In which the pond sends petulant Peta off to the cornfield and so is left with just the swishing Switzer and Jack the wannabe Insider ...

 

The pond has long complained that Thursday is the worst of the worst days in the hive mind calendar, and look no further than this day's outing for evidence it's always dire.

First there's always petulant Peta ...

Islamophobia must be seen for what it is … and isn’t
On International Day to Combat Islamophobia, critics warn that laws and reports may suppress legitimate criticism of religion. True reform must come from within Islam itself.
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

The pond truly appreciates the return of the intermittent archive and personally supervised the uploading of this bigot to that desolate, malfunctioning cornfield... so that all that's needed is a teaser trailer ...

If you wanted a dictionary definition of Islamophobia, you couldn't go past this for an example ...

... there are clearly a lot more radicalised Islamists screaming Allahu Akbar as they take the lives of infidel nonbelievers than there are Christians screaming support for Jesus as they detonate suicide vests or fly planes into buildings.

This at the very time that a bunch of alleged Xians are bombing the heck out of Iranians, not to mention the odd 150+ school girls ...

Petulant Peta went on that way, reminding the pond that atheism really is the only way out of this kind of manic Xian and Islamic mania ... (more on mad Kegsbreath's religion later in this bulletin).

The reptiles compouned this carry on by featuring yet another item worthy of the Australian Daily Zionist News, attempting to tame Tame yet again ...

Tame’s call for intifada has real-world consequences
Grace Tame’s ‘intifada’ call is a threat to all Australians
Grace Tame blames a smear campaign for losing speaking engagements but people and organisations that know what ‘globalising the intifada’ means don’t want you to represent them.
By Marnie Perlstein

What a classic way to carry on a smear campaign and by a typical suspect ...

Marnie Perlstein is a Jewish advocate who lives in Sydney.

The pond didn't want to indulge in the endless reptile smear campaign with even a teaser trailer, what with its opening soft porn snap of Tame, so it was off to the cornfield with that.

But early in the morning that left the pond with just two reptiles, and alas and alack, one of them was the swishing Switzer, still on his rehabilitation tour through the hive mind ...

The header: Is the Iran war testing the limits of American power? Conservative confidence in a US-Israeli victory over Iran may be misplaced. Tehran’s resilience and strategic retaliation suggest a prolonged, high-stakes conflict with no clear end.

The caption for the cavorting King: Trump’s administration assumed decisive advantage over Iran, but Tehran’s response has complicated US objectives. Picture: AFP

On the upside, the swishing Switzer could only manage a three minute read, so the reptiles said, and the presence of the corrupt, narcissistic, demented King gives the pond permission to match it with a 'toon or two ...

And to be fair to the swishing Switzer he hasn't been big on American or Australian adventurism.

 Witness this opening line in the Graudian in March 2015 ...

Tony Abbott’s announcement to deploy 300 Australian army instructors to Iraq by the middle of this year reminds one of Talleyrand’s observations of the Bourbon monarchs: he has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing since the invasion in 2003.
As much as it pains me to say this, the prime minister and other western interventionists – including (of all people) Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek – are showing the same contempt for the lessons of history.

With that noted, it was on with the latest history lesson ...

Among many conservative commentators in the US and Australia, the prevailing view of the war with Iran is one of confidence.
The assumption is that the US and Israel hold the decisive advantage and that Tehran will ultimately be forced to accept Western terms. After all, Iran has been subjected to one of the most intense air attacks in history and there is no let-up in sight.
But the war is not unfolding as Washington and Jerusalem expected, and there are no plausible off-ramps to end the conflict in ways that preserve American credibility.
If that is correct, the implications for American power and regional stability could be profound.
Before the US-Israeli strikes on Iran a little more than fortnight ago, Donald Trump appeared to assume that Tehran would ultimately conform to Washington and Jerusalem’s maximalist demands: an end to uranium enrichment, the dismantling of Iran’s ballistic missile program and the termination of its support for militia proxies across the Middle East. But the Iranian leadership was never going to bow to those demands.
When Washington moved a massive concentration of military power into the Persian Gulf in an effort to intimidate Tehran, the Iranians did not buckle.
And when the US and Israel eventually launched their strikes, the apparent assumption was that the killing of supreme leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior military commanders would leave the regime so weakened that it would have little choice but to capitulate to American demands – or that the resulting instability would lead to regime change, with Iran’s new leaders accepting Washington’s terms. However, the regime remains firmly in place and appears to possess more leverage than Washington or Jerusalem initially imagined.
With its back against the wall and convinced that it faces an existential threat, Tehran has responded with the full range of its capabilities. It has retaliated directly against Israel, struck at American interests and allied facilities in the Persian Gulf, and moved to stop the flow of oil and disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz – steps that are already generating serious tremors in global energy markets.
Washington is so worried about rising petrol prices at the pump that it has granted Russia sanctions relief to allow more oil on to global markets – a development that represents a windfall for Russian leader Vladimir Putin as he continues to prosecute his war in Ukraine.
What, precisely, the US – or Israel, for that matter – has gained from this conflict is far from clear.

As a result of the swishing Switzer being a tad short weight, the reptiles dropped in just one visual distraction:

Iran’s leadership has survived US-Israeli strikes and remains firmly in control, maintaining leverage in negotiations. Picture: AFP

Speaking of middle East influencers ...

Then it was time for the final gobbet:

And if Trump wants to bring the war to a successful conclusion, the obvious question is whether he has any credible off-ramp. At this stage there is none in sight.
The Iranian regime has not been decisively defeated and it has both the incentive and the capability to prolong the conflict while further threatening the international economy.
The key question, therefore, is how Washington expects to persuade Tehran to settle.
Inside the administration, officials sometimes speak as if the US and Israel alone determine the course of events – that they decide when the war begins, when it ends and the terms Iran must accept. Trump says the war will end “when I feel it in my bones”.
But international politics rarely works that way. The Iranians have a say and any settlement must take their interests into account.
Punishment alone is unlikely to force Tehran to capitulate. Iran has long prepared for the possibility of major military confrontation and appears ready to absorb substantial damage while escalating in response.
Strikes on critical infrastructure inside Iran will almost certainly provoke retaliation against strategic and economic targets across the Gulf and in Israel.
Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles and drones gives it a significant capacity to inflict serious damage across the region.
Nor does Tehran have any incentive to settle on America’s terms. To make matters worse, Iranian leaders will expect tangible gains – sanctions relief, financial compensation and guarantees that the attacks will not start again anytime soon.
Indeed, as time passes and the economic and geopolitical costs of the war mount, Iran’s bargaining position could strengthen rather than weaken. Could a long war play to Tehran’s advantage?
If the conflict begins to inflict serious damage on the global economy, Trump may have no choice but to bring the war to an end. Should that happen, Tehran may well claim an ugly victory – and many will ask what this war was about in the first place.

And as always there needs to be a promotion as part of the rehabilitation tour.

Tom Switzer is presenter of Switzerland, a podcast about politics, modern history and international relations.

Lesson learned...

The pond is sure that Milne and Shephard won't mind.

Then it was on to the bonus, and for reasons best known to Jack the wannabe Insider, he decided to tuck into a serve of Tucker ...

The header: How Tucker Carlson became a one-man PR megafactory; Carlson might maintain some level of deniability, but scratch away the ‘just asking questions’ veneer and he is never far away from antisemitism.

The caption: Tucker Carlson speaks on stage on the 2024 Republican National Convention. Picture: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

If the pond wanted a serve of deeply weird America, it would usually revert to The Bulwark or tabloids of The Daily Beast/HuffPo kind ...

For example, this outing by Julie Ingersoll ...What Pete Hegseth’s Spiritual Mentor Wants for America  Pastor-theologian Douglas Wilson advocates theocracy, the restriction of the franchise from women and nonbelievers, and much else—and he is closer than ever to real power.

Nuttier than an Xmas fruitcake, and fruitier too ... and yet this is the drunk notionally in charge of the current crusade!

The likes of Will Sommer have made a career out of observing the antics of the likes of Laura Loomer...

Laura Loomer Gets Roasted on Trip to India Plus: Disgraced manfluencer declares victory, reveals true colors.

And there are a host of "influencers" feeding on each other on assorted platforms as a way of driving clicks and views ...

It's an easy way to fill in time, and Jack is easy ...

In yet another brazen act of self-promotion, Tucker Carlson has claimed he is on the cusp of arrest in the US. Looking trim and tan – the Ozempic and Coke Zero diet seems to be working – Carlson took to the cameras on Sunday, with a vague tale of his texts being read by the CIA.
He could face criminal charges of acting in service of a foreign power – aka fraternising with the enemy – he said, due to “some” conversations he had with “some” Iranians before the war started.
It’s not clear what evidence the former CNN and Fox News host has, but I do know Ayatollah Khamenei had an X account. I attempted to lure the late Supreme Leader of the Islamic Federation of Iran into a Twitter conversation a couple of years ago. Perhaps wisely, he had chosen to keep his DMs closed. But I’m sure a blue tick buddy could always slide in and ask the Ayatollah how the family’s going.
The notion that Carlson and Khamenei were online pen pals is not entirely ridiculous. “Iran and America have nothing to fight about,” Carlson said in a podcast in July last year, in the wake of the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In more recent times, Carlson claimed the Iran war was driven by Israel’s “regional hegemony” and was not in the national interests of the US.

And yet a broken clock can be right a couple of times in a 24 hours cycle, and there's plenty of evidence to hand to support the notion that the Iran war has been driven by Israel’s “regional hegemony” and was not in the national interests of the US.

Up until recent attacks, the US had attempted to avoid attacking key Iranian oil facilities - possibly presuming that there would be an end to the war and that the mess would have to be fixed and that a shortfall in oil would play havoc with the world's economy - as if Benji cared about any of that - and left the assassinations and the adventure in Lebanon to the government of Israel.

Of course the point of being an influence is being noticed, so Tucker will shape shift in a trice ...

Vladimir Putin gives an interview to US talk show host Tucker Carlson at the Kremlin in February, 2024. Picture: Gavriil Grigorov / AFP

The pond has no time for Tucker's fellow travelling with Vlad the Sociopath - the irony of Vlad bleating to the UN about the Iran excursion is beyond the valley of stupidity - but it's not as if Vlad hasn't had a lot of encouragement from the King himself ... a man with way more clout than Tucker, and always willing to present Vlad the Sociopath in the best possible light ...

Jack tries to have fun with this self-serving carry on, but comes off as a lightweight himself ...

One imagines US intelligence agencies have a bit on at the ­moment but should Tucker’s clairvoyance come to pass and he is bundled off to the slammer, we should bow our heads in sorrow for the poor bugger who has to share a cell with him.
Can you imagine it? “So tell me, El Chapo, how are you feeling now? How did you feel after I asked you how you are feeling? You still want to shiv me in the left eyeball? We’ll circle back to that.”
A one-man PR megafactory, Carlson is fresh from an earlier bizarre and ultimately refuted claim that he was harassed by Israeli officials during his brief fly-in, fly-out interview with the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
Apart from a quick selfie taken outside Ben Gurion Airport, Carlson stayed between the airport’s four walls where, he said, Israeli government officials detained him. They didn’t and the Israelis have the CCTV to prove it. The US government also confirmed the incident was a fantasy.
Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett called Carlson “a chickenshit” and “a phony”.
The Huckabee interview went to air on X, racking up two million views almost immediately, with another three million on other platforms. Huckabee batted away Carlson’s themes of Israel pulling US strings. Carlson sneered his way through the interview. According to Carlson, Republicans like Mike Huckabee and Texas senator Ted Cruz are “Christian Zionists” who he “dislikes more than anybody”.
We know this because Carlson said it during his podcast with guest Nick Fuentes in October last year. Fuentes is a white supremacist, Holocaust denier and vicious antisemite who invariably spews out hate and hyper-aggression, which is odd, given Fuentes looks like he couldn’t go three rounds with Mahatma Gandhi.

Yet here's the thing... Fuentes is another shape-shifter, which is why you could read the Daily Beast a couple of weeks ago ... Far-Right Influencer Revolts Against Trump: ‘Vote Democrat’

“Something has gone horribly wrong,” a fuming Fuentes, 27, said during a new podcast episode, while seated beside a hat emblazoned with the words “America First.”
“The movement is something else now. And what we need in 2028—this is our last chance. We need in 2026 for this administration to be shut the f--- down.”
“What does this administration do, other than cover up the Epstein files, embezzle money through government contracts, and bring us to war for Israel,” Fuentes, who has a history of being accused of antisemitism, went on.
He continued: “This administration needs to be shut down immediately. Do not vote in the midterms, and if you do, vote for Democrats, f--- this.”
Fuentes, whose show draws between 500,000 and 1 million views per episode, escalated further, urging voters to metaphorically “burn down the house with them inside.”

And so on, and anything for the clicks and controversy, and that's the way it goes in that weird world, and don't get the pond started on Candace ... Candace Owens; Tucker Carlson with Nick Fuentes. Picture: Facebook

If you want an idle distraction, you can spend time on YouTube watching the three amigos aka the three potato boys take on Candace ...

Candace Owens’s Erika Kirk Docuseries Is NUTS

Candace Owens' latest conspiracy theory is batsh*t crazy

Go down that Candace rabbit hole and you might never see daylight again.

And yet Erica Kirk herself is deeply weird and always contriving to get herself into some kind of war or feud ... it's the nature of the beast:

College Republicans Chapter Collapses After Erika Kirk’s Visit (*archive link)

More deeply weird American younglings.

Social media and the need for clicks and likes has driven the United States mad.

It's a pity that Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die has such a lame final act, because it's opening vision of younglings in the classroom, in thrall to their phones and marching on a substitute teacher, is a hoot ...

Meanwhile, Jack was stuck back in ancient times ...

Fuentes admitted that he’s “always (been) an admirer” of Stalin. The old mass-murdering paranoiac’s birthday is on December 18 and every year, apparently, Fuentes draws a big red circle around it on his calendar.
Fuentes admires Hitler a little more than Stalin. Presumably, the party hats and fairy cakes come out on April 20, too.
Carlson remained cheerful and warm throughout. He’d been waiting so long to meet Fuentes, he gushed, before Fuentes geared up to unleash a litany of antisemitic tropes.
In terms of vodcast views, the high watermark was Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin in February 2024 where Carlson stoically sat for more than two hours, nodding his head at the right times, while Putin regaled him with 9th century revisionist Russian history.
When it came to asking the tough questions, Carlson preferred Moscow’s streets to the Kremlin, only to become bedazzled by Russian supermarkets. It was not so much the bounty on the shelves inside that caught his eye but the coin-operated shopping trolley concept. Chuck a kopeck in the trolley and away you go but bear in mind, in order to get that kopeck back, a shopper has to put the trolley in its designated corral. Carlson looked on, mouth agape in wonder, like a macaque witnessing a pea and thimble trick.
Obviously, the bloke has never shopped at Aldi.
The downside to this miracle of Russian retailing is, if you cause a stink in the fruit and veg aisle, you’ll either be kicked to death by the FSB there and then, or more likely, given cursory firearms training, dispatched to the Zaporizhzhian front and told to go your hardest.

Jack again led with an easy ploy ... Tucker Carlson and Clive Palmer give a press conference ahead of the Australian Freedom Conference at the Palmers Fig Tree Pocket Estate. Picture: NewsWire / Glenn Campbell

Barking mad of course, but what happens when you go looking for sanity? You end up right back with King Donald ...

There's nothing so lame as someone trading on influencers while resolutely unaware that what was true a nanosecond ago is no longer valid a nanosecond later...

Carlson was raised in California as a Democrat and commenced the well-trodden pathway from the left to the right many years ago. He has since veered into the margins to trumpet Christian nationalism and US isolationism, combined with what Ted Cruz ­described as “an obsession with ­Israel”. Other MAGA podcasters and influencers like Steve Bannon, Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly have broken ranks with the White House over the Iranian War but only Carlson seems so fixated on Israel.
Is MAGA splintering under the weight of it? It’s clear Tucker’s outside the tent playing sword fights with Alex Jones, at least according to Donald Trump. “Tucker has lost his way. He’s not Maga. Maga is saving our country. Maga is making our country great again.
“Maga is America first, and Tucker is none of those things. And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.”

Jack's quoting King Donald as some sort of authority?

It's just another variation on MAGA madness, and ssssh, don't mention Epstein.

And so to the closing line ...

Carlson might maintain some level of deniability, but scratch away the “just asking questions” veneer and he is never far away from antisemitism. Be it on the left, or right, or God only knows where when it comes to Tucker, antisemitism is the ugly but inevitable end to anti-war sentiment.

Just roll that one around on your tongue ...

...antisemitism is the ugly but inevitable end to anti-war sentiment.

Yeah nah, you can think in an anti-war way that the current excursion is a mad folly without ending up anti-Semitic, though you might end up with a healthy contempt for the current government of Israel.

It turns out a broken clock can take into account the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, and that can't be easily wiped away by an easy line proposing that it's merely anti-Semitism.

Nah yeah ... Tucker might be a compleat loon, but so are the loons who scribble each day for the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

And now this ...

The beefy boofhead is always good for a laugh ... and now this ...

In which the bromancer and "Ned" grapple with King Donald's folly ...

King Donald has finally got what he worked so diligently to achieve. 

International pariah state status.

And domestically things are a little on the nose. 

Even gutter dwellers of the Tim Pool kind are breaking away ... MAGA Pod Bros Rally Around Top Trump Official After Sudden Exit (*archive link)

That letter in CU?

Oh dear, and yet the news sounded so good in the lizard Oz ... 

After all, there's nothing like a couple of assassinations and Israel government anarchy to stir the lizard Oz blood, and get the hive mind's heart pounding away ...

But the business plan seemed in some kind of trouble ...

A buck for two months? That's the level of the bait and switch that's now needed?

But, for all its many failings,  the intermittent archive comes free...

Down below the news hovered the bromancer, and the pond immediately turned to him for advice and help, only to discover the proud reptile warrior was surprisingly gloomy:

The header: US and Iran locked in ‘horrible equilibrium’ with no clear path to victory: The US-Iran conflict has reached a dangerous equilibrium with Iran still controlling the Strait of Hormuz and Trump unable to achieve regime change.

The caption for the grinning, gesticulating loon: US President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday. Picture: AFP

The bromancer opened by hinting that a quagmire was in the making ...

Donald Trump and the mullahs have reached an ugly stalemate, perhaps indeed a quagmire, in Iran.
The war is poised at an unstable, dynamic and horrible equilibrium, where the US can’t quite win, and Iran won’t quite lose.
No matter what happens from here, Trump, and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, have greatly weakened Iran.
But while the Israelis may be satisfied that they have “mown the grass”, crippling the Iranian threat for a while, Trump has not met several key objectives.
There’s no sign of regime collapse, though that can happen suddenly, or even regime alteration. The Iranian President has been humiliated, but the presidency has never been a powerful post. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, rightly considered a terrorist group by many Western nations, shows no sign of breaking. It seems to be indoctrinated at sufficient depth, like its creation Hamas, that one fallen leader is simply replaced by others.
Yet without regime change, the Iranian threat will in time simply re-emerge.
Trump has also hit the limits of US unilateralism and his own chaotic communications style. Having abused and humiliated allies, he’s now calling for their naval assistance in the dangerous business of clearing the Strait of Hormuz.
No one is volunteering, even those nations sending military resources into the region.
It may be impossible to clear the Strait without a land invasion of Iran. It’s a very narrow waterway. Any Iranian boat can lay a sea mine, any diver attach an explosive to a ship’s hull. It may be possible to suppress Iranian missile firing, though the US hasn’t yet achieved that. It’s impossible to suppress drones, which can easily be fired off the back of a truck.

The reptiles did their best to inspire hope in the bromancer, Liberia-flagged tanker Shenlong Suezmax, carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia, in Mumbai, India, last week. Picture: AP

But these days oils ain't oils ...

Iran also shows every sign of being able to keep up economically crippling attacks on its Gulf Arab neighbours. It’s still firing missiles in small numbers but has plenty of drones. Combined with closing the Strait of Hormuz, that means Tehran can impose a massive economic cost on the whole world, and an acute disruption on US allies in the Gulf.
One of Trump’s greatest strengths is his brazenness. He indicated a week ago that he could declare victory and go home. No one is better able to turn on a dime than Trump. But if he goes home while Iran still has the Strait of Hormuz shut, and perhaps before it even agrees to a ceasefire, that would be, notwithstanding the damage it’s taken, a significant win for Iran’s theocratic, totalitarian and blood-soaked regime.
There are a few other aspects of the equation which have got too little attention. The US and Israel have destroyed most of Iran’s conventional military forces, its navy and air force, much of its command structure, its industrial/military facilities and much of its missile stock and missile production facilities.
That’s hugely significant. But here is a key element of the jigsaw missing from most analysis. Iran has not used its conventional military forces much at all in its tremendous terror, destabilisation and proxy military campaigns.
The Iranian military and political leadership – in complete contrast to the Australian Defence establishment – understand profoundly the power of asymmetric warfare.
Asymmetric warfare is undertaken by weaker powers against stronger powers. Drones are a quintessential asymmetric weapon. So is terrorism. So are proxy militias. So is cyber warfare.

The reptiles decided to parrot King Donald's talking points...

US President Donald Trump has warned the United States is “locked and loaded” to destroy Iran’s key oil export hub on Kharg Island. Trump said the military could wipe out the facility “on five minutes’ notice” if he decided to give the order. The president described the island as Iran’s “crown jewel” and one of the regime’s most valuable strategic assets. Kharg Island handles the vast majority of Iran’s oil exports and is central to the country’s energy industry. US forces previously struck military targets on the island but deliberately avoided destroying the oil infrastructure.

Somebody forgot to tell the bromancer he should have sounded locked and loaded ...

So is disinformation.
All these things don’t cost much money, certainly compared with aircraft carriers and the like. They will be relatively easy for Iran to rebuild.
Israel has been shocked at how heavily the Shia terrorist militia Hezbollah has rearmed itself in Lebanon. Israel had inflicted massive damage on Hezbollah. The elimination of the Syrian regime was thought to have diminished if not eliminated Hezbollah’s resupply lines. The Lebanese state was supposedly newly empowered to disarm Hezbollah. There was a formal ceasefire and commitments made by Hezbollah about demilitarising.
Yet in the current conflict, Hezbollah initiated hostilities with Israel and is still firing rockets, drones, artillery and other projectiles into northern Israel, despite massive, renewed conventional military effort by Jerusalem.
The loyalty of the Iranian proxies to the mullahs in this conflict has been a shock for Western military planners. The Houthis are active again in Yemen, pro-Iranian forces are active again in Iraq. Pro-Iranian terror attacks have occurred again in the US.
This doesn’t mean Trump’s action was futile, or even unnecessary. It does show that with a determined enemy there are very few “short” wars and no predictable or guaranteed outcomes.
The other objective Trump seems unlikely to meet is definitively ending Iran’s nuclear program. Iran has 400kg of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, which is nearly weapons grade. Most of it seems to be stored near Isfahan. If there’s no regime change, the only guarantee for the US would be for special forces to go in physically and take the uranium out. That would be unbelievably dangerous.
Trump could alternatively order his forces to take Kharg Island, through which Iran gets 90 per cent of its income. But this would be a big, dangerous ground operation, which the US public is completely unprepared for.
The US could bomb Iranian electricity and other civilian infrastructure. But that inflicts a terrible human toll, doesn’t guarantee regime change and could generate millions of refugees.
The likeliest outcome may be that Washington and Tehran, on back channels, negotiate a ceasefire, even without the achievement of many US strategic aims.

No clamouring for a dinkum Oz ship to head off to the gulf and join in the action? No call to arms, no celebration of AUKUS?

What on earth has gone wrong with the bromancer?

Sadly the bro ignored his eternal war on China - not one mention of China in his piece! - so allow the pond to help out.

Trump Goes on Wild Rant as Irish PM Struggles Not to Laugh
FULL OF WIND
President Donald Trump reignited one of his favorite grievances, and the Irish prime minister could barely stifle his laughter at the absurdity. (*archive link)

Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin could barely keep a straight face as President Donald Trump launched a rant about one of his signature complaints: windmills.
In an Oval Office appearance to commemorate St. Patrick’s Day, Trump took a question from a British reporter on U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s hesitation to fully support Trump’s war in Iran with the U.K.’s entire military might.
The president said he was disappointed with Starmer before going on an unintelligible rant about energy and wind turbines, which he constantly refers to as windmills.
“Windmills all over the country, destroying those gorgeous Scottish fields,” Trump said, reiterating his longtime hatred.
The president then repeated his lie that China, by and large, the world’s largest producer and user of wind energy, doesn’t use windmills.
“Windmills, which don’t work, uh, they’re tremendously expensive, and the best testament to that is the windmills are made in China, but China doesn’t use them,” Trump complained.

And so on and on, and that reminded the pond of another angle ...

How the Iran War Could Consolidate China’s Energy Dominance
Amid global oil and gas disruptions, China stands prepared for the electrostate era.
By Jason Bordoff, a columnist at Foreign Policy

...China appears highly vulnerable. Roughly half of its crude imports and a third of its LNG imports transit the Strait of Hormuz. With so much at stake, China’s foreign ministry quickly called for an end to hostilities and for all parties to ensure safe passage through the strait. This is why some analysts have cast Beijing as the likely “big loser” of Trump’s strike on Iran.
Yet over the longer term, there are at least three reasons China may emerge as a surprising beneficiary.
First, for more than two decades Beijing has pursued an energy security strategy designed precisely for moments like this. At its core is electrification: shifting more of the economy away from direct oil and gas consumption and thereby reducing exposure to volatile oil and gas markets prone to geopolitical disruption.
More than 30 percent of China’s final energy consumption now comes from electricity, compared with just over 20 percent globally. More than half of the cars sold in China are electric, the result of deliberate policies aimed as much at energy security as emissions reduction. The International Energy Agency estimates China has avoided 1.2 million barrels per day of oil demand growth since 2019 and now projects Chinese oil demand will peak in 2027, two years earlier than previously expected.
Beijing has also worked to generate as much of its electricity as possible from domestic sources. Coal and renewables dominate the power mix, while nearly all electricity demand growth in 2024 was met by clean sources, led by solar and wind. Half of all nuclear reactors under construction worldwide are in China. Although the country imports natural gas, only a modest share is used for power generation. In the event of prolonged LNG disruptions, China can lean more heavily on domestic sources of energy such as coal to bridge the gap.
China would still feel the sting of a global oil shock, of course. But its push to become an electrostate—rather than doubling down on crude production—has reduced its exposure. The United States may be the world’s largest oil producer and a major net exporter, yet because oil is priced globally, American consumers feel the pain at the pump just the same. The most durable hedge against oil shocks is to consume less oil, not merely to produce more.

All that ranting and railing at windmills and renewables by the lizards of Oz, and suddenly there's talk of the joys of being an electrostate?

Likely it was too much for King Donald and the lizard Oz hive mind to comprehend.

Putting King Donald fun aside momentarily, there were other reptiles out and about this day, and thank the long absent lord that the pond could consign them to the intermittent archive.

That took care of Dame Slap celebrating capitalism ...

The two faces of Mike Cannon-Brookes
All this talk of sacking people with heart and humanity can’t hide the fact Cannon-Brookes is – at heart – a brutal capitalist. And there’s no shame in that.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

It's not just sacking the planet that she loves, she loves all sorts of sackings, and brutalism of the most brutal kind.

And these pearls of wisdom could drop into the void ... the pond will accept no wannabe Dame Groan substitutes.

Bullock and her board are the authors of their own predicament
With the RBA’s credibility in tatters after a string of poor decisions and economic calls during the past few years, their hand was forced.
By David Pearl

If the pond wants that sort of commentary, it rarely finds the need to go beyond the infallible Pope ...

And the pond is by now well over the Canavan caravan, and so well over ancient Troy trying to pump up the hagiographical volume...

How a former communist plans to save the Nationals
What matters is not Canavan’s past but the future of the Nationals and the Coalition. The upshot is that Canavan should not be underestimated.
By Troy Bramston
Senior Writer

The pond knows from bitter experience that there's nothing worse than some fundamentalist religious nutter deciding to turn into an atheist nutter, unless it's the process in reverse - atheist turns Opus Dei - and ditto silly young men attracted to communism, who in later days turn into loons of the "coals that batter" Canavan caravan kind.

See Emeritus chairman Rupert for how that plays ... how easy it is to toss off talk of being young Red Rupert, and then in baleful older age, don the black shirt and red MAGA cap, especially if there's a buck in the offing and blood to sell to a vampire...

Never mind, that diligent weeding and sorting left room for "Ned's" natter to join the bromancer blathering about the war...

The header posing an enormously silly couple of questions: Trump as wartime President – is he fit for purpose? Having attacked Iran with no reference to allies, Trump now needs everybody’s help. Suddenly, he is desperate for an allied coalition. Who would have believed?

The caption for the orange clown: US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Marine One. Picture: Brendan Smialowski / AFP

Only in the hive mind could you find a reptile still wondering if King Donald was fit for purpose ...

Okay, the pond needs some help to get through this modest sojourn with "Ned, because he wasjust as gloomy as the bromancer.

On the upside, "Ned" kept this Everest climb to a seemly four minute amble up a modest hill, stuffing it full of banal observations and laughable billy goat butts of the "final judgments still await" kind ...

The world is now seeing another side of Donald Trump – a President under serious pressure over a war he chose but confronting the consequence of a conflict spinning out of his control.
The assumption that many commentators made at the start, myself included, is that Trump at some stage would declare a victory and evacuate the field. But the Iranian regime has made that option far more complicated. Trump is now trapped since this conflict has evolved into two related wars.
The first war has proceeded well in a military sense, given large-scale destruction of Iran’s military and naval capacity that must leave a diminished regime – but Trump’s blunder was his pledge of regime change from the air, an idea historically improbable and ignorant of the nature of the regime and of Iranian identity.
Trump told the regime’s military to “lay down your weapons” or “face certain death”. Final judgments still await, but this bravado seems to have misunderstood the fanatical ideology and structural power of the regime. Into the third week the regime is not only still alive and functioning but is spreading chaos and destruction, attacking the Gulf states and effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz – squeezing global energy supplies, driving up prices and threatening the world economy.

The reptiles flung in a standard snap of the King ...President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One. Picture: Juloa Demaree / AP Photo.

The pond had passed up several chances to celebrate the king, but couldn't resist any longer ...

It was becoming clear that "Ned" couldn't cope, and so he reverted to his usual impression of a headless chook scuttling about, startled by falling clouds ...

There is no sign Trump foresaw or planned for such a contingency. Yet this scenario has been basic to US and Western war-gaming conflicts with Iran for years. It is further evidence that Trump launched this war with an irresponsible lack of planning and a disastrous misjudgment about the regime’s capacity to provoke a global energy crisis.
The Wall Street Journal reported on March 13 that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine warned the President in several briefings before the war that a US attack could prompt Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz and possibly deploy mines, drones and missiles to disrupt the world’s vital shipping corridor.
Yet Trump, while acknowledging the risk, said Iran would likely be forced to capitulate before such a decision and, even if Iran tried, the US military could handle it. This seems to reflect the ignorant and cavalier attitude of Trump towards his most important war decision as President. It is like his tariff policy – Trump acts without thinking issues through.
It raises the question: to what extent has Trump undermined US national security decision-making? America risks living with a wartime President who lacks the emotional and intellectual strengths for the task.

The reptiles slipped in a snap of the general with a surprisingly modest array of scrambled eggs for decor ... Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine

What about the real warrior? Couldn't the reptiles rustle up a snap of their onetime Faux Noise kissing cousin?

At least "Ned" took note of China in his piece ...

The regime, while damaged, has now put Trump under pressure. Trump is being forced to accept as a war goal something he never envisaged – having to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
How to do this? Well, Trump doesn’t really know.
Last week Trump said “We’ve won.” Yet he now battles to thwart a global energy crisis. Having accepted that he must free up the strait, the President can hardly declare victory and head to the exit with the world facing an oil shortage, higher inflation and weaker economic growth.
This is turning into a battle of US power versus Iran’s endurance. The regime’s tactic is to impose such political pain on Trump that he cracks under the pressure. It targets Trump’s vulnerability: that he lacks the temperament or the character to fight for the long haul.
Trump’s bravado never stops. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The Pentagon has been planning for Iran’s desperate and reckless closure of the Strait of Hormuz for decades, and it has been part of the Trump administration’s planning well before Operation Epic Fury was ever launched.”
The world awaits. In the interim, the story is ominous. While declaring victory, Trump has appealed to a range of nations – Britain, France, China, Japan and South Korea – to send ships to help the US to reopen the strait. His appeal implies the US can’t do the job alone. Having attacked Iran with no reference to allies, Trump now needs everybody’s help. Suddenly, he is desperate for an allied coalition. Who would have believed?

Who could have doubted? Only clueless reptiles stuck in the lizard Oz hive mind.

Cue a snap of Xi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Chinese Premier Li Qiang arrives for the closing ceremony of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Picture: Vincent Thian / AP Photo.

Oh, the poor king, left dangling ...

"Ned" ended on a gloomy, almost defeatist, note, dangling in the void with the Faux Noise King ...

In an interview with the Financial Times, Trump threatened NATO countries, saying if it’s a negative response “I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO”. Incredibly, he implies this is a test of the alliance. But NATO countries will need to think hard about sending ships to a likely doomed mission since the narrowness of the strait becomes a killing field for Iranian missiles.
As for China, the main US rival and a close supporter of Iran, Trump wants to delay his upcoming visit to China to put pressure on Beijing to help in the Gulf. So the Iran war is stretching into US-China relations. He needs China’s help – not a smart prelude to talks with Xi Jinping.
As for Russia, Trump has made it a big winner by relaxing sanctions on its energy exports. The power reality is alarming: the more Trump expends US resources in the Middle East, the more Russia and China are the winners.
Trump cannot let Iran win the energy war, but what price to stop it? The other option is ground forces, an option Trump has kept open with his deployment of a marine force to the region.
As the Journal said, Trump might now face a choice between defeat or escalation, neither being remotely entertained a few weeks ago. Trump began this war with devastating damage to Iran’s military capabilities and a powerful sense that reckoning time had come for Iran’s terrorist and fanatical regime. The problem lies in his manifest defects as a war leader – the grave shadow that hangs over this crisis.

 Really? That's the best "Ned's" got?

His manifest defects as a war leader, as if those were the only defects in a wretch so defective he might as well be a Tesla cybertruck.

The pond found this vastly more amusing, even if its explanation of the reasons for start of the first world war is inclined to the mindlessly simplistic ...

Now will somebody shush that baby, the reptiles haven't caught a decent night's sleep in days ...

And finally, the pond is currently on an LBC/James O'Brien jag ...

In which the bromancer leads the war mongering, the Canavan caravan arrives in the hive mind, and Dame Groan spends words on Spender ...

 

Yet more Murdochiana for herpetology students:

Where earlier writers have drawn parallels with Shakespeare’s King Lear, Sherman thinks King Midas is a more appropriate comparison:
"Like the mythical monarch whose touch turned everything to gold, Rupert built a $17 billion fortune but destroyed everything he loved in the process. His media outlets stoked hatred and division on an industrial scale, and amassing that wealth required him to damage virtually anything he touched: the environment, women’s rights, the Republican Party, truth, decency – even his own family."

Much more at The Conversation.

The pond is content to note that he, his spawn, and his minion at the lizard Oz continue to damage virtually everything there is to damage ...

I've seen the rags and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every reptiles's like a settin' sun

And so to the damage done this day, and this day the reptiles decided to get very solemn about Iran, yet try as it might the pond simply couldn't discern a mention of the 150+ schoolgirls murdered in the recent American bombing - a bombing denied by King Donald, but widely acknowledged as an infamous American act, performed during an entirely needless act of adventurism, which if anything has helped entrench the mad Mullahs while making the long suffering Iranian civilian population suffer even more (while news trickles in from Venezuela that that odious regime is still conducting torture under King Donald's mandate, provided they keep forwarding him oil money).

You shouldn't be able to get away with deploring the mad Mullahs, oppressive as they are, while at the same time, ignoring a million or so displaced in Lebanon and the many other civilians killed in the current campaign - apparently, if you trust King Donald's words, being done "for fun".

Down at the bottom of that litany, garrulous Gemma made a bog standard appearance. 

Off to the intermittent archive with her ...

Commentary by Gemma Tognini
At the Oscars, some victims are just more worthy than others
Hollywood’s stars rarely miss a chance to champion fashionable causes, but the silence on Iran at this year’s Oscars highlights what critics say is a pattern of selective activism.

The pond isn't much interested in the sight of a whining snowflake, always with a grievance to hand, but does regret that it didn't watch the Oscars. 

Apparently Sean Penn didn't show up and instead went off to show support for Ukraine, but no doubt grating Gemma stands proudly with Vlad the sociopath.

As a result of only catching theWeapons-inspired cold open and the opening monologue, the pond entirely missed the key awards ...

Now on with the pond's favourite warmonger.

The header: No nation has had more wake-up calls than ours; Though we are the biggest island nation in the world, the Americans know that as a military force the Australian navy is essentially non-existent.

The caption for the bromancer's villains: (R-L) Anthony Albanese, Chris Bowen, Richard Marles and Penny Wong address the media at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire /Martin Ollman

The bromancer was, in his usual way, itching for a bit of kit so that he could take part in the adventurism, and never mind that there was no sane reason to join King Donald in his folly ...

That the Albanese government has gone out loud and proud to announce, without even being asked, that it’s certainly not going to send an Australian navy ship to help keep the Strait of Hormuz safe for international shipping is much more significant than it looks, and bespeaks a shocking Australian impotence.
The Iran war is another wake-up call for our nation. No nation has had more wake-up calls, yet on defence we’re determined to stick to our Mogadon habit.
The decision was somewhat weirdly announced by Infrastructure Minister Catherine King, presumably because Anthony Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles want to restrict themselves to happy talk.
Here’s the real significance. Though we are the biggest island nation in the world, our navy is effectively defunct. Donald Trump announced a long list of nations he would like to contribute to escorting cargo vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. We weren’t on it.
Trump specifically mentioned China, France, Japan, South Korea and the UK, and later expanded the demand to include NATO allies generally. It’s worth noting just what a horrible strategic mess Trump has created by first insulting allies, then demanding their military support.
British television coverage, when Trump’s demand was first published, was full of patriotic outrage at Trump first insulting Keir Starmer’s offer of an aircraft carrier, then days later demanding British ships.

Well yes, the whole sordid, mismanaged affair has been extremely stupid ...

But the bromancer has always shown a lingering affection for the mad King ... President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn upon his arrival to the White House. Picture: Jose Luis Magana / AP Photo

But even the bromancer had to admit that the orange clown had come up with some strange notions in recent times ...

Even more bizarre was Trump’s request for Chinese naval support given that Beijing is a close partner of Iran and has condemned the whole American action in Iran, though Beijing is delighted to see how much American materiel is being used up in the Iran war. It’s tremendously chuffed that Trump has withdrawn significant military resources from South Korea and Japan to send to the Middle East.
But it’s notable that despite Australia being the second or third closest ally to the US, after Britain and, all things considered, probably Japan too, we weren’t asked for a naval contribution. This is because the Americans know that as a military force the Australian navy is essentially non-existent at the moment.
In our surface fleet we notionally have seven Anzac-class frigates, though they are so old that to send them into harm’s way now would rank surely as a species of elder abuse, and three Hobart-class air warfare destroyers. The frigates each have eight vertical launch cells, just eight. Many modern destroyers have well over 100.
The Iranians fire missiles and drones at ships. The Anzacs deploy fairly short-range Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles in their vertical launch cells. In terms of self-defence, that’s pretty much it. In the conflict with the Houthis in the Red Sea, the US Navy mainly used much longer-range SM2 and SM6 missiles. That’s because if you miss an incoming missile with a long-range shot you can have another go with your short-range defence systems. If you miss with a short-range effort, you’re dead.

The reptiles tried to placate the bromancer's death wish with a bit of kit ... Cargo including bombs are removed from a C-130J-30 Super Hercule after landing at RAF Fairford in Fairford, England. The US is using the RAF base as part of its military operations in Iran. Picture: Matthew Horwood / Getty Images

How he yearned to get involve in a stoush ...

Nor do the Anzacs have sophisticated counter-drone systems. The Ukrainians, Iranians and Houthis have all shown that drones can be used to devastating effect against conventional navy ships. If our Anzac frigates ever did fire off their missiles they would be exhausted and in need of replenishment in five minutes. The commander of any US taskforce would regard the Anzacs as a liability, just another ship the Americans had to defend. Of our three Hobart-class destroyers, one is in a long-term upgrade and therefore out of action. Of the other two, perhaps one could be sent. They are optimised for air defence, not what’s happening in the Strait of Hormuz.
They have 48 VLS each, about half a US Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Beyond that they have Phalanx Gatling guns, which can be a last line of defence against incoming drones. They don’t have complex counter-drone systems.
To be effective in high-intensity environments, ships need layered systems of defence. The Hobarts don’t have them. And of course they would be completely reliant on the US for what are becoming extremely scarce missiles as we have pitiful, truly pitiful, stocks of such missiles ourselves.
The Hobart-class is much more capable than the Anzacs, but its utility would be marginal in the Strait of Hormuz. And if we sent one we would in effect be sending the entirety of our surface fleet capability.

And what's the point of being ready to set sail on a futile attempt to prove the old adage that if you break it, you own it? 

Not much beyond offering the bromancer shots of kit, Leading Seaman Aircrewman Liam Sulley looks out towards HMAS Brisbane as the ship transits through the Prince of Wales Channel, off the coast of Queensland.

At this point the bromancer came up with a line that had the pond rolling Jaffas down the aisle:

It’s probable that Trump can’t open the Hormuz strait even with allies’ help. 

So futility is the game?

“If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus (Or perhaps experience a city-wide fire bombing?)

Bravely the bromancer tried to redeem the situation with a billy goat butt ...

But our absolute lack of defence capability is the greatest national scandal of our time. It’s bipartisan in creation. The previous Coalition government was almost as bad as the Albanese government in defence.
Australians should recognise the decisions we’ve made. Just as we’ve decided to keep barely a month’s worth of fuel in reserve so that we couldn’t withstand any interruption to supply, so we have decided not to have any meaningful defence capability.
We’ve not made any significant investment in the kind of drones devastatingly effective in the Ukraine, Iran and Houthi conflicts – swarming, cheap drones in huge numbers.
The Wedgetail air reconnaissance and control plane we’ve sent to the United Arab Emirates is a useful plane if you have an air force or missile defence system to direct. We don’t have significant missile defence in Australia so it’s best used overseas.
The Albanese government has faithfully re-created the worst of Liberal-National defence policy. We take an eternity to procure a tiny number of sophisticated platforms that can be used only as niche capabilities folding into an American operation.
Marcus Hellyer, the best defence budget analyst in Australia, recently published a paper showing that Defence’s Portfolio Additional Estimates Statement discloses that the Albanese government has actually cut defence spending. It has imposed a $1.5bn “efficiency dividend” (honestly, you can’t make this stuff up) on defence, which it had not imposed before, and the entirely fictional “dividend” goes back to consolidated revenue, it’s not kept by defence.

There came a final bit of kit, thankfully lying idle, and not off on a gulf adventure,  HMAS Ballarat (II) in Darwin is the sixth of eight Anzac Class frigates built by Tenix Defence Systems at Williamstown, Victoria for the Royal Australian Navy.

How the lizard Oz's war monger in chief mourned the way we couldn't join this fabulous gulf excursion ...

Further, in famously bringing forward some defence spending in the last budget, the government has cut planned spending across the forward estimates so that, according to Hellyer, by 2027-28 defence spending, on the government’s own figures, will still be just 2.05 per cent of GDP.
If we ever lose the US alliance we are completely defenceless. No doubt Beijing will never want to do this, but in terms of sheer military capability China could do everything to Australia that the US has done to Iran. The difference is, unlike Iran, we couldn’t fight back. And unlike Iran, we’d run out of fuel in five minutes.
We are a deeply foolish nation to let this entirely avoidable set of circumstances continue.

Trust King Donald? We're already completely defenceless, keeping company with a clown car ...

Luckily as something of an offset, that lesser member of the Kelly gang, Joe, was on hand to question the wisdom of it all, and as he only took two minutes to do it, a couple of screen caps covered his thoughts.

Riddled with contradictions? That's an understatement for the mad King, who of late has started to sound bonkers ...

All those incoherent fascist ramblings did was set off Brendan of the FFC and help produce panic buying ...

No wonder Joe was sounding cautious:

With Joe done and dusted, the pond also took to a screen cap for the Canavan caravan:

And that's it for the pond, which has such a contempt for this doofus that it simply couldn't stomach the nonsense, and sent the rest off to the archive ...

(Those are just to wash the Canavan caravan stench from the nostrils).

On the upside, that cleared room for Dame Groan's usual Tuesday groaning ...

The header for the complacent old biddy: Allegra Spender’s tax white paper misses the mark; Older people have always been wealthier than younger folk. This is just a natural outcome of the life cycle of work and family formation.

The caption for the portrait, shown with the sort of grimace the reptiles love to have on hand for their enemies: Allegra Spender. Pictures: iStock/News Corp

Why did Dame Groan decide to have a go at an indie, who has no effective mechanism for doing anything much beyond doing reports?

Because it's easy ...

It must go with the territory. The member for Wentworth puts out a report on tax reform. It’s done for the greater good, not to address the local concerns of constituents. It’s the sort of thing that school captains do.
Early in his term, Malcolm Turnbull released a report outlining a series of tax reform proposals. Now teal member Allegra Spender has put out a report entitled Rewarding Effort in Taxing Times, using the services of known advocates of changing the tax system.
There is nothing new in Spender’s effort. Indeed, we had a federal election in 2019 when the electorate was asked for its opinion on many of the issues canvassed: changes to negative gearing, capital gains tax, the taxation of trusts and several other proposals. We all know the result of that election.
The fundamental problem of Spender’s report is the false premise that wages are taxed too much relative to capital. Of course, we may be overtaxed overall, but it’s the sensitivity of the relative burden that Spender doesn’t seem to understand. She really thinks she’s on to something when she simplistically refers to someone earning $100,000 a year. If it’s from wages, the tax is $23,000; if it’s from capital gains it’s $7000; and if it’s from superannuation, it’s zero if the person is retired.

Naturally the reptiles dragged another enemy into the affair, Malware himself, Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: David Gray / AFP

But if Dame Groan wanted to have a go at someone, why couldn't she tackle this sort of Canavan caravan drivel?

...Things have not been this dire for Australian families since the 1970s, the last time the world faced a major oil crisis. Australia then withstood the shortages better than most because we had just started pumping oil from the Bass Strait. While we were impacted by the global economic downturn of the 70s, Australian petrol bowsers did not have labels put on them, “not in use”.
That was because the Menzies government had the foresight after World War II to subsidise the drilling for oil. BHP, partnering with Esso, took up the offer and the Bass Strait helped provide the fuel for Bathurst 500 winners for a generation – along with other important things.
Just 25 years ago Australia produced 96 per cent of our raw petroleum needs and we made 70 per cent of our demand for refined liquid fuels. Today, the Bass Strait has dried up and we produce less than half of our raw petroleum needs, with less than 30 per cent refined here. While this is the bad news, the good news is that we can restore our living standards because we have all we need here in Australia. We have enormous oil reserves under our feet, but if we don’t drill we will never find them.
If we end our obsession with net zero we can get back to using our resources for the Australian people again. Our artificial ban on the use of our own resources (coal, gas and uranium) is at the heart of why we have gone from some of the lowest energy prices in the world to some of the highest.
There is nothing wrong with Australia that cannot be fixed with what we have here. We do not need to import basic commodities, we do not need to import foreign ideas, we do not need to import people to artificially pump our economic statistics.

Profound apologies.

The pond had promised to ignore the Canavan caravan, but simply couldn't help itself. 

Not when Dame Groan is spending all her verbiage on Spender.

Still, the desire to plunge back into the Canavan caravan cesspool must help explain the pond's fixation on regurgitating Dame Groan's talking points:

But here’s the point. Those capital gains have been made because people have used post-tax income to buy assets. And that tax-free income for superannuants is after a great deal of contributions and earnings tax has been paid. In fact, calculated in cumulative terms, the current tax burden on superannuation is already high.
There is also the further important point that capital is much more mobile than labour. It’s why around the world capital is taxed concessionally relative to wages and other income. Given the importance of capital accumulation to economic performance, it’s very important to get this balance right.
Australia’s capital gains tax is already high by international standards. Several countries don’t even have one, including Singapore and New Zealand, and the rate is highly concessional in the US.
Spender is keen to see the longstanding arrangements for taxing trusts altered, notwithstanding the fact she is a beneficiary of several family trusts. Weirdly, she doesn’t seem to be fully au fait with how the taxation of most trusts work. Each beneficiary pays income tax at their top marginal rate and all the trust income must be distributed each year. It is only the return on assets that can be split, not income from labour.
She makes the point that trusts are also about asset preservation but fails to note that many small businesses are set up as trusts. To impose a minimum tax rate on all beneficiaries – her proposal is 27.5c in the dollar – would be punitive for many mum-and-dad businesses as many of these businesses are struggling to survive.

The reptiles decided to interrupt with an AV distraction featuring the dog botherer on Sky Noise down under (still no rebrand?): 

Sky News host Chris Kenny says Australians “pay too much” tax to the government for them not to “spend it wisely”. Mr Kenny said the “latest champion” for tax reform is the “multi-millionaire” teal MP, Allegra Spender. “I mean she's wealthy beyond the dreams of most Australians, good on her, but when you look at her complex web of companies and trusts, one of its functions must be to minimise the tax payable. “Clearly she knows the tax system very well, but nobody should fall for the pretense (sic) that she can cut taxes for anyone else.”

All very well, but meanwhile the Canavan caravan was getting away with this sort of bilge, a kind of deeply weird variation on "more gruel":

We just need more Australia. More Australian farming, more Australian mining, more Australian manufacturing, more Australian jobs, more Australian everything.
Many of the solutions can be found in regional Australia. Regional Australia is where we can expand farming, mining, energy production (of all types!), manufacturing and tourism.
It is also in regional Australia where we can protect our way of life. The Australian dream should include the birthright to own a home with a backyard big enough to play a game of cricket in. Backyards will become as extinct as the Tasmanian tiger if we keep stacking people up in our capital cities.
Unique in the world, Australia crams in more than half of its population in just five mainland capital cities, all on our coast. The top five cities in the US house around 15 per cent of their population.
Attracting people to the regions needs investment in roads, industry and hospitals. But we also need to encourage more work from home opportunities. It takes two jobs for most families to move now, and work from home allows people in the bush to have many professional jobs (in law, finance and the like) away from where the “sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall”.
If we spread our population out more, that will reduce demand for the scarce land left in our capital cities, which will put downward pressure on housing costs.
Not everyone will want to move to a country town but the people who do will free up a home for those who don’t.

Sorry, the pond has lived in a country town, and not just Adelaide, and doesn't need any of that kind of crap. 

The Canavan caravan might want to quote Clancy of the Overflow in the cause of skin cancer, but the pond endured the Tamworth flies for way too long.

Dame Groan sailed on oblivious, still spending words on Spender. Take that younglings, back in your box vulgar youff:

The larger theme behind Spender’s earnest report is growing intergenerational inequality: “Young people today face challenges of their own, particularly in establishing financial security in the way their parents did. We see this in the stalling levels of household wealth of younger generations, most acutely felt by those finding it difficult to afford housing that is close to family, opportunities and employment.”
Here’s the thing: older people have always been wealthier than younger folk. This is just a natural outcome of the life cycle of work and family formation.
Young people invest in their education, work on their careers, consume rather than invest. It is only after several years that individuals and couples can start to accumulate wealth.
Is it possible that the extent of intergenerational inequality has worsened? Those 60 and older have benefited from that purple patch of economic reform; think Hawke-Keating and Howard-Costello. Younger generations, by contrast, have had to put up with nearly two decades of zero reform and stalling living standards.
When it comes to housing affordability, that demand was allowed to grow far too strongly thanks to excessive migrant intakes meant that supply could never keep up. Negative gearing has been part of the tax code for more than a century and the current CGT arrangements have been in place for a quarter of a century. They simply can’t be the main explanation for recent rising house prices, which have been a global phenomenon.
In fact, the main weakness of our tax system is a top marginal income tax rate that is too high and drives a great deal of behaviour, and not just by the well-off. Even Bill Kelty and Paul Keating agree on this point. But Spender was never going there.
The member for Wentworth would have spent her time and resources more effectively by concentrating on the expenditure side of the budget ledger.

Tax cuts for the rich! Always the best solution:

Then there came a final snap of the villainess of the day: Allegra Spender MP during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond should play fair and note the final Canavan carry on, but what a creepy image to start, three men smirking while talking about women's wombs and the need for them to revert to the kitchen ...

Shades of a recurring, never ending pond nightmare ...

All the pond can do is hope that the Canavan caravan runs out of ticker like that insanely grinning loon ... as Dame Groan had a final groaning in her ...and eventually she reverted to her usual mission, ravaging Jimbo ...

That federal government payments as a percentage of GDP have increased by two percentage points under Labor really doesn’t bear thinking about. Do we all feel miraculously better off as a result? It is surely obvious that a great deal of government spending is effectively squandered by greedy providers and outright fraud.
In the meantime, Jim Chalmers is working on a federal budget that will meet the “reform” test being imposed by the press gallery. Read my lips: This is not the most important budget of this century, not even close.
To rush complex tax proposals is to invite chaos and confusion. Let’s not forget here that it effectively took four years to finalise the GST package. Look also at how long it took to pass the new superannuation tax laws on large bal­ances, including the deeply misguided proposal to tax unrealised capital gains, since dropped.
My advice is to hang on to your hat. There is no reason to have any confidence in the decision-making ability of Chalmers or the quality of the advice he receives from Treasury.
With inflationary pressures building and likely rises in interest rates, it’s not a good time to be implementing radical tax changes with uncertain consequences. Sadly, this is unlikely to deter our Treasurer.

Any concession for the way that the world is currently being turned upside down by a narcissistic king in the grip of dementia, and cowardly minions strutting about in shoes a couple of sizes too big?

Nah, it's not the way of Dame Groan, but you've got to admire how the entire world is being redacted as a form of distraction ...

Finally, a little more propaganda from the Poms ...