Sorry, the pond has a snow cone in Southgate to buy, before the tariffs kick in ...

 

What a dismal response to the Emeritus Chairman as prophet, visionary, seer, sage and futurist, and things continued dismal today ...

There was the Cantaloupe Caligula, sounding a retreat while attempting his usual bullying routine, and dominating the top of the lizard Oz page in the process... with JD "hillbilly peasant" Vance ably helping negotiations ...

Over on the extreme far right the usual motley Thursday mob were on parade ...

The pond was still finding its feet in the jewel of the south and so could only marvel at the sight of a birdbrain offering this lightweight bubble bath of froth and foam ...

Voters deserve more than lightweight election debate
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that neither side really trusts the public with a proper explanation of its policy beyond the barest outline or political caricature.
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

The pond realised that today was all about catching up on favourite cartoonists, a feeling compounded by another offering ...

Judgment defines the debate and slams the dogma
Justice Strum’s decision is the best-yet judicial guide to the debate about youth gender clinics.
By Bernard Lane

That trans thing again, a tremendous distraction, but the pond had just come off watching John Oliver, and all the pond could do was heed Parker Molloy's injunction, Send This John Oliver Segment to Anyone Still Confused About Trans Athletes, It's the most thoughtful, fact-based explanation you'll find about what's really happening in women's sports

There was a transcript of the show, so the pond's job in the slow Lane was done ...

Other offerings failed to stir, what with the pond anxious to get out and about and explore the Athens of the South ... (a title falsely claimed by croweaters) ...

Muslim Votes does not care about, nor represent, Muslims
Muslim Votes is a mix of the aggressive left, of opportunists, cynics, and the naive, with some undercover Liberal support in certain electorates, and idealists unaware of the strange amalgam which is this grouping.
By Jamal Rifi

Meanwhile, the ethnic cleansing goes on apace in Gaza - tremendous real estate opportunity - and the Poms finally get agitated ... about a couple of British MPs...

Then there was this ...

Dear pollies: take WFH from our cold, dead hands
I have no idea what a hybrid work-from-home model is, other than it sounds like the sort of a thing a car manufacturer would say. But the politics of work from home is like comedy.
By Jack the Insider
Columnist

That reminded the pond it had to get off this machine so that WFH could proceed apace ... quick, a relevant cartoon ...

Pickings were so thin, such a wretched gruel, that the pond had to turn to the lizard Oz editorialist, fresh from a bout of bog standard greenie bashing ...

It was just a two minute, read or so the reptiles said ... Trade war is only getting started

US-China breakdown suggests wild ride on tariffs is far from over.

While Australia looks to friends in the US to argue our case on tariffs, we remain hostage to where the real action is taking place. This is between the US and China. As Treasury noted on Monday, if Donald Trump’s trade war persists, 80 per cent of the impact on Australia’s GDP will come from a slowdown in demand in China. Since Treasury did its pre-budget calculations, it has been all bad news on the US-China front.

As financial markets have tried to second-guess whether the US President is indulging in a high-stakes bluff, the trade war has morphed from a negotiating ploy to a full-blown diplomatic breakdown between the world’s two biggest economies. Mr Trump has doubled down on China, lifting tariffs by an additional 84 per cent, bringing the total of the tariffs imposed in his second term to 104 per cent. In what has been an escalating dispute, Mr Trump has imposed 20 per cent duties on Chinese imports in retribution for imports of the socially destructive drug fentanyl. He imposed an extra 34 per cent tariff on China as part of what was presented as a shock-and-awe global fightback.

When China said it would retaliate against his actions, Mr Trump imposed an additional 50 per cent tariff.

Unlike other nations – notably Israel, Vietnam and EU members – China has elected to hit back first rather than negotiate its position. Xi Jinping responded to the reciprocal tariff with a blanket 34 per cent tariff on all US imports as well as curbs on US access to rare-earth minerals. The language from the Chinese Communist Party leader through his economic and media bureaucracy is that China will fight to the end. On Tuesday, China’s central bank allowed the yuan to fall in value against the US dollar, offsetting some of the impact of tariffs. The state is expected to respond further with stimulus spending and direct market support for local companies. All of these measures have grave economic risks for China and point to the political pressure the tariffs represent for Mr Xi.

Being an editorial, there were no illustrations, so the pond brought its own ...

The reptiles sounded gloomy, unaware that there had been a tremendous rebound, all had been fixed, everything was fine, and the pond could look into purchasing that snow cone in Southgate ...

As a result, without a circuit-breaker the potential is for a protracted dispute with unpredictable outcomes. As The Wall Street Journal observes, China sees Mr Trump’s actions as an existential threat aimed at keeping it from surpassing the US as the world’s biggest and richest economy. Mr Trump sees China’s dominance of global trade as the surest sign that the international trading system is rigged against the US.

The US President can point to the numbers for some justification. China in 2024 reported a global goods trade surplus of about $US1 trillion, while the US had a deficit in goods trade of $US1.2 trillion. About $US300bn of this deficit was directly with China but a large portion of the rest was with countries including Mexico and Vietnam that had been used by China to circumvent tariffs imposed by the first Trump administration.

This is why the US is using reciprocal tariffs to cut off China’s access to the US market through third-party destinations.

The US also is looking urgently for alternative supplies of rare earths and minerals to break its dependence on Chinese sources. This presents Australia with a long-term opportunity, but it is swamped by the reality of what a prolonged showdown between China and the US on trade will mean.

As financial markets continue to digest what is happening, Mr Trump is getting ready to increase the pressure further with a set of tariffs specifically aimed at pharmaceuticals. In an act of national self-sufficiency over economic prudence, this is designed to draw drug-makers back to where the market is, the US. It all signals that the wild ride is far from over.

Should the pond have attended to domestic matters? Not if that meant suffering through simpleton Simon style offerings ... (how many conflicts of interest would you like?) ...

Peter Dutton’s strategy to put integrity at heart of budget process

Peter Dutton demonstrated in the debate that he has started to find his line and length on the economic narrative. He now wants to steer the election contest back to safe ground for the Coalition.

By Simon Benson

Political Editor

Integrity! Always the first thought with the Duttonator ... so it was back to the wars ... so many wars ... or were they, as a correspondent had suggested, just wrestling matches?

The reptiles were forced to bring in a WSJ commentator to deal with all the feuding and the fussing and the fighting, a different kind of heady Mead ...

Donald Trump’s tariff flex is all about the pursuit of power, A guy who can turn a mug shot into a presidential portrait should never be discounted, and disasters that would ruin lesser talents leave him unfazed.

Walter Russell Mead

The reptiles assured the pond that once past a standard snap of the best "heel" wrestling has ever produced, US President Donald Trump steps off Air Force One as he arrives at Miami International Airport, it would be a mere three minute read:

How would this Mead handle such a wonderful drop?

Donald Trump’s hastily kludged together tariff plan has global financial markets swooning.

His plan has accomplished two things that befuddled Democrats couldn’t: tariffs have plunged Trump into the first true crisis of his second term; and they have US voters wondering if the President is fit for office.

It is much too early, however, to draft obituaries for the Trump presidency or the MAGA movement. If there is one lesson since the President descended the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, it is not to write this man off.

A guy who can turn a mug shot into a presidential portrait should never be discounted, and disasters that would ruin lesser talents leave him unfazed.

What we are seeing is classic Trump. The President believes in himself and his core intuitions and convictions.

Indeed, indeed, classic ...

This Mead was a heady brew ...

He believes the analysts and policymakers who disagree with him are foolish and weak. When he encounters resistance, his instinct isn’t to compromise and reconsider. It’s to double down on his bets, hype up the drama and intimidate his opponents through bold strokes and tough threats. Show him a Gordian knot and he whips out his sword.

As his policies at home and abroad encounter resistance – a resistance sometimes grounded less in the obstinacy of his enemies than in the unyielding nature of facts – Trump becomes more determined. This method has worked for him in the past and he believes it will work for him now.

Trump’s abiding goal appears to be to maximise his personal power, not to win arguments with trade economists or to boost stock prices. Domestically, he believes the political strength he gains from asserting total control over American tariff policy will intimidate businesses into supporting him. He believes the bonds with his supporters will survive an economic rough patch.

Internationally, the President hopes his shock and awe tariff tactics will boost his – and America’s – power and prestige. Access to the US market, he believes, is the most powerful weapon this side of a nuclear bomb.

The reptiles did allow one AV distraction, emanating from good old Shoe ...ASPI Defence, Strategy and National Security Director Michael Shoebridge has slammed the United States for imposing global tariffs. “America is the richest, most powerful nation on the planet and now behaving like a victim and trying to extract billions of dollars from every other country on the planet makes no sense outside his MAGA base,” Mr Shoebridge said. “Frankly the EU and China are starting to push back and they have real power to do so.”

Forget the Shoe, and arcane references to old movies, this was Huuuggee ...

In perhaps the most naked display of American economic power since Dwight Eisenhower forced Britain to abandon its Suez adventure in 1956 by threatening to attack the British pound, Trump wants to force US allies and adversaries alike to recognise his power and conform to his priorities. It is an understatement to call this a flex.

Trump knows that trade with the US is vital to the prosperity and even the stability of dozens of countries. He is aware that American guarantees underwrite the security of much of the world.

By telling the world that both trade rules and security guarantees depend solely on his will, he is concentrating the greatest possible amount of power in his hands.

The reckless and arbitrary nature of his tariff schedule emphasises how vulnerable others are to his decisions while advertising the absence of domestic constraints on his power.

Trump will need all the power he can get. The international crises confronting this administration grow larger and more dangerous by the day.

Vladimir Putin has taken no steps towards genuine compromise in Ukraine and, if anything, has cosied up to China. Xi Jinping is also standing firm, responding to the latest round of US tariffs with retaliatory tariffs of his own – even as he steps up military preparations against Taiwan. In the Middle East, bombing the Houthis has produced no strategic breakthroughs to date. And as US pressure on Iran and its Houthi allies grows, and the potential for more fighting in the Middle East rises, Russia and China aren’t walking away from their wounded and weakened Iranian friends.

The question as always with Trump is how he intends to use the power he has accumulated.

Does he want a fairer global trading system or are his instincts purely mercantilist? Does he seek to make NATO more effective by shocking the Europeans into behaving less foolishly or is his real goal to break it? Does the President want to reform government or is DOGE an attempt to weaken Washington’s capacity to restrain business interests? Does he care about policy or is his entire political career an expression of egotism and concern for his family’s financial future? Is he really out to conquer Canada?

Trump himself may not know the answers to these questions. But, one way or another, the steps he takes in the coming months will establish his place in history. For good or for ill, it will be huge.

The Wall Street Journal

Huge, and instead of napalm in the morning, there'd be spanners and cogs...

As for what the pond missed yesterday, it was nothing to write home about.

There was one very brief - a mere two minutes, so the reptiles said - visitation by Lloydie of the Amazon as the reptiles tried to do a song and dance about the Duttonator's energy polices ...

 

Queensland’s common sense approach has lessons for others, The engineers and bean-counters are back in control of the Queensland electricity system in what should be a template for the national grid.

There was the usual strange injuction, This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there, so the pond went there ... to see an opening snap The Callide Power Station in Biloela, Queensland. Picture: Getty Images

The pond was wildly excited ... 

The pond was always inspired by Lloydie and his saving of the Amazon, and at last a chance there'd be a chance to learn how nuking the country would save the planet ...

The engineers and bean-counters are back in control of the Queensland electricity system in what should be a template for the national grid. The way forward is for new investment in coal and gas, and a withdrawal of government from trying to pick winners on the basis of ideology not capability.

The pragmatic intent of the Crisafulli government’s energy rework is made clear in the renaming of Labor’s much-hyped Hydrogen Division in the Department of Energy and Climate, to Gas and Sustainable Fuels, which now sits within Queensland Treasury.

Say what, the way forward is good old dinkum, clean, virginal, Oz coal, and fossil fool gas? And nowhere nukes to be found?

The reptiles offered a snap of the visionary, Queensland Treasurer and Energy Minister David Janetzki. Picture: Dan Peled/NewsWire

Surely this was just a distraction, surely we'd get on to nuking the country to save the planet?

State Treasurer and Energy Minister David Janetzki is not backing away from the bipartisan pledge to net zero by 2050. But neither is he being sucked in to never-ending support for ideologically fashionable projects that should never have made it past the glossy brochure. Top of the list is the Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro project, where costs were estimated to have blown out from the original $7bn to $36.8bn.

Mr Janetzki has set out a five-year plan to bring order to a decade of Labor’s ideological energy obsessions. He has not been distracted by the possibility of nuclear energy in the future but has put the focus on what is needed now to guarantee reliable and affordable electricity. Top of the list is investment in the coal-fired generators that currently supply 60 per cent of the state’s electricity.

Say what, he was nuking the nukes and good old coal was top of the action, in much the way that the toads of the north had once given a peanut farmer's splendid ways of doing government to the world?

At this point the reptiles interrupted with an AV distraction, featuring Lloydie of the Amazon himself ...

Environment Editor Graham Lloyd explains how each party is tackling the issue of Energy, and how it will play a significant part in the 2025 Federal election.

What a splendid sight. Two wretches in grey on either side, while there was full-colour Lloydie, right in the centre of the action, explaining how coal was still the answer ... (and what was the question again?)

Renewables as well as smaller-scale pumped hydro are definitely still part of the mix. But Mr Janetzki wants the state to get out of the way and let private enterprise work the numbers and take the risks. He says sticking with net zero is critical to unlocking private sector funding.

The five-year energy plan represents a fresh broom by a new administration that only begs the question: What would happen if equivalent rigour were applied to other renewable energy-obsessed administrations such as Victoria’s.

There are lessons here for Chris Bowen as well. Don’t let the tail wag the dog. Stop throwing good money after bad. Get the energy priorities in order for reliability and price. The Queensland approach is designed to ease pressure on the budget, de-risk the energy future, add significant generation capacity, and apply downward pressure on household and business power bills. It will be up to the private sector to deliver on emissions reductions at an affordable price.

Ah, the private sector ... Gina's mob doing it dirt cheap ... (and should he get rid of that ridiculous beard while pumping up ridiculous insights?)

And with that the pond was done, with the infallible Pope helping out with a little headspace ...