In which Killer Creighton and our Henry visit the court of newly crowned King Donald I ...

Brian Medlin, foundation professor of Philosophy at Flinders University, with whom the pond very briefly once had a Vonnegutian Bokonon relationship via a shared girlfriend, had a theory about achieving a socialist paradise.

First everything had to be comprehensively fucked. Not just a little fucked. Deeply fucked. The pond, in its student days naïveté and folly, suggested a gentler approach. Perhaps a few mild warning signs that all was not well in the cosmos, and people would change course.

Nah, Medlin insisted, an apocalypse was needed, of sufficient strength to rouse the masses and move them in a different direction. Cataclysmic, world ending fucked.

Could the mango Mussolini be the empty vessel via which Medlin's dream might be realised? 

The pond only mentions this in passing, as an opening flourish, what with climate change and its associated science in more than a spot of bother, thanks to incessant denialism.

Graham Readfearn surveyed a bit of current denialism in his general survey under the header Dick Smith’s ABC radio rant against renewables overflows with ill-informed claims. 

Dick Smith is of course a loudmouth dick and the ABC on local radio of a Sunday morning is denialist central, but skipping past these prize loons, as a devotee of the reptiles the pond did enjoy this refutation of the cratering Caterist. It was a pleasure to read:

...In The Australian, Nick Cater, of the Liberal party-associated Menzies Research Centre, said Broken Hill’s blackout “shows how crucial baseload generation is to the grid’s stability. Without it, balancing supply and demand becomes impossible.”
Was this really what the outage showed?
“Definitely not,” said Glenne Drover, an energy systems expert at the Australian Institute of Energy.
He pointed to South Australia, which on several occasions had run predominantly on renewables while the state was “islanded” – that is, essentially cut off from the wider network in other states.
Broken Hill’s system was not configured to utilise the solar, wind and battery if there was a major transmission outage.
Instead, the network was configured to rely on two diesel generators that would form a micro-grid. But one of those generators was offline and the second struggled to keep up with demand while syncing with rooftop solar installations.
The battery technology does have the ability to work in a micro-grid, but was not configured to work this way. The battery was reconfigured after the blackout, and was switched on a week after the outage.
But why couldn’t the solar and wind power be used?
“The reason wind and solar were not available is because it was attached to the transmission system,” said Alison Reeve, an energy expert at the Grattan Institute.
“The wind and solar behaved the same way as a coal-fired power station would have, or a nuclear power station or gas. They’re all connected to the transmission network and if it goes over, all the generators switch off. That’s how the system works.
“It has nothing to do with solar and wind and everything to do with how the transmission system works.

The pond regrets that this came days after the Caterist damage was done, and in the Graudian, a rag likely never visited by reptile readers safely cocooned in the hive mind, but having recycled the Readfearn correction for what disgraced the pond on Monday, it's time to move on to the current set of Friday outrages at the lizard Oz, with triumphalism still all the go:

No need to break out the commentary team. This is Friday and the hole in the bucket man always wins with the pond, what with the chance of having a Thucydides moment ...

But the pond did want to warm up with Killer Creighton's report, because Killer's always a rich source of comedy. (It seems the American late night comedic hosts have also survived their collective trauma, a vast relief to the pond).

Killer's opening flourish was a ripper:

Donald Trump is king of America and his family are the new Kennedys, but trouble awaits

The king of America? Thank the long absent lord, a new heir to the throne has been found. It's been a long time, the interregnum, what with the bloody tea party and such like, but at last King George III's ghost can head to purgatory ...

Killer followed with a Killer pitch:

Donald Trump spent his first day as president-elect like a king. Surrounded by family, the Kennedys without the bad luck, his advisers, and powerful backers such as Elon Musk, this was a president enjoying his moment in the sun.

At this point there came an epic photo, and an assurance from the reptiles that it was only a four minute read, a doddle for members of the hive mind ...

There was a very discreet caption Donald Trump with his family and their partners, with Elon Musk and his son.

No need to mention who was missing:

It was the sort of reassuring snap you'd expect from a monarch in the process of succeeding King George III, though the absence of the Queen consort, his personal concubine, might mean many more nights of bliss with a microphone stand:

The pond felt a surge of pride - only in monarchical, regal America, and the court of King Donald I, and though it added to all the visuals, felt the need to run with the immortal Rowe early because it just felt right, in keeping with all the snaps:

Oh the pond just had to do the close-up, show a little more of the detail. It's always better in the detail:

For those unfamiliar with the Leutze, it's a famous American painting, featuring fat cats on the Delaware:

But how did Gina get in the boat? Well there she was with Teena McQueen and Nige at the celebration for the coronation of King Donald I.

And with Gina a genuine monarchist, at last the pond could get on with the rest of the Killer business:

Donald Trump spent his first day as president-elect like a king. Surrounded by family, the Kennedys without the bad luck, his advisers, and powerful backers such as Elon Musk, this was a president enjoying his moment in the sun.
And he has many more ­moments in the sun to come. Until his inauguration in late January, which Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have ensured will proceed, he will enjoy power without responsibility, as the ­former president radiates vindication and the various criminal charges against him wilt.

At this point the reptiles did a bit of cross promotion:

With this tag ...

Outside the Australian Embassy in Washington, questions swirl the day after the election. Ambassador Kevin Rudd and his team are likely strategising their approach to President Trump's new term set to begin in January. Key global concerns include Trump’s unpredictable stance on Russia and the Ukraine conflict, his support for Israel under Netanyahu, and implications for President Zelensky's vision in the Middle East. For Australia, the spotlight falls on China relations, potential impacts on the AUKUS submarine deal, and navigating Trump’s proposed 10% import tariffs. As...

As to what happens after that "As..." the pond has no clue and cares less, because Killer was still on the regal case:

Trump is unlikely to focus on the detail. He’s 78, after all, and himself conceded during his ­rallies last week that the marathon speeches would end if he were successful. But he will be lucky in this second term.
The 250th anniversary of the American Revolution on July 4, 2026 will trigger momentous patriotic celebrations in which the 47th president will insert ­himself. And of course he’ll pretend he understands soccer when the US hosts the World Cup in the same year, and cap off his final year in office by opening the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.
In between all the festivities the new president will have three challenges: war, prices, and immigration.

Then it was time for another family snap, featuring the King's inner court, Trump, granddaughter Kai Trump, Caitlyn Jenner and Musk. The day after the 2024 presidential election. Source - Caitlin Jenner/X:

Say what? They allowed some trans scum into the king's court, and Uncle Elon seemed to have an arm and a hand around her, suggesting a kind of intimacy and acceptance unusual for a feral white nationalist from South Africa? 

Somehow that's more than passing strange, when you read The New Republic story Elon Musk’s Daughter Shares Heartbreaking Message After Trump Win:

Elon Musk’s daughter announced that she will be leaving the country after Donald Trump’s election night victory. Vivian Jenna Wilson, who is transgender, spoke out against President-elect Trump and her father, who played a pivotal role in helping him retake the White House. 
“I’ve thought this for a while, but yesterday confirmed it for me. I don’t see my future being in the United States,” Wilson said on Threads Wednesday evening. “Even if he’s only in office for 4 years, even if the anti-trans regulations magically don’t happen, the people who willingly voted this in are not going anywhere anytime soon.”
Wilson has notably been estranged from her father since 2022, and has accused him of transphobia, “cruelty,” and “serial” cheating. She said Musk would berate her for being more in touch with femininity as a child, urging her to make her voice deeper.
“I was in fourth grade. We went on this road trip that I didn’t know was actually just an advertisement for one of the cars—I don’t remember which one—and he was constantly yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high,” she told NBC in July. “It was cruel.” 
Musk’s comments toward his daughter only bolster these accusations. He has repeatedly deadnamed Wilson, meaning that he calls her by her male, birth name rather than recognizing the full and independent trans person that she is. In an interview with right-wing pseudo-intellectual Jordan Peterson, Musk stated that “I lost my son, essentially.… My son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus … so I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.” Musk has also referred to his daughter as a “full communist” who thinks that “anyone rich is evil.” Musk is the richest man in the world. 
The billionaire has been Trump’s most enthusiastic surrogate this election cycle, following him from state to state and donating $119 billion to Donald Trump’s America PAC. He is sure to have a significant position, official or otherwise, in a Trump Cabinet chiefly concerned with demolishing transgender rights. America’s most powerful civilian is leading us toward a grim future that his oldest child knows all too well.   
“I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form,” Wilson told a court in 2022.

What a gigantic, albeit filthy rich, human bean he is, how disgusting, how pathetic, but back to the rhapsodic Killer warning the King and his court of dangers ahead:

His first big challenge will be the Russia-Ukraine war, which risks tearing apart his own party: it’s evenly divided among old fashioned Bush-style interventionists and isolationists.
Trump has been careful to avoid the details of how he would end the 2½-year vicious war ­between the two former Soviet-bloc nations, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not call Trump the day after the election, as many other leaders did.
Having cast himself as the anti-war but pro-America candidate, this will be his biggest ­challenge. If he fails, Democrats will seize on it. Putin has publicly stated he would have preferred a predictable Harris presidency, continuing the Biden policy: ­supply Ukraine with weapons enough to defend itself but not enough to win.
Trump, who has boasted about his relations with both Putin and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, has said repeatedly he will finish the war in a day or two. But what will he concede to Putin, who’s increasingly dominant in the military theatre and has formally annexed 20 per cent of the democratic nation?
The politics will be diabolic for a new Trump administration: concede too much and be cast as defeatist and weak; concede not enough and be attacked for failing in his promise.
Russia has clearly said it launched the war to keep NATO out of Ukraine, which Trump has not renounced as policy.

Then came a hint of those divisions in court, because the next caption ran Musk flails on stage at a Trump rally, with a snap of the flailing Musk imitating a child on one of those inflated jumping castles, a routine that suggested to some comedians some kind of orgasmic climax usually reserved for microphones:

Ignoring the comedy, Killer ploughed on with more warnings, and the pond began to take heart. There might be some monumental fuck ups that more than matched mad King George III at his maddest (though they did make for an entertaining film, scriptwriters start taking notes):

The biggest challenge and ­political vulnerability of the Trump administration will be ­prices: were you better off four years ago, as the most resonant and salient question of his campaign. No western government has been re-elected after such ­inflation, and indeed Biden-­Harris wasn’t. Most Americans believe they were better off, but there’s really no way a second Trump administration can reduce prices back to where they were in 2020 or earlier, as many Trump supporters are expecting.
Trillions of new dollars have been released into the economy and they can’t be withdrawn. The damage is done; inflation might return to low-single-digit levels, but the reduction in living standards is complete.
The President-elect has also talked about slashing spending, by as much as $US2 trillion ­according to Elon Musk, who Trump has promised to lead a new Government Efficiency Commission. Like most politicians in all countries, once the politics of cutting spending becomes apparent, they baulk. Musk’s number is about a third of all US spending, which would cause enormous economic disruption and rage among the many tens of thousands bureaucrats who would lose their jobs. It’s a good idea, but politics matter.
And remember what happened to the Truss government in the UK: big tax cuts announced without spending cuts and bond markets revolted. The same could happen to the US, whose fiscal position is even beyond World War II level.

Just to cap it all off, then came the biggest loon of them all, the loon that has meant that Curb Your Enthusiasm is dead to the pond, a certified anti-vax killer loon, Trump with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., though likely a loon dear to Killer's heart:

Who knows and who cares about the other two featured in the snap. The two loons at the centre of the snap are rich enough comedy fodder. Then it was time for a last burst of Killer sounding assorted alarums:

Also, how will the federal government realistically be able to ­remove upwards of 6 million immigrants, illegal or not, from the US. The administrative burden would be extraordinary, not to mention the cost to the businesses, who vote Republican, who will chafe at losing their cheap workers.
Finally, an early test of Trump’s mettle will be his promise to release the entirety of the JFK files, thousands of documents that both Trump as president and Biden refused to release to the public despite legislation ordering the executive to do so.
Trump in theory could do this on day one of his presidency in January; I’d bet he won’t. The CIA and FBI have and surely will push back aggressively against their ­release, as former secretary of state Mike Pompeo once did, according to Trump himself, because of the embarrassment it would cause the US government.
Maybe it will all prove too much and the 47th president, ­having been spectacularly vindicated, will stand aside after a few years and make way for president JD Vance, who’s become the ­undoubted heir to the MAGA movement.

And if JD gets the gig, maybe then the United States will be truly fucked, with an Opus Dei man just as bad as the Taliban, and Brian Medlin's dream might come to pass.

Enough of Killer, time to get real with the hole in the bucket man, time to do a Thucydides search, though the pond doesn't hold out much hope for Roman emperor references this day.

While the pond was reassured that the reptiles thought members of the hive mind could cope with a mere four minute read (only 8 minutes of your life wasted on Killer and Henry), the hole in the bucket man seemed alarmed by Killer's talk of monarchy and court, and so came out with:

US presidency still checked against authoritarian rule, While Donald Trump is denounced as would-be dictator, the underlying reality of American politics haven’t disappeared and will constrain the scope of his power.

As usual, the reptiles began with a snap of the new king holding court, Donald Trump speaks during an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Centre, with the microphone safely out of sight, though possibly not out of reach:

Then Henry got down to his work as professional counsellor, offering assurances, quelling all those alarums, settling folks down. Likely it won't be bad at all:

It is the paradox of American presidential elections that their outcome has far less impact on the US than on the rest of the world. From the republic’s earliest days, the separation of powers has tightly constrained presidents’ ability to reshape the way the country works. And no matter what one makes of Donald Trump, it would be foolish to believe those constraints are about to fade away.
Trump has, for sure, been accused of being a fascist. However, no one who has any understanding of what the word means could take that accusation seriously. It may be that he harbours authoritarian instincts, but the claim that he would govern dictatorially does not sit easily with the record of his first term.
Measuring the unilateral exercise of presidential power is inherently difficult. Nonetheless, since the Federal Register Act of 1935, it has been possible to systematically track the extent and scope of executive decisions. Those decisions acquire legal effect by being translated into executive orders, presidential memorandums, proclamations, signing statements and final rules.
There are, additionally, breakdowns that distinguish the decisions that are substantive, in the sense of setting out new policy, from those that are minor, essentially administrative or largely symbolic.
Using the number of significant decisions as an indicator, the first Trump administration did not make any greater use of unilateral presidential power than its predecessors. Thus, from Dwight Eisen­hower to Trump, American presidents issued, on average, some 220 executive orders in their first term; Trump issued 218. And while Trump issued slightly more presidential memorandums than Barack Obama, he promulgated only one-seventh as many significant final rules.

What's with all that faux data? 

Please, another snap of His Majesty, Donald Trump speaks during an election night event at the West Palm Beach Convention Centre, in the Christ-like pose the reptiles love:

We all know that embrace, the sort that the king of kings routinely offers to his followers:

Back to the hole in the bucket man explaining how everything was for the best in the best of inert, impotent, can't get it up, 78 year old men's worlds trying and failing to bring a microphone to a climax:

What is true is that advocacy groups, primarily on the left, challenged his administration’s executive decisions at an unprecedented rate. Moreover, with the administration’s decisions – and especially those relating to environmental protection and immigration – at times cutting procedural corners, fully 77 per cent of the orders subjected to challenge were quashed by the federal courts.
Adding its own weight to the challenges, the US Supreme Court severely rebuked the sloppy reasoning the administration relied on in one of its most important executive orders, which rescinded Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Presidential action, the Supreme Court reaffirmed, must conform to stringent standards of procedural integrity and substantive rationality.
There is no evidence whatsoever of the Trump administration ignoring those rulings; on the contrary, it complied with the courts in every instance, including by properly revising the orders it regarded as particularly crucial.
It is, at least to that extent, incorrect to claim, as The New York Times does in its election wrap-up, that Trump flouted the separation of powers. And, if anything, the much reviled Supreme Court’s most recent decisions make the hurdles the separation of powers will impose on the new administration even steeper.
Especially important are the decisions that overruled Chevron deference and established the “major questions doctrine”. The Chevron framework, set out in a 1984 Supreme Court decision, vested sweeping, quasi-legislative, powers on the executive branch, allowing it to interpret ambiguous statutory text as it saw fit. By overruling Chevron, and by requiring that executive agencies point to clear congressional authorisation before making decisions on “major questions”, the Supreme Court dramatically reduced the room presidents have to determine domestic policy without an explicit congressional mandate.
Nor will it be easy for Trump to secure that mandate. The outcome in the House of Representatives is still unclear; what is known is that the Republicans have a workable majority in the Senate.
But congress is and has always been most in character when it is saying No. Cherishing its habitual role as a brake on the machine of federal government, it is at least as obstinate as it is constructive.
And even if the Republicans manage to hold the House, that could easily change in 2026. The Democrats controlled all three elective branches for 18 of the 20 years between the 1932 and 1952 elections. However, since then, and particularly since 1992, patterns of control have become increasingly unstable, with the permutations of control changing at virtually every election.

What a relief. The Supreme Court will hold firm, Clarence and Sam and the rest of the far right rabble, facilitated by Roberts, will do the right thing, and nothing will happen until the Democrats arrive to save the day (and the pond has a very special harbour bridge reserved for you, and knocked down to a very cheap price with a guarantee of immunity if it falls down).

At this point the reptiles interrupted our Henry with a bit of cross promotion, a video neutered by the pond and blessed with the tag, Former foreign minister Alexander Downer says people have “had enough” of the left’s woke agenda. Mr Downer told Sky News host Chris Kenny that it was a leading factor for “why Donald Trump won”. Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the 2024 US election and will become the 47th President of the United States.

Sorry, a mere mention of Lord Downer chatting with the dog botherer, and that talk of a woke agenda while a trans athlete was snapped with the mango Mussolini and Uncle Leon, means the pond must add a corollary:

Lord Downer and the dog botherer are fuckheads? Don't blame the pond for pointing this out, blame Godwin and his science.

Then it was on to a final burst from our Henry, and the pond regrets that - spoiler alert - there is no talk of Thucydides or even Cicero, and especially no Roman emperors, or the decline and fall of Rome:

The US, it could be said, has once again become trapped in the institutional instability that, from 1872 to 1892, characterised the so-called Era of No Decision. As the major parties struggled to devise practical policies that reflected the needs of an economic and social structure experiencing wrenchingly painful change, voters repeatedly punished incumbents.
As a result, there were, in those two decades, only four years in which one party controlled all three elective institutions, with each episode of unified control lasting just two years.
Now, as then, there are few signs of the institutional instability waning. Trump’s victory, which saw the Republicans enjoy a widely based swing that allowed them to convincingly win the popular vote, gives his presidency a legitimacy the Democrats always denied it had.
But it still falls well short of momentous shifts, such as those that marked the elections of 1800, 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932 and 1972, that presage a fundamental, stabilising, realignment in American politics.
Substantive policy change – including the renewal of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which expire next year – will therefore require coalition-building that assembles, however fleetingly, what John C. Calhoun famously called “concurrent majorities” throughout the principal elements of the country’s governance. In a constitutional system that lacks any mechanism, such as our double dissolutions, for resolving intractable conflicts between its branches, the key, if it is to turn the lock, will have to engage each pin – the House, the Senate and the President – and then pass Supreme Court scrutiny to boot.
That constraint, experience has repeatedly shown, is a two-edged sword. Almost inevitably, it stymies the soaring hopes of a new administration’s supporters, making American democracy a perpetual lesson in disappointment. But it can also claim to be America’s principal defence against bigness, facelessness and hubris in government, assuaging, at each election, the worst fears of the contest’s losers.
None of that means the administration’s foreign policy, which is subject to far fewer constitutional limitations, will be sensible – though for all its hits and misses, Trump’s first term had some notable successes, including the Abraham Accords.
Even less does it mean that Trump is an admirable human being. But the Americans who voted for Trump didn’t think they were electing a saint. They thought, in a system replete with constitutional safeguards, that they were electing a president who could make their lives at least a little bit better, a little bit easier.
In all societies, governing is hard. In American society, mobile, diversified, conflict-ridden and violence-prone, the task is harder than in most. History records, however, that it has been met and discharged, not unsuccessfully, before. Whether Trump can rise to that challenge is the question that lies ahead.

Splendid stuff, and the pond feels deeply reassured, and is even more pleased that the infallible Pope has returned this day to bless paradise. 

If our Henry is the brilliant, learned guy whom he thinks he is, in his rich imagination, then Brian Medlin doesn't have a chance with King Donald I at the helm (and what a relief to get in a classical reference at last):

The pond did enjoy the detail showing Faux Noise viewers hard at work, dragging in that Trojan rooster. Ah, Kaos, how the pond despises Netflix for not doing a second series, and how clever is they/them Charlie Covell, with more wit in a fingernail than King Donald's court in its entirety: