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

 

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

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

It's understandable. 

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

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

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

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

Teaser trailer ...

EXCLUSIVE

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

Teaser trailer ...

Hotly anticipated? Hacks gotta hack ...

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

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

Teaser trailer ...

Why only a teaser trailer for Dame Slap?

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

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

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

Simple. Allow the pond to explain:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bromancer was seen yesterday offering this ...

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

And before that it was this ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There were only two mentions of Lebanon, including this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Utterly bemusing. What was that link all about?

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

Can Trump recover? Probably ...

Probably?!?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps Dame Groan will do better next time.

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

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

Meanwhile the immortal Rowe brought it all together ...

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

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

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

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

In which the Major outlines his Zionist war hawk credentials, but gets let down by mad King Donald ...

The pond regrets that this day it must get up at 5am, and head up to the big smoke.

The pond regrets even more that it selected Major Mitchell as the stale lump of reptile stew it would reheat and serve up as a standby until business can be resumed tomorrow.

One of the problems is that the Iran folly changes by the minute, the hour and the day, as King Donald desperately tries to escape and struggles to rein in Benji's desire for a greater Israel.

‘Why Did Bibi Have to Do a F*cking Attack?!’ Trump Rages at Netanyahu Over Israel Strikes On Beirut — Says He’s ‘So Pissed Off’

President Donald Trump said he was “pissed off” at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s strikes on Beirut Sunday.
In an interview with Axios’s Barak Ravid on Sunday, the president lashed out at Netanyahu following the Israel strike on a Hezbollah target on the outskirts of Beirut — a response to Hezbollah launching drones toward Galilee.
In a separate interview, Trump told Fox News’s Trey Yingst he called Netanyahu and said “What the f*ck are you doing?”

The president told Ravid that the signing of a peace deal with Iran was “delayed” as a result of the Israeli strikes, but said the deal remains on track.
“It shook it up,” Trump said. “It delayed the signing by a few hours. It was supposed to be now. Now it is scheduled for a few hours from now.”

“Why did Bibi have to do a f*cking attack?” Trump said. “I was so pissed off. I let him know. He has no f*cking judgement. I let him know that.”

It was diplomacy by tweet and Truth social post ...

That showed how desperate the mad King was to do a deal so he could celebrate as a UFC-loving birthday boy. Always a vulgarian at heart and always in search of sybaritic pleasures, and is there anything more comforting and sensuous than watching two men pummel each other in a cage?

Meanwhile, the Iranians kept playing the hapless glitter-gold and big Mac loving orange whale like an out of tune fiddle.

And now here we are, and here's the day-old, already wildly out of date Major:

The header: Media pressure for a ceasefire harms Donald Trump’s Iran mission; More than 100 days after the first strike, the stock and oil markets are even more skittish. A great victory may have been better than a great deal.

The caption for the snap of the decidedly aged warlord: President Donald Trump speaks before signing a proclamation in the Oval Office of the White House last week. Having taken out the top 40 Iranian leaders in the first strike on February 28, Trump might have been better advised to continue until Tehran’s surrender. Picture: AP

There must be a 'toon to hand to set the tone for what follows.

That'll do, that'll do ...

First up the pond just has to celebrate the way that the Major tries to blame "media pressure" for mad King Donald's ongoing folly.

If anyone wanted to talk about pressure, they'd talk about the pressure being exerted by Benji, king of ethnic cleansing, with his desire to keep on bombing his neighbours into oblivion, but as a Zionist of the first water, the Major can't go there.

Apparently it's all this talk in the lamestream media of putting a stop to the killing fields that's ruining things, as if the Major cared about the odd schoolgirl or three (or maybe 170 odd):

Media and diplomatic pressure for a ceasefire fed into Donald Trump’s love of a “powerful deal’’, but more than 80 days of a stop-start truce suggest a clear victory over Iran would have been better.
Trump’s social media assessments have played down the damage done to US allies in the Gulf and Israel since the April 7 ceasefire. He’s probably right in the short term but in the long term, US allies have been given cause to doubt Washington’s resolve, and that could be more damaging than any Iranian drones.
As far as Middle East wars go, the destruction wrought by US and Israeli attacks on Iran between February 28 and the ceasefire was insignificant compared with the damage Israel did in Gaza after October 7, 2023. Even that pales into insignificance compared with, say, the million deaths in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
The death toll in this year’s attacks on Iran is estimated to be between 2000 and 6000. Compare that with the regime’s execution of up to 40,000 of its own protesters between January and May.
Having taken out the top 40 Iranian leaders in the first strike on February 28, Trump might have been better advised to allow his Operation Epic Fury and Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion to continue until Tehran’s surrender.
Instead, Trump feared rising oil prices and a skittish sharemarket in the run-up to the US midterm elections.

Yes, and if the Major had his way, and the mad King had the balls, they'd probably be blathering about nuking Tehran.

That would have put the mad mullahs in their place, and what an inspiration for Vlad the sociopath to nuke Kyiv, or perhaps London or Paris, as that Russian state TV Lord Haw-Haw Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov keeps suggesting.

Sorry, the pond really must stop channeling these crazies, but it's what happens when the pond's in the Major's company ... or is reminded of mad King Donald ... Donald Trump last week. He has again announced an imminent deal and claimed all the region’s governments had accepted the terms. Picture: AP

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

That talk of "imminent deals" became something of a running joke beloved of late night comics looking for an easy collage... CNN: Trump claims at least 38 times peace deal with Iran near.

What's the chance of him delivering? What's the chance he can keep Benji on side, given the way that Benji, and apparently the Major, seem eager to keep on with the carnage and the killing fields ...

The trouble is that more than 100 days after the first strike – and after what CNN last Tuesday reported to have been 38 separate claims by Trump of an imminent peace deal – the stock and oil markets are even more skittish and the President’s personal polling is down.
A great victory may have been better than a great deal.
Trump again announced an imminent deal last Friday (AEST) and claimed all the region’s governments had accepted the terms. We shall see.
A military victory would have silenced our own government, the UK and the EU. It would have ended the carping of the left-wing US media, which would prefer a Trump humiliation to the defeat of the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terrorism.
Trump’s inconsistency in dealing with Tehran was on display last week when the US launched a series of strikes in retaliation for the shooting down of a US Apache helicopter.
Only three days earlier Trump had warned Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel would be on its own if it did not stop its retaliation against strikes first launched by Iran on Israel.
Iran’s motivation – protecting its Hezbollah client terror group in Lebanon – shows how emboldened the Iranian “B Team” leadership is. Dismantling Iran’s proxies was one of the initial war aims, yet Iran openly broke its ceasefire to protect a militia group the Lebanese government has publicly said should leave Lebanon.
This is a test for the media, often unable to report accurately on the reasons for Israel’s strikes in Lebanon. Most reporters have not given enough weight to calls by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun for Tehran to rid his country of Hezbollah.

Spoken like a Zionist of the first water, what with the Major never shows any signs of caring for the civilians being slaughtered in the carnage - if they happen to be in an Islamic country, or even in Lebanon - as the reptiles dragged in a snap, and used it to blame the ABC ... Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun, who has called for Tehran to rid his country of Hezbollah. ABC reporters are quick with tragic tales of the deaths of innocents in Israel’s bombardments in southern Lebanon. Yet the ABC seldom interviews the Israeli victims of Hezbollah strikes in northern Israel. Picture: AFP

It doesn't seem to occur to the Major that his ongoing war with the ABC is just a hill of beans up against what's going on in the middle east, but the Major is always willing to be outraged when he perceives a slight to Israel...

Lebanon wants peace with Israel as surely as Israel’s northern inhabitants do, after years of Hezbollah rocket fire over the border. Yet the ABC says little about Hezbollah’s refusal to sign on to the Washington-backed June 4 Israel-Lebanon ceasefire plan.
ABC reporters are quick with tragic tales of the deaths of innocents in Israel’s bombardments in southern Lebanon. Yet the ABC seldom interviews the Israeli victims of Hezbollah strikes in northern Israel.
It hardly mentioned 60,000 Israelis became internal refugees after October 7 when Hezbollah intensified rocket attacks in the north in support of Hamas in Gaza, and locals had to flee their homes to head south.
Many Western reporters took too long to realise Israel was correct when it said Hamas was using civilians as human shields and was hiding weapons under hospitals and schools.
Now journalists seldom acknowledge Hezbollah also hides behind civilians. It, too, has built a network of tunnels.
The Jerusalem Post on March 27 published photos of Hezbollah weapons in tunnels near a Christian church in the southern Lebanese village of El-Khiam. On March 31, it reported Hezbollah had taken over the Christian village of Qawzah to launch attacks on Israel. Viewers in Australia seldom see footage of such revelations.
The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday pointed out Iran, usually keen to let its proxies do the fighting, was now taking risks to support those proxies.
London based pro-Palestinian think tank Middle East Monitor summarised Tehran’s thinking about the ceasefire on April 30: “A pause that leaves Iran under maritime pressure in the Strait of Hormuz, under nuclear verification pressure from the International Atomic Energy Agency … and under regional pressure through Lebanon is not a neutral diplomatic interval. It is an attempt to convert military shock into political extraction.”
The regime has no qualms about sacrificing the lives of its own citizens so why not continue to test the ceasefire’s terms by attacking Israel and US bases in the Gulf, as it did last week? Especially after Trump’s demands that Israel not respond.

That last par is designed to establish that the Major's the sort of warhawk that produced the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan follies.

Then the Major turned to a plea-deal felon to make his case...

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton was right on June 7 in the WSJ when he warned Trump’s hesitancy “may have laid the groundwork for more nuclear proliferation in the Middle East”.
Bolton wrote: “Gulf Arabs and other regional states have long contemplated whether to acquire nuclear capabilities to hedge against a fickle Washington.”

The reptiles flung in snap of the moustachioed one ... Former national security adviser John Bolton before a media interview at the White House in 2019. Recently he warned Donald Trump’s hesitancy ‘may have laid the groundwork for more nuclear proliferation in the Middle East’. Picture: AP

That's a 'stache that would make The Rest is History mob stop short and gasp in wonder.

What's happening with that lad?

Ouch, seems like he found himself under fire ... and now back to the war mongering with the Major...

Gulf allies that had not been consulted by the US before its attack on Tehran then found themselves under fire. They urged Trump to finish the terror regime, only to see him hesitate.
Many Trump critics claim this war will be like president George W. Bush’s Iraq war quagmire. They are wrong. There have been few US casualties because it has not sent ground troops.
Michael Rubin, of the US based Middle East Forum, says Trump could take a lesson from Bush’s surge in Iraq.
Rubin wrote on June 4: “An Iran surge would … not involve ground troops. Rather it would require demanding peace and continuing to target Iranian leaders until they agree.”
While Iran might think Trump is paralysed as a lame duck president, Trump “should flick the script” and embrace the idea that “never having to face another election can be liberating”.

The pond doesn't usually bother with links in the Major's pieces - they almost invariably stay within the hive mind - but this one should be noted because he drags the lesser member of the Kelly gang, a certain Joe, into his argument ...

The President should not pressure Netanyahu  “but rather tell Tehran if you have a problem with Israel, negotiate with them”.

The Major thought that a return to full-blown hostilities might be a jolly good thing, eh wot?

“A diplomatic bargain that allows the Islamic Republic to rebuild will be as bad as a loss. There can be only one choice: win or lose. Trump’s best way forward is to realise there is no middle way,” Rubin wrote.
Iranian journalist Mardo Soghom, writing for the Middle East Forum on June 8, cited several media reports from inside Tehran suggesting Iran “has decided to escalate its conflict with Israel and, in doing so, place President Trump in an awkward position”.
“Escalation … may represent an attempt to alter the strategic equation, increase pressure on Washington and secure concessions that diplomacy has failed to deliver,” he wrote.
The strategy rested on the assumption that Washington “remains more interested in avoiding a wider war than … responding forcefully to renewed Iranian pressure”.

What a mess, which would only get worse if the Major's advice to respond forcefully was followed.

Thank the long absent lord that the Major has zero influence on events, or thinking, or policies, or pretty much anything else ... and we can keep on enjoying the brawl room, unless you happen to be a civilian in the way of deadly force ...

UPDATE:

The pond left it late in the day to check out mad King Donald's later clown car cavortings.

No doubt the Major, together with the likes of Mark Levin and Miss Lindsey, was left bitterly disappointed.

The desperately pathetic and needy King Donald folded like a tent and stole into the night, leaving Iran holding all the cards. 

Oh for the long lost days when he demanded total surrender, only to offer his own.

It sounded grand, in the way that the pompous blowhard always does, but as Tim Miller said, the "herewith" provided echoes of the Book of Mormon, where if you have nothing real to say, you could always revert to a "herewith". (The real winner is "and it came to pass", which, with variations, by some counts makes up 2.5% of the total words. Okay, it's a Reddit, so for what it's worth).

What was actually announced?

Merely an MOU, which is a plan to turn the plan for a deal into an actual deal in the sweet bye and bye, peace achieved by way of murky time payments and endless haggling.

The alleged reason for the war, the nukes, has been tossed aside, except in the rich couch-molesting fantasy life of J.D. Vance. 

The Strait of Homuz will allegedly be opened, but if that's what it was all about, there was no need for a war.

Oil will eventually flow, but it'll take months for the markets to adjust.

No doubt the market manipulations provoked by King Donald have handsomely rewarded some players.

And who's to say how much King Donald will slip the Iranians by way of compensation for giving him a birthday gift he can crow about, while keeping his cult oblivious to the details?

And how will Benji take to being forced to the sideline, while the mad mullahs are empowered and the shimmering hope of regime change disappears over the hills?

What could possibly go wrong? Per Haaretz,  (*intermittent archive link):

And when it comes to negotiating the details, are either side capable of sticking a landing?

King Donald is being attacked from the left and the centre ...

‘Accomplished Nothing’: Critics Trash Trump’s Boasting About ‘Great’ Iran Deal

Inter alia ...

Oh dear ...

Trump Celebrates While America Capitulates (*intermittent archive link)
The peace deal with Tehran is an Iranian victory.
By Tom Nichols

...Trump has for weeks talked about getting rid of Iran’s “Nuclear Dust”—his odd term for the uranium now lying under the rubble produced by U.S. bombings—and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed on Sunday morning that the United States has multiple plans for removing this material. The Iranians, however, are busily planting booby-traps around the uranium to ensure it stays where it is, and despite Hegseth’s blustering, America is not going to march into Iran and dig it out without Tehran’s  consent. If anything, the Iranians now have every incentive to sprint to a bomb, and can do so with far less transparency than they had to endure under the JCPOA.

Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz will “open,” but it was already open, at least to those the Iranians allowed to pass. In his celebratory message, Trump said: “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz.” That’s terrific, but such a statement has about as much effect as if I or my wife or my cat declared the Strait open; only Iran can make that decision. Trump also declared the U.S. Navy’s blockade of Iranian ports is over, something that is indeed within his power, but that only means that America will withdraw while Iran remains.
Meanwhile—and again, these are the terms that so far have been leaked to the press, mostly from the Iranians—Iran claims that it will not only get some $12 billion up front, but another $12 billion within 60 days. Down the line, the Iranians are claiming they will get a $300 billion fund for reconstruction. (U.S. officials have insisted to reporters that any release of funds will be performance-based, a fuzzy condition that raises more questions and could invite the Iranians to dig in and haggle if the Americans balk at delivering the money.) The war leaves Iran battered, but more powerful and with more cash at its disposal, while it leaves America weaker, with important stocks of weapons depleted, and with its consumers paying the price for the war at the gas pump.

And then there's the barking mad war mongers on the far, ethnic cleansing, right ...

It's Hamas that's brutalising Gaza? What joy to live in a bizarro land of alternative reality.

What will happen to the ethnic cleansing, the genocide, or perhaps worst of all the Gwynocide? (Haaretz, *intermittent archive link)

And just like his boss, Miss Lindsey folded like a pack of cards in Alice in Wonderland...

As bravely spoken as Susan Collins at her best, what with Miss Lindsey being "somewhat concerned".

It's past time for the Zionist Major to give the middle east a rest, and hand the job of sorting it all out to the bromancer, who will surely work wonders so he can bung on his war with China by Xmas ...

Already out of date, and entirely lacking in a rosy, or even golden, hue...

In which Lord Downer and Killer Creighton keep the reptile rage machine raging ...

 

A housekeeping note: the pond will have to get up at an unseemly, obscenely early time tomorrow morning to travel up to the big smoke.

As a result, the pond won't be able to look at the lizard Oz's Tuesday offerings, and instead will provide a place marker to keep the blog ticking over.

The pond has decided Major Mitchell can do the job, on the basis that the Major's stupidity is eternal, and his stupidity will sound just as fresh when reheated tomorrow as it would have sounded today.

Unfortunately, this leaves the pond rather short on reptiles for this morning's outing.

Luckily Lord Downer was on hand to distract from mad King Donald's latest feud with Benji ....

Displaced by the onion muncher from the Liberal party gig, Lord Downer was feeling very One Nation, appropriate for the lizard Oz's new status as the go to One Nation rag of choice.

The header: Why the consensus on multiculturalism is now at breaking point; The political class has spent decades celebrating multiculturalism while a flood of public discontent quietly built beneath their feet.

The caption for the AV distraction the reptiles decided to put at the start of His Lordship's outing: Sky News host James Morrow says multiculturalism is a “failed experiment’ in Australia.

The pond has no idea why the reptiles decided to start with a 6'36" minute long AV distraction, except perhaps to suggest that Lord Downer was only offering his usual feeble, impotent cluckings - 'observations' is too kind a term - and so he needed beefing up with a Sky Noise loon who could declare multiculturalism a failed experiment, much like the ongoing failure to Sky News to come up with a decent rebranding.

The pond immediately knew what was coming, the sort of futtering and fumbling which marked Lord Downer's time as a politician ...

The dramatic rise of populist political parties over the past few years in just about all Western countries has a common thread running through it: immigration.
It’s not inequality, as leftist commentators so often claim. While it’s true that core economic issues like declines in real living standards, persistent inflation, as well as increasing energy prices, have all contributed to a growing sense of exasperation with the political class, nothing compares with the issue of immigration.
The public expects the government to be the guardian of social cohesion. Of course everyone recognises that in any country there is a multiplicity of opinions about everything under the sun but they do not expect the government of whatever complexion to pursue policies which contribute to societal breakdown. It’s a radical thing to say, but a sizeable percentage of Western populations think they have done just that.
Let’s just look at the two countries I know best: the UK and Australia. In both cases there has been substantial immigration including from countries that have very different cultural traditions from our own. In both cases, governments have vigorously defended immigration policies which do not discriminate against people on the basis of their religion, ethnicity, race, or even sexual preference.

And what would Lord Downer propose? Discrimination based on religion, or ethnicity, or race, or even sexual preference?

Set an example of bigotry, fear and loathing, of the kind patented by King Donald, so that prejudice could run rampant and ruin the body politic?

What if someone had proposed that there should be discrimination that saw the banning of loons from the Adelaide hills?

The pond would find it hard to argue against such a proposition, but there'd probably be a few squawks from the reptiles.

Meanwhile, to continue to give the piece the sort of One Nation "rage machine" gloss that the reptiles now take as a standard coating, there came an example of a ratbag who is clearly off the planet and faraway in some little England universe: The dramatic rise of populist political parties over the past few years in just about all Western countries has a common thread running through it: immigration. Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

That's where Lord Downer and the reptiles want to go?

Not to be distracted, His Lordship continued to wring his fingers, sigh at the sky and flutter his ankles. 

Frankly the pond has nothing against those inclined to a little cross-dressing, it adds a little spicy ambiguity to the country ...

... but here we are, with Lord Downer blathering on about the dangers of being tolerant and accepting diversity. 

It's the sort of thing that might score him a good bashing at a beat, or being tossed off a Sydney cliff ...

These principles have had widespread public support. So, too, has the concept of multiculturalism. The idea here, going back in Australia’s case to the 1970s, is that we encourage migrants to retain their historic cultural identities. Like all people, they value their timeworn traditions and conventions. They’re not going to be happy if those are diluted or taken away from them.
As a society, we tolerate and indeed, in many cases, celebrate the diversity of cultures that make up our country. This concept of multiculturalism has also been applied in the UK for many years.
In both countries, the consensus around non-discriminatory immigration policies and multiculturalism has now broken down. Elites in politics, the bureaucracy, and the professional classes don’t wish to accept this, and I can sympathise with their concerns, but it pays to face up to reality rather than dream of ideals.
The reason for that is quite clear: many people, though not all, think that immigration policies are now destroying our own cultural traditions and conventions and are destabilising society. This trend has been building for many years, but what was a trickle of concern has now become a flood.
Taking the UK, there has been a subliminal discomfort for decades about immigration. Immigrant groups are perceived to be taking over large sections of urban Britain. There are parts of Birmingham where English is barely spoken. Over 50 per cent of the population of the city of Leicester do not speak English at home.

In all that blather, the pond took exceptional pride in this Lord Downer sentence, as pure an example of distilled Adelaide Hills hogwash as anyone could hope to find ...

Elites in politics, the bureaucracy, and the professional classes don’t wish to accept this, and I can sympathise with their concerns, but it pays to face up to reality rather than dream of ideals.

The idea of Lord Downer as a grim realist, an adherent of realpolitiks, is so laughable a conceit, so risible that the pond had to bite down severely on thumb to prevent gales of hysterical laughter.

Only Lord Downer could swallow the notion that Lord Downer isn't a pampered member of the elite, a nepo baby born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and about as connected to reality as Bertie Wooster.

Inevitably the reptiles turned to the latest far right scandal to serve as meat for the hive mind... People attend a protest about the police's handling of the arrest of Henry Nowak at Southampton Central Police Station on June 2. The stabbing of Nowak by a Sikh was an instance of violence attributed to migrants. Picture: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

Lord Downer hastened to get there in a pale imitation of Tommy Robinson, but not before he performed a rhetorical trick worthy of his Victorian ancestors:

It’s not just the fact that immigrants are bringing different traditions and values to England; it is the fact that they have clustered in Bantustans, separating themselves from the mainstream of British society. 

Did you notice that? That word ...

A Bantustan (also known as a Bantu homeland, a black homeland, a black state or simply known as a homeland; Afrikaans: Bantoestan or tuisland) was a territory that the National Party administration of the Union of South Africa (1910–1961) and later the Republic of South Africa (1961–1994) set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia), as a part of its policy of apartheid.
The term, first used in the late 1940s, was coined from Bantu (meaning "people" in some of the Bantu languages) and -stan (a suffix meaning "land" in Persian and other Persian-influenced languages). It subsequently came to be regarded as a disparaging term by some critics of the apartheid-era government's homelands. (Wiki and footnotes here).

It says everything you need to know about Lord Downer's colonial mindset and his ability to mangle apartheid into a new meaning.

Did he really need to go there, and do that? Of course he did ...

The British public have grumbled about this, but it hasn’t been a fierce political issue. On the whole, they are a pretty tolerant people, and having had an empire covering a third of the globe, they are very familiar with different races and cultures.
But this tolerance has recently been stretched to breaking point. First, since October 7, 2023, there have been almost weekly demonstrations against Israel in major British cities. The demonstrators have been aggressive. There have sometimes been acts of violence, and there have been frequent expressions of antisemitism. This has triggered a more widespread antisemitism in a country renowned for its liberal tolerance.
What has this got to do with immigration? Well, for many, there is a perception that these demonstrations and the rise of antisemitism have been driven by migrants. While that may not be entirely true, there are, after all, many from the far left of the political spectrum who share those antisemitic sentiments. There is a sense in the UK that migrants have brought their historic grievances to the streets of British cities.
Then there have been instances of violence and, in some cases, murder attributed to migrants. Most recently, there was the stabbing by a Sikh of Henry Nowak in Southampton, and as he lay dying, being handcuffed by the police for a false claim of racist language. A couple of weeks ago, there was the attempted murder of a young man in Belfast allegedly by a Sudanese refugee.
These are just two very recent incidents, but there are many more, including the notorious story of Pakistani grooming gangs in Yorkshire sexually assaulting and raping young white girls.

What the pond finds remarkable when the Lord Downers of the world begin their immigrant litanies is that they never ever note stories of other stories of sexual assault and misogynist abuse, of a kind which has reached up to the White House.

The pond recently noted Heidi Blake's coverage of Andrew Tate in The New Yorker in Andrew Tate’s Empire of Abuse; How the defining figure of the manosphere built a fortune—and became a political force—by systematically exploiting women. (*intermittent archive link)

And what's Tate's background? 

Let Blake start with the father ...

...Emory was brilliant, charismatic, and mercurial. In 1992, he was discharged from the Air Force after being diagnosed as having conditions that “interfere with military service,” including narcissistic personality disorder. Back in civilian life, he was convinced that he was being monitored by the C.I.A., that the family car was being tailed, and that he was under attack by assailants from Eastern Europe. “The world he lived in was a scary world,” Andrew has said. He remembered Emory telling him, “You’re a Tate. They’re going to come for you like they came for me.”
The family relocated to Elkhart, Indiana, to be close to Emory’s mother. The brothers spent hours playing around their grandmother’s house—climbing trees, building forts, and racing through cornfields—but their home life was fraught. Emory drank heavily and was prone to terrifying rages. Tristan told me that if he stepped out of line his father beat him with a belt, sometimes whipping him until his skin was striped red. Andrew has described lying awake at night in terror. “I must have been the most awake child on earth,” he said in one video. “I was so afraid of the beatdown.” In his telling, this violence was an essential part of becoming a man. “I can’t wait to kick my kid’s ass if he gets fresh,” he has said.
In Indiana, Emory worked low-wage jobs—at McDonald’s, a car wash, a park—but funnelled his ferocious intellect into chess, often staying up all night drinking and practicing variations. He started leaving the family to play in tournaments around the country. He would arrive by bus, wearing his trademark trilby, and hustle for spare dollars in chess parks. A dazzling attacking player, he became a folk hero on the circuit—bringing “the flair and swagger to chess often seen on the basketball courts,” the chess writer Daaim Shabazz noted—but he lacked the discipline to reach grandmaster level, where serious winnings kick in. “As smart as my father was, chess doesn’t pay,” Andrew has said. “He also loved gambling, women, and booze. So you add all that up, we were very, very poor.”
When Emory returned to the family after an eight-week absence, Eileen confronted him over an infidelity, and he walked out again. “When you’re older, you’ll understand,” he told Andrew. “Your mother won’t shut up.” As the marriage broke down, Andrew rationalized his father’s abandonment. “You’re a better role model to your son if you barely see him and live life on your own terms,” he later wrote. “A dad is a super hero. Not a full time carer. Don’t sit and become a Bitch like the woman wants.”
In 1997, the year Andrew turned eleven, Eileen moved the children to her home town of Luton, an impoverished and overcrowded municipality north of London. They stayed in a hostel for homeless women and children. “It was a horrible place to live,” Tristan told me. Eileen got a job washing dishes in a school cafeteria, and he remembered that “her hands were always bleeding and cracked.”
Eventually, they moved to the Marsh Farm estate, a housing project plagued by crime and violent riots. The Tates went to a failing school, where they were bullied for their American accents and shabby clothes. Emory occasionally sent money, and the brothers would walk to a pay phone to call him. “My father raised me over the phone,” Andrew has written. “I was STILL AFRAID of him, 3000 miles away.”
As a teen-ager, Andrew was dogged by a feeling of unease. “I always had this sense that something wasn’t quite right about the way the world functioned,” he has said. He thought of himself like the character Neo in “The Matrix,” restlessly searching without knowing what for. When the brothers walked to school together, they sometimes saw a Ferrari drive by, and Andrew became furious. “He’s hacked the Matrix!” he said. “How does he have four hundred grand for a car? He knows something we don’t know!”

So there's migrants and migration in that seedy, wretched mix, but not exactly the sort that Lord Downer is blathering about ...

And at this point the reptiles decided to drag in their standard bout of Zionism ...A Rally For A Free Palestine protest saw the burning of the Israeli flag on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House on October 9, 2023. Picture: NewsWire/Jeremy Piper

The pond should note that it's not just Islamics that are disturbed by the Zionist project, the attempts at a greater Israel, and the accompanying ethnic cleansing. There are Jews of the Haaretz kind who happen to find it disturbing, and there are many others.

The pond happens to be of Celtic origin, and can see something of the barbarity being doled out to the Palestinians as roughly equivalent to the sort of barbarity inflicted on the Irish by the English in the nineteenth century (the pond won't mention Cromwell).

And that's why the pond finds this next bit of Downerism contemptible:

In Australia, we have likewise seen demonstrations against Israel and Jews, most notoriously on October 9, 2023, at the Sydney Opera House.
These persistent demonstrations and the spread of antisemitism have, in the minds of many, been attributed to migrants ­bringing their hatreds from the other side of the world to our own streets. Then there was the Bondi massacre of the Jews on December 14 last year. I think for many Australians, this was pretty much the last straw.
For a migrant and his Australian-born son to massacre people on an iconic Australian beach had a deeper impact on Australian society than commentators who flip from issue to issue, day by day, realise. For many Australians, for right or for wrong (and I’m not ­debating that), they just think enough is enough.
There’s one other thing to say about the public. They feel they cannot talk about these things without being condemned in the most vicious and vigorous of ways as being racist or fascist.
If you abuse people often enough and if those claims against them are false, then that too is going to generate a very negative reaction. People do not, in the main, regard themselves as racist; rather, those who are concerned about immigration take pride in our way of life, in our traditions, and in our values. They do not want people coming into our country to undermine those things.
There is very much the same sentiment in continental Europe and parts of the United States.
Of course, populist political parties are dangerous because in government they would create chaos but nevertheless the challenge for traditional parties is to make sure they address the issue of immigration and the integration of migrants with vigour and not worry too much about the rock throwing from elements of the media.

Here's a starting point. Send people from the Adelaide hills back to where they came from. Only then can this country know peace ...

Have a break, but not a Kit-kat, to celebrate the birthday boy ...

The pond realises that - should Dame Groan arrive tomorrow to announce that the end is nigh, and we'll all be rooned long before Xmas - the pond will miss the chance to provide a fresh baked, hot out of the oven report to correspondents.

The pond promises it will at least manage to reheat it and serve it up on the Wednesday, no matter how stale it sounds, or how long it makes the day's post.

In the interim, please have a serve of simpleton Simon ...who offers his own version of "we'll all be rooned":

Productivity neglect means generations of crisis and decline
Considering productivity is a key to rising living standards, it would appear to lie at the heart of the intergenerational inequity problem the government says it is trying to solve.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst

The pond offered that link - personally saved by the pond - because it thinks a teaser trailer will be enough to send correspondents scuttling off to the intermittent archive to finish the read, so that they can spend the rest of the day in a gloomy reptile fog of despair...

And so to the bonus, but first a little nipplegate mood and scene setting ... because treatment of women seems to start at the top in the disunited states ...

The pond confesses that Killer Creighton only makes this appearance because it's been yonks since Killer has graced these pages, and not because Killer was doing his own impression of the manosphere ...

The header: Do we really need a women’s budget statement? If any large group warranted a special budget ‘statement’, wouldn’t you think it might be young men and boys, whose socio-economic circumstances have been reversing at a rapid rate.

The caption for a woman who looks decidedly bossy and who should have known her place: Finance Minister Katy Gallagher holds a pre-Budget press conference in the Blue Room at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

Killer got stuck straight into a little womyn bashing, mixed with "poor pitiful me" rhetoric:

For evidence federal budgets have become little more than rhetorical spin, look no further than the Women’s Budget Statement that now accompanies the four traditional budget papers pertaining to federal revenue expenses and economic projections.
Because the policy changes in the government’s latest budget have been so bad, the latest WBS, almost 80 pages of divisive, ideological nonsense, has been spared the ridicule it deserves.
After decades of improving socio-economic circumstances relative to men – which had nothing to do with the federal government – it’s far from clear that 51 per cent of the population should be insulted with taxpayer-funded programs that cast them as virtuous, downtrodden victims requiring special assistance. Indeed, if any large group warranted a special budget “statement” each year, wouldn’t you think it might be young men and boys, whose socio-economic circumstances have been reversing at a rapid rate?
“Young men are disengaging from mainstream Australia, from work, from education, and from relationships,” the Page Research Centre said in a recent research paper. They make up a shrinking minority, 40 per cent in 2024, of university graduates, which points to declining fortunes later.
The share of male youth, aged 20 to 24, not in education, employment or training was 13.7 per cent in 2021, according to the OECD, more than three percentage points higher than for similarly aged women. Moreover, women increasingly out earn men too, especially at younger ages as the female-dominated “care economy”, professional services, health, education and the bureaucracy boom, while traditionally male occupations shrivel.
Yes, men are more likely to fill the tiny absolute number of lucrative, top leadership roles in the private sector; but this is such a vanishingly small figure. Really, who cares? As the statement itself shows, women make up almost 55 per cent of the similarly well remunerated senior executive roles in the public sector, and more than half of all Australian government board positions.
“The 48th parliament is the most gender-balanced on record, with women comprising 49.6 per cent of parliamentarians at its opening,” the government trumpets. “When women are involved in decision making and policy design, outcomes are better for everyone,” the statement added – perhaps its most ridiculous, unsubstantiated claim. Finance and Women’s Minister Katy Gallagher didn’t inspire much confidence in this claim when she didn’t appear to care for the difference between gross and net savings at a recent Senate estimates hearing.

Killer then flung in a line finely attuned to the rabble rousing the hive mind requires ...

Seriously, though, women have intellects, talents and personalities everywhere near as diverse as men.

That was followed by a snap reminding the hive mind of what was wrong with the world: Anthony Albanese, Jim Chalmers, and Katy Gallagher. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

Killer then delivered his killer blow. It turns out that women can be just as corrupt as men:

Only last, week a large new statistical study by French and American economists concluded female leadership didn’t make a jot of difference in Brazil. “Over the 2000-2020 and across six corruption measures (and thousands of municipalities), electing a woman mayor ha(d) no detectable effect on corruption,” the two authors wrote in a study that is unlikely to be referenced in next year’s Women’s Statement.

Don't cry for me Argentina.

And then Killer got his knickers in a knot ...

“For too long, women’s health policy wasn’t taken seriously. The government has changed that,” the statement also claimed, ludicrously.

It's ludicrous that women's health policy wasn't taken seriously for a long time? Or is it just the notion that the government has changed that, and instead it still wasn't being taken seriously?

Whatever, what about men, Killer cried, it isn't fair, as he stood in the corner store, and a little girl snatched all the lollies before he could get his share ...

Last time I checked, men still die on average a full four years earlier than women – a gap that has narrowed slightly in recently years after male smoking rates collapsed, a factor perhaps likely to reverse as the government’s tobacco excise policy supercharges smoking across the nation.
I couldn’t find any policies to encourage women to become truck drivers, garbage collectors, miners or general labourers.
Males account for almost all workplace fatalities, are twice as likely to be murdered, commit suicide at in far greater numbers, and are more likely to be called on to die in war. They dominate the ­prison population too. No doubt almost all of them deserve to be there, but other men don’t deserve blame for sharing their sex.
Yet in the statement we read how “men’s violence against women remains a distressing and unacceptable reality”. Shouldn’t that be “some men’s violence”, or is every mother’s son part of the problem?

What a cunning riff, up there with that disarming of "black lives matter" with "white lives matter" and "all lives matter".

Perhaps recognising he'd gone a little too far, Killer tried to walk back a little, flinging in a billy goat butt in the form of an "obviously" ...

Obviously, domestic violence, committed overwhelmingly by a tiny sliver of men, is pathetic, contemptible and should be punished. 

A tiny sliver? 

(Here for more data)

Some sliver!

Such a sublime form of reductionism, and so much for violence against women (and men for that matter), and Killer had an even better follow up, a generality that made sure that violence specifically directed against women disappeared into a generalist void:

All violence is wrong and illegal and has been for a very long time.

The lad has a genuine talent for self-serving platitudes ... as the wailing and the litany of grievances continued, worthy of an incel or Clavicular himself ...

Throughout the document, men appear largely as perpetrators, potential perpetrators, or subjects of behavioural correction. Boys only get a mention four times in the document that casts them as problems in need of “education and awareness programs”, such as The Healthy Masculinities Trial and Evaluation (Healthy MaTE) scheme to “encourage healthy expressions of masculinity among school-aged boys and young men”.
“Gender responsive budgeting was reintroduced in the 2022-23 October budget to put gender equality at the centre of budget ­decision-making,” the statement reminds readers, without explaining how such a method is appropriate, possible or justified.
Pity the smart Treasury graduate who thought joining what was once a rigorous, respected institution might entail actual economics and public policy, rather than contributing to an absurd ­annual document replete with ­selective outrage and cherry-picked statistics.
If such a highly political, contestable document ever warranted routine inclusion in the federal budget, it was decades ago when women faced significant discrimination in the workplace, were a minority at university and female politicians were a rarity. These days, it simply highlights how unserious and simplistic a federal government we have.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Credit where credit is due. Killer is not so far apart from the world infested by influencers and Andrew Tates ...

And speaking of prize misogynists, the lizard Oz editorialist had a tribute to King Donald on his birthday, and the pond found it irresistible, what with its UFC themes fitting Killer's mood exactly ...

That deserves an immortal Rowe ...

And speaking of manly men, this turned up on The Bulwark's channel to celebrate Pete Kegsbreath.

Generally speaking, the pond and the gym have been two for a very long time, but the pond knows enough to know that what Hogsbreath is doing here is pathetic and performative, and injurious to health. 

He seems to know as little about weight training as he does about everything else, and the result is as comical as that diminutive weight lifter who dresses as a cleaner and takes down beefy boofheads in YouTube videos which seem to haunt the pond's logarithms ...