In which the pond sups still more cascading bromancer tears and does a Catholic Boys' Daily Everest climb with "Ned"...

This day the reptiles remained in campaign mode, with an "eek, the dastardly, nefarious Chinese are getting involved" headline setting the pace ...

Even worse the Wong had suggested another Voice might be right, guaranteeing a reptile frenzy ...

Over on the extreme far right, the reptiles decided to give the bouffant one, peddler of highly dubious, unethical and bullshit Compass polling a break ...

What dismal choices. 

A defiant simpleton "here no conflict of interest" Simon was still holding out hope....

When you think you have it by the throat … surprise!
By Simon Benson
Political Editor

There are some parts of the country that are buying Peter Dutton’s message and not buying Labor’s. The question is whether it will be enough for the Coalition to make the inroads it needs.

In contrast, ancient Troy adopted the preferred reptile posture these days, of a pox on both their houses ...

Contrasting campaigns but leaders share a lack of vision
The Prime Minister and Opposition Leader are decent and honourable but where is the courage and vision in this campaign?
By Troy Bramston
Senior Writer

Having already voted, the pond must confess to personal bias. A sense of deep ennui.

Neither of them offered the slightest hint of an interesting read, and triple that for Dame Slap, still harping on, in her relentless way, about Linda ...

What’s going on at the national corruption body?
The NACC says a referral from Linda Reynolds is still ‘under consideration’ after 18 months.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Fergeddit it.

Is it any wonder that the pond turned to the bromancer, deeply unnerved, agitated and unhappy? 

It was only a three minute read, so the reptile official timer said, but what joy he provided, and on a timely topic too ...

Oh Canada, elbows up, dig them into the bromancer ... and for those not interested in clicking on the image to read the fine print...

The header: Liberal lessons from Canada’s election result, Trump intervention, Donald Trump saved the left-of-centre Canadian Liberal Party from certain defeat, just as he may have denied the Australian Liberal Party.

The caption for an incredibly reflexive snap: A person takes a photo in front of a Canada sign on election day in Ottawa. Picture: AFP

The mystical injunction, as deep as transubstantiation (more of that anon): This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Oh okay, the pond stole the bromancer's opening flourish, as he slumped over keyboard in despair ...

Oh Canada! The Canadian ­national election was the first great electoral defeat for Donald Trump since his inauguration as President. It’s not the last election Trump is likely to “lose” for centre-right parties around the world.
Trump, and Trump alone, saved the left-of-centre Canadian Liberal Party from certain elect­oral defeat, just as he may have ­denied the Australian Liberal Party what once looked like a serious shot at power in our election in a few days’ time.

Alone? While watching CBC's live coverage, the pond noted that many of the pundits credited a morsel of the turnaround to Carney, the sort of solid central banker figure likely to send bromancer and Dame Groan types into a frenzy, but do go on ...

Back in January, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party led the unpopular Liberal government in Ottawa by more than 20 points.
The Liberals got rid of their ­unpopular leader, Justin Trudeau – Canada’s Jacinda Ardern – and replaced him with the sober but deeply dull central banker Mark Carney. However, that’s not what changed the course of Canada’s election. Trump began a series of nearly unhinged attacks on Canada, imposing, then withdrawing, then reimposing completely ­unreasonable tariffs, and insultingly and repeatedly telling Canada – a free, prosperous, sovereign, independent nation and one of the longest continuous democracies in the world – that it had no viable future unless it joined the US as the 51st state.

How mortifying, though Wilcox thought it was more fingers than elbows up...

The reptiles also interrupted with a snap,  Supporters of Mark Carney celebrate as results are announced. Picture: AFP

Oh the shameless fully red harridans, jubilant and cheering.

The bromancer was outraged ... the fully woke were on the march ...

Not surprisingly, even Canadians, notoriously the most polite and even-tempered people in the world, got seriously angry.
Support for the Canadian Conservatives, who were never part of the Trump bandwagon and had always distanced themselves from the Trump approach, stayed relatively steady. But support for the Liberal Party – which had governed incompetently and ineffectively for a decade, identifying with every woke cause on the planet, imposing immense green costs on business and consumers, while seeing their economy slip ever further behind that of the US – soared.

Then the reptiles committed an unforgivable visual crime. They linked together the Cantaloupe Caligula and the Duttonator, two peas in a visual pod ... US President Donald Trump. Picture: AP, Peter Dutton.

... and both of them were gesturing with their right hand, and looking deeply weird. What could it mean? Were the reptiles dealing in some kind of cunning pictorial code?

No wonder the bromancer was unnerved and deeply unhappy, and the pond supped on his tears ...

Trump was wonderfully generous to the Canadian left. He gave them an alibi, a cause and electoral access to a stream of patriotism centre-left parties normally find very difficult to corral. Trump sucked all the oxygen out of the Canadian election, which became not a referendum on 10 years of poor Liberal rule, but rather a referendum on who would stand up best against Trump.
Not only that, the damage Trump has wrought on Canada so far has been economic. Carney’s credentials as an economist, certainly compared with the identity politics and social policy obsessions of Trudeau, provided just enough sense of change within the ruling party to make Carney a plausible choice for voters wanting both reassurance and change.
The Liberals only narrowly out-polled the Conservatives. Both main parties scored in the low 40s, a high percentage for the two major parties in a diverse federation with strong regional identities.

Couldn't the reptiles at least slipped in a graphic, even if it meant borrowing from CBC?

Oh there was laughter and joy and much road runner amusement, as imagined by the infallible Pope (with a tip of the hat to the immortal Chuck) ...

Sorry, sorry, there was much deep, ineffable sadness... Strelmark founder Hilary Ford says the re-election of Mark Carney as Prime Minister is “sad for Canadians”. “Mark Carney, certainly as the head of the Bank of England, was actually no great force in terms of economic change, nor prosperity. “I actually think this is rather sad for Canadians.”

Who on earth is Hilary Ford, and why should the pond give a flying fuck? Is she the same person as Hilary Fordwich, sad founder of Strelmark LLC?

The reptiles and their captions, but the pond still didn't give a flying fuck, and moved back to sup more bromancer tears ...

Thus the Conservatives were certainly not humiliated. But nor was the election that close. Virtually all the remainder of the vote was shared between the New Democratic Party, the Quebec separatists and the Greens, all of whom won seats. These parties are all to the left of the Liberals and extremely unlikely ever to favour a Conservative government over a Liberal one.
It would be as if, in Australia, Labor, the teals and the Greens scored 57 per cent of the vote between them. However that was distributed among the parties, it would be a big win for the left.
Unlike Australia, Canada doesn’t have preferential voting, but uses a first past the post system. That favours the big parties and helps them win the lion’s share of seats. The Liberals will be much happier if they get a majority – at time of writing this was unclear – but would be happy enough with minority government if they fall just short.

The reptiles offered a snap of the loser, Canada's Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and his wife Anaida wave to the crowd at the Conservative election party in Ottawa. Picture: AFP

A final sup at the font of bromancer sadness ...

The result demonstrates, for the moment at least, the false promise of the Trump victory for centre-right parties internationally. Trump provides poor centre-left governments an excuse, a distraction and a ready-made smear of their domestic opponents that, no matter what they say publicly, they really yearn to be like Trump.

Indeed, indeed, everyone wants to be a fascist authoritarian, everyone yearns to be a Cantaloupe Caligula. 

Why it's the deepest wish of the bromancer, that's why he understands the impulse so well ...

Sorry for the interruption, now for a final sup and a dire warning, bromancer style ...

In effect, Trump has prevented Canada from enjoying a long-overdue renovation which comes in a democracy when an old, tired government is replaced by a new, fresh government.
The ALP should be careful not to follow the Canadian Liberals too closely. Even if Ottawa and Washington are at loggerheads, Canada’s geographical position means it is effectively defended by the US military, no matter what. It even has a US outpost, Alaska, between it and Russia. Although the US is more significant economically to Canada than it is to Australia, we are far more reliant on American goodwill and sustained commitment for our security.
It’s impossible to know what Trump thinks he might achieve by telling Canada it must become part of the US. What he has got is a left-wing victory in Ottawa, and America’s closest neighbour, and one of its oldest allies, deeply hostile and resolutely determined to work against US leadership internationally.
Trump may pretend it’s all part of a cunning plan. Actually, it’s just unbelievably dumb.

Did the bromancer just call his kissing cousins at Faux Noise unbelievably dumb? 

What an insult, how incredibly wrong.

Why they're totally, completely, fully believably dumb every day of the week.

Time for a 'toon celebration with the immortal Rowe ...

And so to the bonus, and it's "Ned" nattering away as usual ...

Please, bear with him and the pond ...

The header: The flawed legacy of a pope of the people, Pope Francis was a pope of the people but he leaves a church challenged on many fronts

The caption: A College of Cardinals meeting have set a May 7 Conclave date to elect Pope Francis' successor. Picture: Mario Tama/Getty Images

The mystical incantation, up there with transubstantiation: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The pond imagines some of the reptile faithful are getting a bit restless and shuffling about in their pews, especially as the reptiles clocked this Everest climb at some five minutes.

But lordy, lordy, long absent lordy, this is the Catholic Boys' Daily ... this is the reptiles' daily bread and butter.

If you want to read clever dick stuff, head off to a place like McSweeney's for a short clever dick piece like This Five-Hundred-Word Bumper Sticker on My Tesla Explains Why I’m Not a Bad Person

This is where the rubber hits the road, this is where the gluten-filled wafer hits the coeliac throat, this is where the holy oil lands snap bang in the eye, this is where "Ned" does Conclave the Sequel ... but not before giving poor old Frank a hard time ...

The greatness of Pope Francis is that his evangelism transcended the Catholic Church and became a symbol of humanity – projecting love, duty and sacrifice. He excelled as an optimist in a troubled world but essentially failed as a transformative leader of the Catholic Church.
The global response to his death testifies to a world in mourning for what humanity has lost. Wars rage in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the bonds of co-operation are shattered within and between nations, and the march of science seems to both enhance yet threaten human nature.
At a time of complexity Francis offered the virtues of simplicity and faith. He led by example and his personal contact with people often changed their lives. His mission was a church dedicated to the poor, operating in the margins, his reference points being the wooden chair, the hostel room and the cross. Madoc Cairns, editor of Plough Quarterly, said: “Every act he takes is a gesture; images which illume truths; a hand pointing to somewhere past the limits of our sight.”

The reptiles interrupted with an AV distraction, featuring a host of devoted frock wearers, The Vatican has announced that the Papal Conclave to elect the next Pope will begin on May 7. The date was decided during a closed-door meeting of cardinals — the first since Pope Francis’s funeral over the weekend. A total of 135 cardinals will convene in the Sistine Chapel to vote on the next leader of the Catholic Church. The previous two conclaves, held in 2005 and 2013, lasted just two days.

The sight of so many frock wearers induced a fit of piety in "Ned" ...

His death and funeral spectacle reveal the universalism and endurance of the church. Despite the vast crimes of child sexual abuse, the church – its sins revealed to the world – has never been more universal, diverse and remarkable as a surviving institution of two millennia, its mission being to redeem souls and improve the world.
Of the 135 cardinals eligible to participate in the conclave to elect the new pope, the geographical breakdown is: Europe 53, North America 16, Central America four, South America 17, Africa 18, Asia 23 and Oceania four. Jorge Mario Bergoglio reflected that universalism as the first Jesuit, the first Latin American and the first pope from the global south.
Francis came to downgrade doctrinal fixation in favour of evangelical outreach. He conceptualised the church as a “field hospital after a battle” – its task dealing with human beings was to heal wounds. “I dream of a church that is mother and shepherd,” Francis said. He put people before rules.
His papacy began by welcoming refugees on the remote island of Lampedusa; he urged priests to “get out of the sacristies”; he famously said: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?” He encouraged different countries to realise their Catholicism within their own cultures, reflecting the challenge of a global church.

Shocking, what with the reptiles judging all the time, but there was also that Conclave thingie, surely worth a flutter, surely worth a fling, especially as the reptiles helped set the odds with a graph worthy of an ABC finance report ...

"Ned" had a hard time keeping up, and refused to give odds on the hot contenders. Instead he remained hot and bothered.

Lordy, lordy, long absent lordy, could the Popehave been a greenie Marxist?

Francis raised expectations but he was rarely able to satisfy them. His social justice pledges led many Catholic progressives to think he would deliver married priests and female priests along with liberal teaching on sexual matters – but Francis never closed the deal. Writing in First Things, RR Reno said he lived out the old Peronist joke to his car driver: “Signal left, turn right.”
Francis championed synodality – clerics and laity working together – yet the process rarely reached resolution. The story of his papacy is the challenge of holding a global church together as the tensions between progressives and conservatives intensified; witness his most celebrated encyclical, Laudato si’, a document with similarities to green Marxism.
Advocating “united global action” on the environment and climate, Francis aspired to reconcile the church’s historic tension between faith and science. “Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain,” he said. “For human beings to degrade the integrity of the Earth by causing changes in its climate” constituted “sins” – so people must engage in “ecological conversion” by changing the way they live.
Signalling scepticism towards Western capitalism, Francis said mankind must recognise the need for a “decrease in the pace of production and consumption” – that meant “the time has come to accept decreased growth in some parts of the world”. He repudiated the notion that global hunger and poverty will be resolved by “market growth” or higher profits, called for a Christian spirituality marked by “the capacity to be happy with little”, attacked the “absolute power” of finance and, reflecting the outlook of St Francis of Assisi, said “less is more”.

Eek, climate science ...

The reptiles had a different snap, featuring devoted frock wearer Frank, Pope Francis, looks out to the crowd from the central balcony of St Peter's Basilica after being elected 266th pontiff in 2013. Picture: AP /Luca Bruno

"Ned" was puzzled and alarmed ... frock wearing has that effect on reptiles ...

American Bishop Robert Barron, founder of the Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, said: “Pope Francis was a puzzling figure in many ways, seeming to delight in confounding expectations, he famously told the young people gathered for World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro to ‘hagan lio’ (make a mess), and sometimes he appeared to take pleasure in doing just that.”
Having appointed Cardinal George Pell to reform Vatican finances – suffering from corruption and maladministration – Francis eventually gave up on the task. Pell later told me he worried that Francis could start issues but rarely finish them.
There seemed to be a divide between an Australian-based tradition of financial management and an Italian-orientated Vatican under a Latin American pope. The job is still not done. Pell speculated without knowing about the forces that led Pope Benedict to stand aside.
One of the most alarming Vatican policies is the 2018 formal compact between the Holy See and the Chinese Communist Party government – since renewed – over the appointment of bishops, with the former archbishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Joseph Zen, warning such accommodation would “kill the church” in China. Zen denounced the agreement as a betrayal that gave “the flock into the mouths of wolves”.

Then came an AV distraction, Heavy is the white miter worn by the pope. Whoever emerges from the coming conclave as the new leader of the 1.4-billion-member Catholic Church will face a myriad of problems. Ciara Lee reports.

Heavy was "Ned", and solemn, and sad, as only the premium reptile pontificator can be ...

Many underground priests and bishops in China who believed they represented the true church have been detained, isolated or tortured. Beijing engages in religious suppression, church demolitions and censorship, and the party is retranslating the Bible. For the Communist Party, having the church bow before its authoritarianism is a triumph.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin is an apologist for Beijing who has played down religious persecution in China and is a candidate to replace Francis as pope. In 2021 he said “one cannot but be worried” about Australia’s nuclear submarine AUKUS agreement with the UK and US, prompting Pell at the time to defend AUKUS and say more collaboration was needed between democracies in Asia to balance the power of China.
RR Reno offered the remark that “if China becomes a Catholic nation in the next hundred years, Francis will have been vindicated in his tactics”. Surely correct.
The paradox of the Francis papacy is that much of the church’s growth in both the developed and developing world derives from the revival of Catholic tradition as opposed to its progressive concessions to Western secularism.
Bishop Barron said: “Francis had to have known that the church is flourishing precisely among its more conservative members. As the famously liberal church of Germany withers on the vine, the conservative, supernaturally orientated church of Nigeria is exploding in numbers. And in the West, the lively parts of the church are, without doubt, those that embrace a vibrant orthodoxy rather than accommodate the secularist culture.”

All this way and not a single joke about Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who has been amusing late night US comics all week?

Instead a snap of the man who actually killed the Pope stone dead in ten minutes, thereby providing even more material to late night comics, Cardinal Pietro Parolin welcoming US Vice President JD Vance at the Vatican earlier this month. Picture Vatican Media/AFP

Never mind, "Ned" spluttered out with a suggestion we all should come back in a hundred years, which the pond appreciated, but suspected might be a bit tricky achieving ...

A religious leader who captured the imagination of hundreds of millions, Francis had no popular mandate from the people, no executive power in the political world, and was constrained by the limits of his office, yet his personal example cut through beyond the confines of the Catholic Church.
He was a pope, a leader, and a common man with all the vulnerabilities that involved. He alarmed conservatives and he disappointed progressives – but perhaps such compromise is the only way to keep the church unified today. As his fellow Jesuit, Frank Brennan, said: “Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt.”
The legacy from Francis will be better grasped in another 100 years. But the response to his passing testifies to the power of tradition, the longing for moral leadership and the pulling power of ancient institutions whose purpose transcends the temporal world. These are the enduring verities that people want and seek – so contrary to the deluded popular culture that debases our times.

Oh yes, well said, as only a humbug working for the Murdochians, debasing the world with Faux Noise and the mango Mussolini, could manage without a shred of irony or self-awareness.

Speaking of the MM, the pond was delighted that the WSJ board had yet another moment of buyer's remorse.

There has been much useless blather about the first 100 days, as if that marker actually meant anything, but the pond found this effort enchanting ...

At 100 Days, Trump 2.0 Is in Trouble, The tariff shock he’s unleashed could sink his second term.
By 
The Editorial Board (archive link).

Speaking, as we must, of the vulgar gold lover which the Murdochians helped foist on the world,  the deluded and debased movement in popular culture of which "Ned" is singularly unaware ...

What say the US reptiles of this gold bling addicted, bankruptcy loving tyrant?

Presidential second terms are rarely successful, and on the evidence of his first 100 days Donald Trump’s won’t be different. The President needs a major reset if he wants to rescue his final years from the economic and foreign-policy shocks he has unleashed.
There’s no denying his energy or ambition. Mr. Trump is pressing ahead on multiple fronts, and he has had some success. His expansion of U.S. energy production is proceeding well and is much needed after the Biden war on fossil fuels. He has ended the border crisis in short order.
He is also rolling back federal assaults on mainstream American values—such as by policing racial favoritism. Mr. Trump was elected to counter the excesses of the left on climate, culture and censorship, and he is doing it.

Oh yes, the excessive climate thingie...First Dog that covered (link for full 'toon)...

On other priorities, the execution hasn’t matched the promises. That would seem to apply to DOGE, which we’ve supported but has been so frenetic it isn’t clear what it is achieving. Easy targets like USAID make for symbolic victories but no fundamental change in the growth of government. The Trump budget will offer more reform proposals, if the White House can get them through Congress. He badly needs a pro-growth tax bill.
Even on popular causes, one problem has been needless excess. Harvard and other universities need to change, but trying to dictate their curriculum and faculty choices is an intrusion on free speech and risks defeat in court. His deportation of criminals is worthwhile, but denying due process and toying with the courts will sour the effort. The White House motto seems to be that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing too much.
***
That’s especially true on tariffs, which could sink his Presidency. Mr. Trump was elected to control inflation and raise real incomes, but tariffs do the opposite. They guarantee at least a one-time increase in prices on imported goods that will flow through the economy. They portend shortages for consumers, and for businesses that source goods and components from abroad.
The tariffs are the largest economic policy shock since Richard Nixon blew up Bretton Woods in 1971, which unleashed inflation that Nixon tried to stop with wage and price controls and a tariff. The economic consequences arguably doomed Nixon’s second term, perhaps as much as Watergate.
It’s a mistake to think the tariff damage is only domestic. The willy-nilly assault on friends and foes has shaken global confidence in U.S. reliability. Ken Griffin, the investor and major donor to Mr. Trump, summed it up last week as a self-inflicted blow to the American brand. The U.S. is needlessly ceding global economic leadership.
China is already taking advantage by courting U.S. allies as a more dependable giant market. This will make it much harder to build a trade alliance to stop China’s often predatory economic behavior. Mr. Trump last week called us “China Loving,” which must amuse Beijing. Mr. Trump’s tariffs on allies are the real gift to Xi Jinping.

China? Golding's got that covered ...

And so to end this celebration of the art of the steal ...

There are signs Mr. Trump is finally recognizing some of the tariff risks, as he now talks of doing some 200 trade deals. He is also saying he might unilaterally cut his 145% tariff on Chinese imports. We’d like nothing better than to see a retreat—a “Mitterrand moment,” as we wrote last week about the reversal by the 1980s French socialist. But Mr. Trump remains a long way from making such a pivot, and those trade deals won’t be easy to strike.
Mr. Trump’s second-term foreign policy so far is a work in progress. He is trying to reclaim Middle East sea lanes from the Houthis after Joe Biden’s timidity. And he is restoring “maximum pressure” on Iran to abandon its nuclear program. These are hopeful signs.
The main cause for alarm is his one-sided pursuit of peace in Ukraine. Until this weekend he had said scarcely a discouraging word about Vladimir Putin while squeezing Ukraine to make concessions that could doom it to future marauding. Much will hang on the details of an armistice, if there is one, and not merely for Europe’s future.
Joe Biden’s retreat from Afghanistan destroyed American deterrence. A debacle in Ukraine would do the same for Mr. Trump, with ramifications for Iran, North Korea and especially Chinese ambitions in the Pacific. Don’t be surprised if China decides to snatch Taiwan’s outer islands or tries a partial blockade. Mr. Trump told us in October that he’d respond to such a provocation with tariffs, but he’s already playing that card without success.
***
Voters re-elected Mr. Trump in part because they remembered fondly his first-term economy. But that success owed mainly to his pursuit of conventional GOP priorities like tax reform and deregulation. This term he is indulging his trade and foreign-policy obsessions, and the early results are negative. He’ll fail unless he heeds the warnings.

To heel, mango Mussolini, the reptiles are urging you to get around behind and to heel, and good luck with what you've unleashed, believably dumb Murdochians ...

And so back to Barraba and more of the Studebaker mob. 

The pond only stumbled on this gathering by accident, and wasn't in the clan - after all the pond's first car had been a Ben Chifley model, a Holden FX...

What an array there was, and a few ring-ins too, and more on the morrow ...

You're welcome ... to the wacky reptile world of the lizard Oz, hosted by the bromancer and the craven Craven ...

The pond brooded about Orwellian Xi yesterday, and it only seems fair to balance the books by brooding about Orwellian King Donald and his minions, as outlined by Ian Bogost and Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic in American Panopticon, The Trump administration is pooling data on Americans. Experts fear what comes next. (archive link). Inter alia:

If you were tasked with building a panopticon, your design might look a lot like the information stores of the U.S. federal government—a collection of large, complex agencies, each making use of enormous volumes of data provided by or collected from citizens.
The federal government is a veritable cosmos of information, made up of constellations of databases: The IRS gathers comprehensive financial and employment information from every taxpayer; the Department of Labor maintains the National Farmworker Jobs Program (NFJP) system, which collects the personal information of many workers; the Department of Homeland Security amasses data about the movements of every person who travels by air commercially or crosses the nation’s borders; the Drug Enforcement Administration tracks license plates scanned on American roads. And that’s only a minuscule sampling. More obscure agencies, such as the recently gutted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, keep records of corporate trade secrets, credit reports, mortgage information, and other sensitive data, including lists of people who have fallen on financial hardship.
A fragile combination of decades-old laws, norms, and jungly bureaucracy has so far prevented repositories such as these from assembling into a centralized American surveillance state. But that appears to be changing. Since Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have systematically gained access to sensitive data across the federal government, and in ways that people in several agencies have described to us as both dangerous and disturbing. Despite DOGE’s stated mission, little efficiency seems to have been achieved. Now a new phase of Trump’s project is under way: Not only are individual agencies being breached, but the information they hold is being pooled together. The question is Why? And what does the administration intend to do with it?

Good questions, especially given Karoline Leavitt Boasts Trump Wouldn’t Hesitate to Arrest SCOTUS Justices (archive link) and the authors spend much time providing answers, though the main answer likely is very short and bleeding obvious ... nothing good.

But enough already with the authoritarians and on with the authoritarian-loving reptiles this day, with the "news" in fervent campaign mode, at top of page evoking Joe and handing out a denialist rating ...

At the very bottom, there was standard fear-mongering about Hamas, but no note about the current Israeli government using mass starvation as a war strategy, or the ethnic cleansing currently unfolding, but there never is...

Over on the extreme far right there was the usual motley bunch...

Blossoming forth from the pits of reptile despair, the pearls of wisdom man offered ...

Coalition has failed itself and voters on Labor’s tax disgrace
You have to give it to the geniuses advising Peter Dutton in this campaign. In their desperation to minimise any political differences with Labor, they have ignored a tax policy blunder from their opponents.
By David Pearl

... but when in search of reptile despair and reptile tears,  the pond will always turn first to the bromancer, in deep despond, and fully into a "pox on both their houses" mode, with a special pox on Albo.

It was only a four minute read, so the reptiles said, as the bromancer let out a Ginsbergian howl of pain, a cry in the wilderness, An abysmal campaign of national self-harm, This is the worst campaign I’ve seen. Both sides are at fault. It’s not spiteful or vituperative, but easily the most vacuous and irresponsible.

The caption for the opening snap added to the despair, with portraits of the villains who had plunged the bromancer into an existential crisis: The Albanese government richly deserves to lose. But mere honesty compels the conclusion that there’s no way the Dutton opposition deserves to win. Picture: News Corp

The bromancer opened glumly, in full defeatist mode, before moving into a sobbing which left the pond with a surfeit of reptile tears.

It's good to drink these tears each day - who knows when the tears might run out? - but is there a danger that this might lead to a case of reptaholism? Never fear, have a drink on the house ...

The most likely outcome from this dismal election is a second term for the Albanese government. Whether that’s as a majority or minority government matters, though it’s still just theoretically possible the Dutton opposition could scrape into office as a minority government itself.
This is the worst campaign I’ve seen. Both sides are at fault. It’s not spiteful or vituperative, but easily the most vacuous and irresponsible. Never has a campaign been more completely disconnected from reality.
Endless giveaways, ridiculous quibbles about costings that are entirely speculative, policies of deep national self-harm and a resolute determination never to mention the fundamental threats and changes transforming the entire world.
These global dynamics have led many nations, including the ones we routinely compare ourselves with, to increase substantially their military and other national security efforts. The Albanese government has degraded many of our existing capabilities and is proposing a barely incremental increase in defence funding, hardly enough even to pay for the AUKUS submarines.
These actions are so perverse you have to reverse engineer a strategic viewpoint, or policy key, to produce any explanation for them. It seems the government must have decided deliberately that it doesn’t want Australia to have any significant military capabilities over the next 10 years.

Eek, not the war on China by Xmas, not the AUKUS dreaming slip-sliding away, and the reptiles compounded the misery by showing a snap of the fading dream, The Albanese government is proposing a barely incremental increase in defence funding, hardly enough even to pay for the AUKUS submarines. Picture: Supplied

The bromancer was inconsolable ...

It may be that somewhere in the labyrinthine thought processes lurks the idea that if there’s a strategic showdown in the next 10 years it will be between China and the United States. If we have no significant capabilities, Washington will be unable to ask us to do anything significant. We’ll give America our flag and our geography, nothing more. This would be a wildly dangerous approach in any circumstances. Now, in the age of the Chinese, Russian, Iranian and North Korean axis, and Donald Trump’s new alliance uncertainties, it’s an act of national insanity.

In an attempt to console the bromancer, the reptiles quickly flung an AV distraction, featuring the pastie Hastie ... Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie discusses Labor’s “shifty” defence policies in turbulent global times. “This Albanese Labor government is shifty, and the Australian people cannot trust it, but I am still shocked they have been so reckless with the truth,” Mr Hastie said. “We are living in a very dangerous world now.”

Um, the pond hates to sound like a cracked record, but aren't we living in a dangerous world now thanks to the diligent work of Faux Noise minions, though these days they're being challenged by new cultists.

Never mind, there's always the tears ...

Because of its comprehensive failure on national security, the Albanese government richly deserves to lose.
But mere honesty compels the conclusion that there’s no way the Dutton opposition deserves to win. Its defence policy, bizarrely released in the very last days of the campaign, is much better than Labor’s. But it’s nowhere near what the nation needs. Perversely, except for the welcome decision to buy a fourth squadron of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, the opposition hasn’t told us anything of the shape of the defence force it wants to build.
Instead, incredibly, it has talked of having a high-powered closed-door conference as soon as it’s elected, involving defence chiefs, private sector leaders and some strategic analysts, to work out what to do. Good grief, am I dreaming? Is this a recurring nightmare?

You see? Look what they've done to the poor lad, see how they've done him down, reduced him to sounding like Charlie Brown.

The reptiles quickly rushed in another AV distraction, Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell says federal governments at large have been “asleep at the wheel” on defence spending. Labor and the Coalition have continued to clash over defence spending in the lead up to the election after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton promised to boost military investment. “We just haven’t put enough into defence ... all of the governments,” Mr Clennell said. “This government is doing AUKUS, it’s taking forever, they are spending more and more on the NDIS, and I think the Coalition has a point here.”

The bromancer was still inconsolable. 

Not even the thought of bringing back disgraced Mike and Jennings of the fifth form worked for him, not when he contemplated the seat count and the campaign ...

An opposition led by a former defence minister, with a former assistant defence minister as defence spokesman, is going to ask essentially the same people who have produced two decades of utter defence chaos and failure to come up with new advice, but this time to do it quickly?
Surely the opposition knows in some detail what it wants to do. The very last thing we need is more advice. If we could defend the country with advice we’d be invincible. We have mountains of advice. National forests have been sacrificed to produce advice. We groan under the weight of advice. The nation doesn’t need a government seeking advice. It needs a government that gives orders, that gets something done.
The first thing a Dutton government should do is talk Mike Pezzullo and Peter Jennings into coming out of retirement. Appeal to their patriotism and put them both back in harness to actually get some action, unlike the 10 years of Coalition government that were almost as bad in defence as the three years of Albanese government. Assuming we get another Albanese government, what happens to the nation?
If Dutton wins a net gain of, say, even four seats, this will be overall a poor performance but better than the low ebb of expectations right now. In that circumstance he would probably stay as leader simply because there’s no good alternative. A net win of six seats and he’s secure, I would think.
If he wins no seats, or even goes backwards, Dutton is probably gone. The Coalition could then make big, self-harming mistakes. It could easily decide it lost badly because Dutton was too right-wing. In fact Dutton has not been a noticeably right-wing Opposition Leader. His only big call was to campaign for a No vote on the voice referendum, and this was forced on him by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and the Nationals.

Phew, what a relief. He didn't announce all those Trumpian strategies, or if he did, they're easily forgotten and forgiven, what with the many substantial costings that followed ...

Carry on bromancing ...

The Coalition campaign has been strategically cowardly and tactically inept at best. Dutton is the captain-coach of a team with very thin talent. He promoted one of his best, James Paterson. But that’s been his only smart decision. Other talented frontbenchers, Andrew Hastie and Dan Tehan in particular, have been all but invisible in the campaign, until Hastie’s partial re-emergence a few days ago. There’s hidden talent on the backbench, too – people such as Dave Sharma. But the Coalition frontbenchers entrusted with carrying the campaign apart from Dutton have looked like reserve grade footballers doing their best one division above their talent level. Dutton himself has made too many gaffes, repeatedly getting basic facts wrong on national security. Albanese has done the same. But mistakes are easily forgiven when you’re winning. The truth is neither leader looks impressive.

So what Dr Freud, is the real problem here? 

Why that's an easy answer ....the bromancer still yearns for his beloved bro, is still deeply infatuated with the onion muncher...how he hungers for those ancient days, when a man was a budgie-smuggling man, Dutton is a stark contrast to Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd in opposition. Picture: Herald Sun

It's the age of lead, the keys to Valhalla have been lost, and what rough beast slouches towards Canberra for a second term?

What a contrast to Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd in opposition. They were relentless, on top of all detail, worked from sun up to midnight, left no stone unturned. They worked effectively with colleagues they didn’t like. They were much hungrier for victory than this opposition has been. If the Liberals turn now to a milquetoast “moderate” alternative, they will only increase the enervating sense of Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Australian politics.
Partly this is the political environment. The electorate is very cynical. We’ve had a populist campaign without demagogues. The electorate’s cynicism is so powerful the only thing it believes from politics is a fistful of dollars. It’s a self-perpetuating pathology. The electorate’s cynicism is so great it leads the parties to behave in a way that fully justifies the electorate’s cynicism.
If Albanese wins, it would be better for the nation if it’s just short of a majority. The sensible folks among the crossbenchers would readily guarantee confidence and supply. The government would not be greatly destabilised. But the political culture would at least have registered that the last three years deserved a political penalty. If Albanese is re-elected in majority status, every worst instinct in Australian politics is reinforced.
Poor fellow my country.

Say what? In the depths of his despair, did the bromancer just wish a minority government on the country, with the perfidious teals, or perhaps even worse, the treacherous, deviant greenies holding the balance of power?

Has it come to this? Have the reptiles instituted a self-harm watch on the bromancer? Perhaps the immortal Rowe could help with a 'toon ...

Oh that's not much help immortal Rowe, and so to the bonus, which unfortunately involves the craven Craven, even if the reptiles only clock him as a three minute trifle, These weaponised words will test our social cohesion, We must be careful not to overreach with seemingly petty annoyances like innumerable welcomes to country, and condescending instructions in Indigenous protocol.

Many who scribble for the lizard Oz are contemptible, but the craven Craven is surely amongst the most contemptible... Welcome to Country is performed during the 2025 AFL Indigenous All Stars match n Perth. Picture: Getty Images

Of course the contemptible Craven doesn't want to sound too neo-Nazi, so a little distancing is first in order ...

In the final days of the election campaign, welcomes to country have returned to the top of the national conversation. The neo-nothings who crashed Melbourne’s Anzac Day ceremony were beyond pathetic. They were blasphemers against the same faith they claim to protect: the very best of the Australian character as it shone in the horror of the First World War.
These try-hard fascists have no mates. They are devoid of persevering dignity. If they do not like a welcome to country at Anzac Day, fine. Protest in advance against its inclusion. Demonstrate on the steps of parliament. Write a stern letter to the editor. You have every right to fulminate before or after the event. But once something has been officially included in the Anzac ceremony, disrupting it is attacking the day itself and everything it represents.

But then comes a gigantic billy goat butt, what with pesky, difficult uppity blacks always ruining everything, and the need to say that the Duttonator is on to something ...

Of course, none of this goes to the current controversy over whether we have too many welcomes, or whether we should have them at all. There are numerous contending views. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is pretty grim. He not only thinks welcomes are “overdone”, but would quarantine them to a very small class of great ceremonial events, such as the opening of parliament and, presumably, a Carlton premiership.

Oh indeed, indeed ...

At this point the reptiles slipped in an AV distraction featuring the dog botherer, entirely lacking in Golding humour, Sky News host Chris Kenny says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was “all over the shop” when asked about Welcome to Country during his latest debate with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. “Peter Dutton is clear, and Albanese, again, is all over the shop,” Mr Kenny said. “The government leads the way on this stuff, and I think most Australians would side with Dutton. "At least he knows his mind and is strong enough to state it.”

Oh indeed, indeed ... there's humour of a kind.

At least he can recognise a cliff, and is strong enough to drive over it, and see if he can survive the crash ...

Back to the contemptible craven Craven ...

At the other end are those who would have a welcome to country at the instalment of a new light globe. But in the middle, there is an increasing bloc of people, utterly respectful of Indigenous people, who are starting to feel a bit welcomed out. They’re not flatly opposed to welcomes, and certainly would not be as niggardly as Dutton in having them performed. But they are sick of going to events where every single speaker – even if there are a dozen – trudges through a cookie-cutter acknowledgement of country.
They are the same people who roll their eyes when the ABC solemnly announces at the beginning of every news item that it is brought to you – for example – from Wiradjuri country. This certainly irritates me, not in principle, but because of the presumption of these talking heads acknowledging a people of whose country they have no idea, let alone their customs or language.

The long absent lord forfend that the pond should defend ABC talking heads, but by what right of supreme condescension and head up arse does this craven Craven pontificate about a bunch of people and their knowledge of people and country? 

What gives him special insights and understandings and knowledge, with which he might judge everybody else?

Was it Tony Armstrong's decision to abandon the ABC for SBS that meant every ABC talking head was completely clueless, unlike the pontificating Catholic ponce prof, with a cumbersome knowledge cucumber up his bum.

On then with some classic casuistry, sophistry if you will...

All of this may seem trivial, but it is not. Goodwill from non-Indigenous Australians towards their Indigenous compatriots floats on a sea of consensus. The overwhelming number of Australians agree they respect and value their Indigenous brothers and sisters.
But consensus is a funny thing. It can evaporate quickly. It can be pricked as much by repeated irritation as all-out assault. We must be careful not to overreach with seemingly petty annoyances like innumerable welcomes to country, and condescending instructions in Indigenous protocol.
Language matters here. Expressed one way, an Indigenous ceremonial can be an invitation. Said another, it can be a venomous dismissal, something Indigenous people have experienced themselves all too often.

However you read this, it's venomous, snake-like, compounded by the intent of the next snap, Melbourne lord mayor Nick Reece at a smoking ceremony. Picture: Jason Edwards

Time now for a little victim blaming and shaming, and a walking back of Mabo...

Critically, we are at the beginning of a new war of words and meaning around Indigenous people that will be divisive and bitter.
There’s always been difficulty in mutually adapting the English and Indigenous languages. For example, when Indigenous people wanted to express their unique connection with their land, they used the English term “sovereignty”.
But this is an expression of political philosophy, meaning total legal control. Clearly, since European incursion, Aboriginal people do not and cannot rule land in defiance of our constitutional system. “Sovereignty” is an inapt word, and it has been left to people such as Noel Pearson to redefine it as a “moral” suzerainty over land and people.
But a much worse vocabulary is now being pressed upon the Indigenous population by the same activists who lost the voice.

They are no longer Indigenous or Aboriginal people, but “First Nations”. Land is “unceded”. The Australian commonwealth is no longer a constitutional democracy, but an irredeemable “settler state”.

The Voice. 

The craven Craven didn't insist on a capital "V" but folded to the house reptile style,  and given his shameful role in relation to the Voice campaign, perhaps that's fair and so ...

The reptiles then offered another AV distraction, this time featuring the Price is Wrong... Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has agreed with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton on his stance for the acknowledgement of country in Australia. “My position has always been that we have absolutely overdone welcome to country,” Ms Price told Sky News Australia. “Especially when they become politicised, sort of statements that are divisive, as opposed to feeling like it is a welcome. “I absolutely agree with Peter Dutton that it's overdone. “This is Australia; we all belong to this country.”

It's the rats in the ranks, the quislings, the Vichy mob, the lickspittle fellow travellers that are always the worst ...

Or maybe not, maybe it's the craven Cravens of the world ...

These words are not merely loaded, but radioactive. They will provoke endless friction between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. They will be weaponised by enemies of reconciliation. Take First Nations. What does this imply? Australia is a nation, and you cannot have more than one nation in the same territory. Does this imply that Australia is not validly a nation? Is the Australian constitutional settlement merely one entity among many? If the other nations are “First”, is the Australian state inferior?
It is the voice debate turbocharged.
“Unceded” goes the same way. It asserts both an unbreakable, continuous authority, and an illegitimate usurper. Is constitutional Australia a mere political parasite? “Settler state” is the worst. As part of Marxist race theory, it asserts not only that a nation was settled by “settlers”, but that both the country and its contemporary citizens will never be more. On that basis, not only Australia itself, but its current citizens are simply illegitimate.
So small issues over welcomes to country can have big implications. They can be part of the slow fuse that detonates the great consensus between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians that Australia is a great national project, part of which must be justice for our original inhabitants.
If the voice was too far for the average Australian, being told he or she is a mere settler in their own country will be a marathon paved with thorns.
Greg Craven is a former vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University

What a bilge-load of pious hypocrisy ...the long absent lord gave him one face, and he makes for himself a fellow-travelling another.

Luckily there was a Wilcox to hand to summarise the meaning of all this contemptible drivel ...

And now back to Barraba, where gigantic works of art and Studebakers attracted multitudes ...

In which the pond can't resist imbibing Caterist tears and Mein Gott visions in a late arvo slot ...

 

Crisis time for the pond. 

Should the pond sup deeply of late-breaking Caterist tears in a late arvo post, or should the pond hold off, and make them a special morning treat?

It was the deployment of "post-truth" that made the pond break, and while it's not an exact parallel, think of a Tamworth stud eager to enjoy a happy ending. 

Let the devil take care of the 'morrow, the pond wanted it all now ...

What's more the pond could throw in a Mein Gott as a bonus on the very same day, and Mein Gott had moved beyond the delusional to the barking mad. 

What's not to like?

Let the Caterist show the way to essence of comedy stylings ...

The header: Labor, teal lies fitting for our first post-truth election, Welcome to Australia’s first fully fledged post-truth election campaign, where hypocrisy and deception are assets, not liabilities.

The caption: Independent candidate for Dickson Ellie Smith says she was begged by the community to run against Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Picture: Steve Pohlner

The mystical injunction: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Sure, the reptiles clocked at a five minute read, a heavy burden at any time, but especially for those who think an arvo nap is preferable to a wander through the reptile hive mind, but the pond was up for the challenge ...

Ellie Smith claims she is challenging Peter Dutton for the seat of Dickson after being “begged” by the local community.
She said she was persuaded to run in December by members of an organisation called Dickson Decides that had been searching for an independent candidate for six months.
“I don’t see myself as a teal,” she told journalists. “Maroon is our colour. Teal is a construct of the media.”
Dickson Decides Pty Ltd is a construct of Eleanor Smith and Christina Cornford, the directors under whose names the company was registered with ASIC on July 30, 2024.
Smith’s campaign is bankrolled in part by Climate 200, the donation-washing outfit led by teal mastermind Simon Holmes a Court.

Naturally this sent the Caterist right off, compounded by the reptiles deciding to run a snap of that man ... Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200 partially funds Ms Smith’s campaign. Picture: Martin Ollman

The Caterist frenzy resulted in a classic rant, beginning with a classic opening thrust...

Welcome to Australia’s first fully fledged post-truth election campaign, where hypocrisy and deception are assets, not liabilities.

This from a man who lied relentlessly in an expensively defamatory way about the movement of floodwaters in quarries, and who has consistently lied about, or been too blind to see, the harsh realities of climate science.

The pond could have stopped there, and it would still have taken a considerable time for the pond to stop rolling about on the floor in a laughing fit.

What made it all the more astonishing is that this congenital liar and distorter of truth dared to invoke Colbert...

A claim doesn’t need verification; it just needs to sound plausible, like “truthiness”, a term coined by comedian Stephen Colbert for what seems true to a partisan audience.

Partisan audience? Oh sainted aunts, roll the Jaffas down the aisles of the hive mind.

And then without a hint of shamelessness or a sense of irony, the Caterist followed up with ...

Anthony Albanese has adapted to the post-truth environment with ease.

Every line was a joke, too many to note, enjoy them how you will ...

If the facts don’t fit his narrative, he simply makes new ones up. He insists, for example, that Tony Abbott slashed $80bn from health and education in 2014. “The 2014 budget described it as a cut,” the PM told Nine viewers. “$50bn in health and $30bn in education.”
Health spending in 2014-15 rose by 2.7 per cent; education spending grew by 5 per cent. The only cuts worth noting in the 2014 budget papers were a 1.5 per cent reduction in company tax and the axing of the carbon tax.
In a post-truth world, however, evidence is accepted or dismissed not on its merits but on its usefulness to the narrative.
Political priorities are readjusted accordingly.
Hence an isolated example of disrespectful behaviour at an Anzac Day ceremony in Melbourne is quickly inflated into a far-right, neo-Nazi uprising, while a Chinese live-fire exercise off the NSW coast is dismissed as routine.

Of course it all springs from that ominous sense of dread that has haunted the reptiles these past few weeks, as they have anxiety attack after attack, all produced by contemplating this man, Anthony Albanese doesn’t pretend to seek a mandate to address national challenges. Picture: Getty Images

That snap sent the Caterist into a further oscillating frenzy ...

Two accidental surpluses, driven by fluctuating commodity prices, are proclaimed as a fiscal triumph, while challenges from tanking productivity, declining investment and faltering energy production are ignored.
The Prime Minister does not pretend to seek a mandate to address genuine national challenges. Labor’s platform is little more than a list of slogans and electoral bribes.
Medicare, Albanese declared, would be “the beating heart” of his campaign, with a promised 18 million extra bulk-billed GP visits a year. Yet Albanese did not strengthen Medicare in government. GP bulk-billing rates fell from 84 to 77 per cent, forcing patients to hand over their credit cards on about 15 million more occasions.
Far from “stripping away billions” from Medicare rebates, as Albanese claims, the Coalition increased payments for medical services from $25.3bn to $37.6bn over nine years, a 15 per cent rise above inflation.

It's just not fair, and what of the Caterist's apparently cratering hero? 

Oh there's a saucy snap... Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is joined by wife Kirilly Dutton in the seat of Mackellar in Sydney on Sunday. Picture: Getty Images

... but it's all post-modern, a shocking contest of narratives ...

Won't someone think of Burke? (Forget Wills)

Won't somebody do something to help out the struggling Duttonator?

Why is life like this?

Yet Peter Dutton has struggled to rebut Albanese’s false claims. He has received precious little help from journalists, who show no inclination to challenge Albanese using readily available facts.
The journalist’s role is no longer the dogged pursuit of objective truth, a task that could once be performed by a school leaver armed with practical intelligence and a sharpened pencil.
Today’s journalists carry the scars of misspent years at university writing essays on the role of language and discourse in constructing meaning and power. They are no longer members of Edmund Burke’s fourth estate, charged with holding authorities to account. They are the fifth estate, whose job is to promote social change and create a more just and equitable world.
Together these postmodern forces in politics and journalism mark a profound shift. The old contest of policies and ideas has given way to a “contest of narratives”.
Spin and emotional appeals are nothing new. Political strategists have recognised since the 1990s that storytelling, image and repetition can outweigh policy detail come election time.
However, this election is exceptional for the near-eclipse of objective truth by tribal logic and activist framing. Complex problems are reduced to moral absolutes. Voters are presented with a choice between righteousness and complicity; emotional urgency replaces rational persuasion.
In 21st century politics, truth is secondary to group solidarity. If a statement advances “our side” and harms “theirs”, it is accepted without scrutiny.

And there you have it, a reptile locked behind a paywall blathering about group solidarity while stuck in a hive mind that exudes solidarity, and rarely gives a fig about truth. 

The reptiles provoked the Caterist again, Wentworth MP Allegra Spender claims she was sent by her community to represent them in parliament. Picture: Thomas Lisson

It was simply too much for the Caterist, apparently even worse than having to endure Clive's scattershot ads on YouTube featuring some demonic wild-eyed blonde ...

Opponents are not merely wrong but immoral or illegitimate. Alarming reports of intimidation and violence at election stations should come as no surprise. When elections are framed as battles between good and evil, temperatures are bound to run hot.
The teal movement is a post-truth creation, built on a foundation of lies. It is anything but the loose alignment of grassroots-led community independents it pretends to be. It is an anti-democratic force, hostage to the vested interests on which it depends.
Teal MP Allegra Spender claimed in her maiden speech: “I am here because my community, Wentworth, sent me here to represent their values in parliament.”
Yet she was preselected by Daniel and Lyndell Droga, major players in a group called Wentworth Independent and long-time supporters of GetUp, which thanked the couple for their support in 2010.
They were assisted by Blair Palese, a climate activist, Israel critic, and co-founder of 350.org Australia. The extent to which an astroturf movement like Wentworth Independent represents Wentworth’s true community values is debatable.
The teals have turned hypocrisy from vice to virtue. They demand greater transparency and an end to moneyed influence in politics, yet rail against legislation to cap electoral spending. They allege dark conspiracies about fossil fuel companies, but they fail to acknowledge that the teal movement is effectively the political wing of the renewable energy industry.

Ah, climate science, and a deep love of ethnic cleansing. 

What to do, oh what to do? Simple, climb into a time machine and head back into the 1950s, to suck on pacifier and snap... Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies would have been aghast by modern politics.

Actually Ming knew a trick or two about lying and dissembling and lopping off rivals so he could stay in power, but enough already as the Caterist sobbed into his tea cup about how people just didn't understand what an excellent idea it was to nuke the country to save the planet, although climate science was a false religion promoted by mad climate activists ...

The public’s tolerance for political fakery will be tested this weekend. On its record alone, Labor would have no hope of re-election. Yet the dollar figure most discussed in this campaign is not the $275 a year Albanese hasn’t taken off our annual electricity bills, or the cost of his renewables-only energy plan, the modelling for which was ditched after proving unreliable.
Instead, the campaign’s most quoted figure is the $600bn fantasy used to discredit the Coalition’s nuclear plan. The actual cost will be a fraction of that, invested over decades, not years, and as capital expenditure, not deducted from recurrent budgets for health or education any more than road building would be.
We can be sure the Liberal Party’s founder, Robert Menzies, would’ve been aghast at this style of politics.
“The business of political warfare is not to destroy your opponent, but to defeat him,” he said in his 1958 speech, The Art of Politics.
He was writing at a time when whatever their differences, politicians could at least agree on the basic facts.
On Saturday, we will find out if such noble principles still hold.

Yeah, just the basic Sgt Joe Friday facts ma'am, like the basic Joe movement of flood waters in quarries.

And there you have it, and the pond doesn't regret savouring the Caterist. 

It was like dropping into the Messina in Smith street and gorging on a raspberry sorbet ...

And so to the bonus, with Mein Gott briefly at the top of the extreme far right column this day ...

What a grand delusion.

Somehow plucky Australasia could stick it to the Chinese and save the Donald, and never mind the grim news of the 100 days polling spree, which suggest he'll need more than a Mein Gott bright idea ...

Search for them as you will, but never mind King Donald, Mein Gott is here to deliver salvation in a four minute read - so the reptiles say - titled Australia can help Trump fight Chinese stranglehold on rare earths, Whoever is elected Prime Minister of Australia on May 3 will be able to deliver Donald Trump with potentially the best news the US President has received since his inauguration.

Talk about the bestest ever news, and the bestest ever illustrations, Our Prime Minister could tell Trump that within three to six months Australia might just be able to diminish his terbium and dysprosium problem. Picture: Evan Vucci)

What a grand vision it was, how easily Mein Gott sorted everything out ...

The person who is elected Prime Minister of Australia on May 3 will be able to deliver Donald Trump with potentially the best news the US President has received since his inauguration.
Donald Trump went into a tariff war with China looking to gain a better trade deal apparently not realising that the Chinese President had America in a strangle hold because Xi Jinping monopolised America’s supply of terbium and dysprosium plus other heavy rare earths.
America’s defence, heavy industry, communications and any operation that requires heavy magnets and radar protection cannot function without these rare earths.
Trump knows his back is to the wall and his position is not made any better by the fact that American consumer sentiment is close to a record low and inflation expectations have climbed to their highest since 1981.
What our Prime Minister can tell Trump is that within three to six months Australia might just be able to diminish his terbium and dysprosium problem. The Prime Minister will need to emphasise that there is still drilling and processing and recovery testing needed, but given the urgency it can be fast tracked.
Given there has been limited press reporting of the discovery, President Trump may not be aware that our Prime Minister is the only world leader who might be able to relieve China’s stranglehold on the US. At this stage a desperate Trump is crushing fluorescent globes to extract terbium.
After the congratulatory pleasantries, a theoretical conversation might go this way.

At this very point, Mein Gott embarked on a kind of fantasy too rich for ordinary sci fi, more epic high fantasy ... and it was beyond the valley of the delicious, wherein he showed off his incredible skills as a dramatist ...

Australian PM: “Mr. President, I understand that you are desperate for heavy rare earths like terbium and dysprosium. It looks as though we may have discovered the biggest rare earth deposit in the world outside of China.
“It’s an amazing story, although the deposit is owned by a small Australian company called Haoma, for nearly 20 years our largest miner, BHP, in joint venture, undertook significant drilling searching for gold on the Haoma leases.
“No one knew anything about terbium so BHP walked away but Haoma stored all the cores in their disused underground gold mine. Recent testing has yielded amazing terbium results.”
Trump: “How quickly can you get me the terbium? I don’t want to put places like Times Square into darkness,”
President Donald Trump appears to have softened his tone on China, but Beijing’s message remains that it will not negotiate under duress and is prepared to fight to the end.
Australian PM: “Some 80 per cent of Haoma is owned by the Morgan family which operates Australia’s largest opinion poll group. I spoke to Gary Morgan last night and he says normally defining the Haoma’s Pilbara rare earth deposits and further upgrading the Bamboo Creek plant would take at least a year and possibly longer. I told him your need was urgent. If all stops were pulled out he can ship concertante to the US in three to six months. Morgan said he must have a refinery ready to take Haoma’s concentrate for final processing and recovery. He will need $100m so you will need to get our resources minister to talk to your people about that.”
Trump: “I will have that refinery ready.”
Australian PM: “There are a few other things I want to talk to you about...”

It was so lifelike, so utterly convincing, almost Arthur Millerish in its neo-realist intensity, that the spell it cast on the pond was only broken by a Mein Gott disclaimer...

While the above is obviously a fictitious conversation the exciting early results are not fiction,

Amazing. 

Who knew, who could have guessed Mein Gott had made it up, that it was "a fictitious conversation" devised by the lizard Oz's very own Shakspere.

And what news of one industry that might make use of rare minerals?

Uh, not so good ...

Never mind, Mein Gott was still working to save the Cantaloupe Caligula ...

Meanwhile, it’s absolutely vital for Australia that if the PM is Anthony Albanese he must not mention setting up a stockpile of Terbium and Dysprosium plus Iridium to deprive the US.
Given the US desperation such a threat would trigger a Trump explosion that would make his oval office clash with Ukraine President Zelensky seem minor.
Some years ago Haoma was removed from the ASX and shifted its listing to a private share trading hub (Ecosystem) operated through Primary Markets Limited.
The latest announcement from Haoma couldn’t come at a better time for the Pilbara because the price of lower-grade iron ore has slumped reflecting the tougher conditions in China. The profits and cash flow of both Gina Rinehart (Hancock) and Andrew Forrest (Fortescue) would have been hit.

There was just time for the reptiles to slip in an AV distraction, Review and Outlook: While Donald Trump focuses on Ukraine's electrical supply, nuclear power plants and rare earth minerals, Vladimir Putin wants much bigger concessions that would cripple the country.

That seemed to take Mein Gott's mind off his grand vision of saving King Donald from himself, and incidentally defeating the fiendish orientals, and his last gobbet was spent slavering over assorted rare earths...

Haoma’s heavy rare earth deposits centre around Bamboo Creek WA, where gold mining has taken place for 125 years.
WMC erected much of the mining plant and at the time when Rio Tinto owned 50 per cent of the Bamboo Creek gold mining operation.
After Rio closed the Bamboo Creek mine, Haoma was reconstructed by Morgan and John Elliott with WMC owning five per cent of Haoma.
When BHP acquired WMC in 2005 they owned the five per cent and after about 10 years working with Haoma sold their stake to Morgan.
At about the same time former BHP director and now Orica chairman, Malcolm Broomhead, became Haoma’s second largest shareholder.
BHP’s 20-year drilling program searched for gold deposits across Haoma’s Pilbara and Queensland tenements using experimental techniques to assay and extract complex gold ores.
Terbium, Dysprosium and other heavy rare earths were not discovered at Haoma’s Bamboo Creek until 2019, when samples from the Bamboo Creek Valley were analysed at The University of Melbourne’s electron microscope scanning facility with these results now transforming the value of Haoma’s Bamboo Creek area.
When BHP pulled out, the Morgan family funded Haoma with about $100m to develop what is now known as the ‘ElazacProcess’ to extract gold and other difficult to extract metals. Today a plant is operating at Bamboo Creek and will be used in the first stage of recovering poly-metallic concentrates of rare earth and precious metals.
A second plant which is in pilot stage will produce further upgraded concentrates to ship to the US.
Haoma directors say the company has made “a significant heavy rare earths and strategic metal discovery in the Pilbara”.
“There are available many millions of tonnes of ore containing significant quantities of Terbium oxide, Dysprosium oxide, and other Heavy Rare Earth oxides, plus precious metals,” Haoma states.
“A Terbium grade of plus 3,000 grams per tonne, measured by XRF, from different large samples collected over Haoma’s Bamboo Creek tenements is significantly higher than other Australian mines recovering heavy rare earth oxides.”
Both the US and Australia have a lot riding on Bamboo Creek’s future development and production.

And there you have it, and no cartoon because all that talk of the mango Mussolini reminded the pond of the excellent links in Katy Waldman's piece in The New Yorker, Trump is the Emperor of A.I. Slop, It makes sense that a man who yearns for a reality untroubled by other humans would be drawn to art that is untouched by anything human.     (Archive link)

If you follow her links, you can end up with some astonishing visions, reminders of why Mein Gott is such a devotee ...

And so to a hint of the pond's next stop in its recent travel adventures, the mighty hamlet of Barraba, where a bunch of Studebaker devotees were having a group meet.

The pond isn't of that ilk, and came across the meet by accident, but came away with some pictorial pleasures to be rolled out in the next few days.

Amongst them was an ancient fire truck and - given the ways pond correspondents try to hunt out Major Mitchell connections - perhaps they'll be inspired to fresh endeavours by a sighting of a Major on the wall experiencing a reflexive snap moment.

Or is it just a common-or-garden galah, as many Majors turn out to be?