In which climate science denialism is the main reptile Saturday course, with a serve of "Ned" as dessert, what might be called a Pythonish chocolate mint moment too far ...

 

The pond had expected to wake up this Saturday morn thinking the heavy hitters would emerge - the bromancer, the dog botherer - to deal with the rampant clown carnival of the past week. 

But they must have developed a case of the vapours or disappeared into the ether or became a form of ectoplasm because they were nowhere in sight... perhaps by Sunday things might be different...

The pond did enjoy that header Senior NT cop 'dressed up as KKK to scare locals', reminding the pond that the other KKK only dressed up to scare white folk ...

Never mind, the real news is that there's not that much in the lizard Oz about the mango Mussolini's minions.

Apart from a tedious burst by "Ned", today would be climate science denialist day, a reiteration of all that the lizard Oz has stood for these past few decades... and over on the far right came the first clue ...

Two serves of Dame Slap on the far right, with at least one thing true, because the chance of the pond believing Dame Slap - the pond suspects she purports to be a woman rather than an iron maiden - is beyond the valley of zero.

The real clue however is the presence of the Bjorn-again one, and then if you looked a little harder you could see the Ughmann lurking in what purports to be the news section of the digital rag.

The pond has gone on at great length celebrating the Ughmann's astonishing credentials as a climate scientist, and here he showed his stripes by doing a cross promotion for a show on Sky News (Au). 

The flailing cable network, which imagines people will pay for tripe outside a butcher's shop, needs as much help as it can get, with figures given a merry dance in the venerable Meade's Friday edition of the Weekly Beast.

...There was a wild claim about the popularity of Sky v ABC News: “On linear subscription television, Sky News has outrated ABC News by 204% this year”.
This is based on data for subscription TV homes only, in other words people watching the ABC through a Foxtel set top box. When you look at the numbers watching ABC News on free-to-air the reach is 1.9m for ABC News to 323,547 for Sky News Live.

A set top box? How quaint. The other day somebody asked the pond to send a fax ...

Onwards then with the Ughmann and climate science denialism as a way to pump up the Sky volume. 

The reptiles advised members of the hive mind that it was a nine minute read, and even allowing that they're very slow readers, it's a long slog, so the pond will do its best not to interrupt. 

After all, there's little by way of actual climate science news to discuss, there's just a lot of fear-mongering and hysteria ...

The astonishing cost of our net-zero delusion, It is impossible to overstate the stakes if our energy transition runs off the rails. Red lights are flashing here and around the world.

It goes without saying that the flashing red lights have nothing to do with all the catastrophic recent events related to climate, or recent talk of the rich and their doomsday bunkers, nor anything to do with the catastrophic artwork that introduces the Ughmann, No, Mr Bowen, the sun and wind don’t send us bills, but electricity retailers do – and they’re big ones. Original artwork by Emilia Tortorella.

Oh Emilia, Emilia, was that the best you could do to distract from the Ughmann's gibberish?

The discord between reality and rhetoric is playing out in real time as the politics driving a warp-speed shift from predictable electricity generation collides with the physics of delivering constant power with inconstant supply.
It is impossible to overstate the stakes if the energy transition runs off the rails. Electricity is civilisation’s nervous system; without it, everything will collapse. What is happening is akin to conducting a proof-of-concept experiment on an incubator with a child inside.
And red lights are flashing on energy transitions here and around the world.
In Australia, the target for the eastern grid is huge: Labor wants 82 per cent of generation on the National Electricity Market to come from wind, solar and hydro power in the next six years. That’s more than double what it is now.
In fact the gap is bigger than it first appears, because the maximum generation capacity boasted by weather-dependent energy gatherers is no measure of the power they typically harvest. At best, onshore wind farms will deliver 40 per cent of their nameplate capacity. Solar panels sit at under 30 per cent. So at least twice as much random generation must be built to cover the retirement of every reliable power producer.
Labor’s ambition is also built on a promise: the future will be greener and it will be cheaper. Showcasing his formidable rhetorical skills, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has distilled this to a soundbite: “Renewable energy is incredibly cheap because its fuel is free, because it’s the sunshine and the wind.”
In another flourish, he muses: “The sun doesn’t send a bill. The wind doesn’t send a bill.”
Alas, electricity retailers do send bills and everyone who owns or rents a property, and every business, knows they are getting bigger. Turns out, turning sunshine and wind into electricity costs money. And converting widely dispersed on-and-off generation into a reliable power supply is staggeringly expensive.

Amidst the panic and the hysteria, the pond will only pause to note an Animation by Steve Nowakowski.

Oh Steve, Steve, that's as wretched as Emilia's offering. 

What a relief it is not to offer the actual animation, as the Ughmann works himself into a lather about his cross-promotional push for Sky News (Au) ...

Working on a documentary about the energy transition for Sky News, our team set out to speak to people who have real-world experience with energy and in running electricity systems.
What we found was everywhere wind and solar displace reliable generators to become a dominant source of power, two things happen: electricity prices rise and energy security falls.
The reasons are at once complex and simple. In essence, it’s all about balance. The iron law of a bulk electricity system is that supply must perfectly match demand, every second of every minute, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That finely tuned balance is reflected in the system frequency.
Energy gatherers cannot match power demand with supply because their fuel is literally as predictable as the weather. To turn occasionally available power into a reliable electricity system, the gatherers have to be connected to a complex and expensive life-support system the old grid did not need.
Wind and solar plants cannot set the grid’s frequency, or maintain its stability. So essential system strength services that were once delivered as a by-product of generating electricity also have to be recreated and financed.
In North Carolina, Michael Caravaggio is a head of research and development at the world-leading Electric Power Research Institute.
“We built our electricity systems around the world with essentially dispatchable technologies for matching frequency,” Caravaggio says.

Of all the systems in the world to reference, American energy is about the last the pond would seek to emulate, though to be fair Enron did provide a great example of ways to move forward.

At this point the reptiles introduced a snap designed to give the beefy beastly boofhead of Goulburn a complete meltdown: The Clarke Creek Wind Farm project has just hit the halfway mark after having its 50th wind turbine installed.

Shocking stuff, then it was back to the Ughmann providing fodder for the pond's comment section:

“What do I mean? If you use more electricity, I can give you more electricity. Use less, I can turn them down. With wind and solar it’s not like that. So the sun rises, that’s when we have electricity. The wind blows, that’s when we have electricity. Doesn’t care what you or I do in terms of that electricity. That’s a small problem when we build some wind and solar. But that becomes a bigger and bigger problem as these technologies scale.”
Sitting in the real world is Jim Robb, chief executive and president of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. Appointed by congress, his unique job is to oversee the reliability and security of the bulk power system across the entire interconnected American grid, which includes all of the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico.
“There’s a line that a lot of people will latch onto that as we move toward more renewable sources of energy, that costs will decline because we don’t have to pay for fuel,” Robb says. “But we do have to pay for the capital required to convert free wind and free sunshine into electricity. We’re going to have to pay for the capital to distribute it to customers, and we’re going have to pay for the creation of those reliability services.”
This is no surprise. Anyone watching the cautionary tales of South Australia, Germany and California could read the signals years ago that the rhetoric of a cheap, reliable green power was a fraud. It was obvious when Labor produced its energy policy, including the mythic figure of a $275 drop in power prices. Bowen was privately warned not to claim prices would fall.
And the dirty little secret in the construction of the green grid is that it cannot work as an electricity system without gas.
Daniel Westerman, chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator, is the man tasked with developing the system plan to deliver Labor’s pledge to decarbonise the eastern National Electricity Market. He says gas will be essential to ensure the reliability of the grid – to 2050 and beyond – as the cost of trying to cover long periods of low wind and solar generation without it would be prohibitive.

For those uncertain about who's being featured, the reptiles offered this, Daniel Westerman. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

This began to sound terribly gloomy, but there was a happy sight at the end of the gobbet:

“We will have batteries, we’ll have pumped hydro,” Westerman says. “But we’ll have times like we’ve seen earlier this year where there’s not much wind and there’s not much sun, and the gas-fired power stations are really required to back up the reliability of the grid. They are there as the ultimate backstop.”
The energy transition road map is the Integrated System Plan developed by AEMO. It shows that, as coal retires, 15 gigawatts of gas will be needed for the eastern grid to operate securely to 2050 and beyond. This is not just a little bit of gas, it’s enough to power 15 million homes. As a future grid dominated by wind and solar generation cannot form a reliable electricity system without gas, the fossil fuel’s role is more backbone than backstop.
This plan is being built on the railroad tracks laid down by the government. And, lest we forget, last year Bowen told the world climate summit that “fossil fuels have no ongoing role to play in our energy systems” if the Paris targets are to be met.
One begins to wonder if the minister understands that words have meaning. The distance between what he says and what is real is as vast as the generation gaps Labor’s decarbonisation ambitions are punching in the electricity system.
There is another, terrifying, possibility that would explain this reality gap: that the minister, his staff, his department and all the states and territories that have been pushing ambitious renewables targets for a decade have no idea what they are doing.

Oh it's terrifying, but there was a splendid gif showing Proposed renewables projects, land clearing:

Back in the day the reptiles used to love a bit of bush bashing, but these days the snowflakes are hardcore environmentalists, whimpering and moaning about the trees being lost. Remember for coal and iron ore and such like, it's fine, but a solar panel or a wind turbine will just ruin the Ughmann's and the beefy boofhead's day.

 Now back to the breathtakingly, stunningly literate Ughmann, even if he has to say it himself:

That Australia’s political class, and the bureaucrats who advise them are breathtakingly, stunningly energy illiterate. That they have been ruled by virtue signalling and not facts.
This is now my working theory. Here is the evidence.
If any of them did understand the limitations of the technologies they champion, then all states building a wind and solar-dependent grid would have also vigorously pursued the development of domestic gas supplies.
As they raised their targets for more wind and solar, they would have raised their ambitions to secure plentiful gas.
More supply would mean lower electricity costs and would have buttressed the grid, to allow for the orderly retirement of coal generation.
They did the opposite. Victoria imposed a ban on gas exploration and NSW did nothing to encourage it. Worse, energy ministers demonised the fuel. The critical gas shortages all now face is entirely a product of not just bad, but culpably ignorant, policies.
If any of the energy ministers who signed up to Labor’s Capacity Investment Scheme actually knew what they were doing, then gas would have been on the menu of vital technologies needed to support the energy transition. Yet they delivered a plan which specifically excludes gas. Uniquely in the world, Australia has a capacity investment scheme which forbids investing in dispatchable capacity.
If the politicians and bureaucrats had paid attention to what is happening in any jurisdiction attempting a similar transition, then they might have picked up a pretty significant signal.
In June 2022, The New York Times reported that the EU had “endorsed labelling some gas and nuclear energy projects ‘green’, allowing them access to hundreds of billions of euros in cheap loans and even state subsidies”.
Matt Kean was the NSW energy minister and is now Climate Change Authority chairman. As recently as last month he said “people calling for gas to be included in the capacity investment scheme are trying to stop renewables”.
“That just seems like a recipe for much higher electricity bills for Australian consumers, and they’re bills that we can’t afford to pay,” Kean said.
So one of the key figures pushing for a weather-dependent grid appears not to have read, or does not understand, the future system plan he champions.
For his benefit we will return to Westerman: “What we know is that as we get to a net-zero system, it’s really expensive if we don’t have a dispatchable source like gas.”
Is it not just a tad disturbing that Kean’s views are so profoundly discordant with the analysis that underpins the system he is promoting? Again, for his benefit, his preferred grid does not work without gas. And, without gas, it will be even more expensive.

As with any reptile outing, it's important to identify Satan and his minions, so that the hive mind can wobble and quiver like jelly, so here is Energy Minister Chris Bowen with Climate Change Authority chairman Matt Kean.

Naturally these wretches are no match for the Ughmann, and it bewilders the pond that he's left to do cross promotional crap for the emeritus Chairman. In a fair world, he'd be given a job running a major department. If it's good enough for Faux Noise and the Department of Defence, why not the Ughmann? Hasn't he ranted, hasn't he shown his licks and his chops?

Kean also clearly has no knowledge of what’s happening in other countries attempting the same transition, unless he now believes that by subsidising gas the EU is “trying to stop renewables”.
It gets worse. Under questioning before a recent Senate estimates hearing, Kean repeatedly asserted that the system plan “is a look at the counterfactuals as to other sources of generation to provide the cheapest replacement cost of an existing system”.
This is wrong. Examining the cost of coal and nuclear power is explicitly prohibited because the plan is confined by the guardrails of every state and federal policy, including the 82 per cent renewable target. What is being built is not the cheapest system for consumers, it’s the “lowest-cost pathway”. They are two very different things, which is why Westerman will not follow his political masters’ lead in promising lower power prices.
The thought that those leading the net-zero charge might be clueless has clearly occurred to another inhabitant of the real world, Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill.
“One of the things that I think has been challenging is we’re not using data to have the conversation,” O’Neill says.
“We’re using aspiration. We’re using goals. But the fundamental data that will help us understand what’s required to get to the place we want to be, that’s not been laid up for the Australian people.”
And how much back-up of gas, batteries and pumped hydro will be needed to support the so-called net-zero grid?
“What we’ve seen is that you need to manage those zero output hours from wind and solar,” Caravaggio says. “Unfortunately they always happen. So you need essentially a hundred per cent back-up for different periods to cover that need. That is an evolving challenge to figure out the economics and how to make that affordable. Right now, what we typically see is a significant gas build out.”
One hundred per cent backup.
So we are building two systems. The one being advertised and the shadow system needed to ensure the security of supply. And, in a profound irony, the crucial second system has been actively undermined by those championing the first.
In an electricity system, the term for a catastrophic event is cascading system failure. It begins with an initial fault which amplifies through the grid and ends in a widespread blackout. The lights can go out within a minute.
If the mob wakes up to the fact that what was promised by Bowen can never be delivered, or the lights go out, then Labor will learn what a cascading system failure looks like when it is applied to politics. It will put the lights out on the government in a heartbeat.

Ah, the mob. The pond suspects that this isn't the indigenous use of the term, but is more like the deplorables of the dictionary definition...a large and disorderly crowd of people, especially one bent on riotous or destructive action

Fair's fair, the pond will provide the mob with the plug.

The Real Cost of Net Zero premieres on Sky News on Tuesday 19 November at 8pm AEDT. Stream at SkyNews.com.au or download the Sky News Australia app.

Yes, you too can piss your hard-won shekels against the wall supporting climate science denialism. As for the planet, we'll soon be learning what a cascading world system failure looks like ... it'll put your lights and fridge out in a heartbeat of storms, floods and cyclonic winds.

Exeunt Ughmann, enter the Bjorn-again one ...

With that done and dusted, the pond could turn to the Bjorn-again one, with the reptiles promising just a three minute read, which is just as well, because all the Bjorn-again one does is endlessly repeat himself. Rinse and repeat, and so it is in World needs to start again on climate challenge, The global climate process has lost its way. Most of the focus at this week’s UN climate summit will be on the need for huge transfers of wealth. These were never going to happen, even before Trump’s election – but now they are utterly unrealistic.

For years the Bjorn again one has spent his energy spreading FUD, but the real fear came to the pond with the opening illustration,  Since today’s poorer countries are going to be responsible for the vast amount of emissions in the 21st century, the real challenge is to hasten the day they can switch to green energy. Artwork: Frank Ling

Oh Frank, Frank, was it meant to be a homage to Klee, or Braque or mebbe Kandinsky?

Whatever, it certainly sets the tone for the usual third rate alarmism that follows ...

The UN climate summit in Azerbaijan (November 11-22) is happening in the shadow of Donald Trump’s election, and many key leaders won’t even show up. With low expectations set before it even began, the summit will nonetheless see grandiose speeches on the need for a vast flows of money from rich countries to poorer ones. Unrealistic even before Trump’s victory, such calls for trillions of dollars are misguided and sure to fail.
The main problem is that wealthy countries – responsible for most emissions leading to climate change – want to cut emissions, while poorer countries mainly want to eradicate poverty through growth that remains largely reliant on fossil fuels. To get poorer countries to act against their own interest, the West started offering cash two decades ago.
In 2009, then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton promised “new and additional” funds of $US100bn ($153bn) annually by 2020 if developing countries agreed to future carbon cuts.
The rich world didn’t deliver, and most funding was simply repackaged and often mis-labelled development aid.
This fiasco notwithstanding, developing countries now want more money. In 2021, India stated that it alone would need $100bn a year for its own transition. This year, China, India, Brazil and South Africa agreed rich nations should increase their financing “from billions of US dollars per year to trillions of US dollars”.
All this was predicted back in 2010 by UN Climate Panel economist Ottmar Edenhofer: “One must free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.” Instead, “we are de facto distributing world wealth through climate policy”.

It will be noted that the Bjorn-again one loves to toss around figures, but strangely never gets to toss around the cost of climate science related disasters, though they're easy enough to find.

Now there's a graph, but the reptiles strangely stuck in an audio visual distraction: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told world leaders at the COP29 summit on Tuesday (November 12) to "pay up" to prevent climate-led humanitarian disasters, and said time was running out to limit a destructive rise in global temperatures.

On with the Bjorn-again one, tossing figures around like a numbers salad, but without once mentioning the prohibitively expensive game which is making insurance against natural disasters a passing midsummer night's dream:

But it is hard to squeeze billions, much less trillions, out of a rich world that has its own problems. Cleverly, campaigners and many developing countries have rebranded the reason for these transfers by blaming weather damage costs on rich-world emissions and requesting compensation for “loss and damages”.
Factually, this is an ill-considered claim because weather damages from hurricanes, floods, droughts, and other weather calamities have actually declined as a percentage of global GDP since 1990, both for rich and poor countries. Deaths from these catastrophes have plummeted.
But this rebranding is a great way to increase the ask. At last year’s climate jamboree, politicians agreed to create a “loss and damages” fund, which has just been set up.
The UN’s climate change body estimates it will generate a flow to poorer countries in the region of $US5.8 trillion to $US5.9 trillion between now and 2030. Others are making even larger estimates, such as $US100 trillion to $US238 trillion by 2050. Some campaigners suggest the West should raise $US2.5 trillion annually to get reparations started.
This will be prohibitively expensive for the West: the demand means a cost of $US1000 or more from every person in the rich world, every year, for the foreseeable future. This is on top of the cost of rich-world carbon emission-reduction policies that will be even more expensive.

When reading this sort of FUD, it's important to terrify the reptile hive mind readership with shocking AV footage of protestors, such as Climate activists at the COP29 summit held a silent protest on Monday (November 11), saying the United Nations did not allow them to chant or make speeches.

Bloody useless activists, if they just paid heed to the Bjorn-again one they wouldn't have bothered to get out of bed. Think of the cost of the signs, the cost of getting there ... best to do nothing.

A recent US survey shows an overwhelming majority would reject such large transfers, and ­majorities across the West would likely reach similar conclusions.
Moreover, poor people across the world struggle with poverty, disease, malnutrition and bad education, which could be alleviated at low cost. It is wrongheaded and immoral to mostly ignore those afflictions and instead spend trillions on climate projects. To add insult to injury, the added spending will likely squeeze aid spending further.
Even if the money could be mustered, it is highly doubtful the trillions will go to the poor instead of pompous vanity projects or Swiss bank accounts.
Finally, the transfers will not negate the fact that poorer countries still need first to get out of poverty by driving development with enormous amounts of energy, much of which will still be fossil fuels.

Yes, it's fossil fuels all the way, and just to hammer the point home, here's a snap as Pedestrians walk in front of the venue for COP 29 Summit in Baku. Picture: AFP

And then came the moment the pond had been waiting for. The pond has read it a zillion times already, it's a short-cut key as familiar as Polonius's rants about the lack of conservatives at the ABC.

It's the Bjorn-again one's solution: governments should focus on spending much less but much more efficiently on innovation. Spending tens of billions of dollars annually on low-CO research and development to innovate the price of green energy below fossil fuels will drive down the price of future green energy, eventually making it rational for all countries, and especially the world’s poor, to switch.

You've read this pie in the sky distraction before, now read it for the zillion and second time:

Since today’s poorer countries are going to be responsible for the vast amount of emissions in the 21st century, the real challenge is to hasten the day they can switch to green energy.
This isn’t achieved with enormous reparations payments. Instead, governments should focus on spending much less but much more efficiently on innovation. Spending tens of billions of dollars annually on low-CO research and development to innovate the price of green energy below fossil fuels will drive down the price of future green energy, eventually making it rational for all countries, and especially the world’s poor, to switch.
Such a sensible proposal is what politicians should agree on at the UN climate summit. Unfortunately, the global climate process has lost its way. Most of the focus this week will instead be on the need for huge transfers of wealth. These were never going to happen, even before Trump’s election – but now they are utterly unrealistic.
Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and author of False Alarm and Best Things First.

The pond will only note one thing, the charming way that the Bjorn-again one presents himself as president of the "Cophenhagen Consensus". Using "consensus" in that context is pure Orwellian drivel of the war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength school.

Exeunt the Bjorn-again one, enter "Ned" to the sound of coconut shells clattering ...

And so with the climate science denialism 101 done, it's time for post graduate herpetology students to join the pond in a study of nattering "Ned's" lates opus, Donald Trump’s revolution leaves Anthony Albanese deeply exposed, The stakes for Australia cannot be denied – the more Donald Trump succeeds, the more Labor’s policies will look feeble, ineffective and missing the big picture.

To be fair, "Ned" does at least take up the challenge of the mango Mussolini. To be unfair, the reptiles clocked the read at 11 minutes, so the pond thought it might just feature it now, and leave Sunday that little bit less polluted.

The remarkable, neigh astonishing banality of the opening (uncredited) montage evokes what's about to follow, America’s leap to the right will have political repercussions for Australia.

 

Why did that lightning in the distance make the pond think of this?

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind that swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Here the pond would like to pause and give a hat tip to a correspondent, noting that even Lex Luthor attempted to divest himself of conflicts of interest:

It turns out that LexCorp remained one of the nation's biggest weapons suppliers, in much the same way that "Ned" works for one of the world's biggest suppliers of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories, and is a kissing cousin to those diligently beavering away at Faux Noise. 

And that's the last you'll hear of such conflicts of interest, even as Faux Noise and the US government blur into one...

The Trump Revolution is coming and, like all revolutions, its outcome will fluctuate between a glorious remaking of the existing order or a spectacular overreach and fall – maybe even a contradictory mix of both – with Anthony Albanese and Australia in front-row seats for the drama.
From the Trump appointments so far, the big “America First” play is on. The sharemarket has been excited, the bond market is wary, Big Tech is king, Beijing should be worried. President Trump Mark II is more resolute and revolutionary than Trump Mark I.
His hunger for change seems ferocious; his willingness to take risks is more pronounced. He is assembling a tribe of Trump loyalists to punch through the disintegrating Democratic scaffold. Trump demands loyalty and prioritises vindication.
Two lights are flashing – danger and opportunity. Some people will make a stack of money and others will be cast into painful obscurity.
Trump is going to remind everyone of the extent of power vested in the office of US president when pushed to the limit.
Consider the Elon Musk appointment. Surely this can’t be true. The world’s richest man, heading social-media platform X, hanging out at Mar-a-Lago, almost part of the Trump family, will now co-lead a Department of Government Efficiency – sitting outside the federal government – and while keeping all his existing corporate positions, he will pursue his pledge to cut US agency budgets by $US2 trillion ($3 trillion), or about one-third.

To confirm "Ned's" capacity for the trite, the reptiles felt the need to show Uncle Leon, Tesla CEO Elon Musk will now co-lead a Department of Government Efficiency. Picture: AFP, sadly without benefit of stomach-revealing leap into the air:

Oh yes, he could do what he's done for Twitter, and drop 80% of the country's value in just a few years, as "Ned" struggles to keep up with what Faux Noise has helped bring about:

Of course, it is true – only in America. Think about this marriage: Trump’s America meets the Big Tech oligarchs. This is a serious moment for US capitalism, great for innovation, bad for integrity. Trump likens Musk’s brief to “the Manhattan Project of our time”. How many struggling Americans are going to be punished in the process? Australian officials, long familiar with our experience of external budget audits (think Tony Shepherd in 2013), know Musk’s promise is impossible in delivery terms. It can’t be done, short of a massive anti-Trump electoral revolt from the public.
At this time, however, such quibbles don’t matter. Nothing seems impossible in the exaggerated hype of Trump’s vindication. A tariff of 60 per cent on China’s imports? Sure. Cutting a third off federal agency budgets? No problem. Licensing the king of Big Tech, loaded with conflict-of-interest federal contracts, to stage a shooting gallery across the entire federal bureaucracy? Great idea. It’s called purging the deep state.
Change on the scale Trump wants generates both high excitement and high risk. Nobody can be sure of the consequences because these things have never been tried before and we don’t know where the line will be drawn between impression and reality. How long before Trump and Musk fall out?
Trump’s appointments show his priority to purge the “deep state” institutions of justice and intelligence. Given his history, these seem non-negotiable personal passions for Trump. He appointed former Democrat, now Trump loyalist, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national security despite, or perhaps because of, her sustained support for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
He appointed a professional provocateur, Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, as attorney-general with Gaetz, already at political war with the Justice Department he is supposed to run, praised by Trump, who said Gaetz will end “the partisan weaponisation of our justice system”. That means a purge.

At this point the reptiles decided to show a snap of the pervert, Trump has appointed Republican congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney-general. Picture: AFP, doing what he does best, though that salute might get him in to trouble in certain Australian states ...

And a Sieg Heil, to you mein Führer...

Sheesh, is there a cartoon in the house? The pond needs a break already...

That's better, on with "Ned" doing his best to cope. Apparently Tulsi is a bit on "Ned's nose, but his real anxiety attack is that we're not doing the right sort of suck, the sort you should do to microphone stands ...

The wilful naivety of Trump’s apologists in this country looks embarrassing given Trump’s resolve to impose his will on the ­intelligence community, justice and the FBI. Gabbard’s appointment is highly dubious and Gaetz’s should be overruled, with The Wall Street Journal saying it would “undermine confidence in the law” and would be used for “political revenge”.
Trump’s mind seems a cross between powerful insights into the flaws of the Obama-Biden-Harris age and the vindictive fantasies of all rebels pulling down the established order.
But Trump’s experiment will resonate far beyond America. Markets seem alert to the inflationary consequences of his fiscal policy. The combination of Trump and our tight labour market will further weaken Anthony Albanese’s hope of an interest-rate cut before the election.
But the big picture consequences are far larger. At a time when most Western democracies are burdened by disillusion, poor economic and social outcomes and leadership that lacks either conviction or courage, Trump arrives as a giant on the stage of history.
He mocks the orthodox governing model. Much of Trump’s appeal is because he presents as a change agent against leaders running a failed status quo, witness the dismissed Biden-Harris team. More than 70 per cent of Americans felt their country was going in the wrong ­direction.
Trump’s win is the antithesis of Albanese’s victory in 2022 when Albanese ran on reassurance, incrementalism and “safe change”. Trump consigns “safe change” to the dustbin of history. He will steamroll Albanese’s “safe change” into the gutter. Trump’s American political strategy is the complete opposite of Albanese’s Australian strategy.
Of course, America is not Australia; we are different countries and in different moods. Yet the stakes for Australia cannot be denied – the more Trump succeeds, the more Labor’s policies will look feeble, ineffective and missing the big picture.
At almost every point in his agenda, Trump is diametrically opposed to Labor’s framework.
Consider the list: Trump wants savage public-sector cuts, a reduction in federal bureaucratic numbers, a purging of regulation, cutting the corporate tax rate to 15 per cent (half that of Australia), extending income tax cuts, imposing punitive tariffs on China where Australia is just restoring trade normality, repudiating free trade by resurrecting across-the-board tariffs, more support for oil and gas, walking out of the Paris Agreement on climate, dismantling ­environmental obstacles to development, cracking down on immigration, launching a domestic war on all forms of identity politics, boosting US defence spending and disdaining global institutions.
It is folly to think Trump won’t be influenced by the chasm between himself and Albanese. It’s good he told Albanese on the phone that Australia was the “perfect friendship”. Let’s cut to reality – if Trump has initial success in fuelling the animal spirits of the US economy, the governance model for Western democracy will be shaken to its foundations. Parties of the radical right will gain fresh traction everywhere.

At that point came a standard snap of the mango Mussolini,  It is folly to think Trump won’t be influenced by the chasm between himself and Anthony Albanese. Picture: AFP

The pond was shattered that "Ned" hadn't thought to mention RFK Jr. by this point... he's a player too, attention must be paid, show some respect...

Take it away Sheryl Gay Stolberg in the NY Times, Trump Picks R.F.K. Jr. to Be Head of Health and Human Services Dept.,Whether the Senate would confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has unorthodox views about medicine, is an open question. (paywall)

Samples only:

...Mr. Kennedy has spread false information about vaccines, including that they cause autism — a theory that has long been debunked. He has publicly contradicted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that communities fluoridate their water to guard against tooth decay.
He has embraced raw milk, despite the Food and Drug Administration’s warning that drinking it is risky, particularly amid a bird flu epidemic among dairy cows. And he has promoted hydroxychloroquine, a drug whose emergency authorization as a Covid-19 treatment was revoked by the Food and Drug Administration after a study of 821 people found it lacked effectiveness.
...In addition to his outside-the-mainstream views about medicine and health, he has been associated with a number of peculiar activities, like dumping a dead bear in Central Park and supposedly decapitating a whale. In interviews before Mr. Trump’s announcement, some Republican senators said Mr. Kennedy gave them pause, but none ruled out voting for him.
“I find some of his statements to be alarming, but I’ve never even met with him or sat down with him or heard him speak at length,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, a centrist whose vote could be critical to Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation prospects. “So I don’t want to prejudge based just on press clippings that I have read.” However, she added, “I think it would be a surprising choice.”
Republicans more closely aligned with Mr. Trump were enthusiastic. “One hundred percent,” Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama and a member of the Senate Health Committee, said when asked if he would vote to confirm Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Tuberville said he was a fan of Mr. Kennedy because of the work he had done with food and vaccines, adding, “More than anybody that I know of, he’s had an open mind.”
...Mr. Kennedy is an environmental lawyer with no formal training in medicine or public health. He would not be the first lawyer to run the agency; the current health secretary, Xavier Becerra, is a former congressman and attorney general of California. Past secretaries have been governors; they include Tommy Thompson under President George W. Bush and Kathleen Sebelius under President Barack Obama.
Mr. Kennedy has said little about health care delivery programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, that fall within the purview of the Department of Health and Human Services. Instead, he has taken aim at regulators and public health and research agencies: the Food and Drug Administration, the C.D.C. and the National Institutes of Health.
Days before the election, in a social media post that received 6.5 million views, Mr. Kennedy threatened to fire F.D.A. employees who have waged a “war on public health.” He listed some of the products that he claimed the agency had subjected to “aggressive suppression,” including ivermectin, raw milk and vitamins. His message to agency officials, he said, was “1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

Indeed:

Mr. Kennedy has also vowed to shake up the N.I.H., the nation’s premier biomedical research agency, by firing 600 workers, though a vast majority of its employees have civil service protections. When he was running for president, he promised to shift the focus of the N.I.H. away from infectious diseases.
“I’m going to say to N.I.H. scientists, God bless you all,” Mr. Kennedy said then, according to NBC News. “Thank you for public service. We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.”
The comments terrified public health experts, who know that infectious outbreaks can occur at any time. “Unfortunately, viruses don’t pay attention to the political cycles,” Dr. Mandy Cohen, the C.D.C. director, said in an interview this week.
Dr. Cohen expressed concern about Mr. Kennedy, saying she feared he would use his platform to spread misinformation and sow mistrust.
“Even without changing one regulation or one piece of guidance,” she said, “the sharing of misinformation from a place of power is concerning.”

Why does the pond have to do all the comedy? 

Come on "Ned", what about the vaccines? (Beast paywall) Killer Creighton would love this, honour your stablemate ...

...The previous hour on CNN, Gupta said that some expressed “horror” at the idea of Kennedy in the role.
“Somebody said to me today, ‘I can’t think of any single individual who would be more damaging to public health than RFK.‘”
Kennedy’s vaccine views clearly clash with subject matter experts, among them the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mandy Cohen.
At a health summit Wednesday, Cohen said she didn’t want to see science “go backwards.”
“We have a short memory of what it is like to hold a child that has been paralyzed with polio, or to comfort a mom who has lost her kid from measles. It wasn’t that many generations ago,” she said.
“And I don‘t want to have to see us go backwards to remind ourselves that vaccines work. They work. They protect our kids. They are our best defense against these terrible illnesses.”
With Kennedy in charge of the nation’s top health department, that very well may happen. As CNN anchor Jake Tapper put it earlier Wednesday: “Well, America, I hope you like measles.”
Kennedy’s 2019 visit to Samoa, during which he promoted the views of prominent vaccine opponents there, preceded a measles outbreak that killed 83 people.

High comedy, and all "Ned" can think about is Australia. 

And the funniest thing in the next gobbet? There you have to have read the venerable Meade's opening gambit on Friday ...

“Rudd spoke sense about Trump,” the Nine broadsheet said. “It’s a vengeful News Corp that has the explaining to do.”

The SMH reminded readers that the push to get rid of Rudd was reinvigorated by Brexit cheerleader and UK GB News host Nigel Farage in a question to Donald Trump about Rudd back in March. Farage said the question came from “our friends at Sky News Australia”.

“News Corp has been running hard on this for months, ramping up a sense of crisis to the point where it has created one,” editor Bevan Shields wrote. “Media campaigns can be a force for good. This one by News Corp is a disgrace.”

Rudd has had a target on his back ever since his petition three years ago calling for a royal commission into the Murdoch media, which reached a high of almost 500,000 signatures.

The ex-Labor leader said Murdoch had become “a cancer – an arrogant cancer on our democracy”.

And Shields is not wrong about the “campaign”. This week alone has seen a tidal wave of confected outrage about Rudd’s historical barbs about Trump. Andrew Bolt, Chris Kenny, Sharri Markson, Steve Price, Rita Panahi, Tim Blair and more lined up to call for the former prime minister to leave his Washington post.

“Some people still can’t accept the world has changed, and silly Trump-hating Kevin Rudd must now quit as our ambassador to the United States,” Bolt said.

Yep, "Ned's" about to piss on News Corp, but doesn't have the guts to say it ...

If Trump succeeds he will further undermine the shaky policy framework of the Labor Party. The optics will be: Trump’s strength versus Albanese’s weakness. In this situation, the pro-Trump media and conservative drum-beaters in this country – in effect the Trump Appeasement Syndrome lobby – will demand the Peter Dutton-led Coalition follow their messiah while they will use Trump’s success to undermine Albanese. Destroying Kevin Rudd as ambassador is just the first step.
Of course, it might not evolve this way. It might be the precise ­opposite. You never know with Trump. He may overreach from the start, prioritising vengeance, smash too many institutional norms and, drunk on hubris, alienate even his own voters.
But last week Trump sent another message of profound significance for Australia – he is riding with the China hawks. This means Trump will expect Albanese to muscle up and toughen up against China. Forget the idea of Trump going cool on Australia – he likes us, he’ll go hot on Australia and ­expect more action from us to ­reinforce his China hawks.
This is surely the coming message from the appointment of Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and Congressman Mike Waltz as his National Security ­Adviser.
Waltz, in a jointly written essay for The Economist, said the US must wind up the Ukraine conflict and direct its assets towards confronting and deterrence of China. Rubio warns China is “far more dangerous” than the old Soviet Union and poses the central threat of the 21st century. They will drive deeper US rivalry with China.
Rubio supports AUKUS. That’s the good news – but under Trump the US support for AUKUS means more action and commitment from Australia against China. That’s the transactional deal, got it?

One of the burdens of being in the hive mind is that nobody has any clue about anybody on the world stage, and so they need reminding, with snaps like this, China's President Xi Jinping. Picture: AFP:

It really is tedious, the pond would rather be featuring a cartoon:

The pond always likes to honour the sauce ... (source if you must have dry turkey) ...

As a bonus, it delays the return to "Ned" in Turkey Little mode, clucking at clouds and running around in state of hysteria that progressively gets worse because of progressivism...

How does this fit with Albanese’s “stabilisation” agenda with China? Answer: not comfortably. History tells us that Australian domestic support for the US alliance falls when there’s a US president we don’t like, witness the fall in popular backing for the alliance under George W. Bush. Now we will likely have in Trump a US president who expects us to get more hawkish on China while domestic support for that Trump-induced option will plummet.
It’s better for Australia that Trump rides with the China hawks, not the China doves. But you cannot miss the problem. Paul Keating sees it and fell upon the remarkable political monitor poll in The Sydney Morning Herald showing that 57 per cent said Australia should avoid taking sides in any war between the US and China, with only 16 per cent disagreeing. Extraordinary stuff.
Keating said this repudiated ­Albanese’s “lock-in” military ­arrangement with the US, the AUKUS agreement and the ­assumption Australia is tied to the US in any conflict.
Trump’s China policy looks ominous for Labor – his tariff strategy will weaken our trade with China while his overall “get tough” strategy will intensify anti-Trump sentiments within the public in Australia and ignite a debate within Labor, with protests the party is too accommodating of Trump’s anti-China stand. It will be dangerous and unpredictable.
The broader political takeout from Trump’s victory is the failure of Democratic Party progressivism – economic and cultural. This is a mammoth event. Of course, direct political lessons cannot be simply transposed from America to Australia. These are very different countries. Yet it would be unwise to assume there is no connection point for Australia from this epic US election.
Here are three propositions – that US progressives are no longer the party of the working class or the non-college educated; that US progressivism contains the seeds of its own destruction, witness the Trump counter-revolution; and that the deepest faith of the progressives – that Trump is a threat to democracy – didn’t work because the progressives constitute their own threat to democracy.

Oh FFS, always with the blaming of progressives, and never a word of praise for the diligent work of News Corp, Faux Noise and the like. As if to emphasise that failure, at this point the reptiles stuck in an audio insert, featuring Kamala's identity politics fail.

Why not an audio insert featuring Emeritus Chairman succeeds in turning country back to the deep South in the 1930s?

Never mind, "Ned" truly is a mindless old dodderer these days ...

Let’s consider the first proposition – in effect, the voter realignment. Australian pollster Kos Samaras wrote post-election that low-income, working-class voters were heading right-wing. This realignment would reshape politics including in Australia and was tied to the changing nature of left-wing politics with its new priorities around climate change, social justice, urban fashions and housing.
Analysis by the Financial Times shows that in the US poorer and less-educated voters think Republicans best represent them, with the Democrats now the party of high-income and college-educated voters.
Trump won a majority of households with incomes of less than $100,000 while the Democrats won more support from the top third of the income bracket. Education is a sharp line of division – nearly two-thirds of voters without a college degree supported Trump.
Samaras warns the realignment in Australia deepens the divide between urban and rural voters and between professional and low-income voters, “creating fertile ground for conservative and populist leaders”. Is the urban professional class slowly suffocating Labor? Obviously, Dutton will be exploiting this divide at the coming poll.

By this point some will be feeling exhausted, which is perhaps why the reptiles slipped in a video clip:

Redbridge Group Director Kos Samaras says low-income Americans felt “invisible” under Democrat leadership. “What Trump has done is not necessarily provide these working people with a hope he is going to fix all their problems, that is not what this is about,” Mr Samaras said. “What this is about is basically low-income Americans feeling like they have become invisible.”

Uh huh. Some might be wondering about the Redbridge Group and Kos ... wonder no more ...

Kos Samaras specialises in compiling and interpreting research, statistical data and polling to provide a unique insight into the cause and effects of social and political issues impacting communities across Australia.
Often sought for expert commentary on polling data and its impact on all levels of politics, Kos’s keen understanding of the nature of political parties and government decision-making (drawn from more than 25 years of political experience with Victorian Labor) allows him to deliver effective solutions for a broad range of clients.

Yep, it's a bunch of lobbyists, spinning away madly to earn a crust, and as usual, "Ned" regurgitates the thoughts of others, and mashes those thoughts into a "Ned" mess. You know, when mindlessly bereft, fling around "elites", mingle it with "progressives", and entirely forget that you're supposed to be a proud member of the News Corp 'leet ...

On the second proposition, most progressives and elites in Australia are in denial, unable to admit what is happening, despite the defeat of the voice referendum at home and the evidence in the American election – many people voted for Trump on cultural grounds, pointing to a counter-­revolution.
There are numerous pro-Trump commentators hailing the moment. Many exaggerate, yet the trend is manifest. Writing in the Financial Times, respected analyst John B Judis said Democrats must dissociate themselves from support for “gender-affirming care”, their opposition to strong borders, their backing of equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity on racial issues, their indifference to the plight of working-class men, just dismissing Trump supporters as racists and sexists, and their focus on imminent planetary apocalypse to justify draconian ­climate action.
He said the priorities of many voters who deserted the Democrats are decent jobs, safe streets and a proper safety net. But Judis warns even action on these fronts will fail politically “if Democrats don’t sever their identification with cultural radicalism”.
Labor hasn’t gone as far as the Democrats – but it is largely and proudly a progressive party now, and this risk is potent. Most progressive leadership elites in Australia don’t understand the consequences of the cultural positions they champion. Their cultural ignorance is astonishing and dangerous. They need to read the long masterclass provided in July this year by David Brooks in The New York Times.

It had to come, proud maroon "Ned" quoting silly maroon David Brooks, but first a snap reminding the hive mind that we have a PM,  Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Labor hasn’t gone as far as the Democrats – but it is largely and proudly a progressive party. Picture: NewsWire /Â Nikki Davis Jones.

Luckily that was the last snap, and this is the last gobbet, and as usual, after recycling Brooks blathering about the moral void, "Ned" reveals his own deep moral void by blaming it all on progressives, entirely overlooking the role that malign media of the News Corp/Faux Noise kind played in the affair, even as they have weekend morning show host and dangerous axe-thrower assigned to run the Department of Defence ...

Oh fuck it, not the demise of religion crap as well ...

Brooks said that with the demise of religion, US public life became secular in recent decades with “science and reason” becoming the methods by which the nation could be held together. It is now obvious that this answer, championed by the elites, has failed. “By the 21st century, it became clear that Americans were no longer just disagreeing with one another,” Brooks said. “They didn’t even perceive the same reality.”
Was there anything to fill this moral void? As usual, the left produced an answer – identity politics. Brooks said: “This story provides a moral landscape – there are those bad guys over there and us good guys over here. The story provides a sense of belonging. It provides social recognition.” It is orientated around proper esteem for and inclusion of different identity groups.
The problem, however, is the incompatibility of identity politics with the liberal principle of equality – that regardless of identity we are bonded by a common humanity. This is the foundation stone of our liberal democracy. Undermine this principle and our society is undermined. As Brooks says, “the problem with this form of all-explaining identity politics is that it undermines democracy”.
Trump’s voters don’t offer such sophisticated reasoning for their vote. But their visceral distrust of how they are being treated says this is what they feel in their bones. It is reinforced by numerous examples across their lives, telling them they don’t really count.
The more progressives in Australia push this ideology, the more they guarantee a backlash. Dutton knows this – he just needs to judge how far it has gone in Australia and how much to advance the counter-revolution.
This leads directly to the third proposition. The Democrats were consumed by the idea of Trump as a threat to democracy. Ultimately, this was the Harris campaign – and the argument was correct. Watching Trump’s backers in this country trying to pretend black was white was pitiful intellectual dishonesty. Trump refused to concede he lost in 2020 – of course he was a threat to democracy.
But what the Democrats didn’t get was the point brilliantly made by political scientist Yascha Mounk – some exit polls suggested that people felt Harris was a greater threat to democracy than Trump. “This hints at the fundamental fact of the past decade,” Mounk said. “A fact that elite discourse still has not fully confronted: citizens’ trust in mainstream institutions has been absolutely shattered. Corporations and the military, universities and the courts, all used to enjoy a certain modicum of residual trust. That trust is now gone. It is unlikely to return any time soon.”
It is gone because of the left’s march through the institutions, the story in both America and Australia. Progressive activists took charge, while established leaders were weak and ignorant. When people look across the landscape – universities, bureaucracies, cultural bodies, corporates, government departments – they see progressive values, great and small, shoved in their faces. It’s not the democracy they voted for.

When the pond looks across News Corp and Faux Nose, the pond sees weak and ignorant people clashing by night, fucking up the country, neigh the planet, and then refusing to take credit for their deeds and their works ... and worst of all pissing into the wind about the alleged march through the institutions by the left, while ignoring the way ratbag far right sociopaths and oligarchs did their very best to elevate a con artist, fraud, criminal, endless liar and snake oil salesman to the best gig, replete with burgers, diet coke and an endless diet of Faux Noise...

It's so tiresome, such bullshit, is it any wonder that the pond retreated to do comic book research?