There's little doubt that Uncle Leon is very wide on the spectrum ... and that's why the pond did a double take reading this X meme, still doing the rounds.

Cue fawning shots of cute puppies.

One of the signs of "out there" disorder is a complete unawareness of tonal issues. 

That's how a man can make a squillion and yet the Peter principle always kicks in, as acquiring the ideas of others and monetising them, helped by the lashing of sundry serfs into extended underpaid hours, isn't really proper preparation for the role of unofficial President of the USA.

That's how you can end up berating American voters as uneducable pig ignorant retards, complaining of their lack of education and their laziness, while at the same time wanting to slash the funding of American education.

That's how you end up with stories headed Slapped-Down Musk Forced Into Massive U-Turn After MAGA Meltdown.

That's how Huppke can chortle Trump picks Musk's money over 'forgotten' Americans of MAGA. Sorry, xenophobes! 

It's not a new phenomenon. That's how Henry Ford ended up on the side of Adolf ...

While Musk is patently out there, he's also clueless about the madness he faces: Steve Bannon Escalates MAGA Civil War With Call for ‘Reparations’ Over H-1B Visas (paywall)

Talk about precious white snowflakes taking a leaf out of the book favoured by difficult, uppity blacks. Reparations no less ...

And that's why the new year is going to be endless fun, especially if Tim Miller's prediction that King Donald I will at some point have a health event, as aged folk are wont to do, comes to pass. More burgers for the king, please, oh pretty please...

Even better is watching scales fall from assorted eyes. Brett Samuels made a meal of it in The Hill, In shift, Trump downgrades soaring rhetoric on campaign promises.

You don't say. He wasn't going to end the war in Ukraine before his inauguration and lower prices from day one? Who'd have guessed it, who'd have thunk it? Surely Mexico paid for a fine wall.

Sorry, enuff already, as usual, with a deep groan and a pitiful sigh, the pond must turn its attention to the local three ring lizard Oz clown show, which is more Bullens than Barnum and Bailey. 

(For those who came in late for that reference, here's Bullens headed to the mighty Wang, almost as splendid a town as Tamworth ...)

To think of the money the pond's family wasted in times past, but enough already, here's the lizard Oz's top stories for the day ... with the reptiles still in full silly season campaign mode ...

And here are the contenders for the pond's Hunger Games top spot ...

As if it was ever going to be a contest. 

Why waste time comparing ancient Troy and the bromancer arguing over Jimmy Carter? 

If you want to waste a half hour, you could listen to Jonathan Alter pay tribute on the BBC World Service ...

The fix was always in, the pond was always going to ignore Jennings of the fifth form blathering about China, and pick Dame Groan, and what a relief. 

Instead of her usual staples, bagging immigrants or renewables, she turned Trump whisperer this day in Trump tariffs are more about the ‘art of the deal’ than economics, Donald Trump appears to regard tariffs as a political and geo-strategic weapon as much as an instrument of economic protection of local industries. For him, it’s really all about negotiation.

For those who'd forgotten who he is, the reptiles opened with a reminder, US President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, though some might think he's attempting an impersonation of a cheeky, loveable cane toad.

Then it was on with the whispering, and how foolish of the pond ...of course Dame Groan's groaning would work in a bout of climate science denialism:

The most consequential event of 2024 from a global political, economic and strategic perspective was the election of Donald Trump as 47th president of the United States.
Even though he is not formally inaugurated until January 20, some of the likely effects of his ascendancy are already apparent.
One of the key questions for us is: What will the Trump administration mean for the Australian economy? The answer is likely to be nuanced, with pluses and minuses. How the Australian government responds to the challenges of dealing with Trump also will play an important role.
It is worthwhile briefly outlining what a Kamala Harris win would have meant. Notwithstanding his strong previous centrist leanings, Joe Biden as President has overseen a strongly progressive and high government spending administration.
This would have continued under Harris.
The obsession with climate change that led to the passage of the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act provides for hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits for renewable energy and related projects. In a final pointless decision, Biden recently announced a target reduction of 61 to 66 per cent in emissions for the US by 2035.
Had Harris succeeded, the policy priority given to the climate would have strengthened – note here Harris’s Californian background – and various government agencies would have been given a free rein to impose costly regulations in the name of saving the planet.

Yes, there's no need to worry about emissions or the planet or any of that yadda yadda, have a snap of President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping leaving a business leaders event at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Dame Groan was really hitting her stride, but then a strange thing happened ...

It remains to be seen what Trump will do with the Inflation Reduction Act. Some of the spending is directed to projects in Republican states and the lobbyists will be busy trying to lock in spending under the act.
At a minimum, there is likely to be a significant scaling back and redirection of this spending. Trump will again pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement.
But let’s return to what Trump means for the Australian economy. Much of the discussion is about the prospect of the US imposing tariffs on imported goods and services from certain countries. Indeed, Trump has already foreshadowed the prospect of imposing a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian and Mexican imports. The reflex reaction of economists is to declare that tariffs are harmful to economic growth and are a tax on the poor. By distorting trade flows, tariffs can end up damaging the imposing country as well as driving up prices.
The one qualification is that because the US is such a large market, there is scope for tariffs to be absorbed by the exporting countries; it’s called the optimal theory of tariffs.
The reality looks a lot more complicated. For starters, Trump appears to regard tariffs as a political and geo-strategic weapon as much as an instrument of economic protection of local industries. For him, it’s really all about negotiation.
When announcing the potential tariffs that could apply to Mexico and Canada, he mentioned the flow of illegal migrants and fentanyl.
At this point, economists are way out of their depth when it comes to giving policy advice.

Say what? Dame Groan with no advice to give on how bloody migrants ruin everything? Dame Groan unable to go full whisperer? To be sure, that's passing strange ...

To be sure, the president-elect has some strange ideas about trade deficits and the mistaken notion that a deficit indicates that the US is somehow being robbed.
Note here that the US runs a trade surplus with Australia and trade flows between the two countries are relatively small.

To be sure, to be sure, have a snap of King Donald I with the current governor of the 51st state (or maybe 52nd if Greenland or Panama become the 51st), Donald Trump welcomes Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House in Washington, October 2017.

Dame Groan did her best to recover, by helping slag off Uncle Leon and his EVs ...

Tariffs are only one instrument of industry protection, however. Many countries engage in supporting local industries through direct and indirect subsidies as well as through regulation and manipulation of the currency. It is misleading to focus on tariffs and changes thereto. Non-tariff barriers can be just as important, if not more important.
The elephant in the room in this discussion is China. Trump sees the rise of China as an economic superpower as diminishing the economic power of the US and eliminating local jobs in certain sectors.
During his previous term as president he imposed a raft of tariffs on goods imported from China, including motor vehicles. These tariffs were largely kept in place by the Biden administration.
Of growing concern in the US and other parts of the West is the rising dominance of China in the manufacture of electric vehicles. Not only are Chinese-made EVs considerably cheaper than those made elsewhere, their quality and technological capability are as good, if not better.
Coupled with government mandates in several countries that require more EVs to be sold, the pressures are now building on the viability of some of the large automotive companies in the West. This issue will likely come to a head under a Trump administration.
The challenges for Australia are indirect. With China as our largest trading partner by a substantial margin, any action by Trump that affects China will affect us. The best scenario is if Trump can negotiate some sort of settlement with the Chinese government that is likely to involve a winding back of state support for industry and a more freely floating currency.
Trump is also likely to disrupt the flow of international capital if he manages to reduce the rate of company tax in the US.
During his first term he achieved a great deal in lowering the tax burden on companies operating in the US, including by allowing immediate deduction of expenses.
US companies that held large amounts of financial assets offshore because of previously onerous tax arrangements were able to repatriate them without penalty.

At this point the reptiles introduced an AV distraction, and cross promotion for Sky Noise:

Strategic Analysis Australia founding director Michael Shoebridge says US President-elect Donald Trump will have a “deal-based relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “Anyone that thinks he’s going to just whack big tariffs on China and that’s what’s going to happen is wrong,” Mr Shoebridge told Sky News Australia. “He’s got people in his cabinet who are China hawks like Marco Rubio at State, but he’s got Goldman Sachs and Wall Street people that love making money out of China. “It’s going to be a deal-based relationship.”

Yes, it's all going to be the art of the deal, which is to say a book that the tangerine tyrant didn't actually write  ... much the same way he was turned into a reality TV star by others out to make a buck (and helping him make more than a buck or two with the merchandising spin offs).

Dame Groan does her very best to polish this pig ...

During the election campaign, Trump declared he would reduce the rate of company tax in the US to 15 per cent. (He also intends to mandate the continuation of the tax cuts that were enacted during his first term in office.)
At this point, the rate of company tax in Australia looks hopelessly uncompetitive. Add in the cost of energy; it is much lower in the US, particularly in certain states, and the challenge for Australia will be to explore ways of making us an attractive destination for investment.
There will also be considerable interest in the ways Trump is hoping to tackle excessive government spending. He has enlisted the assistance of Elon Musk and former investment banker (and former presidential candidate nominee) Vivek Ramaswamy to take on the task. A new department, the Department of Government Efficiency, will be set up.
Rather than simply trim various government programs, the idea is that a root-and-branch analysis will take place of what drives government spending, particularly the actions of government agencies that effectively face no budget constraints. Attention will be paid to the underlying pieces of legislation and the need to alter or scrap them.
Trump has promised to rescind 10 regulations for every new one, which is likely to have profound implications for doing business in the US. Again, the Australian government will need to pay attention.
There is a real prospect of what economists called a Schumpeterian disruption, which is likely to turbocharge the US economy.
The fact is that productivity in the US is already far higher than here and has been growing strongly while it has been stagnant here. Australia can seek to be part of the new experiment or stick with its existing approach to policy that now looks increasingly out of step.

The pond relaxed. If a reference to a turbocharged US economy arising from Schumpeterian disruption didn't produce a flood of comments, then Dame Groan had utterly failed in her groaning, and so had the pond. 

If groaning about the groaning isn't a form of creative destruction then all is lost.

At this point the pond theoretically should wrap up proceedings. The winner has been elevated into the pond pantheon and that's all she wrote.

But that ship, the notion of just one winner, sailed yesterday, when the pond broke ranks with a winner, a loser, and a drop kick, Lloydie of the Amazon, given a special late afternoon slot.

So there simply had to be room for a runner up, even though Charlotte Mortlock's most excellent piece appeared in the lizard Oz yesterday.

First please allow the pond to introduce Ms Mortlock ... (you can search for it if you like, the pond was reluctant to offer what might be construed as click bait).

What the reptiles need is fresh blood, vulgar youff, and Ms Mortlock was there to provide it in Why the arts became Australia’s most conformist industry, Once synonymous with exposed vulvas, rebellion, promiscuity and swearwords, the arts is now ­synonymous with face-masks, pronouns and ‘holding space’ for non-traumatic trauma.

Showing that vulgar youff are as mindless as old farts, Ms Mortlock introduced the pond to Musician Hayley Mary, of the indie rock band The Jezabels, was cancelled after wearing a MAGA cap. Picture: Mark Stewart

Well the pond can't give Hayley an easy ride, not when berating Dame Slap for donning a MAGA cap, a sure sign of idiocy ...

In fact any form of political slogan on clothing is a sign of idiocy, even if the pond has to make an exception for the Make America Rake Again, Four Seasons T-shirt sent over by a friend ...

Even with the most meta level of post-ironic referentialism, wearing a MAGA cap invites comedy ... if you want to send a message, surely you need to revitalise the ancient art of sending a telegram ...

Never mind, Ms Mortlock was on a roll of indignation, as if she had the back of hillbillies wearing "hillbillies don't need an elegy" T shirts ...

Somehow she imagines she's D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and William Burroughs rolled into one, though it's fair to observe that Hayley Mary and The Jezabels ain't no Miller, nor with cooee of the likes of Frank Zappa ...

Once synonymous with exposed vulvas, rebellion, promiscuity and swearwords, the arts is now ­synonymous with face-masks, pronouns and “holding space” for non-traumatic trauma.
An industry once hailed as ­society’s most creative is now the most conformist.
While musicians, artists and comedians have historically pushed the boundaries of freedom of speech, these days they’re the most sensitive; they’re now often the biggest advocates for homogenous thought and culture in our society. A field once celebrated for its diversity of perspectives and haughty condescension of anyone who played inside the lines is now playing the role of neighbourhood watch.
The entire purpose of the arts is to do things outside the box and provide art so thought-provoking it could be uncomfortable. In a ­bygone era, the arts did such an ­effective job of this it sparked ­revolution.
In 1863, Edouard Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe depicted a naked woman and two clothed men having a picnic. While entirely scandalous at the time, the piece is now widely accepted to have sparked modern art.
Back then, being an artist typically offered some protection. You were allowed to test the boundaries because of your profession, and your fellow artists would fight for your right to do so. Now, it’s ­actually those in your profession who are likely to come with the pitchforks first.
In 2024, we saw many examples of artists cancelled for thinking the “wrong” way – or so their peers decided.

At this point the reptiles helped out with some art education, Edouard Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe at the Musee d’Orsay collection in Paris.

But if the reptiles had wanted to show how radical and disruptive and out there they were, why not something a little less nineteenth century (a time when even the French were easily shocked) with something a little more modern?

Sorry, there's modern and then there's the Catholic church cancelling its subscription to the lizard Oz ...

Meanwhile, Ms Mortlock was struggling to come up with a long list of cancelled folk, a word that deserves its own cancelling ... made even worse by the way that the band cancelled poor Hayley, The Jezabels have released a statement distancing themselves from their lead singer, Hayley Mary (caution, news.com.au link)

Et tu jezabels, cheap hussies? Back to Ms Mortlock frothing and foaming ...

Australian musician Hayley Mary, from The Jezabels, was cancelled for doing the unthinkable. No, not a crime (that’s often celebrated in the arts). Something far, far worse. She wore a hat – a Make America Great Again hat.
Mary seemed apathetic and accepting of the likely outcome. “I probably no longer have a music career in the way that I knew it,” she said at the time.
A month later, it was a fashion designer’s turn, Gold Coast-based label Sabbi.
For no known reason other than boredom or vitriol, an internet sleuth volunteered themselves to spend hours scrolling through the designer’s husband’s “following” section on Instagram. It apparently turned out to be a great use of time because boy oh boy, did they unearth a golden nugget.
This modern-day Robin Hood discovered the unimaginable: the husband followed Donald Trump. Bingo. TikTok was quickly frenzied on the prospect that these creatives might just be politically right-leaning. Fingers were pointed, assumptions were made, and a small Australian business was brought to its knees the month ­before Christmas amid a cost-of-living crisis. A round of applause for all of those involved.
Far more sinister than hat wearing or following a president is portraying a view that challenges a way of thinking.
Adelaide-based comedian Biddy O’Loughlin has been left professionally homeless, with venues refusing to host her comedy shows because of her trans views.
I have read and watched some of O’Loughlin’s jokes and some do make me bristle, but isn’t that the purpose of art? Having the option to just not go to her show is not enough for some.
In all three of these situations it has been fellow peers from the arts who have come down the hardest – the tribe ferociously turning on their own and swiftly ostracising these individuals without a whiff of the curiosity or inquisitiveness they’re supposed to be renowned for.
Friends of mine who work in music have told me of how suffocating this feeling can be, and the very real dread that comes from potentially slipping up and accidentally expressing the “wrong” view.

Then came an AV distraction, featuring the Bolter and "woke" ...

Australian singer-songwriter Hayley Mary has spoken out after facing backlash over posting an image of herself wearing a Trump MAGA cap on social media. The 37-year-old claimed that her cancellation was intentional to make points about the misinformation bill and cancel culture in the music industry. “I think it was a shock because as you probably know, most musicians, maybe all musicians … move in very liberal, woke circles, the industry is very woke and not only was I trying to make a point about the misinformation bill, but I also was trying to make a point about cancel culture and the music industry,” Ms Mary told Sky News host Andrew Bolt. “And the fact that you couldn’t wear a MAGA hat, even though a lot of people like him and he’s the leader of the free world, you couldn’t wear that in our industry in most of the arts without having your career ruined.”

Sorry Ms Mary, use of "woke" requires a pond ritual ...

As for the rest, there was a JJJ Reddit page about the whole fuss...

This is a bit disappointing. Not in that she has different views to me, thats fine - but her whole post, and the follow up post, is this rambling confused meaningless drivel. She doesnt seem to be able to articulate what she wants to say, and its just so wishy washy and pointless.
If you have what you feel is a controversial opinion, just have the guts to say it straight. She just sounds like the dude punching cones in a shed who's decided at 3am theyre going to tell everyone "like it is", but they forget their point half way through and just try to power through it.

And so on and so forth, confusion and bewilderment ...

...how long has it been this way? Cause I can’t imagine the woman who wrote Mace Spray, Smile or Like a Woman Should would support Trump. Also an American fan said in 2016 when playing a show in the states after Trump won she said she’d be out there protesting him if she wasn’t playing the show. How did it turn this way and when?

Who knows? The pond always blames fluoride in the water, or living in Byron Bay ...and now back to Ms Mortlock for more penetrating insights...

What the industry deems as correct and incorrect is actually quite easy to identify. The mistake O’Loughlin made is making a joke at the expense of the left, not the right. The arts are only ever allowed to agitate in one direction. Creatives are allowed to be radical about sex, drugs and gender, and they can be provocative and vile if it diminishes right-wing politics. But the tables are not allowed to turn the other way.
This is actually not new. The arts has always been left-leaning. The part that is new, is that historically they have always been on the side of anti-establishment ­bohemian radicals. And now the anti-establishment is predominantly associated with the right-wing, and it’s the left that’s clinging on to the establishment.

Whoa, Ms Mortlock, there's a potent PowerPoint bunch of paranoid clichés there ...

Always left-leaning?But many fine right wing artists have made excellent contributions to the y'artz ... it wasn't all decadent, degenerate Weimar Republic art you know ...

Adolf himself was a keen artist, producing most excellent paintings, and with a keen interest in architecture. The sweet lad spent much time celebrating the right sort of German art ...

Look a nude and that art lasted a good thousand years, as will the artwork churned out for King Donald I ...

By golly that's way better than a Superman comic book.

So long as there are splendid artists turning out such splendid artworks, the arts industry (funny, the pond thought it was a cultural matter) will be an inspiration to all ...

The pickle the industry finds ­itself in calls for soul-searching, and so far the arts has chosen to remain steadfast to ideology rather than purpose. They have stopped questioning the status quo, and instead begun acting like a propaganda arm for the government, uniformity and conformity. The antithesis of why the industry exists.
The industry now acts as a gatekeeper, full of political prudes. Artists are no longer cheered on by their peers for exploring the boundaries and being brave enough to push the envelope; rather, there is immense pressure to be a sheep. I know this weighs heavily on some who would like more creative licence to be, well, more creative.
I started by talking about vulvas so I’ll end by saying, unequivocally, that the arts has lost its balls. And if that’s too vulgar, just remember I am trying to evoke the emotions once created by a formerly bold industry.

Political prudes?

Lost its balls? Would it have been so hard to suggest that artists had lost their collective cunts? 

Oh of course, it's the lizard Oz, you can't say really naughty words there. Perhaps, Ms Mortlock, you should have talked about them losing their Lady Janes instead ...

Now credit where credit is due, though the pond has already covered this turf ...

Charlotte Mortlock is executive director for Hilma’s Network, an organisation recruiting women to the Liberal Party.

Consider the pond a failed recruiting exercise. The advertisement on offer lacked the right sort of sexual imagery ... a little more reading of Henry Miller might have helped.

And so to wrap up proceedings with a cartoon appearing regularly at Daily Kos ...

In which Lloydie of the Amazon makes a belated attempt to become a Hunger Games contender ...

 

To hell with the competition, to heck with the hunger games, to heaven with the judges ...

Sure Lord Downer and the Caterist were joint winners this day, but when the elusive, reclusive (some might say slacker slug deadbeat lounge lizard) Lloydie of the Amazon sits down at the keyboard, the pond automatically springs to attention...

He's the veritable bromancer of climate science - no greater praise or honor - a legend in his own wilted by the heat lunchtime ...

And this day he emerged from the jungle to take up a slot in the far right section of the lizard Oz digital edition ...

The pond began to salivate with excitement. The gnomic climate science savant has been notable for his many absences, but here he was, as bright as an Antarctic glacier in the melting sun, ready to alleviate the pond's holyday sense of ennui ... Albanese’s climate sideshow is short on hard facts, For Anthony Albanese to claim that natural disasters have become more frequent and more intense under his prime ministership suggests our leaders are losing all sense of perspective.

What a strong start, and the illustration was just as exciting:

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese tours the Grampians fire area and part of the Grampians blaze as seen by CFA crews in the Pomonal area.

The reptiles have been notable in their conspicuous desire to brood too much about detritus like bushfires and other natural disasters. Best leave that sort of climate science FUD to others ... and yet here was an actual snap of an actual bushfire, which had left a trail of destruction behind.

After this great build up, to say that the pond was underwhelmed was something of an understatement ...

Here’s a weather fact. Climate trends happen over decades not half-terms of a federal government.
For Anthony Albanese to claim that natural disasters have become more frequent and more intense under his prime ministership suggests our leaders are losing all sense of perspective.
While it may be true that Mr Albanese has visited more natural disasters in the past two years than he did previously, this does not prove anything more substantial than this is what PM’s are required to do. Just ask Scott Morrison, who failed to attend the 2019 bushfires and never recovered.
Mr Albanese is correct to say we live in a country that has harsh conditions. But his observation that they are becoming more frequent and more intense, while an article of faith for many, is not necessarily supported by the facts. It will be many years before a proper analysis can be made on whether this is true or not.
That said, Australia must always be prepared for the worst. Several years of flooding rains since the last major bushfire season will inevitably worsen the bushfire risk when conditions permit. It should not be forgotten that the 2019 fires occurred after an almost decade-long period of drought.
Years of rain has recharged the environment and resulted in an abundance of regrowth.
The enduring cycle of drought and flooding rains will not be broken by climate change. Proper planning on where we allow new housing and infrastructure to be built and how we lessen the risk in natural events through pre-disaster management is what leaders must concern themselves with.
New disaster payments and claims of a new normal are merely a sideshow in the natural cycle.

That's it, that's absolutely all he scribbled? To say Albo was short of hard facts when Lloydie of the Amazon was clearly short on word count was a marvellous form of cheek ...

Has Lloydie of the Amazon completely abandoned the field? What's this talk of needing many years for a proper analysis? Aren't actual climate scientists busy doing a proper analysis and coming to proper conclusions? 

Why, this very month there appeared a yarn in The Conversation, More than 1,300 Hajj pilgrims died this year when humidity and heat pushed past survivable limits. It's just the start ...

What's this talk of the natural cycle? What about events in the human-made cycle?

Should the reptiles think about losing this dead beat tosser? This idle, loafing, layabout, lounging, lazy bones is a slugabed, a laggard couch potato slob, a shirker rather than a dinkum reptile scribbler ...

The Speccie mob do a much better job of climate science denialism. Ditto the ranters in The Quad. 

The Caterist or his better half could manage it in a doddle, save the Hunter Valley whales from windmills, and knock renewables and EVs for six, and only needing a government grant to help.

It was way back on 23rd November that Lloydie of the Amazon last broke his silence in the lizard Oz to help nuke the country, and then this was the best follow-up he could come up with?

This latest outing was such a parsimonious, miserly, close-fisted, word-pinching, cheese-paring, penurious, skinflint serve that the pond felt the need to pump it up with a few closing 'toons ... but at least it explains why the judges didn't consider the wretch a meaningful contender ...

In which the Caterist romps home in the pond's silly season Hunger Games, only to see a protest from Lord Downer's devotees ...

 

The pond is at a loss. The judges keep on getting distracted from the pond's hunger games by the three ring circus going down in the States, as does the pond's NJ correspondent ...

But dammit, what a fine circus it is, what a fine distraction ...Trump Finally Takes Sides in The Civil War Tearing MAGA Apart.

All those dollar investments paid off for the unofficial President* (*credit Benji), Trump defends foreign worker visas, siding with Musk amid MAGA backlash.

Faux Noise did its best to sooth troubled waters, MAGA Civil War Puts ‘Fox & Friends’ in an Awkward Spot (Beast paywall)

Hosts Rachel Campos-Duffy, Charlie Hurt, and Will Cain reflected on the online meltdown over the visas, which are backed by close Trump allies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The issues, they said, were in abuses of the system that prioritized cheaper labor over Musk-type prodigies.
“The idea of having a program that allows an Elon Musk to come into the country, I don’t think anybody has a problem with that, and certainly Donald Trump doesn’t have a problem with that,“ Hurt said. ”The problem with the program is that it’s been so abused and turned into a system where it is designed for big tech employers to get, maybe not cheap labor, but cheaper labor.”
...Trump told the New York Post he supported the visas, saying they helped staff many of his properties. “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas,” Trump said on Saturday. “That’s why we have them.”

The trouble with this line? Per CNN, Trump vows to ‘hire American.’ His businesses keep hiring foreign guest workers.

Just this year, Trump’s businesses received approval from the US government to hire 209 foreign workers, nearly double the number of such laborers his companies received permission to hire about a decade ago.
The workers include cooks, housekeepers, servers and desk clerks.
Trump has said the seasonal nature of some of his clubs necessitates some temporary jobs that Americans looking for full-time work are reluctant to take. Forbes first reported on Friday Trump’s businesses hired more foreign workers than ever in 2024.
Some former Trump club staffers who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity said Trump could attract more Americans to those temporary roles at his properties if his businesses raised the positions’ wages or offered other perks.

Yes, he's a bigly exploiter, making America great again with cooks, housekeepers, servers and desk clerks ... which made it even funnier when Steve Bannon vowed to fight to the death on the matter, and abused Uncle Leon, as reported in WaPo, Trump backs H-1B visas, aligning with Musk on immigration. (paywall)

Earlier on Saturday, Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, slammed Musk’s defense of the program in a post on the social network Gettr, calling him a “toddler” in need of a “wellness check” from Child Protective Services. He was responding to an X post in which Musk used an expletive to insult H-1B opponents and threatened to “go to war on this issue.”
“The Trump White House has the danger of turning into a snake pit when different factions within Trump’s world compete for his attention,” said Tom Warrick, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked at the Department of Homeland Security under both Trump and Barack Obama. “Many people during the first administration feared that whoever talked to Trump last before he made a decision, that’s what he would do. I can say firsthand this actually does happen.”

In danger of becoming a snake pit? 

Surely it's always been a pit of snakes dressed as clowns, or undressed as the case may be ...

 ... but at this point, the pond simply had to interrupt and force the judges to turn their attention to the local reptiles, valiantly competing for the top Monday score...

Once again the pond could celebrate the absence of the Major as a way of narrowing the field. 

The wily old bird had ducked off, leaving behind the usual assortment of ne'er do wells...

Simplistic Simon at the top of the extreme far right reptile world, ma, doing a standard bout of Jimbo bashing? Nah.

The swishing Switzer teaming up in a desperate bid forattention? Nah, double nah.

While one highly esteemed correspondent had attempted to divert the judges' attention with talk of comely young Freya Leach (caution, black shirt loving Snail link) ...

... the judges argued that there was no need to pay attention to MRC minnows when there was the Caterist MRCgiant to hand, better still with an ample assortment of bold projections, of the sort lizard Oz scribblers resort to at this time of year ...

From energy politics to global security, here are my big predictions for 2025, Forecasting is an inexact science. Writers who succumb to the seasonal temptation of turning to the crystal ball for inspiration can expect to dine on broken glass by the end of the year.

The pond confidently predicts that the Caterist will celebrate dinkum, genuine, virginal Oz coal, piss on renewables from a predictable Caterist height, and have absolutely nothing to say about the likely worsening of the planet's climate situation

The pond also confidently predicts that the predictions will begin, not just with an escape clause, but with a hideous illustration, so bad it must be attributed to AI, especially as no reptile graphics artist stood up to take credit, and sure enough, Writers who succumb to the seasonal temptation of turning to the crystal ball for inspiration can expect be dine on broken glass by the end of the year, writes Nick Cater.

It was so bad that the bond was tempted to enlarge it, but decided anyone wanting to have their face eaten could click on it and be dazzled by the art and the splendid use of a star filter effect for maximum visual impact.

The best thing about the Caterist making predictions was that the pond had nothing do do but sit back and take it easy. 

Who knows if any come to pass? It's true that the Caterist has a fantastic, astonishing record predicting the movement of floodwaters in quarries, but really, you'll need to check back at the end of 2025, and the pond predicts, with absolute certainty, that it will not remember to do so ...

Forecasting is an inexact science. Writers who succumb to the seasonal temptation of turning to the crystal ball for inspiration can expect to dine on broken glass by the end of the year.

“Why Trump won’t win,” Hussein Ibish wrote in The Atlantic last December. “Biden will beat Trump, and Kamala Harris will play a huge role,” predicted Juan Williams in The Hill at the start of January.

“Trump is really going for a particular kind of voter,” Waleed Aly told Channel 10 viewers. “The problem he has is that they are not people who typically turn out and vote.”

Forecasts tell us more about the conceit of commentators than they do about the future.

So, at the risk of beclowning myself in the style of Ibish, Williams and Aly, I’m setting out the following sure-fire predictions for 2025.

1. Global coal production will hit a record high in defiance of the International Energy Agency’s 2015 assertion that the world had reached peak coal.

2. Black coal production in Australia will provide 10,580 petajoules of energy next year, a reduction of 0.88 per cent, the average fall over the past decade. Most of it will be exported.

3. Solar energy will generate 178PJ, and wind energy will generate 130PJ if this decade trend continues. None of it will be exported. Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s dream of a renewable energy superpower will be put on hold for another year.

At this point, the reptiles inserted a snap of the man they most hate, Chris Bowen. Worse, he was still pointing his finger ...

Then it was back to the predictions:

4. The Australian Public Service will keep growing, as it has done every year since approximately 1788. If the 15-year trend continues, we’ll be paying more than 2.5 million public service salaries by next Christmas across three levels of government, up from 1.8 million in 2009.

Here the pond must interrupt with an explanation. 

All those bloody cardigan wearers are required to process applications for grants for taxpayer cash in the paw:

So many closed, non-competitive grants, so hard to keep up with them, but do carry on predicting ...

5. The most significant growth will be in public administration and safety, where 14,780 new jobs will be created if the 15-year trend is maintained. The second-most significant increase will be in healthcare and social assistance, including the NDIS (13,850 new jobs), followed by education (11,830 new jobs).

6. Outside Victoria, the fastest growth will be in the commonwealth public service, which will grow by 3.5 per cent compared to a 2.3 per cent rise in state and territory government employees. In Victoria, the opposite applies. Judging by the 15-year trend, the ranks of the Victorian public service will expand by 11,700 employees or 3.8 per cent.

7. Two out of three Australians will not watch ABC TV broadcasts for five consecutive minutes or longer in an average week. Australia’s population has increased by 23 per cent over the past 15 years, while the size of ABC TV’s broadcast reach has shrunk by 86 per cent.

8. Twice as many people will watch ABC on YouTube than over the airwaves, casting doubt on the retention of the word “broadcasting” in the organisation’s name. Hits on ABC’s YouTube channel increased by 350 per cent in the past five years, while broadcast audiences have fallen by 20 per cent. This begs the question: Why are taxpayers spending $190m a year to run energy-intensive transmitters?

9. Benjamin Netanyahu will accomplish the goal he announced back on October 9, 2023, by changing the balance of power in the Middle East. Iran’s influence will stop at Israel’s borders and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be glancing nervously at his pager.

At this point the reptiles produced another snap: Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu take part in an announcement of Trump's Middle East peace plan in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

It's a pity, because it reminded the pond that real power lies elsewhere...

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought Elon Musk’s guidance on the existential threat posed by artificial intelligence, hinting that the tech billionaire is more powerful than the US president.

“I said to my wife Sara, ‘this guy really knows what he’s talking about’, I said ‘he’s the Edison of our time’,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said during a discussion with Mr Musk on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday.

“You can’t be president of the US last time I checked, but assume you are.”

The tech billionaire, who is currently the world’s richest person, interjected: “Not officially.”

President Netanyahu responded: “Not officially. OK, so you’re the unofficial president.”

Okay, okay, it's likely Uncle Leon will produce peace in our time, but the pond must learn to stop interrupting the unofficial reptile president of predictive prescience ...

10. Incoming US president Donald Trump will reinvigorate negotiations to bring Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords, normalising relations with Israel and raising hopes of restarting the process leading to the two-state agreement with the Palestinians that seemed all but dead this time last year. But Netanyahu and Trump won’t be honoured with the Nobel Peace prizes they deserve.

Indeed, indeed ... so many Nobel prizes to be won ...

Sorry, sorry ... Trumpian triumphalism is all the go in floodwaters in quarries land ...

11. Iran’s demise, Russian exhaustion and the inauguration of Trump will be serious setbacks for the Axis of Evil. China’s hand will be weakened. With the cards stacked in his favour, Trump will seek a deal with Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

12. In February, German voters will throw out the hapless, ineffective and ideologically mismatched coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and elect a hapless, ineffective and ideologically mismatched coalition led by Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz. The European Union’s 2025 growth forecast of 0.7 per cent for the German economy will be exposed as hopelessly optimistic.

13. Germany’s wind turbines will operate at between 20 and 25 per cent of their full capacity next year. They will generate a meagre 110 TWh of electricity. When this power will be produced is impossible to predict.

As for the planet? Here have another snap ... German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

Almost at the end, but there's still time to slag off Uncle Leon's business model ... though it's tricky, Trump says he has 'no choice' but to back EVs after Musk endorsement ...

14. Sales of electric vehicles will overtake conventional vehicles in China, where EV sales have been rising at 20 per cent a year thanks to aggressive targets, subsidies and regulations. In the free world, however, EV sales will plateau. In June, researcher company Jeffries slashed its 2030 forecast for EV sales in the European Union from 8.9 million to 6.8 million. In November, it downgraded its forecast further to 4.7 million.

15. Alexander Lukashenko will be elected president of Belarus on January 26, as he has been at every election since 1994. The Australian government’s travel advice will remain in place. It reads: “If you’re in Belarus, leave immediately.”

16. Canada, by contrast, will become the second-most attractive destination in North America with the ignominious defeat of Justin Trudeau’s joke government. Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are the second safest political bet on offer, Lukashenko being number one.

17. In Australia, Labor will record its lowest primary vote for at least 122 years. Albanese’s 32.6 per cent primary vote in 2022 was the second-lowest since Federation. The average swing against governments seeking a second term since World War II is 3.3 per cent, which would push Labor’s primary vote below 30 per cent for the first time since 1903.

Sounds grim, but strangely the reptiles decided to feature another loser rather than the cliff top man ...Justin Trudeau

Albo will be a loser, won't he? Time to turn back to the entrails man for a final decisive word, expert as he is in mapping quarry flood waterss, decoding the runes and the tea leaves, and always willing to give the I Ching and the Tarot cards a go ...

Even so, the historical trend suggests Peter Dutton won’t win the next election. The post-war average two-party swing of 1.3 per cent won’t be enough. The Coalition needs to win 19 seats to form a majority in the House of Representatives. The average number of seats gained by an opposition taking on a one-term government is eight.

But past results offer no guarantee of future performance. Forecasters must beware of hindsight bias, the tendency to view past events as more predictable than they were.

They must resist falling for the gambler’s fallacy: The belief that past events influence the likelihood of future events in random processes. They must resist overconfidence bias, the hubristic tendency to overestimate one’s ability to predict accurately and underestimate uncertainty or randomness.

18. On this basis, I confidently predict that the Coalition will be back in government by Christmas. However, which Christmas that will be is far too early to say.

Say what? What a colossal fudge. What enormous cheek. All that taxpayer cash in the paw, all those hard-working cardigan wearers and that's the best he can do?

It's way too early to say? What's the point of making the pond scrabble through chicken intestines to arrive at a "far too early to say"? 

Surely nuking the country to save the planet will see the mutton Dutton romp home a clear winner... but when even the Caterist shows signs of doubt, an unseemly caution, signs of saucy doubts and fears, what hope is there in the New Year?

At this point the pond thought the business for the day was done and dusted. Just a cartoon as a sign off, full of hopeful predictions and sensible resolutions ...

At the very last moment, the judges received a protest. 

Apparently the Caterist had been using a weighted, battery powered whip to urge on his nag, and he was disqualified, and so the pond had to make space for the real winner, Lord Downer, furiously scribbling... Australia’s soft power reputation is bust. This is the tragedy of our modern politics, The sad fact is, Australia is losing its soft power in the world because we have lost direction. We have abandoned economic reform and replaced it with a European-style social democratic model.

The reptiles opened with an uncredited collage which really should have found a home with the Caterist, Australia is losing its soft power in the world because as a country we have lost direction, writes Alexander Downer.

When talking of the loss of soft power, a much better illustration would have featured Lord Downer's soft power in action ...

Now that's soft power, not to mention shapely ankles and saucy legs...

Way back in 2005 I accepted on behalf of John Howard the statesman of the year award from an American foundation. It reflected the enormous admiration there was around the world for the various things Australia was doing at that time.

Australia was seen, as Peter Costello put it last week, as an exceptional nation. As the foreign minister at that time, everywhere I went, ministers, prime ministers and presidents would ask me about Australia’s policies; Australia was seen as one of the world’s greatest success stories. As a leader.

This boast probably needs some explanation. What was it about Australia that triggered such admiration? Well, first, it was its economic performance. Australia had an economic growth rate of approximately 3.5 per cent, growing productivity, growing per capita incomes and, importantly, growing consumption and business investment.

What’s more, the Australian government ran a budget surplus and had paid off all net government debt. The world wanted to know how Australia had done this and in particular the types of economic reforms we had pursued and how we had done it politically.

The reptiles then interrupted Lord Downer's wandering down mammary lane with little Johnnie and Petey boy with an AV distraction, Liberal MP Keith Wolahan slams Labor’s “undermining” of Australia’s relationship with Israel. “What it is doing against the other bad faith actors in the region should be supported,” Mr Wolahan said. “To undermine them in key votes at the UN at this time … is really undermining our relationship with a key partner.”

Speaking of Gaza and key hospital destroying genocidal partners ...

Then it was back to Lord Downer, still wallowing in his glory days ... 

How could the judges have ignored all this, and mistakenly awarded the day to the battery-fuelled Caterist blathering about EVs?

Second, Australia had become a significant international player. The world noticed when we helped Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea get through the Asian economic crisis, when we helped end the Bougainville conflict, led the peacekeeping force in East Timor, saved Solomon Islands from civil war and contributed to the War on Terror. Australia also came into its own as a contributor to the geopolitics and economics of the Asia-Pacific region.

We set up the trilateral security dialogue that later became the Quad and negotiated free-trade agreements with the US and a number of Southeast Asian countries, and began similar negotiations with Japan, South Korea and even China. We had been a founder member of APEC and later of the East Asia Summit.

I well remember president George W. Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, seeking John Howard’s and my advice on how the US should deal with China. Let’s be frank. Donald Trump won’t be looking for the current Australian government’s advice on China.

And then there was immigration. We had demonstrated we could have a robust and successful immigration program yet deny access to Australia for people who tried to game the system by hiring people-smugglers. The rest of the world – particularly developed countries – were wrestling with low rates of economic growth and wondering how to counter the rise of Islamic terrorism, and couldn’t work out how to address the problem of illegal immigration. Australia had answers to all of those questions. We were a world leader.

So much glory in Iraq. 

At this point, the nostalgia became overwhelming with a huge snap of the lying rodent, aka John Howard

On and on the tiresome old Lord carried on, mumbling into his vintage port while his leather chair creaked and groaned ... gad sir, it wasn't like this in my day ...

But today there is very little international interest in Australia. Australia’s international reputation these days is much more about beaches, unusual marsupials, dangerous spiders and beautiful weather. That was the old picture of Australia before it developed a reputation for being the go-to place to see good policy in action.

This is the tragedy of modern Australia. It has lost its mojo. It’s lost its passion for innovative liberal policymaking and instead replaced it with the policy packages of Europe. We no longer lead the world in policies, we follow Europe.

Let’s take economic policy. Instead of a budget surplus and zero government debt, Australia is doing exactly what the Europeans have been doing: running deficits and building up ever larger government debt.

Debt servicing is growing as a proportion of the national budget and there is no sign that the Australian government has any plans to reverse that. Take investment, too. Australia’s focus, like much of Europe, is on government investment in all kinds of activities, few of which generate a net economic return. The most prominent of these is the renewable energy revolution.

Instead of being a land of cheap energy, which was one of Australia’s comparative advantages, our government now boasts of an ever growing level of renewables – albeit intermittently available – from wind and solar. That’s what the Europeans have been doing.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a snap, Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush.

The pond confesses that it hasn't had a single thought about Condy or the painter of dogs in the last year or so ... and it was too late to catch up, as the pond still had no time to spare, because it was on to Lord Downer sorting out the climate crisis ,with his top notch climate science credentials to hand...

Like many European countries, Australia has been pouring tens of billions of dollars into subsidising expensive and inefficient energy resources when it’s sitting on some of the cheapest available naturally occurring fossil fuels. Politicians think that by forgoing Australia’s comparative advantage the country will somehow become a renewable superpower. That’s what they all say!

Boris Johnson famously claimed that under his leadership Britain would become the Saudi Arabia of wind power. These sorts of claims are just absurd.

Diverting economic resources into more expensive energy sources and banning cheaper alternatives is designed to reduce global warming. We only export uranium for foreign nuclear power stations but refuse to use it at home! Yet our contribution will have almost no measurable effect at all on the global climate.

I accept we have to make a proportionate contribution to the global effort to reduce CO2 emissions. But we want to go much further, and by going much further we are damaging our economy without making even the slightest contribution to reducing global temperatures.

Then the expert climate scientist proved equally adept sorting out the middle east and Ukraine:

And then there’s security policy. Australia is no longer in the vanguard of those countries passionately embracing the Western alliance in meeting the many challenges it faces.

We have turned on our most important ally in the Middle East, Israel, during Israel’s greatest moment of need since 1948. Because we have become a half-hearted supporter of the Western alliance, what we say about Ukraine is completely irrelevant and the West barely listens to us any more on the issue of China.

The reptiles interrupted with a final snap ...Penny Wong and Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon

The tragedy in all this? The sad fact is that Lord Downer's only relevance, his only moment in the sun, in recent years, came via a meeting in a bar (generating that classic joke, "His Lordship and a Hustler walked into a wine room")....

Those were the days, and the sad fact is that we're unlikely to see them come again, especially as Lord Downer has now set up residency in the lizard Oz on a Monday ...

These days that's how we learn of the wanderings and meanderings of our treasured Ancient Mariner, as he stoppeth one or three of the hive mind for a chat ...

The sad fact is, Australia is losing its soft power in the world because as a country we have lost direction. We have abandoned economic reform and replaced it with a European-style social democratic model of big government spending, almost zero productivity growth, stagnant real living standards and GDP growth that is anaemic.

Whether I’m in the US or Europe, where I spend a lot of my time, no one anymore looks to Australia for any guidance about good policy.

Australia’s political class seems satisfied with this miserable record. They shouldn’t be. They should hang their heads in shame as we come to the end of the year and start to think about how we can rebuild our reputation as a forward-looking, dynamic country that sets an example to the rest of the world.

Alexander Downer was foreign minister from 1996 to 2007 and high commissioner to the UK from 2014 to 2018. He is chairman of British think tank Policy Exchange.

Indeed, indeed, we must nuke the country to save the planet. That'll show 'em, that'll learn 'em that this country's still got the right stuff, or at least the right mallee root ...

On second thoughts, no need to rush, best just to enjoy the holyday silly season, guaranteed to last until the end of January, safe in the knowledge that the world is in safe hands ...