It's economics Tuesday and the discombobulated pond almost runs screaming from the room ...

 

The pond has come to think of Tuesdays as economics day with the reptiles. The pond has become resigned to this fate - others might have their Quigginonomics or their Gittinsonomics but the pond has developed quite a taste for Gottonomics, and there's always a Tuesday groaning to hand from Dame Groan, and so the dismal art must have its place (and feeble art form it is, as meaningless as fossicking through chicken entrails or tea leaves).

The pond blames all this on certain esteemed correspondents, who insist on doing a Linda Loman by saying that attention must be paid.

The pond never quite understands why. After doing one unit of economic history, the mere mention of Sir Lewis Namier's name would prompt the pond to run screaming from the room and do an upchuck in the toilet.

All the same there must be other things going down in theworld. 

The pond woke to the BBC's Newshour reporting on the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the sociopathic deeds of Vlad the destroyer in Ukraine, but naturally when looking at the reptiles, there's little chance of anything but a distorting mirror being held up to the world ...

The pond couldn't help but note that the reptiles had chambered the far right position with a whack job on the man who has little to be proud of ...

Well it's a change of pace, a warning that if the little to be proud of man steps out of line, dares to have a deviant or reprehensible thought, he can expect a 'whack a mole' from the reptiles, loyal to Captain Spud ...

David Littleproud has emerged as one of Australia’s weakest political leaders with limited support in his own party room and diminishing clout around the shadow cabinet table.
The Nationals leader, who spends more time ranting about pet peeves on morning TV shows than rallying support from colleagues, has been reined-in by the Liberals on his push to break-up supermarket chains and frozen-out of Coalition energy policy development.
After spending months threatening to follow the Greens and dismantle supermarket chain dominance, the former banker didn’t mention the D-word (divestiture) in his statement responding to Craig Emerson’s food and grocery code of conduct interim report on Monday.
Littleproud started winding back his rhetoric last week after it emerged opposition treasury spokesman Angus Taylor was taking lead on Coalition competition policy.
“Angus Taylor and I are working through this at the moment and while the Nationals support in principle, broader divestiture powers, what we need to understand is that there are nuances to the supermarkets and their market dominance that need to be looked at and some of the existing architecture that’s already there,” Littleproud said last Thursday.
Peter Dutton’s message to colleagues is clear – they will never follow the Greens on economic policy, let alone during a cost-of-living crisis.
Dutton and Taylor want sensible guardrails and economic reality to lead a Coalition “big stick” approach, similar to what was applied to energy companies.

The pond tried this non-screen cap approach to this reptile hit job because the snaps were of the usual suspects, and if the pond wanted an illustration, it would always turn to a detail in today's immortal Rowe ...

It's always in the detail and yes, yes, economics Tuesday will be turning up in due course, but first the pond should complete the hit job ...

Senior Liberal and Nationals sources say Dutton has performed exceptionally well to get the Coalition close to a 50-50 position following a disastrous 2022 election. But there are concerns a policy vacuum will be filled by a cacophony of backbench commentary and freelancing on major issues.
From nuclear energy to supermarket crackdowns, fractures have emerged as to the best approach to sell Coalition positions. There are concerns the Coalition has not yet put forward a coherent economic narrative.
“The team is behind Dutton 100 per cent. There are conversations about how to best sell the nuclear energy policy and fractures around other policies but everybody is united behind the leader,” a senior Coalition source said.
Just over one-year out from the 2025 election, Dutton needs to put flesh on the bone explaining what the Coalition stands for. Heading towards and beyond the May 14 budget, Dutton, Taylor and opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien will start to fill the void.
“It comes down to what the electorate thinks of us and why. On nuclear energy, there are discussions around how we best mount the case and make the political argument. About how our net-zero emissions trajectory, delivered from a technology agnostic position, is more realistic than Chris Bowen’s blinkered renewables-only vision,” a Coalition source said.
Another Coalition source said “the main show is the economy”.
“There is negative sentiment out there around big business but we have to prove to voters that we are the better economic manager, in addition to being the strongest on national security. The policies will come.”
While there is no threat to Littleproud’s leadership, colleagues believe he doesn’t cut-through and is more “background noise than substance”. Littleproud will be thrown some concessions to buttress his leadership because Dutton has no appetite for any shattering of unity ahead of the 2025 election.

Dear sweet long absent lord, they really are doubling down in the land of delusion - Ted will fill the void? - but at least that allows the pond to flesh out that immortal Rowe ... it's not just the detail, it's the flesh on the trolley cart bone ...

This might begin to sound like a teaser trailer for economics Tuesday, but really the pond should look below the fold and check out what else is on offer ...

Yep, there''s the groaning, and there's good old Shoe and Bergin urging the pond to look the other way, because who would dare take the moral high ground when it comes to an ongoing genocide? 

On the other hand, the pond did decide to look the other way when it came to the bromancer. New Zealand and Jacinda Ardern again? Really? Of all the trouble spots in the world facing cold reality, the pond could think of fifty or so in a worse situation, beginning with Gaza and Ukraine and a number of countries in Africa ...

The pond is tremendously loyal to the bro, but felt an overwhelming tiredness. There must be more to life than bashing fush and chup folk.

What of simplistic Simon? Sure enough the yarn began with a snap of Liddell Hart, as the reptiles are wont to do ...

... but then discontent and unhappiness littered the text ...

The next election will be the seventh in a row where climate change and energy policy stands to be a significant if not deciding factor.

Peter Dutton has now made sure of that.

The injection of nuclear into the debate as a serious baseload option for Australia has ensured yet again that voters are forced to choose between two divergent alternatives.

The ideological ground has shifted. Climate change is no longer the principal issue. The battle now is on which mix of technology gets us there.

But Labor and the Coalition have perhaps never been further apart on this question than now.

The pressing issue is that the exit of coal is imminent. The plan is to retire 90 per cent of it within 10 years. What replaces it in the meantime is the issue.

The government may well argue that the Coalition’s nuclear option is fantasy. There is no doubt it’s ambitious. But Labor’s renewables and battery project is equally hanging on a wing and a prayer if the recent past investment schedule trajectory becomes the future.

Lights are literally going to start going out by 2035 unless Canberra gets this right and the exit plan for coal is managed properly.

Coal plants have got to shut and have to be replaced. And they have to be replaced quickly. This is an issue that has cost both sides elections.

Labor has suffered the most. It lost 2013 on the carbon tax broken promise and then again in 2019, Labor scored an own goal over Adani when the Labor-aligned outfit GetUp! campaigned against Bill Shorten over Adani.

Scott Morrison was assisted out of office by the Climate 200 team that helped the teal independents get elected.

Now Albanese and Dutton are locked into a continuation of the energy wars ahead of the 2025 election.

The outcome of this debate is in no way assured.

Dutton’s nuclear ambitions are easily dismissed. But Albanese’s renewables-only approach is equally fragile.

Forget the politics and follow the money.

Actually at this point the pond thought it might follow the 'toon:

The man who scribbled Dutton’s nuclear ambitions are easily dismissed kept up the lamentations ...

The Investor Group on Climate Change is unashamedly pro-renewable/battery storage. Yet its own assessment is that Labor will not get there unless it radically moves the dial.

Investor concern is that while the government has plenty of projects to announce, many of which are hotly contested at a local level through a lack of community engagement, there is no overarching economy-wide plan on how to get to net zero.

Unsurprisingly, it warns not only of a flight of capital from Australian investors but a collar on capital flowing in.

The window is rapidly closing. If the Coalition fails at the next election, the nuclear debate will be put back at least another decade.

It won’t be dead necessarily, considering by 2045 we will be talking again about what is going to replace the wind farms that have a working life of only 30 years.

But nuclear won’t be a solution to the 2035 crunch point.

And on the current mathematics, the Albanese government is also a long way from getting there.

Fancy that,  nuclear won’t be a solution to the 2035 crunch point, and just how did the reptiles allow that heretic to scribble such outrageous words, words he has little to be proud of ?

Okay, okay, finally it's time for economics Tuesday, but the pond is defiant and insists that the first thing to do is to check out Mein Gott's offering. 

Sure it's a little dated, like getting out leftovers and reheating them, but Mein Gott Monday, was he in top form or what, deserving of a home in economics Tuesday ...

At this point the reptiles interrupted the flow with a snap of the orange Jesus, and the pond decided to get all the interruptions out of the way ...

Mein Gott, this was the 42 guide to the future ...

Why? Who knows, but there are a few stocks that are cratering and the pond isn't talking about X ... Trump’s Stock Officially Down 50% Since First-Day Peak —Trump’s Stake Down Over $3 Billion

• Shares of Trump Media, the majority Trump-owned parent of the right-wing social media platform Truth Social, fell 8% Monday to just above $37.
• That’s some 54% below the peak $79 per share Trump Media fetched on March 26, its first day of trading under its DJT ticker upon the completion of its reverse merger with blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corp.
• The value of Trump’s 58% stake in Trump Media, has accordingly cratered in the 13-day stretch, falling from $6.25 billion to $2.93 billion.
• That knocked his net worth from its March peak of more than $7 billion to $4.8 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates.

Never mind, snake oil con artists come and snake oil grifters go, but Mein Gott is telling it like it is ...

Yes, it's the coming of the tangerine tyrant and everyone is excited... well perhaps not everyone ...

And so to the last gobbet of Mein Gott's vision, though the pond must admit that at the end of it all, the pond sill didn't have the foggiest who might be the next president of the disunited states ...

That ended a bit like the world ending, with not so much a bang as a whimper, and so at last the pond turned to the day's Groan.

The pond expects some gratitude. The pond could have been off bashing Jacinda and the fush and chups folk with the bromancer, but instead will endure, for the umpteenth - some content it's the zillionth - Dame Groan rant about the bloody pesky, difficult, uppity furriners, roonin' everything ...

The pond really should have done a Sir Lewis Namier, run screaming from the room and done an epic Technicolor yawn into the toilet ...

Sure there's comedy of a low kind: "Why are we all so grumpy?"

The pond can't speak for everyone, but apart from the news of the odd genocide, the pond woke in reasonable health, feeling quite relieved at not having been washed away, and lucky not to be caught in an ongoing genocide or caught in a war staged by a sociopath, or arguing with lickspittle lackey GOP fellow travellers ...

"Believe me, people are crabby."

The pond believes the crabby old groaner. She's always crabby...the lizard Oz's very own Oscar the Grouch, and as well as infesting trash cans, as the Americans have it, her language is inclined to the quaint ...

Our English word “crab” comes from the Old English “crabba,” itself from a Germanic root meaning “to scratch or claw,” which is, after all, pretty much the crab’s entire repertoire right there. Our modern “crabby,” meaning “cross, irritable, cranky” is fairly recent (as such things are measured), dating to the late 18th century. “Crabby,” however, was a derivative of an earlier term, “crabbed,” which appeared with the same meaning back in the 14th century.

In both “crabby” and “crabbed,” the analogy is to a crab’s tendency to painfully nip with its claws and tenaciously hold on, as well as its tendency to walk backwards and sideways, making it an excellent metaphor for a difficult, uncooperative person. (This, of course, is not entirely fair to crabs, many of which probably have wonderful personalities and, should they one day take over the planet, will no doubt remember I said that.) One of the more popular uses of “crabby” in this sense in recent years was in the Peanuts comic strip, in which Lucy van Pelt was routinely described as “crabby.”

The peculiar locomotion of a crab actually contributed to another sense of “crabbed,” that of “crooked, knotted, complex, twisted,” which today is found mostly in descriptions of indecipherable handwriting, awkward or overly-complex prose (“Mr. Hume, who has translated so many of the dark and crabbed passages of Butler into his own transparent and beautiful language,” 1830), or the ravages of age and disease on the human body (e.g., “a crabbed old man”).

Interestingly, the “crab,” or wild, apple, takes its name from the probably unrelated Scandinavian word “scrab” rather than the crustacean. But the sourness of the “crabapple” probably reinforced several senses of “crab” as applied to humans, especially the use of “crab” to mean “complain bitterly.” (here)

Okay, it's not economics, but the pond doesn't have much to say on the subject of migration that hasn't already been said before. Of course the migrants are rooning everything, of course we'll all be rooned ...

Of course the pond has mentioned how when the pond turns up at the RPA for a regular check up, there's always a nice non-Anglo-Celt to hand to help, and that's about as far as the pond goes ...

You have to be a certified crabapple to keep on harping about how we'll all be rooned...

Discombobulation?

Here we go again ...

"to upset, embarrass," 1834, discombobricate, American English, fanciful mock-Latin coinage of a type popular then. Compare, on a similar pattern, confusticate (1852), absquatulate (1840), spifflicate "confound, beat" (1850), scrumplicate "eat" (1890). Related: discombobulating; discombobulation

And for those too lazy to follow the link here's some more fanciful mock-Latin mock turtle words the groaner could throw into the "we'll all be rooned" conversation ...

absquatulate (v.)

"run away, make off," 1840, earlier absquotilate (1837), "Facetious U.S. coinage" [Weekley], perhaps based on a mock-Latin negation of squat (v.) "to settle." Said to have been used on the London stage in in the lines of rough, bragging, comical American character "Nimrod Wildfire" in the play "The Kentuckian" as re-written by British author William B. Bernard, perhaps it was in James K. Paulding's American original, "The Lion of the West." Civil War slang established skedaddle in its place. Related: Absquatulated; absquatulating; absquatulation.

confusticate (v.)

"confound, confuse," 1852, a fantastical mock-Latin American English coinage from confound or confuse, originally in "Negro dialect" passages in works such as "J. Thornton Randolph's" pro-slavery "The Cabin and Parlor" (1852, a response to "Uncle Tom's Cabin"), picked up in London publications by the 1860s. Similar formations include confubuscate, conflabberated, etc., and compare discombobulate. Related: Confusticated; confusticating.

Yes the pond has an overwhelming desire to absquatulate its economics Tuesday, and head off to the toilet for an upchuck, Technicolor yawn style, but this is the final gobbet, laden with much mock turtle groaning and sighing ...

The pond wasn't cranky, but Dame Groan has achieved her aim, and now the pond is cranky, really cranky, crabapple cranky.

The pond could have been mocking the fush and chup folk with the bromancer, and instead had to endure a bloody groaning and if the pond's correspondents don't come up with something witty and sharp to say about it, there will be words spoken, harsh words that the pond might regret ...

BTW, did the pond ever mention its deep fear of supermarket bots and its habit of insisting on being served by a real person, in the flesh so to speak? 

Did the pond ever mention that when some zombie servant of the overlords tries to usher the pond towards a supermarket bot the pond sometimes snaps "I'm trying to keep you people employed. Given the excess profits your overlords siphon off, the least that could be expected is that they give people a job. The pond used to teach check out chicks the history of the stump jump plough but if things keep going this way there won't be any check out chicks to teach ..."

Usually the pond is rewarded with a blank stare. Someone's turned up in the fast food diner with a baseball bat looking and sounding like Michael Douglas in search of a late breakfast ... best just let the mad old biddie head for the line stretching far down the aisle ...

Never mind, that was just an elaborate set-up for the infallible Pope of the day....