In which the bromancer, Monsieur Dupont and "Ned's" natter set the Wednesday pace ...

What with King Donald promising boots on the ground in the form of thousands of paratroopers (so the reptiles said) and Jimbo warning of tough times ahead (so the reptiles reported), it was inevitable that the brave, bold, warrior known to intimates as the bromancer would duck for cover and decide to take it all out on the Europeans ...

The header: Anthony Albanese embraces his European ideals, glosses over the difference of a few billion between friends; Anthony Albanese has struck agreements with Europe that signal Australia’s dangerous drift toward the continent’s struggling economic and political model.

The caption for the snap of the dangerous duo: Anthony Albanese and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in Canberra on Tuesday. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The bromancer could only summon up three minutes of copy to warn against this dangerous drift towards those wretched European types, what with their cheese-mongering and fancy plonk, but a careful reading could reveal his yearning for King Donald and his amazing excursions ...

Anthony Albanese loves Europe; he loves its politics, its leaders, its food and especially its failed social model, which he is now imposing on Australia.
Nonetheless the Prime Minister is rightly happy about finally signing a free-trade agreement with the European Union, and a security agreement as well. FTAs are a good thing in principle, even limited ones like this, though they tend to be wildly over-boomed and never deliver anything like what is claimed for them.
The FTA with Europe, Albanese tells us, will add $10bn a year to the Australian economy. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, at the same press conference, says it might add “almost $8bn” to the Australian economy. Nobody takes figures like this too seriously, so what’s a couple of billion dollars in the headline figure between friends? But these agreements do in fact reveal the growing intimacy between the Albanese government and the European leadership.
Trade Minister Don Farrell has done a good job for the government. But Albanese is operating at an altogether deeper level. His government behaves very much like a European government. Australian politics is coming to resemble European politics, as Australian society itself looks increasingly European.

Shocking stuff. 

Increasingly European? The pond almost fainted with fright ...and the reptiles compounded the fear with an AV distraction featuring a hideous creature that came to walk amongst us ...

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers a powerful address in the Australian parliament following the signing of a historic free trade agreement. “What we signed today will unleash a new era of economic and security partnership,” Ms von der Leyen said. “The distance has traditionally been a barrier to our relationship, but today geography is no more our destiny, and distance is no longer a protection or luxury.”

It turns out all that reptile blather about Western Civilisation, and the Judaeo-Xian heritage and such like counts for naught when it comes to the crunch, and what really matters is an unthinking embrace of King Donald's adventures.

Europe itself is a decadent cesspit ...

Once, when Europe embodied humane values, social compromise, hi-tech development and war-sobered democratic solidarity and national security responsibility, that might all have seemed a good thing. Now, not so much. Now, the European model embodies state incompetence, social stress and political fragmentation. Welcome aboard, Australia.
Europe is addicted to massive universal welfare programs (whereas Australia once targeted welfare through means testing) and wildly inefficient transfer payments that ensure crippling tax levels, lack of incentive and chronic, structural budget deficits. They also routinely strangle business in byzantine regulation.
Australia could be a leading member of the European All Stars on all these measures.
Like Europe, Australia has burdened itself with a hugely costly, ultimately unworkable energy policy that makes energy prices uncompetitive with the rest of the world and ensures that reindustrialisation can only occur with massive and unsustainable government subsidies.
The European elite has so consistently ignored the concerns of its people, especially on immigration, that the society has lost faith in normal democratic politics. The traditional political parties are losing support to new parties challenging on the populist right. Sound familiar?
The official ideology of the EU essentially rejects mainstream European cultural heritage and instead of a self-confident historical narrative of achievement and imperfection, promotes the delegitimisation of its own traditions, along with endless identity politics and grievance. Any echoes there?

Just to remind the hive mind yet again of the treachery at work ...Von der Leyen in parliament on Tuesday. Picture: AAP

Talk about fraught times for bromancers, forced to seek out the ugly truth beneath the glittering surfaces ...

Now we have the military co-operation agreement between Australia and Europe. The Albanese government actually does defence diplomacy pretty well. The problem is it virtually doesn’t do defence in substance at all, a very European combination.
Von der Leyen was an elegant, witty, respectful and positive presence in the national parliament. It was good that she spoke, and she spoke well.
Yet it is still the case that, even after four years of Russian war in Ukraine, Europe’s leading nations have not produced military forces, military platforms or military ordnance on anything like the scale that their grave security situation requires. Their budgets are in constant deficit because of the ever increasing demand for universal welfare payments, and they thus cannot make the decision to resource their own defence properly, instead relying, as ever, on the Americans, even as Donald Trump routinely mocks them for their derelictions. However, compared with the Albanese government the Europeans look like Godzilla after a Red Bull overdose.

As if a couple of world wars had turned them into a bunch of pathetic wimps ... how the Reichsmarschall des GroßAustralisch Reiches yearned for a real man, doing manly things with his bone spurs ... US President Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

Sorry, whenever King Donald appears, the pond is contractually required to celebrate with a worshipful cartoon ...

Ahh, you won't find any of that nonsense in Europe, unless you happen to visit Hungary with the bromancer's best buddy, the onion muncher ...

And so to the bromancer wrapping up his despair ...

Von der Leyen confirmed that European leaders had said they would send ships to help the US open the Strait of Hormuz. However, she added, this would only happen after hostilities had ceased. In other words, the Europeans would make a military contribution when there was no longer a military need. They would work to open up the Strait of Hormuz after it was already open.
A very European military commitment. However, even that was more than Australia under Albanese would offer. When asked whether Australia would send a naval vessel to the Strait of Hormuz the Prime Minister simply dodged the question. That’s because, apart from the implausible case of the two air warfare destroyers currently notionally in service, the Australian navy possesses no ship that could realistically be sent to the Strait of Hormuz.
The key to understanding the security agreement between Australia and Europe is that it can’t amount to much. European nations and their militaries can’t cope with Europe’s security challenges, much less make a big ­contribution in the Indo-Pacific. Australia has a tiny number of exquisitely complex defence platforms, so tiny in number that they cannot in themselves make any strategic contribution anywhere, even in the defence of Australia, much less the defence of Europe.
Tokenism, speeches and symbolism on the other hand – the EU and the Albanese government do all that very well.
Australia now rejoices in its participation in the Eurovision song contest. This surely makes the Albanese government yearn for more. How comfortable it would be in the European Union itself!

Indeed, indeed, how much better to dance along to the sounds of that ear worm YMCA ....

And now to an apology. 

In recent times, the pond has taken to sending reptiles to the intermittent archive where correspondents can inspect them at their leisure, but for whatever reason, the archive hasn't been itself these last few days.

So the pond can only show its homework and show what it decided to miss out on.

First up was Dame Slap doing a standard bit of black bashing ...

That's more than enough black bashing.

The pond also decided to miss out on Mandy, even though she was talking about a matter and a country the reptiles have studiously ignored ...

Thanks for raising the matter, Mandy, and anyone wanting follow-up could head off The Diplomat's Why Pakistan Is Desperate to Avert an Iran-Saudi confrontation, or perhaps to AlJazeera for Pakistan 'ready to host US-Iran talks': Can latest peace push work?

Call the pond weird - many do - but the pond's taste runs to reptiles in full hysterical overload, cranked up to eleven ... and Monsieur Dupont was exactly what any loon doctor might order ...

Damn those 'leets. 

Why every day the lizard Oz featured an attack on sociopathic Vlad the Impaler's excursion into Ukraine, and every day the pond kept blinking and missing it, but here he is, in the usual company ... Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arriving to a military parade in Beijing. Picture: AFP

It seems deeply unfair to avoid featuring the biggest war monger of them all at the moment - Cuba next? - but the pond will go with the flow, as Monsieur Dupont readies the country for war ...

Real-world events have shattered the illusion that the generational peace Australians have long enjoyed would continue indefinitely.
Europeans who smugly proclaimed that war on their continent had been consigned to the dustbin of history received a rude shock in 2022 when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in pursuit of his imperial ambitions. This should have been a wake-up call that Pax Americana was fracturing and we needed to lift our game on defence. Again, nothing was done. While Europeans and pacifist Japan ramped up their defence spending, ours flatlined despite warnings from Defence Minister Richard Marles that our strategic circumstances are the most challenging and dangerous since the end of World War II.
Putin’s invasion was followed in short order by the murderous Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 supported by Tehran and its proxies, igniting a series of linked conflicts across the Middle East leading to the current US-Israeli strike against Iran.
Warning lights should have been flashing red in the National Security Committee of cabinet spurring serious attempts to immediately increase fuel reserves, identify supply chain risks, move from “just in time to just in case” planning and redouble efforts to make more of what we need in this country – otherwise known as sovereign capabilities.
But apart from laudable efforts to support Australian critical minerals miners, the government hasn’t done nearly enough to build the resilience needed to mitigate rising geopolitical risk. We have wafer-thin petroleum reserves. Anthony Albanese hasn’t delivered on his promise to build a strategic merchant fleet that could carry oil and other essential commodities in emergencies. Perversely, he now appears to be considering higher taxes on gas exports when the world is facing a critical gas shortage, risking a collapse in new investment.

It's a long time since the pond has thought of Winston, but how splendid of Monsieur Dupont to look across the dutch for advice,  New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Rt Hon Winston Peters. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Indeed, indeed, it's deeply alarming that the current leadership of the United States is united in its desire to unravel a rules-based order, but here we are ...

Ironically, it took a New Zealand foreign minister to bell the cat. Winston Peters has admitted his country and Australia ought to have been better prepared for the Iran war oil crisis and made “serious mistakes” in allowing fuel refineries to close because they were “too cocky” about the state of the world.
It should have been obvious that an unusually peaceful period in world history has ended and we are returning to the historical norm. The respected Peace Research Institute Oslo reports that the world is experiencing a surge in violence not seen since World War II. Sixty-one conflicts were recorded across 36 countries in 2025. PRIO research director Siri Aas Rustad warned: “This is not just a spike – it’s a structural shift. The world today is far more violent, and far more fragmented, than it was a decade ago.
“Conflicts are no longer isolated. They’re layered, transnational and increasingly difficult to end. It is a mistake to assume the world can look away.”
And this may be only the beginning. The next decade could see escalating conflict around the world that will directly impact on Australia, the most serious of which would be a military confrontation between China and the US over Taiwan. To borrow from the late Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, that would be the “mother of all battles”, dwarfing the supply chain and geopolitical upheavals of recent weeks.
It’s no surprise that revisionist powers China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are united in their desire to unravel a rules-based order crafted by the US and fellow democracies that has served Australia well. But few foresaw that an American president would actively participate in the dismantling of this order. Serial interventionist Donald Trump has led a revolution “against the very world that America made”, says Carnegie’s Stewart Patrick.
If you think that’s a stretch, read the 2026 US National Defence Strategy. It dismisses “the rules-based international order” as a “cloud castle” abstraction.

Just the USA Monsieur Dupont?

Isn't the call coming from inside the house? You should really keep up ...

And so on, and oh dear, and the next snap is no consolation,  Richard Marles

At that point, Monsieur Dupont spluttered out, but not before urging on the war with China, preferably by Xmas, as reptiles are wont to do at the drop of a war mongering excursion hat ...

Dispelling the false assumption that geography will continue to cushion us from overseas shocks is a task of government. But the message isn’t getting through often or sharply enough.
When the Ukraine conflict first broke out, complacent elites, who should have known better, asserted that a conflict in distant Europe wouldn’t affect Australia. That was patently wrong. Global supplies of key agricultural products, energy and metals were severely disrupted. The drone war with Russia revealed a potentially fatal structural flaw in our defence force. We have no effective counter-drone capability.
The same people continue to argue that we shouldn’t get involved in a Taiwan conflict because it’s far away and doesn’t concern us. That canard should be rebutted. Much of our trade and energy goes through the South China Sea. If simmering tensions over Taiwan erupt into military conflict, war will come to our shores whether we like it or not. Our geography won’t protect us.
The question is: Does the Albanese government have workable contingency plans in place for such an eventuality?

Just one final flourish. 

Monsieur Dupont warned the hive mind at the start about the dangers of leets and then signed himself off this way ...

Alan Dupont is chief executive of geopolitical risk consultancy The Cognoscenti Group and a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute.

The Cognoscenti Group? 

Why that's up there with the Illuminati ... or perhaps the Rosicrucians ...

And so to "Ned", still in a state of hysteria about the croweaters ...

Poor "Ned", and yet the pond will always turn to him, even if he manages to drag some ancient toad relic out of the dustbin of collective memories... Peter Beattie inside Queensland Parliament, August 1998.

"Ned" was in a state of dire panic ... apparently forgetting that the readership of the lizard Oz had been trained for years to embrace the climate-denialist, Islamophobic, minority fearing and loathing, ways of the redhead's mob...

The SA result reflects the opinion poll trend across the nation: there is a massive vote transfer within the centre-right. It confirmed what we knew: that One Nation can ruin the Liberals, but it cannot win enough preferences to stop Labor being the net winner against a broken Liberal Party.
The numbers are telling: the stronger the Hanson vote, the weaker the overall centre-right vote. Hanson isn’t interested in governing; her brief is sabotage, laying political landmines. If One Nation remains a strong force in future, the consequences are guaranteed. It will assist NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns to be re-elected in March 2027 and then assist the re-election of Anthony Albanese in 2028.
Given that most One Nation voters loathe the Labor Party and the Albanese government, this suggests a disconnection between their emotional disposition and the consequences of their vote. (The qualification, of course, is that some One Nation voters just want to wreck the two-party system.)
If One Nation succeeds in usurping the Liberals and the ­Coalition as the major party of the centre-right, that becomes a devastating event for Australia – Hansonism as the alternative to Labor. It would terminate centre-right politics as it has long been practised in this country.
It is astonishing that the Liberal Party has been confused about whether One Nation is a friend or an enemy. Seeing Hanson openly seeks to destroy the Coalition vote, such confusion is inexcusable folly. The iron law that should govern Liberal Party attitudes towards One Nation is obvious: whatever maximises its vote against Labor, given the goal is to defeat Labor.

Can't we just nuke them? It's good enough for the country, so why not them? Or should we embrace dunderheads keen to destroy writers' festivals? Chris Minns; Peter Malinauskas

It turns out that "Ned", in his usual way, doesn't have much of a clue, might even be part of the problem ...

The Liberals, therefore, should strive to weaken Hanson’s primary vote and to maximise the flow of One Nation preferences to the Coalition. That’s both a primary and preference strategy. It rules out either simple-minded attacks on Hanson or alignments with her. The Liberals need to differentiate themselves from Hanson, avoid turning her into a defiant heroine but make preference decisions solely based on vote maximisation.
More than 30 years ago, ANOP pollster Rod Cameron, who guided the Labor Party for so long, said Hanson thrived on criticism from elites, and “the more criticism she gets, the better she travels”.
Too many people have forgotten this. The golden rules are: don’t criticise her personally, don’t call her a racist or a fascist – that just confirms the dogmatism of her supporters.
Stress instead that she can never govern, she only sets one Australian against another Australian, and, as Matt Canavan said recently, she has never delivered anything worthwhile – not a ­“single dam, single road, single hospital”. A vote for Hanson is a wasted vote.
The Liberals need to avoid a counter-productive binary debate about whether to move to the left or right to combat Hanson. They need, instead, to act as a governing party.
That imposes two requirements. First, remember Hanson is your opponent. The Liberals are not in a team with Hanson, they are not in a coalition with her, and they will never seek to govern with her. Those conservatives who dream of a governing partnership – Liberals, One Nation, Nationals – are deluded since these three parties are too fundamentally different to form a troika. The Liberals who champion this approach risk killing their own party.

And what of the reptiles who joined in the cheerleading? The ones who did their very best to normalise the redhead? 

Isn't the call coming from inside "Ned's" house? Didn't the reptiles celebrate the way the redhead had caught up with the right hive mind attitudes?

And so on and on, a heady reptile brew of immigration fear and loathing and climate science denialism.

The twin planks of the lizard Oz this past decade. 

It doesn't leave much room for a beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, what with him coming to fame by shouting at windmills. Not much of a distinct brand there ... Leader of the Opposition Angus Taylor during Question Time. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

All "Ned" had to offer him  was the chance to sound like Pauline ...

Second, the Liberals need to show their cultural credentials as the party of tradition. Much of Hanson’s success lies in fighting the cultural hegemony of the progressive left in its commitment to identity politics, contemporary tribalism, excessive immigration, weakening Australian identity, and undermining national unity.
Every position advanced by Hanson is tied to the pitch that “I’ll restore the country you are losing” and, in this sense, Hanson targets a genuine affliction in this country.
The irony of election night is that Premier Peter Malinauskas in his victory speech invoked patriotism and the flag as the necessary virtues to stop Hanson’s inroads into the Labor vote. Targeting One Nation, he said pride in country can’t be co-opted by any single party. “The cultural question must be top of mind,” Malinauskas said. “It comes down to: are you for Australia?”
He said One Nation must be met with two responses – economic gains and national pride. The Premier’s message was anathema to left-wing progressivism in this country, but as an ­election winner, he was beyond criticism.
This was an invitation and a lesson for the Liberals. They need to stand up and present themselves as the party of flag, anthem, patriotism, duty, honour, family, personal responsibility, and unity in diversity. And if the moderate wing of the Liberals can’t abide this essential step to halt Hanson, then it also risks killing the party.

Say again?

They need to stand up and present themselves as the party of flag, anthem, patriotism, duty, honour, family, personal responsibility ...

They need to sound just like patriotic, flag-waving Pauline? 

... and then throw in a token reference to "unity in diversity" as the only difference? 

This on the very day that Dame Slap returned to her standard black bashing form?

Completely clueless ... please allow the infallible Pope ot help ...

And now, as everybody knows that Moby is a d*ckhead supreme, (*google bot aware),  the pond felt inclined to celebrate ...

In which the bromancer manages to be more offensive than usual, with lesser gang member Joe and Dame Groan reduced to supporting roles ...

 

The pond woke to news of yet another climate report, saying yet again the same thing ...

No need to waste time on the lizard Oz click bait video that leads off that collage. 

There are plenty of non-paywall sources, including the Graudian and the WMO's Earth's climate swings increasingly out of balance ...

Naturally this coincided with news of a political party taking up the lizard Oz's position on climate science, coal, and nuking the country, in an EXCLUSIVE ...

Might as well now call the lizard Oz "Pauline's paper", so faithfully does she replicate all that the reptiles have pushed for over the years ...

It makes the sort of mealy-mouthed attempt by ancient Troy to swing back to the centre all the more insufferable ...

Really, ancient Troy, you lurk in a far right rag that's desperate to be populist, and urge a return to some mystical centre?

The pond would have sent him off to the intermittent archive forthwith, but it's being moody and downright unreachable this morning, and anyway, who cares for this sort of blather?

Apparently ancient Troy still hasn't worked out that the far-right, xenophobic, nativist and grievance-based lizard Oz has been a wrecking ball for decades.

And speaking of far right weirdos, the bromancer was in top form this day, which is to say sounding like a complete prat ...

The header: A nuclear Iran means Trump’s Mid-East war is a just one; Those who are reflexively anti-American have no appreciation for the moral good of American power.

The caption for the hair blowing in the wind: US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Picture: Saul Loeb / AFP

Ye ancient fraudulent Augustinian cats and howling fundamentalist tyke dogs, not this last refuge for the desperate ...

Though it may lurch into utter catastrophe – if Donald Trump destroys all of Iran’s energy infrastructure and the Iranians attack all Gulf Arab energy infrastructure and desalination plants that they can reach with their drones, remaining missiles and regional proxies – the US and Israel’s war against Iran nonetheless is probably a just war.
Of course, if waged with sufficient incompetence or confusion, as Trump exhibits, that would affect questions of morality.
The key is Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. In taking extreme measures to avoid new nations acquiring nukes, Trump stands squarely in the tradition of all US presidents since Harry Truman.
In 1945, only the US possessed atomic weapons. Today eight nations do – the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan and Israel. That we’ve avoided nuclear war, restricted the number of nuclear weapons states to eight and prevented terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons is a triumph for the human race, and above all for the benign exercise of American power.
The two most unstable and dangerous nuclear states are North Korea and Pakistan. Both have nuclear weapons partly because of historic Chinese complicity in proliferation.

Um, it's just North Korea and Pakistan? What about Israel, Russia, the United States, three incredibly unstable and dangerous nuclear states? What about Israel's notorious attempt to help South Africa nuke up?

Um, didn't the notorious liar advise only months ago that they'd completely obliterated Iran's nuclear program?

He did, he did, with the reptiles themselves regurgitating the news straight from Tulsi's lips ...

Couldn't the bromancer simply admit that there hasn't been a war he hasn't loved in his war mongering way, without trotting out distractions and silly, deeply inapplicable Catholic theology?

US President Bill Clinton; US President Harry Truman

The urge to distract is so naked, so opportunistic, that the pond for a nanosecond felt embarrassed for the bromancer ...

Bill Clinton in 1994 was on the brink of taking military action to destroy North Korea’s nuclear program. He consulted Australia and wanted our support. The action was explicitly not going to attempt regime change and Washington had elaborate plans to communicate this to Pyongyang and Beijing. Clinton was forestalled by the “peace activism” of former president Jimmy Carter making a high-profile visit to Pyongyang just when Clinton would otherwise have struck.
Today, North Korea has perhaps 60 nuclear weapons and has developed intercontinental ballistic missiles that can deliver them to the US or indeed to Australia.
Was it really more moral for the US not to engage in military action against Pyongyang’s nuclear establishment, so that today one of the most bizarre dictatorships in human history has the physical power to wreak catastrophic damage over large parts of the planet?
Israel famously destroyed nuclear reactors in Iraq and Syria. The whole world is safer as a result. The US persuaded many countries, friends and foes, to forswear nuclear weapons plans. It bombed and threatened Libya into abandoning its nuclear program. Famously, Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union broke up but was persuaded to get rid of them in exchange for security guarantees from the US, Britain and Russia.
As late as the late 1960s Australia had considered acquiring its own nuclear weapons. One reason we didn’t was because we sheltered under the warm embrace of America’s extended nuclear deterrence. If any nuclear power attacked us with nuclear weapons it could fear retaliation in kind from the Americans. Those who are reflexively anti-American have no appreciation for the moral good of American power.

He's wanting to blather about the moral good of American power right at the moment that Benji is indulging in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, with the full approval of said American power? Benjamin Netanyahu reacts while visiting the area destroyed by an Iranian ballistic missile. Picture: Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images

The bromancer worked himself up into a lather about nukes, as if stuck in Dr Strangelove land ...

A lot of countries were talked out of seeking nuclear weapons, including South Africa and Brazil. The US convinced two key Asian allies, South Korea and Taiwan, to ditch nuclear weapons programs because they would be protected by US security guarantees.
If the US alliance system unravels, nuclear proliferation will accelerate. South Korea and Japan could both be expected to seriously consider acquiring nukes. Japan could probably produce a nuclear weapon in a month if it wanted to.
If Saudi Arabia loses faith in the US, it’s reported to have an agreement with Pakistan to acquire nukes quickly. Other Arab states also could make the move. Certainly without active, powerful American opposition, nuclear arms would spread.
Among existing nuclear powers, China is producing new nuclear weapons at a record rate, adding perhaps 100 new nukes a year. Russia has abandoned the treaty constraints that the late Soviet Union had negotiated with Washington.
The theory of a just war is one of the most important ethical contributions Christianity has made. Theologians who abandon this theory are abandoning reality and centuries of authoritative Christian teaching.
A just war must involve a just cause, be a last resort, have a realistic chance of success and be conducted by proportional means; that is, the harm allowed by waging it must not be greater than the harm caused by the enemy.
War itself is subject to rules, for example not intentionally attacking civilians. Proportionality means if someone punches you in the head you’re entitled to defend yourself but not to shoot them dead. Proportionality is conceptually tricky, however. The response must be proportionate to the credible threat, not just to the aggressor’s action.

Civilians? What cheek, what nerve.

Despite the bromancer's devotion to word salads, and despite the misinformation offered up by AI bots, this photo is real ...

The reptiles tried another distraction...

A man cleans a billboard featuring Iran’s late supreme leaders Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (l) and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (c) next to newly elected supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. Picture: Tauseef Mustafa

Following that attempt to exploit the image of some mad mullahs, it became the pond's sad duty to advise that the bromancer is not in good standing with the Catholic church, has failed to follow its essential precepts, and does not adhere to the Church's essential teachings, and perhaps should be subject to canonical penalty ...

...The pope’s criticism of the war was more pointed on Sunday when, during his weekly Angelus prayer in St Peter’s Square, he renewed his appeal for a ceasefire. He described the death and suffering caused by the conflict as a “scandal to the whole human family”.
He said he had been following the situation with dismay. “We cannot remain silent in the face of the suffering of so many people, the defenceless victims of these conflicts. What hurts them hurts the whole of humanity,” the pope said. “I strongly renew my appeal for us to persevere in prayer, so that hostilities may cease and the way may finally be paved for peace.”
Leo, who was elected pope in May last year after the death of Pope Francis, has so far been cautious over his engagement with Donald Trump. He has relied instead on his college of cardinals to directly criticise the US’s decision to go to war in Iran.
Earlier this month, Cardinal Domenico Battaglia in Naples addressed an open letter to “the merchants of death” profiting from weapons’ sales, while the Washington DC cardinal Robert McElroy said the conflict “fails to meet the just war threshold for a morally legitimate war”. (Graudian)

Sorry, Pope, sorry Cardinal, you have a heretical cuckoo lodged in your bosom ... preaching hate and falsehoods, a merchant of death, so to speak ...

Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, Tehran has been attacking Israel, the US, the West generally, Sunni Arabs and its own dissidents relentlessly and murderously. It’s the chief state sponsor of terrorism. It created Hamas and Hezbollah, two of the sickest, most sadistic terrorist groups the world has known. It sponsors proxies such as the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq to mount missile attacks on a long list of enemies. It assassinates critics in its diaspora. And it’s pursuing nuclear weapons.
That satisfies, in my view, the just war criteria.
There are in truth very few real pacifists. Jesus himself was not a pacifist, meaning someone who objects to any use of force. He uttered threats filled with violent imagery against those who abuse children. He himself used force to throw money lenders out of the temple. He refused to respond violently, or allow his followers to respond violently, to attacks on his own person.
That is an option of heroic virtue open to an individual. But not in defence of others. If a murderer tried to kill your children, would you intervene with force or ask a policeman to do so? If so, you’re not a pacifist.
Most claimed pacifism is hollow moral posturing that simply pushes hard moral decisions to the adults in the system.
Nuclear weapons pose an exquisite moral dilemma. If they can’t discriminate between civilians and combatants, can their use ever be moral? But if the threat of their use deters war, that surely is moral.
Our historic moment lacks moral adults. We’ve never needed them more.

Always contemptible...always projecting, and without a shred of irony or any awareness of his hypocrisy or his rampant stupidity ...

And so to the lesser member of the Kelly gang's report on the war ...

The header: Donald Trump’s campaign teeters on brink of economic catastrophe; The US has pulled back from its strike threat claiming the Strait of Hormuz will re-open ‘soon’ under joint US-Iranian control, but Tehran still holds the world’s oil lifeline hostage.

The caption for the clown imagining he's Churchill: US President Donald Trump waves before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House on Friday. Picture: AP

Joe attempted a more balanced perspective, though being a reptile, there are the usual sins ...

The US military campaign against Iran faces its most dangerous moment, with the world on the brink of a genuine economic catastrophe over the stand-off in the Strait of Hormuz.
Donald Trump says he will “hit and obliterate” Iran’s power plants – “starting with the biggest one first” – unless the regime reopens the waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes.
The 48-hour deadline the US President gave Tehran in a Truth Social post was scheduled to expire at 7.44pm on Monday, Washington time (10.44am AEDT on Tuesday).
But the US President extended this window period for another five days at 7:23am on Monday, Washington time, (10:23pm AEDT on Monday), when he posted on Truth Social that the US and Iran had “very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.”
“Based on the tenor and tone of these in depth, detailed, and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five day period.”
After raising the stakes, the US President quickly de-escalated.

Um, he quickly changed one set of lies for another set of lies, so that reptiles in the lizard Oz could say he de-escalated ...

But he never gets called out, inside you get this sort of AV distraction, Sky News host James Macpherson says “productive conversations” have occurred between the US and Iran as the Department of War has been instructed to postpone strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.

King Donald has always traded on the way the mainstream media acts like all day suckers, and is always keen to placate the markets and settle the nerves.

That's why you never get to see stories about the counter-bluffs ...

The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has pushed back against reports suggesting any ongoing negotiations with the United States, stating clearly that “no dialogue exists between Tehran and Washington.” The statement, published by the judiciary-linked Mizan News Agency, directly challenges recent remarks made by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Just wrap it up Joe ... take your time, but just finish it ...

He said on Monday (Tuesday morning AEDT) that the Iranian regime had initiated the talks with the US about ending the war and his administration was “very willing to make a deal”.
If negotiations prove successful, Trump says the Strait of Hormuz will be “open very soon” and he would like to see the vital shipping route operate under joint US and Iranian control.
But the next five days still loom as the most crucial in the military campaign so far, with the potential for the world to see how far Trump is willing to go and how much Iran is willing to endure.
If he makes good on his threat, fuel, energy, information technology systems and water desalination infrastructure across Gulf nations risk being drawn far more seriously into the conflict, an outcome that would both heighten and extend the economic pain from the still unfolding hostilities.
The war is on the verge of a tipping point. Iran has already launched strikes on critical energy infrastructure in the region. This includes its attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG terminal - estimated to have taken out about 17 per cent of the country’s LNG export capacity - in response to Israel’s strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field.
The regime has shown no reluctance to embrace escalation and in recent days attempted to launch missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint UK-US military base in the Indian Ocean, 4000km away.
Already the Iranian Foreign Ministry has denied being in talks with Washington, saying there was “no dialogue” with the US and rejecting Trump’s claims of productive discussions.
Tasmin, the semiofficial Iranian news agency controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that the US President had backed off his threat to target Iranian energy sites within 48 hours “after Iran’s military threats became credible.”
Trump’s instinct is to engineer a sense of crisis as part of his political modus operandi.
The tactic allows him to create opportunities and new solutions by maximising US leverage and raising the stakes.
But this approach has not worked with Tehran so far. Escalation has been part of Iran’s strategy since the conflict began on February 28. Its asymmetric strategy has been to maximise the political and economic pain of the conflict on America and the rest of the world.
A US strike on Iran’s power facilities may give the regime another excuse to turn up the dial and embrace a new level of extremism as it fights for survival.
Of course, Trump may be trying to raise the stakes in a bid to create an offramp by providing an incentive for negotiations – including with the Gulf states – but the regime has, so far, shown zero interest in talks.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has demanded reparations, assurances against future aggression and recognition of the country’s legitimate rights as the key conditions of any settlement.
The problem is Trump’s ultimatum not only puts pressure on Tehran, it also puts pressure on him to make an agonising decision in the event he is rebuffed. If Tehran stares him down without consequence, it will risk undermining his credibility and define the limits of his tolerance for escalation.
Confusion already exists regarding the circumstances that led to Trump’s decision to extend his 48-hour deadline for another five days.
The unfolding crisis now reveals how much Washington’s war aims have shifted. Success for America hinges on the US reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a sign the terms of the conflict are being controlled too much by Tehran.
It also reveals a US President veering from one position to another.
Trump on Friday said America was “getting very close to meeting our objectives” but threatened a major escalation the very next day through his 48-hour ultimatum.
Last week, Trump rebuked Israel for targeting Iran’s South Pars gas field and publicly distanced himself from it in a Truth Social post, declaring that “no more attacks will be made by Israel” on the site – unless Iran struck Qatar first.
Days later, Trump threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants in the kind of infrastructure-destroying escalation against which he had only just warned.
This casts doubt over what the US endgame in Iran is.
While the US has certainly weakened the Iranian regime, Trump’s threats of escalation suggest he no longer believes he can simply withdraw and declare victory while Tehran retains control over one of the world’s most vital waterways.

The pond would have liked to spend some time with Rowan, desperately trying to blame it all on the Chinese  ...

Meanwhile, speaking of surveillance states in action ...

Okay, the pond just wanted a break before wrapping up proceedings with the traditional Tuesday groaning ...

The pond confesses that it went the screen cap route because it's feeling tired ... there's only so much bromancer the pond can take before the boiler bursts and hot steam vents.

Besides, there's nothing whatsoever that Jimbo could do that would stop Dame Groan from embarking on a groaning, while shouting to the world "we'll all be rooned, and before Easter at that" ...

The misguided forward guidance issued by governor Philip Lowe in 2022 that interest rates would not rise until 2024 was a major misstep.
But whether these events had anything to do with how the bank was structured was never made clear. Chalmers was keen to be seen to be doing something and was attracted to the idea of the separate monetary policy board, particularly since he would be able to make his own appointments.
New appointees with known dovish views on interest rates had a clear appeal.
The Treasury secretary would continue to have an ex officio position on the board, unlike in other countries. This remains a contentious feature.
In the end, a compromise was made and the terms of the old board members were rolled over. But Lowe was not reappointed for another term – this had been common practice in the past – and Chalmers was able to make his own appointment of the new governor, Michele Bullock.
While Bullock has spent her entire professional career at the bank, she was mainly involved in the payments side rather than interest rate setting. Chalmers is proud that the heads of most of the key economic and financial agencies are women.
A key recommendation of the report was “the RBA should have dual monetary policy objectives of price stability and full employment, with equal consideration given to each”. Unsurprisingly, this was generally interpreted as meaning that equal weight should be given to inflation and full employment, although one of the panellists claimed this was not the intention.

The pond only bothers with this because Dame Groan has a cult following, and they will be undoubtedly pleased to discover that they get their information from Sunrise ... Sunrise host Nat Barr has claimed Labor is 'spending like crazy' following a second consecutive rate hike by the Reserve Bank of Australia, as Jim Chalmers defends government spending and points to global volatility.

There's 22 seconds of your life that's been saved by a screen cap ...(have the reptiles gone fully Daily UK Snail?) ... and you can now waste it on the groaning ...

Of course, it doesn’t make any sense to impose a strict equal weighting between the two factors. For one thing, the inflation goal is stipulated as a target band while unemployment is measured as a continuous variable. How would an equal weighting even work? And what if inflation is 20 per cent and unemployment is 4 per cent? Should the bank be giving an equal weighting to the two factors? Or what if inflation is 2 per cent and unemployment is 12 per cent?
In other words, the value of the variables matters when it comes to sound decision-making.
The principal means whereby this potential conflict between the two objectives is resolved is through recurring communication between the Treasurer and the RBA governor. It goes by the name of Statement on the Conduct of the Monetary Policy. An updated statement was released in July 2025.
In the past these statements have endorsed the central role of controlling inflation. This latest statement is less clear about the primacy of inflation targeting, with considerable discussion about the meaning of full employment and the need to achieve this outcome. The change is subtle but it’s there.

There came a final snap, The misguided forward guidance issued by governor Philip Lowe in 2022 that interest rates would not rise until 2024 was a major misstep. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

And there came a final groaning, though it avoids making the obvious point. 

Until Dame Groan is put in charge of the RBA, or even better, made Treasurer, or perhaps both, we can never be free, we'll all be eternally doomed to being rooned ...

The words are as follows: “The Monetary Policy Board and Government agree that the Monetary Policy Board’s role within this is to focus on achieving sustained full employment, which is the current maximum level of employment that is consistent with low and stable inflation.”
Another instruction from the Treasurer to the governor was that she should hold media conferences after each meeting of the monetary policy board.
This now occurs, although it’s not clear whether this initiative is proving to be worthwhile, from the perspective of the bank or the Treasurer. The conferences too often turn into word salad versions of lectures on macroeconomics while the governor does everything to avoid implicating the government in the inflationary process.
The release of the most recent consumer price index figures raises the important question whether the monetary policy board took the wrong path last year by giving too much weight to unemployment and too little weight to inflation. Inflation is now clearly travelling well outside the target band, which is not the pattern in most advanced economies.
That last week’s decision of the monetary policy board was split, 5-4, has only added confusion to the process. Given that credibility is critical to the effective operation of central banking, this new way of doing things looks like a clear negative, particularly as names are not attached to the votes, as is the case in the US.
There is no doubt that Chalmers regards the changes to the RBA as one of his finest achievements, having struggled to get the necessary legislative changes through the parliament. Whether they really are a case of beneficial reform is an unanswered question at this stage. The early indications are not favourable.

Not favourable? Quelle surprise. Even by the old biddy's dismal standards, that was dull stuff.

Meanwhile ...

... or perhaps a just TACO carrying out a just Cotija, like many cheese-eating surrender monkeys? Who can say? Who can tell?

Croweater chaos ... a Lord Downer special ...

 

Having created all the necessary conditions for a lurch to the extreme far right, the reptiles at the lizard Oz took fright.

Keen to avoid more talk of the war and King Donald, the pond joined the reptiles in their navel-gazing, as they plunged hard into crow eater land and the chaos they'd produced.

But given the abundance of performing seals and pundits, the pond had to be selective.

There could be no room for the likes of Penbo, railing at trendies and snobs ...

After that taster, it was off to the intermittent archive with him.

It will be noted that Penbo, using his rat cunning, tried to shift the focus to Labor, in a reflex reptile move, but a cursory examination of the score card would show that the damage was done primarily to the Liberal party.

In that sort of existential crisis, the pond will always turn to Lord Downer, with His Lordship in a filthy mood ...

After that opening flurry, the reptiles chipped in with a reminder of the keen dress standards in play in SA politics, SA Liberal leader Ashton Hurn with MPs on Sunday. Picture: Brett Hartwig

His Lordship continued to rail, it apparently all being the fault of the woke ...

...These are certainly legitimate issues for public concern. For example the political class has tried to convince voters that building windmills and solar farms will produce much cheaper electricity when obviously the complete reverse has happened.
In the past decade, SA electricity prices have increased by about 100 per cent. Yet 85 per cent of the state’s electricity comes from renewables. Go figure. But talk to people in SA who have moved from voting Liberal to voting One Nation, and it is clear that it is as much non-economic issues that have caused their defection.
Many are saying Australia is changing and they use the phrase “we are losing our country”.
Some of their anger is directed at absurd overreach on symbolic issues. The overuse of welcome to country ceremonies and, in particular, acknowledgment of traditional owners is a good example of woke policies that drive a lot of people nuts.

Sorry, Your Lordship, that invokes the pond's contractual obligation ...

Do carry on, remember the pesky, furriners and your glory days ...

It’s not that these Australians are disrespectful towards Indigenous Australians. It’s that they have deeply embedded in their psyche a laudable belief in the equal value of all people, regardless of race, religion, political beliefs and, for that matter, their sexuality.
Most Australians were born in this country and have no other nationality. They rationalise it this way, for right or for wrong. Progressives think they are not just wrong but downright racist. A recent poll showed 63 per cent of Australians didn’t want welcome to country ceremonies at sporting events. That’s a big majority and those people think Hanson is the one person who’s prepared to say she doesn’t like these ceremonies.
But there’s no doubt immigration is the most potent issue driving up One Nation’s vote.
Thanks to the Howard government’s Tampa policies we have a negligible problem with illegal immigration. But there are a very large number of migrants coming into Australia from all corners of the world.
Those migrants who don’t integrate and who have been playing out the tensions and hatreds of the parts of the world from which they have come have turned a sizeable proportion of the population against immigration.

The reptiles briefly interrupted with an unfortunate reminder of the current ethnic cleansing, Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke have been heckled as “genocide supporters” during Eid celebrations at a mosque in south-west Sydney. The pair made an appearance this morning at Lakemba Mosque, the largest in the country, which sits within Mr Burke’s electorate of Watson, when hecklers tore into them over the Israel-Gaza conflict.

His Lordship took the cue ...

Events such as the massacre of the Jews at Bondi Beach last December only inflame private hostility to immigration. The scene last Friday of Anthony Albanese being heckled and abused at a Lakemba mosque in Sydney plays into this same sentiment.
Hanson may say hurtful and insensitive things, in particular about Muslims, most of whom are perfectly reasonable law-abiding citizens, but her comments play into the private views of many, many people.
These are just examples of how many South Australians and indeed Australians from around the country feel and why they are increasingly flocking to One Nation. It’s not that One Nation has any particular policies that would address housing shortages, the cost of living, electricity prices and so on. It’s that a lot of perfectly patriotic and decent Australians think she stands up for Australia.
It’s as simple as that. They know if they speak out on these issues they will be accused of being racists and fascists and so on.
Instead of speaking out, they vote in the privacy of the ballot box and they are increasingly voting for One Nation.
This is the Australian version of a phenomenon that has been under way in Britain and the EU for quite some time. A sizeable percentage of their populations is fed up with the progressive agenda promoted by the centre-left and often supported by the centre-right.
They are upset about illegal immigration and the restructuring of society to accommodate migrants rather than encouraging the integration of migrants. As in Australia, disruptive and aggressive demonstrations over issues such as Middle East wars only exacerbate this sentiment.
Sure, they have cost-of-living issues, rising electricity prices and escalating housing prices, just as we have, but it’s not those issues driving the rush to populist politics. The answer to the rise of populist politics, including One Nation, is not to ape their positions, but it will require imagination and leadership to address the concerns of the public. That includes addressing, not ignoring, the overreach by progressives.

The reptiles tried to calm Lord Downer by trotting out the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, with some prime Angus rib insights...

Dear sweet long absent lord, the beefy boofhead entirely ignored Lord Downer on the matter of patriotism and furriners and all that jazz, and instead insisted on numbing the hive mind with talk economic matters, like a beekeeper spraying smoke to quieten the buzzing ...

...Australia needs disciplined economic management again and a government that lives within its means so Australians can live within theirs.
This is ultimately a choice about the kind of economy we want. Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers are turning Australia into a government-directed economy.
The Coalition will tip the scales back towards a free-enterprise economy, with a freedom agenda at its core. We want workers to keep more of what they earn through lower taxes.
We want businesses freed from excessive regulation that stifles initiative. We want industries unshackled so we make more here, not offshore. And we want Australians to have more choice, with less interference from government. Because when government gets out of the way, it drives aspiration, investment and growth.
That is how you bring inflation down, take pressure off interest rates and rebuild confidence.
Economic policy should be judged by a simple test. Does it improve the lives of Australian families? Right now too many Australians are going backwards. That must change. We will protect Australians’ way of life and restore their standard of living.

Talk about entirely missing the Lord Downer point. 

Anyone wanting more of this idle, unpatriotic guff about folks living within their means will have to head off to the intermittent archive ...

It won't take long because the best the beefy boofhead could manage was three minutes of bluster and blather...

It was left to the Caterist to contemplate the ultimate solution ...

Oh dear, not Tamworth's enduring shame, not the man who trained as an accountant and keeps on performing as a cocky, not the bull in the back paddock that's all horn and no head, always willing to butt brain with furriners ...

Won't someone remind him that the Caterist is something of a black sheep, sent out to the colony to perform the duties of a whingeing Pom.

As if to prove the point, the Caterist almost sounded like a woke humourless fright ...

Is it a Liberal Party in the sense of being opposed to conservatism, like the governing Canadian Liberal Party? Or is it liberal in a conservative, 19th-century manner, accepting that while our institutions are not perfect, the last thing we should do is knock them down to clear the ground for the new utopia? The tension between the two visions manifests itself in issues such as climate change, hate speech laws, Aboriginal special privilege and immigration.
More often than not, the Liberal Party has tried to smother the argument with polite silence. It hasn’t worked. Sooner or later, a One Nation-shaped thing was bound to fill the gap in the market for plain talking. One Nation’s campaign line – “we say what you’re thinking” – is more than just a slogan. It’s the complete mission statement of a party that is strong on conviction but light on policy. All talk but no action.
When the Liberal Party was in the hands of solid-blue conviction conservatives such as John Howard and Tony Abbott, One Nation’s appeal was limited. Yet the more bland the Libs become, the more One Nation thrives. Outrage, clarity and conflict work well in the era of political TikTokisation. Measured, relaxed and comfortable fall flat.
Cory Bernardi clocked up tens of thousands of “likes” by standing in front of the Ngangkiku Ngartuku Kukuwardli (otherwise known as the Adelaide Women’s and Children’s Hospital) to mock SA Health’s dual naming policy. “Why?” he asked. “No one knows where the Googa Waggly centre is.” You don’t have to be a hum­our­less fright to find lame jokes such as this unworthy of a state political leader.
If One Nation wants to change the policy, it must build an intelligent and persuasive case, as the No campaigners did at the voice referendum. Yet One Nation has no intention of mastering the art of persuasion. It is not and never will be a party of government, not while it remains a Hansonite party, one of limited ambition, content to barrack from the grandstand rather than lace its boots and get on to the field.

Um, could it be that Cory and the Hansonites sound Über-reptile? 

And only now, in a dim way, looking into the darkness, have the reptiles realised they are Dr Frankenstein, and this is their monster? One Nation SA leader Cory Bernardi speaks to supporters at an election night event at the Kent Town Hotel. Picture: NewsWire/ Emma Brasier

Oh dear, that triggered another contractual obligation ...

Carry on cratering ...

Pauline Hanson made that point explicitly this month. “I don’t want any ministerial positions,” she told Sky News. “I want to remain completely independent to judge the legislation that’s being put up.”
Hanson appears indifferent as to which party gets to put forward legislation. Yet Saturday’s result confirms that it inevitably will be Labor, since a fractured centre-right cannot win government. Indeed, a Balkanised conservative movement serves to make Labor’s job easier, so long as it keeps itself tidy and resists the temptation to go the full woke monty.
Just follow the numbers. Labor’s 33.8 per cent of the popular vote in 2013 under Kevin Rudd was labelled disastrous. Nine years later, 32.6 per cent was hailed as a stunning triumph for Anthony Albanese. On current polling, Labor could secure a dominant lower house majority with a vote in the upper 20s. On Saturday, Alexander Downer declared the result the worst in the Liberals’ history. It wasn’t. In the 2021 WA election Zac Kirkup shrank the WA parliamentary Liberal Party from 13 seats to two all by himself.
Before Ashton Hurn became leader in December there was a widespread expectation the SA Libs would suffer a similar fate and would be replaced by One Nation as the official opposition. Yet while the Liberal Party has been humbled, it is institutionally intact.
Under the leadership of a country girl from Nuriootpa High, the Liberals are on track to return as a plausible seven-member opposition, albeit as a diminished force, but a basis from which to begin turning the party around.

How could the reptiles resist a restatement of croweater fashion sense, straight out of Paris, by way of Dutch and willow pattern decor? 

They simply couldn't ... State Liberal Leader Ashton Hurn speaking about the Liberal election results with Liberal. Picture: Brett Hartwig

The Caterist returned to sorting out the implications ...

Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan’s leadership offered a clean break, but the real resurgence is coming from the grassroots, driven by the realisation that, despite One Nation’s rise in the polls, a Liberal-National government is the only viable alternative to a bad Labor government.
The pattern of support for One Nation on Saturday revealed the party’s vulnerability if the Coalition can return to its traditional strengths. The Farrer by-election will test whether its strong performance in country electorates can be repeated in NSW, Victoria and Queensland, where the Nationals are a strong force.
One Nation also ran well in Adelaide’s northern growth belt among two-car families with mortgages. By returning to their traditional role as a party of homeowners and responsible economic management, the Liberals can win back the mortgage belt on the outer metropolitan fringes where the dual pressures of interest rates and fuel prices will only intensify.
Labor also lost votes to One Nation, albeit in smaller numbers, and with no erosion of its parliamentary strength. Yet it is a reminder that One Nation, properly contained, can be the Coalition’s ally rather than an irritant.
Yet we can forget the fanciful notion that the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation can form government in a grand coalition. The century-old National-Liberal partnership endures for a reason.
It evolved to adapt to Australia’s singular instant run-off voting system. The convention that prevents two parties from competing for the same electorate, together with a tight preference exchange, maximises the efficiency of conservative votes and avoids wasting energy on internal fights.
With the best will in the world, it is hard to imagine One Nation maturing into such a responsible partner.

So that's it, the beefy boofhead is on his own.

For a final flourish, the reptiles forgave the Caterist for having gone eastern stater, and reminded the hive mind that for all his expertise on the movements of floodwaters in Queensland quarries, he was heart of hearts, the very worst thing that troubled Lord Downer - a bloody furriner - and yet at the same time, a crow eater...

Nick Cater was state political editor for The Advertiser, 1990-93.

Phew, the pond escaped the 'Tiser and croweater land in the nick of time ... and it was left to the immortal Rowe to conjure up the dire situation ...

Sheesh, the ongoing impact of climate change regularly offers shocks to the system.

Meanwhile, the reptiles had assigned simplistic Simon to deal with the war...

We’re at the edge of a crisis, so how will Future Made in Australia help?
There’s an urgent need to repurpose the nation’s bureaucratic architecture to plan for the new age of uncertainty.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst

Splendid stuff, but that teaser trailer is more than enough and anyone wanting more can head off to the intermittent archive.

Confronted by a crisis, the pond will always turn to the Major on a Monday to explain the correct Zionist view ...

The header: Experts reveal path to victory over Iran despite media pessimism; Media opinions this soon about whether the US and Israel can win the war against Iran are worthless.

The caption for the snap of chaos: The remains of a residential and commercial buildingin the Shahrak-e Gharb neighbourhood of Tehran, Iran. Picture: Getty Images

Before carrying on with the Major, the pond wanted to at least note the suffering of the poor b*ggers (*google bot aware) caught between the hard place of Zionist war mongering and King Donald.

Notes on that can be found in The New Yorker:

What the War Has Done to Iranians
A civilian in Tehran chronicles a country trapped between bombardment and repression—too terrorized to move, let alone start an uprising.
By Cora Engelbrecht

Sadly the formatting made it impossible for the intermittent archive, but this was the last entry...

“Even when there were air strikes, people would cheer again, celebrate, make noise, express joy,” Hadi told me. “At the same time, everyone is still waiting for the Islamic Republic to surrender. The war is still ongoing. The Islamic Republic’s forces are still in the streets, armed. Innocent people are still being killed. We truly didn’t want things to come to this. We just hope that in the new year, everything finally stops—that this cycle ends, that people with weapons stop roaming the streets.”
“As for me, my situation is clear,” he added. “I want to remain close to what’s happening. I’m staying here in the middle of the war until the very end, until my home, what I consider my home, is taken away from me.”

Abandoned and betrayed, and don't expect any hope from the Major, intent on settling media scores...

Media opinions this soon about whether the US and Israel can win the war against Iran are worthless.

As a meta-ironic opening that takes the cake, what with the Major proposing at the outset that his opinions are entirely worthless, and who could argue with that, but the Major carried on at great length being completely worthless ...

The attack that started on February 28 was only days old when many journalists began claiming it was lost because Iran was blocking oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
No surprise many were negative: outlets such as The New York Times were always going to criticise the campaign after Donald Trump started claiming victory on day two.
By last week, foreign policy conservatives were joining US Democrats and the left-wing US media establishment to declare Trump had lost – all by day 18.
It’s too soon to know.
This column reckons it was always obvious Iran would try to disrupt the oil market, attack its Sunni Arab neighbours and try to shut the Strait. It’s done all three before.
Critics who claim Israel and the US are running out of defensive weapons are wrong. Israel’s military Substack, Mission Brief, says Iran’s rate of fire is only a fraction of what it was last year, and much less than a fortnight ago. Israel says it has large stockpiles for the Iron Dome.
It’s also far too early to claim the Iranian regime will survive and Hormuz cannot be reopened.
Mehdi Parpanchi, executive editor at US-based Iran International TV, says the signs from Tehran suggest not that the regime is holding on – as Trump’s critics claim – but rather that prepared plans for how the revolution might survive even if the centre were destroyed are already in operation.
In 2012 the regime drew up contingency plans, Parpanchi wrote in a piece headlined “What Looks Like Resilience in Iran Is Its Collapse Plan”.
“The Islamic Republic prepared for the moment when its centre would be hit, and its command structure would fracture. In that scenario regional units keep firing, security forces keep repressing and the state projects fragments of normality even as central control collapses.”
He argues that “quiet streets do not mean public submission”, and says the US should not believe the authorities have reasserted control, or that people have “rallied around the flag”. They are staying indoors because Reza Pahlavi, the last shah’s son, has urged them to.
Continued missile strikes from Iran “do not show strategic coherence”.
Parpanchi quotes Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who was asked about Iranian strikes on Oman, one of Iran’s closest allies. He replied: “What happened in Oman was not our choice.”
The military units involved were acting “based on instructions given to them in advance”.
The IRGC machine keeps firing “because it was built to outlive” its leaders. It only needs to keep going “until the United States loses the will to continue”. President Trump’s strategic advisers will understand this.
How about global media pessimism at the blockage of oil tankers through Hormuz?
Middle East Forum executive director Gregg Roman published three lengthy essays last week outlining a path to success. Most pertinent to the oil question is the third, “Breaking the Gate”, which describes the blocking of the Strait as an insurance problem rather than a military issue.
Published on March 16, Roman says the US is not facing a naval blockade. Neither has the Strait been mined, and some boats are proceeding with IRGC permission.
“An insurance-driven shutdown has been achieved by a handful of drones that cause war-risk underwriters to pull commercial shipping coverage,” Roman says.
He argues the US needs to step up degradation of Iranian naval power and use financial pressure across its allies to force underwriters back into the insurance market.
Roman says most of the coastal provinces along the Iranian coast are Arab rather than ethnically Persian. Four million Ahvazi Arabs who live in the south have faced “discrimination, cultural suppression and economic marginalisation by Tehran”.
Most are in Khuzestan Province, which produces 90 per cent of the country’s oil. Roman urges more dialogue with Ahvazi resistance movements.
This does not need to threaten Hormuz directly: “It needs to force IRGC ground forces … and logistical capacity away from Hormozgan Province, where the Strait narrows to 21 miles and where … remaining drone and fast-boat capability is concentrated.”

Eventually the reptiles got around to interrupting this splendid analysis ... entirely worthless, but with a snap of kit in action, A navy vessel is seen sailing in the Strait of Hormuz. Picture: AFP

The Major carried on with the important business of being worthless, quoting others at length and shedding tears for King Donald and Xian Karoline ...

Roman outlines a detailed plan for military escorts through the Strait and points out Pakistan is already doing this with its commercial shipping.
Remember too that despite Trump’s denials that he plans to send in troops, 2200 Marines are being moved into the area. The Wall Street Journal on Friday outlined how they could be used to take control of Iran’s various island oil export facilities.
All this may prove too optimistic. Neither critics nor supporters can know yet.
While Trump and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt have complained about US media coverage, both knew in advance the liberal US media never gives a Republican president a fair go.
A Wall Street Journal editorial on March 16 said: “Journalists have a right and a duty to report bad news and Pollyannaish reports from the US government. But many seem to be going beyond that and rooting for America to lose – against an enemy that is the world’s biggest state sponsor of terror.”
The New York Times has reported what it calls a schism inside Trump’s MAGA movement driven by criticism of the war by Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.

At this point the reptiles reminded the pond of the woman who believed in a white Jesus, and at one time was all in on the war on Xmas, Political commentator Megyn Kelly. Picture: Getty Images

The Major decided to defeat the heartless harridan with a poll ...

Batya Ungar-Sargon, in The Free Press on March 17, corrected the record.
“A poll of Americans who voted for Trump found that even 74 per cent of libertarians approve of the campaign. The same poll found that the vast majority of respondents who get their news from the very podcasters denouncing the war as ‘Israel’s war’ support the war – and Israel.” That support was 78 per cent.

All that did was remind the poll of the enormous stupidity of the 'new' CNN when it comes to polling, celebrated by Colby Hall in Mediaite ...

...Enten, CNN’s chief data analyst, was brought on Wednesday morning to answer a specific question: is there a ...growing divide in MAGA world? It was a reasonable question. There have been prominent voices on the right publicly furious about Trump’s war with Iran, citing his promise of no new wars. Tucker Carlson has broken publicly with the administration. The segment had an actual story to chase.
Enten waved it off before the data even appeared. “Tucker Carlson be darned,” he said, and pivoted to the number he wanted to talk about instead.
That number: MAGA Republicans approve of Donald Trump at 100 percent. Zero disapprove. “You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to know you can’t go higher than 100%,” Enten said. “He is the 1972 Miami Dolphins,” breathlessly referencing the only NFL team to go an entire season undefeated and win the Super Bowl.
The thing is, he is right that you don’t need to be a mathematical genius, but for all the wrong reasons. You only need to be able to read a label to come up with his really basic, not-so-newsy conclusion.
You see, MAGA is, by definition, the pro-Trump faction of the Republican Party. Polling MAGA on Trump approval doesn’t produce a finding. It produces a tautology — a conclusion that was never in doubt because it’s built into the premise.
Think of it as polling Catholics on whether they believe in God. Or Cubs fans on whether they love the Cubs. Or asking people who just joined a Trump fan club how they feel about Trump. The answer is baked in before the first call is dialed.
Enten confirmed the circularity on air without appearing to notice — when pressed on Republicans who disapprove of Trump, he explained they “are not members of the Make America Great Again movement.” Correct. The category excludes dissenters by design. CNN then packaged the absence of dissenters as the news.

There's more on Enten's nonsense ...

There’s a real story in this poll if you want one. On Iran, 52 percent of registered voters say the U.S. should not have taken military action, against 41 percent who say it should. That’s a majority against the war. The data also shows the fracture Enten was ostensibly brought on to examine — non-MAGA Republicans approve of military action in Iran at just 54 percent, against 90 percent among MAGA Republicans. That’s a real split inside the GOP. Complicated. Requires context. Doesn’t end with a perfect score.
So CNN led with the tautology instead. The segment closed with anchor and analyst finishing each other’s sentences. “MAGA has the floor,” Sara Sidner said. “MAGA has the floor, 100%,” Enten confirmed. It had the cadence of a bit, not a briefing.

... but the pond must get back to the Major's war mongering ...

Whatever Western journalists say, the media and political leadership of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are urging Trump to finish the job in Iran.
The UAE Minister for Industry, Sultan Al Jaber, told the WSJ last week: “Any long-term political settlement must address the full spectrum of threats, including Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile capabilities and their network of regional proxies.”
Supporting action against Iran, Khalid Al Malik, the editor-in-chief of the Saudi state daily, Al Jazirah, wrote on March 10: “It is important to note that what Hamas did on October 7 has brought destruction on several countries, causing the deaths and injury of thousands.’’
Finally, to journos claiming on X that Israel has been lying about Iran’s nuclear intentions.
MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) last week quoted leading Iranian nuclear scientist Fereydoon Abbasi, a former head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation, saying on May 26 last year that Iran was working on tactical nuclear weapons that “may not fall under the definition of WMDs (weapons of mass destruction)”.
“Now is the time for Israelis to leave,” he said. “No location inside the Zionist regime should be regarded as immune.”
Abbasi was killed by Israel in June.
Why doubt the scientists when their leaders have sworn to destroy Israel and the US?

The pond settled in for the world going through a major slump, all thanks to Benji, rampant Zionism, and a deluded, demented, deeply narcissist King, keen at every turn to avoid the Trumpstein files ...

And here the pond must revert to its promise of offering a Lord Downer special this day

After all, the pond had regretted that yesterday, because of space limitations, there had been no room for His Lordship's appearance in the Sunday Snail ... (it's not just the cane toaders who have their own snail. Once upon a time, the croweater version made a living on a Sunday flogging entirely useless furniture available in the LeCornu store).

Here it is, shorn of interruptions, in screen cap form, a reminder of the apparent ability of His Lordship to repeat himself endlessly ....

The pond isn't going to interrupt, that would be rude, and anyway, why add to the repetitions?

And so to close with poor old Horsey trying to cope.

He began his cartoon with this analysis ...

And then in the second part, he tried to encourage rebellion ...

Fat chance, you're deep in the hole ...