In which a bunch of reptile second stringers hit the couch, including the swishing Switzer, the Bjørn-again one, and the lizard Oz editorialist ...

 

Some days the pond feels like a psychiatrist, required to listen to the saucy doubts and fears of the reptiles, with weekends a special time for clamouring alarm.

Take Dame Slap, please, someone take her.

She's settled on her latest jihad, and so she's at Juliar again, albeit just a way to have yet another burst of transphobic bigotry ... and not being a caring shrink, the pond decided to evict her from the couch and send her to the intermittent archive ...

Julia Knew. She owes Australian women an apology
Women are women, and Julia Gillard owes them all an apology
What does Julia Gillard know now that she didn’t in 2013: that a woman is a woman? That women are entitled to their own spaces?
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

How the reptiles hate TG folk, and the pond is aware that sometimes, confronted by gender uncertainty in the wild, have had a nervous breakdown in the presence of a hermaphrodite. Stay away from tunicates, mollusks and especially earthworms...

What else? Well there was more fear and alarm with a bit of Bita ...

EXCLUSIVE
Explorer’s journals censored at top university
Journals of explorer Edward Eyre censored at University of Sydney
An Oxford historian has compared Australia’s cancel culture to the Soviet Union and the Third Reich, after a university library redacted freely available 181-year-old explorer journals on ‘cultural safety’ grounds.
By Natasha Bita

What a howling and gnashing of teeth and stern words about "virtue signalling".

The pond finally reached the end and thought it was a bit of a storm in a shrink's teacup...

...The University of Sydney spokeswoman said on Friday that Professor Goldman was given “full access to digitised versions for research, and the physical items remain intact and available for scholarly use under appropriate conditions.’’
She said online redaction was used in “limited case-by-case situations’’ for cultural, ethical or privacy reasons.
“It’s not a judgment on the historical value of the material and doesn’t limit access to the original works for legitimate research,’’ the spokeswoman said.

Steady on, all them tribal secrets belong us white folk...

And so to the first patient pouring out his heart and his devotion...

The header: Why this proud Australian will always believe in the American experiment;Yes, there’s a gulf between the nation’s ideals and its conduct, yet the country’s capacity for self-correction still remains unmatched.

The caption for the weird collage, sans any credit, suggesting no human hand was involved in the production of  this monstrosity: My affection for America runs deeper than nostalgia and popular culture.

Wonder Woman as the central focus? A woman who is notoriously the biological daughter of the Greek god Zeus, and so who's actual gender identity must be uncertain. Some think she might be the daughter of Hades, who is said to have helped Hippolyta mould her from clay. Can she be called a woman at all, though it might well be a wonder? Careful, Dame Slap is on the prowl, and might well take a view.

Not to worry, the trick here is to avoid mentioning mad King Donald and the current state of the disunited states, and the swishing Switzer shows a singular ability at this task.

I’m a proud Australian. But I also love America. I was born in Dallas and remain a diehard Cowboys NFL fan. My Texan father served as a marine in Vietnam and, while on R&R in Sydney, met my Australian mother at a Kings Cross pub.
My favourite beer is Samuel Adams Boston Lager and I have a congenital weakness for American fast food.
For more than three decades I’ve scarcely missed a day reading The Wall Street Journal editorial pages. For my sins, I also read – gasp! – the more left-liberal New York Times.
My favourite job (apart, of course, from editing The Australian’s opinion pages) was at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. My dream getaway is lovely, misty little Annapolis, Maryland, with its cobbled streets, cosy bars and home of the US Naval Academy (where my Australian father-in-law once served on exchange).
I proudly wear Richard Nixon ties, and my office and home are decorated with presidential busts and 40 framed American political cartoons. Crikey, my first crush was Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter: “in your satin tights, fighting for your rights and the old red, white and blue”. And I never miss a Super Bowl!

Dear sweet long absent lord, he wears tricky Dick ties? While the reptiles paused for snap of a form of football largely ignored by the rest of the world, shades of Black Sunday ...The Seattle Seahawks celebrate their 29-13 victory over the New England Patriots at Super Bowl LX.

...the pond headed off to relive some favourite tricky Dick/peace prize winner moments...

That felt better and now for the swishing Switzer running deep, but not so silent ...

But my affection for America runs deeper than nostalgia and popular culture. It is also philosophical.
I have long agreed with Ronald Reagan’s observation that the American Revolution was “the only true philosophical revolution in all history”. Writing about Independence Day in 1981, the Gipper argued that while other revolutions merely replaced one ruling class with another, the American Revolution transformed the very idea of government itself.
That is why the 250th anniversary of the Fourth of July is such a remarkable celebration. Americans commemorate not merely their independence but also the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence, principally drafted by that great man of the Enlightenment Thomas Jefferson: liberty, equality of opportunity and government deriving its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. They celebrate those ideals not simply to honour the past but to recommit themselves to them.

Philosophy? The pond thinks it might be psychological. It certainly involves memory loss about the way things are at the moment.

The reptiles were also careful to ignore mad King Donald in their selection of cheap snaps, John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence (1817–1819) depicts the presentation of the draft document to the Continental Congress on June 28, 1776.

That inspired the swishing Switzer to more celebration and more avoidance ...

No serious observer would deny the gulf that has often existed between America’s ideals and its conduct. Slavery and segregation all testify to that. Yet the significance of the Fourth of July is precisely that it reminds Americans that their founding principles remain standards by which they judge themselves, and aspirations that remain unfinished.
None of this is to disguise or excuse America’s shortcomings. The foreign policy setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and, more recently, Iran, mounting public debt and chronic deficits, growing political polarisation and an increasingly more multipolar world have all dented American confidence.
We’ve been here before. With the end of the Cold War nearly four decades ago, there were, as the godfather of American neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, warned, “clear signs of rot and decay germinating in American society”. And distinguished British historian Paul Kennedy wrote his thesis on American decline that made him famous among the elites.
Yet 35 years since the collapse of Soviet communism, America remains globally dominant in technology and artificial intelligence, the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, and the leader of global growth: whereas in 1990, at the height of the unipolar moment, the US economy accounted for 40 per cent of the G7 GDP, today it’s nearly 60 per cent.
Jefferson understood that liberty begins in the mind. Once governments acquire the power to police opinion or punish dissent, every other freedom is placed at risk. That insight, central to the American founding, deserves to be remembered on this Fourth of July as much as any other.

The pond began to develop a diagnosis of latent schizophrenia ... I keep returning to Martin Luther King’s enduring appeal that America should be judged not by the standards of others but by its own magnificent promises.

Uh huh...

...Many black leaders, including Martin Luther King, Sr., and Jackie Robinson, initially supported Nixon’s 1960 bid for the presidency. Blacks believed Nixon to be more committed to civil rights reform than President Eisenhower had been, but the attitudes of black voters shifted during the final days of the 1960 presidential campaign. In October 1960 King was sentenced to four months in jail for violating his probation after participating in an Atlanta sit-in. After encouragement from Harris Wofford and other advisors, Nixon’s opponent, John F. Kennedy, phoned Coretta Scott King to convey his sympathy. King expressed disappointment that, despite his previously warm relationship with Nixon, “When this moment came, it was like he had never heard of me.” King believed Nixon’s inaction made him appear as “a moral coward and one who was really unwilling to take a courageous step and take a risk” (King, 9 March 1964). Kennedy’s phone call and his campaign’s discreet publicity promoting his role in releasing King from jail gained him the support of many black voters, and he defeated Nixon by less than one percent of the popular vote.

Give that man a moral coward tricky Dick neck tie, for the lynching thereof ...

There are times when America seems to fall short of that ideal. Last year, for example, an Australian writer was detained and ultimately deported after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport. US officials reportedly questioned him at length about articles he had written on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and protests at Columbia University before refusing him entry. Whatever the merits of his views, the episode raised uncomfortable questions about freedom of expression in a nation that has long presented itself as the world’s foremost defender of free speech.
Yet I keep returning to Martin Luther King’s enduring appeal that America should be judged not by the standards of others but by its own magnificent promises, set out in the Declaration of Independence. In that same spirit, Bill Clinton declared on his first day as president: “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”

Slick Willie, is there a blow job in the house? America recovered from the civil war, the Depression and, eventually, the trauma of Vietnam and Watergate.

Sssh, don't mention Iran or those pesky straits.

The swishing Switzer quickly wound down, with not one mention of the heroics of mad King Donald's fair, nor the way that former Olympians had ravaged and ruined a reflecting pool designed to be a central part of the celebrations ...
One of the most remarkable features of American history has been the nation’s extraordinary capacity for self-correction. It recovered from the civil war, the Depression and, eventually, the trauma of Vietnam and Watergate with a resilience unmatched by other great powers.
Whether it can do so again in the face of a rising China and toxic political polarisation at home may be the defining political question of our age.
America has never been perfect. It never will be. But few nations have shown a greater capacity to acknowledge their failures, renew themselves and strive, however imperfectly, towards their founding ideals. That is why, despite everything, this proud Australian will always have a soft spot for the American experiment.
Happy Fourth of July!
Tom Switzer hosts the podcast Switzerland.

That's got to be worth a 'toon or two ...

Meanwhile, as the official paper for One Nation and Pauline, the reptiles were wildly excited by their latest poll...

Labor and Anthony Albanese on the slide in three states, Newspoll finds
Prime Minister’s net approval rating has collapsed in every key state as One Nation’s record surge rewrites Australian political allegiances.
By Geoff Chambers

In fact Geoff chambered several rounds at the top of the digital edition ...

Do you slowly’: Labor’s old plan to defeat new enemy One Nation
‘Do you slowly’: Labor’s plan to crush One Nation
Gearing up for a 2028 election, the PM takes a leaf from Paul Keating’s script in his plan to wrest votes from One Nation as support for Pauline Hanson’s party surges to a record high.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

That seemed to be the motto for the dog botherer.

You see, the reptiles have been doing the government quickly for the way it has allegedly produced a slump in real estate prices, a key way to introduce some affordability into the market.

But the dog botherer has discovered a weird kind of affinity with long-suffering vulgar youff ...no, strike that, with the already entitled doomed to suffer ...

Debt trap: the crushing reality of trying to buy your first home
Crushing reality of buying a home: dream traps young in a debt nightmare
Labor has subsidised hundreds of thousands of Australians into homes it is now helping make less valuable, with experts warning a property crash is not out of the question.
By Chris Kenny
Associate Editor (National Affairs)

Enough already, given the recent heat in Europe and the current heat in the disunited States, the pond wanted to sit a patient in the couch and discuss climate change, and who better than the Bjørn-again one?

The header: WHO misleads public with cherrypicked climate data; The world’s peak health body has used European heat death figures that exaggerate the true risk more than 50-fold.

The caption for the poetic image of the sun beating down: European heat death risk has risen 82 per cent since 1990. But heat mortality risk rises sharply with age and Europe has aged dramatically. Picture: AFP

Indeed, indeed, who cares if some oldies shuffle off in the heat, they were going to die anyway, so let them wilt.

Unfortunately the Bjørn-again one is only willing to spend three or so minutes on the couch, but that was more than enough time for him to lather himself into a frenzy ...

At the start of the FIFA World Cup in North America, sensationalist headlines suggested climate change could make the games “the most dangerous ever” because of the heat. Of course the claim is absurd given that the previous tournament was played in much hotter conditions in Qatar, but it is an excellent example of the activist-driven climate alarm stories we see every summer.
Riding this wave, the World Health Organisation is again blurring the line between evidence-based public health and climate advocacy. A WHO commission made up of politicians and green advocates has urged the organisation to declare climate change a “public health emergency of international concern”.

Dammit, as if a few deaths made any difference to the joys of experiencing climate change ... cue an aV distraction, The World Health Organisation has attributed 1300 unexpected deaths across Europe to its record heatwave. National temperature records in Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic were set on Sunday. France's Health Ministry says there have been 1000 more deaths than expected in the country since Wednesday.

And after that AV distraction, the Bjørn-again one was left to his own data-mangling devices, wherein all is well, and all will be well ...

This is a flashback to the 2010s when WHO’s director-general named climate change the most important health issue of the 21st century. Not long after, Covid arrived – and WHO’s preparedness and early response were found deeply wanting.
The lesson clearly was not learned. The WHO commission’s headline claim is that climate change poses a “catastrophic threat to human health”. Its key evidence comes from a Lancet study showing heat deaths in Europe are rising rapidly, reaching 63,000 a year. Even setting aside the peculiarity of a global health emergency built primarily on European data, the argument collapses under scrutiny.
European heat death risk has risen 82 per cent since 1990. But heat mortality risk rises sharply with age and Europe has aged dramatically. Since 1990, the share of the European population over 70 has increased by 78 per cent. Ageing alone explains virtually all of the observed increase in heat deaths. The study and the commission simply ignore this.
Any honest analysis of mortality would use age-standardised death rates that make figures comparable over time. The WHO report makes no such adjustment.
The Global Burden of Disease, the leading mortality database, does. It shows that Europe’s age-standardised heat death risk has changed only marginally since 1990. Adjusted to reflect today’s population size and age distribution, the increase amounts to fewer than 850 additional heat deaths. The WHO commission’s figures exaggerate the problem more than 50-fold.
The deeper dishonesty lies in what the report omits. As temperatures rise, heat deaths increase but cold deaths fall. Cold deaths far outnumber heat deaths on every continent. Using the age-standardised methodology that reveals minimal heat death increases, cold death rates in Europe have nearly halved since 1990. At today’s population levels, that translates to about 210,000 fewer cold deaths each year. The WHO commission conceals the fact cold deaths have declined by about 250 times as much as heat deaths have risen.
The report’s second big claim is that climate change in Europe has made more Europeans food insecure. This strains credulity. Real food insecurity lies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The claim also ignores UN projections showing the world on track for record cereal production. If the WHO commission were genuinely concerned about the world’s hungry, it would lead with those facts.
There is a cruel irony in the commission’s prescription. Climate policies have already made electricity three to four times costlier for consumers in Europe than in the US and China, and more than a third of all Europeans now say they can’t afford airconditioning. Making even more aggressive emissions cuts would raise energy costs further, making heatwaves even deadlier for those who cannot afford airconditioning and prolonged cold deadlier for those who cannot afford heating.
Higher energy prices also raise the cost of fertiliser and mechanised farming, pushing more people in developing countries into hunger. The prescribed cure is worse than the disease.
The WHO director who convened the commission writes that “our citizens expect urgency from us” as though he were an elected politician rather than a health official. What global citizens expect from doctors is honest, evidence-based counsel. They do not expect clinical authority to be borrowed for political purposes or public alarm to be manufactured by omitting data that would defuse it.
WHO exists to prevent disease and protect human health. Declaring a climate emergency on the basis of cherrypicked, misleading statistics will not protect the most vulnerable. It will erode the organisation’s credibility further, divert attention and resources from real threats and lend political cover to costly policies that harm the people WHO claims to champion.
Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and author of False Alarm and Best Things First.

Yes, air-conditioning is the way forward, and while Bjørn-again one is coy about it - he doesn't once mention the life-giving power of coal - it's clear to many reptiles that these A/Cs should be run on dinkum, virginal, clean Oz coal. 

Now that'll fix the planet and what ails it ...

And so to a special treat. 

After consigning a few reptiles to fill up the pond's meditative Sunday, the pond decided to use the lizard Oz editorialist as couch filler.

Here you will find the distilled essence of darkness, the sort of analysis that defies treatment by any form of psychiatry ...

With the lizard Oz editorialist simpering like a swishing Switzer, that's got to be worth a few more 'toons ...

And there was also this ...

And yet ...he really did think he was a great man ...urging punters to judge him soberly and fairly ...

And lastly the lizard Oz editorialist was inevitably indignant, and it took quite a bit to get the anon scribbler from pacing about in an agitated manner, and head back to the couch for a bleat ...

Third Reich?

But surely Adolf was a great man, who needed to be judged fairly and soberly?

What an excellent set of distractions, while the looting and the rorting goes on apace ...

All's well, and will continue to be well ...

Our Henry, the Lynch Mob and Killer Creighton, and lots of links ... are you not Friday entertained?

 

How could the pond resist starting with the venerable Meade's pitch for "getting Murdoched"?

‘This is the dark art’: new book claims pattern of personal attacks by Murdoch media empire
In a book dedicated to ‘the bullied’, two former News Corp journalists outline a behaviour pattern they call ‘getting Murdoched’, which they say harms individuals and public debate

Inter alia ...

...“Murdoched”, a term Dodd and Ricketson coin for the book, means to be “editorially attacked when one’s ideas or deeds do not accord with the media proprietor’s programs or publications”.
The book examines “murdoching” across the US, the UK and Australia, including dozens of interviews with prominent people and ordinary citizens about the way they were treated in newspapers, such as the Sun and the New York Post, and cable television network Fox News.
Dedicated to “the bullied”, the book focuses squarely on Murdoch’s “way of doing journalism”, Dodd and Ricketson write. The techniques include unleashing a torrent of articles against particular targets “contesting even the tiniest of points, so as to wipe the critic’s original ideas from everyone’s mind”. Another is to attack the critic personally, “pitilessly and repeatedly”. When all else fails, “murdoching” is “simply continuing to assert something as true as if no one has ever shown it was false”, they write.
“Murdoch perverted the fourth estate function of journalism,” Dodd and Ricketson write. “Instead of it being a way to hold power to account, Murdoch saw it as a means of holding individuals to account, especially those who held views contrary to his own.”
The consequences, they argue, are severe: these tactics have a chilling effect on democracy and seriously harm those who are targeted. And across the US, the UK and Australia, the three markets where Murdoch’s outlets are dominant, they write, the techniques employed by the company’s journalists are similar.

Well yes, over the years of closely observing the reptiles at work in the lizard Oz, the pond has lost count of the endless amounts of invective and abuse directed at hapless victims, not to mention ideas or observations that don't accord with hive mind expectations.

Getting Murdoched is as good a term as any for these relentless jihads.

Put it another way, as the infallible Pope did ...

Well it's Foxy in a way ...

So who or what is getting Murdoched today?

Almost by way of caricature, an ancient jihad, dedicated to relentless assaults on Juliar - is there a chaff bag handy? - resurfaced today thanks to Dame Slap ...

First there was the set up, by way of an EXCLUSIVE ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘It was a different time’: Gillard remark ignites push on gender law
A women’s sex-based rights campaigner says ‘history will judge’ Anthony Albanese following Julia Gillard’s claims her 2013 gender reforms were not designed for the world they now govern.
By Rachel Baxendale, Jacquelin Magnay and Elizabeth Pike

Just below came Dame Slap, eager to keep the jihad flowing ...

Commentary by Janet Albrechtsen
The buck stops with our first female and feminist PM
I have always admired Julia Gillard’s life after politics. But alas, she deserves no credit for her public attempts to wheedle her way out of what her government did to Australian women in 2012.

Juliar and the chance to excoriate TG folk all in one bilious, indigestible assault!

Luckily the pond had other fish to fry this day and so could step around that particular jihad, by spending quality time with Our Henry ...

The header: A nation born to ‘save the world’ fights to save itself; The Declaration of Independence fuelled the aspiration to commit great deeds and ensured an immense gap between ambition and achievement.

The caption for the painting, perfect for the reptiles because it comes cheap from the archives: Declaration of Independence, painting by John Trumbull. Picture: Universal History Archive

The hole in bucket man decided he'd spend a bigly five minutes brooding about the state of the disunited states.

Would he mention Emeritus Chairman Rupert's role in degrading discourse to a point of insensibility, by way of Faux Noise? Would he note that mad King Donald is the final, perfect flowering of that degradation?

Of course not, Our Henry will stay resolutely shtum about all that, and wander back into the sheltering past in his usual way, though this day without the comfort of Thucydides ...

As Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the meaning they place on that founding document bears little relation to its meaning in 1776. That has been its fate since its earliest years – and it is precisely that capacity for reinterpretation that has enabled it to remain both relevant and revered.
The recasting of a document that answered the needs of one era to address those of another is hardly unusual. Magna Carta, which entrenched the privileges of the barons, was reimagined in the 16th and 17th centuries as the pillar of the liberties of freeborn Englishmen. So it has been, too, with the Declaration’s most famous proposition: the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal”.
Understanding that proposition requires a grasp of what made the Declaration truly revolutionary. There had been previous declarations of independence: the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), which asserted the freedom of the Scots nation, is one example among many. But the American Declaration broke new ground.
Whereas its predecessors had claimed independence on the basis of historical continuity, the American Declaration proclaimed its aim “to dissolve the political bands” that had connected “one people with another”, thereby bringing into existence an entirely new political community. Moreover, it rested that claim not on an imagined past but on “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”– that is, on natural rights.

And what of the white Xian nationalism currently rampant, and wanting to turn the nation literal creationist? Not to worry, pause for another cheap image from the archive, featuring dudes in their period glory, much like Our Henry, Drafting of the Declaration of Independence by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

The pond much prefers the conversation and insights offered by the two "the rest is history" dudes that came as an AV distraction at the end of yesterday's post, but that's yesterday, and now we're stuck here...

And finally, it announced that the new community was entitled to “assume among the powers of the earth” a “separate and equal station”, possessing, as a “Free and Independent State”, the “full Power to do all (the) Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do”.
Far from being central, the “self-evident” truth was instrumental to the Declaration’s main purpose. Deployed primarily to rebut the contention that the increasingly assertive colonial elites did not merit the same level of parliamentary representation as their British counterparts, it underpinned the colonists’ entitlement to control a polity of their own. It was therefore as the first act of collective self-determination, in which a nation willed itself into being and proclaimed its equality with states founded on centuries of dynastic succession, that the Declaration acquired immense historical significance.
Little wonder then that when Britain recognised the new polity at the end of the war in 1783, Edmond Burke remarked, with considerable astonishment, that “A great revolution has happened – a revolution made, not by chopping and changing of power in any one of the existing states, but by the appearance of a new state, of a new species, in a new part of the globe”. This was, he concluded, as momentous “as the appearance of a new planet would (be) in the system of the solar world”.
However, another feature of the Declaration’s intellectual context ensured that the “self-evident” truth did not remain confined to the sovereign equality of peoples, becoming instead what Martin Luther King referred to as the revolution’s great “promissory note” to generations of Americans.
For the new nation was by no means ordinary. Its birth, John Adams wrote in his diary, was “the opening of a grand design in Providence for the emancipation of mankind”. America was more than a state; it was a redeemer. The “infinite privilege” of the United States, Woodrow Wilson later claimed, was that of “saving the world”.

If you encourage this rampant form of exceptionalism, get ready to beat a path to mad Kind Donald, as the reptiles again resorted to an easy and cheap visual distraction... Leaders of March on Washington for Jobs & (sic) Freedom marching from right to left Rabbi Joachim Prinz, Eugene Carson Blake, Martin Luther King, Floyd McKissick, Matthew Ahmann and John Lewis in a scene from the TV documentary The Sixties. Picture: Robert W Kelley / Time Life Pictures

Our Henry eventually gets around to noting that maybe all is not well in the American dream, but safely insulates himself from the current awkward reality...

That sense of divine mission proved a two-edged sword. It inspired extraordinary confidence in the nation’s capacity for moral purpose. It was in the character of Americans, said Ronald Reagan in his first inaugural address, to “believe in ourselves and in our capacity to perform great deeds”.
And among the greatest of those deeds was the commitment, first clearly articulated by Abraham Lincoln, “to afford” every American “an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life”: that is, to realise in practice the “self-evident” equality announced at the republic’s birth.
Yet the vaulting ambition also imposed a burden of expectation so enormous as to ensure perpetual disappointment – and gave that disappointment an uncompromising moralism that could readily shade into fanaticism.
Never was that tendency more evident than during the fiery religious revivals – the “Great Awakenings” – that periodically swept the nation. Convinced that “God had shed further light upon his revelation” as a sign of “the coming Kingdom of God on earth”, movements sprang up that hailed the moment as the cusp of salvation. But as the boundary between this world and the next seemed to dissolve, so the power of Satan – and of his desperate attempts to thwart the divine plan – became ever more immediate.
With so much at stake, opposition was no longer a political disagreement to be accommodated or overcome; it was a demonic force, acting to undermine the millennial nation from within, that had to be decisively defeated.
The capacity of these movements to fracture the republic was all the greater because they drew together two powerful currents in American Protestantism whose influence long outlasted Protestantism’s cultural predominance: an Arminian conviction that individuals and societies alike could choose salvation, and an antinomian tendency to regard those acting under divine inspiration as released from ordinary moral and institutional restraints.
Whenever the social fabric weakened, the combination of those currents with the conviction that an evil conspiracy had gained control of the republic transformed political contention into moral warfare, driving the nation ever deeper into civil discord.

Instead of offering a snap of mad King Donald, the reptiles sought refuge in a safe archival 
harbour, Abraham Lincoln.

And Our Henry stayed stuck in the past, keen to offer little beyond bland generalities and ancient authors ...

The danger was not lost on contemporary observers. Having travelled through the United States in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville concluded that, while there were many fragilities, the republic’s survival depended less on its commendable constitutional arrangements than on “the habits of heart and mind” of its citizens – habits that leaned towards civility and restraint.
But those habits were precisely what the new moral politics threatened to dissolve. As rhetorical and physical violence mounted in the lead-up to the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln warned that the fading memory of the sacrifices on which the republic had been founded, together with the erosion of faith in its ideals, was removing the bulwarks that held it together.
With what he termed the “mobocratic spirit” – which recognised no limits to political conflict – on the rise, and the excesses of “the lawless in spirit” acquiring an alarming degree of legitimacy, “depend on it, this government cannot last”.
The redemptive fervour that had helped inspire the republic was now turning against it, transforming partisan rivalry into a fratricidal struggle. Unless a “political religion”, devoted to reverence for law and the orderly functioning of civil institutions, could once again bind Americans, Lincoln prophesied, the warring factions would not merely render those institutions ineffective; they would ensure their “total annihilation”.
Has Lincoln’s premonition ever rung truer? And are the dangers of the politics of raging self-righteousness not as great for us as they are for the United States? The enduring glory of the Declaration was that it gave the highest political expression to the Enlightenment ideals of reason, progress and ordered liberty. The question, on its 250th anniversary, is no longer whether those ideals can found free societies; it is whether they retain the moral force to preserve them.

Oh come on, just mention Faux Noise and its acme achievement, to which it remains American Fair devoted (and how many turned up to that state fair? Why squillions if you watched Faux Noise)...

And with that done, the pond's cup overflowed, because the Lynch mob was also out and about this day ... determined as always to defame and sully the reputation of the University of Melbourne:

The header: We need more in the academy to speak up against ideological bullying; When disagreement takes the form of co-ordinated ideological pressure aimed at shaming an individual into refusing a scholarly honour, it crosses a line.

The caption for a fuss in the ranks: Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine demonstrators at the University of Melbourne. Picture: Jason Edwards

This will be another familiar jihad for students of the lizard Oz's hive mind: a passionate plea for the right for the current government of Israel to continue with its ethnic cleansing and genocide, without let, hindrance or protest:

It is ironic that at a moment when we celebrate the most important open letter in the history of the world – the Declaration of Independence – a slither of Australia’s university class writes its own, demonising a democracy.
How Western civilisation has declined. And how much the signatories of this Israelophobic letter would love that to be true. There is no sacred honour being pledged here. Instead, Associate Professor Matthew Champion must give up a prize, worth $US300,000 ($434,000), because 150 (or so) “academics, writers, activists, and students” claim it “normalises the colonial occupation of Palestine, and Israel’s apartheid regime” to accept it.
“We the undersigned believe that acceptance of the award, in the context of ongoing Israeli genocide, war crimes, human rights abuses … is unconscionable”. All this because the prize giver, the Dan David Foundation, is insufficiently onside with this anti-Israel position of the activists. It is, of course, merely coincidental that the prize giver is Jewish.
Their text is bog-standard identity politics: define Israel as a “white settler” project, ignore Palestinian agency, treat Hamas voters in Gaza as a uniquely oppressed group (which they are not), and then chide any behaviour Israel takes in its own defence – and indeed anyone seen as complicit in that self-defence.
The clear implication is that Champion will be added to that list unless he turns down his prize – for work, get this, on medieval concepts of time.
Despite the ability of anti-Zionists to make campus life hard for their Jewish colleagues and students, I do not seek their silencing. I do not demand they repay their ARC grants – funded by an Australian government allied to the Zionist entity.
If we cancelled every professor that believes a crazy idea, the higher education sector would be in trouble. Better they find expression (and challenge) at a university than spilling over into the general population, though they do that too.
We are wrong to inflate the significance of this latest intercession. Note that the petitioners are a minority within a minority. Unless more coverage unlocks even more signatures, we are dealing with less than 0.01 per cent of university staff in Australia. My conversations with some of the other 99.99 per cent reveal colleagues delighted (read: very jealous) that Champion has won the historians’ jackpot.
Tiny factions can, of course, become powerful. Didn’t the Christians and the Bolsheviks start small?

The Lynch mob is of course faithfully following in the footsteps of the lizard Oz's jihad.

In the past days, there's been this ...

Top scholars leap to defence of University of Melbourne historian in academic ‘double standards’ row
High-profile scholars have accused more than 100 academics of double standards over demands that historian Matthew Champion return his Dan David Prize.

And this ...

Melbourne academic Matthew Champion rejects boycotters’ demands to return $435,000 history prize
Matthew Champion vows to keep the $435,000 Dan David Prize despite a campaign by more than 100 academics, including Randa Abdel-Fattah.

Ah that name, redolent of another reptile jihad.

The reptiles love soft Israeli power and are no doubt hoping to collect a prize for "best jihadists for ethnic cleansing" in the next year or so.

Meanwhile, the reptiles slipped in a snap ... Interim vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne Professor Glyn Davis. Picture: Aaron Francis / The Australian

The Lynch mob carried on exuding smug complacency, as is his wont ...

But I reckon those represented here are not the vanguard of a new revolutionary movement. They carry along too few comrades. I think even students are starting to twig that the jig is up. Stan Grant said, “identity is a cage in search of a bird”. After a three-year degree, some students are desperate to escape the group identities activist academics have put them in.
The signatories are thus neither a representative sample of Australian academics nor even of humanities and social science (HASS) scholars, where anti-Israel sentiment runs higher than in other disciplines. There is a special tragedy in that, which I will leave for another day.
Remember also that universities have a dual role: as asylums and as interfaces. We enable the brilliant work of researchers to inform and improve society. But we also have high walls that protect society from our activist obsessions. This open letter has not managed to clamber over that wall.
I’d be confident that everyone who has signed it considers himself an “antiracist” and likely a champion of that modish cause. We are then in the bizarre situation of having an official campus culture dedicated to antiracism seemingly unable to staunch the outbreak of one of the most ancient of hatreds: antisemitism.
My own university, to its credit, has congratulated Champion for his success and encouraged him to accept the prize. That sort of institutional resistance to ideological bullying matters. We need to see more of it in higher education.
This does, though, mask a deeper problem. This fixation with concepts of race, mostly imported from the American campus, has created a sea in which antisemites swim.
What if antiracism turns out to be an essential precursor of antisemitism? Its simple binaries lend themselves to the oppressor-versus-oppressed narrative that so distorts our understanding of Israel’s predicament.
The letter derides Israel as an apartheid state; the end of white rule in South Africa remains an enduring model for antiracists. But if Israel is an apartheid regime, it must have no right to exist. This open letter pretends to want one man to give up his history prize; its actual goal is the eradication of a nation.
The letter targets the Israeli government, Israeli state institutions, Israeli universities, the Dan David Foundation, and Zionism as a political project. Would a letter, demanding justice for the Uighurs, that targeted the Chinese government, Chinese state institutions, Chinese universities, and Chinese communism as a political project escape the accusation of Sinophobia? Wouldn’t such a campaign against Beijing inevitably invite racists to join it?
Champion is right to accept his prize. His colleagues are entitled to disagree and to challenge that decision. But when disagreement takes the form of co-ordinated ideological pressure aimed at shaming an individual into refusing a scholarly honour, it crosses an important line.
The far larger – and too often silent – majority of academics have a responsibility to speak up when public pressure campaigns like this become a form of ideological bullying.
Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.

Talking of ideological bullies, it takes one to know one, and once again, the University of Melbourne stands in the vanguard of ethnic cleansing as a natural, neigh inevitable way forward, the perfect resolution to the situation of Gaza and the West Bank ...

For further reading, see Haaretz's In His Own Words: Naftali Bennett Is Committed to Annexing the West Bank

And so on, and so much for alternatives to Benji, as the dissembling Lynch mob enthusiastically celebrates the cause ... joining that cosmic circus of clowns that helped Benji out with a war on Iran, and hasn't that turned out fine and dandy ...

Meanwhile, at the top of this day's early morning digital page, the reptiles were sparing a thought for Moira and carrying on their perennial jihad about taxes...

Just for the record, as the pond wouldn't want to tease without an intermittent archive link ...

EXCLUSIVE
Go harder on taxes: Labor’s wishlist for PM
NSW Labor pushes Anthony Albanese to go further on tax reforms
Following a controversial budget, NSW Labor’s grassroots branches now want a billionaires tax and an end to negative gearing grandfathering.
By Matthew Cranston

Urgent Hearing 
Deeming launches last ditch court bid to stop Libs dumping her
Moira Deeming is suing Victorian Liberal president Brian Loughnane on Friday to block her disendorsement, as Pauline Hanson declares One Nation doesn’t want the MP either.

By Rachel Baxendale and Lily McCaffrey

Seems she's put herself in some kind of headlock, and won't someone think of the squillionaires!

The pond must trip past all this to celebrate Killer Creighton's solution to climate change, and assorted recent, happening heat waves across Europe and the Unites States.

Just bung in A/C and watch it all fade away ...

The header: Why it’s time Europe embraced the magic of airconditioning; The unnecessary deaths triggered by the latest heatwave are a reminder of how arrogant climate change fanatics have become.

The caption for the collage, apparently put together without the help of human hands: Could Chris Bowen's big coup at COP be introducing heatwave-hit Europe to airconditioning? Pictures: News Corp / iStock

This was a peak Killer outing, epic climate science denialism, and all done in just three minutes ...

Energy Minister Chris Bowen is apparently pushing for a global electrification target of 35 per cent by 2035 – up from around 20 per cent – as part of his $150m Australian taxpayer-funded presidency of the COP31 summit, which will be hosted in Turkey later this year.
If only adapting to climate change was part of the brief, he could make a last-minute change by ditching electrification and replacing it with a more modest, achievable and far more helpful goal: 35 per cent airconditioning penetration in Europe by 2035.
The thousands of unnecessary deaths likely triggered by the latest heatwave in Europe are a reminder of how dangerous, unscientific and arrogant climate change fanatics have become, even as the rest of the world realises “net zero by 2050” is a costly fraud. Despite economic stagnation, European nations remain among the richest in the world and yet airconditioning penetration is not even 20 per cent, thanks to the elite’s hypocritical aversion to one of the greatest innovations of all time.
When the mercury hit high 30s in Brussels last week, the European Commission switched off the airconditioning on the first seven floors, where most of the building’s 3000 staff work, but exempted floors eight to 13, where Her Majesty Ursula von der Leyen, the EC’s president, and her staff were no doubt mulling new ways to save the planet. Let them stay cool!

Maestro, a snap of the villainess, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen talks to journalists during a media conference at the EU summit in Brussels. Picture: Geert Vanden Wijngaert / AP Photo

As is always the case with Killer, nihilism is at the core of the argument. Let the world fry, so long as you've got A/C:

Cutting back on airconditioning for others in Europe is more about virtue-signalling than reducing emissions. About half of Belgium’s electricity – and around three-quarters of France’s – is generated by nuclear energy, for instance, which produces zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Even American’s supposedly gauche predilection for airconditioning is a rounding error on the global emissions pie chart. Airconditioning globally contributes around 3 per cent of global emissions and the US share isn’t more than a third of that – in other words negligible.
But following the logic of Europe’s climate change zealots can be challenging. Warming the planet is bad, but not the home. Global carbon dioxide emissions from heating are at least four times greater than those for cooling, according to Our World in Data. So, it’s OK to keep your food cool, but not yourself.
In 2024, according to Eurostat data, space cooling made up 0.8 per cent of European household’s energy usage, compared to 77 per cent for space and water heating.
“OMG, this is so rich!” wrote Paris deputy mayor Audrey Pulvar on social media in a comical attempt to hit back at Americans poking fun at Europe’s lack of airconditioning – something 90 per cent of American households have taken for granted for a long time.
“As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, you bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences,” she fumed earlier this week.
At least here we can observe some degree of understanding that the climate doesn’t care where greenhouse emissions come from. European countries can flaunt their greenhouse emissions statistics all they want, but the global total is still increasing every year as Europe – and Australia – offshore their manufacturing (and jobs) to the rest of the world.

There followed a rare acknowledgement by the reptiles that large parts of the world have been a tad warm of late, and with any luck we'll be joining them later in the year with a sooper dooper hot summer, A man sits out in the sun in a park in Leicester Square in central London. Picture: Brook Mitchell / AFP

Killer followed up with a final flourish of Killer logic ...

Indeed, if she were serious about pointing the finger over emissions, Pulvar should’ve directed her criticism elsewhere. China, which still insists it is a developing country, has almost 990 million airconditioning units installed, according to Our World in Data. That’s more than four times as many as Europe, resulting in a penetration ratio three times that of Europe.
Its greenhouse emissions footprint is about four times that of the US and growing. Chinese officials no doubt understand what should be obvious: airconditioning not only massively improves the wellbeing of ordinary people but also increases economic growth and productivity, and promotes better learning outcomes too.
If the Europeans were serious about reducing emissions, they would encourage take-up of airconditioning. The amount of carbon emitted for every dollar of economic output has been falling steadily across advanced economies for decades, as innovation makes energy cleaner and more productive. Indeed, airconditioners themselves are a good example of this: quieter, cheaper, cleaner and dramatically more efficient than those of a generation ago.
In drumming up support in Europe for his last-minute change to his COP31 target, Bowen could cite an insightful economic paper from 2013 entitled The Remarkable Decline in US Temperature Mortality Relationship over the 20th Century.
“Residential AC appears to be both the most promising technology to help poor countries mitigate the temperature-related mortality impacts of climate change and, because fossil fuels are the least expensive source of energy, a technology whose proliferation will speed up the rate of climate change,” the report concluded.
No doubt it will be hard for European leaders to read that fossil fuels were – and still are, measured correctly – the cheapest source of energy. But it will be much harder to face being lumped in with “poor countries”, which is almost certainly where they’ll end up if they maintain their mindless obsession with reducing emissions.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

What a delightful load of Killer Krap, a perfect summation of the IPA view of the world, citing a paper without providing a link, without pausing to contemplate what it might mean to attempt to air condition the entire world as a way of avoiding the consequences of climate change, and with the aid of fossil fuels no less!

In view of the cartoon to follow, the pond joyously quotes Google's AI on the implications of the paper ...

... in the context of climate denialism or skepticism, this paper is sometimes selectively cited by contrarians to argue that temperature-related mortality is no longer a threat, or to suggest that climate change is inherently benign because humans can easily adapt. Climate scientists and public health experts counter this argument by emphasizing several key points:

• The Cost of Adaptation: While air conditioning protects wealthier populations in developed countries, it is energy-intensive and highlights systemic inequalities. Poorer populations and developing nations often lack access to these technologies, leaving them acutely vulnerable.
• Energy Vulnerability: Increased air conditioning usage dramatically strains the electrical grid during peak heatwaves, which can lead to blackouts that exacerbate the very crisis they are meant to solve.
• Broader Climate Impacts: The paper's findings on heat adaptation do not negate the other severe impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather, agricultural disruptions, or rising sea levels.

Luckily Wilcox came up with an equally Killer idea, which Killer will probably embrace wholeheartedly ...

And here's a little backgrounder for a man who reports frequently on what's going down in Vlad the Sociopath's world ...

In which the pond returns, only to be confronted by a dire triptych of "Ned's" natter, Switzer's swishes and and Dame Groan's yearning for disaster...

 

The pond regrets missing any number of key events while sojourning in the deep south, not least Kez's ditties, and not least Paul Hogan calling Pauline Hanson a pelican, and the pelican invoking the ghost of Norman Gunston as the spirit of dinkum Australia.

The pond doesn't expect Hanson to share the pond's meta, post-ironic, post-reflexive, post-modern understanding of Gunston and the Aunty Jack show, which led decades later to the pond taking up residence in the mighty 'Gong, sharing space with hordes of cackling cockies. 

Suffice to say that she's much thicker than the average house brick, deeply dumb and deplorable, though you're not supposed to say such things for fear of a raid by the thought police. 

If the little Aussie bleeder, voice of the Illawarra, is the new standard bearer for dinkum men, then it's time for them to get out a big box of tissues and a cutthroat razor: Paul Hogan has reportedly called Pauline Hanson a ‘pelican’. Please explain?

The pond also missed out definitive proof that Jewish activists can be even more problematic and irritating than Islamic activists: Cairo Takeaway secures court win over pro-Israel activist who claimed he was ‘completely vindicated’ after settlement

Talk about a desperate attempt to distract from an ongoing genocide, a bit like reptiles sticking heads in sand about assorted heat domes.

On the upside, while down south, the pond did finally learn the meaning of a headlock, an insight that apparently escaped barking mad Moira: Moira Deeming misunderstood meaning of ‘headlock’ but won’t apologise to Matthew Guy for assault allegation, Victorian Liberal MP says interaction with her colleague left her fearful and confused

How long before she finds her true home amongst the gum trees and One Nation?

And damned if she was the only one fearful and confused, because the pond did its best to dig up some Commie swines and socialist preverts down south, but came up short.

As for the reptiles, the pond cared not one whit or jot ... but the pond is pleased to note that over the past month google alleges that the pond went way past a million views ...

It's all nonsense of course, just a bot counting bots in an inane way typical of AI - the real number is in the thousands - but the pond does appreciate those who hung in for the tabloid trash filler. The numbers fell away, but some showed remarkable intestinal fortitude, no doubt boosted by the chance of sighting a Kez contribution, or some other offering from a lark-inclined correspondent.

Speaking of regrets, the pond also apologises for returning on a Thursday, always low rent day at the hive mind, but wot the hell, time to resume the dance.

Sheesh, did the reptiles have to offer "Ned's" natter as the first chance to do the lobster quadrille?

The header: Can Anthony Albanese win where Keir Starmer failed? Albanese is not Starmer and probably won’t resemble Andy Burnham either. But the shared policy overlap between these parties of the left cannot be missed.

The caption and the unfortunate credit for the wretched collage: Can Anthony Albanese, left, succeed where Keir Starmer, right, failed so spectacularly? Pictures: News Corp / AFP. Artwork: Debbie Schipp For that banality, the reptiles offered a credit? 

As for "Ned's" dance card number, it's an entirely specious comparison between two different parties in two different countries, but it's an easy layup for the ponderously pompous pedant, and as a bonus, it's so wretched the eternal natterer could only manage a five minute read.

The tone was set by the gigantic billy goat butt in the sub-header: Albanese is not Starmer and probably won’t resemble Andy Burnham either.

So what's the point?

Well the natterer has to fill up those column inches, and the pond silently endured:

When a two-year-old government with a parliamentary majority of more than 160 seats has its prime minister forced to resign, the conclusion is irresistible – British Labour and its left-wing ideology have confronted a crisis of electoral support and political relevance.
The Albanese government, elected in 2022, has been a superior political performer to its British counterpart under the failed leadership of Sir Keir Starmer – but the British experience contains lessons in Australia both for the progressive left and for Albanese Labor.
Starmer ran a far more left-wing government than Albanese with much less political acumen. It was marked by two ideas above all – the assumption that a sustained greater role for state power was the key to a better economy and soci­ety, and that a steady transition to progressive cultural values would promote human flourishing.
These assumptions faced a virulent backlash from the parties of the right – Reform UK and the Tories – but they also provoked alarm and concern from the left itself. Albanese shares many of Starmer’s policy assumptions but he has been far more pragmatic for far longer. Yet, like every Labor prime minister, Albanese ultim­ately will be defined and judged by the quality of his Labor reformism and this raises the question: can Albanese devise a successful centre-left agenda that works in the current age of disruption?
Can Albanese succeed where Starmer failed so spectacularly?

Just to add to the idle speculation, the reptiles dragged in a snap of the man fitted up as being a Sir Keir clone, Anthony Albanese and speaks at the CME breakfast at The Westin. Picture: NewsWire / Colin Murty

The pond found it hard to take, especially as "Ned" resorted to his old trick of quoting the thoughts of others:

Starmer’s dilemma was captured by a senior Labour figure who told The Times: “We’ve passed the two most left-wing budgets in more than half a century and then bled votes to the Greens. We should probably reflect about why that is, before lurching off to the left again.”
Starmer faced a political assault on two fronts – by the right-wing populist party of Nigel Farage, still leading in the polls, and by the extreme left Green Party under Zack Polanski, campaigning against climate delay and timid politics and espousing quasi socialism. Starmer was the wrong man for the times – in an age of super-polarised, ideological politics he operated as a political bureaucrat, making his removal probably inevitable.
In their account of the Starmer era, Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund capture his immobility: “The prime minister liked to work alone in the upstairs room they called the Thatcher study. The Iron Lady stared down at him over the first weeks of his premiership; disturbed, he had the picture taken away. If she could have spoken, she would have told them that the prime minister was reading. That, as much as the deathly hush, was the biggest mystery of the new No. 10. For hours, Starmer sat alone, rigid with monastic int­ensity.”
Andy Burnham will not be sitting alone. He is a social creature. Britain’s new prime minister likes people and people, so far, like him. Virtually every profile of Burnham reports that his skill lies in pleasing people and that he adjusts his message to the audience.
While being popular after Starmer is an imperative, Burnham’s mission is to confront the nation’s economic crisis. There is a favourite and disrespectful joke told about Burnham: A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walk into a bar and the bartender asks: “What will you be having, Mr Burnham?”

The next caption featured a stunning insight, down there with "Ned's": Keir Starmer was forced to resign as the Prime Minister.

It's true it's a devastating insight into the paucity of "Ned's" insights, but is that any reason to keep on reading?

Burnham’s elevation, unchallenged to this point, is a devastating insight into the paucity of Labour politics. The party was unable to find a successor from within its own cabinet. Every sign is that Burnham, previously mayor of Greater Manchester, will be accorded a “coronation” despite offer­ing no comprehensive manifesto for his prime ministership and having no mandate from the British people for what he might do. This is hardly a recipe for success. A few voices have suggested he go to the people, but that would be a high-stakes gamble.
He inherits a government relieved but in disarray. Its centre-left governing ideology hasn’t worked. Under Labour, Britain is a high tax, high spending, redistributionist government with weak economic growth, poor productivity and struggling living standards. It is undermined by high energy prices arising from its successful decarbonisation, a flawed and unpopular immigration policy, suffers from an inflated welfare sector, a highly regulated labour market, and a culture of identity politics embedded across many institutions.
What was the problem? Was it Starmer’s ineffective leadership or Labour’s social democratic model?
In truth it was both.
The lesson of the past two years is writ large. British Labour is a strange blend of economic nostalgia, revived faith in state power, net-zero rigidity and a divisive culture based on identity characteristics. Burnham arrives having previously been a Westminster MP and with strong ideas about devolution, winding back Whitehall’s power and strengthening the regions.
Perhaps he will benefit from low expectations. The Economist magazine wrote: “Mr Burnham’s instincts do not appear to lean towards a convincing program either. One reason is his chameleon-like nature. Britain’s next prime minister twists with the wind and panders to the people in the room. At a time of extraordinary technological and geopolitical change, Mr Burnham tells voters that he can turn back the clock on 40 years of neoliberalism.”
Burnham will surely begin with a message of dramatic change – but change based on the future or the past?
Much of Britain’s problems lie in the system of government itself. The structure is ill-suited to the economic, technological and knowledge-based explosions of the coming decade. Too much policy is about protecting the public from change and its consequences, not maximising the opportunity and community benefits from change.

This from a rag that has studiously attempted to resist both climate science and the digital revolution, and still carries on with a tree killer edition? You could get a coffee for the price of the weekend rag if you were mug enough to pay full price for the folly.

Hang on, must show off Andy, Andy Burnham delivers a speech at The People’s Museum in Manchester, England. Picture: Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images

And that was that, a grim final gobbet from "Ned" in his usual Chicken Little, the sky is falling, doomsayer mode ...and wouldn't ya kno it, he resorted to Tony Bleagh as a truth teller ...

The grim conclusion from British Labour is that its current policy settings and ideological faiths aren’t working for the public as a whole. Is Labour in the 2020s the party of British decline? That question needs to be confronted. Indeed, the Albanese government should cast its eye on the UK and also reflect upon that question. If the idea takes hold that British Labour is presiding over national decline then the combined forces of the right will surely prevail at the next British election.
Maybe Burnham will provide the ultimate answer. Of course, Britain’s problems are deep-seated with the previous long-serving Tory government bearing much of the responsibility.
But Labour is now politically ascendant and purports to put its stamp on the country.
Albanese is not Starmer and probably won’t resemble Burnham either. But the shared policy overlap between these parties of the left cannot be missed. In this age of disruption and populism, centre-left politics in the West is moving further left. Britain demonstrates this and Australia seems to be moving in that direction.
In his recent essay Tony Blair got it right – the times are calling for bold policies from the radical centre, not the extremes of the left or right. Incrementalism won’t do the job. The public is after change and that puts the ideological beliefs of the left and right under searching pressure.
Albanese won’t be going the way of Starmer’s forced resignation. Indeed, his political position remains stronger than many of his opponents realise. But the parallel issue for Australian Labor cannot be missed: does Labor’s policy model and ideology still work for Australia in the 2020s?

Oh just go suck on a Board of Peace, and have a European heat wave just at the time Bleagh pretended climate change wasn't a thing, and dammit the pond refuses to miss out on the infallible Pope that turned up during the pond's away time...

Oh dear, he mentioned the unmentionable.

As for the rest of the reptile pack, the pond refused to add this to its dance card, but at least the pond could add it to the intermittent archive for those who cared:

China is not simply exporting influence. It’s expanding jurisdiction
Beijing has not enacted another domestic law. It has asserted a right to judge conduct occurring inside other sovereign states.
By John Coyne and Geoff Wade

What did they expect from a dictator running a one party state, but at least the archive seems to be continuing to work...

Unfortunately, that made room for the swishing Switzer, a man who could make the tango seem like a serve of rhubarb crumble (once a staple of UNE college kitchens back in the day).

The header: How Malcolm Turnbull’s 2016 election disaster started Liberal fragmentation. This was the moment many Liberal supporters began to conclude that Howard and Costello no longer represented their interests or values.

The caption for the snap of the self-regarding wondrous gesticulator with crooked lip: Malcolm Turnbull announces his victory in the 2016 Federal election. Picture: Braden Fastier

Look, the pond is always up for a bout of Malware bashing, but unfortunately when it's done by a dickhead the size of the swishing Switzer, there's a danger that the pond might be made to feel a trace of sympathy for Malware.

The opening line in this version of the blame game perfectly posed the problem.

Ten years after squandering Tony Abbott’s commanding electoral majority, Malcolm Turnbull still has the chutzpah to rant and rail about the Liberal Party.

Qué? The short lived onion muncher's reign did much to squander any regard for the Liberal party, and the loons that followed him didn't help, and not just Malware.

Currently it's a carnival of clowns, with the latest dropkick loser, the beefy boofhead, casting around to blame his predecessors: Liberal frontbencher calls for party ‘rebrand’ after drop in polls, prompting ridicule from Labor; Melissa McIntosh’s comment comes after Angus Taylor’s claim Morrison government ‘breached trust

So why shouldn't Malware join in the fun?

The swishing Switzer has to reach far back into time to drag up Ted Heath, and remind the pond that it still has a CD of Ted conducting classical music. (Please, call the maestro Edward, and it's not that bad).

Never mind, the swishing Switzer has an extraordinary talent for making himself unlovable, so the pond endured:

He has become something of Australia’s Ted Heath, the wet British Tory prime minister dubbed “The Incredible Sulk” for devoting his post-political life to undermining the Conservatives after Margaret Thatcher toppled him as party leader in 1975.
Like Heath, Turnbull possesses an extraordinary talent for making himself unlovable, sustained by the conviction that he has been right about almost everything and his successors wrong about almost everything.
Never mind that Turnbull’s prime ministership, from 2015 to 2018, marked the beginning of the Coalition’s long electoral fragmentation. The disappointing 2016 election, a decade ago on Thursday, was more than a poor result. It was the moment many traditional Liberal supporters began to conclude that the party of John Howard and Peter Costello no longer represented their interests or values.

The party of little Johnny and the man who didn't have the ticker?

The man who managed to lose his own seat as well as government?

What bizarro world does this Switzer live in, as the reptiles interrupted with a snap... Malcolm Turnbull with members of his ministry. Picture: Andrew Taylor / AAP Image

If you want a re-write of political history, the swishing Switzer is your man:

The irony is that Turnbull now dispenses regular advice on how the Liberal Party should rebuild itself, even though many of the fractures that now threaten the party first opened under his own leadership. Turnbull led the Coalition into the July 2 election as the overwhelming favourite but it lost 14 seats and clung to office by the narrowest of margins.
The most significant legacy of the election lay elsewhere. Nearly a third of Australians voted for minor parties and independents, foreshadowing the fragmentation that has since transformed Australian politics. Pauline Hanson returned to the Australian political theatre and One Nation, widely dismissed as a spent force, secured four Senate seats. This was on Turnbull’s watch.
How did Turnbull, a sophisticated, highly intelligent and self-made man who had seemed so assured when he deposed a first-term prime minister only nine months earlier, come so close to defeat?
Much of the answer lay with Turnbull himself. His justification for replacing Abbott in September 2015 – a case oddly echoed at the time by influential conservative commentators, such as Miranda Devine – was that he would broaden the Coalition’s electoral appeal and restore stability after years of leadership turmoil.

By this time the pond has so many bruises on its toes from doing the dance with this clumsy clodhopper that the snap of Ted merely felt like another elephant treading on foot: Sir Edward Heath at No. 10 Downing Street

Sheesh, instead of that distraction, the pond could have been celebrating the deep south with the immortal Rowe ...

Can someone put that creature in a headlock?

In the next gobbet, the swishing Switzer tried to pretend there's some weird brand of liberalism that embraces Ming the Merciless and the madness of the onion muncher:

The argument was simple: only Turnbull could win back centrist voters while retaining the Liberal base. The strategy failed. Rather than broadening the Coalition’s support, Turnbull’s leadership began to alienate many of the party’s traditional voters without winning enough new ones to compensate.
The deeper problem was that Turnbull himself was not, in Thatcher’s parlance, “one of us”. Long regarded as what Robert Menzies would have dismissed as a “little-L liberal”, he was viewed by the conservative grassroots as aloof, patrician and disconnected from mainstream Australia.
His enthusiasm for more ambitious climate policies and changes to superannuation unsettled many traditional Liberal voters who had expected something very different from a Coalition government. His positions on tax reform also shifted repeatedly, leaving an impression of hesitation rather than conviction.
No wonder the election campaign became a debacle. Having triggered the first double-dissolution election in nearly three decades over legislation to rein in corrupt unions, Turnbull scarcely campaigned on workplace reform.
Labor performed far better than expected, though the result was hardly a ringing endorsement of Bill Shorten. Henry Kissinger’s famous observation during the Iran-Iraq war – “It is a pity both sides can’t lose” – neatly captured the public mood. Britain had just voted for Brexit, Americans would soon elect Donald Trump, and many Australian voters had likewise grown disillusioned with both major parties.

The reptiles interrupted with the man who, so it seems, so it's alleged, ruined everything: Malcolm Turnbull meets locals on July 7, 2016 in Brisbane. Picture: Tertius Pickard / Getty Images

Malware did much that was wrong - destroying the NBN at the whim of the onion muncher for starters - but this is just a silly form of specious revisionism, a casting about for a victim in the blame game (as if the pond would lift a finger to argue in Malware's defence).

Turnbull’s decision to call a double dissolution proved a costly political miscalculation. The Coalition’s commanding House of Representatives majority was reduced to the barest parliamentary margin, while an increasingly fragmented Senate left the government dependent on a disparate crossbench to pass legislation.
The election fatally weakened Turnbull’s prime ministership. Although he remained in office for another two years, he did so as a diminished leader, increasingly constrained by colleagues who had lost confidence in his political judgment. Within two years, they did to him precisely what he had done to Abbott. It was a reminder of one of politics’ oldest laws: those who seize power by the sword should never assume they will not perish by it.
Looking back, the 2016 election was less an aberration than a warning. It was not simply a disappointing Liberal result; it marked an inflection point in Australian politics. The Coalition retained office but the election exposed a growing disconnect between the Liberal Party and many of its traditional supporters.
A school of thought holds that Turnbull, as a progressive Liberal, helped preserve the party’s affluent metropolitan seats in Sydney and Melbourne. That’s a fair point, although that trend became far more pronounced after the 2019 election.

Luckily dragging the wooden Sir Keir into the blame game heralded the final gobbet, Keir Starmer resigned as the British Prime Minister in June

And inevitably the final gobbet proved the ineffable stupidity of the swishing Switzer ...

The more important point, however, is this: had Turnbull moved further towards progressive positions on climate, border protection and constitutional change, he would almost certainly have deepened the estrangement already felt by many traditional Coalition voters. The Liberal Party today is bleeding far more votes on its right than on its left.
Turnbull will be remembered as an inconsequential prime minister who invites comparison with another British prime minister.
No, not the aforementioned Heath but Keir Starmer. Both entered office amid enormous expectations before leaving behind little in the way of lasting achievement or reform. Both also left office to the relief of much of the electorate.
Yet even the outgoing Labour prime minister has one distinction Turnbull can never claim. He won a landslide. Turnbull inherited one and nearly squandered it.
Tom Switzer is presenter of the Switzerland podcast.

That's the best distraction the reptiles can offer for the current woeful state of the Liberal party under the beefy boofhead?

Not bloody Starmer again!

What limited imaginations and references this antediluvian hive mind has.

Please allow the immortal Rowe to celebrate the way forward:

And so to a great relief, because Dame Groan was out and about this day, and as usual, we're about to be entirely rooned:

The header: Albanese government faces real estate downturn as new tax policies begin. While Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers will assume everyone will move on from their tax changes, one danger looms large.

Sadly there was no credit for the truly hideous collage, so AI can take the blame: A major downturn in the housing market would be a huge hit to the Albanese government.

As usual, Dame Groan was determined to find disaster at every turn, which perhaps explains why she drags Houdini into her wriggle and squirm escape act:

Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers think they have pulled off a budget Houdini act. The incoherent and compliance-heavy package of tax increases designed to attack owners of capital was rushed through parliament, with a few embarrassing tweaks made on the way.
The wrinkle of the “widow’s tax” still hasn’t been sorted, but the Treasurer assures us that he’s on to it. It’s a bit like his assurance that the capital gains tax and negative gearing wouldn’t be changed – not convincing, in other words.
What happens to anyone affected in the meantime through a death or divorce is anyone’s guess.
But the changes to the capital gains tax and negative gearing are now law, and so Albo and Jimbo assume that nearly everyone will just move on. For Labor, it’s a numbers game. There are not many voters directly affected by the new tax imposts, so the politics are auspicious. Let’s not forget here that the Albanese government is diabolically bad at policy but good at politics.
But here’s the thing: there is one major stumbling block that could really disrupt the best-laid plans of the two men. And this is a major correction in the real estate market – dare I even use the word “crash”. (A correction is usually defined as a price decline of about 10 per cent; anything significantly above that is a crash and is also associated with much lower numbers of transactions in the market.)

The reptiles decided to share the odium: Housing Minister Clare O'Neil says collapsing auction clearance rates are “a market correction”.

Here's the thing, and the pond says this as someone who actually owns a property in the inner west of Sydney.

In what universe is a block of land containing an aged Victorian era structure worth squillions, or at least a couple of million? How can anyone afford to get into that market, unless they happen to be a lawyer or a doctor, and even then not your average solicitor or GP?

Yet in Dame Groan land, this is all perfectly natural and to be expected, and must be maintained or the sky will fall, and clouds will hit the ground:
It’s clear that a major downturn in housing prices has begun. In June alone, home prices nationwide fell by 0.4 per cent, the biggest fall since 2022. In Sydney, prices fell by 1.2 per cent and in Melbourne, by 1 per cent. Even in some of the better-performing smaller capitals, house prices are beginning to soften.
Now the Prime Minister declares that this is “great news” because it favours young first-home buyers. He may want to think this one through.
If house prices are falling, who wants to rush in to buy if prices will be a whole lot lower in six or 12 months? And what happens to the supply of suitable homes for purchase when property prices are falling? They simply dry up as owners hold off on putting their properties up for sale.
We see this in recent house auction data. Not only has the auction clearance rate fallen below the magic 50 per cent mark, but the number of auctions is also far fewer than just 12 months ago.
The figures for housing approvals in May are also worrying. Total dwelling approvals fell 1.1 per cent, the third month in a row. Approvals for private sector dwellings excluding houses – that’s higher-density housing – fell by 10.4 per cent. Note here there is a considerable time lag between approval and completion of new homes. Not all approvals lead to construction.
The widely held view now is that the Albanese government’s target of 1.2 million extra homes by 2029 will not be met, with a shortfall of at least 200,000.

Only a shortfall of 200k? In the pond's view, that would be a miracle. And what of all the wretched apartments into which the rats are being packed, or the hasty "innovative construction" being backed by loons of the Minns' kind, structures that will be lucky to last twenty years before they need major overhauls?

Minns Labor Government backing innovative construction to build more homes faster

As Minns hoes into inner city public housing for a quick fiscal fix, he's determined to make replacement housing in the donga look like the sort of ticky-tack to be found everywhere in the United States, preferably in the path of a tornado.

Don't get the pond started, as the reptiles flung in an anodyne snap that didn't prove anything: Total dwelling approvals, fuelling developments such as Armstrong Creek in Victoria, fell for the third consecutive month. Picture: Getty Images

And so to the final gobbet, wherein Dame Groan came to a prospect that set her salivating, an economic crash, and the country flung into a depression. 

What joy for the old biddy ...

Naively, the Prime Minister is placing great store by Treasury modelling that indicates the combined impact of the changes to CGT and negative gearing will simply reduce the rate of growth of property prices by 2 per cent.
Let’s be clear here: this figure is not quite made up, but it’s close. Assumption upon assumption drives the outcome. Change the assumptions and the result looks very different. And let’s not overlook the fact here that Treasury is also suggesting that the combined impact of the tax package will lift the rate of home ownership by only 7500, on average, per year – that’s trivial – and there will be 35,000 fewer homes built as a result.
You think Albanese might have learnt his lesson about the folly of relying on modelling. It was Reputex modelling that told us all that electricity bills would fall by $275 per year. Yeah, right. He was happy to turn his back on that when it suited him.
He might end up doing the same thing with the Treasury modelling when he is dealing with the economic fallout of a real estate market crash.

Oh please, just wipe away the "we'll all be rooned" disaster drool, so we can settle down to a breakfast of tar and cement ...

And now, just to prove that the pond went on a trip, this from beefy boofhead central, otherwise known as the mighty town of Goulburn, which fancies itself as a down south Tamworth, but doesn't quite make it ...

How they love and care for their pose dogs ...

And now as the pond had to endure this pair blathering on about Lord Nelson for endless episodes during the trip down there, roughly equivalent to a constant repeat playing of Sir Edward Elgar's greatest patriotic hits, this for those interested in their take on the American War of Independence.

It might be too long for whatever this blog is being viewed on, but a search of The New Yorker YouTube channel will turn it up ...