A big reptile outing to celebrate the inauguration, with the Lynch mob, Dame Groan, Mein Gott, the bromancer and the ritual sinking of subs ...

 

Can the pond ignore all that blather about a new golden age (and the hysteria thereby erupting), offered up a notorious con artist, grifter and snake oil salesman?

Hard, especially given the reptile response ...

The pond started by ignoring Killer Creighton's coverage, with the reptiles apparently unaware that attempted cheek kiss, fended off by the hat, has already become a meme ...

Even Killer didn't sound convinced by all he'd heard, ending his piece this way ...

Millions of Americans were cheering on their political hero, but his long list of promises, not to mention to bring about a ‘golden age’, will be very difficult to achieve.

Put it another way, as the immortal Rowe did ...

Okay, that's enough inauguration coverage, now to see what's happening in the extreme far right, top of the world ma, portion of the lizard Oz ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, there's a lot to cover, so the pond will truncate the Lynch mob, the eternal shame of the University of Melbourne, and get him out of the way quickly ...

Even the hook was suspect, Hitler learned to hate Jewish people in the lecture halls of Munich University. His racism was not genetically encoded in him. All the evidence suggests that, when Hitler was a youth, the Jews were not on his radar. It was a university that changed all that.

It got worse...

I’ve spent the summer holiday in the company of Adolf Hitler. My father is about to publish a second edition of his biography of the Nazi leader. I’ve been proofreading it. What a complete nonentity he was (Hitler, not my dad).
Intellectually banal, asexual, vegetarian, silly moustache, puritan. An anti-Semitic, anti-smoking zealot (with, ironically, bad breath). The most cultured people in continental Europe chose this man to lead them. He didn’t foist his racial theories on them; they embraced them. And for nearly a decade everything was hunky-dory. It was only when World War II turned against them that the volk turned against the fuhrer.
To its great credit, democratic Germany has imbibed and processed the shame of 1933-42 – when Hitler was in his pomp. It is one of the few nations to stand (mostly) consistently with Israel as it fights the neo-Nazis of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Germany gets where anti-Semitism can lead.
The Holocaust forced what now constitutes about 50 per cent of the population of Israel to seek safety in that brave experiment on the Mediterranean coast.
The other 50 per cent were expelled by Arab regimes into the world’s only Jewish state. Left-wing lecturers call this colonisation. Their keffiyeh-clad students occupy quads demanding an end to this Jewish safe harbour, to its “decolonisation”.
This trendy anti-Semitism has an uncomfortably academic genesis. Hitler learned to hate Jewish people in the lecture halls of Munich University.
His racism was not genetically encoded in him; rumours persist that he was partly Jewish. All the evidence suggests that, when Hitler was a youth, the Jews were not on his radar. It was a university that changed all that.
In 1919, 30-year-old Hitler was looking for a job. An unremarkable soldier in the 1914-18 war, he began a course in military intelligence at Munich U, where he classroom-shopped.
As my father tells it: “This introduced him to the political ideas of a number of academics, most of whom blamed Germany’s current crises on the Jews. Although the Jews were not always referred to specifically, it was generally understood that when speculation and usury were identified as major problems, this was a veiled way of asserting that Jewry was engaged in undermining Germany’s economic strength.
“Hitler wrote that the lectures led him towards the conviction that to save the nation from international Jewry there was only one doctrine for true Germans – ‘People and Fatherland’.”
After his rise to power in 1933, Hitler found willing adherents across Germany’s campuses. Their selling-out of Jewish teachers and students was an appalling episode in European history.

The pond hopes that there's a chance for a revised edition of that book, which takes into account the testimony revealed in Thomas Weber's 2020 paper, The Pre-1914 Origins of Hitler’s Antisemitism Revisited (pdf here)

In short:

According to her (Elisabeth Grünbauer, the daughter of the family with whom Hitler lodged in Munich prior to the First World War testimony), Hitler was already an antisemite six years earlier than previously believed. Crucially, she claims that Hitler's Jew-hatred predates the watershed of World War One. In her testimony, Grünbauer recorded antisemitic statements Hitler made to her father that link Hitler's decision to leave Austria to his antisemitism. 

In more detail:

...In short, Elisabeth Grünbauer’s interview gives, for the first time, the most plausible and probable explanation yet as to how Hitler managed to serve in the German armed forces and from there enter the world of politics. However, the real significance of Grünbauer’s interview lies in her statements about Hitler’s expressions of antisemitism. As she recalled in the interview: And he always complained about what was going on in Austria; and, above all, he [said] that he did not want to serve in the military in Austria because Austria was too swamped with Jews [verjudet]... That was one of his recurring themes, that he said that Vienna and Austria were so “verjudet” that he had left the country and was unwilling to fight in the war for Austria... That repeatedly came up in conversation on his frequent visits to my father in his shop.... Their discussions often lasted for hours, which was not always pleasant for my father, who of course had to work during the day. But other than that, the two of them got along well...[His anti-Semitism] was in no way conspicuous. It only appeared in conversation - for example, when he chatted with my father and asserted that “the Jews are exploiting the people”... And the Stuffler Company on Lenbachplatz was Jewish too, and it paid him hardly anything for his paintings... Well, he also said that the Jews were exploiters, as they controlled Austria and the stock exchange. I was not personally present [to hear Hitler say this], but was told as much by my parents...He spoke simply of exploitation, that people were being exploited over there [in Austria], and that it was no different in Germany.

And again, a reminder that anti-Semitism in Europe and Germany and Austria in particular wasn't confined to Munich University.

It was a commonplace, it was pervasive, before and after the war, even if Germany didn't have as spectacular an example as the Dreyfus Affair, with many using it for political ends:

What we do know is that two Austrian politicians greatly influenced Hitler's thinking. The first, Georg Ritter von Schönerer (1842-1921), was a German nationalist. He believed that the German-speaking regions of Austria-Hungary should be added to the German empire. He also felt that Jews could never be fully-fledged German citizens.From the second, the Viennese mayor Karl Lueger (1844-1910), Hitler learned how antisemitism and social reforms could be successful. In Mein Kampf, Hitler praised Lueger as 'the greatest German mayor of all times'.

Tbe Lynch mob attempted a little backtracking in his closer, but from the get go, he'd failed the Godwin's Law test ...

...My argument is not that the modern campus left are all Nazis in disguise. Criticism of how Israel defends itself is legitimate.
Not all charges laid against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amount to anti-Semitism. But when progressives denounce Israelis as “white supremacist colonisers” we are in dangerous territory. If Zionists are Nazis, as we hear so often from activist academics, doesn’t the nation they built deserve the same fate?
After at least a decade of diversity, equity and inclusion, anti-racism training, decolonisation of curriculums, doctrines of kindness, rainbow flags and safe spaces, we now have campuses across the West where Jewish students, staff and even artists are reflexively censored.
For all the social engineering universities have attempted, we have done little to ameliorate the most ancient of hatreds. We may have made it worse.
Hitler tapped a latent and deep anti-Semitism that did not die when he fired a bullet into his brain on April 30, 1945.
Rather, his hatred of Jews has mutated into a modish Israelophobia, propagated by people of culture and learning, determined that the tiny democratic state, made necessary by Hitler’s crimes, should fall.
Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.

What an eternal disgrace and shame the Lynch mob is to the University of Melbourne.

Meanwhile, the immortal Pope provided a handy corrective to that dismal record of carnage and genocide with a farewell 'toon...

But the pond had no time to argue all that, because Dame Groan was out and about, and she was in a MAGA mood to celebrate the inauguration, and full attention had to be paid ...

What should we do about the entitlement culture? Benefits become part of people’s points of reference, including the middle class, and therefore any reduction in entitlements is deeply politically unpopular. It’s the principal reason governments find it so hard to control spending.

The reptiles alleged it was a five minute read, as the well-off Groaner took a cricket bat to the MAGA style bludgers lurking down under ... and what better way to start than a snap of old Petey boy hisself,  Former treasurer Peter Costello, who said the best way to control spending is not to spend in the first place. Picture: Jane Dempster

Then it was on for young and old, with the manifestly entitled berating and bludgeoning the allegedly entitled ...

One of the wisest pieces of advice former treasurer Peter Costello ever gave is this: the best way to control spending is not to spend in the first place.

Oh yes, a truism of the first water to crank the old cognitive cogs into gear ...and it warmed up the old biddy ...

Once a spending program is initiated, it almost invariably takes on a life of its own and the dollars that need to be committed grow quickly. This is particularly the case with what are known as demand-driven programs. As long as recipients meet the criteria of the program, then the spending follows like night follows day.
I was reminded of this truth while I was researching the budget position in Canada, prompted by the resignation of long-serving Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I had a hunch things weren’t going well in that country, fiscally speaking, but I was unaware of the details.
In December a mini-budget was handed down in which it was revealed that last financial year’s budget deficit had blown out by more than $C20bn ($22.3bn) to reach $C62bn.
This outcome violates the government’s own fiscal rules that the annual deficit should not exceed $C40bn. Deficits are forecast for the rest of the decade.
One chart in the budget papers – the statement went by the corny title Fairness for Every Generation – particularly caught my eye. It illustrated the expenditure on various entitlement programs across the period 2015-16 to 2025-26. Note that Trudeau came to power in 2015.
The heading was Investing in Benefits for Canadians, which presumably was chosen because it had a better political ring to it than the Cost of Entitlements.
Across this period the left-leaning Trudeau government introduced several new programs as well as enhancing others.
The key ones are Canada Child Benefit; Canadian Dental Care Plan and Dental Benefit; and $10-a-day Child Care. At the beginning of the period, spending on these entitlement programs was about $C64bn. By 2025-26 it is expected that spending will have reached $C140bn. These figures are in real terms. In other words, spending on these entitlement programs is expected to more than double in the decade.
While Australia is slightly lagging Canada on some of these programs, we are not far behind and we do have the NDIS National Disability Insurance Scheme as one of the largest spending programs with its phenomenal growth in annual expenses.
The two Canadian examples of providing “free” dental care and $10-a-day childcare are important ones. These programs started off relatively small in spending terms but the expenses have quickly blown out.
This is because the users respond to the incentives and the behaviour of the providers changes. Instead of spending their own money to go to the dentist, people rationally make the switch to the “free” scheme. Dentists are then in the box seat to determine the treatment plan, subject to any restrictions of the scheme.

Still kicking this old can down the road? Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing his resignation on January 6. Picture: AFP

Yep indoody, and it sent Dame Groan into a razor gang slashing frenzy ...

In the case of childcare – the $10-a-day scheme is seen as attractive to the Albanese government – the negotiations between the provinces and childcare centres to implement the arrangement have been tortuous. There are pages of possible top-up funding items and there is a perception that this is being widely gamed by the mainly private providers.
In effect the governments, federal and provincial, are having to prop up the most marginal centres to meet the political promise of universal childcare. This is proving to be very expensive and not completely achievable in any case.
If we look at the top 20 programs by expense in Australia, we observe that total spending is expected to rise from $691bn in 2023-24 to $830bn in 2027-28, an increase of $139bn or just more than 20 per cent.
Leaving aside revenue assistance to the states and territories, the NDIS was the second largest program at $44bn in the 2023-24 financial year, just behind support for seniors (principally the age pension). In 2027-28, close to $61bn is expected to be spent on the NDIS, and that is based on optimistic assumptions about achieving lower growth rates in spending than in the past.
Other large spending programs are aged care, Medicare, the Disability Support Pension, pharmaceutical benefits, support for non-government schools and childcare subsidies.
Reflecting the accumulation of government debt that has occurred across the past nearly two decades, the fastest growing spending item is net interest payments. The main observation to make is that, absent any major change to the parameters or indeed the elimination of the big programs, the strong upward trajectory of government spending is effectively locked in.
The benefits become part of people’s points of reference, including the middle class, and therefore any reduction in entitlements is deeply politically unpopular. It’s the principal reason governments find it so hard to control spending. An opposition that proposes to trim entitlements is quickly accused of heartless austerity. In any case, a great deal of program spending is stipulated in legislation; legislative change is therefore required to alter the course of funding.
This problem now affects all advanced economies. In France and the US, the current budget deficits are more than 6 per cent of GDP, with rapid growth in government debt. Attempts by the Macron government in France to trim some of the extremely generous entitlements enjoyed by French citizens – by increasing the retirement age, for instance – largely have failed.

Then came the Messiah, King Donald I hisself ... The incoming Trump administration intends to slash government spending. Picture: AP Photo

That inspired Dame Groan to a slasher frenzy to rival the best indie slasher flicks ... because King Donald wasn't going far enough ...

What we need is more homeless people on the streets without any visible means of support.

While the incoming Trump administration intends to slash government spending through the Department of Government Efficiency, there is no plan to touch entitlements such as social security benefits.
Many countries have operated on the basis that growth can outrun the cost of debt and thereby bring the budget under control. This has generally met with very little success. And while inflation is unpopular among voters, it does serve to reduce the real value of government debt.
The inexorable rise in the cost of entitlements has been brought into greater focus with the global sell-off of bonds. The yields on long-dated government securities have been rising in most advanced economies, including Britain, France, the US, Canada and here.
What this means is that the cost of servicing government debt suddenly becomes more expensive and the credit ratings of a number of countries are suddenly up for review.
It seems a long time ago when Costello gave his wise advice. It’s almost impossible to recall the root-and-branch examination of government spending undertaken by Labor treasurer Paul Keating and finance minister Peter Walsh in the late 1980s.
The result was strict means testing of many government benefits, an arrangement that has been wound back in recent times. Think here the non-means-tested NDIS and the $530,000 a year household income cap for childcare subsidies.
These days, governments are only too happy to use other people’s money in an attempt to secure enough votes to stay in power. There is little evidence that careful consideration is given to the costs and benefits of new programs or altering existing ones.
It probably takes a crisis such as the one Argentina faced and an exceptional political leader such as Javier Milei to achieve a substantial cut in the size of government. It’s just a pity that it requires such a damaging economic and societal crunch for politicians to act.

Really? Slash and burn and make the multitudes suffer?

But surely the US is now in the best of hands, a paradise for billionaires, a suitable refuge for Dame Groan in her retirement years ...

On the topic of cost-cutting, Mein Gott was out and about yesterday, full of hope ... Musk, Trump and how DOGE can help the West, Nobody knows if the Musk-Trump relationship will work, but if it does the Western world will become a very different place.

Oh there was wild-eyed excitement, a slavering at the thought of all that cost-cutting, featuring US President-elect Donald Trump and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk watch a fight during UFC 309. Picture: Kena Betancur/AFP

UFC warriors in the cage, ready for mortal combat ...

Elon Musk has already recruited a significant number of business and technology people prepared to donate up to six months of their time, often working 80 hours per week, to help reduce US government expenditure by up to $US2 trillion ($3.2 trillion), or 30 per cent.
Nothing on this scale has ever previously been attempted in the world.
This will not be a traditional and simple slashing of benefits and burning of government activities but rather a huge reduction in administration and costly regulation. The program will be aided by an adaptation of Elon Musk’s unique management technique which has enabled him to build the Tesla electric car empire and to become the largest operator in space. Naturally, artificial intelligence will be harnessed.
Given his space, communication and defence dominance, and his close links with the US President, Musk is arguably the most powerful person in the world. And, he also has his own media platform, X, which is likely to become important in the exercise.
With entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy Musk will head President Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). When Trump announced the DOGE he described it as an effort to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies”.

Dominance and disruption and an AV distraction...

Wonder Land: Donald Trump used to be accused of breaking norms. Now it’s ‘disruption.’ Question is: will this approach work in 2025? The answer doesn’t break easily into yes or no.

Mein Gott talked it all up in style ...

Trump said Musk and Ramaswamy’s work “will conclude no later than July 4, 2026,” — the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
In accepting the role Musk told Americans: “Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Efficiency will fix that.”
Musk is volatile and there are many things which could go wrong, including a fallout with President Trump and Congress’ (plus Musk’s) often displayed inability to work with others. But, if the operation succeeds other countries will need to follow, including Australia.
I will first describe Musk’s unique Tesla and SpaceX management scheme and its so-called “idiot index”, and then how it will be applied in the US government affairs to reduce costs.
The repercussions for Australia are much bigger than our major political parties understand and I will highlight them in future commentaries.
The key driver of Musk’s past success, the idiot index, is the ratio of the total cost of base raw materials (metal, rubber plastics, etc) in a product to the actual cost of the product. An item with a high idiot index might cost $1m when the base ingredients cost only $10,000. As Musk describes it: “if the ratio is high, you are an idiot”.
Items which score highly on the idiot index usually have: a too-complex design; an inefficient manufacturing process; are the subject of unnecessary or bad regulation; and, are delivering huge profits to producers.
SpaceX boomed because in the US space programs using “cost-plus contracts” with a high idiot index. Contracts with large companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin paid all their costs, plus a guaranteed profit.
Musk believes the cost-plus system stymies innovation. Worse, if the contract goes over budget the contractor gets paid more. There was little incentive for cost-plus contractors to take risks, be creative, work fast or cut costs.
Musk will slash US costs this way. He vividly remembers when, in 2010, President Obama cancelled the Constellation space program, but Musk via SpaceX offered an alternative and Obama backed him.
SpaceX risked its own capital, and it would be paid only if and when it delivered on certain milestones. There was a lot of money to be made if it built a cost-efficient rocket that succeeded — and a lot of money to be lost if it failed.
Musk and the idiot index slashed the cost of rockets and space exploration. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos competed with him. The US would send more astronauts, satellites and cargo into space than any other country.

At this point the reptiles helped out with a snap of that other visionary ...Vivek Ramaswamy will be heading up DOGE alongside Elon Musk. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Uh oh, is this the point where the pond breaks the bad news to Mein Gott?

Vivek Ramaswamy Plans to Bail on MAGA Pal Musk at DOGE, The Cincinnati native was encouraged to consider accepting an appointment to fill Vice President-elect JD Vance’s vacant Senate seat, but told the Trump transition team he’d prefer to occupy the governor’s office in Columbus.

It was all over the place ...

Uncle Leon was triumphant, and the pond was inconsolable, and for some weird reason was reminded of that 1689 Bashō poem:

夏草や兵どもが夢の跡　芭蕉

Natsukusa ya / tsuwamonodomo ga / yume no ato

Summer grasses—
all that remain of
a dream of MAGA warriors (here)

Pretty prescient of Bashō to slip in a MAGA reference to the already fallen, before the enemy was within cooee ...

Never mind, back to Mein Gott, still in 'trumphal' mood.

DOGE will embrace a key rule in the idiot index — question every rule and regulation and assume every requirement is dumb until proven otherwise.
Challenging regulations often involves discovering the actual person who is responsible either for creating the regulation or administering it. Musk worked incredible hours in implementing the index to both SpaceX and Tesla. Now, to DOGE.
When Musk applies the idiot index to government social services, the equivalent of the raw material cost is likely to be the money which goes into the pockets of the recipients. The cost of the project will be the bureaucracy and regulations that deliver the benefit. They will be measured by the idiot index. The DOGE plan is not to initially attack legislative complexities of government departments but rather concentrate on federal government bodies.
Musk has declared there are more than 400 federal government agencies which have overlapping areas of responsibility. He wants to bring the number down to a maximum of 99.
The goal is for most major agencies to have two DOGE representatives, and DOGE will provide a mechanism to share the discoveries of its representatives.
Can two people on a government board deliver change? Watch it happen. Bodies which don’t share information and co-operate in delivering efficiency will be severely punished, almost certainly including the ridicule of delinquent directors via X.
Delinquent government board directors will be unlikely to be involved in any future government contracts.
There will of course be great controversy in this process and there is a real possibility amid that and other controversies there will be a split between Musk and President Trump.
But, inserted on the edge of the DOGE process is a person with a unique relationship with both Trump and Musk to smooth out differences
Peter Thiel has been a longtime Trump supporter and is trusted by the US President-elect. Both Musk and Thiel were involved in the early days of PayPal and although they split Thiel later helped Musk with capital for SpaceX at a crucial time. Thiel knows Musk’s strengths and weaknesses.
(As I will describe tomorrow, these two men are set to have a huge direct impact on Australia.)
Trump needs the DOGE process to work and if it does the Western world will be in a very different place, with the largest economy combining industrial strength with efficient government.

The pond will of course return to Mein Gott and see what he makes of "these two men" being reduced to one man having a huuuuge impact.

Speaking of the DODGY process, grifters gotta grift.

Donald Trump meme coin price tanks after wife Melania also launches token,The president-elect’s $Trump coin more than halved in value before steadily recovering on Sunday

The pond understands the technical term is "pulling the rug", which is to say the grifters get in and out, and the punters are left holding the losses, though really it's as ancient as Lucy snatching Linus's blanket, with the mug punters as likely to learn from the experience as Charlie Brown learning from that old football gag.

Yep, there's a lot of rug pulling to go down ...

And with disappointment already in the air, how could the pond resist the bromancer, even though it was another five minute read, and so added to the day's rich sense of foreboding and suffering? Especially as the pond's correspondents always get excited about Bunker Bro...

It turns out that AUKUS is really all about symbolism, Trump and his administration are likely to speak kindly of AUKUS. This will be highly deceptive for Australians.

The bro started with a snap ...

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden and then British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after a trilateral meeting during the AUKUS summit on March 13, 2023 in San Diego, California. Picture: PMO

It didn't take long for the bromancer to become disconsolate ...

Now we’ve got Donald Trump as president, he’ll dominate all our lives, and the whole planet, for the next four years.
Let’s ask two questions: what does Trump mean for AUKUS? What does the AUKUS that will evolve under Trump mean for Australia?
I predict Trump and his administration will speak kindly of AUKUS. This will be highly deceptive for Australians.
The impressive Marco Rubio, the new secretary of state, has already warmly endorsed AUKUS, as have lots of congressmen. That’s good – they like not only AUKUS but also Australia.

An upbeat AV distraction didn't help the bromancer...

Sky News contributor Kosha Gada has praised the “strong words” in favour of AUKUS from a key US politician. Incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed AUKUS has ‘strong support’ from the Trump administration. “It is strategically important,” Ms Gada told Sky News host Danica De Giorgio. “And it does put American interests first.”

The bro became gloomier by the word and by the line... even the thought of his penny a word from the emeritus chairman didn't appease him ...

But let me give you the grim conclusion first, then the reasoning. There’s very little chance Australia will get any nuclear-powered submarines in the 2030s. We’ll probably never get any.
We’re supposed to buy our first Virginia-class nuclear sub in 2032, second in 2035, third in 2038. Then we buy another two Virginias, or if the Brits are ready with their new nuclear sub (not likely, they’re even more behind schedule than the Americans) we might be building one with them in Adelaide in the early 2040s. And if you believe that, Virginia …
I find myself in an odd position in the AUKUS debate. I sit outside the left-right divide. I’d be wildly in favour of it if I thought it amounted to anything.
Its only importance now is symbolism.
Its biggest effect is to provide an excuse for the Albanese government, following the path of its Coalition predecessors, to do nothing of substance on defence.
None of the three AUKUS nations is moving remotely fast enough to build up its military manufacturing base to the point where it can cope militarily with China or even Russia. Trump is infinitely more likely to try to fix this than Kamala Harris would have been.
Trump is thus AUKUS’s best hope, but it’s still forlorn. For all Joe Biden’s talk about AUKUS, he never proposed a US Navy budget that would come anywhere near building enough Virginias so America could sell them to Australia in the 2030s.
Equally, there’s almost no chance Australia would actually be able to crew, operate, house or maintain nuclear submarines – in eight years?
Beyond the subs, AUKUS is mostly baloney. AUKUS is more than four years old and Australia hasn’t exported a single widget under its auspices.
The Australian Defence Force doesn’t have one weapon it would not have had apart from AUKUS.

The reptiles heaped fuel on the fire of bro despondency ...

For some reason, the more the bromancer slumped into a deep gloom - his vision of leading the war on China no later than Ēostre receding into some indefinable distance - the more the pond's spirits lifted ...the happier the pond became. Why it was a purgative, designed to cleanse any thought of King Donald I's ascendancy to the throne...

AUKUS’ biggest effect is to provide an excuse for the Albanese government, following the path of its Coalition predecessors, to do nothing of substance on defence. Picture: AFP
The only value in AUKUS is signalling – to Beijing that we’re with the Americans and they’re with us, and to the wider world that Washington can still mobilise allies.
The Trump administration will speak well of AUKUS partly because Australia is contributing $4bn to the US submarine manufacturing effort. Give anyone $4bn and you’ll get smiles for a while.
In many ways AUKUS is a typical conspiracy of Australia’s cosy politics.
The right pretends AUKUS is happening so they can pretend they’re doing something substantial on defence without actually doing anything or spending any more money. (Last year our defence budget didn’t even reach 2 per cent of GDP.)
The left pretends AUKUS is real so they can pretend they’re heroically resisting shocking militarism.
Left and right resemble Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, two workmates disguised as performers in an endless contest neither one must ever win or lose.

Gloom upon gloom, as all the toys were snatched from the bromancer's bath tub, The Virginia-class attack submarine. ‘Australia’s plan to acquire Virginia-class submarines from the US is looking increasingly improbable’, says retired rear admiral Peter Briggs. Picture: Supplied

At least they were giving the bromancer a big set of snaps, but nothing made him happy ...

Many good folks know AUKUS is delivering nothing but support it anyway because it’s part of the US alliance, it might one day deliver something and they don’t want to be negative about any military effort. That attitude has many admirable qualities except one – it doesn’t deal with reality. I think I owe you, dear reader, the truth. AUKUS, so far at least, is a bust. The only area where net zero is likely to be achieved.
Don’t take my word for it. Read two documents.
On The Strategist, the online publication of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, retired rear admiral Peter Briggs lays out with devastating logic why the US cannot possibly produce enough Virginias to have any to spare for Australia in the 2030s.
You can see why the Albanese government has been so keen to intimidate, censor, muzzle and ultimately probably destroy ASPI. Australian defence policy exists in a kind of fantasy zone.
It’s very bad manners of people such as Briggs to introduce unwelcome facts. Briggs concludes: “Australia’s plan to acquire Virginia-class submarines from the US is looking increasingly improbable. The US building program is slipping too badly.”
Amid a plethora of dismal facts, Briggs writes: “The (US) industry laid down only one SSN (nuclear attack sub) in 2021. It delivered none from April 2020 to May 2022. The USN (navy) has requested funding for only one Virginia in fiscal year 2025, breaking the two-a-year drumbeat.” This was partly because of “the growing Virginia-class backlog”.
I don’t want to get too carried away with any criticism of the US. The US spends 3.38 per cent of its huge GDP on defence, whereas in the last completed budget year the Albanese government came in at less than 2 per cent.
The Albanese government won’t nominate the site of an east coast nuclear submarine base because it’s scared of local political reaction. Major infrastructure like that takes decades to build.
A serious government would start. There’s no sign we’ll be able to crew three Virginias by the 2030s. I don’t think the government is serious about this. AUKUS serves a political purpose for the moment. If it drags on forever and we miraculously get our first sub in 2050, that won’t bother anyone in the current cabinet.

In short, it's all a disaster ... The only value in AUKUS is signalling to Beijing that we’re with the Americans and they’re with us, and to the wider world that the US can still mobilise allies. Picture: Supplied

Quelle catastrophe, but surely God's on our side and all will be well?

Trump Declares MAGAfest Destiny in Unhinged ‘Saved by God’ Speech

Mebbe not ...

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Sheesh, a disapproving Jesus, a megalomaniac narcissist who thinks he's the chosen one in charge, and the bro in full gloom ...how could it possibly get any better?

The other document to read is the US Congressional Budget Office report earlier this month on the navy budget.
The CBO shows why the early 2030s will be exactly the time the US won’t be willing to give up any Virginias. Its report is a blandly written but devastating indictment of military policy under Biden.
The CBO observes: “The (US) fleet’s firepower will be reduced over the next decade.”
It details the logjam in building the Virginias. One-third of the fleet is awaiting maintenance, whereas it’s never meant to be more than 20 per cent sidelined for that reason.
US nuclear sub builders have prioritised the much bigger Columbia-class guided missile submarines.

You can only do gloom for so long, and the bromancer started winding down ...Trump is AUKUS’s best hope, but it’s still forlorn. Picture: Getty

The Messiah, King Donald I, a forlorn hope! All the reptiles hopes, dreams and desires shattered, all the talk of a golden era already turned to lead in just the first day... no wonder the pond was happy, verging on elation ... 

Oh say it ain't so, bromancer ...

It’s physically impossible for the US shipyards to increase production at the rate required. The CBO comments that if AUKUS goes ahead as planned, the US Navy will have three to five fewer nuclear attack subs from 2033 to 2053, with a loss of between 65 and 107 operational years of submarine activity.
You really think whoever follows Trump and is president in 2031 (JD Vance? Michelle Obama? Hunter Biden?) will go for that? Of course we can’t abandon AUKUS now. But we should build a mighty defence force around the nuclear subs we likely will never get.
Instead we’ll probably spend huge sums of money, cannibalise the rest of our military and end up with no subs at all. That would be a characteristic Australian defence outcome.

Here's how to console the bromancer. Assure him that tanks are the future, tanks are the answer, we need to get back into tanks if we're to have his war with China by Ēostre ... (light this fuse with a very long taper from a very great distance).

As for people with a real reason for gloom, you don't have to look far or hard, not that the pond would expect any of the reptiles to care or pay attention ... or even make a stand for freedumb...