In which the onion muncher returns like a bad penny ...

 

Of late the pond has taken to looking at just the headlines and railing and ranting at them. 

Take this effort by the both siderist NY Times ... go on, take it ...

 

"Strains Bounds of Propriety"? 

Talk about contortions worthy of a maiden aunt. If you bother to follow through and read the piece (archive link), it's plain enough that it's deeply corrupt ..

Another headline trick is to pose it as a question. 

See Clare Malone in The New Yorker, Is Jeff Bezos Selling Out the Washington Post? (archive link)

It's a straw dog, a McGuffin, an incitement to read, and the answer to the question is bleeding obvious in the read. 

Of course,  of course - he's not just selling it out, he's fucking it up in many, many ways and, like many filthy rich people, remains in the grip of his own delusions ...

....There has been some speculation that Bezos might sell the Post, but he recently told one interested buyer that it is not for sale. “He doesn’t really care what people think of him,” Baron, the former executive editor, told me. Last year, after deciding to block the paper’s endorsement, Bezos wrote, “You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other. I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled.” Still, he added, “you are of course free to make your own determination.”

Le Journal, c'est moi.

And so to this day's lizard Oz headlines, the day after Sussan, who was welcomed yesterday thusly...

Oh the poor thing ...

As for the rest this day ...

No wonder the pond has tended to stick with the headlines and over on the extreme far right it got no better, with Dame Slap top of the world ma, early in the morning ...

The pond baulked at doing Dame Slap... the headline was enough ...

An open letter to Marcia Langton and Noel
Conflating the rejection of race in the Constitution with the notion that Australians don’t care about Indigenous disadvantage is not only insulting, it’s plain wrong. Both of you need to stop with the baseless accusations.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

An open letter? What a pompous bitch from hell approach. Always banging on about the difficult, uppity blacks, never grateful enough for Dame Slap's care ...

And there was another headline that didn't bode well.

EXCLUSIVE

Bowen feels ‘silent’ wind at his back on green agenda

An emboldened Chris Bowen has doubled down on Labor’s rollout of offshore wind farms, renewables and the phase-out of coal-fired power plants in a post-election attack on critics of his green power agenda.

By Geoff Chambers

Usually when the reptiles lead with an EXCLUSIVE of this kind, it means some member of the government has taken to propping up the lizard Oz paywall with an offering, and sure enough ...

The reality is suburbia and the bush love renewables

Conservative commentators – who don’t actually spend much time in our regional heartlands – don’t understand just how popular solar panels, batteries and EVs are out there in voter land.

By Chris Bowen

While ranting at conservative commentators, Bowen was in reality feeding the beast, and any hapless punter who wanted to find out what he was saying had to fork over their shekels to the Murdochians ...

But headlines aside, someone had to make the cut, and today it was the onion muncher, now such an ill-tempered irrelevance, it's wondrous to see him sticking his head up over the parapet yet again...

First a little background reading. 

Sir Keir has managed to put himself in the doghouse, as explained in The Graudian ...No 10 defends Starmer’s language on immigration likened to Enoch Powell speech, Downing Street says it is wrong to compare PM’s warning about ‘island of strangers’ to 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech

It is, of course, absolutely right, to compare Starmer's speech with Enoch Powell's rivers of blood speech. (wiki, in full pdf here)

Powell received his training in bigotry with a colonial stint as Prof of Greek at Sydney University, and the connections are enhanced by Starmer proposing an English language test, the apple in the methodological eye of the White Australia policy.

On the upside, the fuss has produced a couple of cracking Craces, as in Yvette Cooper left to spin the unspinnable after Starmer’s ‘island of strangers’ speech and in The race to the bottom is on as Starmer delivers his great immigration reset

The Poms have always had more than their fair share of Little Englanders, and amongst them can be counted the onion muncher, on display today ...

It's a relief really, a disease rendered harmless by continued inoculation, but always lurking in the system: Immigration is the elephant still crowding the room, We claim to be the world’s most successful immigrant nation but can we stay that way, based on official bromides such as ‘our diversity is our unity’ – in other words, that all we have in common is that we don’t have anything in common?

Such a stupid man, such a stupid, pathetic attempt at a witticism.

The caption for the opening image? Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton before the ABC debate on April 16. Immigration and multiculturalism proved too difficult to talk about. Picture: Matt Roberts/ ABC/ Pool/NewsWire

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

The main interest here is the timing. 

Sussssan gets the gig, and suddenly the onion muncher is on parade with his usual line in shit stirring and bigotry ...

Immigration and multiculturalism was the issue neither side wanted to touch in the election campaign, even though it impacted heavily on the cost-of-living crisis both sides were pledged to address; even though it contributed to the wave of anti-Semitism both sides were pledged to stop, and; even though both sides had said they were committed to getting immigration numbers down.
But once discussing immigration moves from the need to get it down to the practical steps to cut it, the vested interests it benefits are prone to take offence: the universities, colleges and language schools whose business model depends on fee-paying overseas students seeking to work and to immigrate rather than just study and return; the businesses that would prefer to import labour rather than train Australians, or to pay people more to do menial jobs; the reform-shy officials who’ve been relying on immigration as the lazy way to generate positive economic growth, and; the moralists who want large numbers of migrants to dilute the Anglo culture they find dull or otherwise dislike; plus a lot of recent immigrants inclined to take personally any critique of high immigration.

The Anglo culture? 

He is, of course, just another wannabe Enoch, though fortunately also a eunuch of late ... as the reptiles cut to the Bolter ... Sky News host Andrew Bolt discusses the “massive problem” of overpopulation in Australia which the “Albanese government ignored in the election campaign”. Mr Bolt says the high rate of immigration in Australia will become a “theme” this year. “No wonder we’re choking on this immigration,” Mr Bolt said. “You compare Australia’s population growth to the rest of the world’s, and you see that ours is off the charts. “Does anyone really want … us becoming a land of people who increasingly share no history?”

Increasingly share no history?Shades of Starmer, and one of the ironies of globalist war mongering is that we share histories with many people in many countries, such as Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

What's really going down is the hard right forming a new line of attack on poor old Sussssan, trying to force her to the right, no matter how she tries to paint the tiger ...

Back to the onion muncher, letting full bigotry rain down...

Dealing with all this turned out to be too much for a federal Coalition that repeatedly promised to get immigration down further and faster than Labor but eventually declined to specify how that might be achieved.
If such a sensitive topic is successfully to be addressed, it will require a sustained national debate, well prior to the stress of an election campaign, and preferably without the accusations of racism that can so readily derail it.
Even for a country of 28 million, if sustained, close to half a million newcomers a year is transformative. It’s the equivalent of a city the size of Canberra, every year. Every migrant needs something to do, somewhere to live, and a means of getting around. That means downward pressure on wages, upward pressure on housing costs, and massive pressure on infrastructure.
Immigration at scale certainly adds to the size of the overall economy. But it only adds to individuals’ wealth if the newcomers, on average, are more productive than the locals. And even if it does add to wealth, it only adds to social wellbeing if nearly all the newcomers are keen to fit in, which can’t always be taken for granted.
We claim to be the world’s most successful immigrant nation but can we stay that way, based on official bromides such as “our diversity is our unity” – in other words, that all we have in common is that we don’t have anything in common? Increasingly, this is an issue for every immigrant nation, especially the Anglosphere countries, wracked with doubt and guilt about their history: slavery, colonialism and the dispossession of the original inhabitants.

There it comes again, the full-blown chauvinism in "Anglosphere" countries, a nebulous concept which can't mean the Commonwealth, because think of all the differently coloured people that might bring to the table.

Oh poor, poor Sussssan ...

The other point to this sort of outing is the desperate quest for relevance, the narcissistic desire to be heard, or more to the point seen, and so the reptiles gratified the poor, deprived man, Former prime minister Tony Abbott. Picture by Andrew Parsons / Parsons Media

Poor old elbows up Canada, which had to deal with the difficult French, cops the blame, as if the Habsburg empire hadn't existed and tried out the notion of fitting many different tents under the one roof ...(read the wiki and you have to start with Cyrus the Great, much loved on YouTube)

It was the notion of multiculturalism, imported from Canada in the 1970s, that first encouraged migrants to maintain their languages and distinctive characteristics, in order, supposedly, to enliven the Anglo-Celtic mainstream, and to make it easier for us to bond with other countries. At its best, it meant migrants becoming Australians in their own way and at their own pace, without pressure to conform. And given that migrants invariably come because they like what’s here – to join us, not change us – the gravitational pull of the Australian way of life has continued to make wonderful Australians of millions of newcomers.
Yet, in sufficient numbers, change us they do. Especially now that cheap air travel and the internet enable migrants, should they choose, almost to live in two countries at once.
Australian Jews have role-modelled how to maintain a distinct community and identity while being committed Australians. The Indians, now our largest immigrant source, are readily integrating; perhaps pre-prepared for life in Australia by their homeland’s ready acceptance of democracy, the rule of law and, to a considerable extent, the English language. And likewise the Chinese, many of whom have come via Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia or Taiwan. Even the Australians of Chinese background who spend considerable time in China, having tasted the largeness of life here, are more likely to be ambassadors for Australian values in China than the other way round.
The downside of multiculturalism is the presence of migrants unaccustomed to religious pluralism, minority rights and a secular state. For a few, the “death to the infidel” mindset is hard to shake, plus a tendency to judge issues in terms of religious solidarity, notwithstanding the Australian citizenship pledge specifying “loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey”.

Note the cunning way that the onion muncher introduces his standard form of bigotry and hate, not directly at Islamics, but at those who chant "death to the infidel", which is to say the perfidious Islamics. 

We all know what that means - those who dare to mention mass starvation as a weapon of war, ethnic cleansing and genocide (Try mentioning the Gaza holocaust, and wait for all the chants of death to the infidel).

The reptiles reinforced the notion and the target with the next snap ...Protesters outside the ABC western Sydney headquarters as Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton head into their second debate. Picture: NewsWire / Monique Harmer

Again the pond was reminded just how far the extreme right has broken and is still intent on breaking things, and what a tough time Sussssan would have assembling the furniture for a new look ...

Then came a repeat of the usual rant, because the reptile hive mind loves its rote indoctrination ...

There wasn’t much respect for Australian values in the angry mob outside the Sydney Opera House, two days after the October 7 atrocities, shouting “f..k the Jews”, and what sounded very much like “gas the Jews”. Or in local Islamic leaders describing October 7 as a “day of victory”. Perhaps there needs to be a longer probationary period before residents can become citizens and a more exacting citizenship test to weed out people who would prefer merely to live in Hotel Australia than sincerely to join Team Australia.

Oh just fuck off, the day the pond will be on your team is the day the pond returns to the earth... and so to a final bout of bigotry, with the spoiler saved to the end...

In the end, Australia has to run its migration program much more for the benefit of existing citizens than for potential new ones; and for the good of society as a whole than for any of its constituent communities. We’re perfectly entitled to discriminate on the basis of values, if we’re to avoid importing destructive passions. And if we’re proud of Australia as it is, as we’re entitled to be, we should be wary of immigration that risks making the native-born feel like strangers in their own neighbourhoods.
The immediate family of Australian citizens should always have a right to come here. There should always be a welcome for any essential workers who really can’t be found locally. And it would be folly to turn away highly skilled people, whose local employers are prepared to pay a substantial foreign workers’ tax annually, at least until these staff have qualified for citizenship.
But even if only to maintain their own standards, universities and colleges should not rely nearly so much on foreign students, many with little fluency in English; businesses should not be permitted to bring in foreign workers without first offering locals more training or higher pay; and the so-called skilled migration programme – inviting in people on the basis of literally hundreds of occupations supposedly in demand – should be abolished in favour of a scheme that admits people for a specific job with a specific employer that a specific person really is needed to fill.
Employment should be the main basis for immigration because working and paying taxes from day one is also the best way to integrate and ultimately to assimilate into the wider Australian community.
Almost nothing engenders more pride in Australia than someone from an obvious migrant background, speaking with a broad Australian accent, succeeding in something that reflects well on our country. But that means migrants who see Australia as a place to be committed to, rather than simply to be taken advantage of. Like the members of an extended family, what Australians should all share is mutual solidarity and a determination to work together for the common good.
Tony Abbott was prime minister from 2013-15. This is based on a paper prepared for a Danube Institute talk in Hungary last week.

Ah, the Hungarians, of course, of course, stout Little Englanders the lot of them.

Will someone tell the Hungarians, mired in autocracy, that they're part of the problem?

As an indication of where this sat in the reptile world, down below came a "further reading" suggestion, a way of staying inside the hive mind.

This was the offering ...

And so on and on, and so forth, and to cleanse the mouth and wash the taste way, a couple of imports ...

It was just a three minute read, rich in irony and the reptiles seized the chance to slip in an AV distraction, President Trump announced a 90-day trade deal with China, which will reduce tariffs to 10% from 125%.

Reading the reptiles get agitated about the man they made king is a special kind of catnip or porn for the pond, and the WSJ Board obliged in full ...

Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs—and by Mr. Trump’s own hand. Witness the agreement Monday morning to scale back his punitive tariffs on China—his second major retreat in less than a week. This is a win for economic reality, and for American prosperity.
Make that a partial win for reality. The Administration agreed to scrap most of the 145% tariff Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods on April 2 and later. What remains is his new 10% global base-line tariff, plus the separate 20% levy putatively tied to China’s role in the fentanyl trade, for a total rate of 30%. In exchange, Beijing will reduce its retaliatory tariff to 10% from 125%. The deal is good for 90 days to start, as negotiations continue.
Investors are cheering at this border-tax reprieve, since this is a step back from mutual assured trade destruction. Dan Clifton of Strategas calculates that Mr. Trump’s trade walkbacks add up to some $300 billion in tariff relief. That’s a huge tax reprieve.
The 30% tariff is still exceptionally high for a major trading partner, but the 90-day rollback spares both sides from what looked like an impending economic crackup. U.S. consumers were facing widespread shortages, while China feared growing unemployment.

Indeedy do, 30% is high, as the markets began to realise, but the reptiles decided on another AV distraction, featuring more lying from the notorious liar, During his remarks at the White House, President Trump said the U.S. has all the cards in its trade discussions with the European Union.

It turned out that the liar's previous great announcement was now just a modest agreement ... (kudos for Jon Stewart having great fun with that great announcement - YouTube link - and while considering many great moments, failing to mention that particular trade deal).

As with last week’s modest British agreement, the China deal is more surrender than Trump victory. Apart from the tariff rollback, neither side announced any broader concessions on the substantive trade issues that weigh on the U.S.-China relationship. Those include China’s barriers to American firms, especially in services such as digital and financial, and its chronic intellectual-property theft.
Many of these bad Chinese practices have become worse under President Xi Jinping’s strong-arm economic management. One tragedy of Mr. Trump’s shoot-America-in-the-foot-first approach is that he’s hurt his chances of rallying a united front of countries against Beijing’s mercantilism. By targeting allies with tariffs, Mr. Trump has eroded trust in America’s economic and political reliability.
Beijing now also has the benefit of concrete experience to reassure the Communist Party that Washington would struggle to impose economic sanctions in a crisis such as a Chinese blockade or invasion of Taiwan. If there’s a silver lining to the tariff fiasco, it’s the timely reminder to Congress to get serious about true military deterrence again.
Taking a step back, where are we now after nearly four months of Mr. Trump’s protectionism? The President’s concessions since his initial tariff announcements include: exemptions for goods from Canada and Mexico produced under the terms of the USMCA; a 90-day pause on his reciprocal tariffs against everyone except China; exemptions on China tariffs for iPhones and electronics; the mini-deal with the United Kingdom; and now the 90-day rollback on China tariffs.

Then came a snap of the real winner, Many bad Chinese practices have become worse under President Xi Jinping’s strong-arm economic management. Picture: AP Photo/Pavel Bednyakov, Pool

How long will it take Americans to understand that the Cantaloupe Caligula has managed to introduce a new tax, one that punishes the poor much more than the rich?

The landing spot coming into view is a 10% global tariff, and higher (but not 145%) for China. The negotiations allegedly underway with dozens of countries while the reciprocal tariffs are paused may make some marginal headway opening markets for American firms. But so far there’s scant sign of the substantial trade deals that Mr. Trump promises.
So after weeks of market turmoil, the economy is left with higher trade costs and greater uncertainty for business, but at least a step back from Smoot-Hawley 2.0. Investors, businesses and households probably would welcome this outcome, which is considerably better than Mr. Trump’s initial plan.
But a 10% across-the-board tariff is still four times the average U.S. tariff rate before Mr. Trump took office. It keeps the door open to the economically and politically destructive special pleading for tariff breaks for well-connected industries and companies at the expense of everyone else. U.S. companies protected by high tariffs will gradually lose their competitiveness against the rest of the world.
If there’s a silver lining to this turmoil, it is that markets have forced Mr. Trump to back down from his fever dream that high tariff walls will usher in a new “golden age.” The age didn’t last two months, and it was more leaden than golden. White House aide Peter Navarro, the main architect with Mr. Trump of the Liberation Day fiasco, has been repudiated.
Mr. Trump will not want to admit it, but he started a trade war with Adam Smith and lost. He’s not the first President to learn that lesson.

And so to more comedy ...

Everybody had fun with this, with Marina giving it a hydeing in the Graudian as Poor Trump: you can’t even accept a luxury jet from Qatar without being called corrupt these days

The reptiles turned to The Times ...

The Alistair Dawber header: MAGA ire at jet gift from ‘jihadists in suits’, The proposed $626m aircraft is a bridge too far for some of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters.

The caption: Donald Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Saudi Royal Court in Riyadh on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

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

This was the sensation of the day, and many covered it, and in a curious way it leads the pond back to where it started with the NY Times ...

In these days you can only be a headline for a very short space of time ... and the moment you start blathering about world peace, you can be safely ignored ...

This is the sort of attention-seeking the onion muncher would love, but will never manage ...

Donald Trump has defended the gift of a luxury jet from the Qatari royal family, an aircraft he has previously described as “a palace in the sky”, amid growing criticism of the decision to accept the plane.
Worth about $US400m ($626m), the plane would probably be the most valuable foreign gift ever received by the US government, an official said.
“They’re giving us a free jet,” the President said when he was asked about the aircraft at the White House on Tuesday (AEST), adding that the reporter asking the question should be embarrassed about raising the issue. “I could say ‘No, no, no, I want to pay you, a billion, or $400m or whatever it is,’ or I could say ‘Thank you very much’.”

Talk about contortions, and the reptiles offered this one in an AV distraction, Comedian Alex Stein has weighed in on the controversy surrounding the US president accepting a luxury jet from the royal family of Qatar. The Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet is set to be used by the president as the new Air Force One. “I think the bigger story personally is that Boeing can’t produce this plane,” Mr Stein told Sky News Digital Presenter Gabriella Power. “It’s just sad that Boeing, arguably one of the greatest American companies, not anymore, cannot produce the proper Air Force One for the president.”

Stein is passably thick, with the specs the difficulty, and the job of bringing the "gift" up to spec remarkably high ...

That's what makes it so funny ...

He then used a quote from golfer Sam Snead to defend the gift: “When you’re given a putt, say ‘Thank you very much, pick up your ball and you walk to the next hole’.”
He said it was a gift to the US rather than a personal present. “It’s a gift to the Department of Defence, and you (the reporter) should know better, because you’ve been embarrassed enough and so has your network. ABC is a disaster.”
Even some of Mr Trump’s most ardent supporters criticised ­his ­acceptance of the gift, the details of which are still to be finalised.
Laura Loomer, a right-wing podcaster and conspiracy theorist, drew attention to the Qatari government’s links with the Muslim Brotherhood and its connections with groups such as Hamas.

It wouldn't be a story if it didn't feature the Mango Mussolini, and so it came to pass, though without benefit of toilet paper on shoe ... Mr Trump walks down the stairs of Air Force One upon his arrival at King Khalid International Airport Royal Terminal in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Picture: AP

On with the comedy ...

Doha has acted as mediator between the US, Israel and Hamas during the Gaza war. “I love President Trump,” Ms Loomer said in a social media post. “I would take a bullet for him. But I have to call a spade a spade. We can’t accept a $400m ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits.”
She questioned Mr Trump’s objectives in the Middle East. “It’s going to be hard for the admin to designate the Muslim Brotherhood and obliterate Iran­ian proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah when Qatar funds the Muslim Brotherhood, harbours Hamas, and the US accepted a $US400m jet from Qatar,” she wrote. “The biggest lobby in DC is the Qatar lobby. We are watching an Islamic takeover of our country in real time.”
The Qatari-owned aircraft is expected eventually to be donated to Mr Trump’s presidential “library” when he leaves office in 2029, allowing him to continue using it as a private citizen.
Democrats have also condemned the gift. Jamie Raskin, a congressman from Maryland, said: “A gift you use for four years and then deposit in your library is still a gift (and a grift).”
Mr Trump argued that the agreement was a shrewd business move. “So the fact that the Defence Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40-year-old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane,” he said in a post on his Truth Social. “Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!! MAGA.”

The reptiles interrupted with another AV distraction, the grifter arriving in his natural home in search of yet another grift ...US President Donald Trump was welcomed to Saudi Arabia by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday, May 13. Saudi Arabia is Trump’s first stop on his three-day trip to the Middle East, which will also include a visit to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Footage released by the White House shows Trump disembarking Air Force One on Tuesday afternoon and being greeted by the prince. Trump was to deliver remarks at an investment forum, which would bring together major Saudi and American investors, including Elon Musk. Credit: The White House via Storyful

Then it was on to the wrap-up ...

The President has been angered at delays to upgrades of the fleet of US presidential planes, known as Air Force One after the military call sign given to any plane used by a president.
The US government has hired a contractor to add secure communication equipment that the plane will need before it can transport the President.
According to the aircraft’s specifications, there is a private master bedroom that comes with enclosed office and a lounge with its own entrance to the plane.
The White House counsel’s office, as well as lawyers at the Department of Justice, said it was legal for the Department of Defence to accept the aircraft as a gift and for Mr Trump to use it after he is president. They said it would not violate laws against bribery or the constitution’s ban on officials accepting gifts “from any king, prince or foreign state”.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told Fox News the legal details were “still being worked out”.
The primary aircraft in the Air Force One fleet are two ageing Boeing 747-200 jets in operation since 1990. The US Air Force contracted Boeing to replace the aircraft but the project, which was agreed in 2018, has been hamstrung by delays. The new planes are not expected to be ready until 2029, by which time Mr Trump will have left office.
Mr Trump inspected the Qatari-owned 747 while it was at the Palm Beach International Airport in February, describing it as a palace. It is expected to be retrofitted by the end of the year, allowing Mr Trump to use it while in office.
The Times

The plane won't be retrofitted by the end of the year, not unless the specs are hugely modified, and if they are the plane will have lost its original meaning as a command centre in the sky, and simply become a pleasure palace for King Donald... but by then it will be just another forgotten announcement, another bit of turmoil lost in the fog ...

And so to celebrate again the arrival of Sussssan, this time with the immortal Rowe ...