In which the pond serves up reheated bromancer, no better than standard Monday Caterist stodge and a lashing of Major Zionist parritch ...

 

Dumb as a stick and deeply offensive and stupid to boot (watch out Martians, she means you no harm), but there's always got to be a goose this holyday weekend, and it's about the only role Suuhhssaann knows how to play ...

She makes the beefy boofhead based in Goulburn seem like a rocket scientist, when all he really knows how to do is tilt at windmills like a down under Don Quixote ...

Moving right along, the pond's lackadaisical approach to invasion day meant the pond missed out on the bromancer tackling King Donald I. 

Nothing like reheated bro stodge for the holyday Monday, so here we go ...

Trump remakes America with a revolution in common sense, Is Donald J. Trump a modern Moses leading his people into the promised land? Or is he the Apocalypse? It’s too early to tell, but the blizzard of activity in Trump’s first few days demonstrates he is reinventing America in his own likeness.

Sorry, the pond should have warned that the reptiles rated it a ten minute read, and worse, eyeballs were going to be visually assaulted, US President Donald Trump. Illustration: Johannes Leak

The pond apologises. It simply wasn't possible to make it any smaller. The pond likes to include 'toons, but occasionally poseurs, dilettantes and nepotistic oddities creep in, no thanks to the lizard Oz.

Hey ho ...

Boom. Boom. Boom. The second presidency of Donald Trump burst like a clap of thunder across the whole American nation, across the whole world.
Here is the Donald in unimagined glory, the victor of all he surveys, not just embarking on the latest unbelievable chapter in a completely unbelievable American life, from reality TV to the White House, via porn star dalliances, assassin’s bullets and politicised felony convictions that voters rightly ignored, but promising the very reinvention, the historic renewal, of America itself.
It’s a scene with biblical resonance.
But is Trump a modern Moses leading his people into the promised land? Or is he the Apocalypse? It’s too early to tell, but the blizzard of activity in Trump’s first few days demonstrates he is changing America, probably fundamentally. As with all things Trump, there will be good and bad, courageous and cringeworthy, inspiring and implausible.

From the get go, the aim is obvious ... sanewashing as much as possible, and slipping in the odd bit of criticism to sustain a mirage of plausibility ...

How long can the bro go on with this before dragging in the 'leets, and never mind that he and we are dealing with a government of oligarchical billionaires? 

Not very long ...

The unifying theme is America first, American power and destiny, the revolution of common sense, the bonfire of woke vanities, the immola­tion of the influence of the Western left-liberal elite with its increasing­ly out-of-touch values, nonsensical culture and ineffective policies.
The dangers are manifold: that Trump goes too far; that his administration is ill-disciplined if not incoherent; that the opposition in the courts and Democrat-controlled states frustrates his program; that he ignores the law; that he confuses personal profit with public policy; that America’s adversaries, wise to Trump this time, less intimidated by his bluster, refuse him the deals he wants, the deals he needs; that the meanness inherent in parts of Trump’s program becomes exaggerated or dominant; that he encompasses some monumental blunder.

Oops, already time for an AV distraction? Sure enough, Trump's long-held campaign promise to bring the European conflict to an end in a day is facing challenges.

Then on with the sane washing and the Trumphalism ...manifold promise ...

But the promise is also manifold: that Trump unleashes the entrepreneurial spirits of the American economy; that the US military streaks ahead of the rest, providing unassailable deterrence; that the US sets up a huge lead in artificial intelligence and other areas of hi-tech; that America leads the West out of the debilitating ideologies of self-hatred and identity politics that grip the Western academy; that race is delegitimised as a central feature of Western politics and culture; that inflation is slayed; that bureaucracy is tamed, government spending reduced; that dereg­ulation liberates business and slashes costs.
The frisson of danger that always accompanies Trump is palpable. It’s tied up not only with Trump’s personality but with his essential modus operandi. Everything is psycho-drama. Everything is a deal. So everything is unpredictable. Positions that seem solid, change in a minute, sacrificed as leverage in a deal. Strategic unpredictability can be an asset in negotiation, but as former diplomat Peter Varghese has argued, strategic unpredictability can easily become strategic unreliability.
To take one relatively minor example, Trump’s Vice-President, JD Vance, a few days before the inauguration, said any of the January 6, 2021, rioters who had attacked police wouldn’t be pardoned. Then Trump pardoned them anyway, saying they’d been in jail long enough. Vance surely had spoken to Trump before he made his public comments. Trump presumably was undecided until the last minute, characteristically. He certainly wasn’t fussed about embarrassing Vance.

Was the bromancer that troubled about a laura n'order mob letting loose criminals, violent assaulters of sundry traps?

Not likely, have another snap, there's lots of them to hand ... US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his wife Jeanette arrive to speak to employees at the State Department in Washington. Picture: AFP

Sanewashing isn't an easy job, which is why the bromancer calls on an old friend, a man who fried his head with drugs, and so remains a reptile favourite ...

Still, stepping back from the sheer volume and speed of action in the first days, you can see that Trump’s election, notwithstanding the new/old President’s many foibles, represents a characteristic American response to perceived decline and stagnation. The old left liberal orthodoxy that was strangling America, its economy and its society, just as it’s strangling Europe and even Australia, just wasn’t working. Everyone could see that except left-liberal ideologues. Crime. Homelessness. Skyrocketing energy prices. Uncontrolled illegal immigration. These things were a mess.
No nation suffers paradigm paralysis less willingly than the US. If things really aren’t working, its voters have a visceral reaction: throw the bums out! And if the next lot don’t work, throw them out too.
Often the US has looked permanently crippled by its internal difficulties – after the civil war in the 19th century, or the savage internal polarisation over Vietnam in the 1960s, or the stagflation of the ’70s. But every time, America comes roaring back.
Is it roaring back now? America certainly has profound social problems – drug abuse, especially fentanyl, gun violence, homelessness, inner-city crime, obesity. Ruinous inflation. But never forget the incredible American achievement.
Psychologist Jordan Peterson claimed recently that by the end of 2024, the poorest US state, Mississippi, was richer than the richest province of social democratic Canada, after a decade of enlightened left-liberal incompetence and ideological posturing from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The poorest American state enjoys a higher per capita income than Britain or France. The US is about $US30,000 ($47,700) richer per head than Canada, about twice as rich per capita as the EU. Even when America is doing poorly, it’s doing better than almost everybody else. Nonetheless, America has dangerously lost much of its manufacturing industry. In today’s militarily fraught environment, that’s dangerous.

Really? There's meaningless data, and inconsequential trivia, whether of a wiki or a CIA kind ...

Sorry, we must leave the musings of a recovering addict for an emotive snap, A homeless encampment in San Francisco. Picture: Getty Images

More Trumphalism ...

But the modern world was still made in America – from Silicon Valley to Hollywood, from Pulitzer prizes to nation-shifting podcasts, from the internet to space travel. So while left-liberal formulas are failing, Trump inherits an America still possessed of profound strengths. Nonetheless, he’s going to change its direction and, if he can, its character. He’s attacking every issue with frightening energy.
His first week was political shock and awe: dozens of presidential executive orders; two states of emergency, energy and the southern border; two big international withdrawals, from the Paris climate accords and the World Health Organisation; a string of important appointments; a half-trillion-dollar AI investment announcement; the establishment of a new agency, the Department of Government Efficiency, to slash government spending; and the greatest repudiation of racial preferences by abolishing every program of the federal US government implementing or promoting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Trump gave us real actions in a dizzy range of policy areas. These include: the economy, including tariffs, energy policy, climate change, tax cuts, deregulation; foreign policy, including China, Russia, Israel and the Middle East; immigration, especially the southern border; and every aspect of identity politics, to promote “a colourblind society based on merit”.
It’s a cultural revolution, perhaps as Tesla boss and Trump bestie Elon Musk, head of DOGE, claimed, “a fork in the road of human civilisation”.

Oh indeed, it's a fork, but a one already well travelled ...

Speaking of resistance, did you read the story about California seceding? 

Calexit might be a dream - it used to be Texit - but it's fun, which is more than can be said for reading the bro ...

There will be plenty of resistance, even if Democrats rightly feel like idiots at the moment, demoralised at their loss, stunned at the people’s rejection, humiliated that the majority did not regard Trump in anything like the lurid light that Democrats had painted for eight years.
Nonetheless, although Trump’s victory was clear, it was relatively narrow. Trump got 77.3 million votes to Kamala Harris’s 75 million. That’s good but not landslide territory. He won 49.8 per cent of a relatively low turnout to Harris’s 48.3 per cent. Trump didn’t win a majority of the popular vote as George W. Bush did in 2004.

The reptiles knew they needed an AV distraction ... how about taking back the Panama Canal?

Donald Trump has reignited a decades-old debate by declaring his intention to reclaim the Panama Canal, a vital artery for global trade. This video unpacks the history of the canal, its economic importance to Panama, and the controversial implications of Trump’s statements. Is this a serious policy move or a high-stakes geopolitical gambit? Dive into the details and discover why this iconic waterway is at the centre of international attention once again.

The pond avoided the deep dive, while the bro was inevitably big on alternative facts ...

The result was, in the prescient phrase of former Trump campaign manager and adviser Kellyanne Conway, a “narrow landslide”.
Trump won all the battleground states, but narrowly. If Harris had won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, she would be president. She lost those states respectively by 120,000, 80,000 and 29,000. So if just 115,000 votes in three key states, out of a total of more than 155 million votes cast, had gone the other way, the Trump revolution would be just one of the ghostly ifs of history.
None of this diminishes Trump’s victory. Given everything thrown against him, it was a magnificent triumph. But America is still a 50-50 nation. Trump will need to score successes that affect people’s lives to cement his political revolution. Just as conservatives were energised by Joe Biden’s appalling presidency, radical activists will be motivated to oppose Trump. Though not just yet, perhaps.
What do Trump’s early actions tell us about how he’ll govern? Stylistically, they’re revealing. This will be a personalised presidency where all big policy issues are deals, supervised by the President.
Some specific policies are clear. Trump will secure US borders. The American people want that. He says he will deport people who are in the US illegally. That’s more than 12 million people. He can’t physically deport that many. But he can deport a lot if he wants to.
Barack Obama, liberal hero, deported hundreds of thousands of people every year. That’s what it means to enter the US illegally. You don’t have the right to be there. If Trump concentrates on illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes, and the more than a million who have been ordered to be deported but have not actually been removed, that’s likely to maintain strong support.

The pond almost felt like bursting into a verse of Kipling's "If ...", but was rudely interrupted by yet another snap ... US Customs and Border Protection officers. Picture: AFP

A few saucy doubts crept in ...

For the moment, Trump has stopped all refugee arrivals. That surely must be temporary. Attempting to end automatic citizenship for babies born in the US appears unconstitutional. The constitutional amendment was first introduced to allow slaves and ex-slaves to become citizens. That will be fought legally.

Hang on, hang on, doesn't the bro fancy himself as a tyke? 

What are we to make of this? ‘Look in the Mirror’: New Catholic JD Vance Lectures Church Leaders on Faith

But like a lot of US Xians, the bromancer is a Catholic of convenience, and knows how to sway in the breeze ...

Energy policy is clear. Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, ended federal mandates for electric vehicles and reversed every one of Biden’s multitudinous executive orders restricting fossil fuel exploration and exploitation. During the election, Harris did not campaign on climate change at all. This issue could be gone for the left.
Most politicians try to sniff the breeze. Some politicians make the weather. Trump is doing this, perhaps literally and figuratively, on climate change and energy. His administration will promote the use of every source of energy – oil, gas, coal, nuclear, wind, solar – everything altogether all at once. There will be a lot of legal battles but the direction is clear. And the US taxpayer won’t contribute a dime to green energy funds.

Yes, indeed, the direction is clear. The planet is already fucked, and will be even more fuckeder ...but do carry on ...

There are only a couple of nations formally outside the Paris Agreement. But Trump’s action demolishes global climate plans as they exist and demonstrates the extreme folly of the Albanese government bankrupting our economy to pursue the fantasy chimera of net zero.
Most developed nations have substantially deindustrialised because of crazy net-zero targets and the consequent spiralling costs of energy. This week’s Spectator magazine contains a mournful essay outlining the process in Britain. A recently returned European diplomat observes to me that climate action and green energy policies have damaged German industry more than the Royal Air Force did in World War II.
Trump won’t let this happen in America. Further, the big greenhouse gas emitters, whose emissions are growing most strongly, are not developed economies but nations such as China, India, Indonesia and so on. These nations are part of the Paris accords but don’t face any serious burdens under them. They use every source of energy they can.

Yet another snap in the interminable parade ... The border between the US and Mexico as seen in El Paso, Texas. Picture: AFP

Still more Trumphalism ...

With the US effectively joining them, it’s the failing economies of Europe, and not much better performing Australia, that look out of touch with reality and committed to self-destruction. Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are both right to say Australia can’t exit Paris like the US has done. This would be to become a target. It should instead do what so many do: stay notionally in Paris but maintain the economy anyway with traditional energy sources. And it should embrace nuclear.
Trump wants to cut taxes and attract foreign investment into the US. None of this foreign investment will hesitate for a nano-second because of ethical concerns about climate. Trump will face his greatest opposition in the courts, from some Democrat states such as California; and, if Republicans lose congress in two years, from congress as well.
On tariffs, Trump is still a mystery. He says punitive tariffs may begin against Canada and Mexico in a week or two. He’s unhappy that they let too many people, and too much fentanyl, cross into the US. Such tariffs would devastate Mexico and Canada. The slight delay seems to be an invitation to their governments to make him an offer he can’t refuse.
He has delayed the giant tariffs he was planning on China even further. Though Trump said he would impose such tariffs, it’s clear they were always essentially a bargaining ploy. He’s open to deals.
Trump offered actions and indications of direction on the Middle East, Russia and China. The actions are unified by Trump’s deal-making and by his America first predilections, but they can’t be connected by coherent policy otherwise.
On the Middle East, he forced a welcome ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. If Hamas comes back to dominate Gaza, Trump will likely back Israel if it decides it must resume military action.

Perhaps the news came too late for the bromancer, but ethnic cleansing is the final solution ...

Yes, the tangerine tyrant is all for upholding borders, and deploring migration, except when imitating Joe Stalin suits, and people can be moved about at a whim ... (and naturally news.com.au was outraged that "militants" seemed a tad agitated)...

Meanwhile, at last, a final snap ... Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin in 2018. Picture: AFP

And so to a final burst of bro-ness in this holyday weekend magnum opus...

On Russia, Trump wants a deal. However bad it is in principle, in that Ukraine should not have had to give up any territory, in reality the shape of the deal is obvious. Russia gets to keep the Ukrainian territory it has already conquered and Ukraine gets genuine security guarantees – if not NATO membership, perhaps the presence of British and French troops on its soil.
Trump began by hectoring Russia’s Vladimir Putin, saying he was destroying Russia and waging a ridiculous war. He threatened more sanctions if Putin didn’t make a deal. That seems a hollow threat but Trump’s deals typically begin with a lot of bluster. Trump wants this deal very badly.
On China, Trump has sent mixed and confusing signals. His decision to save TikTok is extremely perplexing. Congress passed legislation to force TikTok to sever its connection with its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or cease operations in the US. Trump has delayed enforcement of this law, and that in itself seems highly dubious legally. Trump also says he would accept a deal in which the US, whether government or private companies, owned 50 per cent of TikTok. But that would still be in breach of the law, which Trump himself called for way back in 2020, and would not stop China from harvesting all the user data from TikTok.
As a result of Trump’s stay of execution, TikTok has been lavishing praise on him. That’s pretty dubious from every point of view.
Trump has appointed genuine and profound China hawks such as new Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elbridge Colby, the new Under Secretary of Defence for Policy at the Pentagon. But he also has appointed business-as-usual types to Treasury. Similarly, he has talked of wanting to visit China soon, which would seem unlikely if he’s levying punishing tariffs. The best you can say is that China policy is a movable feast, likely to harden over the course of Trump’s presidency, as it did during his first term.
Trump wants to renovate, modernise and expand American power. He’s greatly drawn to tariffs and economic sanctions as his “hard” power tools of choice. He’s pro-business, pro-hi tech, pro-patriotic and in alliance with many good forces in US society. And of course he has his dark side and his share of very bad hangers-on.
History has often used much worse men than this to conduct necessary national renovations. Trump is planning to reinvent himself, and reinvent America. The world awaits the reinvention.

Exhausting, and what did the pond miss when it turned to check out the Monday offerings? Not much ...

More flag waving this day, this time by Lord Downer, but the pond decided to hold him over for a late final holyday weekend special ...because over on the far right there came the usual suspects ...

Not Sharri, full disrespect, still banging on, yet when the pond looked at the NY Times in archive, nothing had changed ... the both siderism was still strong and present and correct ...

Senior intelligence officials in the Biden administration defend their process and methodology. They have said that no intelligence was suppressed and insist that politics did not play into their analysis.

These officials say that there are powerful logical arguments for both the lab leak and the natural causes theories, but that there simply is no decisive piece of intelligence on either side of the issue.

To boost the natural origins theory, intelligence officers would like to find the animal that passed it to a human or find a bat carrying what was the likely ancestor of the coronavirus that causes Covid.

Similarly, to seal the lab leak, the intelligence community would like to find evidence that one of the labs in Wuhan was working on a progenitor virus that directly led to the epidemic.

Neither piece of evidence has been found.

Except in Sharri land, above the magic faraway tree, and no Killer Kreighton to back her up. 

No, there was nothing for it, but to run with the usual Monday regulars ... even though the Caterist ground had been well covered by the bro ...

Donald Trump highlights why Anthony Albanese’s ‘keep calm and carry on’ will not work, Donald Trump’s storming start to his presidency has highlighted Anthony Albanese’s impotency. His attempt to keep calm and carry on will prove as futile as Kamala Harris’s vacuous campaign.

In short, King Donald I reigns, bring on King Peter I ...

US President Donald Trump is seen on a giant screen during his address by video conference at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 23. Picture: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP

That's almost worthy of Citizen Kane ...

Then on with the bog standard rant about a new world order ...

The World Economic Forum was at its obsequious best as it gathered for an address by the newly inaugurated US President on Thursday. Donald Trump joined the global elite for the best part of an hour to deliver scripted remarks and respond to questions from a panel led by WEF president Borge Brende.
“We know that you called President Xi Jinping,” remarked Brende. “He called me,” Trump corrected him. “I think that we’re going to have a very good relationship.”
There can be little doubt who called whom to arrange the video link between the White House and the WEF forum. Trump’s uncompromising performance at the festival of corporate virtue-signalling showed the level of authority he commands.
In January 2021, the month Joe Biden became president, the theme of the annual Davos forum was the Great Reset, a blueprint for a system more diverse, equitable and inclusive than the privileged, predatory and patriarchal system under which the assembled delegates became rich.
This year, a wave of collective amnesia swept through the Swiss mountain resort, rendering delegates unable to recall the nonsense they’d been talking for the past four years.
Peer-level exchanges between DEI officers, partnerships to dismantle systemic racism, ensuring the full participation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer individuals in socio-economic life and other worthless schemes appeared to have vanished from delegates’ memory banks as they greeted the US President with unctuous applause.

But could they be more unctuous than a uxorious Caterist being fully unctuous? Pause for an AV distraction ...

Media Research Centre research analyst Bill D’Agostino has reacted to US President Donald Trump’s address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It’s certainly a pretty bellicose way for him to be conducting himself on the world stage,” he told Sky News host Steve Price. “I understand that he’s trying to project strength, but these are also strategic allies, many of whom he’s talking to, so he’s walking a bit of a tightrope there.”

On with the promises and never mind the price of eggs ... JD Vance Snaps at CBS Host as He’s Grilled on Lowering Grocery Prices: ‘Going to Take a Little Bit of Time’

CBS Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan grilled JD Vance on the economy as he failed to pick out an executive order that had an immediate effect on grocery prices.

The vice-president appeared to struggle before Brennan as she claimed most of the executive orders made by Donald Trump this week did not relate to the economy.

“You campaigned on lowering prices for consumers. We’ve seen all of these executive orders. Which one lowers prices?” Brennan asked in direct terms.

Tip: don't ask JD or the Caterist.

Instead, a liddle bit more time must be spent with the Caterist, slobbering with desire over many other distracting matters ...

“My administration has taken action to abolish all discriminatory, diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense,” Trump said. “America will once again become a merit-based country.
“There are only two genders: male and female. We will have no men participating in women’s sports. Transgender operations, which became the rage, will occur very rarely.
“I terminated the ridiculous and incredibly wasteful Green New Deal. I call it the green new scam. I withdrew from the one-sided Paris climate accord and ended the insane and costly electric vehicle mandate. I declared a national energy emergency to unlock the liquid gold under our feet. I’m also taking swift action to stop the invasion at our southern border
“No longer will our government label the speech of our own citizens as misinformation or disinformation, which are the favourite words of those who wish to stop the free exchange of ideas and, frankly, progress.”
If there was a murmur of disapproval from the audience, it was inaudible on the official recording. The overwhelming sentiment from his corporate audience appeared to be relief. No more endless meetings with bloated HR departments, no more protection money to the corrupt and subversive Black Lives Matter movement, and no more tedious board papers on triple bottom lines.
The President had given them the authority to do what business does best: create wealth and expand prosperity. Millions of pages of mumbo-jumbo could be committed to the shredder. Capital could be allocated on the advice of the capital markets rather than responding to government diktat. Liberation day had arrived.

Yes, it was time to fuck people and the planet over, and the Caterist was just the right man to help with the job ...

Sorry, this was the actual visual interruption ...Rightwing writer, filmmaker and activist Christopher Rufo. Picture: Supplied

Don't ask about Rufo's filmography ... he's just a PBS refugee ...

Trump’s inauguration marked much more than the transfer of power from one administration to the next. It was the start of the counter-revolution predicted by Christopher F. Rufo in 2023 in his book, America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. Rufo has Trump’s ear and was part of the transition team at Mar-a-Lago. His influence in Trump’s inaugural address is unmistakeable: Trump follows his prescription for counter-revolution against the left’s cultural revolution.
Trump failed in his first-term goal of draining the swamp. In his second term, his goal is to dismantle the anti-democratic DEI departments, capture bureaucracies and turn them to dust. He intends to split the nexus between the cultural revolutionaries and the deep state, restoring the power assumed by judges, bureaucrats and social engineers, and returning authority to the people.
Rufo traces the links between today’s militant culture warriors and America’s cultural revolution that began in 1968 with student uprisings, urban riots and revolutionary violence. It became the template for everything that followed. The intellectual foundation was laid with the critical theories of Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis, Paolo Freire and Derek Bell, from which the strategy of the long march through the institutions emerged
Race replaced class as the new proletariat. The precondition for revolution was the complete disintegration of the existing culture, economy and society.
It would require introducing what Marcuse termed “liberating tolerance”, which manifests as intolerance of conservatives.
The new regime would enforce strict censorship on universities, corporations, media outlets, educational institutions, political parties and the state itself.
The radical left’s stranglehold of universities, cultural institutions, the public service and the corporate world has tightened considerably since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, giving the new woke establishment the appearance of invulnerability.
Yet Rufo maintains that the new regime harbours critical weaknesses and that its gains could be reversed.
He writes: “Ultimately, critical theory will be put to a simple test: Are conditions improving or not improving? Are cities safer or less safe? Are students learning to read or not learning to read? The new regime can only suppress the answers for so long.”

Indeedy do, are stupid people ever any less stupid?

Sorry, this was meant to be the real distraction ... Former president Joe Biden. Picture: Allison Robbert/AFP

And so to the final Caterist gobbet ... with King Peter I a looming, wondrous sight ...

With hindsight, it was Trump’s good fortune to sit out the past four years and allow the Biden administration to be the crash-test dummy for critical theory pushed to extremes.
Biden reaped the ugly legacy of defunded police, diversity-hire firefighters, hundreds of billions lavished on lunatic green boondoggles, and self-inflicted pain from rising gas prices.
Trump, meanwhile, made political incorrectness his hallmark, violating every woke stricture with impunity and evident delight. Like the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the rebellious instinct is infectious, and the end will come quickly.
The dominoes are falling across the English-speaking world as the gap widens between woke’s utopian abstractions and concrete failures.
Jacinda Ardern’s foolish excesses paved the way for conservative government in NZ while the Trudeau experiment is drawing to a dismal end in Canada. The reckoning will come for Keir Starmer’s accidental Labour government once the Conservatives can get their act together.
Anthony Albanese should have executed a handbrake turn 15 months ago when the world’s first referendum on identity politics came down decisively on the side of common sense. Yet he lacks the courage or intelligence to confront the nutbags in his own party or the destabilising and divisive policies of the Greens.
Albanese will be judged by his record. He has been unable to solve everyday problems such as soaring energy prices and inflation even on his own terms. Family structures have eroded, and his pro-immigration, pro-Palestinian indulgences have damaged the social fabric. The ever-expanding state has usurped Australia’s culture of self-reliance, and the industrious middle class is discouraged and despondent.
Trump’s storming start to his presidency has further highlighted Albanese’s impotency. His attempt to keep calm and carry on will ultimately prove as futile as Kamala Harris’s vacuous and valueless presidential campaign.
Nick Cater is senior fellow at Menzies Research Centre

Or alternatively ...Trump Picks Sides in Elon Musk Feud—And It’s Not With the ‘First Buddy’, “He’s liberal, which is a bit different from me, but I think he’s a very good person,” President Donald Trump said of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

That's the trouble when you side with a loon, you never know which way the breeze will blow, or who the ice will chill ...

And so, even though the pond's beyond exhausted, on to the Major, burbling Western media shuns truth tellers on Gaza, Why the lack of interest shown by Western media in the work of Palestinian and Arab reporters and academics who criticise Hamas?

There was the usual opening illustration ...Israeli soldier Nimrod Palmach at the Opera House. He is a major in the Israeli army who raced to fight Hamas terrorists during their massacre in Israel on October 7. Picture: John Feder.

The pond can't suggest any way to cope with the Major's rampant Zionism, except skate through as quickly as possible ...

This column has argued for 15 months that much reporting about Gaza is compromised by reliance on the Qatar-owned, pro-Hamas Al Jazeera network, its Gaza-based journalists – many of whom have been proven to be Hamas fighters – and the social media feeds of paid Palestinian influencers.
After relentless reporting about mass famine, we got a good idea just how Gaza’s civilians really look during the hostage release on January 19. And they were not starving.
Worse than journalists relying on compromised sources, including the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, is the lack of interest shown by Western media in the work of Palestinian and Arab reporters and academics who criticise Hamas and its October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel – an atrocity that Hamas praises as the Al Aqsa Flood.
As if it took great courage to enter remote communities on a Saturday morning and murder, rape and behead civilians.
Lots of Western journalists working in Israel have Arabic-speaking minders who can translate criticisms of Hamas for independently minded, balanced reporters. Few have taken the opportunity.
Palestinian Authority daily newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida on December 9 published columnist Bassem Barhoum criticising Hamas for launching “its war against Israel entirely on its own initiative”.
“It wasn’t the Palestinian people that made the decision to launch the Al-Aqsa Flood, and neither was it their legitimate leadership. It was a single faction. It was an entirely reckless adventure, and it brought about a national catastrophe,” he wrote.
“Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip by force of arms … Hamas has held the Gaza Strip hostage since then. The Palestinian people do not deserve to be punished for the crimes of Hamas.”
This is the context in which journalists report silly claims by Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khamenei that Hamas has defeated Israel. Or even sillier claims by Hamas political bureau member Khalil al-Hayya on Al-Jazeera on January 15 that the present ceasefire is a great victory for Hamas, despite its own claims that 46,000 Gazans have been killed in the conflict.
Promising Hamas would continue its jihad against Israel, al-Hayya said “the miracle … of October 7 … will remain a source of pride for our people and our resistance and will be passed down from generation to generation”.

Cue the only other snap the reptiles gave to the Major ...Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Picture: AFP

Then it was back to the ranting ...

This is how Hamas’s leaders think about the murder of 1200 civilians and the taking of 251 hostages.
Responding directly to al-Hayya’s speech, Saudi journalist Yahya Al-Shabraqi posted on X: “Al-Hayya called Hamas’s victories in Gaza ‘miraculous’. Oh Al-Hayya if you see this spilt blood and destruction as victory I’d like to know how you would describe a defeat.”
Another Saudi journalist, Abd al-Aziz, wrote on X: “I have been laughing at the stupidity of the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas’s parent organisation). They say Hamas has won. Yes it won after seeing 200,000 Gazans killed and wounded, 80 per cent of Gaza destroyed and the Israeli army occupying Gaza. All they care about is that Hamas endured.”

Hitting the nub of the problem in media terms, Moroccan security commentator Abd Al-Hak Snaibi wrote: “The Al Jazeera channel, which competes with Satan, is trying to convince the Arabs and Muslims that the martyrdom of over 70,000 Palestinians, the annihilation of Gaza and the displacement of hundreds of thousands is a great and honourable victory.”
Why don’t we hear these sort of criticisms of Hamas in reports from our Middle East correspondents?

It's likely that the Major filed a little too early and so wasn't up to speed. 

There was a new solution, new insights, ethnic cleansing and genocide were good. Why not just bulldoze everything, and think of the real estate opportunities...

Trump Floats Plan for Gaza: ‘Clean Out the Whole Thing’, “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump said, of potentially displacing Palestinians to other countries.

Or if you like the brain fart at length, try the Graudian ...Trump’s Gaza proposal rejected by allies and condemned as ethnic cleansing plan, US president has suggested Palestinians should leave Gaza for neighbouring countries to ‘just clean out’ whole strip

Poor Major, missed out again. The pond realises he'd love the solution, the perfect way to end the gulag, raze it to the ground and put up some hotels, but instead he was left back doing the usual ....

This column on November 7, 2023 quoted Ibrahim Eissa, a prominent Egyptian TV host and editor in chief of the daily newspaper Al Tahrir, criticising Hamas for enriching its leaders and spending billions on tunnels under Gaza but not building a single tunnel to shelter Gaza’s sick, its women and children or to store food and supplies for ordinary Gazans.
MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) included in its best clips of 2024 Eissa telling his audience during his own show on February 28: “To this very day people are still talking about the victory of Hamas and the resistance. And about Israel’s defeat. Seriously? Such blindness!
“We have been living this lousy story for 75 years – we are defeated, but we tell ourselves we are victorious. We are living a delusion. We relish victimhood. So am I blaming the victims? Yes I am.”
It’s not only the failure to criticise Hamas. If you follow the reporting of the ABC you would never realise lots of Lebanese are thrilled that Israel killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership late last year.

Why wouldn’t they be, given Hezbollah has been terrorising local Lebanese since 1990 under now ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad?
Lebanese journalist and editor of the Newsalist website, Fares Khachan, on December 22 mocked Hezbollah’s claims it had not been beaten by Israel.
“Hezbollah bears sole responsibility for what Israel is doing. Hezbollah started the war.”
Only days after the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, former Lebanese diplomat Hisham Hamdan published a searing critique of Hezbollah in the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar, saying Lebanon had always wanted peace with Israel.
He blamed Iran for the latest destruction in Lebanon and urged his government to sue Iran in international courts for war reparations.
Lebanese film maker Youssef El-Khoury, interviewed on MTV on October 24, said he was upset it was not the Lebanese people that had rid his country of the plague of Hezbollah. Lebanon had to rely on Israel to do it.
In November he told Voice of Lebanon: “Israel is not an enemy.”
MEMRI quoted El-Khoury saying that after the previous war with Israel, that country’s occupation of southern Lebanon involved the building of extensive infrastructure while not controlling Lebanese decision-making the way the previous Syrian occupiers had.

Uh huh ... meanwhile over at Haaretz ...

Israel's full withdrawal from Lebanon, which was supposed to be completed on Sunday, will not happen on time. Thousands of Lebanese who had hoped to return to their homes this week are being forced to wait at temporary accommodation sites without knowing when they'll get the greenlight to return.

Israel claims that the Lebanese military has still not fulfilled its commitments under the cease-fire agreement and has yet to dismantle Hezbollah installations and collect its weapons. Lebanon says that as long as Israel continues to occupy dozens of villages, its forces can't operate there. In places where the Lebanese military has been deployed, it has collected large quantities of weapons and sent them to its warehouses, it says.

While Israel has withdrawn from most of the towns it has occupied, the last-minute delay has made many in Lebanon suspicious that it plans to remain in some locations for an extended period. These are likely to become points of friction and an excuse for a violent response from Hezbollah that would elicit an Israeli retaliation. The road from there to a total collapse of the cease-fire is short.

Never mind, it's all for the best in the best of Major worlds...

Before the Israeli action against Hezbollah, Lebanese academic Makram Rabah, a professor of history at the American University of Beirut, told Spot Shot Online (Lebanon), that Hezbollah had deliberately provoked Israel after the October 7 pogrom. He said the Lebanese people did not want to foot “Iran’s bills” for the damage Hezbollah was doing. Rabah was arrested after the interview.
Lebanese Shi’ite journalist Nancy Lakiss in a YouTube interview on August 3 accused Hezbollah of sending young men to their deaths only to serve Iran’s interests in Lebanon. She said Lebanese Christians wanted their children to become professionals but Shi’ite parents wanted theirs to be martyrs.
Making a similar point about Hamas on YouTube on August 30, Lebanon-based Palestinian researcher Hesham Dibsi said the group did not represent the Palestinian people. It was a “Shi’ite Islamic enterprise” while most Palestinians wanted to build a secular state.
Brussels-based Palestinian activist Amjad AbuKoush wrote on Facebook on March 7 that it seemed “Al Jazeera does not want the bloodshed to stop”.
Qatar was a small country that gained a global role by appropriating Palestinian decision-making, he said.
“As Palestinians we have a right to reject this. We have a right to say: Stop it you bastards,” AbuKoush concluded.

And so amen to all that and to the reptiles this day ... stormy weather forecasts continue ...