Relax, the pond might be feeling terribly gay, but there's a Mein Gott in the playlist ...

 

The pond did think briefly about donning a MAGA cap and organising a riot in Holt street - apparently the wearing of the cap means Laura N'order must give way to a pardon, and criminals can be freed to riot again at a time and place of their choosing.

On second thoughts, the pond wasn't sure that King Donald I's pardon powers might curry the mustard with local traps and beaks, and so the pond did the usual, and scanned the reptile digital edition ...

Sheesh, the pond is so tired of the rampant Zionism the rag has embraced, and yet they didn't find space to celebrate the killings on the West Bank? Enough already ...

Over on the extreme far right, the top of the world ma crowd managed a collective chorus of Zionism ...

The pond is beyond bored by it all - there wasn't even a petulant Peta to ignore - and so the pond turned back to the news, if only for the pleasure of seeing that there was more trouble at mill, a yarn being generated by that notorious Nazi-salute lover ...

The pond was almost blown away by that image until discovering it was the sort of crap image to be found all over the full to overflowing intertubes ... and just to make an excessive point, in the pond manner ...

You made it past all that AI crap? Amazing ...

Yep, there's a new level of AI visual depravity stalking the land, matched by the moronic behaviour of News Corp, and the pond almost began to think the Nazi salute lover was on to something ...

It wasn't just the reptiles reproducing Dow Jones, it was everywhere ...

Per CNN ...

Shortly after President Donald Trump announced a new massive AI infrastructure investment from the White House, “First Buddy” Elon Musk tried to tear it down.
“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”
Trump said the investment will create a new company, called Stargate, to grow artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. The leaders of SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle stood alongside Trump during the announcement. Their respective companies will invest $100 billion in total for the project to start, with plans to pour up to $500 billion into Stargate in the coming years.
The comments are a notable takedown of a major White House project from someone that is in Trump’s innermost circle. As a sign of how involved Musk is in the first days of the administration, Musk said he was in the Oval Office on Tuesday as Trump signed a pardon for Ross William Ulbricht, founder of the dark web marketplace SilkRoad. Musk had also dispatched a top staffer from his SpaceX and X companies to help ensure the release of convicted January 6 rioters after Trump signed a blanket pardon.
But perhaps it should not be a surprise that Musk is going after an OpenAI initiative. Musk is in an ongoing lawsuit with OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, who was at the White House for the announcement. Musk, who has said he “doesn’t trust” Altman, claims in the lawsuit the ChatGPT has abandoned its original nonprofit mission by reserving some of its most advanced AI technology for private customers.
The companies involved in Stargate have not publicly disclosed how they will contribute the funds, but they don’t necessarily need the money in the bank to support it — they could raise debt or sign on other equity investors.
Altman replied directly to Musk’s claim on X, writing “wrong, as you surely know. want to come visit the first site already under way? this is great for the country. i realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role i hope you’ll mostly put (America) first.”

Epic conflicts of interest, chaos and confusion? Nah. Just another day at the circus with comedy stylings by the inhouse clowns.

You didn't have the popcorn ready? Don't blame the pond, the pond has repeatedly advised that popcorn must be available for the daily showings ...

What else? Well the lesser member of the Kelly gang, a certain Joe, managed to capture some of the ectoplasm emanating from Gina's nostrils and how could the pond resist?

Be like Donald Trump, Gina Rinehart tells nation’s leaders, The nation’s richest person is pushing Australian leaders to emulate Don­ald Trump, urging the Albanese government to set up a version of the Department of Government Efficiency and withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

Of course, of course, despite Clive's epic failure, despite Uncle Leon's eccentric arm-waving, we should give Gina a go, and get the IPA to run our very own dodgy DOGE ...

This sort of story always requires the VIP (very important billionaire) to be featured with another celebrity, and so it came to pass, Gina Rinehart with Argentinian President Javier Milei at the Starlight Ball in Washington on Tuesday (AEDT).

Was that designed to make Gina look like the princess at the ball, with the most handsome of princes? 

For some in explicably perverse reason, the pond was reminded of that Golding cartoon ...

Then it was on with Joe loyally transcribing Gina so that the masses might fawn and succumb ...

The nation’s richest person is pushing Australian political and business leaders to emulate Don­ald Trump’s policy agenda, urging the Albanese government to set up a version of the Department of Government Efficiency and withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
Gina Rinehart says she is hoping that Australians will be “inspired by Don­ald Trump” but warns there is a risk the country will be left behind if it does not ­adequately respond to the new policy agenda being rolled out in Washington.
“If we are sensible, we should set up a DOGE immediately, reduce government waste, gov­ernment tape and regulations,” she said.
Mrs Rinehart also argued in favour of tax cuts while shortening approval processes and compliance in a bid to encourage investment, create jobs and revenue while providing a higher standard of living for Australians.
“Donald Trump has led an important movement with his policies – a movement that is growing and growing,” she told The Australian. “I hope our country is not left behind.”
The US President’s actions in encouraging greater investment in America had served as a “shining light for the world”, she said, and it was time for “people in other countries to now get their governments on board with this”.
Mrs Rinehart, who attended the Starlight Ball in Washington following Mr Trump’s inauguration on Monday, said Australia should withdraw from the Paris Agreement because this was “common sense.”
“The implementation agenda by our governments of the Paris accord is costing our living standards and causing suffering for many Australians and if not abandoned, will likely get worse,” she said.

The reptiles followed up with another snap of Gina at the centre of the action, Gina Rinehart with Vivek Ramaswamy.

Oh that's unfortunate ... the pond could barely remember who that chap on the left of Gina (seen far right) was, and had to have its memory jogged ...

That's better, that's who he is, that's why he's a bigger joke than Liz and the lettuce ...

“Ramaswamy lasted minus one day, OK? He got blown out on Jan. 19, so he’s not even—you can’t even measure him by Scaramuccis, which are 11-day time units,” he said on Politico’s Power Play podcast. “You know, like Liz Truss lasted 4.1 Scaramuccis, right? This guy didn’t even make it, right? He was minus a day.”
Truss was the former British prime minster who was outlasted by a lettuce. Coincidentally Truss was seen in D.C. partying and claiming to be learning how to “foment revolution” last weekend by The Swamp, the Daily Beast’s must-read newsletter about Washington’s secrets.

Apart from the comedy of hanging around with dropkick losers who don't even know how to match it with a lettuce or do a dinkum Nazi salute, what else has Gina got to offer?

Mrs Rinehart said Mr Trump had “set the world stage for others to follow” because he understood intermittent energy caused problems for manufacturing and other businesses by pushing up electricity prices, which punished those on low incomes the most.
She also said there was a double standard at play, arguing that renewable and clean energy projects were being fast-tracked and not held to the same standards as other projects, including in the resources and agriculture sectors.
“Farmlands and the environment and native animals’ habitat are being destroyed by the hasty clearing of thousands of miles of countryside for the very expensive intermittent power infrastructure, without any of the studies or safeguard conditions or approvals those in mining and agriculture must go through,” she said.
“We need our politicians to walk away (from the Paris Agreement). That is not Donald Trump’s job or responsibility. It is ours.”

Yeay, fuck the planet ... you know it's the right thing to do, and maybe while we're at it, fuck the country too ...

Back for more musings on the new Darth ...

Mrs Rinehart, a Trump supporter who attended the victory celebrations following his election win last November at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, said most Australians knew their country was “off course”.
She said a big-spending government at home was driving up the cost of living, and she hoped the public started to “call for some real leadership in Australia”.
In a blast at woke culture, she said it was time for political and corporate leaders to “hit the stop button” like Mr Trump had done in the US.

Sigh, the pond almost forgot the prize...

Do bigot on like a fuckhead...

“Donald Trump has also declared there are only two true genders,” she said.
“This reset now presents the leadership for other Western nations. This is the type of leadership our nation needs rather than ... corporates who are too scared to take on this cult in Australia.”
Ms Rinehart praised the inauguration address from Mr Trump for its restoration of “sensible leadership” that would help to “fix America after four years of rising costs, failing businesses (and) declining standards of living”.

Okay, okay, she's just a fair average vile bigot with lots of cash in paw - how is that news? - but what an excuse to turn to the immortal Rowe ...

At this point, some correspondents might be wondering if the pond intended to get serious at any point, and luckily the pond at hand some leftover Mein Gott. 

It was only a day old, so the pond took it out of the fridge, popped it in the microwave and scored this ...

Here’s what we can learn from Trump and his economic agenda, Strip away the bluster and Donald Trump’s US economic agenda is based on three key pillars. The utopia may crash down, but until then here’s what it means for Australians.

It was the holy text Mein Gott had promised, as exciting as discovering a bit of apocrypha written on papyrus, and it came with snaps, showing the adoration of the MagAi ...

Larry Ellison, executive chairman of Oracle, listens to US President Donald Trump speak in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Dear sweet long absent lord, it was the same mob that had produced the ruckus featured above, but the pond stayed true ...utopia was at hand, a way out of the wilderness, perhaps even a chance to organise a riot in Holt street and score a pardon...

Strip away the bluster and Donald Trump’s US economic agenda is based on three pillars: extra ‘revenue’ by slashing the cost of providing public services; a GST-style tax (tariffs) on imports; and low cost energy to supply the enormous demand being created by the next stage of the computer revolution led by artificial intelligence.
Today, I will also discuss the implications of these pillars to Australian politicians making promises and make a small request, without criticism, to Commissioner of Taxation Rob Heferen who can pioneer an Australian regulatory public service response in a tiny ATO area. And in the process he would help our government schools and save many small volunteer sporting bodies.

Mein Gott was sounding incredibly serious. He hasn't just displaced the bromancer on matters of defence, he's kept his old job as expert on matters economic, and he attends conferences, or so the snap suggests, Commission of Taxation Rob Heferen and ASIC commissioner Kate O'Rourke during a panel discussion at the COSBOA conference in Sydney. Picture: John Feder

The pond sat at the feet of this guru, eager to learn, and to hell with all that jibber jabber about no guru, no method, no teacher ... the pond knew that correspondents would find this religious instruction an inspiration ...

Trump will also require defence partners like Australia to contribute substantially more money to their defence, and complying partners may gain some exemptions from the tariffs.
Under the plan, the US inflationary implications will be muted by a high American dollar, more productivity and an argument to the Federal Reserve that the impact of the GST/tariffs be excluded from interest rate settings.
The above policy is planned to enable lower taxes and, most importantly, politicians will be able to raise money without massive reductions in public services because the cost of delivering those benefits (not the benefits themselves) will be slashed.
This utopian vision may come crashing down but given Australia is going to be required to invest substantially more in defence and reinvigorate the abandoned space program of Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, Australia will need to substantially raise taxes and/or slash services unless it embraces the techniques being introduced into the US to transform the efficiency of delivering public services.
This new approach to government efficiency is the brainchild of Elon Musk, who developed management techniques that transformed the production of electric cars and enabled the US to become the world’s leading nation in space communication, with huge defence implications.
As I explained earlier this week, the Musk driven program starts with substantial simplification of government regulatory bodies, which will be reduced from the current level of 400 to around 100.

Oh dear, immediate confusion. The pond had just read Uncle Leon rabbiting on about how dropping 500 squillion on AI was a pipe dream, and yet there he was offering substantial simplification (not to mention Nazi salutes). 

The pond was immediately reassured by the next snap, Google CEO Sundar Pichai (C, L) and SpaceX, X and Tesla CEO Elon Musk watch during the inauguration of Donald Trump. Picture: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AFP

Inspirational, and the pond suspects the reptiles will never, ever feature that other snap of Uncle Leon ...

... thereby depriving the pond of the chance to link to Did Elon Musk give a Nazi or Roman salute, and what’s the difference? Historians say Musk clearly made Nazi salute – but supporter claims he was inspired by Roman greeting adopted by Benito Mussolini ... or to ...News Organizations Are Tiptoeing Around What We All Saw, How fear of litigation shapes coverage of influential figures‘ ... or to ... Catastrophic’: Great Barrier Reef hit by its most widespread coral bleaching, study finds, More than 40% of individual corals monitored around One Tree Island reef bleached by heat stress and damaged by flesh-eating disease

Sorry, sorry, how the hell did that one end up in the mix? That's a job for Lloydie of the Amazon or the Riddster ... and the pond is standing by, waiting further orders.

Still, the question has to be asked: was that link playlist compiled by the Village People, anxious to keep everyone feeling terribly gay (in a strictly Wodehouse sense of the word, if you can overlook the leather pants and the bear hair)? 

Meanwhile, we must take seriously what a Nazi salute and AfD lover is proposing for the masses, thanks be to guru Mein Gott ...

The revolution in government bodies will extend into lowering the costs of providing public services. Essential to the cost reduction process we will be Musk’s so-called “idiot index”
The “idiot index” is the ratio of the total cost of the base “raw materials” in a product or service which covers physical items like metal, rubber plastics but also the cost of actual services being provided. Then the actual cost of delivering those products or services is calculated.
An item of service or a product with a high “idiot index” might cost $1m to deliver when the base ingredients cost only $10,000. As Musk describes it; “if the ratio is high, you are an idiot”. But it’s not the workers or middle management who are the idiots. It’s the
CEO.

(Being rigorous, the pond preserved the original formatting. Idiot layout for an idiot CEO doing his best to tarnish his brands, such that the streets of Newtown are now littered with Teslas carrying stickers disavowing any responsibility for being seen dead in a heilwagen).

Do carry on ...

Musk found that the only way to tackle products or services with a high “idiot index” was for the chief executive (in the case of Tesla and SpaceX that was Musk) to go down into the operation room and discover the detail including regulations and the actual people (not organisations) imposing those regulations.
Accordingly, Australian operations with a high “idiot index” will require chief executives who roll up their sleeves and find new ways to deliver their goods or services.
In Australia, former minister Bill Shorten did a good job containing the in the NDIS expenditure, but the NDIS and similar organisations will not be sustainable in an era of higher defence and space expenditure unless a different way of delivering their services is devised.

Just to remind those in the hive mind, who had already forgotten,  Bill Shorten at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

Ah comrade Bill, it seems so long ago ...

And then a strange thing happened. Mein Gott forgot where he was, dropped Uncle Leon and the rest of the rabble and veered off into his very own hive mind.

It was time now to punish all those bloody bludgers and make everyone understand the pleasure of volunteering, because nothing beats doing everything for nothing ...

In the NDIS, there are more than 300,000 equivalent full-time workers – a massive operation which is far bigger than our agriculture and mining industries.
NDIS is not the only government in that situation, so the nation needs to study what Musk is doing and look what works and what doesn’t work when his “idiot index” is applied to public services.
And so we come to Heferen. There are no significant revenue implications in the task I set for him. But if Heferen has the courage to personally (delegation does not work) step into the unknown, he can help our government schools and save large numbers of our volunteer run small sporting bodies. The national community benefit will be enormous.
A Sydney state school small voluntary body that is helping to provide music for students has just received a 97 point position manifesto — repeat 97 points – on whether music conductors are contractors or employees.
I won’t go into the details, except that it is incredibly complex and personally dangerous for voluntary body committee members around Australia.
In some areas, a school music conductor’s status swings on what happens when that conductor delegates their job to someone else on a particular day and whether that replacement person sends an invoice.
The 97 point manifesto can bankrupt voluntary bodies and destroy the financial standing of their members. If an invoice wasn’t sent or some other breach of the 97 point manifesto is found, they could be liable for back superannuation.
The bodies don’t have the money, These are ordinary Australians who receive no financial remuneration for helping our young people. And they are subjected to this nonsense.
On behalf of our young people around the country, I ask Heferen to roll up his sleeves and find out the regulation that causes this damage; work out a way to fix it and then find which person (public servant or minister) who has inadvertently caused this community damage and show them how to fix it.
If parliamentary approval is required, give any individual person who holds up the process the required push along. I think everyone in the parliament will support any voluntary body changes required
And can I make one extra request? While you are in ATO operations, ask whether many small enterprises about to be bankrupted were given clear reasons for their original tax assessment.

Splendid stuff, an economy driven by unpaid volunteers... yeah, nah, all good ...