In which old favourite reptiles return to gush like Monday geysers, geezers if you will...

 

Immensely satisfying news:

General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen... tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?
General Jack D. Ripper: [somewhat embarassed] Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No.
General Jack D. Ripper: But I... I do deny them my essence.

The pond never gets tired of quoting Dr Strangelove and its prophetic insights. 

Meanwhile RFK Jr: 

Meanwhile eminent expert Donald J. Trump: Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he had not spoken to Kennedy about fluoride yet, “but it sounds OK to me. You know it’s possible.”

Meanwhile back to the lizard Oz and the pond had completely forgotten that Monday was Caterist day, with the mission to crater any nonsense about climate change.

In a alternative world, you might expect an interesting, reflective column about the impact of climate change on recent Spanish floods. 

Say in the sadly diminished WaPo (paywall): Spain’s floods have killed more than 200. Why have they been so deadly?, Climate change helps explains why the storms and floods were so extreme.

Over at Politico.eu: Spain’s ‘monster’ floods expose Europe’s unpreparedness for climate change.

Over at the Beeb: Scientists say climate change made Spanish floods worse.

Over at NPR: Hundreds are dead in Spain's floods. Scientists see a connection to climate change.

Inevitably at the Graudian: Spain’s deadly floods and droughts are two faces of the climate crisis coin

Cranked up to 11 at the Graudian: We are in danger of forgetting what the climate crisis means: extinction.

Locally you might wonder about that Broken Hill superstorm, an intense cell, and what might have contributed to the intensity of that cell. Was it another portent of the shape of things to come, and if so, what to do about it?

You might respond with Broken Hill fiasco shows why we need to rethink the grid, and turn it upside down. Inter alia:

...Watt says rethinking the grid from the ground up, will empower rather than alienate customers as renewable energy increases, and boost resilience – which is even more important as the grid faces challenges from climate change and bushfires and storms.

...The country has a long stringy grid vulnerable to the increasing intensity of natural disasters – whether they are fire, flood or storms.

Faces challenges? Increasing intensity? Nah, you might just crater any thoughts about such matters.

Broken Hill’s power outage can’t just be swept aside

Three years ago, Transgrid boasted the outback town could run on a renewable energy microgrid. It was blocked from shutting down two diesel generators, a move Chris Bowen described as ‘really silly and perverse’.

As usual the reptiles began the Caterist piece with an illustrative piece and a caption, A power station on Pinnacles Road at Broken Hill in far west NSW. Picture: Richard Dobson

That was possibly the last immediate connection to reality in the cratering to follow:

Broken Hill’s two-week experiment in fossil-fuel-free living ended at 8.41pm local time last Thursday when its connection to the east coast grid finally was restored. Transgrid issued a press release thanking the community for its patience and announced that the emergency diesel generators it had trucked in would remain in place.
Three years ago, Transgrid boasted that the outback town could run on a renewable energy microgrid if the line to the outside world went down. It was so confident that it sought permission from the Australian Energy Regulator to decommission the two diesel generators installed in the early 1980s. The AER said no, a decision criticised as “really silly and perverse” by Chris Bowen, who held it up as an example of the antiquated energy market thinking he intended to fix.
“A little while ago Transgrid wanted and suggested that to help Broken Hill, they would put in a microgrid of renewable energy,” the Climate Change and Energy Minister told David Speers on the ABC’s Insiders in August 2022. “It was much more reliable, with much lower emissions, and they were told at that point, ‘No, you’ve got to keep your old diesel generators running.’
“It wasn’t the regulator’s fault … they haven’t been legally able to take into account emissions reduction, and it’s been ridiculous, and we’ve fixed it.”

Handily the reptiles knew that nobody had the first clue about who to blame and so it inserted this caption Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman, and snap:

That set the tremendous expert in the movement of flood waters in quarries, the cratering Caterist, right off:

Bowen has yet to comment on the fortnight of rolling blackouts across the NSW far west that began when seven transmission towers collapsed on the 260km high-voltage line to Buronga.
He was not there to witness the indignity of AGL’s new mega battery being recharged by diesel generators or watch the Silverton wind turbines sit idle because they weren’t connected to the grid. He didn’t see Broken Hill residents hunting for the off switch on their rooftop solar arrays because their fluctuating output tripped the diesel generators.
To describe the Silver City’s experience as a setback for Bowen’s dream of turning Australia into a nuclear-free clean energy superpower would be an understatement. Broken Hill was the renewable energy industry’s Potemkin village, the recipient of $650m of green investment and the proposed location for the world’s biggest advanced compressed-air energy storage plant.

Next came another caption Workers trying to restore power to Broken Hill after a violent storm has left the town without electricity for days. Picture: Supplied/Transgrid and snap:

The pond treasured the interruptions. There was no way out of here, as the joker said to the thief, and bugger all chance of relief from climate science denialism:

In 2018, Broken Hill City Council announced its goal to become Australia’s first carbon-free city by 2030. Three years ago the mayor at the time, Darriea Turley, welcomed the announcement that AGL was proceeding with plans to build a grid-scale battery, which the company claimed would be a reliable backup power source for 10,000 homes.
“This is a great opportunity for Broken Hill and renewable energies,” Turley told the ABC. “What they will see is when there is an outage, the battery would click into operation.”
AGL had badly misled Turley and her fellow councillors. When the storm hit at about midnight local time on Wednesday, October 16, the battery clicked offline, not on. The town sat in darkness for several hours until the single operating backup diesel generator could be turned on.

Then came another caption Darriea Turley, the former mayor of Broken Hill. Picture: Dylan Robinson and snap:

On and on the flood waters in quarries expert ranted:

AGL was not prepared to keep a $41m battery fully charged, primed for that just-in-case moment. The battery was dispatching power into the national electricity market from early evening on the day of the storm.
The battery was offline for more than eight days while it was reprogrammed to feed into the local grid and recharged with rooftop solar and diesel. Silverton and the Broken Hill solar plant did not resume operation until the region was reconnected to the grid last Thursday. Turley’s successor as mayor, Tom Kennedy, was pictured wielding a shovel at the soil-turning photo-op for the battery in November 2022. He told the ABC the battery closely aligned with the council’s desire to see the Silver City at the forefront of renewable energy and energy storage.
Last week he told Chris Kenny on Sky News, “There’s no way that renewables at this time are capable of supplying Broken Hill … The reality is it’s not consistent power. You don’t have that baseload power, so for Broken Hill it’s almost useless.”
The principle lesson from Broken Hill is that a stable, consistent baseload supply produced by rotating turbines is essential for stabilising the grid’s frequency and underwriting fluctuating demand. Converting DC power from wind and solar to synchronised AC current becomes harder the more renewable energy is put into the system.

The rant was interrupted with another caption Broken Hill mayor Tom Kennedy. Picture: Jonathan Ng and snap:

Then it was on with the ranting about renewables:

Yet at the time of writing, AGL was still boasting on its website that its Broken Hill Battery Energy Storage System facility with advanced grid-forming inverters “will support the reliable supply of electricity to Broken Hill in the event of line failure and provide efficient grid support for the region”.
Elsewhere it was claiming that its part-owned subsidiary was harnessing enough energy at the Silverton Wind Farm to power about 98,000 average Australian homes, while the Broken Hill Solar Farm would meet the needs of 19,000 more.
Not everyone has been as quick as Kennedy to wise up to the monstrous deception the renewable energy industry practised. Last Monday, Australia Institute research director Rod Campbell appeared before a parliamentary committee on nuclear power to argue for the rapid phasing out of fossil fuels, “which is what climate science demands”. Nuclear power was a distraction, he claimed.

Another snap and caption Broken Hill family Sarah and Nick Pratt with their kids, Mimi, Eden and Leo. Picture: Richard Dobson interrupted the ranting:

Then it was time to give Ted and nuking the country centre stage, though the pond hasn't the first clue what nuking the country is for, what with the alleged climate change crisis just a bunch of hooey, at least if you read the collective works of the cratering Caterist:

Campbell said he had “spent a lot of time looking at economic modelling” and concluded “the capital costs of nuclear are very high and very uncertain”.
Opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien asked Campbell what his extensive knowledge of economic modelling had told him about the total system cost of the government’s renewables-only plan.
Campbell: “I don’t know. I haven’t researched that.”
O’Brien: “But aren’t you arguing that including nuclear as part of the mix would be more expensive than that?”
Campbell: “It would be more expensive.”
O’Brien: “You started off explaining that you’ve spent a lot of time doing modelling. So, do you know what the total system cost is for Labor’s plan to get to net zero by 2050?
Campbell: “No, I’ve never modelled that. I’ve done a lot of economic modelling through my career. I haven’t done much of it on the NEM itself and the ISP.”
O’Brien: “How have you drawn that conclusion then?”
Campbell: “Because, as I said at the top, you don’t need to do a lot of modelling to see that capital costs of nuclear energy are really high and really uncertain.”
Tellingly, the Australia Institute posted a video of Campbell’s testimony on YouTube, suggesting they weren’t aware that he’d made a clown of himself. The anti-nuclear left is immune to contrary facts, paying homage to “the science” while disregarding the laws of physics, urging us to abandon fossil fuels by this time tomorrow while never once considering the constraints of engineering.

Remember, all the splendid work of Nick Cater is senior fellow at the Menzies Research Centre and is a certified expert in the movement of flood waters in quarries.

Then came a pond dilemma. The pond has been limiting itself to a reptile a day on doctor's orders, but look at this succulent menu:

Sadly the pond had to rule out Killer Kreighton doing over Kovid for the zillionth time, and Lord Downer doing his best to recover from his shameful instigation of all that chatter about Russia.

For old times sake, the pond simply had to go with Major Mitchell on a Monday, and The Democrat blunders that could put Donald Trump back in the White House, Kamala Harris’s main problem is not that she covered for Joe Biden. It’s her association with California’s extreme identity politics.

Now the pond has already extensively covered the US on the weekend, thanks in no small part to prattling Polonius, and so was happy to just let the Major show off his inclination to verbal diarrhoea, disguised in a flimsy way as a survey of the media, when actually he's all in with General Ripper.

As usual the reptiles began with a caption The problem for Democrats is Vice-President Kamala Harris can’t really separate herself from the poor economic performance and high government spending of Biden, and a tremendously inventive collage:

Then it was on with the Major:

Wealthy voters on the left seem to prefer confirmation bias over journalistic acumen from their preferred media sources.
Only last Wednesday, ABC Radio National breakfast host Patricia Karvelas complained about the number of texts from listeners criticising her for following the story of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s relationship with former Qantas boss Alan Joyce, one of the best domestic political stories of the year.
It’s worse in the United States where The New York Times and broadcasters such as MSNBC and CNN scrutinise only conservatives but are rewarded by readers and viewers for their bias.

At this point the pond must rudely interrupt, if only to note that the Major has completely overlooked the NY Times fabulous reputation for both siderism, dubious headlines and "sanewashing".  

Let's hear an example of a use of the word from David Corn:

In recent days, I came across what seems to be a new term to describe much media treatment of Donald Trump: “sane-washing.” This is similar to the more common phrase “normalization,” but it extends beyond what we’ve seen for years—the media reporting on Trump as if he is a regular politician who operates within the conventional bounds of political spin and human actions—to covering up (or sidestepping or downplaying) Trump’s apparent cognitive flaws.

A good example occurred last week. As you might have noticed—especially if you read the Dumbass Comment of the Week feature in the most recent issue (the premium version for subscribers)—Trump, while delivering a speech at the Economic Club of New York, went on a long, somewhat nonsensical ramble when asked whether he would support child care legislation if he returns to the White House. He began his answer with a heaping portion of word salad: “Well, I would do that, and we're sitting down, and I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so, uh, impactful on that issue. It's a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about, that, because, look, child care is child care is.” Then, in nearly incomprehensible sentences, he suggested that the massive tariffs he intends to impose on imported goods—a policy that numerous economists say will cause inflation, increase the deficit, and serve as a massive tax hike for middle- and low-income Americans—will generate money that could be used for child care. Read his response for yourself. It was not the answer of an intellectually sharp (or perhaps competent) person. And it would be reasonable for an American to worry about someone who thinks and speaks in this manner inhabiting the White House.

Yet this is how the New York Times covered Trump’s speech. Under the headline (in the hard-copy edition) “Trump Backs Panel On Efficiency,” it led with the fact that during this address Trump “called for the creation of an economic efficiency commission” that would be headed by billionaire troll Elon Musk and recommend “drastic reforms” for cutting government waste that would save “trillions of dollars.” This was a positive framing of the event. Though the third paragraph characterized Trump’s speech as “sometimes meandering” and the end of the article noted that Trump replied to the child care question with a “jumbled and winding answer,” the most important paper in the land did not shine the spotlight on Trump’s incoherence and inability to fashion a straightforward reply to a basic query.

Sorry, the pond promises not to interrupt again, what with the Major determined not to shine the spotlight on Trump’s incoherence and inability to fashion a straightforward reply to a basic query.

The Washington Post, among the worst of America’s Trump “derangement syndrome” products, was hit by a subscriber strike when owner Jeff Bezos decided a fortnight ago that his masthead would not editorialise in favour of either candidate in Tuesday’s (Wednesday AEST) US presidential election.
Readers who quit the newspaper in protest apparently forgot it had been a relentless, one-eyed campaigner against Donald Trump since before the 2016 election.
Nor had it ever seen the slightest sign of mental decline by incumbent President Joe Biden until his confusion could no longer be denied when debating Trump in late June.
This column is amused by the loyalty of Democrat voters to news products that seem unable to report the truth about Democrats; to own up to their mistakes about Republicans; or to predict political events correctly.
And it’s not just the US outlets mentioned above that are the problem. The ABC spent years pushing the false Russiagate narrative we now know was a Democrat National Committee stitch-up supported by Obama-era intelligence figures – the same ones who mistakenly dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story by the New York Post in late 2020 as Russian disinformation.
The New York Times has also been ratcheting up its anti-Trump news and opinion pieces. The pace of these stories accelerated after October 23 when it published influential pollster and professional gambler Nate Silver saying the polls were too close to call but his “gut instinct” was for a Trump win.
The problem for Democrats is Vice-President Kamala Harris can’t really separate herself from the poor economic performance and high government spending of Biden.

At this point the reptiles finally interrupted the Major with a caption US Vice-President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally in Reno, Nevada, on October 31. Picture: AFP and a snap of the Satanic anti-Christ,  with a sinister smirk as she prepares to devour the United States:

The pond thought that the Major had been badly served by a lack of snaps - why should the Caterist catch all the glory? - and so decided to help out with a toon:

Back to the Major:

Nor can she criticise Biden’s poor handling of wars in Ukraine and Gaza, or timidity on China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. Conversely, voters seem likely to accept Trump’s boast that today’s wars would not have occurred had he still been president.

Oh yes, JD Vance and the Mango Mussolini are going to sort out Ukraine - give it to Russia - and Gaza - give it to Benji - so that the MM can build a fine hotel with Ocean Views. 

Sorry, back to the Major:

Not a natural public policy person, Harris is left with only an exaggerated negative campaign against Trump. Last week she was happy to call him a fascist and Hitler wannabe. Yet she and her media supporters insist it’s Trump who is divisive.
The Wall Street Journal has been honest in assessing Trump’s problems. His refusal to accept defeat in 2020 and the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 should have disqualified him from public office, it has argued.
Yet the legal pursuit of Trump by Democrat state prosecutors, and the party’s tendency to deride Trump supporters, have only rallied support for him.
Bret Stephens, a thoughtful conservative who left the WSJ for the Times in 2017, was close to the truth in a piece he wrote on the cultural assumptions of the left about Trump voters. The condescension of Democrat grandees – think the Obamas – towards ordinary voters is, at least to this column, every bit as damaging as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 “basket of deplorables” comment about working-class mid-western voters who had once voted for the Democrats but moved to Trump.
Wrote Stephens: “Aside from being gratuitous and self-defeating – what kind of voter is going to be won over by name-calling – it’s also mostly wrong. Trump’s supporters overwhelmingly are people who think the Biden-Harris years have been bad for them and the country.”

That description of Stephens as a "thoughtful conservative" did at least give the pond a howl of laughter before carrying on:

Biden effectively showcased Stephens’ argument himself on Wednesday in response to a comedian’s remarks at a Trump rally calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage’’. Biden said “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters”. It hurt Harris because it confirms what people think: rich Democrats despise ordinary voters.
The Journal’s former editor-in-chief, Gerard Baker, nailed the problem on October 28. Voters can see all the problems with Trump and still be concerned about the Democrats manipulating those very reasonable concerns “to validate retrospectively the damage they have wrought in the past four years and approve proactively what they might do in the next four”.
“Many Americans want to tell the Democrats: ‘You don’t get to drive the country ever further into your progressive dystopia … and then turn around and say to the voters: Sorry but it’s us or Hitler’.”
The biggest Democrat blunder has been attempts by the party’s district attorneys in state jurisdictions to destroy Trump in the courts: the so-called lawfare campaign that has driven voter sympathy for Trump.

The reptiles did at least provide the Major with an audiovisual distraction, a tie in and cross over to Sky, with the caption: Curtin University Dean of Global Future Joe Siracusa claims the US election has been a “dirty” race saying former president Donald Trump “survived” the weaponisation of the just system. “I can tell you that this last election is unprecedented; in this sense, it is a very dirty election,” Mr Siracusa told Sky News Australia. “The Biden government threw everything they could at former president Trump – Trump survived the slings and arrows of the weaponisation of the justice system.”

What to say about Joe, Sky News(AU!) favourite? That title Dean of Global Future pretty much says it all.

Given the visual stimulus, the pond thought it might help out with another 'toon:

Then the Major delivered his final thoughts:

Many journalists and lawyers have criticised the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial, arguing that for most of the country’s legal history this would have been a misdemeanour at worst.
Even the UK’s New Statesman, one of the most left-wing journals in the English language, has criticised this lawfare.
On June 5 it published Sohrab Ahmari, founder and editor of online magazine Compact, arguing progressives around the world needed to speak out about political partiality in the US legal system and the endless persecution of Trump.
The Wall Street Journal nailed the problem in a July 9 editorial after the Supreme Court found the presidency enjoys constitutional immunity for official acts.
The Journal Editorial Board wrote: ‘’Is there a hall of fame for political backfires? Democrats cheered on the prosecutions of Mr Trump, hoping they’d guarantee his defeat. Instead they energised his re-election effort.”
This became obvious after Trump was shot in the ear at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13 and got back to his feet fist-pumping and yelling “fight, fight, fight” into the microphone.
Yet it’s not like Trump has no policy vulnerabilities.
Fifty per cent of voters now approve of the job he did as president, but Harris is vulnerable economically because of Biden’s overreach, especially on the inflationary and green Inflation Reduction Act.
A better candidate could have made a serious point about Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on all imports to America. This will only increase prices for Americans and bring tariff reprisals.
A poll of 50 economists published in the Journal on October 14 found most thought Trump’s policies, while they might stimulate growth, would add more to inflation and the federal deficit than Harris’s.
For this column’s money, Harris’s main problem is not that she covered for Biden, failed as his “border tsar” to halt illegal immigration, or is weak on policy. It’s her association with California’s extreme identity politics.
While left-wing journalists write about Trump’s misogyny, violent language and propensity to cosy up to dictators, a lot of voters are more suspicious of politicians and media who think gender, race and patriotism are simply social constructs.

Actually the pond suspects that the Major is a social construct, or perhaps has been replaced by an AI bot, or perhaps, just a canny Major Mitchell parrot.

Speaking of AI, some might wonder why the pond has reverted from screen caps to text. It's simple really. Last month the blog's database recorded some 112,000 hits, at a time when the pond was largely absent. The real views, as recorded by Statcounter, are vastly smaller.

The pond thinks it might be AI bots, out patrolling the full to overflowing web, sucking in words in an attempt to get AI smarter than humans. 

What better way to fuck with AI and reveal it for the sham it is, than to stuff it full of lizard Oz reptile nonsense? 

Let the bots come and scrape the very bottom of the barrel, and then see how intelligent AI manages to sound. 

Or perhaps it might result in a thousand year Uncle Leon Reich. Whatever, trust AI at your peril, which is inevitably why lazy bureaucrats of the Victorian kind will march in trusting style into the belly of the beast.

And so to wrap up proceedings with the immortal Rowe:

The inspiration is well known but the pond will repeat it anyway:

How much better than denim overalls are the MM's fork and tatts: