In which the pond tries to match the tailor, and while there's not seven blowflies, there are four reptiles ... count 'em and weep ...

 

There are days that the pond feels that the reptile hive mind is about to make the pond's head explode, and this was one of them ...

Those who can be bothered to click on the headlines will see at the very bottom a yarn, VC's sins set to be all forgiven at ACU, a way of explaining why the latest terror campaign by the reptiles didn't grip.

The pond didn't mind wasting time on that reptile nonsense, it's always a relief to spend time with frock lovers.

It was over on the far right that the pond's head exploded, because for some reason the reptiles had held over the Caterist - perhaps it took him an extra day to marshal his deepest thoughts, about six inches as you measure flood water in quarries - and so there was an over-abundance of reptiliana ...

The Caterist, the craven Craven, a dinkum groaning? No time to chamber the Chambers and what chance of visiting yesterday to catch up on Mein Gott?

The laggard Caterist reminded the pond of a memoir by Robert Manne, for which there was a teaser in Crikey yesterday, ‘As vicious as anything I had ever seen’: Robert Manne on being News Corp’s target, (paywall) "According to John Kidd, my 'intellectual arrogance' was 'breathtaking'. According to John McCarthy, it was not The Australian I disliked, it was 'the Australian people'."

This is how it opened:

In early August 2011, my wife Anne and I were participants at the Byron Bay Writers Festival. News Corp was a sponsor, having supplied a festival tent, along with which came the editor of The Weekend Australian, Nick Cater. One of the events was a discussion about The Australian between Cater and me. I believed it would be dishonest (and dangerous) if in our conversation I did not make clear the conclusions of my Quarterly Essay on The Australian, which was to be published the following month.
Anne sat next to Cater’s wife, Rebecca Weisser, then The Australian’s opinion editor and now editor of Quadrant. Recently, Wendi Deng had lunged at someone who threatened husband Rupert [Murdoch] with a cream pie. Anne joked that one of them might soon need to similarly intervene. Weisser told Anne that she need not be concerned. Only the left was uncivil. Anne mentioned the case of Anders Behring Breivik, the right-wing extremist who had recently murdered dozens of young Swedish Social Democrats in cold blood. Silence. 
One audience member that afternoon was the veteran journalist Mungo MacCallum. He reported in the Lismore Echo of August 11 what happened between Cater and me: 
Cater’s patently absurd line was to insist that The Australian is not an organ of the right. It is central, mainstream, indeed really old-fashioned Liberal … Cater kept on assuring his incredulous audience that the paper really believed in man-made climate change and in taking action about it, and was even in favour of a mining tax; it had said so in its editorials. When Manne pointed out that its treatment of both news and comment overwhelmingly opposed both propositions, Cater muttered that it was only an argument about what sort of action and what sort of tax. His derisory attempts at self-justification were greeted with well-merited loathing and contempt. 
In front of this audience, Cater renewed an offer for me to write in The Australian. I declined. To do so, I said, would be to provide the paper with “legitimacy”. I had no intention of being rolled out as an alibi every time the paper was accused of being right-wing. 
In our relations, Cater had always been courteous. It was a mistake to humiliate him in front of a left-wing Byron Bay audience. Nick Cater now became an implacable enemy, without the pretence even of civility, let alone courtesy. On August 19, The Australian’s “Cut & Paste” column – which I described as “the daily compendium of Schadenfreude and spleen” – was devoted to mockery of my political journey from right to left: “I’ve been everywhere Manne, I’ve been everywhere: A salute to an intellectual wanderer.” There were very many such “Cut & Pastes” to come. 

That says everything about the Caterist (and Manne too), and it explains why the Caterist should be so excited about the new mango Mussolini era. 

After all, didn't the MM's recent nominee promise, “We’ve got to put in all-American patriots top to bottom,” Patel says in the footage taken from a 2023 interview with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser. Patel later adds: “We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”

“We’re going to come after you,” Patel continues. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”... (Daily Beast paywall).

There was a coda, ...The Morning Joe clip of Patel’s 2023 interview with Bannon did not include part of the conversation in which Bannon said: “I want the Morning Joe producers that watch us, and all the producers that watch us—this is just not rhetoric. We’re absolutely dead serious.”, which might explain why the Morning Joe mob travelled to Mafia HQ, and tried to bend the knee and kiss the ring ...

The point of course is the vindictiveness of the Caterist being at one with his vindictive MM hero, so it's on with the payback, Trump’s anti-woke agenda has already hit corporate America, Donald Trump does not deserve all the credit for the decline of woke corporatism, but his ­election has undoubtedly accelerated the trend. Woke will be starved of federal funding, and universities will be pressured to roll back initiatives.

Sorry the pond spotted a mention of "woke" in that headline, and is obliged by contract to be triggered whenever that word appears ...

Contractual obligations satisfied, naturally the five minute fuckhead Caterist monologue opened with a snap of his hero, President-elect Donald Trump, in a tragic uncredited lizard Oz attempt at humour at the arrival of King Donald I, keen to reverse the Boston Tea Party (which happened to be designed as a protest about tariffs) ...

On with the payback, and never mind the minorities or the bigotry or the prejudice. When you're doing a Caterist jihad, a kareening katerist krusade, throw 'em all under the bus ...

In June, the American retailer Tractor Supply abandoned its decarbonisation goals and began to de-woke instead. It shelved its ­diversity, equity and inclusion program and declared that appointments and contracts would be decided purely on merit.
The threatened backlash from the black and LGBTQ farming communities never arrived. Instead, a stampede of companies followed in its wake. They included John Deere, Caterpillar, home improvement retailer Lowe’s, brewer Molson Coors and Harley-Davidson.
Last week, another high-profile defector climbed over the wall to flee wokeism. Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, announced it would no longer prioritise suppliers based on race and gender. Its staff will no longer be subject to racial equity training, and the company will stop sharing data with the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. Appointments would be made purely on merit regardless of race, gender or sexual identity.
The New York Times’ coverage of the story was scathing. “This is Walmart preparing for a Trump presidency and Justice Department,” Amber Madison, a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant, told the newspaper.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a lengthy AV distraction, featuring the usual cross-promotion. Why is it always the dog botherer? Who knows or cares?:

Sky News contributor Kristin Tate says X CEO Elon Musk will be put in charge of “downsizing” the federal bureaucracy to create a government which works for the people. “The swamp needs to be drained - this is not about demonising individuals who work for the federal government, this about creating a government that works for the people,” Ms Tate told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “Elon Musk is going to be in charge of downsizing the swamp in the federal government. “When he bought Twitter, Elon Musk fired 80 per cent of the staff and Twitter now X runs better than it ever has.”

The pond is grateful for the long exposition, so there's no need to watch, though the presence of Uncle Leon did remind the pond that there'd be winners and losers in the new world order ...

Aw, so sad, such a lonely waif, or is that cross dresser in apron and frock? 

Meanwhile, the Caterist kept crowing with glee, apparently unaware of the FAFO phenomenon that's already sweeping the land ... with the fuckhead still in the fuck around phase ...

Donald Trump does not deserve all the credit for the decline of woke corporatism, but his ­election has undoubtedly accelerated the trend. Woke will be starved of federal funding, and universities will be pressured to roll back initiatives. The appointment of Vivek Ramaswamy to head the Department of Government Efficiency alongside Elon Musk signals that the jig is up. Ramaswamy is the author of Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.
On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported that companies were considering whether to scrub left-leaning policies from their websites. Some were scoping out appearances on conservative podcasts to gain the Trump administration’s attention. Ramaswamy told the Journal: “My inbox and text-message box looks like Niagara Falls.”
The delicate state of relations between the big end of town and the president-elect is testimony to the transformation of Republican politics under Trump. Big business and the Republicans were firm allies under Ronald Reagan and the two Bush administrations.
Indeed, Reagan’s strong personal and political relationships with business leaders were a defining feature of the presidency and helped drive his pro-market reforms.
Under Trump, however, the relationship has yet to be negotiated. Much of Trump’s reform program has the potential to create problems for the corporate sector. The green subsidies to which businesses became accustomed under Joe Biden are no longer assured.Tariffs on goods from China, Canada and Mexico would raise input costs and threaten exports. Closing the border and deporting illegal migrants may push up labour costs.
Historically, the progressive agenda of Democrat administrations meant that relations with businesses were uneasy. However, the change in progressive priorities this century from the redistribution of wealth to identity politics opened the door for the march through the institutions to occupy the corporate sector.
It coincided with the rise of the tech-industry based in Silicon Valley, reputed to be the wokest place on earth.
From Barack Obama’s administration onwards, the Democrat Party has become the political wing of woke corporate America. The relationship was consummated when the worldwide social democratic movement embraced the doctrine of the entrepreneurial state in which governments assume responsibility for driving the economy in a virtuous direction to encourage what its practitioners call “inclusive growth”. In practice, this means redirecting capital investment, subsidising operating losses and constraining consumer choice by regulation. Government largesse is factored into revenue forecasts of businesses, fostering an unseemly culture of corporate entitlement.

On and on the mega Maga dickhead rambled, complete with snap of Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk. Picture: AFP

As for tariffs, and the migrant saga and mass deportations that would strip labour from key industries such as agriculture, and might even lead to a war in the tech sector, Elon Musk vs. Stephen Miller: Washington preps for battle on high-tech immigration, (Politico paywall), don't you worry the pretty Caterist head about such matters ...

Trump’s second coming doesn’t threaten business, but it is catastrophic for the corporate elite – those who make a tangible profit out of woke policies on top of the warm inner glow.
Trump’s 2024 campaign rhetoric targeted the elite with precision. A UCLA study of Trump’s vocabulary found the pejorative use of the word elite had increased considerably since his earlier campaign. He took aim at the “media elites”, “the political elites”, and “the elites who only want to raise more money for global corporations”, pitting them against the people he calls “us”.
In a single syllable, Trump throws the weight of his party against the entire woke establishment. As Thomas Sowell perceptively described them in 1995, they are the anointed ones, the educated, articulate and self-assured people who flatter themselves that they see the world in a sharper light than the uninformed, irresponsible and ill-bred masses.
Trump’s recalibration of the Republican Party to place it squarely in opposition to the elite is a response to a new fault line that runs through political and cultural life.
In an influential essay published at the start of Obama’s first term, conservative writer Angelo M. Codevilla noted the increasing polarisation between a college-educated would-be ruling class and the people he called the country class.
The ruling class was the product of “an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas”, he wrote. “These amount to a ­social canon of judgment about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints.”
The division that matters in contemporary politics is not between left and right, north and south, or even Democrats and Republicans. Yet, the legacy parties have been slow to adjust to the changed landscape. To Codevilla, writing in 2010, it was far from clear on which side of the fence conservative parties stood on the heated political issues of their day. Had they joined the climate panic, or were they resisting it? Were they for Brexit or against it? Did they support the diversity, equity and inclusion doctrine or recognise its inherent dangers? Did they back minority rights or recognise their corrosive effect on the civic fabric?

Again the reptiles interrupted, this time with a snap of the wannabe government vivisectionist, Vivek Ramaswamy endorses Republican presidential candidate former US president Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

The pond would love to revisit this Caterist outing a year on, when the FAFO phenomenon has kicked in and the 'find out' phase is in high gear ... the level of delusion is strong in this one, almost as strong as the level of vindictive spite and the yearning for payback ...

Trump has cleared up any lingering confusion. In 2016, Trump was widely seen by the Republican establishment as an agitator who would divert it from its sacred course. In time, Trump may be recognised as the one who saved it from death by mediocrity as an ineffective, chaotic and utterly unmemorable band of fence-sitters, too timid to confront the profoundly divisive force of identity politics and save America from destroying its economy in a futile quest for net zero.
Trump’s first primary win in 2014 shocked the Republican establishment, who fretted about the ease with which the Grand Old Party had been requisitioned by a usurper intent on satisfying his ego. With Trump’s second victory, the real nature of Trumpism is clear. It is not the cult of personality his first term in office seemed so often to resemble, nor is it a surrender to populism or a lurch to the right.
It is a belated realisation that woke isn’t just an irritating sideshow but the main game. It recognises the woke vision has harmed our institutions and traditions irreparably and weakened the social fabric.
Far from an attack on democracy, Trumpism is a movement to reinforce national sovereignty and wrest power back from the deep state, returning decisions to elected bodies. It is a return to the virtues of freedom and accountability noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in the first volume of Democracy in America in 1835.
Those entrusted to direct ­public affairs in the US “may frequently be faithless and frequently mistaken,” de Tocqueville wrote. “But they will never systematically adopt a line of conduct hostile to the majority.”

Apropos of this or nothing, the pond happened to read Noah Hawley's piece for The Atlantic, Journalism's What If Problem, Too many reporters are writing fiction.

Hawley, a screen writer, was in the "just the facts ma'am" school:

I first saw evidence of this phenomenon during coverage of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Halfway through the week, a CNN anchor noted in an interview with Newt Gingrich, the Republican politician and former speaker of the House, that violent crime was down across the country. But Gingrich argued that this was just one “view” and that people “feel more threatened.” The CNN anchor insisted, “Feel it, yes. They feel it, but the facts don’t support it.” Without missing a beat, Gingrich said, “As a political candidate, I’ll go with how people feel, and I’ll let you go with the theoreticians.”
This was an early sign that we were moving, perhaps had already moved, from a fact-based world to a fictional one, where how people feel about crime is as real as the crime itself. My feelings, your feelings, everybody’s feelings are facts—and facts of equal value to actual reality. Crime is up because I feel like crime is up. And you will never convince me otherwise, because my feeling is a fact.
Now, feelings, as I’ve suggested, are meant to be the purview of fiction writers. We construct our stories around the feelings of our characters. How they feel drives their actions. Feelings are not, traditionally, how we as humans understand reality, how we filter events into first news and then history. Those are assembled—in a perfect world—from actual facts, an objective recording of events that occurred. The motivations of the players matter, certainly. But the feelings of the reader? Of the observer? How we feel about what happened in the world cannot change what happened. Can it?
That was one sign. Another was the rapid proliferation of alternative narratives. In the old days, when news happened, the media would report the facts—two planes crashed into the Twin Towers, which then collapsed. Only later would conspiracy theories emerge—9/11 was an inside job, for example.
Then came January 6, an event that unfolded as fact and fiction simultaneously. While the mainstream media showed us footage of Donald Trump supporters storming the Capitol in real time, Fox News, other right-wing outlets, and social media told people that the riot they were watching was actually the work of antifa. And so, before our eyes, the fictional version of the moment was born at the same instant as the reality...

And so on, and you know ...

...and the pond had a strange feeling that Hawley was deeply wrong in proposing that there might be some redemption by following his "just the facts ma'am" school.

The funny thing was that at the same time, Tom Nichols was also present in The Atlantic, scribbling The Kash Patel Principle, Donald Trump’s choice for FBI director speaks volumes about his real second-term agenda.

Inter alia, just some of them facts, with a little futurist projection as a bonus:

...Patel’s nomination is shocking in many ways, not least because the FBI already has a director, Christopher Wray, whom Trump appointed to a 10-year term only seven years ago and whom he would have to fire almost immediately to make way for Patel. Worse, Patel is a conspiracy theorist even by the standards of MAGA world. Like other senior Trump nominees, his primary qualification for the job appears to be his willingness to do Trump’s bidding without hesitation. Patel will likely face a difficult path to confirmation in the Senate.
For Trump, naming Patel to the post serves several purposes. First, Trump is taking his razor-thin election win as a mandate to rule as he pleases, and Patel is the perfect nominee to prove that he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Even knowing what they know, Americans chose to return Trump to office, and he has taken their decision as a license to do whatever he wants—including giving immense power to someone like Patel.
Second, Trump wants to show that the objections of senior elected Republicans are of no consequence to him, and that he can politically flatten them at will. Some of his nominations seem like a trollish flex, a way to display his power by naming people to posts and daring others to stop him. Trump has always thought of the GOP as his fiefdom and GOP leaders as his vassals—and if the Senate folds on Patel and others, he may be proved right on both counts.
This approach backfired when Matt Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general flamed out quickly in the face of likely defeat in the Senate, but Trump seems confident that he can get most of his other picks across the finish line, even nominees who would have stood little chance of confirmation in previous administrations. And Trump always keeps pushing limits: In place of Gaetz, he sent forward the more competent but equally committed MAGA loyalist Pam Bondi, who has aroused far less opposition.
Trump has made clear how much he hates the FBI, and he has convinced his MAGA base that it’s a nest of political corruption. In a stunning reversal of political polarity, a significant part of the law-and-order GOP now regards the men and women of federal law enforcement with contempt and paranoia. If Trump’s goal is to break the FBI and undermine its missions, Kash Patel is the perfect nominee. Some senior officials would likely resign rather than serve under Patel, which would probably suit Trump just fine.
Of course, this means the FBI would struggle to do the things it’s supposed to be doing, including fighting crime and conducting counterintelligence work against America’s enemies. But it would become an excellent instrument of revenge against anyone Trump or Patel identifies as an internal enemy—which, in Trump’s world, is anyone who criticizes Donald Trump.

The Russians speak of “power ministries,” the departments that have significant legal and coercive capacity. In the United States, those include the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the FBI, and the intelligence community. Trump has now named sycophants to lead each of these institutions, a move that eliminates important obstacles to his frequently expressed desires to use the armed forces, federal law-enforcement agents, intelligence professionals, and government lawyers as he chooses, unbounded by the law or the Constitution.

If you want to assemble the infrastructure of an authoritarian government, this is how you do it.

The early-20th-century Peruvian strongman Óscar R. Benavides once stated a simple principle that Trump now appears to be pursuing when he said: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” It falls now to the Republican members of the Senate to decide whether Trump can impose this formula on the United States.

All this talk of feelings and dire futures is relevant, because the craven Craven - a man of enormous, almost immeasurable stupidity, commingled with an astonishing amount of narcissistic self-regard - was out and about in the lizard Oz with Forget class, it’s ‘nobility of opinion’ that counts most now, Australia has been mercifully free of an aristocracy of birth or wealth. The last thing we need is a nobility of opinion.

The pond regrets that it couldn't attend to the actual arguments, which naturally began with a snap designed to terrify members of the lizard Oz hive mind, Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marching through Sydney. Picture: Getty Images

Strangle the pond in the shallow waters before the craven Craven tries to get too deep ...

Dividing people into social classes like breeds of dog is always good fun. Sociologists like to count them, while revolutionaries incite healthy intersectional violence.
The great thing about class is that it’s self-validating. Whether you are an aristocrat, New York Brahmin or colourful Sydney racing identity, once you are top class you are automatically superior and important.
Even Jim Chalmers probably knows Western societies such as Australia traditionally have three classes: upper, middle and lower. People are allocated to them according to an incestuous interaction of wealth, background, prestige and occupation.
But how all this stacks up for any particular individual is fraught.
The Brits have it easier. In their stratified society, it is a fair bet a duke socially outranks a dustman, and a countess beats a cleaner. Mind you, on a moral scale, things are often reversed.
Things are harder in Australia, where there is no Marquis of Mudgee. Will a professor always beat a plumber? What if the plumber has a fleet of contractors, and clears a couple of million a year? Does a prime minister really have more social prestige that Kylie Minogue?
But now we have a new class system emerging. It is based not on wealth, education or occupation, but on the group of thinkers to which you belong. You tell me your social and political views, and I will cast your hierarchical horoscope.

The reptiles interrupted with a video distraction:

Council of the City of Sydney is set to donate more than $20,000 to the Rising Tide activist group. The donation follows the arrests of 170 people during the group's Newcastle climate protest over the weekend. One councillor moved a motion to give the money from the council's Contingency Fund to the group to cover the costs of the demonstration. All but one of the councillors voted in favour of the donation.

The pond felt more inclined to interrupt with a cartoon:

Would the craven Caterist turn Trumpian and genocidal? 

You betcha ... with a tragic attempt at proving he was up to George Orwell, when all that exuded from that pathetic brain worm was something sounding remarkably Orwellian ...

If you voted for Trump, you are garbage (not just horribly, horribly wrong). If you support Israel in Gaza, you are genocidal war criminal. If you are seriously religious you are a gullible bigot, and a would-be persecutor to boot.
Your class is Wrong Thought, right at the bottom. You are despised and dismissed on sight, like a Victorian chimney sweep.
Contrariwise, if you saw Kamala Harris as the new Joan of Arc, want Benjamin Netanyahu drowned in ethically sourced tar and see religion as the crystal meth of the masses, welcome to the top of the social tree. Your class is Right Thought.
You will be invited to Peter FitzSimons’ harbourside New Year party.
Generously, though, there is an intermediate position between thought classes, like one of the better suburbs of Purgatory. You may be confused, or misinformed, or just plain uninterested in the really important issues of the day, like climate change and pangolins.
If so, you are No Thought, which is not good, but redeemable. With education and dedication, you may yet be elevated to Right Thought. Or through sloth and disinformation, you might find yourself stuck firmly among the Wrong Thoughted.
We should be quite clear that this is not just an ordinary contest between competing strands of opinion. Categorisation under this schema is every bit as defining of human character and worth as any consignment to the old working class or elevation to the peerage.
But the critical problem for the Right Thoughted is that there are just so many people who are irredeemably wrong, or lazily without thought. Like 18th-century Whig aristocrats, our thought superiors despair of the endemically incorrect.
They try to educate us, but we are stubbornly ignorant. This breeds condescending frustration, which quickly turns to contempt, followed by righteous rage.
This partly explains why contemporary political and social debate is so vituperative. When one class is automatically right and the other by definition wrong, mere dissent is an Orwellian thought crime. This in turn underlies the current obsession with disinformation and misinformation.
The only way a Right-Thoughted person can confront contradiction is if their Wrong-Thoughted opponent is either spreading lies, is a contemptible dupe, or preferably both.
Either way, there is no need to actually address an argument. The mere fact that it is being put by an inferior intellectual class will explode it.

At this point came another interruption, an attempt at a distraction, designed to terrify members of the hive mind:

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have spilled onto the streets in the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield. The anti-Zionist action had been called off over unfound claims of violence. Despite it being cancelled, activists still gathered outside a Melbourne synagogue on Monday night.

The pond hasn't attempted to do anything other than heap scorn on the craven Craven, but will nominate one line as worth contemplating ...

Sadly, the best example of this in contemporary Australia was the approach by some parts of the Yes campaign in the referendum for an Indigenous voice. Opponents were simply wrong in the way that only an intellectual sub-class can be wrong.
Insisting on supporting argument, bipartisanship, detail and explanation was not only unnecessary, but presumptuous. The right people are, by definition, right.
Of course, the central problem with this intellectual class approach is that there always are going to be a lot more people outside the magic circle than inside. That is the whole purpose of being upper class.
This conundrum is diabolical in a country such as Australia, which is not only a plural democracy, but has a Constitution that can be changed by referendum. No matter how clever you are, the dipstick down the road has the same vote.
The right also has to be careful of this correctness-by-classification regime. In the voice debate, for example, there were plenty on the No side who regarded their opponents as an intellectually debased class. Simply to describe them was to defeat them.
Australia has been mercifully free of an aristocracy of birth or wealth. The last thing we need is a nobility of opinion.
Greg Craven is the former vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.

Thar he blew, Australia has been mercifully free of an aristocracy of birth or wealth, thereby guaranteeing that this country is completely free of a nobility of opinion, or the capacity for thinking, not when sub-Orwellian garbage can serve as lizard Oz content filler, better than foam or bubble wrap when it comes to packing up nonsense ...

And so at last to the groaning, and the good news is that this Tuesday migrants are spared, so that renewables can feel the lash of Dame Groan, applied firmly to back in Let’s drop the ‘energy superpower’ nonsense. We’re not even close, The idea that Australia can become a renewable energy superpower is fanciful, even if we can agree on a definition for the term. As for things being made in Australia, we are heading in the direction of making fewer things, not more.

As usual for these lashings, the chief Satanist is presented, while the reptiles check that there's a decent supply of tomatoes to hand for his time in Dame Groan's stocks:

Energy Minister Chris Bowen is keen on the notion of Australia being a renewable energy superpower.

Yes, it's another uncredited collage, and the pond sometimes thinks that there should be the deepest sympathies for what was once a proud graphics department ...

Around the world, political discourse is now replete with slogans. This began a long time ago in Australia. For example, catchy titles have been given to annual budgets for decades as a means of selling their content.
Paul Keating, for instance, was very keen on giving adjectives to “nation”. We had One Nation, Building Nation, Knowledge Nation, Creative Nation and others I’ve since forgotten.
The Albanese government has relentlessly pushed Renewable Energy Superpower and, more latterly, Future Made in Australia, as supposedly appealing slogans. The electorate is presumed to be inspired by these catchphrases, highlighting the direction in which Labor wishes to take the country.
The problem is that both these slogans have little analytical content and cannot, and should not, be used as organising principles for governing. The idea that Australia can become a renewable energy superpower is fanciful, even if we can agree on a definition for the term. As for things being made in Australia, we are heading in the direction of making fewer things, not more.
It is understandable why Energy Minister Chris Bowen is so keen on the notion of the renewable energy superpower. It’s not just about the government handing out wads of subsidies to promote renewable energy, it’s about a new economic direction for the country. We can turn our backs on fossil fuels, but the future will be brighter still.

The pond blanched, it knew at once what the mention of Paul Keating would mean: a gigantic snap, possibly one without benefit of French clocks, or Keating flying over the dead heart on his way to Paris ...

There's an inexorable banality in reptile presentations, but when you've got a Dame Groan groaning away, what else can you do?

What is less clear is why Treasurer Jim Chalmers would sign up to this fairytale. We should expect serious and practical analysis based on realistic assumptions and time frames rather than wishful thinking. But Chalmers is all on-board, having included the promotion of the renewable energy superpower as a factor the Productivity Commission must consider. It has been mentioned in the three budgets he has handed down.
The renewable energy superpower idea has several parts. The first is our supposed comparative advantage in having lots of sunshine, many windy spots and plenty of land. The trouble is that many countries also have these characteristics, and they are much closer to the global economic action than Australia. For Bowen to compare the number of hours of sunshine in London with the number in Melbourne is to insult the electorate.
But the vision of the true believers is that there can be massive investment in wind, solar and batteries, and, in this way, we can secure an alternative economic future for the country. To be sure, the excess electricity that is assumed to be cheap cannot be exported directly – unlike coal and LNG – but can be used to power green industries. Their low-emissions products can then be exported to countries willing to pay a price premium – think green steel, green cement, green aluminium. We should also look forward to the development of a large green hydrogen industry.
The leaps of faith in this vision are cavernous and almost entirely ignore the laws of physics as well as the constraints of engineering and economics. Take, for instance, the proposition that we have oodles of land. Yes and no. Wind turbines are best located on the ridge lines of mountains; hence the desecration of much of the Great Dividing Range. It also ignores the entirely legitimate preferences of the existing users of the land.
Siting renewable energy installations a long distance from the demand involves massive costs in terms of additional transmission lines, voltage loss and refitting of distribution systems. As for the proposition that all this electricity from renewable sources can be effectively used by existing and new large-scale plants is another whimsy.

At this moment the reptiles interrupted the overly familiar recitation with a visual distraction:

Sky News host James Macpherson slams “disaster” Energy Minister Chris Bowen after blackout warnings were issued for NSW. “If you told me 15 years ago that in 2024 we’ll be rationing electricity, I would’ve thought what disaster befell us,” Mr Macpherson said. “No disaster, just Chris Bowen.”

Does the pond have any regrets? Might there be something more amusing than keeping company with Dame Groan?

Well yes, the keen Keane delivered a splendid rant in Crikey yesterday, headed Paul Fletcher’s grand conspiracy theory is the most interesting thing he’s ever said, (paywall), Paul Fletcher — a nullity of a politician who has occupied Bradfield for 15 years — is panicking over being replaced by a community independent.

...Fletcher, after 15 years in politics, remains shapeless, formless, a blank space without feature or characteristic. Marise Payne was the elegant political equivalent of those elementary particles that can travel right through the entire Earth without leaving any trace or interaction. But Fletcher is dark energy, a phenomenon that can’t be observed and can only be inferred from precise calculations of the rates of movements of other objects, as he slowly increases the amount of nothingness in the universe. Left alone long enough in any room, Fletcher will expand the dead space within it until any other living creatures will find themselves so separated by a vacuum that communication becomes impossible.
Fletcher’s portfolio (I’m paid to follow politics and I still had to look it up) is “Government Services and the Digital Economy”, an indication that Peter Dutton ran out of things to give out while compiling his shadow ministry and cobbled together the portfolio equivalent of painting rocks white and turning them over.
But Fletcher rarely troubles the scorers on issues relating to his shadow ministerial responsibilities. His media appearances — 90% of which are either talking to the Coalition’s friends at Sky or to his twin brother Greg Jennett, whose obvious sense of family charity extends to having him regularly on the ABC political insider cognoscenti’s Afternoon Briefing — are usually confined to bagging Labor, something that must set Albanese government strategists shuddering with fear every time the media alert goes out.
But tonight Fletcher will grace the halls of the Sydney Institute to talk not about Labor but the teals. Fletcher will easily be Gerard Henderson’s most boring guest since I spoke there a decade-plus ago, but his perspective on community independents may be amusing given he’s the next Liberal in line to be knocked off by one — viz. Nicolette Boele, who, in 2022, despite barely featuring in the media coverage of teal seats, ripped 15% out of Fletcher’s primary vote in his northern Sydney seat of Bradfield, clinching second spot and a two-party-preferred outcome of nearly 46%.

And so on and there was a cartoon to go with it too, albeit from another place:

And yet somehow the pond got lumbered with Dame Groan groaning away? How can that be, why does the pond always get the short straw, and can nuking the country to save the planet be far away in this groaning?

Indeed, the owners of the largest aluminium plant in NSW have already made it clear that achieving net-zero emissions output using renewable energy is unachievable in any realistic time frame.
The outlook for the Whyalla steelworks is also currently tenuous with the prospects for conversion to an electric arc furnace using renewable energy rapidly fading. A major issue is the lack of certainty that the required temperatures can even be obtained. This problem applies more broadly, particularly for manufacturing operations that use natural gas as their main source of energy.
Even if large-scale plants survive, and new ones may be developed, it seems far-fetched that other countries would pay a significant price premium to buy the products based on their commitment to net-zero emissions by certain dates. Do we really think Japan, Korea or India will jump at the chance to buy our green steel, particularly if it is much more expensive than the alternative?
The fledgling – that should really read flailing – green hydrogen industry has failed to attract any customers at all, in part because there is a yawning gap between the cost of green hydrogen and the $US2 per kilogram that would be needed for green hydrogen to stack up as an energy source. Both Anthony Albanese and Chalmers should be wary of throwing green hydrogen into their speeches because, at this point, it’s going nowhere – and not just in Australia.
Many voters will be baffled by the idea of being a renewable energy superpower because of the recent restrictions on the use of electricity in NSW after several 30-degree days. Households were told to turn down their airconditioners – how does this make sense? – and refrain from using their dishwashers and other appliances. Large-scale industry was instructed to power down. Does this sound like a situation in which investors would be attracted to throw money at new energy-using plants?
All that government money directed to renewable energy has been insufficient to ensure the reliability of the grid. And energy bills have continued to soar, and have only been made more manageable because of taxpayer-funded subsidies.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with either Satan or his chief helper, Jim Chalmers.

And so to the nuking of the country to save the planet, though as the pond has observed many times before, according to the reptiles, the planet doesn't need saving from the climate science hoax ...

Much store is also placed on the exploitation of specific metals and minerals needed for the renewable energy industry, particularly for batteries. Thus far, it has been a wild ride – think lithium here – and many other countries also have deposits of the required elements.
The point is that the renewable energy superpower is a hard sell for Australia because it is unbelievable. There is in fact a renewable energy superpower already and it is China. It’s not because that country uses renewable energy at the expense of all other energy sources – coal and nuclear. But because it has cornered the market for wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and most other paraphernalia associated with renewable energy. They are akin to the purveyors of picks and shovels on the gold fields.
The Albanese government would be well-advised to reconsider its adherence to far-fetched slogans such as renewable energy superpower and making things in Australia. The preferred alternative is to focus on the fundamentals, including the provision of affordable and reliable energy. Without this, there can be no future for large-scale manufacturing. It also underpins living standards for households.
A growing list of countries are turning to nuclear energy to meet their energy needs while constraining the growth of carbon dioxide emissions. We should take note, given it is clear that intermittent and short-lived renewable energy requiring expensive backup just won’t cut it.

Dame Groan has almost achieved a prattling Polonius capacity for infinite repetition of a few thoughts, though on the upside, as the pond noted at the get go, this day migrants were spared the lash so that the build up to the nuking of the country could be done in style ...(perhaps Dame Groan has a supply of SMRs for the pond's backyard?)

As for Mein Gott? Sorry, the pond is already bursting at the seams. All that needs to be known was that Mein Gott mounted a valiant defence of the two big supermarket chains because ... Amazon. You know, one monster cancels out two monsters ...

Oh what the heck, the pond will just strip out the boring snaps of Amazon warehouses in action ... because Mein Gott goes PowerPoint dot presentation in... Amazon’s low tax challenge to Woolworths, Coles, Woolworths and Coles say Amazon is a rising competitor in hard groceries, so there is no need to split up our two powerful local supermarkets.

Don't spare the Groanian lash, it's flog the horses and full speed to the climax:

There’s an old axiom in business that looks set to apply to Australia’s supermarkets: “Be careful about what you wish for.”

Woolworths and Coles are pointing out to the competition regulator that Amazon is a rising competitor in hard groceries, so there is no need to split the supermarket giants to create greater competition.

Right now, Amazon has only around 1 per cent of the Australian grocery trade, but it has inherent advantages over Coles and Woolworths. Some of those advantages are unique to Australia and over time will make Amazon a more dangerous hard grocery competitor to Woolworths and Coles than it is to its US rivals, Walmart, Kroger and Costco.

And in the fresh food area, the Australian supermarkets have not invested sufficiently in their refrigerated transport systems which contributes to Australia’s incredible volumes of food waste – a cost that is often passed on to small farmers and requires the attention of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission.

Over time, unless the Australian majors become more efficient, Amazon will eventually apply its retail power to fresh food.

Meanwhile, at the moment, Amazon has four clear built-in advantages over Woolworths and Coles.

• Woolworths and Coles are substantial taxpayers. Amazon, like other giant US corporations such as Microsoft, ,Apple, Netflix and so on, haves the world's best tax accountants and pays little or no tax.

To be fair, in the case of Amazon, one of the reasons for its local low tax is the enormous legal depreciation allowances it provides on its massive Australian capital investments.

Some of the other giants enjoy the delights of the “leprechaun sandwich” whereby they send Australian and other country profits into Ireland, where there is little tax.

Gradually, low or non-tax-paying international companies will replace Australian companies in whatever industries the internationals choose to compete in. Australian companies that pay tax usually can’t compete against rivals that don’t.

Australia is not alone in facing this problem, but with iron ore prices set to fall this is going to be one of the challenges facing Australia for the rest of the decade.

It’s the sort of issue where the two major parties should combine forces to seek a solution. Currently, the best solution is taxing cashflow.

• While Woolworths, and to a lesser extent Coles, backed the Albanese government in the voice referendum (much to the angst of some of their customers), the supermarkets got no reward because at the same time, the government’s industrial relations legislation had a special clause inserted. Known as the “Amazon clause”, it helped the online international giant increase its market share over bricks and mortar ­retailers.

The industrial relations act is designed to increase costs and lower the productivity of the nation. One of the worst features of the 700 pages of legislation is the section that dismantles the enterprises operated by Australia’s efficient, safe, low-cost and independent truckies. They are to be replaced by a cartel of the large transport companies and the unions. The result will be lower productivity. It is expected to lift transport costs by about 10 per cent, but it could be much more.

Then comes the “Amazon clause” which states that if goods are trucked from a factory, farm or warehouse directly to a home residence – not a business – then the more efficient, non-cartel transport systems can be used.

That means bricks and mortar supermarkets are lumbered with costs that simply don’t apply if the goods go directly to homes, which is the Amazon model. And poor old Australia Post gets a nasty sideswipe because its systems do not divide destinations between homes and business, so it is lumbered with the high-cost cartel system too.

• Amazon has a massive media operation, which in the US is now moving to gradually replace the US equivalent of our free-to-air television in broadcasting major sports events.

In due course this will happen in Australian and with it will come Amazon’s promotional power, that Woolworths and Coles will simply not be able to match.

• Amazon has a huge database, allowing it to legally gain knowledge of its customers and their spending patterns. This can be incredibly valuable in promotions.

Goldman Sachs says Amazon is likely to lift its total Australian gross merchandise revenue from $4.5bn to $6.5bn in 2025 – a growth rate of per 40 per cent.

Woolworths and Coles are watching the rise in the grocery section of Amazon’s sales. According to Goldman, Amazon’s sales of snacks, confectionary, cereal and beauty products will reach $1.3bn this year.

Amazon is now the second largest online retailer in Australia. Only Woolworths is bigger. The Amazon 2025 sales growth rate of almost 40 plus per cent may slow but with the above advantages it will swamp not only Coles and Woolworths.

QED: Amazon means Coles and warehouse Woollies can keep on making out like bandits...

That's four reptiles in one day, which almost matches that tailor managing to take out seven blowflies in a day ...

Now all that remains to be done is wrap up proceedings with the infallible Pope ...

Now there's a portrait for the ages ...

... and the immortal Rowe, on the same theme ...

As usual, it's in the details, with a fine observation of the carnival of clowns ...

Okay, okay, there has to be a winner, and the pond reckons this is he ...