally” in Iran’s leadership circle.

Baker of the WSJ remained resolute in his uncertainty, and his abject lack of confidence in anything:

No fog of war for these seers. They have scrutinised the battlefield from the vantage points of St James’s, SW1, and Hyde Park, 60637, and, like ancient augurs, have divined the outcome: It’s over for the US and Israel, with devastation rippling for years.
There is no less confidence on the other side. Torsten Slok, chief economist at private equity firm Apollo, dismissed the war’s alarming fallout in commodity, equity and bond markets, and said it would “ultimately result in 50 years of stability in oil markets, supply chains and geopolitics”.
Marc Thiessen, a speechwriter for president George W. Bush (whose administration isn’t especially noted for the accuracy of its observations) and now a columnist for The Washington Post, said on Fox News that Donald Trump’s war would go down as “possibly the greatest military campaign … since the American Revolution”. Move over, Dwight D. Eisenhower; step aside, Ulysses S. Grant.
Since rhetorical extremism in the pursuit of persuasion is all the rage, why stop there? Surely someone will soon make the case that Operation Epic Fury is the greatest triumph of arms since Henry V’s longbowmen routed the superior French numbers at Agincourt. Or, according to your taste, it already represents the most disastrous defeat for a major power since the Romans were out-generalled at Cannae by Hannibal.

What a tremendous fudger he is, as the reptiles tried to match his uncertainty in the caption, Rubio says Trump prefers diplomacy but vows strikes if Hormuz stays shut, while analysts warn over chokepoints & Iran vows to keep leverage.

Nothing is but what is not seems to be the best way forward, the way to evade and deflect:

I am not against bold opinion commentary, as you might have noticed, but this level of certainty about a war that is four weeks old and with plainly many more phases to come, is simply unsupportable. As we stand, the outcome isn’t knowable with any level of confidence; it surely rests on events at a tactical and strategic level in coming weeks and months that we can’t know.
It is evident that the US and Israel have enjoyed extraordinary military success in eliminating much of Iran’s leadership and military capabilities. But Iran’s regime has succeeded at a political and economic level – first by simply surviving the onslaught to date and second by exercising its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
These are all limited and contingent successes. Again, their ultimate outcome is conditional on the extent to which the US is able to break that stranglehold and either force out the regime or at least cow it into submission. And that in turn is conditional on a host of at this stage unknowable developments: the deployment of ground forces; the contribution of neighbours and others to the shipping challenge.
Some of us who acknowledge our uncertainty may be simply reflecting a larger uncertainty about the wisdom of this war in the first place.
In the same way, to declare now that it is already won or lost is merely to affirm one’s prior and continuing political and ideological prejudices, delivered to an audience that wants to hear nothing else.

By golly, and there was the pond thinking that Donald Rumsfeld had gone on to bigger things. Who knew he'd reincarnate as a WSJ columnist explaining that there are conditional matters that are unknowable. So many unknown unknowns, so little time.

And so to wrap up proceedings with the lesser member of the Kelly gang, also brooding about the war.

The header: Hormuz handover: Trump risks handing Iran a strategic victory: Donald Trump could be forced down a rabbit hole he never intended to enter.

The caption for an image of a king ever more closely resembling a clown: The American operation is on track to achieve a major tactical victory. It will weaken Iran by degrading its missile and nuclear programs while up-ending its political and military chain of command. Picture: Getty Images

Joe could only lather up three minutes, and unlike Baker of the WSJ, he was full of righteous certainty, and full of "musts", with the first "must" opening fire at the get go ...

Iran must not be allowed to emerge from the Middle East conflict with the lasting ability to control the Strait of Hormuz, an outcome that would elevate the regime as the gatekeeper of global energy flows, with the power to trigger a worldwide recession at will.
This would deliver a decisive blow to American power and global standing, exposing the limits of Donald Trump’s unilateralism and his vision of a US less bound by the constraints and responsibilities of a multilateral order under increasing strain.
Yet critics hoping for the administration to have its wings clipped in the fight against Iran as a check on Trump’s “American First” foreign policy revolution stand on the wrong side of history and for a regime that for 47 years has terrorised the world while oppressing and killing its own people.

The reptiles urgently rushed in a man apparently standing on Joe's right side of history ... US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says if Iran were wise, “they will cut a deal” with US President Donald Trump. “Just one month in, only one month, we set the terms,” Mr Hegseth said. “The upcoming days will be decisive. Iran knows that, and there is almost nothing they can militarily do about it. “Yes, they will still shoot some missiles, but we will shoot them down. “They will go underground, but we will find them.”

See below for a little note on Kegsbreath ... as saucy doubts and fears began to creep into Joe's text, producing more 'mustiness' than 'must' ...

'There is no doubt the American operation against Iran is noble in intention. But every day that passes reveals that Operation Epic Fury risks empowering Iran in strategic terms given its failure – so far – to break the political will of the regime.
Instead, it may achieve the opposite.
The American operation is on track to achieve a major tactical victory. It will weaken Iran by degrading its missile and nuclear programs while up-ending its political and military chain of command.
Yet, the war will be judged on how it changes the strategic calculus in the region.
If the regime survives the US onslaught with control over the Hormuz Strait – one of the world’s most vital choke-points through which one fifth of global oil supply passes – it will have saddled the globe with a dangerous new problem.
Tehran will emerge from the conflict with greater leverage over the global economy and a new revenue stream worth billions every month if it continues to charge $2m for safe passage through the strait.
This is not a tenable outcome.
Yet the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Trump may do exactly this and walk away from the war – leaving Iran in control over the strait.
This is the inverse of the famous warning from then Secretary of State Collin Powell to George W Bush over the 2003 invasion of Iraq: “You break it, you own it.”
Commentators are now characterising the US position as: “We break it, you fix it.”
The fear for Trump is that a mission to secure the Strait of Hormuz would drag out the conflict beyond his six week timeline.
Already the US President is telling the rest of the world the closure of the waterway is its problem rather than America’s.
Posting on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday local time, he said that US allies should “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just take it.”
“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.”

Way to go King Donald ... and even petulant Peta seemed a tad worried, Sky News host Peta Credlin reacts to a story by The Wall Street Journal today. “The Wall Street Journal says today that reportedly Trump is open to ending the war without actually reopening the Strait of Hormuz,” Ms Credlin said. “How on earth would that work?”

The pond would usually slip in a 'toon at a King Donald sighting, but perhaps it's enough to recycle that Colbert joke about that sign behind the king looking awfully like the FU Institute ...(what's more it was a google bot safe joke).

And then it was just a doddle to finish off Joe, poised in mid-air, caught up by indecision, perhaps losing his timing somewhat early in his career ...

Senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Aaron David Miller, a former State Department official and veteran Middle East negotiator told The Australian that a “war of choice has now turned into war of necessity.”
“It’s now a global crisis,” he said. “Fertiliser, helium, natural gas, oil and hydrocarbons are not getting through.”
“The winners right now are Putin and Netanyahu,” he said. ‘The Chinese are somewhere in between. The losers are the Gulf States and the civilians that are caught up in this.”
Already, the US troop footprint in the Middle East has surged to more than 50,000 but any ground operation in Iran would be fraught with risk and the near certainty of US casualties.
Trump could be forced down a rabbit hole he never intended to enter.Miller said it was possible for the US to seize the strait with enough combat power and boots on the ground, but pointed to the experience in Iraq and Afghanistan where America stayed for 20 years in the two longest wars in US history.
He also warned that an attempt to seize or destroy Kharg Island – Iran’s central oil exporting hub – would inflict further pain on the global economy while doing little to weaken the regime’s resolve.
“The picture right now doesn’t look very promising to me,” he said. “Things have been done that no-one ever anticipated. Oil may be over $100 a barrel till the end of the year. And if there’s more damage to oil infrastructure in Iran and the Gulf the price could be higher.”
The military campaign is poised at a delicate moment and Trump faces the most important decisions of his presidency.
If he walks away without clearing the Hormuz Strait he will hand Iran a strategic victory and harm America’s international reputation. But if he doubles down, the options for retaking the strait are fraught with risk and the prospect of a longer and more bloody military campaign.

Looking good ...

And so to that note on Kegsbreath.

The pond simply couldn't resist this note in The New Republic by Greg Sargent ...

Pete Hegseth Just Revealed the Real Roots of His Sadism and Rage

Does God want America to kill as many of our enemies as we can—in as violent a fashion as possible? We have a defense secretary who apparently thinks so.

Inter alia ...

And so on and on, with fundamentalist theocracies on the go, and white Xian nationalism destroying the world, and what better way to celebrate proceedings than with the immortal Rowe ...

That naturally segues into that celebration in the Washington Mall ... with another of the King's thrones on display ...

There was of course a plaque. There should always be a gilt gold lined plaque, and not just on teeth ...

On that Kegsbreath theme ...Bill Kristol remarking on the way he himself once was, proud Iraq war warrior ...

 

 And now for something different ...