A few late Friday arvo treats ...

 

The pond had a guilty pleasure today watching Rachel Maddow gloating about King Donald's polling collapse...

The news was pretty much everywhere...

Maddow in particular was gloating about the latest Gallup Poll, which had some splendid headline figures...

Don't even ask about Congress - the joke headline was that it had "jumped" to a massive 29%.

There's a lot more, there were a lot of numbers for Maddow and others to get excited about ...

Maddow did a montage of headlines, and local news, and Republicans shouting at a Georgia Repuglican rep to do his job ... the 'don't bend over' line helped it go viral...

Just for fun, a sampling of some of the headlines ...

The pond settled for the notion that King Donald was in the tank, and already his poll numbers were showing as much popularity as a dead fish rotting from the head ... go Kash ...

The pond also noticed that Anne Applebaum had popped into the pond's in-box in a state of hysteria. She was in The Atlantic furiously scribbling The End of the Postwar World,Trump and Vance are sending a dark message to America’s allies. 

She was agitated about many things ... 

This is just an example... the link will lead to more ...

...In his first term as president, Trump’s Cabinet members and advisers repeatedly restrained him from insulting allies or severing military and diplomatic links. Now he has surrounded himself with people who are prepared to enact and even encourage the radical changes he always wanted, cheered on by thousands of anonymous accounts on X. Of course America’s relations with allies are complex and multilayered, and in some form they will endure. But American allies, especially in Europe, need to face up to this new reality and make some dramatic changes.
This shift began with what felt at first like ad hoc, perhaps unserious attacks on the sovereignty of Denmark, Canada, and Panama. Events over the past week or so have provided further clarification. At a major multinational security conference in Munich last weekend, I sat in a room full of defense ministers, four-star generals and security analysts—people who procure ammunition for Ukrainian missile defense, or who worry about Russian ships cutting fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea. All of them were expecting Vice President J. D. Vance to address these kinds of concerns. Instead, Vance told a series of misleading stories designed to demonstrate that European democracies aren’t democratic.
Vance, a prominent member of the political movement that launched the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, had to know what he was doing: flipping the narrative, turning arguments upside down in the manner of a Russian propagandist. But the content of his speech, which cherry-picked stories designed to portray the U.K., Germany, Romania, and other democracies as enemies of free expression, was less important than the fact that he gave a speech that wasn’t about the very real Russian threat to the continent at all: He was telling the Europeans present that he wasn’t interested in discussing their security. They got the message.
A few days before the Munich conference, the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went to Kyiv and presented President Volodymyr Zelensky with a two-page document and asked him to sign. Details of this proposed agreement began to leak last weekend. It calls for the U.S. to take 50 percent of all “economic value associated with resources of Ukraine,” including “mineral resources, oil and gas resources, ports, other infrastructure,” not just now but forever, as the British newspaper The Telegraph reported and others confirmed: “For all future licenses the U.S. will have a right of first refusal for the purchase of exportable minerals,” the document says.
Europeans have contributed more resources to Ukraine’s military and economic survival than the U.S. has—despite Trump’s repeated, untruthful claims to the contrary—but would presumably be cut out of this deal. The Ukrainians, who have suffered hundreds of thousands of military and civilian casualties, whose cities have been turned to rubble, whose national finances have been decimated, and whose personal lives have been disrupted, are offered nothing in exchange for half their wealth: No security guarantees, no investment. These terms resemble nothing so much as the Versailles Treaty imposed on a defeated Germany after World War I, and are dramatically worse than those imposed on Germany and Japan after World War II. As currently written, they could not be carried out under Ukrainian law. Zelensky, for the moment, did not sign.
The cruelty of the document is remarkable, as are its ambiguities. People who have seen it say that it does not explain exactly which Americans would be the beneficiaries of this deal. Perhaps the American government? Perhaps the president’s friends and business partners? The document also reportedly says that all disputes would be resolved by courts in New York, as if a New York court could adjudicate something so open-ended. But the document at least served to reiterate Vance’s message, and to add a new element: The U.S. doesn’t need or want allies—unless they can pay.
Trump made this new policy even clearer during a press conference on Tuesday, when he made a series of false statements about Ukraine that he later repeated in social-media posts. No, Ukraine did not start the war; Russia launched the invasion, Russia is still attacking Ukraine, and Russia could end the war today if it stopped attacking Ukraine. No, the U.S. did not spend “$350 billion” in Ukraine. No, Volodymyr Zelensky does not have “four percent” popularity; the real number is more than 50 percent, higher than Trump’s. No, Zelensky is not a “dictator”; Ukrainians, unlike Russians, freely debate and argue about politics. But because they are under daily threat of attack, the Ukrainian government has declared martial law and postponed elections until a cease-fire. With so many people displaced and so many soldiers at the front line, Ukrainians fear that an election would be dangerous, unfair, and an obvious target for Russian manipulation, as even Zelensky’s harshest critics agree.

Well, yes, there's a 'toon for that ...

Not Chewie hanging out with the evil empire's emperor, that's got to hurt ...(wait a bit, Star Wars is a popular metaphor this day).

I can’t tell you exactly why Trump chose to repeat these falsehoods, or why his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, once made a TikTok video of herself repeating them, or why they directly echo the Russian propaganda that has long sought to portray Zelensky, along with the nation of Ukraine itself, as illegitimate. Plenty of Republicans, including some I met in Munich, know that these claims aren’t true. American allies must draw a lesson: Trump is demonstrating that he can and will align himself with whomever he wants—Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Salman, perhaps eventually with Xi Jinping—in defiance of past treaties and agreements. In order to bully Ukraine into signing unfavorable deals, he is even willing to distort reality.
In these circumstances, everything is up for grabs, any relationship is subject to bargaining. Zelensky knows this already: It was he who originally proposed giving Americans access to rare-earth metals, in order to appeal to a transactional U.S. president, although without imagining that the concession would be in exchange for nothing. Zelensky is trying to acquire other kinds of leverage too. This week he flew to Istanbul, where the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, reaffirmed his support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, in defiance of the U.S.

And so on, and then to make the pond's Friday compleat, the dog botherer turned up in a state of hysteria, panic, fear and loathing ...

Eek, the redhead, even though she's a fading star, and Clive of the Titanic ... and some troublesome Tasmanian devil over there on the left ...

How badly does it hurt? The dog botherer wailing for a good six minutes, or so the reptiles say, and he started off in the header by quoting the French clock lover as he flew over the heartland to Paris ...

The election could could throw up a parliamentary flea circus, Paul Keating rightly called the upper house ‘unrepresentative swill’ and it has become only increasingly unrepresentative as more independents and minor parties wallow in the slops. Now we risk turning the house of government into the same godawful mess.

That's got to hurt. Paul Keating rightly ...

Is that the first time the French clock man has been right in the lizard Oz?

The poor dog botherer was like Alice in wonderland, but more to the point, he was back in the land of Star Wars metaphors, hanging out with Chewie, having a quiet ale, so the DB could sob into his booze ... Our Senate has turned into a madhouse where major parties can be sidelined by a Star Wars bar full of Greens, Hansonites, Palmerites, Lambieites, Xenophonites and quasi-teals.

Mix up one pathetic collage and repeat the terrifying dose ...

Then the dog botherer began cranking up to 11:

As ineffectual and incompetent as the Albanese Labor government is in the here and now, we may look back on it with fondness in two months as a period of relatively predictable inadequacy.

I know that sounds crazy, but our election could throw up a parliamentary flea circus where the smallest players make the biggest calls.

The attraction of our preferential voting system is that it moderates outcomes; when no candidate wins a popular majority in any electorate the preferences ensure it goes to a candidate acceptable to most voters according to preferences. But in the Senate proportional representation com­bined with the small quotas that come from having 12 seats in each state give us the opposite effect, almost guaranteeing that fringe candidates get elected into positions that can wield the balance of power.

Naturally the reptiles found the room for a little AV cross-promotion, blessed by flag and Liberal promo...but ominously, with empty, desolate podium ...

Sky News host Chris Kenny discusses the “worry” of centre right parties taking preferences and votes away from the Nationals and LNP in such a “tight” election. “The broader domestic debate, we have seen it before with One Nation at their peak,” Mr Kenny said. “You get these right of centre parties, and they attract a certain portion of the vote … take first preferences away from the Nationals and the LNP.”

Where's Citizen Kane when he's needed?

Was the pond sharing the sounds of the dog botherer's alarums? Neigh, the pond was horsing around ... as the Star Wars metaphor came around another time ...like a bad penny, except King Donald is banning the penny ...

Increasingly this has turned our Senate into a madhouse where major parties can be sidelined by a Star Wars bar full of Greens, Hansonites, Palmerites, Lambieites, Xenophonites, quasi-teals or any number of kangaroo poo-throwing novices and major party rejects. Paul Keating rightly called the upper house “unrepresentative swill” and it has become only increasingly unrepresentative as more independents and minor parties wallow in the slops.

At this election we risk turning the house of government into the same godawful mess. The combination of compulsory preferential voting, disillusionment with the major parties and contemporary selfie politics (where many voters like to put someone just like them into parliament) has delivered an unprecedented number of independent and minor party MPs in the House of Representatives, and they could decide which major party governs the country.

We have lived this nightmare before. Nearly 15 years ago Rob Oakeshott went live to the nation for his 15 minutes of fame, then added two more minutes, before announcing he would join fellow independent Tony Windsor in backing Julia Gillard’s Labor government (which also did a deal with the Greens).

A godawful mess. He's taking the long absent lord's name in vain!

After turning foul-mouthed atheist - waiter, soap please - there followed a couple of napshots of long forgotten figures, whirling out of the dog botherer fog of war, Rob Oakeshott. Picture: Lindsay Moller Productions, Tony Windsor. Picture: Marlon Dalton

Why one of them's from out Tamworth way, he can't be all bad...

On and on the dog botherer wailed and sobbed ... and how the pond supped on his tears ...

What a fine mess that got us into. It was so bad that before the term was up Labor MPs held their noses and brought back Kevin Rudd as prime minister, complete with new leadership rules that make a Labor prime minister about as susceptible to challenges as Kim Jong-un.

In my view Tony Abbott made a crucial error back in 2010 as opposition leader.

Oakeshott and Windsor were both former conservatives who had won their conser­vative seats without relinq­uish­ing their conservative dispositions. They had an obligation to support a Coalition government because it was clearly what their electorates would have expected – it was implicit, if not explicit, in their political positioning.

When I said so at the time and predicted neither man would have the courage to face their electorates for judgment again, both reacted angrily, insisting they would re-contest their seats – neither did, and both seats returned to the Coalition in 2013.

So what did Abbott do wrong? He validated the independents’ so-called neutrality through days and weeks of negotiation.

Even that noble figure, Former prime minister Tony Abbott. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman, came in for a dog botherer slagging ...

The mouth was open, but the reptiles refused to show its obvious fit-for-purpose use ...

That's better, that's what to shove into the onion muncher's open mouth ...

Perhaps it might have been better to shove one into the dog botherer's mouth (if no smelly sock was handy) ...

Labor and the Coalition met separately with Oakeshott and Windsor, wheeling and dealing over policies and promises, awaiting news of who they would choose to run the nation. It was rank and undemocratic.

At the time I though Abbott and the Coalition should have made the case publicly that Oakeshott and Windsor owed it to their electorates, the parliament and the country to instal a Coalition government. Better to put that moral expectation on them, along with the weight of their electorates’ expectations, than to play into their egomaniacal bargaining for power. The worst that could have happened is that Oakeshott and Windsor could have ignored this pressure and installed Labor, which they did anyway.

Yet it would have been clear to all that they had abandoned their electorates, and the Coalition would have stood defiantly on the high moral ground.

This is relevant now because in the event of a hung parliament – quite likely based on current polling – there will be frenetic post-election horse-trading.

On the Labor side we know it can count on the Greens, who will only drag the once proud ALP further to the loony left.

Yet the prospect, put by some, that the Coalition could bargain with the teals is equally appalling. Most of the teals are just a different shade of green, and the most economically literate of them, Allegra Spender, is so far off the charts on climate demands that she could not possibly have any sway in a Coalition government.

Oh not the climate, Teal Allegra Spender is so far off the charts on climate that she could not have sway in a Coalition government. Picture: Martin Ollman/The Australian

That gave the pond a chance to link to the Graudian interactive, Two-thirds of the Earth’s surface experienced record heat in 2024

Some grand images popped up ... the pond liked the one for May ...

Of course things like this don't terrify the dog botherer. 

He's only terrified if anyone takes the signs seriously, and shows serious signs of wanting to do something about it ...

Panic time ...why the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and the turning of it into a new Riviera for the filthy rich might be in peril ...

Spender also has been weak on Israel, signing a letter demanding Labor return funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East even after its staff were exposed as Hamas terrorists in the October 7 atrocities. The teals need to be exposed and defeated, not courted.

It would be emaciating for the Coalition if after an inconclusive election Peter Dutton were to indulge in a series of meetings with the teals and others, competing with Labor for their favour, offering an assortment of irrational climate policies and giveaways. Dutton could do all that and then see them opt for Labor anyway.

Much better to apply maximum pressure on the non-committed independents to declare their inclinations ahead of time – put pressure on them every day, invite them to deny a vote for them is a vote for Labor.

Dutton also should announce pre-election that he will shun such dealings and instead offer a set of criteria he would expect independents to abide by in the event of a hung parliament, such as how the major parties fare by seat count and popular vote.

Oh dear, and yet the mutton Dutton has made such a good start ...

The dog botherer was inconsolable ... it's one thing to be attracted, it's another thing to nail that object of desire and lust ...

Again, it might be ignored by the crossbench MPs. But it is a more transparent and democratic way to operate, and if it fails to deliver power it will expose a Labor-Greens-teals conglomeration at the outset, setting the terms for the following election.

Many would argue this is unrealistic, that realpolitik means a party is beholden to consider just about any deal to muster the numbers. My point is that you can lose more than you win in such exchanges, even if you form government (ask Gillard).

An alternative government must have core policies and values that are non-negotiable, it must make them clear before an election, and they must not be up for negotiation with a bunch of wildcats who have campaigned on a completely different subset of ideals. Compromise and accommodation are a daily part of politics, sure, but there are limits, and it is voters and their will that should decide who forms government, not side deals.

Some independents are a natural fit for the Coalition and common ground can be identified with them before the election. Andrew Gee, the former Nationals MP in Calare, Dai Le in Fowler, Bob Katter in Queensland, and even, perhaps, Rebekha Sharkie in South Australia are examples.

The teals are problematic, bristling at Liberal research showing they voted with the Greens in parliament on 70 to 80 per cent of occasions. Spender took to social media countering that she voted 60 per cent with Liberals, 50 per cent with Labor, 45 per cent with the Greens and 100 per cent for Wentworth.

Do we want our national government decided by interpretations from one or two teals about what their electorates might want? Would this be a sell-out of democracy given the teals are the top spenders on individual seat campaigns, receive millions of dollars from millionaire and billionaire donors, and are supported financially and strategically by Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200 outfit?

There are some hard decisions to be made on preferencing. The Coalition needs to put the Greens last everywhere and demand Labor does the same.

Most Labor MPs ride into parliament on Greens preferences. Yet the Greens have become a hateful party rife less concerned with the environment than they are with stirring up anti-Israeli hatred and sabotaging our economy.

Former Victorian state Labor MP Tony Lupton demonstrated the power of an alternative approach in the Prahran by-election this month. Running as an independent and preferencing the Liberals ahead of the Greens he ensured the Greens lost and the Liberals won.

Wait, there's still hope, in the shape of Former Victorian Labor MP Tony Lupton.

Rats in the ranks. It might be the only hope of salvation.

The disconsolate dog botherer picked desultorily at a few threads of comfort as he wended his way to a fearfully shambolic conclusion ...

Lupton says if his beloved ALP does this more broadly it will benefit by isolating the Greens and developing a stronger political brand itself. Currently, the ALP allows itself to be cannibalised by the Greens.
Another test for Labor is The Muslim Vote candidates. Both major parties should repudiate this regressive move towards sectarian politicking.
And with Clive Palmer’s new Trumpian incarnation, the preferences could be flying thick and fast on the right side of the count too. Palmer could hurt Labor with his advertising spend, but he undoubtedly will damage the Coalition in some seats by splintering the conservative vote.
It must be time for a serious debate about adopting optional preferential voting – why should voters be forced to exhaust their preferences when they might believe only one or two of the options are viable? This system has worked well in NSW.
Along with shrinking the Senate to increase the quota, this would provide the most achievable democratic reforms to help resist the trend towards endemic chaos. But that debate is for another day.
For now, we must contemplate whether strong policy differentiation between the major parties at the looming election may arrest or reclaim the drift to independents and minor parties and help deliver a majority government.
If not, I fear we will see haggling over who forms government in shambolic scenes that may make Oakeshott look like a paragon of brevity and wit.

What fun. 

He blathered, ranted and raged for a good six minutes and then had the cheek to berate others about brevity and wit. Only a truly verbose and witless scribbler like him could manage it.

And that's how the pond prefers the dog botherer,... all gloomy and deep in a panic attack, trying to wade of endemic chaos, the way that Alice tried to fling off that attack by those pesky flying cards ...

That mention of Titanic Clive was the capper, and luckily the pond could end with a cartoon celebrating his role in causing the dog botherer's agitation, such that the DB soon might need a cone around his neck to stop all the scratching and biting at his raw flesh ...

Fear not ... the dog botherer is an expert at the dogwhistle of division ... all he needs to do is pucker up his lips and blow ...