In which Jimbo takes centre stage in a 'leet penguin suit, and Rowan refuses to STFU and crawl under a rock ...

Shattered.

Without a by-your-leave, or a word of explanation, early this morning there was no sight or sound from Our Henry.

The pond had to check that it was Friday, and then looked Our Henry up, and yes, it was a bigly week since he'd helped out the Australian Daily Zionist News with Overpaid vice-chancellors parade their ignorance.

What did the reptiles produce as an alternative to this wreckage, this dereliction of duty, this studied insult?

Jimbo!

Just Jimbo ... and not that Jimbo, this Jimbo ...

And worse it was double barrelled Jimbo, as the reptiles reverted to a favourite ploy of having Jimbo offer a column over on the far right of the digital rag, and then have a reptile hack regurgitate its contents as an EXCLUSIVE as the news lead of the day ...

The reptile hack of the day was Geoff, assigned the task of pretending he'd done something to earn the EXCLUSIVE ...

The pond dipped into it for the sheer pleasure, the impossible absurdity, of seeing one more time Jimbo posed at the top of the piece, as if a manifestation of the cultural 'leets the reptiles purport to despise ...

For the rest of that astonishing EXCLUSIVE, go here ...

EXCLUSIVE
Trashing free society: Paterson’s repudiation of Hanson
James Paterson calls for reforms to unis and the judiciary to stop threat of Hanson and populist right
The senior Liberal conservative says the ‘age of disruption and rise of populism’ threatens the Australian way of life.
By Geoff Chambers

But why drink at Geoff's EXCLUSIVE hack trough when you can go to the original horse's mouth? 

The header: Lies, conspiracies, anger: Don’t let populism trash our fragile inheritance; We should be very wary of those on the right who want to import foreign concepts of cultural uniformity to Australia.

The caption, featuring a new angle on Jimbo in a penguin suit, a manifestation of the cultural 'leets the reptiles purport to detest and despise: James Paterson delivering his speech to the Ramsay Centre at the State Library of NSW. Picture: Chris Pavlich / The Australian

The Ramsay centre's now based at the State Library?

Nah, it's just a mangling, just like the way that Jimbo had to spend a bigly eight minutes mangling blather about Western Civilisation (remember the caps!), as he goose stepped around the way that Gina's pet actually embodied pretty much every position favoured by the lizard Oz, and the Liberal and National parties, this past decade or so.

This called for an exceptional form of pomposity, while pandering to the nonsense the Ramsay centre embodies ...

The unique inheritance of Western civilisation is not just the great books, art, music and science, although they certainly have shaped our culture in a profound way. It is the institutions of Western civilisation that are truly unique and consequential. Institutions such as our Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, our common law system of courts and an independent judiciary, and our universities.
For Australia, these institutions were primarily, though not exclusively, inherited, developed, and refined from the British, and translated to our continent at settlement. 

Say what? No mention of the classic onion muncher ploy of attributing it to a Judaeo-Xian tradition emanating from the middle east, as peddled by a swarthy type of dubious Semitic appearance?

Never mind ...

We should never assume just because we inherited these remarkable institutions from previous generations that transferring them to future generations is assured.
Because we are living in an age of disruption and populism. And the institutions we may have taken for granted in the past do not have the near universal support and approval they might have once enjoyed.
They are fragile. In many quarters they are under outright attack.
The populist challenge
A poll this week laid bare the bleak outlook for our fellow citizens. A record 68 per cent believe our country is heading in the wrong direction; 44 per cent say they are experiencing personal financial distress; 47 per cent believe they are worse off than their parents were at the same stage of life.
They are right to be angry. Australia’s post-pandemic economic performance has been dismal. Real wages have fallen by 5 per cent since 2021, when the average OECD member has seen a 5 per cent increase. It is understandable why distrust in our institutions rises when people feel like it is not delivering for them materially. But the danger is these anti-establishment parties don’t just mine grievance about poor economic performance. Whether on the populist left or right, they bring with them a much broader wagon of grudges and resentments.
Right now, they also have a helping hand from some foreign state and non-state actors, who see strategic advantage and even profit from weaponising our distrust and amplifying our divisions. It is easier than ever before for them to do so.

One thing's certain. The reptile obsession with the monster they've created - after all, Gina's pampered pet has found most of her policies within the pages of The Australian - will only draw more attention to her, and make her stronger ... One Nation senators Malcolm Roberts and Pauline Hanson in the Senate chamber.

After all, that prize loon Malcolm Roberts is just one of a long line of climate science deniers following the hive mind line ...

Jimbo handily decided not to go there ...and sought safety in other topics ...

Once, they would have had to mount a sophisticated human intelligence operation to influence journalists, editors or producers who controlled access to the public square in democracies. Now they can pump our public square full of propaganda by hijacking Western-headquartered social media platforms using inauthentic accounts or by covertly paying mercenary influencers to promote their agenda.
Even easier is secretly putting their thumb on the scale of the algorithm of foreign authoritarian-controlled applications to serve content that divides and distracts us.
The risk today is that understandable discontent with Australia’s recent economic performance – a solvable policy problem – is used as a vehicle to trash our political, legal and social institutions.
Australians struggling with the cost of living have not suddenly embraced conspiracy theories about chemtrails, the Federal Reserve, school shootings, 9/11 and pharmaceutical companies. But populism is a package deal.
Voting to express your reasonable frustrations with the established parties of government brings with it a lot of baggage. Those of us who want to preserve what is great about our Western society and way of life have two tasks.
First, address our economic underperformance to remove the main driver of populist discontent. Second, defend and, where necessary, reform the institutions of Western civilisation so they can survive this disrupted era.
The most fundamental idea of the “small c” conservative philosophy is that institutions must evolve gradually over time through the accumulation of wisdom. There are three institutions I will focus on: universities, the rule of law and pluralism.
Our universities
There is no institution more critical to the progress and success of Western civilisation that is more vulnerable in a populist era than our universities. The prosperity, progress and advancement of our civilisation in science, art and culture cannot be separated from the teaching, research and thinking conducted in our universities over centuries.
Right now, though, many universities feel underfunded and under-appreciated. They warn policymakers their business models are unsustainable, and the lack of public funding and interventions such as the Job-Ready Graduates Scheme, are leading them to cut staff and courses. I know many universities and their defenders believe these policies are the cause of their current malaise.
But this gets their dilemma exactly backwards. The reason why universities are not better funded and supported by our political system is because they have lost the broad social licence to sustain public support. And the reason for that is that a significant proportion of society feel estranged from our system of higher education.

Actually the universities have never recovered from the school of "what we need is plumbers and sparkies", and if you want an arts education be prepared to sacrifice your first born child brand offered to them by SloMo and his mates.

Remember Jimbo?

It’s time to axe the Morrison-era policy strangling Australia’s humanities degrees (sorry, that's a Crikey paywall)
‘Unless we have lawyers from all class backgrounds, we will have a legal system that is shaped by a particular narrow set of perspectives and assumptions and blind spots.’
Varsha Yajman

I enrolled in an arts and law bachelor’s degree in 2020 and left with a HECS debt of around $40,000. Students who started the same degree in 2021 and after will have left owing around $85,000. The blame for this lies at the feet of the Morrison-era Job-ready Graduates Package (JRGP).
While Australia was battling the COVID-19 pandemic, the Morrison government tried to encourage students to enrol in areas of “national need” that would help “drive economic recovery”, slashing fees for STEM and nursing while more than doubling the cost of humanities degrees, with law and commerce becoming the most expensive. 
But research has shown that the JGRP, rather than furthering the Australian economy, will likely worsen skills shortages. In 2024, the Australian Universities Accord stated the policy “should be replaced” and that it had “tilted the overall cost burden of higher education further onto students and away from the Australian government”. 

And so on, and of course the current Labor government has been equally tardy on this matter, but so much for all that blather about the glories of Western Civilisation.

In traditional Australian Daily Zionist News fashion, the reptiles slipped in a standard demonic snap comporting to Australian Daily Zionist News standards... An anti-Israel protest at Melbourne University. Picture: Jason Edwards

How to get out of the Western Civilisation bind? Pretend it's all about the long march through the institutions by lefties!

And so it was on to Jimbo trying to bs his way through the pricing of the humanities out of the marketplace ...

Classical liberals and conservatives believe their perspectives are unwelcome, at least in the humanities departments at universities across Australia. Australian data is limited, but there is no reason to think our universities differ much from American higher education, and there the data is stark and extensive. I don’t believe cabinet would have agreed to a Job-Ready Graduates Scheme that deprioritised the teaching of humanities, or allowed their fees to rise significantly, if they felt that they had a stake in what is taught there. But most Coalition MPs would tell you they regard what is exclusively taught at universities as openly hostile to their beliefs, and many of their constituents agree.
And if universities think that’s bad, the movement that seeks to replace centre-right politics in this country makes a Coalition government look like a walk in the park for higher education.
These are people who often display open contempt for expertise, and gleefully indulge in the most absurd conspiracy theories in the face of all evidence.
Universities should be alarmed that four years of centre-left government has seen no meaningful increase to their funding, no changes to the Job-Ready Graduates Scheme, cuts to their international student numbers and a massively increased regulatory burden. The recent, troubling antisemitism crisis on campus has not helped.
Universities need to do two things. First, make a meaningful attempt to ensure there is a diversity of views, especially in their humanities faculties. If any other group in society were as under-represented among their faculty as conservatives and classical liberals, every university would establish a working group to fix it.
Second, prioritise research in the national interest, and tell the Australian people – who ultimately fund it – about this critical contribution.

So you're now whining about how there's been no changes to the JRGP policy your government, with you in that government, implemented?

When it came to the 2020 vote, nobody rebelled against their party...

It's always the hypocrisy that gets to the pond.

Speaking of Western Civilisation...

And now at last the hypocrite in full flower, and so to another ginger dance...

The rule of law
The second institution I am gravely concerned about is the rule of law. One of the few things that separates a free and ordered society from domestic anarchy is the belief that a justice system will ensure wrongdoers are punished fairly. And yet decisions of our justice system are more routinely becoming sensationalised.
As you know, there is a high-profile prosecution of a former Australian soldier currently before the courts, following allegations of war crimes. Unlike some of my parliamentary colleagues, I do not want to run the risk of contempt of court. But we have recently seen this case become so politicised that a photo of an accused person was displayed at polling booths as a tactic to generate votes.

The reptiles followed up that peculiar foot dance with a snap of an alleged war criminal, Ben Roberts-Smith.

What with being gormless and gutless, Jimbo showed such bravery that Roberts-Smith's name never passed his lips, at least in the Oz-edited version:

Public support for the rule of law and, critically, an independent judiciary, is undermined when sentencing fails to meet community expectations. There have been too many cases, especially with violent and sexual crimes, where perpetrators are given light sentences. While we do not sentence criminals by opinion poll, and the individual circumstances of each case are relevant, too often the legal system appears out of touch with the people whose justice it is supposed to administer.
Nothing fuels populist discontent in our justice system more than the perception their justified outrage at its failings is being carefully managed to resist necessary reform. In May, Justice Beech-Jones launched a bizarre attack on a small voluntary legal association, the Samuel Griffith Society, and its American equivalent, the Federalist Society. He accused the Society of misappropriating Samuel Griffith’s legacy and being engaged in “ominous” activism on university campuses.
The Justice was particularly concerned about a paper presented to an SGS conference by my former Senate colleague, Amanda Stoker, who advocated taking greater care to consider the judicial philosophy of potential candidates for the bench before appointing them. For this, she is accused of “court stacking” and associated with a North Korean judicial college.

Does Jimbo have the first clue about the Federalist Society and what they wrought?

It's a bit like Faux Noise and the way they've prodded the disunited states into a black hole of madness ...

C.f. the both siderist NY Times ...

The Federalist Society Is Torn Between Its Legal Philosophy and Trump’s Demands
Guided by Leonard Leo, the society built a pipeline for traditional conservative judges. But that might not be enough for President Trump in his second term.

So what if they were hoist on their own petard.

They'd helped stack the Supreme Court, which promptly gave mad King Donald a grand form of immunity, and now here we are ...and Jimbo thinks Mandy has the first clue about all that?

And this guy should take the rap? Justice Robert Beech-Jones at Sydney’s Queen Square Courthouse. Picture: Oscar Colman

And so Jimbo ends up sounding just like Gina's pet ...

To justify his attack, Justice Beech-Jones commented extensively on US domestic public policy issues, including gun control, and said: “Ordinarily all this would be none of my business but these methods are being advocated for in Australia … To adapt a phrase, they have driven into my lane and they have driven into yours. If anyone thinks this particular US style of court stacking and judicial decision-making is a good idea, then go and live there.”
The problem, as the Justice surely knows, is that judicial appointments are not “his lane”. He may wish to live in a country where a cozy club of judges chooses its own colleagues. But in a common law democracy such as ours, judicial appointments are solely a matter for the elected governments of this country. I don’t want to live in a country where the decisions of judges begin to be called into question because of their unwise interventions into political debate.

And so the dance continued, what with Jimbo trying to sound like Pauline, but not really Pauline ...

Pluralism
Another of those intangible, philosophical institutions that has been so critical to the functioning of our harmonious and free society is the principle of pluralism.
There has been a lot of debate in recent weeks about how we practise multiculturalism in Australia. Two things can be true at the same time: That Australia is a multicultural country. Also that it’s reasonable to disagree about whether the policies that underpin multiculturalism are working well, or not. One thing that would be totally alien to our history and political culture would be a government-imposed monoculture. We should be very wary of those on the right who want to import foreign concepts of cultural uniformity to Australia.
This has never been part of the Australian tradition. I do not agree with those who argue that “diversity is our strength”. Diversity in and of itself is not a strength. There are many diverse countries today that are not strong at all. Our strength is that despite our diversity, we have generally been a harmonious and cohesive society. This is thanks to pluralism. We have a live-and-let-live philosophy. Most Australians are comfortable that their neighbour may observe their own cultural traditions and have their own religious beliefs. But pluralism is not relativism.

For no particular reason, the reptiles flung in a visual reminder of that classic loon Mandy, useless in office and even more useless out of it, and now reduced to Oodgeroo toad status, Amanda Stoker.

Jimbo then performed a classic twist and pike:

In an Australian context, that means we can – and should – insist on the respect for and adherence to shared Australian values as part of any successful embrace of multiculturalism. If we don’t, we run the very serious risk of descending into a nation of tribes.
That is why I would never support our migration system discriminating against someone on the basis of their race, religion or nationality, as some have advocated, and I am more than comfortable with it being discerning about their values.
Frankly, the explosion of antisemitism in Australia in recent years is partly because we have failed to do this. We cannot practise multiculturalism in a way that tears us apart. We should never be afraid to insist that people who make a life here be from among the many in the world who share our values and want to sustain them, not those who want to change them.
Senator James Paterson is opposition defence spokesman. This is an edited version of a speech he delivered to the Ramsay Centre on Thursday evening in Sydney.

And if discerning their values isn't about their race and religion and nationality, what on earth is it about? If it's about sharing "our values", then Jimbo's all the way with Pauline banning those damned Islamics and Asians from the country.

And there's the Liberal party's (and the lizard Oz's) current dilemma in a nutshell. Too gutless to take on Gina's pet, too dedicated to their myopic brand of bigotry, fear and loathing, patented over decades, only to see it snatched away and rebranded as a form of generic populism they can't control ...

In that context, dressing up in a penguin suit is the least of Jimbo's thought crimes ...

Is there a reptile who manages to sound even more pathetic?

Of course there is ...

PM’s latest obsession is one he refuses to name
Similar to his approach linking Peter Dutton with Donald Trump, Anthony Albanese has adopted a Voldemort ‘she who must not be named’ approach to Pauline Hanson.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

Just a thought? How is not naming Gina's pet the same as naming the mutton Dutton and linking him to the named and clearly barking mad King Donald?

The pond will concede a couple of things.

This Geoff is a prolific chamberer of rounds.

And the reptiles know which side their sales are buttered on. Just as the media was entranced, fell into a swoon at the sight of mad King Donald in his early days, so the reptiles have now fallen hard for Pauline, purveyor of their policies ...

She sells, bigly ... just like that bloody woke movie ...

And speaking of that bigotry, hate and fear mongering, the reptiles were at it again today ...

The pond refuses to indulge the reptiles in their TG jihad ...

Luckily the pond also felt no need to go here ...

Take that, chatbot: why I’m bringing back handwritten exams
AI will neither be as catastrophic as the pessimists fear nor as beautiful as the futurists imagine.
By Mark Edele
Contributor

Who on earth is this loon?

Mark Edele is Hansen Professor in History and head of the history program at the University of Melbourne. He developed the idea for this essay in a notebook, using a pen.

The University of Melbourne?!

The pond should have guessed it.

Did he want to make Jimbo sound sensible on the matter of academia?

The pond's handwriting looks like a spider had wandered too close to an inkwell ... it makes Molesworth look like a master of calligraphy, and it was 'rooned by academics demanding that the pond transcribe their insights, imagining them to be dollops of gold ...

And that's about it for the far right this day, though the pond must mention this rant ...

The hot-take economy is poisoning the public square
Who is entitled to demand public space to promote their personal views on areas beyond their expertise or particular knowledge?
By Rowan Callick

First a credential ...

Rowan Callick is an expert associate at the Australian National University’s National Security College.

Somehow that makes Rowan think he has the right to rant and rage away in the lizard Oz.

The opening snap was pure projection ...

Roll that line around on your tongue:

I am not convinced that my own views on these and other travesties are so compelling that they might command precious space in the realm of public discourse.

So why are you ranting?

Why don't you just STFU, crawl under a rock, go away?

The pond saved the rant to the intermittent archive, what with it being such a strange and puzzling insistence that we should all shut up, mind that we should stick to our lanes and not say boo to a goose and all would be well ...

It was peak rhetorical indignation and absurdity ... and so the pond presents the remainder of the text unencumbered by visual distraction or commentary ...

...Should all people of Chinese ethnicity, who might have been born in Australia or somewhere else outside China, and who are not members of the Chinese Communist Party, be expected as a condition of their gaining access to a public platform for whatever unrelated reason to use that platform to make very clear that they do not support the relentless subjugation of the Muslim Uighur population by the Chinese party-state, or that they are critical of the deaths in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution?
Not only that; should they on any occasion when they approach the public realm, online or offline, repudiate all wrongdoings on the part of the CCP, and keep doing so?
What of our fast-growing ethnically Indian population? Should we demand that they publicly disavow Prime Minister Narendra Modi over accusations of escalating religious tensions? Are Australians of Russian descent going to be held to account for the many horrors of Vladimir Putin?
Our citizens of Myanmar origin may almost all have escaped persecution – but perhaps they too should be held to account for the tyrannical military junta that they fled. One does not need to suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome to be troubled by Donald Trump – so surely Americans living in our midst must confess his sins as their own?
The promotion of guilt by association has become widespread in Australia. For instance, if you are deemed to look Jewish, you’re held responsible by some Australians for the claimed genocide in Gaza. The only source of possible if still partial exculpation is public dissociation.
One fears that next in line for such guilty sentences might be Chinese, Indian, Russian, Myanmar, American, and any other people with connections – however innocent on their own part – to people or groups who have behaved badly.
Despite our efforts to achieve, we are increasingly defined in some social arenas not by accomplishment, experience or character, but by race, birthplace, and other “identity” categories. Unless we opt very publicly out of our identity markers, shedding connections and relationships, we are assumed to be collusive with enemy outlooks, dispositions, or simply with the enemy itself.
This applies not only to individuals but also to organisations – and thus, in addition, to those who might be associated with such organisations in any way. If an institution fails to attack publicly those deemed to be enemies of a particular peer group, then that group will demand that the institution and related individuals must be shunned.
For failure to attack publicly leaders, countries or causes with which an individual and their peer group disagrees – or the opposite – is perceived as tantamount to complicity. To fail to express, in public, concern about the impacts of climate change risks denunciation as a “climate sceptic”, even if that person does indeed share such anxiety while not sharing assuredness that a public proclamation would ameliorate the situation.
This expectation is not universal. Who is entitled – even required – to demand public space to promote their personal views on areas beyond their expertise or particular knowledge? Artists, writers, musicians, actors, academics – culture-work professionals, essentially.
We do not see a commensurate insistence from pharmacists, mining engineers or accountants, for instance, that before filling a script or shipping copper or signing an audit, they are provided online space or offline time to deliver their views on current political debates.
Last year, Doechii, a hip-hop performer, said on stage in receiving an award: “It is my responsibility as an artist to use this moment to speak up for all oppressed people, for black people, for Latino people, for trans people, for the people in Gaza.”
I might use this space to critique hip-hop, and to speak up for purveyors of traditional folk and blues music, or for Baroque recorder ensembles. But that would be beyond my responsibility.
Rowan Callick is an expert associate at the Australian National University’s National Security College.

Make of that what you will.

What did the pond make of it?

As before. If only Rowan would take his own advice, and STFU ...disappear up his fundament, head off to a black hole of his choice, and take climate change with him.

And now this ...

As always the answer lies in the detail, because kick anything out of doors to send the rats scuttling ...

And now this ... oh America ...

 

In which the pond returns to discover the swishing Switzer and a certain Zoe, and wished it had stayed oblivious in the big smoke ...

 

And why not help Saudi Arabia with nukes?

Israel has got nukes, Iran wants them, so why not smooth the way for even more? 

The pond had expected the reptiles to at least make a note, but top of the digital page ma, this morning, came this yarn ...

EXCLUSIVE
Jihadi Tareq Kamleh’s survival was a secret ALP sat on for years
Labor kept Tareq Kamleh’s survival secret for years despite being briefed multiple times, as his father speaks for the first time.
By Paul Garvey and Mohammad Alfares

Nah, hard pass. If he comes back, prosecute him according to the law. (And think of the hay the reptiles would be able to reap with that never ending jihad!)

Down below that, the obsession with Gina's pet continued, with three stories all in a row ...

EXCLUSIVE
Swan’s warning: One Nation is Labor’s biggest electoral threat
As Wayne Swan sounds the alarm over Pauline Hanson, Linda Burney says Aboriginal constitutional recognition is still possible in Australia’s future.
By Greg Brown

COMMENTARY
I was the true brains behind One Nation. Here’s why Pauline is in strife
Everyone has an opinion of what One Nation is – mostly, they’re wrong.
By David Oldfield

Did the pond need to spend time with another irrelevant loon of the Oldfield kind? And his delusions of Svengali grandeur?

Nah, hard pass ...

Perhaps the reptiles covered it yesterday, but this should have been the angle ...

Geoff was on hand to chamber another round and concoct a radical conspiracy theory ...

Commentary by Geoff Chambers
This time round, Albanese’s got them by the Shorten curlies
Anthony Albanese tried to disrupt the last ALP conference in Adelaide – now he’s the master
Expect well-orchestrated faux debates enshrining motions at this Labor conference that are ultimately designed to help the PM push ahead with new policies, some potentially even radical.

Sheesh, that's a pun that made the pun-addicted pond flinch.

Sorry, Geoff didn't actually mention Gina's pet, but whatever, it was inserted into the Gina pet's stew, a bit of trading off trolling, with that alarmist fear-mongering unexplained and left to a darkening final sentence ...

Expect well-orchestrated, stage-managed, faux debates enshrining motions that are ultimately designed to help Albanese push ahead with new policies, some potentially even radical, aimed at helping Labor win a third term in 2028.

"Potentially even radical"?

The pond's mother used to say that if you had nothing to say, best to say nothing, but Geoff apparently hadn't heard the saying, and squeezed out two minutes of drivel.

Well played Geoff, but nah, time to head over to the far right for a serve of the swishing Switzer ...

The header: Do celebrity activists really hold any political influence? The celebrity chorus may dominate the headlines. In the end, it never gets the final vote.

The caption suggesting that the swishing Switzer was shamelessly trading off on someone who still had way more box office clout than him: Paul Hogan carrying dead crocodile in bar in a scene from the film Crocodile Dundee, 1986.

One of my favourite sideshows of modern politics is the celebrity chorus: the actors, singers and writers among whom ideological conformity is as thick as Beijing smog.
Paul Hogan recently added another layer to that smog when he criticised Pauline Hanson for suggesting Australia should be a monoculture. “She’s a pelican. Outrageous, so racist. It sounds very much like this stupid boofhead over here, Trump,” the Los Angeles-based actor and comedian complained.
Hanson responded in kind, with her hilarious Please Explain video accusing Hoges of lecturing Australians while living in California and asking why someone who no longer lives here should presume to tell Australians how to run their country.
Fair enough. Both were entitled to have their say. But the exchange raises a broader question: how much political influence do celebrity interventions really have?

Such an inane and deeply stupid man, and apparently infatuated with Gina's pet's cartoons ...

The Pelican - Please Explain
Pauline Hanson's Please Explain

Nah, the pond isn't going to bother with a YouTube link.

And it took a lot of summoning of energy to continue with the swishing Switzer, what with evidence of at least one celebrity intervention that has had much political influence, much of it malign ...

But do go on, in a superficial and vapid way, picking low hanging fruit ...

For decades, in Australia, Britain and especially the US, actors, musicians and writers have sought to influence political debate – usually with far less success than they imagine.
Start with Australia. In the lead-up to the 1998 federal election, veteran broadcaster Phillip Adams declared that John Howard’s Australia was poised to occupy “the proud place vacated by pre-Mandela South Africa”. Not to be outdone, novelist and playwright Bob Ellis warned that Australia would become “an international pariah like South Africa, with no way back”. Howard won (again).
Three elections later, actor Toni Collette lamented: “I think I’ll slit my wrists if Howard gets in again.” Howard did get in again. Two decades later, Collette is happily still with us.
In 2015, a group of entertainment figures – including Geoffrey Rush, Guy Pearce and Brendan Cowell – launched the #saveourboys campaign against Tony Abbott over the impending executions of drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in Indonesia. They urged the Prime Minister to “grow some balls”, “show some ticker”, “be a leader” and do more to help the Bali duo.
The campaign changed nothing. Chan and Sukumaran were executed, and Abbott preserved Australia’s crucial relationship with Indonesia.

Now there's a triumph, and then for some reason the reptiles slipped back in time... Hanson is set to meet with Nigel Farage during her time in the UK. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

She's set to meet? During her time in the UK?

Will someone tell the reptiles about her return? Will they ever wonder who paid for the junket?

Preserve the pond in aspic and persevere...

The pattern repeated itself during the 2023 voice referendum. John Farnham allowed his anthem You’re the Voice to be used by the Yes campaign, joined by figures including Shaquille O’Neal, Jimmy Barnes and Missy Higgins. The referendum was defeated decisively.
Across the democratic world, celebrities have repeatedly ventured into politics, usually with little to show for it.
Scottish tennis star Andy Murray backed independence ahead of Scotland’s 2014 referendum. The No campaign prevailed. Two years later, a galaxy of actors, musicians and writers implored Britons to remain in the EU. Brexit won instead.
If celebrity politics has a natural home, however, it is the US. Politics may be described as show business for ugly people, but America’s beautiful people have long shown an enthusiasm for nailing their colours to the mast – usually Democratic blue.
Take the 2004 election when virtually all of Hollywood’s stars backed John Kerry against Republican president George W. Bush. Indeed, celebrity activism had generated such public irritation that it became the target of the satirical film Team America: World Police. Puppet versions of Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon and Matt Damon joined forces with Kim Jong-il before meeting spectacularly grisly ends, to the delight of cinema audiences.
The same campaign produced an even more revealing episode. Britain’s Guardian newspaper urged its readers to write to voters in Clark County, Ohio – one of the pivotal counties in a pivotal swing state – explaining why they should reject Bush. Among those lending their names to the effort were Antonia Fraser, John Le Carre and other celebrated progressive writers.

Here's the thing. It's all about the vibe. Some care what celebrities think, some don't. Some care about the drivel the swishing Switzer scribbles, some don't.

Some realise that the real point of this piece is to mock anyone speaking out who might have some visibility, especially if they can be shown to disagree with the reptile monoculture that the reptiles want to impose on the world... Robert De Niro speaks in support of US President Joe Biden outside of Manhattan Criminal Court. Picture: Charly Triballeau / AFP

And so to the inevitable bout of mad King Donald triumphalism (and hasn't that worked out well?):

The response from Ohio was not what The Guardian had hoped. Many recipients told the newspaper that “real Americans aren’t interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions”. Clark County, which had narrowly backed Al Gore in 2000, swung decisively behind Bush in 2004. Local Republicans later credited the campaign with energising conservative voters rather than persuading them.
The pattern was even more pronounced in the 2016 contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Middle America was inundated with lectures from Hollywood’s cultural elite – actors, comedians and musicians who seemed united in their conviction that Trump was unfit for office. Meryl Streep, Madonna and Robert De Niro were among the most outspoken. De Niro declared that he wanted “to punch him in the face”. Trump won anyway.
Eight years later, almost every major figure in Hollywood and the music industry lined up behind Kamala Harris, from Taylor Swift and Katy Perry to George Clooney. De Niro again became one of Trump’s fiercest critics, Bruce Springsteen branded him “a moron” and Basic Instinct star Sharon Stone spoke of moving to Europe if Trump returned to the White House. None of it mattered. Trump won. Stone remained in the US. Television host Ellen DeGeneres and her wife did “get the hell out” of Trump’s America only to relocate to (of all places) post-Brexit Britain.

Did it occur to the swishing Switzer that mad King Donald was a reality TV star, famous for his starring roles?

 

It's a Hollywood circus, cf the both siderist NY Times, How Donald Trump Used Hollywood to Create 'Donald Trump' ...(*intermittent archive link)

So all the swishing Switzer is doing is putting one celebrity up against others...ones with their own kind of charisma, ready to go into the entertainment game after serving their time handing out gongs ... Barack Obama presents actress and comedian Ellen DeGeneres with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Eventually there had to come a billy goat butt, but it was a minor one, though it suggested that at last the swishing Switzer was realising that there might be something to getting the vibe ...

None of this is to suggest that celebrities are invariably wrong. Gough Whitlam’s 1972 It’s Time campaign enlisted an array of entertainers, such as Little Pattie – and it helped capture the national mood. Nor were celebrities mistaken in opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq. At that year’s Academy Awards, dozens of Hollywood’s biggest stars wore silver “dove of peace” pins to signal their opposition to a war that proved a costly strategic blunder.

But, billy goat butting away, it might have been a costly strategic blunder, but did they stop it? 

Does anybody have a way to stop mad King Donald and his impotent, if testosterone laden, sycophants, conducting an incredible folly in Iran?

So why did the swishing Switzer give mad King Donald a pass, but crack down on George Bush?

All anyone can do is say their piece, and add to the vibe, and hope that appearing with a crocodile in a bar might boost a lizard Oz columnist, even if it's an appearance from the 1980s ... (is that the real time for the lizard Oz demographic?)

The lesson is not that celebrities should stay out of politics. Like everyone else, they are entitled to their opinions. The point, though, is that celebrity interventions rarely change electoral outcomes and can even provoke a backlash when cultural elites appear to lecture voters, who are more concerned about cost of living and national sovereignty.
Hogan’s intervention is fair enough. Yet it also serves as a reminder of an enduring democratic truth: in liberal democracies, political authority belongs not to actors, musicians or bestselling authors but to citizens casting ballots. The celebrity chorus may dominate the headlines. In the end, it never gets the final vote.
Tom Switzer is presenter of the Switzerland YouTube podcast.

The real point? Appearances by dull pedants in rags like the lizard Oz can provoke a backlash when these cultural 'leets declare war on other cultural 'leets ...

The celebrity did get the final vote, and the last disunited states ruining vote ...

What a useless tool he is, another four minutes of the pond's time down the drain, never to be recovered ...

Please allow the pond a chance to catch up with today's infallible Pope ...

As for the rest, it was a dull early morning stint in the hive mind, with a bit of legalese ...

‘Fleeting facts’ make comments a comedy
A Federal Court judge has handed Rebel Wilson a defamation victory, finding Instagram posts are too ‘fleeting’ to damage a person’s reputation.
By Jenna Clarke
Culture Writer

NSW DPP Sally Dowling should not be allowed to play covert games
Scrutiny of the NSW DPP wouldn’t undermine justice — it would protect it. After what this inquiry uncovered, greater oversight seems hard to argue against.
By Stephen Lawrence

The pond felt vaguely guilty it had to turn to Zoe for the bonus.

The header: The green energy transition: soaring bills, dead eagles; It is time Australia’s leaders stop pretending the current paradigm is working.

The caption for the terrifying image: “When it comes to energy sources, we need every option on the table,” writes Zoe Hilton.

Zoe could only manage a three minute serve, but the moment the pond saw that snap of wind farms, the pond knew she knew what would sell to the reptiles of Oz and their hive mind.

When it comes to energy sources, we might need every option on the table, but dammit, we don't need those bloody windmills.

So Zoe plucked up her best Don Quixote impression and tilted at them ...

Two recent stories from NSW wind farms have exposed the failure of the energy transition before our eyes. Far from saving the environment while lowering power bills, the attempt to transform a mostly coal-powered grid to one running on 96 per cent wind and solar by 2050 has shown no signs of doing either.
The first story reveals wind farm developers have been unable to make their projects stack up economically, even with federal underwriting, and are now setting their rent-seeking sights on a state scheme.
The federal Capacity Investment Scheme provides taxpayer underwriting to wind, solar and battery projects. But for wind developers even this generous subsidy scheme isn’t enough for them to turn a profit. After the federal government rejected their plea for more taxpayer money, some developers in NSW are now trying to secure even more subsidies, this time through NSW’s Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap.
Subsidies doled out through the roadmap are charged to NSW consumers, not taxpayers. That means consumers are being hit with a double tax – once through their tax bill and again through their energy bill, all to benefit renewables investors in the name of government targets; targets that have completely failed to deliver affordable energy for Australians.
Power prices have more than tripled since the mid-2000s, with prices rising 21 per cent in the past year alone.
The effects are devastating. One in five households is in energy hardship or on the brink. The same number have been forced to skip meals because of financial strain. Forty-one per cent of Australian seniors are rationing heating in the winter and cooling in the summer, and 340,000 customers are in long-term energy debt, averaging $1367.

The source of this data?

Go whistle in the wind, and maintain that fear of windmills...Lotus Creek Wind Farm (central Queensland). Picture: Steven Nowakowski

In lieu of reptile links, the pond did find one beat up at Nine ... Millions of Aussies going cold as electricity bills bite

More than half of Australians are minimising heating in their homes this winter to avoid paying hefty electricity bills, new research released today shows.
Many households are also buying cheaper heaters, despite experts warning the budget buys consume more electricity, according to the survey by comparison website Canstar.
The findings were based on 700 people who had purchased an electric heater this winter to stay warm.
While their main concern was keeping power bills down, less than half of are carrying out basic measures to stay warm, such as pulling on a jumper and socks before switching their heater on, keeping their room warm by closing windows and doors and fixing a draught stopper on their doors.

That's a survey? Sure, and this is a knife.

The pond scented the stench of AI in that ...

As for Zoe, it's like she'd spent the last 18 months swallowing reptile talking points...

And it’s not just households paying the price. Rising energy costs are now the No.1 factor affecting the finances of small businesses, with one in five reporting difficulties in paying their energy bills. Australia has lost 39,400 manufacturing jobs in the past two years alone.
Government energy policy has failed to put affordability at the centre for too long.
That’s why I’m launching the Affordable Energy Australia campaign. We are calling on our country’s leaders to prioritise affordable, reliable energy. We are calling for every party to commit to prioritising energy affordability and sustainability.
When it comes to energy sources, we need every option on the table. It is time to put engineering before ideology – because ideology is not lowering power bills or saving the environment.
The second story revealed a single NSW wind farm killed 20 wedge-tailed eagles in 18 months. This is only the tip of the iceberg of the impacts many wind farms are having on wildlife across the country.

The pond did chase that story down. 

Here's the thing.

The data came from the developer, and was picked up by the AFR (*intermittent archive link), and remedial measures were put in place ...

Inter alia ...

Well yes, it should be possible to pat climate change tummy and chew conservation gum at the same time, but Zoe was intent on a litany of fear...

In Queensland, pristine rainforest and the habitats of endangered koalas are being blown up to make way for the infrastructure required by wind farms. Bird and bat deaths from wind turbine blades are commonplace, and reported numbers are likely underestimating the death toll because carcass surveys are being carried out only on a monthly basis.
Destroying the environment to save it is nonsensical. 

How did the pond know this was pure reptile? It came with this line:

At 1 per cent of global emissions, Australia does not have any control over our own climate. 

Oh that's all right then, do nothing, and carry on regardless ...and make sure you confuse and conflate action in relation to conservation with climate change, and disregard entirely the impact that climate change is already having on all parts of the planet, humans and creatures alike...

What we do have control over is the direct impacts we have on our environment at the local level.
We need a rethink of our approach to environmental policy. For every industrial project, there is a trade-off between its economic benefits and the effects it has on the environment.
Wind farms are not providing the predicted net economic benefits to Australia. In fact, they are often a net cost to society as they cannot survive without ever-growing subsidies. On top of that, many are destroying the environment they were meant to preserve. Yet the federal government still plans to more than double the amount of wind capacity in the eastern grid by 2050.
It is clearer than ever that governments’ renewables targets cannot help secure cheap energy for Australia, nor will they preserve our unique natural heritage.
Australian families and businesses deserve better. It is time Australia’s leaders stop pretending the current paradigm is working. They must prioritise affordable, reliable energy so our energy system serves the needs of all Australians – not just the rent-seekers profiting off the public purse.
Zoe Hilton works at Affordable Energy Australia.

The pond felt titillated enough to check out "Affordable Energy Australia" and discovered its site was just a shell (and that of late Zoe has been picked up by the likes of Sky Noise and petulant Peta) ...

Eek, he's a 'Gong-ite. The pond bowed its head in shame, and it turned out that Zoe had other connections ...

 

CIS?

See its wiki and the opening lines...

The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) is an Australian think tank founded in 1976 by Greg Lindsay. The CIS specialises in public policy research and publishes material in areas such as economics, education, culture and foreign policy. Although there are no explicit ties between the CIS and the centre-right Liberal Party, the CIS is politically aligned with the Liberal Party, praising Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies, hosting various Liberal Party politicians and holding very critical views of the Labor Party.

So Zoe is a mover and a shaker, a tilter at windmills, and the pond offered up a Herbert 'toon as an act of contrition ...

And here's what a TV celebrity will give you ...

In which the pond offers a serve of Akker Dakker as place marker pablum...

 

Back in the day, the pond vividly remembers its first stay in Sydney, free of parents or the need to pander to the rellies out Kogarah way (as much losers as the current St George thugby league team).

In order to do some research at the Mitchell library, the pond decided to stay, as rustic folk were wont to do, at the Gresham, an elaborate Miss Havingsham kind of Victorian wedding cake concoction ...

It's since been rebadged and repurposed.

It was dirt cheap, suitable to a student budget, but that meant the rooms were rustic basic, and when checking under the bed to see nothing had escaped when packing to leave, the pond discovered a used condom.

This was big smoke sophistication at its finest, and the pond felt quite Parisian, in a brothel sort of way.

The pond relived that rustic spirit the last time it was in Sydney, preferring the downmarket vibe of the Great Southern Hotel to expensive inns with a harbour view.

The pond knows this is the sort of place that cockies, squatters and Tamworth types like to stay ... and it pretty much still looks like it did back in the 1940s ...

 

It has a twenty bucks all-in bacon and eggs breakfast, and a shower and toilet cubicle of a size to give anyone claustrophobia.

And it has a sub-Shining vibe - the lobby/foyer area is littered with snaps of the hotel in its grand 1940 era, and there are still some hints of the past.

The night the pond stayed, there was a giant exhaust fan blasting away, perhaps for the restaurant downstairs, but it shut down early enough in the night to allow a little sleep (unless you had a fear of being trapped in the rabbit warren if a fire broke out). (After all, country folk must eat no later than seven, and be in bed by eight, in order to get up with the sun).

The noise reminded the pond of the air conditioner racket that ran all night when the pond stayed at the Tamworth Hotel (just across the way from the railway station).

That too was a bit of nostalgia, because the pond's father had paid for that hotel back in the day when it was known as the Town Talk (aka the Railway), brick by brick, fermenting ale glass by glass, until he was completely awash in amber fluid ...

And the pond is staying at the Great Southern again, it being the cheapest, price friendly, home away from home available to rustics and tourists, and that's why the pond isn't able to offer an update this day for herpetologists devoted to the lizard Oz.

Enough of exploring ancient remnants of near forgotten Sydney, at least the pond can offer a token distraction before hopefully returning to the real business at hand tomorrow.

How about another serve of Akker Dakker?

Though the pond has shamefully ignored him in recent years, back in ancient times the pond always had a taste for the Gresham hotel-like festoonings that littered the Akker Dakker brain.

He was big on fear and loathing of the NBN ...

Akker Dakker tried every scare and bit of fear-mongering imaginable - the cables ruining the fine aesthetics of inner west Sydney, death stalking the land ...

Since the pond has moved to the mighty 'Gong, it's experienced the joys of fibre to the home, what with an earlier Labor government pandering to its base by making the 'Gong a trial run, and what a mighty fine thing it is ...

The pond now looks with pity on those who were deprived of the real thing by the shameless Malware doing it down on orders from the onion muncher and News Corp (desperate to see its box model for streaming survive in the new age. Silly reptiles).

The pond hesitates to provide a link to this Akker Dakker outing, what with it hooking up with news.com.au, but some might want more ...

And so on. 2009, and a visionary even then!

Others have been devoted to Akker Dakker. 

Here he is in a piece by Graham Readfearn back on Wednesday 30th March 2022, under the header A cut-and-paste attack on electric vehicle batteries and renewables is spanning the globe. But is it right?

If you followed the link, you might have come up against a Daily Terror paywall, so here it is ...

Those younglings are just the sort to give Akker Dakker nightmares - but then Akker Dakker's always been a 'green nightmares, we must nuke the country to save the planet' sort of reptile ...

We've been there before, and still go there each day ...

There wasn't anything Akker Dakker wouldn't tackle in order to keep the country back in the Mesozoic era ...

The Finkel report will burn us just like a Canadian wildfire? Or perhaps like the forthcoming Australian summer bushfire season?

Such a visionary.

Wait, the pond should probably finish off that other Akker Dakker outing ... especially as it evoked memories of that ancient dinosaur, Shane Stone ...

The fat owl of the remove was possibly shattered when the NRRA was merged with the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), with Stone ankling his baby, and with Murray Watt eventually coming to hold ministerial responsibility for it ...

Sic transit Akker Dakker, knock 'em down Humpty Dumpty glory ...

Is it any wonder that the pond once was devoted to Akker Dakker?

Why, the vibe's just the same, and the pond has always loved ancient vibes ...

Sorry, that's possibly a little too modern for Akker Dakker ...

And still he burbles on, at it again last Sunday in the Terror ... and so at last to the real place marker pablum ...

The header: Piers Akerman: Bowen’s silly electric truck plan running out of road while EV users don’t pay for the damage; Australia would need 14,000 extra trucks on its roads if Chris Bowen’s electric prime mover policy succeeds – and Piers Akerman says that is only part of the problem.

The thing about the fat owl of the remove is that he only manages a couple of minutes for a read, though perhaps even that's stretching the attention span of the rag's thugby league demographic, notoriously known for thinking that a full minute is quality time for a woman.

The reptiles have been down on EVs for some considerable time, so it was inevitable the fat owl of the remove would have a go at trucks ...

Veteran radio host Ray Hadley reacts to the Labor government’s push for electric trucks. “The arrant nonsense about B-doubles … and road trains being run on electricity,” Mr Hadley told Sky News host Sharri Markson. “Anyone who thinks that is going to happen in the next 100 years is stark raving mad. “They need fossil fuels to run.”
A scientific poll conducted under strict guidelines has found Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is the stupidest member of the Albanese Labor government’s cabinet – except for Anthony Albanese.
OK, the poll was probably not that scientific. It involved asking groups at bus stops, in coffee shops, waiting at check-outs and sporting stadiums one question: Who do you rate as the biggest idiot in the government? The answer was Bowen every time, with some saying the Prime Minister was almost as dumb for keeping him in the cabinet.
When further explanation was sought, those who followed up pointed to Bowen’s denial of obvious facts, including the reality the price of electricity has soared since he insisted that rolling out so-called renewables, including wind and solar factories, would reduce energy prices to homeowners and businesses.
As one member of an impromptu focus group said, anyone who thinks the global climate can be altered by increasing taxes, subsidising electric vehicle purchases, importing solar panels and carbon fibre windmill blades from China or eating less red meat, hasn’t a clue.

Classic, sublimely stupid Akker Dakker, a form of self-projection of a kind that can be found throughout his scribbles, because he's a vox pop ssort of dude of the first water, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Energy Minister Chris Bowen. In a street poll, Bowen was rated the biggest idiot in the government, with Albanese almost as dumb for keeping him in the cabinet. Picture: NewsWire/Nathan Smith

The pond notes that battery-powered heavy duty trucks still need work.

But the pond can remember the days when reptiles at the lizard Oz tried to introduce range anxiety to the hive mind.

And yet these days  Chinese manufacturers are promising EV cars which can do Sydney to Melbourne on a charge.

Too rich for the pond, but dare to dream. Who knows, the next scratchie might be the answer. And if battery technology continues at its current pace, there'll be plenty to drop the cash on.

The pond remembers the days when EV vans were dismissed as out of the question. 

And yet when the pond rocks up to IKEA for a charge, there's always a flock of vans on view ...

Ditto buses, at least if the wretchedly inept Minns government ever gets its act together ...

The pond understands that not everyone is ready for an EV, or can afford one, or wants the singular pleasure of hooking up their EV to a trickle charger, and watch the car load up during the day for free courtesy of solar charging ...

But dare to dream, the pond says, in a way that luddites never can ...

These things are so apparent that no further examples of his stupidity should be necessary but, in the course of the research, the question of the government’s subsidy for electric prime movers – the big trucks that thunder across the nation’s highways – was raised.
Both federal and state governments underwrite the cost of heavy-truck electrification. LinFox received a $19.63m package, $755,000 a vehicle, to cover the gap in truck costs and the upgrade needed for charging stations, for example. Subsidised green financing is spewing money, but trucking firms aren’t convinced EVs are the answer. One trucking company executive bluntly says Bowen’s EV truck policy won’t work west (or east) of the Great Divide.

Akker Dakker was inevitably agitated at the sight of an EV van rocking across the bridge... Subsidised green financing is spewing money, but trucking firms aren’t convinced EVs are the answer.

Worried by the state of the strait of Hormuz? Worried that oil might hereafter be more a political football than a means of getting about?

In Akker Dakker's world, you just suck it up ... (in much the same way that mug punters must do without a FTTH connection) ...

“There just aren’t the charging stations and EV prime movers need charging every three to four hours, for hours at a time,” he says.
A regular prime mover carries enough fuel for 24 hours of operation. EVs’ hefty batteries put a 9-tonne weight on the front axle; regular diesel-powered prime movers are restricted by regulation to a 6-tonne weight limit.
This is a free pass for EVs, an additional penalty for the majority of trucks that crisscross the country. An articulated vehicle, a semi-trailer or a B-double truck with an electric powertrain weighs five tonnes more than a diesel truck. Logically, a wheat carter driving a single trailer EV could only cart 20 tonnes, a diesel would carry 25 tonnes legally.
There are 105,000 articulated vehicles on the road every day, and if the big trucks all went electric, there would need to be an extra 12-15 per cent more vehicles on the road just to carry the same payload as the current fleet.

Regarding the impossibility of it all, why not repeat that line so that the thugby league readership will fall in line, and stay with their gas guzzlerd ... There are 105,000 articulated vehicles on the road every day, and if the big trucks all went electric, there would need to be an extra 12-15 per cent more vehicles on the road to carry the same payload.

Should the pond revert to calling the fat owl full Bunter?

He's always had the same preening, supercilious air about him.

And so to the closing gobbet ...

That’s roughly an extra 14,000 trucks to carry the same loads. Australia can’t get enough truckies now; perhaps Bowen or the hopeless Immigration Minister Tony Burke will retrain returning ISIS fighters as heavy-vehicle operators.
The huge batteries would need to be changed by forklift vehicles because recharging the monsters would take too long.
Freight costs would soar and the effect on our climate would be zero. The extra cost would ensure greater inflation in almost every productive sector of the economy, and it would be more difficult to compete on the export market because all our agriculture, wheat, rice and cotton rely on road transport.
Our truckies pay for the damage they cause to roads through a 52c-a-litre excise, of which they can reclaim 20c a litre.
EV road users don’t pay for the damage their heavier vehicles cause.
With new Euro-standards being introduced, diesel trucks will use more fuel, pay more tax, and produce fewer emissions.
It’s a big country outside Canberra. Bowen and Albanese need to be reminded.

Hopefully this sort of carry-on will get slotted into the Daily Terror's campaign in favour of tungsten light bulbs.

Hopefully Akker Dakker will meet his match when invited to play a challenging game of chess ...

It's no longer Monday, but it seems like it's always Monday in America ...