In which a triptych of reptiles are wild-eyed, neigh google-eyed, with excitement ...

 

It's started, with the reptiles wildly excited, kicking and thrashing about in their nest ... with the tangerine tyrant getting to the top of the lizard Oz heap, toppling news of a vast international conspiracy into second place ...

Over on the extreme far right, top of the world ma, the reptiles lined up to contemplate King Donald I mania ...

Such was the wild eyed excitement that the pond had to dump Dame Slap though she probably would have scored high marks with the pond's wokerati for her suggesting that woke is fading in woke central... Australian banks! The pond often has a chat with its local friendly ATM machine about woke drivel, though more times than not, most conversations are via the intertube with a bot ...

In other times, the pond would have led with Dame Groan and been forced to use the Godwin's Law that proves her usage of the term meant she was a fuckhead ...

Instead the pond, as it always does, went with the reptile flow. Lie back and take it, and enjoy the wild ride has always been the pond's motto. Toot, toot, said Mr Toad ...

First up was the bro, with the reptiles seizing on the chance to promote Sky News offerings ...

Donald Trump: Bolder, brassier than ever before,Donald Trump knows how Washington works now, he knows he’s got a limited time in office and he’s going to revolutionise America and its politics in double quick time.

As usual, the offering began with a snap,  US President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

To maintain its sanity, the pond will open with a 'toon and will regularly return to cartoonists for signs of life ...

Then it was on with the bro, barely able to contain his wild-eyed excitement ...

Donald Trump is back baby! Bigger, bolder, brassier than ever before.
This was a second term presidential inauguration like no other we’ve ever seen. Speaking for the plain American and the sometimes forgotten majority, Trump was Action Man, driven by impatience to get going.
Trump knows how Washington works now, he knows he’s got a limited time in office and he’s going to revolutionise America and its politics in double quick time.
Love him or hate him, you have to admire Trump’s energy and stamina. Approaching 80, he undertook countless events, even answering journalists’ questions without teleprompters as he signed a slew of executive orders. The contrast with the sheltered workshop and acute teleprompter dependence of the Biden presidency was staggering.
Having cheated an assassin’s bullet, having escaped the earnest efforts of Joe Biden and a swag of other Democratic Party government leaders and prosecutors to put him in jail, Trump looked as though he wanted to change the whole world in one day.
He withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords. Inflation, he told his fellow Americans, was caused by excess government spending and bad energy policy.

Then came the first attempt to promote Sky Noise, with Sharri, disrespect, leading the way ...

Sky News host Sharri Markson claims Donald Trump “prevailed over his enemies and crisis” as he was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States of America. “It was a day of major policy announcement, a changing of the world order in Washington,” she said. “Out with the woke ideology, and a new era of common sense with a priority on national security.”

Oh it's going to be a long haul of fist-pumping, with the bro delighted that climate science has been kicked to the kerb, and fossil fools returned to the mainstream ...

Trump reversed a wide range of Biden environmental policies and declared the US was going to use every bit of its vast oil and gas endowments: “Drill, baby, drill!”
This move alone up-ends all the politics and financial and other calculations of climate change action globally. European governments have been collapsing over inflation and energy prices. Meanwhile, the big and growing economies – the US, China, India, Indonesia and many others – while they pay differing degrees of lip service to climate change action, are using every energy supply available to them to power development.
Whether they like that development or not, Western governments, including the Albanese government, will have to face it eventually.
Trump declared an emergency on the US southern border, which enables him to mobilise the military and other arms of US power to stop illegal immigration.
Trump said he strongly favours legal immigration. He wants investment, companies and skilled workers to come into the US. But he’s determined to stamp out illegal immigration. Pure common sense.

It's pure common sense to make the most of the ruckus by promoting Sky Noise ... come on down snappy Tom, beloved by Oz cats ...

Sky News Chief Election Analyst Tom Connell reveals what struck him as the biggest moment on Donald Trump’s inauguration day. “It struck me how quickly change had happened,” Mr Connell told Sky News host Andrew Bolt. “Because Joe Biden was being sworn in having been the Democratic hero, he came back, they said ‘we need someone to beat Trump’, and he did that. “Four years later he watched on, surely thinking he was the biggest reason why Donald Trump won this time.”

The bro was big on common sense this day ...

Some of these actions will be subject to legal challenge. But Trump’s Republicans control the Senate and the House of Representatives. He has a clear mandate for these policies and it will be intensely undemocratic if they’re held up.
Trump declared he would build the biggest and strongest military the world had ever seen: “Our friends will respect us, our enemies will fear us.” The single overriding objective of the military, Trump said, would be its ability to defeat the country’s enemies. In policy areas like energy, illegal immigration and military policy, there is a thread of common sense that runs through much of what Trump says. This is the strength of populism if it’s intelligently managed. What kind of mental delusion ever led Biden to institute an effective open border on the southern flank of the US? No normal person possessed of average intelligence, prudence, the wisdom of experience or the most elementary common sense could ever have done that.
In this area, Trump gives expression to American common sense. Similarly, he promised “a colourblind and merit-based ­society”. Who, other than a professional ideologue, could seriously disagree with that?
Trump was right to say that “a corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth” from the American people while being increasingly unable to fulfil basic tasks of government.
There was of course some over statement, dodgy facts, dubious judgments among the thousands upon thousands of words that Trump spoke on inauguration day. But for large slabs of what he had to say, tens of millions of Americans would have been nodding their heads at what were really statements of the obvious.
Trump’s remarkable success is a tribute to his determined will and genuine courage, but it’s also a huge tribute to Biden’s manifold failures. On many of these policy areas, Trump had effectively won the debate before the campaign began.

Dodgy facts? 

Already the gems have started to drool from the mouth, as per The New Republic, Trump Starts Presidency by Failing Basic Geography Question, summarised this way:

The rain might fall hard on that BRICS Spain plain, but the reptiles were too busy pumping up Sky Noise, with petulant Peta next in line, Sky News host Peta Credlin says it is “clear” President Donald Trump wastes “no time” pursuing his new agenda. “Putting aside the pageantry of the inauguration today,” Ms Credlin said. “It is clear President Donald Trump is wasting no time in pursuing his second term agenda.”

Note to reptiles: if you really wanted to promote Sky Noise, why not feature snaps of shameless Sharri, election analyst snappy Tom (first choice for cats in Australia), and petulant Peta? 

Why all the visual worshipping of King Donald I?

In his wrap-up, the bro did allow a minor doubt, quickly swept away by his addiction to hysteria, a personality trait he shares with King Donald ...

Similarly, Trump’s promise to restore law and order in big cities resonates with Americans, especially in cities with Democrat mayors and Democrat state governments. Liberal crime policies and anti-police reflexes have been a disaster, especially for residents of poor neighbourhoods.
Trump looks to have overstepped, however, in pardoning too many of the January 6 rioters. There was clearly a double standard in their sentencing, but if some of them commit violent offences after they’ve been released, Trump will rightly pay a heavy political price.
Biden’s farewell decision to pre-emptively pardon all his siblings and their partners from any prosecution was pathetic and confirms just how politicised were the prosecutions launched against Trump by Biden’s Justice Department and other Democrat office holders.
Democrats screamed that whoever may have launched the prosecutions against Trump, they were all taking place in real courts so could not be considered political and all would observe fair process. But that rule apparently doesn’t apply to Biden’s family, or anyone else on the Democrat side.
No one has done more to debauch the constitution or the rule of law in the US than Biden. What Trump makes of these precedents in the fullness of time remains to be seen.
But the big takeout from Inauguration Day is that this is going to be a high-octane, high-energy, consequential presidency. Hold on to your hats.

Oh it's going to be a long time in the clink ...

Next up, JC rose from the grave, pre-empting Ēostre. 

It's been a while since the pond has seen JC strutting about in the hive mind, yet here he was, risen and offering Trump is a flawed leader who is just right for the times,Donald Trump promises a new dawn, of an activist President who gets things done, after the torpid senility of the Biden years.

Getting things done! Fucking the planet a most excellent start, so naturally there was a snap ...An unconventional President with his Vice-President. Picture: Getty Images

JC was also excited at the ending of that fake, woke Weimar Republic phase ...

President Donald Trump has charged into office riding a wave of an electoral mood fed up with the old order, demanding change. He promises a new dawn, of an activist President who gets things done, after the torpid senility of the Biden years, a man who may even make America great again, and cleanse it of woke causes.
The public generally feels either of two emotions when a new leader takes office – hope or fear. This is amplified as never in living memory in the case of Donald Trump. On the fear side, an unscrupulous maniac is perceived who stands as a sworn enemy of everything progressive.
The most optimistic serious projection of the positive has been made by historian Niall Ferguson. He reads the Trump ascendancy as a sign of a changing vibe in geopolitical culture. The mood in the zeitgeist has shifted.
Trump is the latest and most significant example of the people striking back against the elites, demanding pragmatic realism and decisive action from governments. Europe has been the lead example so far, with rejection in France of the moderate centrism of President Emmanuel Macron, and electorates in Italy, Germany and a gathering tide of smaller nations, all demanding stricter controls of immigration and action on soaring costs of living.
Amid all the hype, hysteria and speculation that is accompanying Trump, two things can be said with confidence. Both are true, but at odds with each other.
Firstly, the negative. Trump is a person, simply put, who is unfit to be President. He lowers the office and diminishes the reputation of the country. The main issue is dignity. Walter Bagehot, in his 19th-century classic, The English Constitution, argued that a strength of the British political system was predicated on separating power from authority, with the responsibility for running the country vested in prime minister and parliament, the dignity of state vested in the Crown.
The constitutional importance of the monarch is in standing apart from political difference, serving as a higher unifying symbol, enduring and timeless, a figurehead uniquely placed to animate the nation.
In the United States, the two functions are concentrated in the one person, meaning that an undignified occupant disturbs the political firmament far more seriously than would be the case in Britain or Australia.

Unfit to be Prez? But look, he's an action figure, he's getting things done ... US President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House. Picture: AFP

Don't worry, it won't take long for JC to come around, to see the light and join the cult ...

Trump is a convicted felon, he has shown little faith in democracy or respect for the American constitution, he lies shamelessly, he tars opponents with invented, crude slanders, and he is a blatant misogynist.
Further on the negative, there is questionable competency. The Trump personality is vain and vengeful, and demands total subservience from those who work with him. He might be typed a pathological narcissist – obsessed by how great he is.
As in his first term in office, there may well be a high turnover of people in senior positions, with declining quality of incumbent. Trump is reported to be lazy and quick to lose focus, which would not matter greatly if he were to remain surrounded by capable advisers and key departmental secretaries.
Yet in the end, leadership is judged principally by what it achieves. And the public tends to get used to the flawed character of a political leader, as it did in this country with Bob Hawke.
On the positive side, the times are suited to someone who is brashly decisive, times shaped by brutal dictators and terrorist organisations. Already, Trump’s warning that there will be hell to pay if the Israeli hostages aren’t released when he takes office has galvanised Hamas into panicked negotiation. The contrast is striking with the unending failure of the Biden policy of diplomatic negotiation. Trump’s intention, with Elon Musk in charge, to bulldoze government inefficiency would, if achieved, prove an immense public good.

And Vivek too, don't forgot Vivek. Oh sheesh, he's already been forgotten ... other rats are keen to join the ship ...

That $2 trillion is ready to fall, if they can just find a way to get rid of all that social security nonsense.

Sorry, back to JC, now well into trumphalist mode ...

Most significantly of all in global terms, Iran is on the back foot – the progenitor of strife in the Middle East, the country driving, funding, and arming most conflicts there.
Israel’s overwhelming successes in damaging Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, plus the sudden fall of Assad in Syria, have opened the path for the United States to press home the advantage of the moment. Trump is suited to carry this out.
Also in Trump’s favour is the declining prestige of Putin and Xi. The state of the Russian economy is parlous, the people are restive, while there are signs that Putin’s domestic reputation is fragile. Trump has a much stronger hand to force a negotiated peace with terms favourable to Ukraine.
With China, the economy is also in a slump and the confident buoyancy of the early years of President Xi have faded.
The sight of an unpredictable American President, given to strong words, is likely to make China generally more reserved in its expansionist ambitions.

Indeed, indeed, Uncle Elon will be on hand to clip China's wings ... there are no conflicts of interest there, none at all. Look at the stern way that King Donald I knocked TikTok for six ...

But then JC began to have a few saucy doubts and fears. Those bloody lefties, those wokerati, are fiendish and alarmingly strong ...

Niall Ferguson’s optimistic reading of a changing vibe in the zeitgeist seems to me more plausible on the electoral mood front, and in the swing in international affairs into one favouring the democracies over the autocracies. The positing of a weather change in the wider culture is another matter.
The left has dominated elite thinking since the 1960s, and driven progressive attitudes through educational institutions, the arts, and into government bureaucracies and even corporations.
Reversal may occur in some domains, that of business corporations for instance, in which a reality principle governs behaviour. But schools and universities have not changed, nor have the attitudes of the vast majority of those in their 20s and 30s who are politically engaged, and nor has a vaguely progressive cast of mind, which became instinct, expressed right through the tertiary-educated upper middle class, colouring its values.
Trump has only two effective years before he becomes a lame duck – typically with a hostile congress, and both Republicans and Democrats turning their attention to who will succeed him. The political reality, as always, is one of the slow and hard boring of hard boards, to quote sociologist Max Weber.
It means almost always there will be the drag weight of inertia slowing down change and paralysing policy or dragging it towards the centre. In the American case, the President has the herculean task of swaying congress to move to his political will.

JC decided that he'd end by having a final each way bet ...

Finally, in looking forward, it is important to remember that history is the story of the unforeseen. The next four years may well see a surprise, unpredicted historical moment and Donald Trump himself may prove just one such surprise, either way.
John Carroll is professor emeritus of sociology at La Trobe University.

Splendid stuff - you know, that sage talk of winter and spring and growth and such like, a tribute to Chance - and after a hard time turning sods, the pond paused for refreshments and a 'toon ...sorry, JC, you've been replaced...

Then it was on to an import, Walter Russell Mead from the WSJ,  Rm Rm to his friends ...

He' not so foreign, he's a member of the world wide reptile hive, offering wild-eyed excitement in An exceptional marriage of populists and tech barons, In aligning US policy with the needs of the most dynamic, future-facing elements in the economy, the MAGA movement and its new-found technology allies may be more consequential than many critics understand.

Yes, it's AI all the way, and soon enough Rm Rm will be replaced by a bot ...

The reptiles started with an elevating image, Elon Musk looks on ahead of the inauguration ceremony. Picture: AFP

Why it was visionary, elevating, profound, mystical look, as Uncle Leon gazed up at Mars, or perhaps at an exploding rocket ...

Would the reptiles ever feature a more expressive snap, one that went that extra step, one that evoked the deepest ketamine-fuelled and X-stoked Uncle Leon?

Probably not, that's just Uncle Leon expressing his affinity with the people, his deep love for them, or so they say, much like they did back in the 1930s, when love was everywhere ...

Sorry, so very sorry, back on the populist front foot ...

As the world braces for the second coming of Donald Trump, many fear and some hope that his return to power means the end of American exceptionalism.
I think Trump’s return means exactly the opposite. His remarkable political recovery demonstrates the enduring strength of American cultural forces that have, for more than two centuries, made America uniquely hospitable to the disruption and chaos that dynamic capitalism inevitably brings.
Trump’s MAGA coalition has at least temporarily brought together two groups who are at daggers drawn in much of the world: angry populists seeking to defend the identities and, as they see it, the traditional values of their societies, and entrepreneurial tech lords pushing for deregulation and the rapid deployment of cutting-edge technologies that are likely to displace many blue-collar ­workers.
It will take some fancy footwork by Trump to keep these rival wings of his coalition together, but the job isn’t impossible.
American populists are typically more pro-capitalist than populists in Europe and elsewhere, and America’s tech lords have less reason to object to the populist elements of the MAGA agenda than do the leaders of more traditional industries and firms. There is a large set of issues on which Trump’s base and his tech allies agree, and even their differences offer more room for compromise than many observers expect.

MAGA’s hatred of entrenched bureaucracies and the smug professional classes who run key American institutions meshes very comfortably with the tech agenda. The economic reform American populists seek is less about restraining the power of large corporations than about restraining the power of the bureaucracies that hamper businesses large and small. And while many blue-collar Trump constituents may fear and resent the effect of artificial intelligence and other revolutionary technologies on employment, much of the President’s base will cheer if tech displaces large numbers of bureaucrats, bankers and lawyers. That base won’t support technology regulations or demand antitrust suits aimed at preventing the automation of upper middle class professional jobs.

Meanwhile, the elements of the MAGA agenda that raise eyebrows in C-suites and economics departments, such as industrial protectionism and immigration restriction, are less worrisome for the tech lords than for many other businessmen.

At this point, the reptiles felt compelled to remind the hive mind of their new oligarchical leaders, filthy rich folk ... Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk ahead of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Picture: Getty Images

Why there's Zuck the cuck suck, and that baldie destroyer of WaPo and some oddity googling away, just like Uncle Leon ... so teen TikTok...

Some things are beyond satire ...

Time to celebrate freedumb, including the freedumb to hire people to work longer hours for less people, and take pleasure in the freedumb of being allowed to sleep on a mattress in the office (such luxury) or piss into bottles for a little relief ... remember, freedumb ...

Tech firms are less vulnerable to the consequences of tariff and trade barriers than companies like Walmart. And while the tech industry’s staunch defence of the H-1B visa program enrages some populists, the tech industry is far less dependent on low-wage immigrant labour than many other economic sectors.
Overall, a compromise in which Trump’s tech allies support caps on unskilled immigration and tight border controls while keeping the door open for migrants with the skills tech needs seems within reach.
The combination of reshoring production and restricting the growth of the labour force may be a net positive for tech. Faced with paying US wages to production employees, manufacturers will invest much greater resources in technology that allows them to keep their headcounts low. That is good for the national economy and productivity overall. It is even better for the tech sector.
Meanwhile, protectionism, immigration and deregulation will support blue-collar labour demand even as the technology revolution disrupts one industry after another. That looks important. Robo-taxis are already beginning to roll across the streets of American cities. How long will the members of the Teamsters Union be needed to drive trucks?
This is how American exceptionalism works. While much of the West remains gridlocked among anti-growth greens, sullen socialists clinging to unsustainable welfare states and technophobic regulators more interested in blocking potentially dangerous technologies than in developing world-beating companies, American populists have aligned with tech moguls around a program of deregulation that will accelerate the transformation of the American economy. The pro-enterprise streak in American populism runs deep.
The colonists who revolted against Britain wanted, among other things, the freedom to conduct their business without the restrictions that British policy sought to impose.
Andrew Jackson’s populists weren’t capitalism-hating socialists who wanted to introduce central planning or stifle the animal spirits of American entrepreneurs. They hated the eastern coastal elite and its domination of finance, but they wanted to decentralise and democratise capitalist opportunity, not crush it.
The MAGA-populist/tech-lord coalition is a volatile one, and keeping it together will be taxing. It is too early to tell how successful the second Trump administration will be. But as your columnist attends this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he will be cautioning participants against underestimating the potential of America to renew itself in unlikely and even unseemly ways.
In aligning US policy with the needs of the most dynamic, future-facing elements in the economy, the MAGA movement and its new-found technology allies may be more consequential than many critics understand.
The Wall Street Journal

Splendid stuff ... and the only really sour note came when the pond opened its email and came across John Hanscombe in depressed mood in The Echnida newsletter ...

Oh come on John, you need to become a reptile addict, a junkie injecting Murdochian insights straight into vein or eyeball ...

Call me a snowflake if you like. Or a sook if you prefer the Aussie vernacular. I'll take it on the chin.
I found nothing uplifting about Trump's inauguration. Nothing that inspired hope. Nothing in the hours of coverage that followed that suggested the world would be a better place for his second coming.
The symbolism was dark from the outset.
There was First Bro Elon Musk geeing up the crowd of MAGA faithful at a stadium with fascist salutes, right arm outstretched, a stunt that would have landed him in court and possibly jail here in Australia.
And First Lady Melania, dressed more for a funeral than the swearing in of her husband, her face in shadow under a boater, looking uncannily like legendary guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Trump's daughter Ivanka looked more like the governor's wife from The Handmaid's Tale.
Trump himself, not orange like the first time around but a little more reptilian and, of course, just as spiteful and vindictive. If his inauguration speech had a shred more dignity than his 2017 American carnage rant, it was back to the same old show at the stadium.
The mocking insults hurled at the vanquished, the snarling rhetoric and meandering tangents were all there for his adoring fans, who lapped up not so much what he said - much of it was incomprehensible - as how he said it. And this is what has me in a sulk today.
Four more years of The Trump Show seems a cruel and unusual punishment.
It's not just the bragging, boasting and derision from the president that'll be intolerable.
It's not the rekindling of the Manifest Destiny notion, coined by an American newspaper editor in 1845 to promote the idea of continental territorial expansion, this time directed at Mars (and Greenland and Canada and Panama).
It's not the arrogance of calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
It's not the incredible tariff con job, which will fuel inflation and make ordinary Americans pay more for the tat they buy at Walmart. Nor is it the plan to deport millions of undocumented migrants who do the jobs Americans refuse to do.
Harder to swallow than all that will be the simpering hypocrisy of our own leaders as they line up to kiss the emperor's ring. To suck up like Mark Zuckerberg did.
Since Trump's election victory, it's felt as if our country has been trapped in an abusive relationship, fearful of what hubby might do if he finds your old diary entries critical of him. Will he or won't he impose tariffs? Is AUKUS still a goer? Will our interest rates stay high because Trump wages a global trade war? Will a couple of degrees be added to the climate when he drills, baby, drills?
Balancing Foreign Minister Penny Wong's fawning over being invited to Trump's inauguration was her warning Australia needed to be realistic about how his America First could make life much harder for us.
With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Mr Hanscombe invited comments and trawled for new subscribers, but all the pond could think to say was that doing four years hard porridge might not be so bad. 

There was always the delight of rain falling on a BRICSS Spain plain, not to mention the 'toons, and the pond will be out of here before the climate truly fucks everything, so look on the bright side, just like Tom Tomorrow does ...