In which there's some light moments with the reptiles' Roving reporter, and then there's Henry ...

 

Hard to begin in a light hearted way this day, no thanks to the reptiles, but the pond thought this Bernie tribute helped ...

Don't ask the pond for an explanation, ask Kimmel (and avoid the last Newsom sketch). 

Kimmel's writers came up with a new name, The Cantaloupe-in-Chief, which the pond rather liked, because there's a real resemblance ...

As for coverage, the pond found yet another reason to dislike the NY Times ...

In all that nonsense, they assigned a certain Jacob Gallagher, "a Times reporter covering fashion and style", to cover RFK Jr's tie?

It read like a parody of a New Yorker piece ... (though to be fair, The New Yorker managed to look past the tie to get to The Junk Science of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)

Appearing before the Senate Finance Committee at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday to be health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. looped on a blue tie with embroidered birds. It appeared to be a nod to Mr. Kennedy’s hobby of raising birds, something he has shared with his followers in some affable missives on social media. A falconer, Mr. Kennedy has raised ravens for years, but his tie’s molted yellow, red and green birds looked more like a flock of parrots...
...Mr. Kennedy’s biceps pressed against his suit, hinting at the physique that has become central to his singular image.
His face, tanned to toasted pumpkin, bore the fruits of living in California for decades. (Mr. Kennedy’s wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, her kohl eye shadow matching her dark suit, could be spotted over his shoulder throughout the hearing.)

And so on, and if you want an explanation of why the USA is deeply stuffed, Mr Gallagher's approach provided more than sufficient evidence...

But the pond can't get too distracted, it must deal with the reptiles of the day ...

Grim news. Who will stand ready with the reptiles to fight the war on China? 

There's a new approach required ...

Over on the extreme far right, things were even gloomier ...

Oh dear, there's that call for arms, and talk of a lack of firepower. Oh come on, the pond has every confidence that the reptiles, led by the bromancer, will make an epic last stand in Holt street, down there with Colonel Custer ...

And then came our Henry, invoking Auschwitz, not a topic for comedy or his First Law, especially for an Islamophobic bigot, so the pond decided it would begin with a light touch by turning to the reptiles' roving WSJ reporter...

Donald Trump’s executive orders were the easy part, The US President has gotten off to a running start, filling every day with action – but he can get only so far without congress.

Comedy gold, but for some reason the reptiles left out that "Off to a good start", the wording in the splash.

Curious that, but still there were plenty of sightings of the The Cantaloupe-in-Chief from the get go, with the first showing him surrounded by sycophants, Donald Trump signs the Laken Riley Act in the East Room of the White House. Picture: AFP.

It made the pond giddy, and for some strange reason, reminded the pond of that other sycophant, the liar from the Shire, featured in Crikey ...(paywall)

By golly, the pond thought that Oz day was over, but it just keeps on giving ...

It put the pond in just the right mood for the reptiles' Roving reporter ...

In his first week in office, President Trump has moved fast and hard, filling every day with action.

He has removed criminal illegal aliens from America and toughened border defences. He has named trusted lieutenants as acting cabinet secretaries and agency heads. In turn, they’re preparing withdrawals of Biden-era regulations wherever possible on everything from the economy to climate and abortion.

He visited victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and the Los Angeles fires in California, spoke at a Nevada rally, and hosted House Republicans at his Trump National Doral Golf Club. He fired at least 17 departmental inspectors general, froze all federal grants and offered buyouts for all federal civil-service workers.

He has issued dozens of executive orders, including creating an “Iron Dome” missile defence, barring transgender troops from serving in the military, reinstating service members discharged for refusing the Covid vaccine, and killing diversity, equity and inclusion programs throughout the government. He has moved to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organisation and the Paris Climate Agreement, to end birthright citizenship, and to declassify all records on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

He was strengthened by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s refusal to allow US military aircraft to land and repatriate his countrymen. Mr Trump’s instantaneous response — a threat to slap tariffs on Colombian exports to the U.S. (namely oil, coffee and cut flowers) — caused Mr Petro to fold, leaving Mr Trump looking powerful and effective.

The reptiles stacked the yarn with endless snaps of The Cantaloupe-in-Chief, Donald Trump tours areas devastated by Hurricane Helene to assess recovery efforts in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Picture: Reuters.

The Roving reporter did his best to sound enthusiastic, but it was a tempered enthusiasm ...

His furious activity has contributed to the image of a purposeful leader pressing his agenda. This resulted in his best job-approval numbers ever: 50 per cent as of Sunday approved of his performance and 41.7 per cent disapproved in the 538 average of recent polls. He never got that high in his first term. But it’s also the lowest starting approval number for any president since polling began in the 1930s — except for Mr Trump in 2017.

And his dusk-to-dawn, flood-the-zone approach could give the impression that he cares about culture-war issues and symbolism more than inflation and the economy, issues critical to his November triumph. 

Come now, no one cares about the price of eggs anymore, surely ...

The Roving reporter pressed on ...

In the flurry of orders, it’s the hot-button cultural ones that the media jump on. Add his efforts to acquire Greenland, take back the Panama Canal, rename the Gulf of Mexico and make Canada a state (or states), and swing voters might ask if he’s serious about killing inflation and spurring economic growth.

Speed can also lead to mistakes, such as pardoning at least 170 Jan. 6 rioters who were accused of attacking police with deadly weapons. The blanket pardons were an attempt “to move past the issue quickly,” according to Axios. Rather than spend the time to identify violent criminals, “Trump just said: ‘F — it: release ’em all,’ ” an anonymous adviser told Axios’s Marc Caputo.

And an AV distraction followed, US President Donald Trump signed into law a bill requiring the federal detention of undocumented immigrants accused of criminal activity.

The pond doesn't want to rain on the reptiles' pictorial parade, but there was this in Axios, Why Trump won't be deporting "millions" of criminals:

President Trump claims that his administration will quickly deport "millions and millions" of "illegal aliens" with criminal records.

• Those millions don't exist.

The big picture: Less than 1% of immigrants deported last fiscal year were kicked out of the U.S. for crimes other than immigration violations. In the past 40 years, federal officials have documented about 425,000 noncitizens with criminal convictions on the ICE's "non-detained docket."

• About 13,100 of those were convicted in homicides and are imprisoned in the U.S. They'll have deportation hearings after serving their sentences.

To deport millions of "criminals," Trump would have to consider all undocumented immigrants as criminals. But being in the U.S. illegally is a civil violation, not a criminal one.

• Those millions would have to include agricultural, construction and service workers, students and others who are unauthorized to be in the U.S. but have no criminal backgrounds, according to legal specialists and an Axios review of federal immigration data.
• Unauthorized immigrants caught near the border can be quickly removed.
• But any convicted immigrants serving time — or those charged with crimes — will face deportation hearings only after the U.S. criminal justice system is done with them.

Sure enough, of the first 1,179 reportedly arrested, at least 566 people arrested Sunday had not committed any crimes and were only detained because they lacked legal authorization to remain in the United States. (NBC).

Inevitably there were sadly funny stories of Hispanics who had FAFO'd, but the Roving reporter pressed on, deeper into saucy doubts and fears land:

Mr Trump might also want to rethink linking presidential actions to partisanship and political favours. Visiting North Carolina victims of Hurricane Helene, he led with how the region “supported us in record numbers, and I’m supporting them in record numbers, too.” But when it came to California, he said he had “a condition” for approving wildfire disaster relief: The state must pass a voter identification law. The 1988 Stafford Act, which modernised federal disaster emergency response, clearly outlines the criteria for a disaster declaration. It doesn’t include such quid pro quos. Can you imagine the MAGA world rage if a Democratic president conditioned aid to red states on weaker voting laws?

If Mr Trump keeps making disaster relief all about taking care of politics, voters might object. Americans want their president to act for the good of all the people, not just reward supporters while punishing states that went blue.

Then came a final AV distraction, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday (January 29) that federal workers must agree to show up for work in the office by Feb. 6 or their employment will be terminated.

"Off to a good start"wasn't sounding so good ...

A bigger challenge awaits Mr Trump. Every president has a mandate, no matter how narrow his winning margin. But it can’t all be done by executive orders. A future president can easily undo them. To give his agenda some permanence, Mr Trump must pass it into law.

Which brings us to Congress. It has a role to play, especially on the budget and taxes. And little can be done on a party-line vote. Against Mr Trump’s urging, 38 House Republicans chose not to vote to raise the debt ceiling last December. That points to the necessity of at least some bipartisanship.

Mr Trump is off to a good start, but acting only by executive order is over. Hard, serious work must begin.

Those who champion disrupting the “Deep State” must now show they can unite the country and govern.

Karl Rove helped organise the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of The Triumph of William McKinley (Simon & Schuster, 2015).

Remarkable really, that the reptiles managed to miss out on the circus currently in town, but help is at hand ...

And so to our Henry, and a sterling example of how a terrible historical event can be pressed into the service of bigotry ...

Auschwitz is a lasting symbol of apocalyptic hatred of Jews, In refusing to learn history’s lessons, world leaders have sullied the memory of the millions whose lives were stolen on Auschwitz’s blood-soaked plains.

It's not so much what's in our Henry's read as what isn't, and even more bewildering, why the reptiles offered up this snap as starters, Catherine, Princess of Wales and Prince William, Prince of Wales light candles during a ceremony commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day in London. Picture:Getty Images

Never no mind, the reptiles love the monarchy, and then it was on with our Henry ...

Entering Auschwitz on Saturday, January 27, 1945, the Soviet soldiers struggled to make sense of what they saw. The camp’s liberation had not come cheaply: overcoming fierce resistance from German guards cost some 230 Soviet lives. As they fought to break through, the Soviet troops knew virtually nothing about what lay behind the dense thickets of barbed wire.

According to General Vassily Petrenko, one of the operation’s commanders, “We only learned about the camp’s existence the previous night”. And they were given next to no information about the camp itself.

That this was a site of mass murder was soon obvious. But in fleeing, the SS had tried to remove every trace of the slaughter of 1.1 million people, of whom one million were Jews.

Of the 67,000 inmates who were in Auschwitz 10 days before it was freed, only 7000 remained, the rest having been sent on “death marches” that quickly earned their grim name. Strewn amid frozen corpses, the survivors, whose bodies had to be carefully examined to ascertain whether they were dead or alive, hardly had the strength to explain the camp’s workings.

It took two months for a coherent picture to emerge. Once it did, however, its horror made “Auschwitz” synonymous with the Holocaust and defined the image that gave, and still gives, the newly coined term “genocide” its emotive force.

Yet the transformation of Auschwitz into a symbolic reference had fateful consequences. As the whole notion of genocide was stretched into meaninglessness, the specific nature of the Holocaust, and of factors that made it possible, faded from sight. And with them faded public understanding of the risk that it could recur.

To say that is not to ignore the many controversies that mark the enormous scholarly literature. But this much is beyond dispute: had it not been for the apocalyptic version of anti-Semitism that lay at the heart of Nazi ideology, the Holocaust would never have occurred.

The Jews were, Hitler said, “the evil enemy of mankind”, “vermin” who, like “rats”, poison the body politic. The choice was stark: either “our people and our country become these bloodthirsty Jewish tyrants’ victims”, allowing “the entire world to fall into their clutches”; or “if Germany can free itself from the Jews’ grasp, this greatest of all dangers will be eliminated from the whole world”.

And on January 30, 1939, as he prepared to launch the “final struggle” to assure the supremacy of the Aryan race, Hitler, speaking “as a prophet”, assured the German people that the battle would end “not in the victory of Judaism, but in the extermination of Europe’s Jews”.

It was that apocalyptic vision, which combined an unbridgeable division between the good and the evil with the conviction that salvation requires the disappearance of the evil from the face of the Earth, that gave the “final solution” its impetus. Elevating slaughter into a moral duty, it justified acquiescence at best, active participation at worst, in crimes that, merely a decade earlier, would have seemed unimaginable.

The reptiles decided on a break ...Penny Wong joins King Charles III, King Frederik X of Denmark, Queen Mary of Denmark amongst other dignitaries and Holocaust victims during the ceremony for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp.

It wasn't enough to stop a bigot in full flight, as the hole in the bucket man disappeared up his fundament in his usual way ...

Unfortunately, apocalyptic anti-Semitism did not vanish with the Nazi Reich’s collapse. On the contrary, it lived on in the Middle East, where it could build on beliefs deeply ingrained in the Muslim world. Fusing elements of Jewish messianism and Christian millenarianism, Islam had long nourished an apocalyptic narrative in which small and then great “signs of the hour” unleash a sequence of terrifying events that culminate in “a grievous day for the disbelievers”. As the Mahdi, a messianic deliverer, leads the “army of wrath” to victory, the oppressors of the faithful will drown in rivers of blood, heralding the end of times.

That vision always coexisted uneasily with official Islam, which was wary of apocalyptic fantasies’ potential to foment unrest. But grounded in both the Koran and the Hadith (the sayings and teachings of Muhammad), the promise of deliverance steadily acquired doctrinal prominence.

Epitomised by the rebellion that swept Sudan in the 1880s – when a self-proclaimed Mahdi announced his intention “to destroy this world in order to construct the other world” – one of the vision’s most distinctive features was its obsessive focus on Jews.

Thus, in his highly respected compilation of Hadith, Muhammad al-Bukhari (809-870) warned that “the Last Hour will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them”. Slightly later, as Sufism was taking shape, the integral role of the extermination of the Jews in unlocking the “Last Hour” was emphasised by ibn al-’Arabi (1165–1240), the most celebrated of Islam’s great mystics.

Hang on, hang on, what about more recent great mystics continuing the tradition?

Never mind, the pond understands it's a leaf and trees matter ...

It then received authoritative endorsement from the 13th and 14th centuries’ teachings of the scholar Abu ’Abd al-Andalusi, known as al-Qurtubi, and especially of ibn Kathir, who was a disciple of ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328), the unrivalled champion of Hanbali literalism.

Establishing an intellectual tradition on which future generations could draw, it was those works, rather than European anti-Semitism, that provided the doctrinal foundations for the explosive growth of apocalyptic versions of Islam that began with the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Um, this is all well and good, but might not there be a strong tradition of anti-Semitism in Xianity? Might there be things the pompous pedant had omitted?

Should anti-Semitism - remembering that Arabs are also Semites - only be defined in an Islamic context? 

If you're a bigot, perhaps, but please, it's there in both the Catholic and Protestant traditions. The pond felt the need to indulge in its own form of portentous pedantry.

Luther, for example, was what passed for Germany back in the fifteen century. 

He had plenty to say, as per the wiki on the matter, and there's a more direct lineage between him and Adolf than there is between Adolf and medieval Islamic bigots ...

In a paragraph from his On the Jews and Their Lies he (Luther) deplores Christendom's failure to expel them. Moreover, he proposed "What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews":

• "First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools ... This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians ..."
• "Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed."
• "Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them."
• "Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb ..."
• "Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside ..."
• "Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them ..."
• "Seventh, I recommend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow ... But if we are afraid that they might harm us or our wives, children, servants, cattle, etc., ... then let us emulate the common sense of other nations such as France, Spain, Bohemia, etc., ... then eject them forever from the country ..."

Why no mention of any of this? 

Why no mention of any of the many other examples to be found, such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which emanated from imperial Russia, or so its wiki says ...

Towards the end of the 18th century, following the Partitions of Poland, the Russian Empire conquered the world's largest Jewish population. The Jews lived in shtetls in the West of the Empire, in the Pale of Settlement and until the 1840s, local Jewish affairs were organised through the qahal, the semi-autonomous Jewish local government, including for purposes of taxation and conscription into the Imperial Russian Army. Following the ascent of liberalism in Europe and among the intelligentsia in Russia, the Tsarist civil service became more hardline in its reactionary policies, upholding Tsar Nicholas I's slogan of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality, whereby non-Orthodox and non-Russian subjects, including Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, were viewed as a subversive fifth column who needed to be forcibly converted and assimilated; but even Jews like the composer Maximilian Steinberg who attempted to assimilate by converting to Orthodoxy were still regarded with suspicion as potential "infiltrators" supposedly trying to "take over society", while Jews who remained attached to their traditional religion and culture were resented as undesirable aliens.

Well yes, it wasn't just the Islamics, every Xian European country, tyke, proddie or orthodox, had its own tradition of anti-semitism, with few exceptions, but none of this makes our Henry's cut. Why?

One explanation? Could it have something to do with the need to step discreetly past the fanatical fundamentalists currently in charge in the state of Israel, intent on ethnic cleansing and a genocide of their own?

The subsequent outpouring of apocalyptic texts – in which Jews are repeatedly described as “harmful vermin that eats its own dung”, “termites that gouge the wood until it collapses” and “scorpions that harm only the non-Jews who come close to them” – contain plenty of claims that verge on delirium.

For example, according to the wildly popular Egyptian author Said Ayyub, who has spawned imitators throughout the Muslim world, “the Jews have placed themselves in the hands of the Antichrist”, planning “the Third World War in order to eliminate Islam”. Fortunately, in the colossal battles that will unfold as the final hour strikes, “their corpses will be delivered up to the birds of Armageddon, and their flesh will be scattered about the skies”.

But drenched in the stock figure of the scheming Jew and celebrating in advance the Jewish people’s complete disappearance, the vision those works embody is now at the very heart of Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s world view – as well as that of near-nuclear Iran. Rendering hatred inexpiable and compromise inconceivable, there is only one thing that will quench their fanaticism – a new Holocaust.

Years ago, as the Nazis armed for war, Sebastian Haffner, who fled Germany for England, despaired over the inability of the British to understand that there could be people who would never accept a compromise or respect an agreement. Convinced there were “moderates” in the Nazi party whose position would be strengthened by concessions, the appeasers and sentimentalists were, Haffner said, “dooming humanity to disaster”.

That is the tragedy of this week’s commemorations. As Israel is once again threatened by genocidal enemies, and violent anti-Semitism becomes normalised, world leaders stood by, piously intoning “never again”. In refusing to learn history’s lessons, they sullied the memory of the millions whose lives were stolen on Auschwitz’s sombre plains.

Yep, if we're talking of sombre plains, try Palestinians confront a landscape of destruction in 'ghost towns'...

It's hard to come back from all of that, but the pond is determined to end how it started, on a cheerful note, thanks to the immortal Rowe and the infallible Pope, celebrating first world problems...

In which the pond hotwires AI to avoid petulant Peta and other reptiles ...

 

It's what passes as a quiet day at the haven for reptiles devoted to the Murdochian hive mind... including yet more confected hysteria about Albo's mob... featuring that villain for the reptile ages, the notorious Comrade Dan ... (will the reptiles ever allow him to fade away?)

The reptiles quickly passed over most unfortunate news. 

Dame Groan had been out and about yesterday mourning it ...Inflation beast conquered but consumers have paid a high price, The inflation rate is good news for the government, but it does not guarantee either an interest-rate cut or Labor’s re-election.

The old biddy did her best to play it all down, but stripped of photos and AV distractions, it was a dismal effort ...

It felt like the countdown to a rocket launch – the release of the CPI figures for the December quarter 2024. Normally, the releases of the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures come and go and no one takes too much notice.

A rocket launch? The pond had thought it was a plane ride ...

Please, let the old biddy do a beefy boofhead from Goulburn, and continue ...

There is a lot riding on how the Reserve Bank interprets the result. Needless to say, the bank won’t be relying on a single CPI figure to determine whether or not the cash rate should be cut at its February 17-18 meeting. There will be a wide range of figures and market intelligence that feeds into the decision, but this CPI release is very important.
Three very important additional considerations are the ongoing tight labour market; the low and falling value of the Australian dollar; and the ongoing high rate of services inflation as opposed to goods inflation.
The key figure in the ABS release is the rise of 3.2 per cent in the trimmed mean CPI in the December quarter, a measure that factors out volatile and extreme elements from the calculation. This figure is down from 3.6 per cent (revised up) in the September quarter. The bank focuses on the trimmed mean.
By conItrast, the headline figure for the December quarter was 2.4 per cent, down from 2.8 per cent in the September quarter. Both the trimmed mean and the headline figures are marginally below the prior consensus estimates. No doubt, the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, will be bragging about this headline figure, the trimmed mean outcomes still being above the bank’s annual target range of 2 to 3 per cent.
Last year, the bank’s governor, Michele Bullock, stressed the need for inflation to be sustainably in the annual range before cutting the cash rate. This points to a degree of caution lest the cash rate is cut too soon and inflation then fails to stay in the target band. This would be widely marked as a monetary policy failure.
Notwithstanding the ongoing declaration of both Anthony Albanese and Chalmers of their respect for the independence of the RBA, a lot of nudging has been going on for some time. When Chalmers declared last year that high interest rates were “smashing the economy”, he was in effect telling the bank what to do.
In this sense, the RBA’s February meeting is a test of its independence. To be sure, if the case for a cut is overwhelming, the bank should make this call. But if there is a high degree of uncertainty about the course of inflation over the coming year, it should hold, even in the face of considerable political pressures.
Unfortunately, the CPI result puts the bank’s decision spectrum somewhere between a clear-cut case for a rate cut and a hold on the cash rate. The bond traders will probably put a high probability on a cut – most likely 25 basis points. The government will argue that the case for a cut is now compelling.
There will now be another rocket launch-type countdown come February 18.
As the election approaches, the political benefit for the Labor government of a cash rate cut is that it would quickly feed into lower mortgage rates and provide a degree of financial relief for indebted homeowners. It would be a demonstration that the inflation beast has been conquered, although bear in mind prices won’t be reverting to their 2021 levels. Prices have increased by around 15 per cent since then.
Mind you, the Fed in the US cut its official interest rates several times leading up to the election there in November. It was insufficient to save Biden/Harris from defeat.
Judith Sloan is The Australian’s contributing economics editor. She is an economist and company director.

Indeed, indeed, what an inspiration there is overseas ...

Over on the extreme far right, things were back to normal with the return of petulant Peta ...

As usual the pond decided the right move was to studiously cut petulant Peta with an imperious wave of the finger. 

As soon as the pond noted the reference to "political correctness" and yet another attempt to demonise furriners, petulant Peta was dead to the pond. 

If the pond wanted electioneering, it would turn to Wilcox for inspiration ...

On the other hand, all that leaves the pond precariously short of reptiles to study ...

There was some more blather about back-door banquets being food for thought. Forget it Jake, this is still the reptiles in election mode.

The shortage was compounded by Jack the Insider behaving like a well-trained cat and pissing into the kitty litter like the rest of the Murdochian empire ... see Politico ...

Inter alia ...

The newspapers — the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post — cited concerns about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine advocacy, business conflicts and other public controversies that have sparked headlines since he emerged as a presidential candidate in the 2024 election. The New York Post, the famously pugilistic tabloid, attacked Kennedy’s status as a conservative and accused him of being a “serial womanizer” who “hasn’t met a conspiracy theory he didn’t love.”
“He’s still a radical left lunatic who is anti-energy, a ‘big time’ taxer and completely incoherent about our nation’s health,” the New York Post’s editorial board wrote on Monday night.
Trump and Rupert Murdoch — the family patriarch who has wielded significant influence over his media properties — have had a complicated relationship. While many viewed Murdoch’s attendance at last year’s Republican National Convention as a sign of a repaired alliance between the two, the Fox News titan previously expressed fear about Trump’s influence on the conservative broadcast network’s audience during depositions for the Dominion lawsuit.
His properties also seemingly backed Trump’s chief competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for the 2024 Republican primaries for a time before throwing back in with Trump.

Poor Jack, just another parrot inn the empire and as relevant as spittle on a fire down under.

As if it was anything but the bleeding obvious.

RFK Jr. is a anit-vax conspiracy nutter of the first water, and willing to compromise body and what is called the soul for a glimpse of power, with a craven sidekick TV celebrity wife happy to go along for the ride...

He should fit right into the monarchy, the Valhalla of clowns that News Corp and Faux Noise helped create ...

The pond had hoped that some reptile had felt the calling to maintain the Zionist rage. 

That way the pond would have been able to note the keen Keane railing at the Murdochians in Crikey, Sarah Schwartz must be punished: The instrumentalisation of a dissenting Jew, After calling out Peter Dutton's use of Australian Jews for his own political purposes, Sarah Schwartz has faced a campaign of demonisation (archived here for those who have paywall problems)

The keen Keane began with a flourish:

In the history of News Corp holy wars against the company’s ideological and commercial enemies, rarely has there been one with less basis in reality than that being conducted against Human Rights Law Centre legal director and Jewish Council of Australia executive officer Sarah Schwartz.
Over the past week, Schwartz has been attacked across multiple News Corp outlets, right-wing pro-Israel Jewish groups have been pressed into service to criticise her, university vice-chancellors have been forced to apologise for her, and gullible politicians like Labor’s Jason Clare have joined in.
The charge? That Schwartz was antisemitic in her presentation to a comedy debate on bad racism takes, held as part of a Queensland University of Technology symposium on racism. How? Schwartz — who routinely comes under vile antisemitic attacks from neo-Nazis online, and who has worked with pro-Palestinian groups to block recruitment efforts by Nazi groups — put up a slide referring to “Dutton’s Jew”, which she argued is a creation of the opposition leader for his political benefit.
All the tropes of a News Corp holy war have been on display. Multiple articles saying nothing but repeating attacks on the target. Inviting op-ed comment, followed by news articles about the comment and comments on the comment. And the conflation of unrelated issues, such as Schwartz being blamed for the “coordinated humiliation” a Jewish academic claimed he experienced, allegedly at the hands of other delegates at the main symposium event which Schwartz didn’t even attend. And that’s as nothing compared to the online onslaught Schwartz has endured as a result, including vexatious threats to pursue her under the Racial Discrimination Act.
If you actually read Schwartz’s presentation, you’ll see she’s making a thoughtful and well-evidenced point: Jews have long been instrumentalised by political elites for their own purposes: “This idea of Jews as political footballs to be used by the elite ruling class has a long history. Anti-Jewish conspiracies have historically provided elites with a shock absorber, to prevent popular rage from reaching the kings, queens and tsars,” she said in her presentation.

And so on, and the pond realised how lucky and wise it had been to avoid that particular reptile mugwump-infested swamp...

The pond decided it should make at least one attempt to provide reptile content, and so it was left to a certain Anne-Louise Brown to debrief the pond on DeepSeek one more time, although the fuss had largely died away ...

DeepSeek shows tech’s a monster, but we can tame it, World leaders need to find a path between week guardrails and excessive control or risk inhibiting innovation of this growing phenomenon.

As per standard reptile practice, the reptiles opened with a bog standard meaningless stock photo... Stock opened up flat amid the arrival of the Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek which sparked a sell-off in tech stocks.

At least the pond could match that, and up the (medium rare) steak, with an infallible Pope ...

AI can be tamed? And we only learned it was a monster because of DeepSeek?

Strangle the pond in shallow waters before things get too Frankenstein Henry deep ...

More than 200 years have passed since the publication of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece, Frankenstein. Yet, when it comes to the human condition and the opportunities and challenges new technologies present to humanity, surprisingly little has shifted.
At the crux of this seeming immutability lies a basic truth – it is not the technology that is bad; rather, it is how people choose to use it.
In Frankenstein, Shelley observed that: “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.”
In 2025 – as has been the case since the dawn of time – humankind finds itself in another race for technological supremacy. Today, however, the technology is not hewn of wood or stone, but of chips and wires. Artificial intelligence is here to stay and will have an increasingly profound impact on the way we communicate, work and play, on politics, policy and geopolitics. The big challenge for Australia, therefore, as a net consumer of AI, is how to create the right ­settings and safeguards to ensure the use of AI technologies by our governments and organisations is responsible?
Over the past week the significant impacts of international AI policy have been on display.
In one of his first acts as President, Donald Trump announced the Stargate Project, which aims to build $US500bn ($801bn) worth of AI infrastructure in the US via a powerful coalition of OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank and MGX. Much like the US push into enhanced semiconductor production via the CHIPS Act, Stargate is aimed at building real technology competition in a market China has aggressively pursued and upon which the world relies.
However, the fanfare of the US announcement has been overshadowed by a Wall Street grenade, with the launch of DeepSeek’s R1, a Chinese-developed generative AI (GAI) model that has been found to perform better than OpenAI’s comparable tech.
Also, DeepSeek’s technology is significantly cheaper to train and develop, which means it will be highly attractive to organisations wanting to implement GAI systems but struggling with budget.

Then followed another useless bit of visual stock photo mush,  Fears of upheaval in the AI gold rush rocked Wall Street, following the emergence of a popular ChatGPT-like model from China, with US President Donald Trump saying it was a "wake-up call" for Silicon Valley.

The pond thought the mention of King Donald I at least allowed the use of an alternative illustration ...

Amazingly the reptiles had managed to miss the entire OMB panic and confusion from the King's karnival of klowns ... it had managed to make the AI tulips panic seem like a passing blip ...

Instead of all that OMB chaotic fun, there was more tepid AI broth to sup on ...

The announcement of the technology’s apparent efficacy sent the US stockmarket into a panic, with Microsoft, Tesla, Nvidia and Broadcom all experiencing losses. Indeed, the shockwave prompted US tech billionaire Marc Andressen to proclaim that “DeepSeek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment”.
So what does this global competition mean for Australia? As previously noted, we are and will ultimately continue to be consumers of AI, not large producers of these technologies.
Therefore, in an age defined by a global technology race, Australia is confined in relation to the impact it can have on a geopolitical stage. But there are things that can be achieved domestically via policy and regulatory settings that can help Australia take advantage of AI innovations while also mitigating potential risks. However, they must not be knee-jerk reactions.
The federal government’s significant consultation on mandatory and voluntary AI guardrails has helped set the scene for what AI regulation in Australia may look like. But while engagement from government has been strong, the proposed guardrails remain very broad and, in practice, may be difficult and expensive to ­implement.
In this regard there are also big lessons for Australia to take from the EU experience and the implementation of the AI Act, a cumbersome tome of legislation that frequently contradicts itself and other pieces of EU law. Indeed, a recent European Commission report into future EU competitiveness by former European Central Bank president Marion Draghi noted that “the EU’s regulatory stance towards tech companies hampers innovation”.

There was a feeble attempt at an AV distraction, to accompany wringing of hands, A new Chinese-developed AI assistant, DeepSeek, has crashed US tech markets and caused investors to wonder if American dominance is over.

And that was pretty much it ... you know, reptiles in the swamp and elephants in the room ...

Then there is the elephant in the room: energy supply. AI systems and the data centres they rely upon use vast amounts of energy. For Australia, which is aiming for net zero emissions by 2050, this may be one of the toughest hurdles to overcome. Furthermore, as ­operational prices surge, it may also push Australian organisations towards vendors who can provide AI technologies more cheaply – vendors such as DeepSeek.
This is not inherently bad because tech competition is good. But as has been the case with other Chinese companies and potential security risks associated with 5G technologies, some level of caution must be applied.
Therefore, there is a key role for Australia’s national security establishment to play in helping ensure that Australians are protected from threats including foreign ­surveillance, social engineering and data hoarding.
When it comes to AI, there are many doomsayers but the stark reality is that AI is here to stay and, if not embraced for the opportunities it presents, Australia risks being left behind.
Sensible regulation that fosters, not hinders, innovation is vital. As is the understanding that, just as Shelley observed in 1818, it is humans that control the technology and the outcomes it brings, not the technology itself.
Anne-Louise Brown is head of strategy and Iisights at Akin Agency. She was formerly the director of policy, Cyber Security Co-operative Research Centre.

That's it, we're supposed to take comfort from 1818? 

Has this Brown woman ever seen any of the movies that show the results of human folly and madness?And the effect it can have on dwellers inside the reptile hive mind, still eager to replicate the 1930s?

 Possibly not ...

As for the rest, perhaps this day old infallible Pope shows a way forward for the reptiles ...

Given the paucity of the pond's offerings this day, guilt made the pond think a parody might be in order.

The pond has always enjoyed the conceit behind The Producers and so was primed for this offering ...

 

 

For those wanting to savour the original film, there's this, without the quavering voice ...

   

 And there's this for those who hanker for the stage version straight, no Uncle Leon chaser ...

 

Relax, the bro will fix it, and if not the bro, there's always the glorious return of "Ned" and the always present and incorrect mean girl Dame Slap ...

 

Good. Perhaps Nvidia can now get back to its main game, and upgrade the Shield, which has gone for years without attention being paid, and is now very long in the tooth.

Not that the pond is in any way bitter, and so to a first brief note on an act of unparalleled treachery, an epic betrayal for the ages, an act so demeaning and upsetting that the reptiles featured it in their digital news this day...

Yoni Bashan was on the case in Coal-fired ScoMo has seen the light in solar ...Life out of politics for coal-fired-up former PM Scott Morrison is all sunshine now and his plans for 18 rooftop solar panels on his soon-to-be home suggest he’s seen the light.

It was devastating stuff ...

Scott Morrison has been working double-time post politics to make a crust on the speaking and advisory circuit; hence his roles with Dubai engineering firm Sidara and Boston-based DYNE Maritime.
Extra cash has slid in from his roles as chair of Space Centre Australia and vice-chair of American Global Strategies, founded by former Trump White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien.
But now we know what he’s been saving up for since his retirement from parliament: he’s pimping out his Shire abode with a $1m knockdown-rebuild. The estimated cost, according to documents filed with Sutherland Shire Council, is $1.05m. Let’s call it $2m to be safe. Isn’t there a tradie shortage at the moment?
Morrison wouldn’t engage with us on his plans for the house but our spies clocked a bulldozer sitting in the yard, the documents in our possession pointing to a levelling of the joint with a two-storey, five bedder upgrade.
We were surprised, however, to note the presence of 18 solar panels due to be spread across the prospective rooftop, per the technical drawings lodged with the council. Morrison, as prime minister, showed an absolute commitment to the future of fossil fuels, spending billions on gas projects and oil refineries and embracing coal with the vigour of Matt Kean wrapping his arms around an EV charging station. Morrison even brought a lump of coal into parliament one time.
“This is coal!” he shouted at Labor MPs, brandishing the hunk at them. “Don’t be afraid! Don’t scared! It was dug up by men and women who work in the electorates of those who sit opposite!”

Ah the glory days...

And now an epic betrayal. The coal king gone solar. What will Dame Groan say? What will the reptiles do? 

Cast the liar from the Shire out of Valhalla into the pits of solar hellfire? Nah, just a little bit more snide sniping ...

Funny, as well, that the DA couldn’t be assessed by the usual council cardigans because Morrison was determined to have “affiliations with councillors within the Sutherland Shire Council”, which is a cute way of saying that the Libs on council probably owe him their careers. It’s also why external assessors and a senior manager were engaged to cast an eye over the application. YB

Local council at its finest ... but then who doesn't have a Sydney council deep in pocket with developers?

And so to the far right, and the deep panic that gripped the tech world, and the reptiles sent in their best and brightest to deal with the crisis ...

Such a font (fount if you like) of riches, but the pond knew where to begin, the bromancer, always ahead on the war with China, currently due by Ēostre ...

China’s DeepSeek is our generation’s Sputnik moment and the whole world has a lot of reasons to be concerned, The emergence of DeepSeek is no reason to panic. But it sure is a reason to get moving. Donald Trump’s early actions on the Chinese AI bombshell could not be more thoroughly justified.

No need to panic, the ultra high tech bro is on the case, and has an opening snap to help for those in the hive mind struggling to remember which emperor is which... Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Pictures: AFP

Stay relaxed, let the bro handle it ...

The unveiling of China’s DeepSeek chatbot is the Sputnik moment of our generation.

In 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the US by launching the first satellite into orbit of the earth.

The Americans couldn’t believe it. They were richer than the Russians. They’d worked hard and long on space. They had a huge scientific establishment. Everyone knew that democracies and free societies fostered innovation and creativity and discovery and technology, while communism fostered grey bureaucratic monotony.

Yet there was Sputnik 1, all alone in orbit.

Sputnik 1 turned out a Pyrrhic victory for Moscow. It galvanised America into action. Then there was a race for the moon. America not only won, but so much modern technology came out of that initial moonshot of Apollo 11 in 1969.

The Cold War finally ended 30 years later because the Soviets couldn’t match the Americans technologically, economically or militarily. Eventually they gave up.

China is vastly more formidable than the Soviets ever were.

And we have much more reason to be concerned than the Americans were after Sputnik in 1957.

Of course, we’ve got to be careful about what we don’t know. The Chinese say it cost them less than $US6m to train DeepSeek and they did it without access to the most advanced American computer chips, which the Biden administration prevented them from buying.

Well. hmmm. Let’s establish all those facts for ourselves. Either the American export controls weren’t as effective as thought, or this is an astonishing innovation. Probably both things are true.

One reason we need to be much more concerned than the Americans were in 1957 is that Chinese technology is infinitely more intertwined in everyday Western life than Russian technology ever dreamt of being. We depend on Chinese technology every day in batteries, solar panels, electric vehicles, all kinds of social media, refrigerators and a million other things, all of them increasingly connected online.

The pond can't help but think that the bro missed a trick here. 

It was Donna Lu in the Graudian that produced a laugh with We tried out DeepSeek. It worked well, until we asked it about Tiananmen Square and Taiwan ...

Instead the reptiles did the equivalent of turning the beast on and off, by flinging in another snap ... DeepSeek is shaking up the tech world, causing Nvidia’s shares to drop nearly 18% after its launch.

The bro was shaken but not stirred ...

If China establishes dominance, or even a clear lead, in Artificial Intelligence, this will have the most profound imaginable strategic consequences.

The competition across hi-tech between the US and its close allies on one hand and China on the other will be decisive in three key domains.

First, and most brutally, is the military domain.

Sophisticated warfare is already completely dependent on hi-tech sensors, electronic warfare, AI selection of targets and delivery of kinetic effects, information superiority in the battlespace and the rest. If you lead in hi-tech, you will lead in warfare capability. And if you lead decisively in warfare capability, you may very well be able to win without fighting.

Second, hi-tech dominance is central to the ability of a modern society to keep functioning in the event of cyber hostility. A fascinating feature of the Russia-Ukraine war has been Moscow’s inability so far to cripple Ukrainian infrastructure through offensive cyber operations.

Artillery has done much more damage than cyber. *

(* Pro "bro" tip. When you know SFA about AI, scribble about "cyber hostility")

But if your strategic adversary had planted “back doors” in even some of your key civilian infrastructure, anything from hospitals to dams to banks and everything else necessary to daily life, your society would be acutely vulnerable.

And third, it’s likely that the great power that dominates hi-tech will dominate the economy of the future.

There’s been a reassuring and complacent narrative lately that the Stalinist restrictions that Xi Jinping’s government has been imposing on China have weakened its economic performance and sapped its innovative energy.

Yet China has fused its military and civilian sectors, fused its government and private efforts, drawn all technology advances towards the purposes of the state in China Inc.

Plus, if you put hundreds and hundreds of clever engineers together, they will surely come up with stuff.

The emergence of DeepSeek is no reason to panic, but it sure is a reason to get moving in all these areas.

At this point, the pond should note that the immortal David Rowe was just as reassuring ...

The reptiles flung another great mind at the problem, a certain Jared Lynch, likely his first time in a starring role in the pond with Trump may be best bet to take on China’s DeepSeek, China has shown the world that it’s now game on in the artificial intelligence race, sending markets into a massive tailspin.

Ah yes, King Donald I will fix it, and so the reptiles indulged themselves with an AV distraction:

DeepSeek is shaking up the tech world, causing Nvidia’s shares to drop nearly 18% after its launch. Developed by a China-based startup, this AI model rivals OpenAI in performance while being significantly cheaper to train and operate. With its open-source design, users can download and run DeepSeek locally, bypassing data-sharing concerns. However, its rapid rise has sparked debate. Critics highlight fears of bias and censorship due to the company’s ties to China, raising ethical questions about its global impact. Despite facing a major cyberattack that temporarily limited registrations, DeepSeek has become the top-rated free app on Apple’s U.S. App Store, surpassing ChatGPT in downloads. Its success is challenging long-held beliefs about AI’s dependence on expensive hardware and U.S. dominance, marking a pivotal shift in the global AI landscape.

After all that, it was past time to take a breath with Jared ...

China has shown the world that it’s now game on in the artificial intelligence race, sending markets into a massive tailspin and sparking a new wild west.

More than $US580bn was wiped from the market value of Jensen Huang’s Nvidia after its shares tumbled 17 per cent on Monday – the biggest drop since March 2020 – while the Nasdaq has shed almost 3 per cent.

Australian tech stocks were also hit, with Data Centre operator NextDC falling as much as 7.8 per cent and investigations software company Nuix – which has been rebuilding itself around AI – diving 16.3 per cent on Tuesday morning.

What sparked the sell-off isn’t the fact that China’s DeepSeek AI model that is almost on par with America’s best. Investors are anxious given Chinese developers did so for a mere $US5.6m. This compares with OpenAI spending more than $US100m to train ChatGPT, which was launched in 2023.

If China can do it so cheaply, then this spells bad news for the likes of Nvidia, maker of the most advanced AI chips – technology that China is banned from accessing.

On this score, it is Silicon Valley’s turn to be disrupted. China has already upended the automotive industry after it surpassed Japan as the world’s leading exporter of vehicles by volume, rattling carmakers like Honda and Nissan, which now plan to merge to combat the new threat.

Now with DeepSeek, that disruption appears to be happening almost at the speed of light, catching the West’s best and brightest on the hop.

Or so Beijing would like the world to think.

It’s now time to take a breath.

Much of what has been reported on DeepSeek are untested claims. The exact cost of development and energy consumption of DeepSeek are not fully documented.

And some analysts are starting to call the proverbial BS on DeepSeek’s claims. “DeepSeek DID NOT build Open AI for $US5m,” Stacy Rasgon of Bernstein wrote in a note to investors.

Others have been more tempered, saying the launch of DeepSeek is the natural evolution of AI.

“DeepSeek is not a game changer, and on the contrary fits very well with the way we have now seen the industry evolving in the last three years,” Pierre Ferragu of New Street Research wrote to investors.

Indeed, Donald Trump foresaw this threat last week when he launched Stargate – a massive AI venture that aims to maintain the US’s dominance of the technology.

Trump’s project – backed by Larry Ellison’s Oracle, Masayoshi Son of Japan’s SoftBank, and OpenAI chief Sam Altman – committed an extraordinary $US500bn to build out a network of data centres and the energy infrastructure to power all the computing brute force needed to run generative AI models.

Hang on, hang on, didn't Uncle Leon himself call out that nonsense, in between Nazi salutes and Nazi-style addresses to the AfD?

Golly, he loves to salute ... and stir up a fuss ... apparently ketamine helps ...

And so on, and on ...see also Arwa Mahdawi's While Musk and Altman wage their silly little feud, China is making all the broligarchs look like chumps ...and now back with the lizard Oz, where Jared was blessed with another AV distraction...

DeepSeek, China’s answer to ChatGPT, avoids addressing sensitive topics like the Tiananmen Square massacre, Xi Jinping, the Cultural Revolution, or China’s human rights record. Despite relying on less advanced hardware, DeepSeek has shaken global markets, coming close to matching its US competitors. Hailed by one of Donald Trump’s advisers as “one of the most impressive breakthroughs,” this chatbot raises questions about bias and the future of AI in the global landscape.

Jared was sanguine and defiant ...

The sceptics – or those rattled by DeepSeek – will say why is such an investment necessary, given China appears to achieve the same result so cheaply, if its claims are true?

The answer is because, like in the space race between the US and Russia, more capital – not less – is needed.

As Ferragu said: “increased competition rarely reduces aggregate spending”.

The so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks – which have been belted around by DeepSeek’s launch – have committed about $US200bn on AI investment this coming year. That’s across all kinds of infrastructure, from data centres, chips, research as well as energy.”

Microsoft – the shares of which sank 4 per cent on Monday – will be the first of the big tech companies to report its quarterly earnings on Thursday morning (Australian time). Investors will be looking to see how DeepSeek’s launch will affect its investment plans.

But Trump was clear about the motivation for a project like Stargate: “China’s a competitor, and others are competitors. We want it to be in this country.”

It’s going to be a wild ride. Trump has already rescinded a Biden executive order that had bound US companies too much to government red tape. Those companies are no free of those bounds to go forth and innovate - and crucially take on China.

We’re entering uncharted territory, akin to the wild west. The most important question is what role do we want AI to play in Western democratic societies? Will it be artificial intelligence, augmenting our own, or in the case of DeepSeek ‘autocratic intelligence’ becoming another arm of China’s communist regime?

So buckle up – it’s now game on in earnest.

What could possibly go wrong? King Donald is such a tech head. His ability to compute can hurt brains.

Never mind, at this point in the season, the pond announces with pride that nattering "Ned" has returned to the lizard Oz playing catch up, a bit like the Washington Commanders... with Stand back for the US President as king, By invoking the Almighty, Donald Trump has positioned himself and the White House within the most powerful idea that inspired the republic.

"Ned" was a little behind the times and burbled on for some five minutes, in the inimitable way that he has as a ponderous, portentous pundit, and the reptiles blessed him with a snap, Donald Trump is invoking the Divine Right of Kings doctrine as he remakes America.

Is that the best the reptiles could do? After all, if we're celebrating His Kingship ...

Still, "Ned" was on the right track, bore everyone silly, including King Donald himself, and things might settle down ...

You believed the Divine Rights of Kings doctrine was long dead. That’s correct – but it is staging a resurgence in the White House. Donald Trump’s statement in his inauguration speech was the signal, with Trump declaring “I was saved by God to make America great again”.

Trump claims to govern with divine instigation. He believes ”even more so now” that his escape from the assassin’s bullet in Pennsylvania was inspired by God to allow Trump to fulfil his mission to “reclaim our republic”, thereby making the 2024 election the “most consequential” in US history. The biblical invocation is obvious. Trump, like Moses, comes with a divinely ordained mission – to lead the American people back to their manifest destiny – a mission in which “we will not forget our God” just as Moses honoured God’s command in leading the Israelites out of Egypt.

Accordingly, Trump declares January 20, 2025, to be “Liberation Day” for American citizens. It is liberation from a “radical and corrupt establishment” that “extracted power and wealth” from the people while “the pillars of our society lay broken”.

Trump claims to have been “tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history” – but Trump has come through to make America “greater, stronger and far more exceptional than ever before”.

He declares a rebirth. By invoking the Almighty, Trump locates himself in the most powerful idea that inspired the republic.

In George Washington’s 1789 inaugural he invoked the “divine blessing” that guided the new nation and declared the American people were bound to that “Great Author” where every step towards their independence “seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency”.

Sheesh,  is "Ned"trying to do a Henry by invoking a slave owner? 

Never mind, another snap ... US President Donald Trump reviews the troops in Emancipation Hall during inauguration ceremonies at the US Capitol in Washington on January 20. Picture: AFP

Whenever "Ned" gets going like this, disremembering that he's kissing cousins with the folk at Faux Noise, for some reason the pond is reminded of David Brooks and is inclined to nod off to sleep ... but he's back, "Ned" is back in all his tedious glory, endless trudges up the "Ned" Everest await, and for that the pond gives thanks...

Trump’s second presidency rests upon the deepest origins of the presidential office. That great generation of American founding fathers, when they devised their constitution, were fixated by the British monarchy. While they denounced George 111, they created a presidency that combined the powers of both the head of state and head of government, and resembled an elective kingship.

From the start, the US president possessed a monarchical status – but the president, unlike the British monarch, was weaponised with real constitutional power. Benjamin Franklin said: “The executive will always be increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a monarchy.” During the Civil War, Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Seward, said: “We elect a king for four years and give him absolute power within certain limits, which after all he can interpret for himself.”

This is exactly what Trump intends to do. He embarks upon a grand experiment – commanding the executive branch, with a majority in congress, a conservative-inclined Supreme Court and, in an alliance with the hi-tech billionaires of the age, Trump will push the powers of the presidency to their limits and beyond.

We are about to witness an extraordinary real-time test of presidential power and whether it can be constrained by the political, judicial and constitutional system in the cause of democratic balance.

Trump began by rewriting the law for about 1500 people who invaded and rioted at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. He commuted prison sentences to time served for 14 people and offered blanket pardons for the rest. This included prominent leaders of radical groups such as the Proud Boys, whose leader had been sentenced to 22 years in prison. Hundreds were prosecuted for assaulting or resisting police.

For example, in the litany of individuals, Daniel Joseph “DJ” Rodriguez, sentenced to 151 months, is seen on video using an electroshock weapon against police by “plunging it into the officer’s neck”. The previous evening he pledged in a MAGA chat group: “There will be blood.” Many individuals attacked and sprayed the eyes of police, bashed them, and bragged about it.

Yes, yes, been there, done that, but "Ned" has always been a little slow and we should allow him to catch up, and get with the groove. DJ, play some gay tune for "Ned" ...US President Donald Trump dances as House Majority Whip Tom Emmer applauds following Trump's speech before the 2025 Republican Issues Conference on January 27. Picture: Getty Images

And finally to that savaging of the Emeritus Chairman, his spawn, and the dastardly way that Faux Noise enabled, and continues to enable, the tangerine tyrant ...

Trump abandoned his previous claim to do “case-by-case” assessment. His vice president, JD Vance, had said: “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” Obviously – unless the President changes his mind and does whatever he likes. Trump exercised a constitutional power but his action was a direct assault on the US justice system.

That outgoing president Joe Biden had abused the same power with his pardons inevitably dilutes criticism of Trump but affords no justification for his actions. Trump’s actions invoke the divine powers vested in monarchs – the power to offer mercy or sentence enemies, deployed in ancient times to reward supporters, punish rivals and court populist approval. Sound familiar? Trump is playing a brutal political game. His message: if cops are bashed and criminal laws are broken in his good name, then the President as king has the power to forgive you.

Trump also changed his mind and wants to save TikTok, another example of the President deciding he will interpret the law to suit himself. Last year, in a bipartisan spirit, the House voted 360-58 and the Senate 79-18 to ban TikTok in America unless the China-based owner sold its stake within a year. TikTok is fighting the law, deploying its 170 million-strong users in the US – but the Supreme Court has just upheld the law. The US system and its intelligence agencies fear the US data held by Chinese owner ByteDance could be extracted on behalf of the Beijing government. Trump initially spearheaded efforts to ban TikTok, claiming it was a national security threat to America. But on returning to the White House, he has reinvented himself as TikTok’s saviour. Why?

Note that Trump used TikTok with immense success during the election. He has now issued an executive order seeking to suspend enforcement of the law while he seeks a solution that saves “a platform used by 170 million Americans”. In effect, he won’t enforce a law passed by congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, with Trump now floating a “joint venture” deal where the US would have a 50 per cent stake.

Yet this is contrary to the law that says TikTok must sever all ties with ByteDance and China. The Wall Street Journal said: “Mr Trump is relaying that he puts pleasing China’s Xi Jinping above a law passed by congress.” It argued: “Congress is a co-equal branch of government, not a subsidiary of the president.” But it is doubtful that Trump accepts this.

Ah, the pond was just kidding about Faux Noise and "Ned's" righteous indignation ... as if ...

Here, have another snap, US President Donald Trump holds an executive order stating the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement that he signed during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena. Picture: AFP

And so to a final burst of "Ned", and no, Faux Noise and the Murdochian role in it all won't be mentioned... as Dione once sang, walk on by, tears and sadness are all "Ned" has to offer ...

The entire message of his first week is the overriding nature of his executive power. While the WSJ said Trump “can’t suspend laws like an English king before the 1689 Bill of Rights”, Trump clearly intends to circumvent or thwart the law, and is recruiting Big Tech, probably Elon Musk, to help him. “I have the right to make a deal,” Trump said. Implicitly, he is saying two things – he has superior power to congress and he can cut a deal with China.

The deluded pro-Trump commentators* can’t see what is happening before their eyes – the new rules by which Trump will operate mean he will intimidate and bully smaller entities (Mexico, Panama, Denmark and hopeless Colombia) but attempt epic deal-making with the big boys (China and Russia) to reduce military conflict and its threat. His inauguration was a gobsmacking classic. It was old-fashioned manifest destiny and imperial expansion rolled together. The 19th century is alive and well, witness his honouring of president William McKinley, whom Trump applauds for his “expansion of territorial gains” for America – a reference to the 1898 Spanish-American War that saw Guam, Puerto Rico and The Philippines ceded to the US.

Trump’s world has left behind the Labor Party’s sad mantra of a “rules-based order.” His vision is the world of American territorial, trade and sphere of influence expansion – from Greenland to Panama. That’s why he looks forward to dealing with those other like-minded nationalistic imperialists, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, dealing with them in his mode: the President as king.

* As "Ned" mentioned deluded pro-Trump commentators, the pond decided to overstay its welcome and note that "Ned" is also kissing cousin with Dame Slap, intent on reasserting the right of blondes to rule in Donald Trump’s war on DEI puts the wind up our diversity divas, There is no evidentiary foundation to DEI. From the get-go, it was built on sand. But just watch the advocates in Australian hold on to a flawed policy.

It's yet another tedious read in Slappian Trumphalism, a style Dame Slap long ago adopted when she slipped on a MAGA cap and strode into the New York night to celebrate ...

The reptiles helped out Dame Slap with a snap of bigotry and hate at work, Donald Trump denounced DEI policies as an ‘identity-based spoils system’. Picture: AFP

That got Dame Slap into bigoted gear ...

One phrase in an executive order signed by Donald Trump last week must have caused a collective inhaling of breath from diversity divas in Australia.

That Trump wants an end to the “diversity, equity and inclusion” fad was no surprise. What’s most agitating to DEI devotees is the language he used when announcing its demise.

Trump said DEI policies “not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding federal civil rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence and individual achievement in favour of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system. Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatised, demeaned or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex”.

In that terrific denunciation of DEI is one short phrase – identity-based spoils system – that exposes the racket. That kind of cut-through is enough to make Australian beneficiaries of DEI gird their loins for battle. Having secured the spoils from DEI, don’t count on DEI benefactors giving them up. Many are already circling the wagons in a highly public effort to hold on to the identity-based spoils system that secures them money and prestige. In their corner is Australia’s superannuation system, where huge investment funds dominating Australia’s corporate landscape have entrenched left-wing fads.

Industry funds, controlled by unions and beloved by Labor, hold the levers of corporate power and have no compunction in using them for ideological ends. Aided and abetted by proxy advisers, these funds are playing social engineers in the ASX-listed companies, DEI being just one of their engineering feats.

There is a confluence of interests between DEI beneficiaries and industry funds. The latter know they can rely on the former to help implement policies within corporations, far beyond DEI. To put it bluntly, many beneficiaries of DEI are unofficial loyal lieutenants of super funds. The claim that DEI helps rid boards of group think is, frankly, a joke. The opposite is true. DEI appointees tend to swing one way having come from the same political, social and cultural milieu.

Dame Slap, in her blonde way, loves to dish it out to trans folk, and difficult, uppity blacks, and other minorities, and it was a pity that the reptiles interrupted her with an AV distraction just when she was hitting her stride ...

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order demanding that all federal employees in DEI roles be placed on leave. Political journalist John Fund claims the crackdown on DEI programs is a “great precedent”. “This would be a precedent not just to get rid of loathsome DEI programs but to spread this across the federal government,” Mr Fund said.

The point of course is that cruelty is cool, as noted by Parker Molloy in When Cruelty Becomes Cool, Trump's return to power has normalised offensive language among a new breed of young conservatives ...

With Donald Trump’s return to power, one of the most disturbing trends in public discourse has been the casual revival of what was, until recently, widely understood to be an offensive slur — the r-word. This resurgence isn't happening in some dark corner of the internet, but in mainstream spaces, and is now being promoted by influential voices who seem emboldened by Trump's victory.

Miles Klee at Rolling Stone documented the trend earlier this month, highlighting how the word has roared back into common usage across social media platforms. From podcast hosts to tech billionaires, from conservative influencers to ostensibly centrist pundits, the word is being deliberately deployed as a rejection of what they dismissively call "wokeness."

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As Brock Colyar's disturbing dispatch from Trump's inauguration celebrations in New York magazine illustrates, there's a new breed of young conservative for whom offensive language isn't just acceptable — it's a way to demonstrate their bonafides with the ingroup. These aren't the stereotypical MAGA devotees. They're young, urban professionals who view cruelty as both entertainment and ideology.

"Six months into Biden being president, I was like, I can't fucking do this anymore," one 19-year-old told Colyar, explaining his political conversion. He, like others quoted in the piece, specifically cited the ability to use slurs as a key attraction to the MAGA movement. Another former liberal made the same point, telling Colyar he switched sides because he wanted the "freedom" to use offensive language.

It isn't just a new breed of young conservatives. 

Dame Slap has always been a mean girl ... long before there was any talk of a musical, Rachel McAdams' Regina George was her heroine, and she still knows how to sink a Princess slipper into minorities and the disadvantaged ...

She might be too cunning to come out with the "r-word", but she knows how to think it, and get it down, even if it turns up disguised as "zealots" ...

That’s why super funds have used their voting power to install a cadre of DEI advocates on listed company boards and inside influential governance bodies such as the ASX Corporate Governance Council. Given these stubborn homegrown forces, some horsepower is needed to defeat DEI in Australia: reasoned arguments, an injection of common sense, long overdue legal changes, and, let’s face it, a dose of public shaming.

DEI divas have never been shy about naming and shaming companies that haven’t drunk the DEI Kool-Aid fast enough or in sufficient quantities. They shouldn’t be surprised to have their names out there when counter arguments are put.

So, let’s get to work. First, there is no evidentiary foundation to DEI. From the get-go, it was built on sand, piled especially high in a 2015 report by McKinsey that claimed a connection between corporate profits and diversity in executive ranks. When its results were exposed as untrue by a number of academic observers, McKinsey tweaked its modelling and said: “We have also been clear and consistent that our research identifies correlation, not causation, and that those two things are not the same.”

Alas, zealots paid no attention to this. The McKinsey report was their corporate bible and its untrue claims about the benefits of diversity became religious dogma.

Despite the lack of evidence to support diversity as a profit-boosting policy, the McKinsey report turbocharged DEI: in 2015 the Australian Institute of Company Directors set a 30 per cent gender target for ASX 200 board seats by 2018. Likewise, the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors said it would be voting against directors on boards with poor gender diversity. AICD chair Elizabeth Proust called that a “game changer”. The DEI divas were in clover.

When Trump signed executive orders to dismantle DEI across government agencies, pointing out the pernicious nature of this spoils-based system, DEI divas in Australia went full throttle. Gone, however, is any mention of DEI boosting profits – because not even the original McKinsey said that. Now advocates have tweaked their language to talk nebulously, but still without supporting evidence, about “financial risks”.

Offensiveness is Dame Slap's schtick ... and she loves to keep elevated company ...

Never mind the perm, feel the aggro vibe...

Australian Council of Superannuation Investors chief executive Louise Davidson said: “Diversity – or lack thereof – is a financially material risk, so we do not anticipate that there will be a reduction in investor focus on how companies are planning for and managing diversity.” HESTA boss Debby Blakey said corporate cultures that don’t encourage diversity “pose a significant material risk to investors”.

Despite no evidence showing that DEI leads to higher profits, it’s time to call bulldust on DEI activists protecting their spoils-based system. ACSI and the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, representing some of the nation’s largest super funds and institutional investors, have thrown their weight behind the ASX Corporate Governance Council changes demanding ever higher quotas for female board members, along with tougher corporate reporting of diversity efforts beyond gender.

Alas, reasoning and logic are not part of the DEI ideology. The giant hole in the push for higher gender targets and tougher reporting about diversity is this: If the benefits of DEI for business are so blindingly obvious, why do we need to mandate quotas? If any halfway competent director should know that diversity increases shareholder value, why do we need prescriptive quotas, targets and reporting measures? If it is so demonstrably good for business, then a board that doesn’t ensure sufficient diversity is breaching its fiduciary duties to shareholders.

Why can’t diversity be left to the common sense of directors or, if that fails, their fear of litigation? 

Yes, kick it down the road, and bring in the lawyers. What could go wrong?

And then there was a final burst of fear and loathing ...

After all, there is a whole universe of feral litigation funders looking for opportunities to sue boards that don’t take obvious steps to enhance shareholder value.

Could it be that if diversity wasn’t mandated with a blizzard of quotas, targets and reporting demands, together with bullying from activists, some of those currently enjoying the spoils of quotas – and those hoping to do so in the future – fear their personal cash registers might stop ringing?

The spoils-based DEI system in Australia is almost exclusively for the benefit of women, and works heavily in favour of affluent, well-educated women. Are these middle-class women fighting so hard to hang on to quotas because, if they are abandoned and diversity left to the good sense of boards, they might have to share the spoils with say, bright but poor males of immigrant extraction? God forbid that blokes should benefit from DEI.

Indeed, the fact the defenders of quotas fight so hard to keep them might reveal, not only their motivations, but whether they believe their own story. Maybe they know that if logic won’t secure wealth generating quotas, then they need regulators to do it for them.

The other reason DEI is on borrowed time is the flow of capital. A revitalised US economy and regulatory system will expose corporate Australia’s fetish for increasingly stale corporate fads. There are already promises from Australian businesses to send investment capital to the US.

How long before we are forced to drain our corporate and regulatory swamps?

I's always projection isn't it. Talk of zealots or swamps while Dame Slap gaily swims in a reptile swamp while exuding her very own form of zealotry, not to mention bigotry, bile and prejudice.

Phew, the pond needs a couple of cartoons to take the stench out of nostrils, and the fetid mud taste away from mouth ...