In which Our Henry yearns for blut, Killer Creighton kills off EVs, and of course there's a Groaning ...

 

This morning the reptiles of Oz were wildly excited by the alleged death of the alleged "death tax" (remember to always use scare quotes when making things up), allegedly the result of an allegedly astonishing reptile jihad.

This wasn't the reason the pond rose with the cockies of the 'Gong to rush to the lizard Oz to gaze in awe on the rag, but for those who care, the whole platoon of reptiles assigned to the task could be found in the intermittent archive.\:

FLIPPIN' NOT ENOUGH
Brutal rejection of the Albanese-Chalmers budget backdown
Business groups, tech founders and a former Labor premier have united to dismiss the Albanese government’s capital gains tax concessions as a ‘patch-up job’ with ‘devastating consequences’.
By Greg Brown, Matthew Cranston and Jared Lynch

From ‘lies’ to ‘certainty’, Labor’s CGT change that makes no money 
On June 4, Jim Chalmers described concerns expressed by business owners over proposed tax changes as ‘rubbish’. A fortnight later, he backed down.
By Matthew Cranston

EXCLUSIVE
Labor’s just put a ‘ceiling on ambition’
Capital gains tax changes promise small business relief but may starve mining companies of capital and disproportionately hit female founders.
By Julie-anne Sprague and James Dowling

Mining industry blasts government’s tax changes as a ‘kick in the guts’

Jim Chalmers has handed tech start-ups a tax lifeline while leaving the industry that ‘finds the mines of the future’ out in the cold – and critics say Australia will pay the price.
By Perry Williams, John Stensholt and Brad Thompson

Labor axes ‘death tax’ but the damage is done

The move always smacked of overreach. Now it’s official, raising tax on testamentary discretionary trusts was a mistake.

By James Kirby

Associate Editor – Wealth

What a line up, what a jihad.

When the reptiles go on a jihad, you can never accuse them of being half-hearted, with reptiles dragooned into the fray, shrieking at the hive mind.

Of course others of the Graudian kind tend to see things differently.

The CGT ‘backflip’ is more tweak than transformation. Labor hasn’t changed its mind on housing
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Do the concessions undermine the original objective of helping young Australians buy their own home? No.

But none of that was what got the pond going.

Even the revival of perhaps the most ancient and revered reptile jihad still doing the rounds - Higgins! - failed to move the pond, except to the intermittent archive.

EXCLUSIVE
Million dollar question: what happened to Brittany Higgins’ $2.4m payout?
More than $1m of the $2.4m Brittany Higgins received in her compensation payout is yet to be located by her appointed trustee in bankruptcy, with just $3000 remaining in the account.
By Stephen Rice

The boiling rice - just asking questions - didn't even need Dame Slap's help to get wildly overcooked about that one, but to be fair, it did feature an entirely irrelevant and astonishingly crude collage featuring a wedding snap.

Frankly Frank, you should give the game away and leave the graphics to AI ...

By this point regular correspondents will know the real reason for the pond's enthusiastic embrace of the lizard Oz.

How was Our Henry, esteemed hole in bucket repair man, coping?

How was the valiant Zionist, and noble crusader, dealing with everything?

Please, stand back, allow the pond a little indulgence:

The header: The West no longer wants to invest in real war with all its costs; We have substituted money for blood. Protecting our troops is entirely desirable; but as the fiscal costs soar, opposition to wars soars with them.

The caption for the depressing snap, which thankfully avoided the need to show dead Iranian schoolgirls: Flag-draped coffins of US war casualties aboard a cargo plane returning to the US.

Lordy, long absent lordy, Our Henry was deeply depressed about the will to fight, and sounded just like that German documentary Eine Symphonie des Kampfwillens , at least if you turned the symphony into a requiem for the will to fight:

While the full details of the agreement between the US and Iran remain to be seen, its broad outline confirms what has long been clear: the West has lost the will to fight. Seduced by the fantasy of wars that cost no lives, require no sacrifices and harm no civilians, it has condemned itself to premature capitulation.
We demand wars that resemble peace – or, at worst, a televised cage fight: never fatal for those who wage them, painless for those who watch them. But war is neither a spectacle nor a defective form of peace; it is the opposite of both. And it is precisely because it wreaks death and destruction that the credible threat of “the calamity of warre” can, in Hobbes’s famous phrase, act as life’s “most violent master”, teaching states and peoples alike to treasure peace and fear its loss.
Yet every element of the mindset in which we are trapped undermines that effect. The logic is inescapable. Convinced that war must be without victims, we have become willing to incur almost any financial cost to avoid bearing fatalities.

Poor valiant crusader, perhaps made even more depressed by the way that the reptiles stripped him of all snaps and AV distractions.

The pond felt the need to cheer him up with the odd 'toon ...

Being Henry, a little history celebrating "blut und boden" always comes in handy ...

In the Korean War, the United States spent roughly $16m, in today’s dollars, for each of the 36,500 lives it lost. By the war in Afghanistan, that figure had reached $1.4bn. In this year’s confrontation with Iran, it exceeded $3bn per American fatality – a 200-fold increase compared to Korea, capping a decades-long trend across the Western world.
We have, in other words, substituted money for blood. Protecting our troops is entirely desirable; but as the fiscal costs soar, opposition to wars soars with them.
Moreover, that bargain’s costs appear not merely in the ledger but in the conduct of war itself. Determined to minimise casualties, Western militaries increasingly rely on stand-off warfare through the massed application of air power. In reality, air power can destroy territory; it cannot secure it. Yes, adversaries can be bombed into submission. But that requires devastation on a scale that causes enormous civilian casualties.

Hey, sh*t happens, as noted in the both siderist NY Times ... (sorry, paywall):

Our Henry was hampered, constricted, by saucy doubts and fears. What a tragedy we can't do a dinkum sort of do like we use to do in world war days:

The only alternative is troops on the ground. Yet combat in densely populated areas, against enemies who regard civilian deaths as a propaganda tool, entails civilian-to-combatant fatality ratios on the order of those seen in Gaza – roughly two civilians for every enemy fighter killed – or even the four to five experienced in Iraq.
Both options – devastating air power and brutal urban combat – have become politically untenable. And nor are Western societies, which seek security without suffering, willing to bear the economic sacrifices major wars involve.
Nowhere are the consequences more evident than in Europe. Like the children of Peter Pan’s Neverland, Europeans have persuaded themselves that reality yields to desire. Germany stands out as the only major Western European country in which a majority appears willing to contemplate reductions in social expenditure to finance rearmament – and even that majority evaporates when specific cuts are proposed.
Elsewhere, resistance to explicit welfare-defence trade-offs predominates: 50 per cent in France, 53 per cent in Britain, 57 per cent in Spain and 61 per cent in Italy oppose reducing public services or other government spending in order to increase defence outlays.

 Quelle catastrophe. What was it that bloody useless bible once said?

...they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.

O dammit, it's come to pass, the worst of the worst stalks the impotent land ...

Those preferences translate into budgetary choices: the four largest EU countries today spend eight dollars on pensions for every dollar they spend on defence – and pension spending becomes harder to curb as the population ages. The aversion to sacrifice extends beyond money: having wished away the realities of war, Europeans remain fiercely opposed to participation in serious military operations.
The American situation is more complex. Gallup finds that 64 per cent of Americans say it is important that the United States remain the world’s number one military power. Yet support for military predominance should not be confused with support for military intervention.
In February, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 63 per cent opposed sending US troops to defend Ukraine, despite majority support for military aid. Similarly, during the Iran crisis, only 14-28 per cent endorsed deploying US ground forces.
The result is a striking paradox. The United States, buoyed by public support for military predominance, accumulates an extraordinary military arsenal – but one that shines far more than it serves. Meanwhile, the gulf between American defence spending and that of its allies continues to widen.
In the 1950s, the spending asymmetry was large but it rested on a massive wealth gap. The United States spent far more because it was far richer; however, allies such as Britain – then devoting 7.6 per cent of GDP to defence – were exerting themselves almost as hard as the United States, where defence spending amounted to 8 to 10 per cent of GDP.
Today, the combined GDP of America’s allies exceeds that of the United States, yet the spending asymmetry remains stubbornly large. It now rests almost entirely on an effort gap, as high-income allies – Australia among them – devote a much smaller share of their national income to defence.
That only fuels Americans’ sense that – as George Washington observed in his Farewell Address, which is still read out in the Senate each February 22 – “there can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favours from nation to nation”. And the resentment the gap creates makes it harder still to persuade Americans to engage in complex, risky and potentially prolonged military operations that benefit the West as a whole.
The political consequence is that presidents, in trying to justify deploying American military force, promise vast outcomes from operations whose actual objectives are necessarily much narrower. Moreover, the character of the post-Cold War world aggravates that mismatch. For almost half a century, American strategic thinking was shaped by a concentrated, existential confrontation with the Soviet Union; the challenges that now demand military action are diffuse, localised and deeply entrenched.

Who or what to blame for this rampant sort of impotence? This gormless refusal to bung on a bloody do?

Our Henry knows ...

The grandiose, almost messianic, promises of painless success are therefore increasingly detached from the realities they are meant to address. When the easy triumph fails to materialise – as it invariably does – it reinforces what Louis Hartz identified in The Liberal Tradition in America (1955) as a characteristic American tendency: to “oscillate between fleeing from the rest of the world”, including the responsibilities it imposes, “and embracing it with too ardent a passion”.
Donald Trump has undoubtedly intensified that tendency. A politician who confuses showmanship with statesmanship and dresses vulgar opportunism in the language of high principle, he acts as a weathervane that amplifies, rather than just reflecting, the oscillation in public opinion. But can anyone believe the other “leaders” – such as Macron, Merz and Starmer, who relentlessly warned of the dangers Iran posed, merely to urge capitulation the moment crude oil prices started to rise – are, for all their greater polish, any better?

Why just for a moment there it sounded like Our Henry was channeling Pete Kegsbreath: Pete Hegseth blasts NATO members and announces review of US forces in Europe

Let's face it, only mad mullahs know how to do a jihad right...

The Iranians may be fanatics, but they are not fools. They may be Islamists, but they are also faithful Leninists, believing that “for a revolutionary, peace is only the continuation of war, waged by different means”. And above all, they know one big thing: there is no Neverland. It would be a tragedy if we discovered that only when it was too late.

Um, is it worth noting that the entire thing was a folly best stood clear of? 

One that did nothing for Iranians, sensible dissidents or regime sheep, or the world economy, but instead has enabled the mad mullahs in ways they could only have dreamed of before King Donald got going...

And with that splendid bout of mourning for days of war mongering past, it's time for a 'toon.

While on the subject, the lizard Oz editorialist knew who to blame. He (or she) was at one with Our Henry, blaming those gutless wimps who blinked at the thought of a world depression or a middle east in meaningless flames ...

The header: EVs migh (sic, so and thus) feel right for the wealthy, but they will destroy our planet; Imagine the damage should net zero zealots replace two billion-odd, mostly internal combustion engines, with EVs.
The caption for a terrifying sight (at least to the hive mind): Robotic arms work on the assembly line of new electric vehicles at factory in China. Picture: Getty Images

Killer Creighton could only muster a three minute read, and he was also stripped of all AV distractions and snaps, but bear with him, because he was keen to give Pauline some tips on how to tackle climate change (which doesn't exist. Allegedly.)

As a user of EVs,  the pond took particular pleasure in this shriek of pain, this howl of IPA anguish, and just let it roll ...

Pauline Hanson’s broadside against net-zero policies in her Press Club speech on Wednesday included a subtle dig at electric vehicles, products the government wants everyone to pay for – whether they want to or not.
The One Nation leader pointed out how their plastic interiors are still made from petroleum and other fossil fuels, putting the lie to the zero-emissions claim so beloved of their proponents.
She could have gone a lot harder on EVs, which are as dependent for production on subsidies and climate change fanaticism as solar panels and wind turbines.
They are also devastating – and vastly worse than ordinary combustion engine cars – for the environment. And by that, I mean the environment we actually live in, as opposed to the imaginary doomsday one decades hence that is projected by climate models unless we all buy EVs and slash emissions to zero.
High-income EV buyers, many of whom would honestly believe they are helping the planet, should be appalled that their shiny new BYD is in fact destroying the environment at a faster pace than their neighbour’s Ford Ranger.
The International Energy Agency itself says EVs require at least six times the mineral content of a conventional car during production, including graphite, nickel, lithium and cobalt.

You have to admire Killer's ability to cherry pick, and fling around the names of nasty minerals, while avoiding mentioning the way that lithium ion phosphate batteries (LFP) contain no cobalt and don't rely on high-nickel chemistries (see the actual report, for which the reptiles provided no link)

In this context, weight is an entirely meaningless measure, so naturally Killer deploys it ...

No wonder EVs weigh up to 500kg more than traditional cars.

Killer then does a reptile classic. Pick on a small consultancy which has pandered to its client base with scare stories of this kind...

EV myths, real numbers: driver misperceptions around EVs

Under the hood: The untold environmental impact of EVs (electric vehicles)

It's easy to see the cut of their jib, which is why Killer cut to them.

Sadly for the scare mongers, once you've tried an EV, it's hard to go back, unless you like feeding gas guzzlers from your hip pocket rather than from solar, and unless you like cars to match Harley Davidson sounds, what with the size of your exhaust pipe being a good indication of the size of your penis.

Roar away Killer, and perhaps attach a set of truck nuts ...

Melbourne-based Frontier Economics, an independent economics consultancy, is researching “whether Australian consumers should be protected from unknowingly supporting environmental damage through their purchase of EVs, especially from manufacturers who source raw minerals from suppliers who have poor environmental practices”.
In a 2025 research note titled Under the Hood, it wrote of the untold environmental impact of EVs, pointing out how the planned shift to EVs would “drive a massive increase in mining activity … along with other significant environmental impacts associated with mining”.
“Meeting this demand will require significantly more mining activity and place greater environmental pressure on mineral-rich locations – oftentimes in locations far away and out of sight of EV consumers,” Frontier Economics reported.
Indeed, imagine the damage to Earth should net-zero zealots actually try to replace the world’s two billion-odd vehicles (overwhelmingly powered by combustion engines) with EVs, and then update their batteries every few years. Literally hundreds of massive new mines that irreversibly destroy their surrounds will be required around the world.
Indeed, as Frontier points out, hundreds of thousands of hectares of Indonesian rainforests are set to be wiped out around Weda Bay, where China sources much of the nickel required to assemble EVs using electricity generated by coal-fired power stations.
“The government prohibits the importation of illegal, unsustainable logged timber to prevent Australian consumers from unintentionally contributing to environmental harm,” Frontier economists also point out. Yet the same government says nothing about the permanent destruction of pristine areas of Africa, Chile, The Philippines, Indonesia and even Papua New Guinea stemming from mindless EV boosting. Carbon dioxide isn’t the only thing worth conserving.

Now what could cap all this? Government intervention, and taxation, as only a free market IPA stooge could want ...

If One Nation were looking for a tax increase that would inject some industrial and environmental sanity into Australian policymaking, it should roll out a road user charge on electric vehicles, which would raise more than $300m a year by 2028, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office. As it stands, EV drivers don’t pay fuel excise, which is meant to contribute to the upkeep of roads.

Perhaps realising he'd gone too far, Killer hastily promised to help out the gas guzzlers by doing a DOGE ...

One Nation could also tear down a complex array of state and federal government tax credits, stamp duty exemptions and subsidies totalling thousands of dollars for vehicles that flow only to EVs, equalling rates of support per car that earlier governments provided Ford, Holden and Toyota to make cars here, according to a report in The Australian last October.
Inefficient no doubt those subsidies were, but at least we got some full-time well-paid jobs out of them. Quite aside from the accelerated, permanent environmental damage to poor nations that EV subsidies and tax breaks encourage, the benefits accrue mostly to China, a nation that arbitrarily slaps embargoes and quotas on our exports when it feels like it. The Albanese government has helped supercharge Chinese EV manufacturers’ share of the domestic EV market to almost 60 per cent last year from about half that in 2024. These are vehicles numerous experts across the US, UK and Australia have worried could be shut down by embedded kill switches from mainland China.

Throw in a bit of generalist climate science denialism ...

Science and economics are providing inevitable wake-up calls to the net-zero fantasies seemingly in every country except Australia, where governments are ploughing on with ludicrous, obscenely expensive and globally pointless emissions targets of which EV take-up is a critical part.
Just as climate change has fallen well down voters’ concerns compared to only a few years back, EVs will once again become a niche product for higher-income earners. Taxpayers will ultimately baulk at the absurd cost of providing charging infrastructure, just as they will quadrupling the nation’s transmission lines to make way for wind turbines that work only a fraction of the day.

...and bob's your equivocating Killer uncle...

Debate rages over whether greenhouse emissions from EVs or combustion engine vehicles are greater in total over their entire life cycle.
But there’s no debate over which type of car causes more environmental damage in the here and now. If buyers cared more about the planet they live in, the EV bubble will burst sooner.

Debate rages?

Professor of Economics at the University of Birmingham Robert Elliott acknowledge that while an EV initially had a higher manufacturing carbon footprint, “a long-lasting electric vehicle can quickly offset its carbon footprint, contributing to the fight against climate change – making them a more sustainable long-term option.

Nice alarmist, hysterical try Killer, just no carbon-producing cigar... 

Perhaps you need to make bulldozer noises to attract Pauline's attention ...

And now some correspondents might be wondering if the pond had overlooked the latest Groaning from Dame Groan.

How could you think such heretical thoughts?

There'll always be room for Dame Groan in this inn, though it was so familiar the pond thought a few screen caps could do the job.

If anyone wants to catch the text for a cut and paste, it's at the intermittent archive ...

Sad to say, it's just the usual jihad jeremiad.

It's all such familiar stuff that Dame Slap really needs to find new components for her word salad.

Henry VIII provisions? Fiascos? 

What happened to the good old days of "we'll all be rooned"? 

The old biddie's now so hysterical she's running out of word puff ...

A better way? The pond knows what that means, it being code for the new era of One Nationisation at work in the lizard Oz.

It was time for the immortal Rowe celebrating the new and better way ...

So much winning, on so many fronts...

In which the perils of being Pauline and King Donald are bigly featured, being bigly birds of a like-minded bigoted feather ...

 

With One Nation having wholeheartedly embraced the policies, attitudes and positions promoted by the lizard Oz these past few decades, the mutual admiration society, and the One Nationisation of the hive mind continued apace early this morning.

The pond hopes that the frenzy will soon fade, because it's already well past the point of existential ennui.

Brownie emerged from the murk to lead with an alleged "news" item ...

ONE NATION
Hanson goes to war with Labor, Islam and trans agenda
Pauline Hanson has launched a battalion of policy wars with Labor and the Coalition by pledging massive cuts to government spending while ending the ‘transgender insurgency’ and Islamic fundamentalism in Australia.
By Greg Brown

Transphobia, Islamophobia, Laborphobia, and climate science denialism! What's not for a reptile to love wholeheartedly?

Brownie put forward an immortal sentence, presumably meaning we must all become reptiles:

“Under the failed policy of multiculturalism, all cultures are allowed equivalence to ours,” ­Senator Hanson said. “Surely ­opposing that is not racist, it’s ­common sense. We cannot be a multicultural society. We are a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural.”

The pond wasn't sure what it meant. 

Did it mean monocultural like tykes v. proddies v. evangelicals v. deeply weird Xian nationalists, or did it mean the monocultural harmony of little England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland? Or was it just meaningless blather of a bigoted kind, and so at one with the reptiles?

Down below Brownie, Geoff chambered yet another round ...

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Taylor invisible as Hanson emerges as unofficial opposition leader
Angus Taylor struggling to be heard as Pauline Hanson takes on Anthony Albanese
Angus Taylor is struggling to be heard. At a press conference on Wednesday, he received just one question from the lone journalist present.

The poor old beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way was swatted to the curb ...

...While Taylor is trying his best, he is struggling to be heard. There is a handful of Liberal MPs led by Tim Wilson, Andrew Hastie and Garth Hamilton who are showing they are prepared to go head-to-head with One Nation. Speaking at a press conference in southern Sydney ahead of the ABS on Thursday releasing updated net overseas migration data, Taylor received one question from a sole journalist who asked him what he expected from Hanson’s address.
“Scrutiny matters, and, frankly, One Nation is yet to give this country a credible plan,” Taylor said. “Right now, I’m every day subjecting myself to the press, having press conferences like this, and answering those hard questions because they matter. But most importantly, laying out that credible plan for our country. A plan for lower taxes, for more aspiration, for an economy that grows and provides opportunity for hardworking Australians, for affordable and abundant energy, for housing ownership that is within reach for young Australians, for putting Australians first.”
Just four months into the job, Taylor is grappling with a rejuvenated Hanson who has mastered the art of opposition deflection and soundbites. When quizzed about One Nation policies and funding, it is easy for Hanson to shift focus back to the unpopular major parties.

Steady, they're on the job ...

Over on the extreme far right of the digital edition, Jenna did her best to show that her male colleagues were rank amateurs when it came to hagiography by invoking Maggie Thatcher.

Pauline Hanson is no longer the Karen in Chief, she’s Thatcher from Queensland
Maggie Thatcher said ‘the cocks may crow, but it’s the hen that lays the egg’. Having waited 30 years for credibility and poll success, Pauline Hanson isn’t counting her chickens yet.
By Jenna Clarke
Culture Writer

That's culture?

No, that's a gigantic suck ...

The pond could only swallow a bit of it, because Jenna didn't hold back with the gushing, a gigantic squirt of devotion ...

... Her oration wasn’t groundbreaking, it was refreshing.
Unlike the major party leaders, she actually knows her audience.
No fence-sitting like Angus Taylor and no talking out both sides of her mouth like Anthony Albanese.
It’s why her language, which some scoff at for its “bogan” simplicity, is so successful.
Oxley is a long way from Oxford.
As a single mother of four children, she’s used to vacuuming, not living in one.
The 72-year-old used phrases like “sick to the back teeth”, opted for the word “dear” instead of “expensive” and simplified — with varying levels of success — fraught topics like foreign aid and energy policy.
While every government representative appears to have been created in a petri dish on Sussex Street, Hanson sounds, according to various and successive polls, relatable to the majority of Australians right now.
Buried in her bluster and away from the pathetic protests, were some kernels of legitimate vote winning ideas, such as allowing pensioners, veterans and students to earn as much as they like without having their benefits impacted.
It’s wrong to say she is of the “extremist far right”, she’s extreme.
Always has, always will be.
If politics seems like a circus right now, and Australia is indeed going down the same path as other democracies like the US, maybe Pauline could be the ringmaster voters want in order to rein in the clowns of Canberra in two years time.

That abject devotion, that pitiable grovelling on bended knees, is the sound of reptile surrender.

Did any reptile attempt a fight back?

Not really. 

The lizard Oz editorialist attempted a token gesture, but no one reads what the lizard Oz editorialist has to say, and the few no ones who do probably couldn't give a toss up against the gushing Jenna ...

Please, make room, bear with the pond ...

Put it another way ...

Now that's the way to treat reptiles.

Did the lizard Oz editorialist read gushing Jenna?

And why did the pond feature the editorialist and send most of gushing Jenna to the intermittent archive?

It's because the lizard Oz editorialist shows the schizophrenia that now saturates the rag, as the reptiles simultaneously cheer on the Hansonites, while at times remembering that once they used to blather about Ming the Merciless and picket fences...

The hapless reptile even tried to downplay the Paulinist embrace of reptile positions:

..Senator Hanson has diagnosed the full impact of the wayward energy transition on cost-of-living pressures and put her cards on the table in support of coal, oil, gas and nuclear as well as rooftop solar. Her mantra, with echoes of Donald Trump, is “Dig, baby, dig” but the details and reality of implementation can be frustrating.
The rise of One Nation reflects a trend towards populist leaders in other parts of the world. Senator Hanson credits the defeat of the voice to parliament referendum as a wake-up call where citizens rediscovered their own voice. 

Uh huh...didn't she mean they discovered a reptile voice?

Pearls of wisdom also arrived to ask questions ...

The header: Pauline Hanson’s outsider status remains her precious superpower;Those at her speech hoping for more specifics on plans to ‘grow the pie’ and pay for her promises would have been disappointed.

The caption for the snap, a reminder of Pauline's uncanny resemblance to Martin Luther (thank you Ughmann): One Nation leader Pauline Hanson speaks at the National Press Club on Wednesday. Picture: Getty Images

The reptiles were, in their usual way, incredibly discreet. There was no snap of a rogue kind to start off the droppings of pearls of wisdom:

And the pearls of wisdom only managed to run for a measly three minutes.

They were polite in delivery, and while there was talk of mixed signals, there were clear indications that some of the signals were right and just ...

On Wednesday afternoon Pauline Hanson gave her first National Press Club address, a debut 30 years in the making.
Her speech was passionately argued and uncompromising. Hanson covered familiar policy ground: she spoke about immigration and housing, our national identity and values, the cost-of-living crisis and energy, the tax hits announced in the budget and even what she called “the transgender insurgency” in Canberra.
On immigration, she sent mixed signals. Pragmatically, she linked our high intake to the housing crisis, yet in an unscripted moment she commented bitterly about “floods” of people coming here; an echo of her maiden speech in 1996. She called for Islamic “hate preachers” to be deported and said people who weren’t willing to embrace our Judaeo-Christian traditions should not be allowed to settle in this country.
A little oddly, perhaps, she expressed disapproval for the fact that a quarter of Australians speak a language other than English in their homes (even though many of them, I suspect, would subscribe to the values she upholds).

He suspects? That's the sort of deeply researched point that makes the lizard Oz such a sociological marvel.

The reptiles then interrupted with an AV distraction, with the thumb again shorn of unseemly images ... Will Glasgow reports from Pauline Hanson's Press Club event in Canberra

The pearls of wisdom allowed the talk of the hoax of climate change to go unchallenged, which was right and proper considering that the lizard Oz has been climate science denial central these past couple of decades:

Hanson grew visibly angry when talking about the Australians forced to seek help from the Salvation Army and other charities, blaming “the hoax” of global warming and heavily subsidised wind and solar energy for our cost-of-living crisis.
She pledged to end every net-zero related grant, subsidy and mandate the government has on its books and build two coal-fired power stations and one nuclear one.
Hanson confined herself to motherhood statements on economic policy questions.
She said she had always argued against “escalating debt”, compared Jim Chalmers’ spending record unfavourably with Paul Keating’s and pointed out – correctly – that this was contributing to inflation and higher interest rates. In response to one question, she said she would not seek to interfere with the Reserve Bank.
Those hoping for more specifics on her plan to “grow the pie” and pay for her promises would have been disappointed.
Hanson’s political rise this year has been spectacular but remains poorly understood by many. We are told variously that it was prompted by the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, or economic pain people are feeling, or the progressive cultural assault on this country. All of these explanations have merit.

The reptiles interrupted with another AV distraction, this one generously offering to the hive mind an IN FULL viewing of the entire 48'06" minutes: One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson makes her first National Press Club address since entering politics over 30 years ago.

Talk about helping the Hansonites infiltrate the hive mind in a bigly way...

And then it was on to a billy goat butt from the pearls of wisdom and an explanation of the phenomenon.

It turned out that it was the hijacking elites, the Beijing-like Covid response to Covid (shades of Killer Kreighton!), the net-zero crusade, rampant furriners, and elite attacks on Australian values, there being no 'leet, none at all, in the lizard Oz.

In short, it was the pearls of wisdom showing he knew how to regurgitate Hansonism 101, as the reptiles of Oz have done over the years ...

But at the heart of this political upheaval – which we are seeing in the US, Britain and many other advanced countries – is something deeper and more disturbing. It is the hijacking of our politics by the political and bureaucratic establishment during the past decade or more.
This has given us numerous disastrous policies, including pandemic-era lockdowns modelled after Beijing’s, a net-zero crusade that is hurting our growth and living standards (with no discernible environmental benefit), an uncontrolled migration system (appropriated by money-hungry universities) and elite attacks on Australian values.
While each of these things is bad enough, what too few people – even today – acknowledge is that they were foisted on the electorate. They were not demanded by the community. They were not debated and voted for during election campaigns. Their costs and risks were not assessed by a competent and professional public service. They were not scrutinised by a sceptical media.
Instead, they were presented to us as unarguable moral and economic imperatives, sanctioned by experts, by science, by the direction of history or by all right-thinking people – take your pick. We were told by our leaders that if we so much as questioned them, we were mentally deficient or morally reprobate.
Hanson understands this anti-democratic malaise acutely. In the most powerful part of her speech, which much reporting seems to have missed, she drew a strong link between herself and everyday Australians. She said that just as “every attempt has been made to silence me”, in Australia “people have been frightened to speak up”.
People have been “demeaned and condescended to” and “civil debate has been paralysed”, Hanson said, with the media being complicit in this. I couldn’t agree more.
Hanson’s outsider status is her superpower. Not only has it given her an immunity from establishment criticism – about the way she talks and acts, the detail and credibility of her policies, and the quality of some One Nation candidates – but it has allowed her to gain strength from these attacks.
For many Australians, criticism of her National Press Club speech will be a further reason to rally to her cause.

And after that set of ringing endorsements by the pearls of wisdom, there came a last feeble billy goat butt, one likely to be entirely ignored by the hive mind:

But here is the problem. If Hanson is right to call out our political and bureaucratic leaders, it does not mean she has the answers or – if she finds herself in a position of power – the capacity to repair the deep economic and cultural damage they have caused.
This is not a question of competence. By any measure, Anthony Albanese and his Treasurer cannot claim this mantle. Neither can many of those in the Coalition, judging by their performance when last in government.
All the same, it is one thing to give voice to popular frustrations or hopes but quite another to meet these demands successfully in government or coalition. After all, if outsiders succeed in gaining the power they seek, they become the establishment.
David Pearl is a former Treasury assistant secretary.

The pond would have liked an invisible deity to exist so that it could offer a silent prayer for that "former".

Who cares about having the answers?

Did King Donald have any answers?

Do the reptiles think they have any answers? 

They have bigotry and stupidity as their super powers ...

And speaking of King Donald, the reptiles were all over the Iran deal early in the morning.

But the analysis and commentary on offer was pitiful.

Instead of the bromancer, the reptiles sent in Jack ...

The header: Iran’s victory claims are a delusion amid the ruins; Iranian generals have declared triumph from the rubble as the regime prints its first-ever 10 million rial note – worth one Happy Meal.

The caption for the uncredited collage, featuring a snap and fatuous imagery: A giant billboard depicting the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his son, the supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, with Arabic writing that reads: ‘Thank you Iran.’ Picture: Anwar Amro/AFP

Jack spent four minutes celebrating the way, or perhaps clinging to the mad King Donald dream, that the mad Mullahs had been given a sound thrashing:

In the wake of almost any armed conflict it is unsurprising that the surviving combatants on either side will claim victory. They can both be wrong but they can’t both be right.
In the US, celebrations have been muted despite President Donald Trump’s buoyant social media posts. Of course, Trump would probably claim the Battle of Little Big Horn was a stunning US victory against the odds.
A lot of ink has been hurled on to the front pages of newspapers around the globe, claiming Trump’s objectives – which initially centred on regime change in Iran, then moved to wiping out the Iranian civilisation, such as it is, before finally resting on prohibiting the Iranian regime’s desire for nuclear weapons – have not been met and may never be met.

Celebrations muted?

That's one way of putting it. Other ways include ...

Trump in Defeat
The president went to war triumphant and will likely leave greatly weakened.
By Jonathan Lemire

Trump Does Not Understand the War He Lost
The president’s comments at the G7 summit revealed that he doesn’t understand the war he started—or the words that come out of his own mouth.
By Tom Nichols

Sssh, don't disturb Jack's dreaming, even as the reptiles flooded the Jacked up zone with assorted AV distractions, with the first backing up Jack: Deakin University Global Islamic Politics Chair Professor Greg Barton discusses the severe economic impact of the war in Iran on the Iranian people. “Iran has been devastated by this war; the economy is really on its knees, the 92 million citizens of Iran are really suffering, more than they have for decades,” Mr Barton told Sky News Digital Presenter Gabriella Power. “It’s a really tough situation; Iran doesn’t have a conventional air force or navy to speak of; it’s got small, fast boats … but it does have the capacity to project force through ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones, cheap drones. “The regime has not gone away; if anything, it’s in its current form perhaps even more hardline.”

Jack was keen to emphasise that the mad Mullahs were on their knees:

But if it’s full-blown delusions one is after, look no further than the Islamic Republic’s surviving leadership.
Speaking from a pile of debris that was Iran’s military operational headquarters at Khatam al-Anbiya and surveying the smouldering wreck that was once the Iranian military, a chipper Major General Ali Abdollahi claimed “the humiliated … enemies have no option but to accept defeat and surrender before a people inspired by God and the soldiers of the Almighty”.
Moments after emerging from his spider hole, the Speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (also one of the leading Iranian figures in the peace talks), declared Iran had taken “a long step towards final victory”.
Summoning up the memory of Iraq’s propaganda minister, Comical Ali, predicting a fiery apocalypse for US troops while they sauntered into Baghdad unopposed, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi stated that Iran “defeated the US on the military battlefield”, adding: “Iran’s armed forces will always have their hand on the trigger to confront the conspiracies of the enemies.”
The regime’s state news agency, Mehr, also was in a celebratory mood, pointing to the cash and prizes as the spoils of war it thinks are headed the regime’s way. Reports quoted from a 14-point memorandum of understanding that seems to be a fiction of Mehr’s own making, claiming the regime would be the recipient of “the release of $US24bn ($34bn) in frozen Iranian assets during the 60-day negotiation period” that begins after the framework deal is signed.
The details of the MOA between the two nations have not been fully published and negotiations are expected to begin in Switzerland on Friday. That hasn’t stopped the predictable skiting, bluff and bullshit from this most appalling government.

MOA? Well it's probably no big deal to talk that way about the MOU, no more than King Donald talking about "nuclear dust".

The reptiles next rolled in JD, sans couch: US President Donald Trump is currently in Evian-les-Bains, where leaders are meeting for the annual G7 Summit. During remarks alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, Trump said that an agreement had been signed. In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, US Vice President JD Vance commented on this. “On the one hand, if they continue to try to rebuild their nuclear program, this deal ensures they will never have the resources in order to do that,” Mr Vance said. “On the other hand, if the Iranians are willing to give a long-term commitment along with proper verification to giving up that nuclear weapon, we are willing to welcome them into the world economy, to lift some sanctions and to turn over a new leaf in that relationship.”

Being something of a couch lover, Jack followed up with more talk of mad Mullahdefeat:

According to US Vice-President JD Vance, that money has been set aside to pay for infrastructure reconstruction in the Gulf states caused by missile and drone strikes inflicted by Iraq during the four-month war.
In the Iranian capital, Mehr news agency also showed a gigantic mural – an advertising format much beloved of the mullahs – that claimed: “The US was forced to sign an agreement to end the war.”
It’s not all victory garlands, fist pumps and self-congratulation in Iran. One hardline MP, the deputy chairman of parliament’s national security committee, reportedly has described the draft peace deal as a document that would turn Iran into an American colony.

There came final AV distraction celebrating the way that the mad Mullahs had met their match, with an air about of state regime media, otherwise known as Faux Noise ... Iran's leaders are splashing propaganda posters across Tehran boasting of national unity and victory over a global superpower, just months after crushing protests with mass killings and as war worsens economic pain for their people. This report produced by Jillian Kitchener.

As for the poor hapless Iranian dissidents sold down the river by King Donald and his acolytes, Jack had a few consoling words. Not to worry. According to Jack, it'll be regime change by Xmas ...

Meanwhile, anti-regime Iranians continue to dwell in despair. One anonymous Iranian who despises the mullahs and their corrupt regime initially had supported US military action. He was left to ponder what the US attack had achieved since it did not lead to political change in Iran: “Our hope was that the ruling system would change. But apart from misery, inflation and further damage to the economy, what benefit did it have for people?”
Blanket propaganda and collective delusional disorder aside, the regime is overseeing an economy that had been mired in recession before February 28 and is now teetering on the brink of depression. GDP growth in the Islamic Republic has gone from a single negative point to negative 6.1 for the year to date.
Before the conflict the Iranian currency was hardly humming along but the war forced a 40 per cent reduction on the rial. Ten thousand rials will get you 10 Australian cents.
The flatlining currency shows no sign of any real recovery. To avoid grim scenes of Iranians pushing wheelbarrows full of almost worthless cash, the regime has printed a 10 million rial note for the first time. It’s worth the price of a Happy Meal in Australia.
Numismatists with a penchant for collecting worthless currency can add the freshly minted note to their collections alongside Iraq’s 10,000 dinar note issued by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2002 before the world came to pay him a final visit and Zimbabwe’s $100 trillion note, featuring so many zeroes it was exhausting just to look at it.
The biggest challenge to Iran’s corrupt and bloody regime comes in the form of food security.
There already were profound hyper-inflationary pressures in Iran before the war. While these have worsened only marginally since the war began, the cost of basic staples in Iran has skyrocketed. The price of cooking oils, rice and flour has shot up by more than 200 per cent.
Regime change in Iran was always unlikely by sheer force of munitions. Bombing raids and missile strikes by the US and Israel even may have shored up the mullahs’ ugly dominance of the Iranian people.
Food security is another matter and it is at crisis level. Hungry people are angry people. The most recent and compelling example was in Sri Lanka in 2022, when president Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned and fled the country amid critical shortages of fuel, food and medicine.
The Islamic Republic of Iran will be a tougher nut for its citizens to crack, but one certainty is that if enough hungry, angry people hit the streets, it’s time for the mullahs to grab their suitcases and flee, possibly to Russia where the best advice they can receive is to avoid standing in front of windows.
Clearly, the warring parties – one a military superpower, the other a regional middle power – have separate and distinct objectives, but mere survival is not triumph.

Mere survival?

That's what they're calling 300 billion dollars in the lizard Oz these days?

In an attempt to balance the simperings of Jack, the reptiles included a more lengthy analysis, borrowed from the WSJ.

It was a point by point breakdown, and the pond doesn't intend to add to the exegesis. 

Rather, it is what it is, but at least it doesn't rely on the vagaries of the intermittent archive:

The header: Annotated analysis of Trump’s Iran deal; The official agreement envisages trade relief for opening the Strait of Hormuz and limits on Iran’s nuclear program.
The authors: Laurence Norman, Alexander Ward and Summer Said
The caption for the snap: A man wave an Iranian flag in front of a billboard displaying the flag. Picture: Getty Images.

This outing was liberally sprinkled with AV distractions, and took a bigly six minute read (according to the reptiles), but at least it isn't Jack sounding jacked-up:

A senior Trump administration official read out President Trump’s memorandum of understanding to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and wind down the war with Iran in exchange for financial incentives for Tehran that will begin immediately.
Another official, speaking at the same event Wednesday, said Iran had asked the US not to release the text itself. The Wall Street Journal produced this transcript, along with Journal analysis of the crucial points.
The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran have jointly agreed in good faith on such and such a date on the following:
Paragraph 1 The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war, by signing this memorandum of understanding, declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and other provisions of this paragraph.
WSJ analysis: The inclusion of Lebanon is highly controversial in Israel, which is fighting a war there with Hezbollah. This official version includes tougher language on Lebanon’s sovereignty.
Paragraph 2 The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran undertake to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.
WSJ analysis: President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began the war calling on Iranians to overthrow the regime, a goal that faded as the government in Tehran held firm.
Paragraph 3 The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran commit to negotiating and achieving the final deal in maximum 60 days extendable with mutual consent.
WSJ analysis:The tough questions around Iran’s nuclear program and funds for reconstruction will be tackled in this second phase.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday (June 17) that Iran can access a $300 billion private fund "only if they’re doing things right" and that the United States has taken a lot of Iran's money which will at "some point" have to be returned.

Paragraph 4 Immediately upon the signing of this memorandum of understanding, the United States of America will begin the removal of its naval blockade and any disturbances or impediments against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and end the naval blockade within 30 days. During this period, the traffic of vessels will be in proportion to the numbers of pre-war traffic being restored by the Islamic Republic of Iran. United States of America further undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final deal.
WSJ analysis: This is the meat of the deal, reopening the strategic Strait of Hormuz and pausing the war. The administration official said the deadline for removal of forces is after any final deal on nuclear and other issues.
Paragraph 5: Upon the signing of this memorandum of understanding, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be reinstated. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.
WSJ analysis: Iran’s main obligation under the deal, lifting its chokehold on the strait. The updated version says Iran agrees not to charge fees for transit for 60 days and blesses an Iranian plan to work with Oman on the future administration of the strait, but says they must involve other Gulf states in the discussion.

President Trump issued a chilling warning to any country who would sell Iran a nuclear weapon, saying that they would "get nuked," themselves. Trump said that as part of the Iran p …

Paragraph 6: The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, fully agreed plan with at least $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalised as part of a final deal within 60 days. All required licenses, waivers, and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the United States of America.
WSJ analysis: A new twist on the economic benefits Iran could expect if it delivers on US demands on the nuclear front. Mr Trump says there will be no US funding for this effort. The updated draft says the US will grant sanctions waivers needed for investors to participate.
Paragraph 7: The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, i.e. IAEA Board of Governors resolutions, and all unilateral US sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed upon schedule as part of the final deal. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America acknowledge the critical importance of the sanctions termination issue above mentioned, and expressed their intentions to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.
WSJ analysis: The big carrot, an end to economically crippling sanctions if Iran meets American demands. In the updated version, the US recognises the urgency of the issue for Iran.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday (June 17) that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could use a "softer touch" in Lebanon in comments made at the close of a G7 summit in France.

Paragraph 8: The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. The United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpiled enriched material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon in accordance with the schedule mentioned in Paragraph 7, with the minimum methodology to be downblending on site under the supervision of the IAEA. The two parties also agreed to discuss the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters related to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs based on a satisfactory framework being agreed upon in the final deal. The final deal will confirm the provisions of this paragraph. The Islamic Republic of Iran acknowledge the critical importance of nuclear issues above mentioned, and express their intention to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.
WSJ analysis: Iran repeats its longstanding pledge not to develop a nuclear weapon. The updated version includes more specific language on the disposal of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, with the senior administration official saying Iran has committed to destroy it. This version also specifically mentions future nuclear enrichment, with Iran acknowledging the urgency of the issue for the US
Paragraph 9: Pending the final deal, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran agree to maintain the status quo. The Islamic Republic of Iran will maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program, and the United States of America will not impose any new sanctions, and will not deploy additional forces in the region.
WSJ analysis: Freezes the nuclear standoff in place.
Paragraph 10: The United States of America undertakes that immediately upon the signing of this memorandum of understanding, and until the termination of sanctions, the US Department of Treasury will issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products, and derivatives, and all associated services, including banking transactions, insurances, transportation, etc.
WSJ analysis: A major up-front American concession freeing Iran to sell oil as it likes and reap the financial benefits.

In a speech at the G-7 summit in France, Trump said he was giving Iran 60 days to negotiate their agreement, or the U.S. would resume bombing.

Paragraph 11: The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Upon the implementation of this memorandum of understanding, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will mutually agree on the procedures related to the release of these funds during the negotiations. Such funds, whether retained in the original account or transferred, shall be made fully usable for payment to any ultimate beneficiary designed by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America undertakes to issue all necessary licenses and authorisations accordingly.
WSJ analysis: The US will let Iran access some of its estimated $100 billion in frozen assets depending on progress in talks.
Paragraph 12: The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran agree that an executive mechanism will be established to monitor the successful implementation of this memorandum of understanding and the future compliance of the final deal.
Paragraph 13: After signing this memorandum of understanding and subject to the beginning of the implementation of paragraphs 1, 4, 5, 10 and 11 of this memorandum of understanding, and the continuing implementation of these measures, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will start negotiations regarding the final deal exclusively on the other paragraphs.
WSJ analysis: Limits the scope of discussion in the second phase, leaving out Iran’s ballistic missile program and its network of regional militias. The updated version expands the list of paragraphs to include Paragraph 1, the cessation of hostilities including in Lebanon.
Paragraph 14: The final deal will be endorsed by a binding resolution of the UN Security Council.
The Wall St Journal

Put it another, algae-laden, American flag green way...

In which the pond ignores the One Nationisation of the lizard Oz for the pleasures of "Ned's" natter and a short Groaning ...

 

The pond returned from the big smoke to find the One Nationisation of the lizard Oz in an advanced condition.

The reptiles were wildly excited by the vibe and the rebellion, with two yarns topping the "news" section early this morning ...

It's understandable. 

The lizard Oz has always been a leader in devising and setting One Nation policies, and at last they can come out in a way that would make the average Pride party seem lightweight.

These days they're more than Pauline curious, they're happy piling on the Pauline bandwagon.

The pond doesn't usually bother with the lizard Oz "news", what with it being another word for propaganda in the alternative hive mind universe, but for those that care...

INSIDE ONE NATION
One Nation’s ‘Svengali’ taps Trump’s vibe to mastermind Hanson’s rise
James Ashby has built a Trump-style digital machine that has left Labor, Coalition and Greens strategists flat-footed.
By Geoff Chambers

Teaser trailer ...

EXCLUSIVE

Strategy of the rebellion: Joyce to take on Chalmers
Barnaby Joyce has emerged as One Nation’s Treasury spokesman as Pauline Hanson prepares to present an alternative vision for the country.
By Sarah Ison and Greg Brown

Teaser trailer ...

Hotly anticipated? Hacks gotta hack ...

Just to help pump up the volume, MAGA cap wearer Dame Slap was over on the extreme far right dong her thing...

In the Hanson era, institutional hubris is in the firing line
Soaring levels of support for One Nation suggests millions of Australians have had enough with institutionalised complacency.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Teaser trailer ...

Why only a teaser trailer for Dame Slap?

Well, she seizes the chance to indulge in another bout of transphobia, and there's only so much of the lizard Oz transphobia jihad the pond can take in a month. (If you want to see where a Bud Lite bout of transphobia can lead, have a sip of Parker Molloy).

The intermittent archive is currently working, so why not send her and her bigotry to that particular cornfield, where she can parade in her MAGA hat to her eternal pleasure ...

As for why the reptiles are obsessed with Pauline, Barners and the rabble on the extreme far right? 

Simple. Allow the pond to explain:

Pauline channels the reptiles, she makes them feel whole, and right.

They're in a mutually reinforcing echo chamber, united in a holy crusade, a jihad for the reptile ages.

And besides, all those teaser trailers clear space for "Ned" to natter, and as the pond is designed as a soporific, what better way to accomplish the mission?

The header: Iran deal proves one thing, Donald Trump is no wartime leader; There’s no question the Iran war has done the US President lasting damage.

Sadly there was no caption for the collage, and so the pond can't definitively say that it's a textbook example of how AI has completely degraded the lizard Oz, but the pond has its suspicions. Just look at how wretched it is ...

As for "Ned", he spent a remarkably short five minute read contemplating the current state of King Donald and his kingdom's war on Iran.

Who knows why the bromancer avoids the subject, leaving it all to "Ned", but it's a verifiable phenomenon.

The bromancer was seen yesterday offering this ...

Starmer, like Albo, talks big but is making a mess of his government
As the British Prime Minister stumbles and AUKUS doubts grow, the parallels with Canberra raise uncomfortable questions for Australia.

And before that it was this ...

Albanese government is using AUKUS to conceal shameful defence reality
Albanese and Marles dissemble and deceive over Australia’s military weakness. Labor’s security performance is pure spin mixed with moonshine.

It was a bigly ten days ago that the bromancer scribbled No winners as Iran war set to get even worse.

And that's how the hive mind and the pond got stuck with "Ned", desperately nattering away in a bid to mop up the damage...

A diminished Donald Trump, scrambling to evacuate his war against Iran, has secured a patched-up interim agreement that cannot disguise his ineptitude as a war leader and points to a likely failure on many of the initial goals when he launched military action against Iran.
Trump is a weakened president, at home and in the world. The irony of the major triumph in his 60-day ceasefire agreement with Iran is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz – but that is merely a restoration of the status quo before the attack on Iran by Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
The interim agreement, not yet released but to be signed on Friday, is a fragile compromise, with political forces in both Washington and Tehran unhappy with the outcome. Trump’s political salesmanship – casting a messy retreat as a magnificent victory – will be tested to the limit as both sides claim to be winners.

Not yet released? The pond has no idea if this leak is true, READ: Leaked Alleged Text of Trump-Iran Deal, but if it's true, it's a doozy and makes everything "Ned" have to say seem entirely beside the point. 

But that generally applies to what "Ned" has to say, so whatever ...

At this point there are three big lessons. The Iranian regime proved far more resilient and effective under pressure than Trump realised; in today’s strategic rivalry all resources will be deployed, with Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz pivotal in exposing Trump and driving his concessions; and, in historical terms, the most astonishing aspect will be the chasm between Trump’s incredibly ambitious war aims and his inability to achieve them within the acceptable and deployable limits of US military, political and diplomatic powers.
Trump is exposed as an inept war leader, flawed in preparation, outsmarted in tactics, misjudging the extent of US power, too close to Netanyahu and too arrogant in dealings with traditional allies. Equally damaging is the domestic impact in America. Trump failed to persuade the American public – even his own MAGA loyalists – of his Iran campaign. Trump couldn’t muster domestic support for a foreign war unpopular from the start and couldn’t put troops on the ground.

The reptiles decided to fling in a snap of the man who could yet bring the entire edifice crashing to the ground... Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a press conference in Jerusalem. Picture: Ronen Zvulun / AFP

Speaking of Benji, the pond usually doesn't link to the cesspit known as X (Media Watch took to the platform in style) but Benji's pivot to AI is something to see ...

There were only two mentions of Lebanon, including this:

...I wish to clarify: we will remain in the security zones for as long as it is required to defend our country. ​Because after October 7th, I established a simple principle: Israel will not allow terror organizations to encamp on our borders; to tunnel into our territory; to prepare for a massacre close to our citizens. Today, the heroic IDF fighters stand as barrier between the terrorists and our citizens. 

Good luck with negotiating an all-embracing peace treaty in sixty days, as "Ned" blamed the citizenry for being gutless...

The US public has no stomach for a serious war policy. This is likely only to weaken US-led strategic deterrence against the dictators. Do you think Moscow and Beijing haven’t absorbed this conclusion? A related insight is Trump’s obvious obsession about Iran, surely influenced by Netanyahu. The risk Iran poses to the region and the world drove Trump’s actions yet future assessments may conclude the US President should have prioritised strategic deterrence against Russia and China.
Consider the agreement. It is a 60-day ceasefire extension, opening the strait for vessels, lifting the US naval blockade against Iran, decisions on the nuclear program are kicked down the road, reports from US officials suggest the future lifting of sanctions on Iran are tied to the progress on nuclear negotiations, and hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah are supposed to end, a provision that leaves Israel deeply upset. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah are parties to the agreement but further military exchanges between them could threaten the deal.
Given the lack of trust between America and Iran, many things can go wrong. While Trump said the reopened strait would be “toll-free”, Iranian officials said while there would not be “transit tolls” there could be fees in exchange for services. If the waterway is not completely free, Trump will be in trouble and the Iranians will face a global backlash.
Trump couldn’t let Iran impose an ongoing price on the world by closure of the strait. His military campaign had badly damaged Iran’s military forces and its state capability, but in the end Iran strangled the life out of Trump’s war: he had no option but to settle for a compromise peace over military escalation. It was a sound decision.

At this point the reptiles decided to slip in some PREMIUM content ...

PREMIUM
Iran deal proves one thing, Trump is no wartime leader
Become a member to access our premium video content

Pay for reptile AV content? In what known or alternative universe is that a good idea?

The long absent lord knows what that's all about, and the pond will leave it to the long absent lord to care, as the "Ned" blame game continued...

But Trump blamed the American people for their lack of fighting resolve, saying last week: “I don’t know that America has the appetite to do what I would really much prefer doing.”
The regional power equation seems unresolved – Iran’s quest for regional dominance and Trump’s quest, along with Israel, to thwart its aspirations and its ideological consequences. Walter Russell Mead, in assessing the agreement for The Wall Street Journal, highlighted the paradox of Trump – a master of political theatre who inevitably dominates the stage yet who “often fails to achieve the kind of concrete results that mark the difference between a PT Barnum and an Otto von Bismarck”.
Vice President JD Vance, expected to sign the agreement on Friday, talked up the nuclear angle, saying Iran “will never have a nuclear weapon”, a line reinforced by Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN. Yet as far as is known, the agreement doesn’t involve any pledge to turn over stockpiles of enriched uranium with the nuclear negotiations deferred and the political nightmare for Trump being the need to secure a superior nuclear deal to Barack Obama’s in 2015, a deal Trump has denounced.
For Iran, the strategy logic seems unavoidable: this war will reinforce the regime’s determination to acquire a nuclear capability as the only guaranteed method to prevent a further resort to destructive US military action in coming years.
At the same time there appears to be no provision in the agreement for Iran to halt its support for regional terrorist groups, another issue kicked down the road. The Wall Street Journal, a supporter of Trump’s Iranian policy, significantly called the agreement “a strategic retreat short of achieving his war aims” but pointed out that Iran’s key nuclear facilities were in rubble and enrichment of uranium has been halted for the first time in 20 years.
The wider historical context is replete with Trump’s serial blunders. From the start he made clear his goal was regime change from air assault, encouraging the Iranian people to remove their government, always a forlorn prospect. This meant regime survival became an Iranian win and Trump’s own goal.

The reptiles offered a picture of the most forlorn and desperate member of the junta, with memories of his couch-molesting days hovering in the background (now that would make an interesting confession to his priest) ... JD Vance welcomed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Picture: Matt Rourke / AFP

Isn't JD busy doing a book tour and getting tangled with the likes of Megyn Kelly?

Contemptible as well as needy and pathetic, as "Ned" rolled out his final gobbet...

The war guaranteed the regime of the ayatollahs became totally hostage to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that, with its survival in the balance, played its tactical ace – closing the strait, forcing a global energy crisis and heaping Trump under pressure at home from rising fuel costs and higher inflation. The Iranians hurt home on his own terrain.
Incredibly, Trump had ignored earlier warnings from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, that Iran might close the strait to exert its leverage. Trump was dismissive, a disastrous mistake at the heart of how the war turned against him. The US national security system seemed partly dysfunctional, undermined by a president who overruled advice and believed his own propaganda. The Iranian war is like his tariffs – he acts without assessing the consequences.
Trump’s repeated declarations of victory, his calls for “unconditional surrender” and his conviction that killing senior regime figures would trigger an internal collapse exposed Trump as a war leader lacking judgment. He loves being the strongman, railing against Greenland, threatening Cuba and kidnapping the former Venezuelan dictator. But the longer Trump governs the more he resembles a phony tough.
Can  Trump recover? Probably, but the war has still done him lasting damage. It has divided the Republicans, encouraged dissent among his advocates and suggests his unpredictable opportunism is a diminished currency.

For some reason that pond failed to understand - apart from the need to keep punters inside the hive mind - that last link led to Major Mitchell's Monday piece...

The pond has already covered it, but for those who can't be bothered reverting to yesterday's pond post or heading off to the archive, here's a reminder:

Utterly bemusing. What was that link all about?

The pond suspects it was a way to hide "Ned's" conclusion.

Can Trump recover? Probably ...

Probably?!?

Again we're in that alternative reptile universe known only to them.

That's worthy of state news media, otherwise known as Faux Noise, but in this stage of King Donald's reign, it suggests "Ned" is as completely delusional as the King and his sycophants ...

Take it away infallible Pope, spread that carcass like a patient etherised upon a table:

And so, as promised, to Dame Groan, who had in any case hung around like a bad smell and was still visible early in the morning, what with the lands not having swung around above the magic reptile faraway tree ...

The header: ‘Substandard’: Chalmers’ RBA revamp an abject failure; The Reserve Bank’s new-look board cut rates twice, then hiked three times – and now mortgage holders must wait until 2028 for inflation to be tamed.

Again there was no credit for the headlining collage, and again the pond suspects that's because AI is yet again ruining everything.

As for Dame Groan, she too was in her usual "we'll all be rooned" and "abject failure" mode, but the pond confesses that it was bitterly disappointed by her outing.

All she could manage for her diatribe was a measly two minutes!

As that disgraced comedian once said, sort of...

"Boy, the scribbles at this place are really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."

 And with that, on with the abject failure and the complete roonation ...

After three cash rate hikes this year, a pause, albeit possibly temporary, was the almost certain outcome of the June meeting of the Monetary Policy Board. Add in the chaos caused by the budget’s ill-considered assault on capital, including housing, and the members of the board really had no choice. All of them.
This doesn’t mean that the next move in the cash rate is down. More time is needed to see how the economic landscape develops, including the consequences of the end of the conflict in the Middle East.
Indeed, the board’s statement makes it clear that fighting inflation remains its main role at this stage and “it will do what it considers necessary to achieve that outcome, including increasing the cash rate target further if required”.
The MPB has now been in operation for over a year. Achieving the restructure of the Reserve Bank is seen by Jim Chalmers as one of his finest achievements. He was able to install his preferred candidates. But the performance of the board has been underwhelming to be kind, substandard to be accurate.
Let’s not forget here that the MPB doesn’t expect the target rate of inflation to be achieved until the middle of 2028 – fully two years away. No, that’s not a typo – that the board’s expectation.

The reptiles probably decided this feeble offering - such a small portion - needed a bolstering with an AV distraction...The Reserve Bank of Australia have voted to keep the cash rate on hold at 4.35 per cent in a unanimous decision from the Monetary Policy Board.

The pond understands the problem, the dilemma Dame Groan faced. How to lather up yet another storm in her teacup?

What with the Reserve doing nothing, it takes some kind of heroic strength to get wildly agitated and run screaming around the hive mind that we'll all be rooned, but Dame Groan does her best ...

Last year, the board jumped the gun by reducing the cash rate twice (the cash rate had been cut in February under the old bank structure) only to undertake a dramatic U-turn this year and put up the cash rate three times. That’s embarrassing stuff.
Blind Freddy could see that the inflation giant hadn’t been slayed last year, particularly as both the federal and some state governments were contributing to rising prices through their excessive spending. Not that the governor and chair of the MPB, Michele Bullock, could bring herself to issue an important warning to the respective treasurers. That would be too hard, if on point.
A part of the new arrangements is the media conference held by the governor after each MPB meeting. So much talking, so many questions, some of them silly. At first, it was a novelty and the performance of Bullock did improve. These media conferences now add very little apart from the governor making repetitive remarks and offering some general observations.
The regular statement put out by the board is equally vacuous, it having been carefully curated by the communications department of the bank. Why does the bank need a communications department? These statements are like reading the blurb on a box of cereal.
It’s hard not to side with the view of newly appointed chair of the US Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, that less talk is better. This includes avoiding potentially misleading forecasts of future rate movements. Our governor should say something when something needs to be said, not at the end of every board meeting.
In the meantime, mortgage holders will need to hold onto their hats. If the cash rate is to be cut, it will probably not be until next year. A further hike cannot be ruled out for this year. For those being pushed into negative equity as property prices fall, it’s likely to be a worrying time.
While many countries were able to bring inflation down quickly by hiking interest rates, our bank decided to take the scenic route by keeping the cash rate too low and then cutting it when the justification was not clear-cut. We are now paying a high price for this faulty decision-making. As Bullock says, “inflation hurts everyone”.

Perhaps Dame Groan will do better next time.

After all, people will feel short-changed, if it takes just two minutes for us to all be rooned. 

Being rooned should take a little longer, and would benefit from added spice.

Meanwhile the immortal Rowe brought it all together ...

The pond has to wonder if that portrait of Barners, Tamworth's eternal shame, which defames Henry Higgins (just you wait, Mr Rowe) ...

... owes anything to that ancient Tamworth power station, where the pond once played in the slag heap, good preparation for dealing with that old slag...

There's nothing like a rustic kitchen coated inch deep in coal gas scum, just as there's nothing like a Barners to make for a scum-laden country ...

Meanwhile, the "warning shot" Ruskis are as barking mad as ever, and in urgent need of a bromancer reprimand. Keir Starmer shouldn't have all the fun: