In which the pond does all the supplemental reading required, but has readings of its own to study ...

 

The pond did all the supplemental reading required. 

There was Dame Slap, heavily featured in Bruce Lehrmann inquiry head spent 7.5 hours over 55 phone calls to The Australian during probe, court told. Of course you won't read about any of that adverse attitude and reasonable apprehension of bias in the lizard Oz.

There was Tim Dunlop furiously scribbling Politician swallows boofhead, How rejigging the Stage 3 tax package exposed the nothingness of Dutton and News Corp.

The pond took a look at Budget 2014: The front pages, which was a bit like an addiction to torture porn shows, and the pond read Greg Jericho's When it comes to tax, what is bracket creep – and is ‘fixing’ it really that important?  Then the pond moved on to Cost of negative gearing and other rental deductions soaring, Australian treasury data reveals.

By then the pond's burning of the midnight oil had left it exhausted, so it flunked out on the link to Alex Krainer, a bizarre rant involving the satanic Soros that didn't make any sense ...

Besides, the pond had new tasks for a new reptile day ...and look who occupied the centrefold, while valiant Ben did more turf war stuff, droning on about things the bromancer should be droning about...

Now the pond understands that there will be some who will flinch from any reading of petulant Peta but some of it was truly delicious. 

It must be terrible to be reminded that you were the driving force in one of the worst governments in recent memory and having refused to take part, then turned to the lizard Oz to defend yourself ... so the pond broke its usual rule, and sampled just a little of Peta's implausible denials ...

...it didn’t surprise me that Abbott declined to be involved because he never saw himself as the hero in a play that was all about him. Abbott took the view that he’d said all that needed to be said when in office and had adequately reflected on the strengths and weaknesses of his government in speeches he personally wrote, as well as in the three essays he penned for Quadrant, published in 2016. 
Like me, he mistrusted the ABC’s own agenda. As it happened, the file footage that the ABC selected at least did justice to the focus and discipline required to bring the Coalition back to government in record time and didn’t entirely ignore the successes of the first two years, like stopping the boats (that no one thought could be done), finalising the trade deals that had languished for a decade, scrapping the carbon tax and mining tax, and beginning an infrastructure catch-up with new projects (such as WestConnex and the Western Sydney airport) that are even now still being opened.
As for Turnbull’s claim that ­Abbott was a “dangerous” prime minister who ran a “terrible” government, a minister with honour could always have resigned, if that were his view, rather than spend more time machinating against his leader than doing his job. Turnbull several times offered to use his friendship with fellow rich-lister Clive Palmer in support of the 2014 budget (the last attempt at significant economic reform) but like so much, those were empty words. And as he told the world on Monday night, by then he was in discussions with numerous colleagues, including Scott Morrison, he insisted, to remove the PM who’d won a majority akin to that of Fraser in 1975 and Howard in 1996.
Indeed, it was only because of Abbott’s landslide victory that Turnbull narrowly survived his one and only electoral test as leader when he sacrificed 14 of the 25 seats that Abbott had won from Labor over two elections. Turnbull’s claim that the PM was somehow both anti-women and overly dependent on his female CoS was utterly implausible. Claims that Abbott didn’t run a proper cabinet process are also fanciful; after all, Turnbull himself had appointed me secretary to the shadow cabinet when he was leader and Abbott’s problem was less how cabinet operated and more those who leaked from it.
Whatever the claims against me, at least I was working for the government, not against it. 
On national security, far from being dangerous, “shirt-fronting” Putin was the least a self-respecting Australian leader could do after the Russian dictator’s 2014 mini-invasion of Ukraine led to the murder of 38 Australians on MH17. Abbott didn’t sit on his hands or hide behind bureaucrats. Yet all the Abbott government’s military deployments – to Ukraine to bring back our dead, to airdrop supplies to the besieged Yazidis on Mt Sinjar, to advise and assist and train the Iraqi armed forces against ISIS, to run weapons to the Kurds, and to bomb terrorist positions in Syria – were made with official military and intelligence advice and demonstrated that, at least in those days, Australia’s armed forces were more than capable of being deployed around the world in support of freedom.

Of course the truly delicious element was the snaps. One featured petulant Peta glowering behind Malware like an éminence grise ...

The whining and the caterwauling ... the petulance, if you will ... continued on ... and it's hardly surprising she whinges about the ABC, what with refusing to take part ...

It’s hardly surprising, given the nature of the program, that the ABC failed to put the record-straight on a couple of key issues. The 2014 budget did not break election promises. It was only subsequently that Abbott applied a modest efficiency dividend to the ABC that nearly all other agencies had long faced. Abbott had been explicit in the 2013 campaign that the Coalition would not support the Gillard cash splash on schools and hospitals beyond the then forward estimates. And history shows that total spending on health and education continued to increase (yes, increase) under Abbott; only at a slower (and more sustainable) rate than before. Abbott was just following the Hawke government precedent in seeking a modest co-payment on GP visits, and extending an earlier Labor move to raise the pension age, and to reduce the indexation rates for some social ­security benefits. Seeking to have school leavers learn or earn rather than go on the dole was a worthy bid to break the “something for nothing” mindset that’s so contrary to our old “have a go” Australian ethos.
Once same-sex marriage had been rejected by the parliament in the 2010 term (including by then PM Gillard who voted it down), Abbott’s position was that, if it came up again, the Coalition’s position would be decided in the usual way by the joint partyroom. There was nothing tricky or underhand in his handling of this issue. Indeed, he’d specifically discussed putting the issue to a plebiscite with a key frontbencher (who subsequently claimed to have been taken by surprise) at a dinner in Adelaide a few weeks earlier; I know because I was there. As Abbott said at the time, people’s attitude to marriage is so personal that it should be decided directly by them rather than by their MPs (as was Turnbull’s preference); that it would mean, whatever the outcome, that Australians would accept it without rancour. And he was right. Indeed, resolving this issue via the plebiscite that Turnbull had opposed turned out to be one of his government’s few achievements.
With time to reflect, it’s now clear that one of the key differences between our public life in the Hawke-Howard era, when I started in politics in 1998, and more recently has been the decline in personal character. Our best recent PMs were able to succeed because big egos with different policy positions were much readier to buckle down and support the government, and the leader of the day. Most of them saw public life in terms of service to the nation rather than personal advancement and didn’t let resentment get the better of them if they never went into cabinet or even past the backbench. On that score, looking at how Turnbull and others let their personal agendas trump the long-term national interest shows how central Peter Costello’s good character and forbearance were to the ultimate success of the Howard government. Perhaps the most dispiriting aspect of Nemesis’ first episode was the credibility it gave to a raft of MPs smarting at Abbott’s move to end family members’ employment at taxpayer expense or first class travel overseas.
After having a ringside seat at the self-destruction of the Rudd-Gillard government, I never thought that the Coalition would indulge in an action replay. I always knew Turnbull would try and come for Abbott one day but I didn’t think MPs would buy the carpetbagger’s spiel in the first term, especially after his patent failures as opposition leader. Such a waste, such a tragedy for our country, and such a blot on the ­record of the Liberal Party to the everlasting shame of those responsible.
Like Abbott, I declined to appear in the program; because I was certain of a selective and distorted version of my response to the usual crap that I was too tough on entitlements (what was the alternative, to lose ministers as in the first term of Howard?), that MPs couldn’t get to Abbott (really; they couldn’t use a mobile phone, walk around to his office, or buttonhole him after question time?), that voters didn’t want to see staffers in bars late at night (recent history? enough said) or that I spoke my mind (isn’t that what a good adviser does, not just meekly agree?) 
    ‘Everything was used against me, even my years on IVF by low-lifes like Clive Palmer.’

Then there was that other snap ...

It almost as if the reptiles, after listening to petulant Peta do her princess and the pea routine, had decided to select snaps that showed her carrying on like a pork chop ...

It was commitment to the Liberal Party’s ideals that motivated me to serve our country as a political staffer for over 16 years; a faith – to be frank – that was severely shaken when Turnbull and Morrison were moving against the PM they were duty-bound to support. And in the process, trashing the reputation for policy and procedural smarts I’d earned in the Howard years and in opposition; the grudging recognition that a woman on my side of aisle could be as good as the blokes when it came to campaigning. Everything was used against me, even my years on IVF by low-lifes like Clive Palmer. Some days, I honestly don’t know how I managed to survive, and I mean literally; a big part of what kept my head together was never wanting the haters to succeed. While we do not agree on so many things, I will never forget the humanity of Bill Shorten and, later, Anthony Albanese, who both quietly reached out to me to express their disgust at my treatment. Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop? Maybe the card is in the mail.
Part of the reason you are reading me in The Australian today is that when the caricature of me was created by the plotters out to get Abbott, as a staffer I had no voice; I could not respond and all I could do was cop it. When that changed, I knew it would be near impossible to counter what had been manufactured and that my best response was to enter the public square and let people who had heard the criticisms take a closer look and make up their own minds. Having the top-rating show on Sky News for the past three years is my answer to “those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat”.
Now that Morrison has joined Turnbull in exiting the parliament, my hope is for an end to the self-serving duplicity of recent years so that the next Coalition government can be far better than the last.

Don't worry, duckie, you'll always have the memories and the devotion to a man who's singular skill was to make wearing budgies, riding bikes in MAMIL gear, donning knighthoods and eating onions all the rage ...

Such love, such devotion, such good times but now the pond must move on to check the other offerings...

There's a surprise ... Jack the insider veers towards myopia, genocide, Benji, collective punishment, collective displacement, and all the rest ...

Then pond noticed the Killer letter from America, and knew what it had to do ...

Ah, the suffering of the mango Mussolini, and once again, there's no need to read between the lines. 

Killer is deeply moved by the suffering of the Donald ...

If only Killer could break out and tell the truth the way they do on Faux Noise ...Pentagon Rejects Fox News Conspiracy About Taylor Swift Being Recruited as an Asset

Good old Jesse Waters, it started at Faux Noise, and Variety could see the entertainment value in Taylor Swift Ignites Right-Wing Media Frenzy: Why Pundits Think the Super Bowl Is Rigged and the Pop Star Is a Psyop.

On the Jan. 9 episode of his show “Jesse Watters Primetime,” the Fox News talking head played a clip from a 2019 conference organized by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence (per Politico). During the presentation, Swift is named as a powerful influencer, and Watters connected several disparate dots from there.

“Around four years ago, the Pentagon’s psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset,” he said. “It’s real. The Pentagon Psyop unit pitched NATO on turning Taylor Swift into an asset for combating misinformation online.”

Days later, the Pentagon denied the accusation with a Swift-quoting statement, saying “As for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off.”

Despite the rebuttal, Watters’ speculation kicked off a flood of posts about Swift potentially being a psyop on platforms like X/Twitter and Reddit.

Conspiracy theorist and one-time candidate Vivek Ramaswamy sure thinks so. In a now-viral response to a tweet saying that Swift came out as “super liberal in 2020,” Ramaswamy wrote on Monday that, “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

The pond isn't a big fan of Sonny Brunch's film reviews, but he too saw the fun ...

And so on, and for once the pond can look forward to the thugby season, but sadly Killer is off the pace ...

Actually she had a friend back up her word, with another word or two, but the pond isn't going to relitigate the case ... because it seems like it's habba habba redo time, what with Trump says he’s interviewing new lawyers for Carroll case appeal, attacks judge.

The reptiles blessed Killer with a couple of large snaps ...

... but the pond had been there before many times, and was more interested in Killer's killer take ...

Ah, of course, it's all an idle conspiracy ...bloody New Yorkers and their bloody fancy pants cocktails ...

And so to the final Killer gobbet, with everything resolved, because Killer knows, Killer was there in the jury room, considering all the evidence ...

Indeed, indeed, and what joy for the United States to have a man at the top of his game in the top job ...

And now to a protest. Why do the reptiles always seek to hide their very best? 

If the pond hadn't broken a lifetime habit, and glanced at the reptiles late in the day - reptiles are best tackled in the morning on an empty stomach - the pond would have missed Mein Gott's latest offering.

The pond can always leave Oliver droning on about the fush and chup fulk, but has developed a taste for Mein Gott offerings, almost up there with Killer himself,  and this was a grand solution to everything ...

Yes, Mein Gott is on the case, and the reptiles backed it up with a snap of a state-run plant ...

The pond was wildly excited, a reptile spruiking the need to nationalise energy production, the energy grid, the entire kit and caboodle. State-run is the way to go ...

How often do you read a reptile spruiking rampant government control? Yet it seems we must follow the Xi ...

Ah, the inscrutable cunning of the fiendish Chinese and Chairman Xi, and only Mein Gott knows the truth of the cunning plan, and to prove it, the reptiles offered up a snap of a government owned and run nuclear power plant ...

We must nationalise the production of energy by, if not the end of the week, then certainly by the end of the month ... we must implement Chairman Xi's solution ... we must nuke the country, nuke the planet, in order to save the country and save the planet...

Indeed, indeed, keep on with coal, because there'll be nuke or thorium or whatever, which is to say whatever major technology might be developed long after it matters, because remember, there'll always be sweet pie in the sky bye and bye ...

...and that reminded the pond of another bit of required reading ...a reminder of how long the pie in the sky in the bye and bye has been going on ...

‘Smoking gun proof’: fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954, documents show

...Experts say the documents show the fossil fuel industry had intimate involvement in the inception of modern climate science, along with its warnings of the severe harm climate change will wreak, only to then publicly deny this science for decades and fund ongoing efforts to delay action on the climate crisis.
“They contain smoking gun proof that by at least 1954, the fossil fuel industry was on notice about the potential for its products to disrupt Earth’s climate on a scale significant to human civilization,” said Geoffrey Supran, an expert in historic climate disinformation at the University of Miami.
“These findings are a startling confirmation that big oil has had its finger on the pulse of academic climate science for 70 years – for twice my lifetime – and a reminder that it continues to do so to this day. They make a mockery of the oil industry’s denial of basic climate science decades later.”
Previous investigations of public and private records have found that major oil companies spent decades conducting their own research into the consequences of burning their product, often to an uncannily accurate degree – a study last year found that Exxon scientists made “breathtakingly” accurate predictions of global heating in the 1970s and 1980s.
The newly discovered documents now show the industry knew of CO2’s potential climate impact as early as 1954 via, strikingly, the work of Keeling, then a 26-year-old Caltech researcher conducting formative work measuring CO2 levels across California and the waters of the Pacific ocean. There is no suggestion that oil and gas funding distorted his research in any way.
The findings of this work would lead the US scientist to further experiments upon the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii that were to provide a continual status report of the world’s dangerously-rising carbon dioxide composition.
Keeling died in 2005 but his seminal work lives on. Currently, the Earth’s atmospheric CO2 level is 422 parts per million, which is nearly a third higher than the first reading taken in 1958, and a 50% jump on pre-industrial levels.
This essential tracking of the primary heat-trapping gas that has pushed global temperatures to higher than ever previously experienced in human civilization was born, in part, due to the backing of the Air Pollution Foundation.
A total of 18 automotive companies, including Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, gave money to the foundation. Other entities, including banks and retailers, also contributed funding.
Separately, a 1959 memo identifies the American Petroleum Institute (API), the US’s leading oil and gas lobbying body, and the Western Oil and Gas Association, now known as the Western States Petroleum Association, as “major contributors to the funds of the Air Pollution Foundation”. It’s not clear exactly when API started funding the foundation but it had a representative on a research committee from mid-1955 onwards.
A policy statement of the Air Pollution Foundation from 1955 calls the problem of air pollution, which is caused by the emissions of cars, trucks and industrial facilities, “one of the most serious confronting urban areas in California and elsewhere” and that the issue will be addressed via “diligent and honest fact finding, by wise and effective action”...

And so on and on, but enough of the readings, it's time to wrap things up with an infallible Pope...