In which the pond spends Thursday devouring the sample bag that came with the carnival of clowns ...

 

The fantastic news came rolling in across the Pacific, giant waves of madness hinting at the tsunami, shit storm if you will, that's likely to follow.

The losers and suckers who backed the mango Mussolini to fix Gaza had their answer very quickly with the appointment of Mike Hucksterbee as the ambassador for Israeli settlers.:

Huckabee views Israel as an “overwhelming ally of the United States”, Paul Musgrave, an associate professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera.
“He will certainly be a strong voice for a pro-Israel faction in the administration and the country,” he said.
Huckabee has tied his evangelical faith to support for Israeli control of the West Bank and his support for Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.
In an interview in 2017 with the CNN news network, he said: “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria (the territory’s biblical name). There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighbourhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
Huckabee has gone as far as to question Palestinian identity.
During his Republican presidential campaign, he said: “I need to be careful about saying this, because people will really get upset – there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”
Huckabee is against a two-state solution.
Instead, in various TV interviews, he has propagated the idea that “there’s plenty of land” for Palestinians in countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Syria. (Aljazeera)

But the news of appointment of a genocide lover was swamped by the appointment of a Faux Noise breakfast host as head of the department of defence - cue a shot of him hurling an axe and almost taking out a drummer in the b/g:

It seemed right and proper, a reality TV show host as CIC appointing a Faux loon to handle a massive department without any relevant experience, unless you count a stint as a captain ...and the pond realised that Thursday was going to be that sort of axe-throwing day.

Then there was the appointment of Vivek Musk as head of a non-existent department, with the stated aim of cutting two trillion from the 6 billion budget. 

At last Americans will have the chance to discover what it's like working for Tesla or X. Make sure to take a mattress into the office. Better also cancel your subscription to the federal department of education.

Little Rubio was still only a hot rumour for Sec of State, but it was enough for Kimmel to do a montage of sippy long stocking Little Rubio abusing the mango Mussolini and the MM abusing L.I.D.D.L.E Marco, with the MM calling him a total lightweight, a very nasty guy, a nervous basket case,who couldn't get elected dog catcher, and with a little mouth on him, bing bing bing ...

What with the promise of massive (and expensive) deportations while promising to massively shrink the bureaucrats needed to handle the concentration camps, it could make for a wildly interesting new year, especially as there'd also been the promise of a day of the long knives regarding eristic generals and admirals. 

On the upside, the late night TV comics seemed to lose their recent gloom and relish the chance to have an abundance of new material for years to come.

The pond could barely get to sleep, so exciting was the chance to wake up in the morning and see what the reptiles made of the beginning of the cabinet carnival of clowns. What hope did they have of matching the slapstick from America?

Perhaps a missive from the bromancer, perhaps a head nodder from "Ned", perhaps Killer Creighton rushing to make sense of it all, as only an expert in mask and vaccine denialism could do ...

Strangely the lizard Oz heavyweights were eerily silent this morning ... with only the arrival of Thune as new Senate leader disturbing the headlines.

Over on the extreme far right there was more of a focus on the climate ...

The pond prefers not to spend any time with petulant Peta, especially as this time she spent a goodly, unholy if you will, part of her column recycling the thoughts Jennie, gorging on George ...

...In her latest dissent, the respected former ACTU president and former Labor MP lands hammer blow after hammer blow on her party’s current energy policy.
George says the “pervasive” effect of Labor’s plan to boost renewable energy has been “continued price hikes”.
She says: “Who could have imagined growing queues of people in energy poverty in a country blessed with resources that are the envy of the world?” – resources the current government would prefer were no longer ever used.
George says the “only relief from escalating energy bills has been in taxpayer-funded assistance”, which means taking money out of one pocket, only to put it in the other, as compensation for what was always clearly a government mistake in the first place.
She says planning for an “orderly transition” was a “casualty” of “the rush to meet the 2030 targets”, yet despite the government-mandated disruption and the policy-ordained impact on cost of living, our emissions are now actually edging up while the government’s renewables push is well behind target.
While dutifully taking a swipe at the Coalition’s failure, so far, to provide a costed energy policy of its own, George zeroes in on her own side’s failure to be upfront about its promised 2035 targets, its failure to be upfront about its draft 2025 power price increases and its epic sustained failure to provide whole-of-system costings for its own energy policy.
Effectively, George is calling out the failure of the Albanese government, despite all the resources at its disposal, to do precisely what it’s demanding of the resource-starved opposition.
And she warns voters about the need to “be alert to the possibility of missing crucial information about the energy transition during the caretaker period”, which she clearly expects to start in February, before a March federal election, to give the Albanese government cover to hide from the public even higher future energy costs.

That's the point of having a rat in the ranks, you can have as many dips as you like, recycle her thoughts until the cows come home. And you get to suggest that she's really at one with Bob, a staunch true bluw comrade ...

Nauseating really, then petulant Peta then ended with a bog standard plea to embrace the inner mutton and either gas or nuke the country, or mebbe both ...

...Committing to net zero by 2050 undermined Scott Morrison’s 2022 campaign against Labor because it removed much of the policy contest in energy.

The Opposition Leader has already restored the contest by pledging to use the emissions-free nuclear power Labor furiously rejects to get to net zero and keep the lights on. Let’s hope Dutton doesn’t fall for the trap of keeping legislated interim targets, that he will pledge to develop the new gas fields that even the Australian Energy Market Operator says are needed, and will repeat the new Queensland Premier’s pledge not to close coal-fired power stations until there’s a reliable alternative.

If Labor does succeed in securing the 2026 climate COP for Australia, Dutton will have a further point of difference between an energy realist Coalition and an emissions obsessive green-left Labor Party. Unlike Labor’s cancelling the Commonwealth Games, which cost Victorian taxpayers $600m, cancelling the COP would save taxpayers’ money and be a clear statement that a Dutton government won’t let green ideology play havoc with families’ cost of living.

And after 20 years fighting to keep Afghanistan free from Taliban control, do we really want to roll out the red carpet for them here?

That was as much as the pond could take.

Jack the Insider spent most of his time raging at Azerbaijan, Baku and its corrupt leader in COP29: We’re saving the planet, one brazen kleptocrat at a time, but did come out with one corker ...

“A lot of (climate change) is a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, OK? It’s a hoax, a lot of it,” Trump said in 2015. The president-elect has been less condemnatory of the science of climate change in recent times but it is difficult to ignore his words when it comes to COP29, hosted by a notoriously corrupt and vicious regime in Azerbaijan.

By all means slag off the situation in Azerbaijan, but The president-elect has been less condemnatory of the science of climate change in recent times??

Really Jack? The pond has no idea what "drill, baby, drill" election campaign you were watching these past few months, but all the usual routines about whale-killing, bird-genociding, cancer-inducing windmills were present and correct.

There were red flags all over the place: ‘Drill, baby, drill’: Climate change ignored in the US election

...Unlike the Democrats, Trump has always been very open about his enthusiasm for fossil fuels and disdain for climate science. During his campaign he promised to “terminate the green new scam, one of the great scams in history”, and scoffed at the prospect of sea level rises, saying “Who the hell cares?” and joking, in an interview with Elon Musk, that “you’ll have more oceanfront property”.

So much for the man who made a fortune promising to save the planet by persuading punters to go EV. His bug out will have more oceanfront ...

Jack's work was mainly distinguished by a comical shot ...

Down below, way out of the headlines, Lloydie of the Amazon did make a brief appearance, but his effort was perfunctory, albeit in his usual alarmist way ...

It was a mere two minute read, or so the reptiles said ...

China makes $1.8 trillion climate demand from developed nations at COP29.China has led a call for developed countries, including Australia, to provide more than $1.8 trillion a year to developing nations, as Chris Bowen prepares to play a key role in negotiations at COP29.

There was a bland snap to start, China is leading a push at COP29 for $US1.3 trillion a year in funding for developing nations. Picture: AFP

It seems dinkum taxpayers will have to front the tab, with Lloydie apparently never having heard of ambit claims designed to scare reptiles ...

China has led a call for developed countries, including Australia, to provide more than $US1.3 trillion ($1.8 trillion) a year to developing nations because of climate change.
The demand was made at the UN COP29 meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, where countries have agreed to update an existing pledge of $100bn a year.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has been nominated to play a key role in the negotiations for what has been called the New Collective Quantified Goal.

There was another snap, less amusing than Jack's, featuring... Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Really reptiles? Jack given the comical photo and Lloydie left in the dust, sounding a bit like a desiccated coconut?

...Environment groups had called for a target of $US1 trillion a year. But a group of 77 ­developing countries, led by China, called for $US1.3 trillion a year in new, ­additional, adequate and affordable finance to address mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage.
A group of least developed countries wants at least $220bn a year and small island states, including Pacific nations, want a minimum of $39bn a year.
South American countries have yet to set a figure. China is not legally expected to contribute to the fund because it is considered a developing country.
Most of the money is expected to come from the US, Europe, ­Australia, Japan and other major economies.
But last week’s re-election of Donald Trump as US president has put a cloud over the talks in Baku.
A summary of Tuesday’s discussions released by the International Institute for Sustainable Development said the US had opposed inclusion of loss and damage in the demands.
And the EU, Japan and New Zealand had stressed the need to “discuss the quantum in the context of the contributor base, instruments and timelines”.
If Mr Trump pulls the US out of the Paris Agreement as he has promised to do, the US will not be required to make public its greenhouse gas emissions or make ­payments to other countries.
This will increase the burden on those that remain.
Activist group 350.org said “fair climate finance is being held up by rich countries in the Global North who have a historic debt in responsibility to this due to a ­legacy of colonialism, and ­predatory profiteering at the expense of many Global South countries and communities”.
“While governments may claim that finding money is the missing piece to commit to these agreements and plans, the truth is that this money exists, but we need the political will to ­redirect it”, the group said.
The Baku talks have got off to a controversial start with Azer­baijan President Ilham Aliyev ­declaring that fossil fuels were a “gift of the God”. He said countries could not be blamed for bringing their natural resources to international markets.
European demand for oil and gas from Azerbaijan has been boosted by Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Major world leaders have elected not to attend the Baku talks. But British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a new emissions reduction target of 81 per cent by 2035 from 1990 levels.
The UK’s current target is 68 per cent which is it not on track to meet. Mr Starmer said in Baku that the UK was “building on our reputation as a climate leader”.
The Australian government is not expected to announce a 2035 climate target until after the federal election.

That's it? Just a bit of hip pocket alarmism? Truly Lloydie of the Amazon is just a shadow of himself these days ...

What else? Perhaps back to the future?

Well, the pond had to return to yesterday's lizard Oz to discover the splendid effort by Cameron Stewart surveying the new American landscape, Donald Trump is gathering a merry band of disruptive loyalists for his second term, Ranging from the unlikely to experimental, Donald Trump’s choices for his new-look team to run the US for the next four years all share one thing.

A merry band? 

"Merry" is one way of putting it ... and Stewart began with a snap, Donald Trump appointees (clockwise from main) Kristi Noem, Mike Waltz, Steve Witkoff, John Ratcliffe and Mike Huckabee.

Cameron's offering was heavy on the graphics, so the pond went with it as a way of filling up the Thursday sample bag ...

Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty. These are the three most critical factors driving Donald Trump as he chooses his new-look team to run the US for the next four years.
Trump’s choices range from the unlikely, such as Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defence secretary, to the predictable, such as new CIA chief John Ratcliffe, to the experimental, such as billionaire ally Elon Musk to “restructure” the US government.
Yet each shares a common trait: complete loyalty to the incoming president and a willingness to disrupt the status quo.
They speak to the fact that for his second term in the White House, Trump does not want to be surrounded by the same sort of establishment Republican figures who gave him such push-back during his first term.
He wants to be able to enact his mandate for change from defence to immigration to intelligence to slashing government waste without the fights that marred his first term in office. The benefit of such a team is that it makes it much easier for Trump to achieve what he was elected to achieve.
That is a valid aim for any president. The potential downside is that a president needs more than “yes” men to push back on his ­excesses.
A president also needs experience and some of the choices he has made look more like a wing-and-a-prayer candidates than proven leaders.

There was a mild hint of heresy in that last line, but the remnants of the reptiles' graphics department did their level best to make the clown carnival look respectable. 

Even puppy killers came out looking Persil white with dot point cleansing...

Update:and then came news of the craziest one of all, though to be fair, sexual predators should stick together ...

Update to the update, can it get any crazier (paywall)?

Maybe not so much carnival of clowns as weird ship of fools?

Zeldin scored with some by leading off with a statement which spent a goodly time on industry and diddly squat on the environment: 

“One of the biggest issues for so many Americans was the economy, and the president was talking about unleashing economic prosperity through the EPA. We have the ability to pursue energy dominance, to be able to make the United States the artificial intelligence capital of the world, to bring back American jobs to the auto industry, and so much more." 

He did eventually mention clean air and water, but wisely avoided climate science.

But he and the puppy killer were no match for Hegseth. 

Even Cameron seemed to notice as he went through the list of names ...

...Yet traditional experience ranks less highly with Trump than does loyalty and a willingness to push boundaries. That is why the experienced Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley were excluded from the new administration because they hadn’t shown the level of loyalty Trump demands.

So let’s go through the grab bag of new appointments. Trump followed up on his relatively standard choices of senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state and congressman Mike Waltz as nat­ional security adviser with the wildly left-field choice of Hegseth as defence secretary. The 44-year-old is a long-time Fox news host and a veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was an earlier backer of Trump in 2016 and has been an informal adviser to him at times.

Hegseth has also been a vocal critic of US military leadership, saying it was more focused on ­diversity in the ranks than creating a lethal fighting force. He has also championed the cause of combat veterans accused of war crimes.

By being an outsider, Hegseth may be the disruptor in the Pentagon that Trump is looking for, although he is the president-elect’s most radical cabinet appointment to date.

By contrast, Trump’s decision to choose his former director of national intelligence, Ratcliffe, to head the CIA makes sense.

Trump is deeply suspicious of US intelligence agencies, lumping them as part of his so-called “deep state” apparatus, and he liked how Ratcliffe previously was a vocal critic of intelligence investigations into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Trump’s decision to tap South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary also makes sense, and reflects her longstanding strong support for much tougher border security.

Noem has made immigration a key issue and she will have a broad mandate to prosecute sweeping plans for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

Noem makes sense?

Noem, who has been in South Dakota politics since 2006, is no stranger to controversy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Noem imposed minimal public health initiatives and discouraged mask-wearing and social distancing, which caused the health care system in South Dakota to nearly collapse. The 2020 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which Noem encouraged to occur, is widely seen as one of the largest super-spreader events of the pandemic. 

She also repeatedly made bizarre endorsements from her official accounts and made light of transgender youth depression in her state.

Throughout her time as governor, Noem has repeatedly clashed with the Native American tribes in South Dakota. Her administration initiated multiple lawsuits against the tribes regarding a variety of disputes, including everything from alleged collusion with drug cartels to tribal sovereignty. These clashes made global headlines earlier this year after the tribes unanimously voted to banish her from their lands. Noem’s memoir, “No Going Back,” received widespread ridicule after much of the book was found to be false and included a shocking passage about Noem shooting and killing one of her family’s dogs. (WCPT820 Radio)

She certainly knows how to kill puppies and make useless, extremely expensive attempts at border control, a real headline generator. The pond apologises for interrupting, Carry on Camming ...

Among Trump’s less impressive choices is the appointment of personal friend, fellow golfer and campaign donor Steve Witkoff as a special envoy to the Middle East.

Witkoff, a fellow New York real estate investor, has zero government or diplomatic experience yet he will be catapulted into the cauldron of the Middle East.

Good luck with that.

Easily the most intriguing of the new appointments is that of the eccentric Musk to work alongside failed presidential aspirant Vivek Ramaswamy in leading a new “Department of Government Efficiency” meant to slash regu­lations and waste, and “restructure” federal agencies.

According to Trump, “These two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regu­lat­ions, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”

How this will work is anyone’s guess, but by choosing them Trump is being true to his mission to be an agent for change during his second term in Washington.

The new team is fast taking shape and they are looking like a merry band of disruptive loyalists.

Back to that "merry band" routine as a way of covering the carnival of clowns? That's all the reptiles have got? 

If the pond wanted to be merry, it would turn to the immortal Rowe showing the new king at the ceremonial crowning of clowns...

Over at The Bulwark, the Hesgeth crowning particularly upset William Kristol in The Trump Sh*t Show Arrives in D.C., Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk, and Trump himself. Buckle up.

It must be awkward to realise that in your past life you did your best giving a leg up to the clowns, and now must spend eternity in repentance and attempting to make good ...

...he really is unfit.

I knew Pete Hegseth fifteen years ago when he was a young, pro-Iraq war veteran, moving in Weekly Standard/Project for a New American Century circles. He seemed to be an effective proponent of neoconservative foreign policy, and some of us wanted to think well of him and give him a hand on a promising career. I even weighed in (ineffectually) on his behalf when he ran for the Republican nomination for senator in Minnesota—against, as I recall, a Ron Paul–supporting America First type.

But as sometimes happens, my judgment and that of others was mistaken. Hegseth turned out to be personally untrustworthy, intellectually shallow, and politically opportunistic. He moved on and was encouraged to move on out of our world, and ended up in the orbit of Fox News and Trumpist sycophancy, where he fit in well.

At the point of "personally untrustworthy", the well-thinking Bill provided a link to Words and deeds out of alignment for potential Cabinet appointment and Fox News personality, Pete Hegseth, a decorated Army veteran thought to be considered to run Veteran's Affairs, portrays himself as a defender of traditional family values despite extramarital affairs with co-workers and divorces.

Ah, he likes to fuck around? Say no more, does he know how to blow a microphone stand?

Then it was on to the repentance, and what good deeds might compensate for past errors ...

...The general reaction of others who knew him back when is summarized in a text I got last night. This is from someone who’s seen it all, who has a cynical view of politics, and who expects the corridors of power to be populated by opportunists and phonies. He’s not the type to get upset about second- or third-raters being appointed to high office. But still, he couldn’t quite believe this nomination. Under the subject line “Good Christ,” my friend wrote simply: “I wouldn’t let this creep dog-sit for me. Now he’s going to be the Secretary of Defense?”

But don’t believe me, or my dog-loving friend. Let’s just have a full exploration and public scrutiny of Hegseth’s background, and let people make up their own minds based on the evidence as to whether he should be in charge of the United States military.

Another friend emailed last night wondering if we should make a fuss about Hegseth. Wouldn’t it be better to have an incompetent showman rather than a more able Trumpist as secretary of defense? Wouldn’t the first perhaps be able to do less damage than the second?

It’s not a ridiculous position.

But Hegseth would be an ultra-loyalist, and would go along with everything Trump and his apparatchiks in the White House want. He would enable all of Trump’s plans to politicize and degrade our military, about which we’ve already seen a glimpse. It’s impossible to imagine him raising any objection regarding the host of things Trump plans to do, from using the military to round up immigrants to intervening to promote politically aligned general officers.

History suggests that shallow opportunists who have become mindless loyalists can be as dangerous as more impressive ideologues in helping effectuate the authoritarian project.

So it’s worth having this fight. It could prevent a really bad secretary of defense from taking office. But it also could establish the principle, early on in this second and far more dangerous Trump term that lies ahead, that the opposition will fight. And that it can win.

Oh it's going to be a grand affair, and Bill's piece was capped by Tim Miller, though whether he was still X'ing or otherwising wasn't clear ...

For those wondering about what this really said about Hegseth's priorities, see Mulvaney's wiki listing ...

Dylan Mulvaney (born December 29, 1996) is an American social media personality known for detailing her gender transition in daily videos published on TikTok since early 2022. Before coming out as a transgender woman and launching her internet career, Mulvaney performed as a stage actor in Old Globe Theatre, Off-Broadway, and Broadway productions. She gained a higher profile on social media platforms after her interview with U.S. president Joe Biden at the White House, during which they spoke about transgender rights. After Bud Light sent a beer can to Mulvaney for an Instagram promotion in 2023, American conservatives led a boycott of the brand.

The pond gets it. It's the new America way.

Indulge in a little bashing of TG folk and everything in the world will be fixed. 

Why even Gaza might be sorted out if TG folk were put in their place. There'd be no need for the infallible Pope to draw attention to the ongoing genocide:

Just to rub the genocide in a little more ...

Finally, walking past the always blinking Blinken and that wretched horse, time to end this very mixed sample bag of Royal Show rip-offs with an example of how to cope with the cavalcade of clowns appointed to run carnival, as Tim Miller and Sam Stein oscillated wildly between dark humour, bewilderment, laughs and terror. 

The Bulwark's business plan seems assured for years, though they didn't sound that comforted ...