In which the pond nukes the country with Ted and others, is troubled with our Henry and spares a thought for quislings everywhere thanks to the grave Sexton ...

 

The pond had wanted to start off on a lighter note today with a Colbert joke about aging, (useless YouTube ads apply), what with recent talk about the perils of old age in US politics and that WSJ whack job ...

... but then the genocide lovers got in the way, blathering on about anti-Semitism while the mass murder continues ...

 

Always the conflating and confusing of genocide and anti-Semitism, and yet, it's an ugly time ...

The infallible Pope arrived a little late in the day to offer comment, but better late than never ...

Never mind, there's never time for news of the ongoing genocide in the lizard Oz, what with Petey boy daring to take out lizard Oz journalist Liam Mendes ...

Rather than reading the reptile account, the pond suggests the ABC or the Graudian ...

The ABC should be pleased, the wild-eyed hysteria means that the reptiles have entirely forgotten about their war with the ABC for the moment, and instead the war with Nine is on, with Petey boy the prime target, and the pond standing by with a seraphic smile ...

While dealing with the headlines, this one also caught the pond's eye ...

It was simply too rich to ignore - the anti-Voice campaigners complaining about anyone being deaf to the Voice was a most generous serve of irony, and the pond congratulates Tess for a singular ability to whip up a meal laden with irony without the first clue as to what she was concocting ...

While the news offering was relatively skimpy - the top of the page seemed to be slimmed down, with just the bouffant one in the top far right corner blathering about reality checks - as opposed to a good old State of Origin check on Petey boy - down below the fold there were many riches ...

The pond usually doesn't give politicians in the commentary section the time of day, but it will always make an exception for Ted and his desire to nuke the country to save the planet, and when the big huggable Teddy bear starts off with George Orwell, the pond was immediately beyond sold ...

It so happens that for its thought crimes, yesterday the pond was reading a piece in WaPo, Evan Halper's As nuclear power flails in the U.S., White House bets big on a revival (paywall), with the tag, Price shock, engineering mishaps, long delays and a spate of corruption have not deterred the White House from its nuclear energy ambitions.

It was a ripper read and the pond regrets it can offer Ted only a portion of it, but it did have a lovely snap of a cooling tower just to lure Ted on...

Ted was really hot for taxpayers to foot the bill, what with cost overruns, engineering setbacks and major doubts about viability, and lordy lordy, long absent lordy, he knew all about doublespeak ...

Meanwhile, back with WaPo ...

Indeed, indeed, Ted is keen to get cracking, with Ontario a perennial favourite ...

That WaPo story wrapped up this way ...

...The same challenge faces developers of small modular reactors.
Plans to build the nation’s first such plant in Idaho fell apart in November as the projected price of power kept spiraling upward. The price shock ultimately forced the small power companies in Utah that had earlier agreed to purchase electricity from the Idaho project to bail.
Administration officials counter that tech companies, with their surging energy needs and commitments to zero-emissions energy, are changing the equation. They point to nascent agreements with both big utilities and small nuclear power start-ups through which the tech firms are aiming to bankroll some of the infrastructure construction themselves, shielding other ratepayers and utility investors from financial risk. Duke Energy is collaborating with Amazon, Google, Microsoft and the steel company Nucor on one such agreement that the firm is hoping will propel nuclear development. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
But Parsons and other experts say jump-starting the nuclear industry will also require a big new infusion of federal cash, potentially in the tens of billions of dollars. That is a heavy political lift after lawmakers have already approved subsidies and incentives for nuclear developers that Granholm said can cover as much as half the cost of a plant.
Many proponents of wind and solar — as well as natural gas and even coal power — are fiercely opposed to further nuclear subsidies, arguing it is throwing good money after bad at a time other types of clean power can already be made more cheaply and without radioactive waste.
“The nuclear industry has this huge public relations campaign that says only it can meet the demand for clean energy,” said Patty Durand, a consumer advocate and a candidate for the Georgia board that regulates utilities. “But it is just not true.”
But the United States, the birthplace of the nuclear energy industry, is fast losing its dominance over it. China currently has 21 reactors under construction. India has eight large reactors under construction. South Korea has been steadily building new nuclear plants and is on a path to generate nearly a third of its energy from nuclear power by the end of the decade. (Nuclear currently accounts for 19 percent of the U.S. power supply.)
There are 19 AP1000 reactors, the design used at Vogtle, in development around the world. None of them are being built in the United States.

Perhaps fearing that Ted might appear a little lightweight, the reptiles sent for quango reinforcements, with CIS hacks on hand to offer think tank thoughts ... while operating as a caring charity ...

It was enough to put a rosy glow on cheeks, a radiant kind of joy, though the pond couldn't help thinking about the US experience ...

Luckily this pair could only manage another, albeit long gobbet ...

Having nuked the country to save the planet, the pond could turn to the usual Friday dissertation by our Henry, a great favourite at the pond, treasured for his classical learning, though alas, the pond must report that there's no mention of Thucydides today, but rather a lecture on the moral failings of Boss Hogg and Sheriff Buford T. Justice of Portague County, or similar ...

Yes, like his Republican brethren, our Henry has been brooding about the 'justice' handed out to a notorious crook and con artist, and brings his learned artillery to bear on the problem ...

The pond hesitates to interrupt the learned Henry's treatise just as he's drawn himself up and got going, but his Republican colleagues have already launched a splendid campaign ... as reported in the NY Times, with that report outside the paywall in The GOP Push for Post-Verdict Payback: 'Fight Fire Wirth Fire' ...

Splendid stuff, and the reptiles showed off their orange Jesus in several videos promising said righteous retribution, as only notorious crooks and con artists and snake oil salesmen can do ...

Meanwhile, our Henry was on fire ...

The snake oil salesman's chums were in furious agreement ...

...A central tenet of their argument is that the four criminal cases in four different jurisdictions against Trump are illegitimate and nothing more than political weaponization of the justice system. They continue to put forward the theory, without evidence, that all four cases are the result of a conspiracy by Biden — implicitly or explicitly rejecting the notion that Trump has been charged with crimes based on evidence.

But based on their premise that the charges — and now convictions in the fraudulent business records case — are baseless and were invented for political reasons, they are arguing that Republican prosecutors not only should but can do the same thing to Democrats. In short, having accused Democrats of “lawfare” — or using the law to wage war against political opponents — Republicans are saying they should respond in kind.

Some veteran Republican lawyers have sought to dress up the need for such retribution as a matter of constitutional principle. Among those calling for eye-for-an-eye prosecutions is John C. Yoo, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor best known as the author of once-secret Bush administration legal memos declaring that the president can lawfully violate legal limits on torturing detainees and wiretapping without warrants.

“In order to prevent the case against Trump from assuming a permanent place in the American political system, Republicans will have to bring charges against Democratic officers, even presidents,” Yoo wrote in an essay published by The National Review.

He added: “Only retaliation in kind can produce the deterrence necessary to enforce a political version of mutual assured destruction; without the threat of prosecution of their own leaders, Democrats will continue to charge future Republican presidents without restraint.”

Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill are less bothered about finding a high-minded constitutional rationale.

“President Biden should just be ready because on Jan. 20 of next year when he’s former President Joe Biden, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a close Trump ally, said in an appearance on the pro-Trump network Newsmax.

Jackson said: “I am going to encourage all of my colleagues and everybody that I have any influence over as a member of Congress to aggressively go after the president and his entire family, his entire crime family, for all of the misdeeds that are out there right now related to this family.”

Some of the rhetoric has gone even further.

“Not just jail, they should get the death penalty,” Laura Loomer, a far-right and anti-Muslim activist with a history of expressing bigoted views, said in a podcast appearance after the verdict. Loomer, a onetime Republican nominee for a House seat in Florida, is not officially part of the Trump campaign. Trump, however, has praised her as “very special,” invited her to travel with him on his private plane and has met with her at his private clubs.

Indeed, indeed, hang 'em all.

Meanwhile, our Henry was at one, with his dismay at partisan ratbaggery deeply moving...

Indeed, indeed ...

....There is no room on this issue for moderate or traditional Republicans, such as Larry Hogan, a former governor of Maryland and a star GOP recruit to run for the Senate in the blue state. Hogan erred unforgivably in the eyes of the Trump team when he implored Americans “to respect the verdict and the legal process” regardless of the outcome.

Chris LaCivita, a top Trump adviser, addressed Hogan in a post on X: “You just ended your campaign.” And even though a victory by Hogan could make the difference between whether Republicans or Democrats control the Senate next year, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who is also the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said on CNN that Hogan “doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party.”

And so to the hole in the bucket man's final gobbet ...

Who wouldn't be worried about a notorious crook and con artist finally being caught out, albeit on a relatively minor matter, while the justice system valiantly works to protect him in other more serious cases, and his lickspittle sycophants promise mayhem and payback ...

And now, while the pond has run wildly over length - you don't get to nuke the country or defend con artists without spending a few words - speaking of lickspittles, the pond would like to end with the thoughts of lickspittle quisling and fellow traveller, the grave Sexton ...

It goes without say that there's SFA analogy with the Vietnam war, but we're dealing with a dealer in Vlad the Sociopath's talking points, so naturally Vlad featured in the visual distractions, together with a gratuitous snap of a de-miner at work ...

The important thing here is to give Vlad the Sociopath what he wants, and for that you want someone capable of the finest Neville Chamberlain impression, and for that you need the grave Sexton ...

It might be that this impression of Neville Chamberlain is first rate, but the pond certainly didn't interrupt when this Nev got to "R", that was the doing of the reptiles ...

Stay in the mood, stay in sell out lickspittle quisling mode, remember the point is to sell out Ukraine and give the sociopath what he wants ...

That's a mighty big billy goat butt from the lickspittle quisling, dressed up as "none of this is to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine", which is true enough, the point being that even a quisling would find it hard to justify.

The point is to work out how to make it a fait accompli, which is something of a challenge, even for quislings.

Doubtless Neville Chamberlain felt the same way, having given up on Austria, the Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia, only to be suddenly confronted by Danzig, the corridor and the Polish matter ... 

No doubt everybody would be better off giving Vlad the Sociopath back the entirety of the old Soviet empire, and who cares what the people might actually want. They should just thank the venerable Sexton for bringing back peace and the Stasi ... (and if you want he can hand over Taiwan as a supplementary bargain to Hong Kong's fate).

The pond notes with some regret that the day's business precluded any cartoons, so here are a couple to bring an end to today's proceedings at the lizard Oz ...