In which the Lynch mob embarks on a weird strategy to defend the Cantaloupe Caligula, followed by a few 'toons ...

 

Just to keep the local flavour from the pond's deep south tour going ... this one was decidedly weird ...

It wasn't just the pose or the gesture with the fingers - perhaps a response to his third term - it was the way that the pose meant that his hand was full of white-ish looking pigeon poo (discreetly hidden by the framing).

Speaking of poo, the pond should now offer up its daily serve of reptile poo ...

So much omitted at the top of the digital edition in the pursuit of the lizard Oz agenda, and over on the extreme far right, it was pretty much the same story ...

The pond can never come at petulant Peta, bigot and hate-monger from hell, and it's especially hard while in holyday mode ...

The dour sourpuss does however provide a solution to the question raised in relation to another matter ...

...Asio’s director general, Mike Burgess, was provided with an overview of the case by Queensland senator Gerard Rennick during Tuesday night’s hearing. Rennick accused the Daily Telegraph team of “stirring trouble” and trying to “bait” staff into making a prejudiced statement.
“In that case, if those facts are correct, then that is just mind-blowingly stupid, is it not, and inappropriate that you would do something to generate a headline,” Burgess told the hearing.
“[It’s] entirely unhelpful and think about the poor person on the receiving end of that.”
Greens senator David Shoebridge then questioned why Burgess was not more critical of the alleged sting operation and suggested it deserved more attention from the domestic spy agency, which has repeatedly warned of social division.
“The concerns that many people have is this was not a moment of stupidity, this was a planned, resourced and approved sting operations to try and sow division on the streets of Sydney,” Shoebridge told the hearing.
“It didn’t appear to be stupid, it appeared to be venal, planned, nasty and divisive … That is more troubling than something mind-blowingly stupid.”

Surely, as with petulant Peta, it can be both ... mind-blowingly stupid, while also being venal, planned, nasty and divisive ...

Speaking of nasty - and the pond isn't talking about Uncle Leon calling the Cantaloupe Caligula a fucking moron (archive, with unfortunate bot addition) - WaPo seems to still be dying in billionaire darkness ...

It was sad to see the rag go down ... per the Graudian 

Washington Post opinion editor departs as Bezos pushes to promote ‘personal liberties and free markets’, Opinion editor leaves as Amazon executive and newspaper owner says ‘viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others’

It was in the Beast as Legendary Washington Post Editor Slams Bezos for ‘Betraying’ Paper (archive) with MAGA Makeover, Former executive editor Marty Baron told the Daily Beast there was “no doubt in my mind” that Bezos was prioritizing his business interests over The Washington Post.

Over at The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last saw a chance to plug their offerings in The Washington Post and Autocracy’s Asymmetric Advantage, Liberalism is afraid to take its own side.

Poor old MSNBC ...

While MSNBC holds to the honor system and tries to be fair to Republicans, Fox News paid $787 million dollars so that it could knowingly lie about Democrats.

Of late MSNBC hasn't tried to be fair to its demographic, or its black hosts ...

As for the billionaire?

...It is precisely the fact that Bezos understands that Trump cares nothing for “personal liberties and free markets” that leads him to disfigure the newspaper he owns.

Liberalism has no answer for oligarchs who care only about wealth, because the liberal order does not either punish or reward them without due process according to the transparent rule of law. Illiberalism, on the other hand, offers plenty of punishment and reward.

Liberal society must be willing to take its own side and elites like Bezos must be willing to accept discomfort.

If not? Well, we know where the road leads. We are already a good ways down it

Across the aisle, William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Joe Perticone were moaning It IS Happening Here

Trump’s autocratic project isn’t some threat on the horizon. It’s our current moment.

WaPo did try to look like it was business as usual ... with standard click bait stories about failing Tesla and rampant hypocrisy and resistance and measles ...

But when you read the likes of Philip Bump, rabbiting on in his usual way in What political scientists see as worrisome, Republicans see as welcome, Many Trump supporters welcome a strongman government, with 55 percent viewing it positively (archive), all that's visible are painful ironies ...

So Bump ends ...

Ten years ago, the idea that Americans might welcome such leadership would probably have inspired skepticism. The idea that such a system of government might soon be considered possible would have been considered wildly alarmist.

Today it very much does not. A system of government in which the legislature is unwilling to hold the chief executive in check as he seizes power constitutionally allocated to them? A chief executive eagerly undercutting democratic norms as he centralizes authority in the White House? Sounds more familiar than fantastic.

And to a lot of Republicans, it seems, it sounds pretty good.

The pond could only offer a few editorial hints and revisions ...

Ten years ago, the idea that American journalists and commentary writers might welcome the diktats of their billionaire owner would probably have inspired skepticism. The idea that such a system of diktats might soon be considered possible would have been considered wildly alarmist.

Today it very much does not. A system of newspaper ownership diktats in which the journalists are unwilling to hold the billionaire owner in check as he seizes power usually allocated to them under the notional heading of a free and fair press? A billionaire owner eagerly undercutting democratic norms as he centralizes authority to himself? Sounds more familiar than fantastic.

And to a lot of journalists, eager to make a crust and keep the job market wolf from the door, it seems, it sounds pretty good ...

Or, if you will, what the actual fuck ...

So Hearst, so the Murdochians, so Bezos, same as it ever was ...

All that sounded like the perfect segue into a local offering, this one from the man determined to ruin the reputation of the University of Melbourne.

All American presidents betray their friends, The US-led world order is on the verge of collapse. Again. And Donald Trump is next in line to disappoint his friends – he’s just less bothered than his predecessors about admitting it.

It was an alleged five minute read from the Lynch mob, and in it he did a Henry and roamed through history, with the point being to downplay the thought that these might be exceptional times.

So start with a snap of completely normal sociopaths, US President Donald Trump speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2017.

Then to the nub of the argument ...

A little more than a month into his second term and already we have reached a new peak of Trump derangement syndrome. His creeping betrayal of Ukraine and embrace of Russian leader Vladimir Putin has stunned Europe. The US-led world order is on the verge of collapse. Again.

According to the sublimely silly Lynch mob, the only way out of TDS is to propose that the United States has always been led by fuckers and fucking morons determined to fuck the world ...

In truth, that order has always been chimerical and American perfidy often balances its altruism. Donald Trump is next in line to disappoint his friends – he is just less bothered than his predecessors about admitting it.

In order to save the reputation of the United States under a mango Mussolini, you must destroy the village and the country ...

US president Woodrow Wilson watched for nearly three years as Europeans bled themselves white in World War I. It was only German U-boat attacks on Americans and their ships that tipped him into war on the Allied side.

Wilson’s plan to make the world safe for democracy after German defeat – in his Fourteen Points and League of Nations – was rejected by the US Senate.

American isolationism was a stain on world politics for the next two decades. Communism and fascism marched across Europe and Asia.

That's fine by the pond, but deeply weird, a kind of narcissistic donning of the cilice that's worthy of Mel Gibson ...

Cue a snap of all that was wrong with America ... Representatives at the Paris Conference in 1919 (L-R), David Lloyd George, Vittorio Orlando, George Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson.

On and on the Lynch mob rambled, pissing inside the tent in order to avoid pissing on - to use Uncle Leon's words - that fucking moron ...

It took a surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, not the invasion of Poland in 1939, to bring the US into World War II.

Franklin Roosevelt maintained US neutrality – as France was conquered and Britain stood alone – for the war’s first two years. Poland’s fate was to be handed to the Soviet Union – the state that had dismembered it in a deal with Nazi Germany, beginning World War II – for the next half century.

The Western allies became practised at respecting Russia’s buffer zone. Trump may not know this history but he it gives cover in Ukraine.

We remember the Allied victory in 1945 as ushering in 80 years of US global engagement – which, it is claimed, Trump is busily ending. Perhaps. But those years also were replete with American infidelities and desertions. Trump is inextricably part of that less lauded American tradition. The US, of course, rebuilt Germany and Japan. No nation in history has done more to generate global prosperity and freedom than the US. It sponsored European reconstruction and offered security against Soviet communism.

What's the real point of this exercise? Why it's a way for the Lynch mob to not have to join an apology tour ...

No needy for sorry in the world of the Lynch mob.

It's as if posing as a rampant leftist raging about the guilt of America is a low road to extreme far right populism ...

But it also did little to roll back that ideology in Eastern Europe – what we now think of as Russia’s “near abroad”, where Ukraine uncomfortably sits.

Harry Truman is blamed for losing China in 1949. He also acquiesced to the Soviet colonisation of Prague, Warsaw and East Berlin. We can hear echoes of Truman’s realpolitik in Trump’s selling out of Kyiv. In 1956, Dwight Eisenhower left Britain, France and Israel twisting in the Egyptian wind. His refusal to back their seizure of the Suez Canal doomed the intervention. A few years later, the clever Harvard men surrounding John F. Kennedy got him into Vietnam. Australia and South Korea followed him there.

At this point the reptiles introduced an obvious candidate for denigration, Dwight Eisenhower.

The message: everyone did it, so it's fine for the Cantaloupe Clown to do it too ...

After 58,000 American soldiers died in South Vietnam’s defence, the Nixon administration abandoned the south to its zealous neighbour. Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine will be comparatively much easier. The pattern extends into the post-Cold War era. Bill Clinton had no interest in rebuilding Afghanistan after Soviet withdrawal – made possible by Ronald Reagan’s covert support of the Mujaheddin. The Taliban filled the vacuum. Indeed, George W. Bush, the last great military interventionist, is roundly condemned for his use of force to liberate Muslims. I wrote a book defending his war on terror and was quickly transported to Australia.

The men after W. have been studious avoiders of hard power.

Barack Obama, the supposedly anti-Trump president, forsook foreigners just as easily as his successor. Omer Aziz, a scholar of the Syrian civil war, described Obama’s failure to intervene in these terms: “The Syrian uprising (in 2011) was ignited by children who spray-painted anti-Assad slogans on their school’s wall. They were arrested and tortured the next day. Their fellow citizens, who had lost their innocence long ago, took to the streets to demand their dignity. They chanted, ‘One, one, one, the Syrian people are one.’ They threw flowers on (US) ambassador (Robert) Ford’s car when he went to their rally. They thought the Americans were with them. But the US was nowhere to be found.”

Trump 1.0 honed his desertion of ally strategy on the Kurds, one of the most pro-American people on Earth. Joe Biden’s bolting from Afghnistan in 2021 was an error of judgment almost as catastrophic as his choice of vice-president. Trump 2.0 now risks in his appeasement of Russia being seen like Biden in Afghanistan: handing an ally to an enemy.

Then came another candidate designed to make the mango Mussolini look good, Richard Nixon.

See how easy it is to distract from current criminality by evoking past criminals? 

Why, done expertly, it can make the barking mad JD seem perfectly normal ... just another Spiro on the loose ... or perhaps a sight from which nobody need quail ...

We are nostalgic for a “rules-based” world order that the US often lacked the resolve to sustain. From Saigon to Damascus and Kabul to Kyiv, the US has a long and depressing record of walking away from allies.

Consider, also, despite the outrage directed towards US Vice-President JD Vance in Munich this month, that falling out with Europeans is an occupational hazard for most American presidents. Trump’s rift with the EU over Ukraine is not as deep as that between George W. Bush and Paris and Berlin over the Iraq war.

Trans-Atlantic relations were in a worse way in 2003 than they are today. It was then because the US was determined to remove a dictator and an “old Europe” (what US secretary of state Donald Rumsfeld called the negationists) that wanted him kept in place. And if you think Trump buddying up to Putin is unseemly, consider how deliberately after the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 that the US offered its perpetrators “most favoured” trading status. Resisting Chinese and Russian autocracy does not guarantee you American support. Taiwan, watch out.

The odd mild awareness of what's going down at the moment ...

Trump certainly has it arse-backwards when it comes to blaming Ukraine for starting the war. His swallowing of Putin’s propaganda is emetic – like FDR blaming Winston Churchill rather than Adolf Hitler for World War II...

... is only a weird way to sustain the apologetics ...

 But Trump’s apparent treachery is hardly unique.

See the animal cunning in "apparent".

Think about Satan and you can see how it works. After all, Satan's "apparent treachery is hardly unique'. Think of bloody womyn and that bloody apple ..

Cue a final snap of another failed loon, Joe Biden on a surprise visit in Kabul, Afghanistan, 2014.

Cue another splendid line ...

As one Melbourne-based Russian historian put it to me sardonically: Trump can never be right simply because he is Trump. Fail in stopping the war, and he is a loudmouth who promised and never delivered. Succeed in stopping the war, and he kowtowed to Putin. His critics are anti-war, but only when it suits them. Once the violence is about to stop, they suddenly want it to continue.

... unless of course, the Cantaloupe Clown can never be right simply because he's a fucking moron.

By this point, some might be wondering about the Lynch mob's strategy, but of course here comes the course corrective and a gigantic billy goat butt ... the real point revealed, the redemption of the mango Mussolini confirmed, at least in the mind of the Lynch mob ...

The world is a better place for America’s engagement in it. There are in foreign fields many thousands of US war graves attesting to the sacrifice. America does not owe them to Europe.

What Trump’s transactional retreat from Ukraine reveals is how dependent on his nation we have become. The US is not a welfare state for its work-shy allies. Trump does not exist to perpetuate a global welfarism. The democracies craving US support need to be better, bolder defenders of democracy and Western values. That is the best insurance against the inconstancies of American power.

And so the defaming of Melbourne University continues apace, its welfarism for wayward academics providing dismal reptile fodder ...

Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.

Uh huh ...off to Bond University with him ... or perhaps he could head off to a bar to discuss welfarism with drunks ...

And now the pond, having a backlog of locally relevant cartoons, turned to John Hanscombe in The Echnida

The pond signed up to this newsletter because it was a good way to get a regular supply of infallible Pope cartoons ...

You could also catch up on stories that had run rife through the Nine rags, but had gone completely MIA with the lizard Oz ...

Irrespective of whether you think there was any wrongdoing, regardless of whether there were even questions to answer, it was fascinating to watch. Not that his famously expressionless face gave too much away.
Peter Dutton had the tables turned on him yesterday, which must have come as a bit of a shock after dominating the political narrative for so long.
He'd called a press conference to talk about energy prices and the cost of living and getting Australia back on track. But the media weren't interested. They wanted to know about his 2009 bank share trades and his multimillion-dollar property investment history, two different stories from two rival news organisations landing like bombs in the short space of two days.

They'd also wanted to know about climate science, but that's covered by a 'toon ...

Put it another way ... I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker...

Or was that a flicker?

The flicker of annoyance across Dutton's brow when answering the torrent of questions suggested he'd tasted his own medicine and it was bitter.
Nothing irritates a politician more than having their heavily crafted talking points derailed by questions alluding to character. And here was Dutton, enduring the same frustration suffered by Anthony Albanese for most of his term - discomfort dished out by the man now copping it.
It was hard not to chuckle at the schadenfreude.

And you could chuckle at the immortal Rowe ...

Talk about bedding and bathtubs ... on the commentary flowed ...

Dutton tried to dismiss the bank share trading story as baseless dirt dug up by Labor and shopped around but only taken up by one journalist. But here was a room full of other journalists asking questions about it. After being on the offensive for so long, the combative Opposition Leader looked ill at ease playing a defensive game.

Having accused Albanese of being out of touch with ordinary Australians for so long - often justifiably - trying to convince the electorate that he's any different becomes much harder now Dutton's own impressive investment history is out there, flapping in the media breeze.

No log cabin story - neither Albanese growing up in public housing nor Dutton working as a butcher boy in his teens - cuts it when you're worth millions.

Well yes ...

... indoody do ..

Dutton might have had an easy ride up until now but as the election looms, the prospect he might actually become PM means he'll face closer scrutiny and tougher questions from the media.

Oh there'll be scrutiny, or grief ...

It's amazing how easy it is to catch up by way of 'toons ...

There's that controversy done and dusted, and now time for a few last words ...

As Bill, a regular Echidna commentator, put it a few days ago, once the campaign starts it will be the parliamentary press gallery applying the blowtorch, not reporters who normally cover police rounds in the regional capitals sent to cover the Opposition Leader's appearances.
This will be Dutton's first tilt at the top job after a political career memorable for its missteps rather than any crowning achievements. Serial dog whistling. Foreign au pairs. Multimillion-dollar contracts with companies headquartered in beach shacks. Chainsaws taken to health spending years before Elon Musk got his first hair plugs. The attempted coup against Malcolm Turnbull that gave us Scott Morrison.
Dirt will fly - that's a given. How Dutton responds to it will give the electorate a handy measure of the man.

The pond has already measured the man, if only because the man has provided ample opportunities for measurement, and the resulting coat is ill-fitting and not suited to purpose... unless you happen to think nuking the country is a solution to anything except more billions down the AUKUS sub gurgler ...

And now, having done a little domestic duty, the pond can join in a farewell ... another blow to a fading ABC ... (over a million on legal fees?! Ita as vengeful loon?!)

It's always in the detail ...