In which the pond celebrates King Donald and a timely Ted talk from Ted ...

 

Okay, time to start off in a light way with the dressing habits of a theological liar, liar ... too short pants on fire ...

Sheesh, the pond recognises the style, those glimpses of leg. 

It's undiluted Tamworth, pure hillbilly. Don't they have a Henry Bucks in DC? 

A fashionista made the obvious point ...

... only to be immediately threatened with deportation ...

Two dickhead minds at work together ...

They can ship the pants truth whisperer out of country to wherever they like, but there's no way around the essential horror ...

The pond was reminded of an old Lyle Lovett song ...

So won't you, won't you let me help you mister
Just pull your hat down the way I do
And buy your pants just a, a little longer
And next time somebody laughs at you
You just tell 'em you're not from Texas
That's right you're not from Texas

The lyrics missed on a minor point. Texas and Tamworth likely don't want a man who can't get his boots on right, or wears his hats and his pants so badly ...

Cf Amanda Marcotte in Salon, How narcissism became everyone's obsession,A once-obscure psychological disorder threatens democracy and haunts the internet

You'd think an attention-seeking narcissist would stop humping his couch and rush off to a tailor for help.

And that's the end of the light relief, as the pond opens its lizard Oz version of Bembrick's guide to obscure Latin for the day's news ...

Sorry, the pond keeps failing the reptile tests set each day. 

There's no way the pond could go there ...

Ardern’s fuzzy empathy edict won’t change politics
It could be worse. At least the former New Zealand PM is not a smiling assassin seeking vengeance for her own failures – like some of our former PMs. Also, I am not going to lie. Her new memoir, A Different Kind of Power, is a good read.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Empathy, fuzzy or no? 

That decidedly unempathetic bitch from hell will never be separated from her bile...but please shed a tear for memories of a valiant warrior far removed from the likes of Ardern ...

What else?

It was pleasing to see that the Australian Daily Zionist News had this as its second story, just above Dame Slap ...

OUTRAGEOUS

Australia sanctions Israeli ministers

Australia will join the UK, New Zealand, Canada and Norway in black-listing Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

By Lydia Lynch

Outrageous? Um, so had the UK ... and what nasty pieces of work they are...

As the ethnic cleansing keeps on keeping on, so the lizard Oz loves fascist homophobes and extremism ... and there was this too ...

Thunberg gaff

Generally speaking, sensible people everywhere scoffed at Greta Thunberg and her stunt with a troupe of activists aboard a boat bound for Gaza.

The exception might be Sydney architect Luigi Rosselli. His firm distinguished itself on Tuesday night with an Instagram post seeming to praise the Swedish activist. 

We say seeming because its caption, and the hasty clarification posted afterwards, wasn’t especially coherent. 

“We have often been asked ‘What is a humanist architect?’ … It is a person that builds with care for the environment and well being. Greta could be one,” the post said.

An accompanying photograph contained Greta and Gaza side by side, the picture overlaid with the words “Architects for Humanism”. Again, not entirely coherent, but given that Greta’s in the news the point seemed obvious enough to everyone to draw.

Which is why Rosselli was utterly panned in the comments, leading the firm to clarify that its statement was a “philosophical one and not political”, which no one bought or understood. We’ll see how it goes down with Rosselli’s client base, some of whom, such as designer Camilla Freeman-Topper and advertising executive David Droga, are Jewish.

Supporting Greta’s puerility is stupid enough; staking your firm’s reputation on Greta suggests Rosselli is desperately in want of a career change. Although there were a couple of notable people who praised him, including artist Annalisa Ferraris, PR agent Odette Barry, Lauren Li’s Sisalla Interior Design, and stylist Lucy Feagins. YB

YP? That'd be Yoni Bashan, onetime scribbler for the AJN. 

Say no more, just gotta love the killing fields, on with the ethnic cleansing.

And so over to the extreme far right ...

Once you glide past Dame Slap, it's slim pickings, what with Geoff in crisis, while that prize Charlie yearns for the swagger and authority of the Cantaloupe Caligula ...

It was a pathetically desperate and pathetic attempt at twee humour, with this the climax ...

...“OK, Tone. That was Pete Hegseth. The Pentagon hears everything. He’s just told me something alarming. That you guys are spending as much on wheelchairs as you are on defence. That’s gotta be crazy given China is about to invade Taiwan, and you are in this fight with us. You gotta know wheelchairs won’t cut it against Chinese tanks and warships.”

“Mr President, I presume you mean our NDIS?”

“More damn initials, Tone. Never heard of it. But Pete googled me up some figures. You guys spend $55.7bn on defence this year and almost as much, what is it, $52.3bn on wheelchairs. That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, and you know I talk with some pretty way-out-there characters like Vladimir Putin and what’s his name, Little Rocket Man.

“But you Austrians, I dunno, but you are really taking the cake here.”

“With respect, Mr President, I think you mean Australians.”

“Sure, governor. Whichever. Great country. I really loved the movie.”

“What movie was that, Mr President?”

“The Sound of Music, Tone. I loved the bit where your guy threw another apple strudel on the barbie.”

Charles Wooley is a journalist who lives on the beach in Tasmania.

Oh dear, what with troops on the ground, perhaps it's best stay on the beach Charlie. 

If the pond wanted comedy about an arsonist it would look to the 'toons ...

Or maybe take to the street with the infallible Pope...

Instead the pond turned to Gerard Baker, who managed to ignore the epic LA distraction, and ruminate on other, long forgotten matters ...

The header: Musk-Trump split portends deeper Republican rifts, The president’s populism isn’t entirely popular among business leaders.

The caption, for those who'd spent time in a cave picking mushrooms: President Donald Trump, right, speaks during a news conference with Elon Musk in the Oval Office.

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

The reptiles clocked it as a three minute read, so the pond was happy to clamber aboard:

The alliance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk was always likely to be about as durable as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the 1939 deal Nazi Germany struck with the Soviet Union days before invading Poland.

I won’t extend the analogy too far for obvious reasons of taste, except to say that deals rarely last when they are made for short-term advantage between two parties with outsize ambitions but divergent characters.

The more important question is: Does this split signal something fundamentally awry in the MAGA coalition? What does the quick disillusionment of the Republican Party’s most prominent convert mean for the President and the party’s wider fortunes?

On the face of it, not much. For one thing, the rupture seems mainly personal.

In some respects the MAGA movement is a personality cult. Musk wasn’t that personality. The Tesla and SpaceX boss is a brilliant but mercurial man whose pathologies can lead him to dark places, as we have learned more since the break-up. Even in this White House, it seems, some decorums can’t be breached.

Splendid understatement: "in some respects". A golden and glitzy White House with "decorums".

Cue a collage, Donald Trump and Elon Musk

Cue more "insights"

But Musk’s rising animus seems also to have been based on a belated realisation that the returns from his alliance were heavily asymmetric.

As an example of Trump’s facility for one-sided deal-making, it can hardly be bettered. What Musk gave – in campaign money, in good publicity for the Department of Government Efficiency’s assault on wasteful spending, in lost value for Tesla and in his own diminished personal wealth and reputation – wasn’t close to matched by whatever he was supposed to be getting in return.

At least the Soviets got a chunk of Poland and the Baltic states before Operation Barbarossa ended the relationship.

Why was the pond swamped by a sense of ennui? This was so yesterday, including this attempt to spice up proceedings with the Bolter ...Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says Elon Musk had “overstayed his welcome” when launching biting tweets at US President Donald Trump. The pair have traded barbs with one another through social media following disagreements over Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill". “The supporters in the MAGA movement are for Donald Trump and he learnt that the hard way,” Mr Spicer told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

Do keep up reptiles. Things have moved along, Trump Threatens to Crush Violent Protests in Every State ...

And being an authoritarian with a love of apartheid and certain forms of salute, Leon has fallen into line...loyally reposting his master's voice and saying it's not okay ...

Why the love affair might be back on, with Leon in his emoji place...

To think that the pond has ended up tracking social media like a doting TikTok type ...

Meanwhile the arsonist in chief goes about his business ...

Do keep up reptiles, at least try to sound relevant instead of dawdling in the past...

But there’s more to the break than the inevitable parting of two powerful and incompatible egos.

For all his idiosyncrasies, Musk represented a certain class of business leaders that, to varying levels of enthusiasm, embraced Trump and his unorthodox style.

They had grown alarmed by the left’s suffocating control of the nation’s institutions and were eager for the more economically orthodox parts of the Trump agenda.

Many surprised themselves with how enthusiastically they voted last year, believing he would deliver mainly more of the good stuff from the first term. They hoped he would foster growth and economic opportunity, reverse the Biden administration’s regulatory fetishism and end woke extremism.

They are only half happy with the outcome. On deregulation, tax-cutting and the cultural counter-revolution, Trump hasn’t disappointed. But growing numbers of business leaders I speak with (quietly) express dismay about the misbegotten tariff and trade policies, the lack of interest in fiscal prudence, and the wilful alienation of allies and partners around the world (the last a problem to which Musk contributed).

The Musk divorce is symbolic of the tension at the heart of the new Republican coalition. Trump’s working and middle-class multiethnic alliance is driving the highly successful cultural counter-revolution on the border, race, sex and national security.

But those same voters are none too keen on Musk’s free-market approach to trade, migration, taxes and spending.

This tension isn’t new. It has been a core feature of Republican politics for decades. It probably will remain mostly suppressed as long as Trump is boss, because of the sheer force of his personality and the willingness of his less enthusiastic supporters to submit.

But we can expect these fractures to widen in the coming years as the battle for the future of the party begins in earnest.

Yet more memories gushed forth, US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk speak in the Oval Office before departing the White House in Washington.

The opening line of the final gobbet was a ripper...

The other significance of the Musk break is that it represents a slight loosening of the climate of coercive authoritarianism Trump has fostered. 

Say what?

Just a sample of those 'toons ...

Never mind, do finish up all this living in an ancient past ...

As business leaders have watched his treatment of law firms and media companies and others he deems hostile, most have been reluctant to walk into that propeller with public criticism. They will be watching carefully to see whether Musk faces retribution. But the spectacle of America’s richest man and most creative entrepreneur brazenly denouncing the President can’t help but change the climate.

There have been signs in recent weeks that other parts of civil society are rising to challenge the Trump supremacy: senators criticising his fiscal approach and pressing to support Ukraine; the administration’s bowing to court rulings on deportation.

When he acquired and transformed Twitter, Musk described himself as a “free speech absolutist”. He hasn’t always behaved like one in the past year. But his dramatic break with the White House is a useful reminder that for all the concerns Trump understandably arouses about the health of our democracy, a pluralistic, diverse republic doesn’t disappear that easily.

The Wall Street Journal

A changed climate? 

Poor old David Frum chucked a wobbly in The Atlantic, full of dark and ominous fear, For Trump, This Is a Dress Rehearsal, Ordering the National Guard to deploy in Los Angeles is a warning of what to expect when his hold on power is threatened. (archive link for the full horror)

...In his first term, Trump repeatedly talked more radically than he acted. He was usually constrained by his own appointees. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley rebuffed Trump’s suggestion during the George Floyd unrest that the military shoot protesters, which sufficed to dissuade Trump from upgrading the suggestion into a direct order.

But instead of Esper and Milley, the second Trump administration’s military is headed by a former talk-show host facing troubling allegations of heavy drinking and sexual misconduct. (He denies these claims.) Hegseth owes everything to Trump. The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are likewise headed by radical partisans with dubious records, abjectly beholden to Trump. This Trump administration is sending masked agents into the streets to seize and detain people—and, in some cases, sending detainees to a prison in El Salvador without a hearing—on the basis of a 1798 law originally designed to defend the United States against invasion by the army and navy of revolutionary France. The presidency of 2025 has available a wide and messy array of emergency powers, as the legal scholar Elizabeth Goitein has described.

Second-term Trump and his new team are avidly using those powers in ways never intended or imagined.

Since Trump’s return to the presidency in January, many political observers have puzzled over a seeming paradox. On the one hand, Trump keeps doing corrupt and illegal things. If and when his party loses its majorities in Congress—and thus the ability to protect Trump from investigation and accountability—he will likely face severe legal danger. On the other hand, Trump is doing extreme and unpopular things that seem certain to doom his party’s majorities in the 2026 elections. Doesn’t Trump know that the midterms are coming? Why isn’t he more worried?

This weekend’s events suggest an answer. Trump knows full well that the midterms are coming. He is worried. But he might already be testing ways to protect himself that could end in subverting those elections’ integrity. So far, the results must be gratifying to him—and deeply ominous to anyone who hopes to preserve free and fair elections in the United States under this corrupt, authoritarian, and lawless presidency.

A changed climate? 

Same as it ever was, with this report on the usual suspects, including the NY Times...

And so to a modest bonus from terrific Ted...

Ah, yet another snap of terrifying towers ... with the caption Transgrid transmission lines running over rural properties.

That header for what the reptiles clocked as a five minute read? Rewire the rollout – go underground to win energy standoff, We need to prioritise renewable generation closer to load centres, upgrading existing transmission lines, making transmission companies accountable for project estimates.

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

Ted started off sounding resigned about all that climate science nonsense, but soon got into the cost of it all ...

The re-election of the Labor government has reconfirmed the transition to renewable energy and the 82 per cent target by 2030. But an integral component of that transition – the rollout of high voltage transmission lines – is not going well.

Of the 10,000km to be completed by 2050, only a few hundred kilometres have been finished; community opposition has intensified and the regulatory approval process that Chris Bowen called not fit for purpose in 2022 has yet to be reformed.

Every transmission project is years late and way over budget. EnergyConnect has blown out six times from the initial estimate ($700m to $4.1bn); HumeLink by five times ($1bn to $4.9bn); Marinus Link by three times ($3bn for two cables to $4.8bn for one cable); and CopperString by eight times ($1.8bn to $13.9bn). Every year or so the estimated cost of every project has increased and the scheduled completion date delayed. Undoubtedly there will be further cost increases and delays.

The reptiles knew immediately what had to be done.

Interrupt with Little to be Proud of nuking the discussion with a climate science denialist and infamous dog botherer, Nationals Leader David Littleproud discusses the “physical consequence” of net-zero. Mr Littleproud told Sky News host Chris Kenny prime agricultural land is being “ripped up”. “With transmission lines, solar panels and wind turbines.”

There, tone set, what with that truly alarming sighting of solar panels designed to give the hive mind a buzz that might last all day.

Carry on with the eye-watering fear Ted ...

Such eye-watering blowouts are partly explained by worldwide commodity price escalations, but the primary reason is woefully underestimated costs with impossible deadlines.

Transmission companies have an inherent incentive to submit lowball estimates, as once a project is approved by the Australian Energy Regulator it is never unapproved. The perverse outcome is transmission companies are rewarded with a regulated return based on whatever the final cost of the project turns out to be. So the higher the cost, the higher is the return for shareholders, usually foreign investors.

The AER has not held transmission companies accountable for their underestimates and flawed cost-benefit justifications and has passed on the extra billions of dollars to electricity consumers. Plugging the latest costs into the initial cost-benefit analyses results in all approved projects now having whopping negative benefits. Though the transmission companies valiantly try to contend that benefits have increased more than costs. They have yet to see the impacts on their bills, but transmission tariffs are set to multiply manyfold in the coming years.

Another aspect of the rollout that is not going well is the ham-fisted dealings of transmission companies with local communities and landowners, creating widespread resistance as well as delays and costs.

The groundswell opposition to “hosting” overhead lines is becoming more strident.

There is no enthusiasm for massive 500-kilovolt transmission lines, with 75m towers, 26 suspended wires, a 70m to 100m wide easement, and access tracks blighting the landscape across hundreds of kilometres. Lecturing communities on the common good is just insulting. Transmission companies have failed to foster a social licence for their projects.

What should be done? Three suggestions. First, hold transmission companies to account for their estimates by requiring them to contribute to cost increases above the initial AER-approved budget. This will encourage genuine estimates in the first place.

Second, look at ways to scale back the extent and frenetic schedule of the transmission rollout to mitigate costs for consumers and social and environmental impacts. In particular, focus on locating renewable energy generation as close as possible to capital city load centres, not hundreds of kilometres away, and thereby reduce the need for new transmission. Install more rooftop solar (residential and business) together with more wind (onshore and offshore) close to load centres, supplemented by battery firming.

Then came a snap to remind the hive mind of a Ted bête noire, Snowy Hydro 2.0 project:

Ted was inspired to sort it all out, on the basis of out of sight, out of mind ...

Also, make use of spare capacity on   transmission (and distribution) networks and upgrade where possible on existing easements, augmented with batteries for fault response and storage of above-capacity energy flows.

Third, take a broader approach to the regulatory approval process rather than just selecting the project with the cheapest capital cost.

A broader approach would bring in technologies other than just high-voltage alternating current overhead lines, particularly high-voltage direct current underground cables. Astoundingly, minimal land-based HVDC transmission is proposed in the rollout, in contrast to overseas where long-distance underground cables are now commonplace and in some situations are mandated.

In 2002 Australia led the world with the longest HVDC underground cable, Murraylink, which is still in operation.

Australia now lags well behind other nations.

The stock excuse for rejecting HVDC is that it is too expensive. Yes, it can be dearer to install than HVAC, typically 1½ to three times. But the capital cost gap narrows and can reverse when the broader long-term benefits of underground HVDC are considered, together with the possibility of taking a shorter route or using existing easements and other infrastructure corridors. For example, the Syncline Community HVDC Cable Project proposes running for 100 kilometres in the median strip of Victoria’s Calder Highway.

Gaining social licence is so much easier and quicker (and cheaper).

There are negligible costs for arbitration or compulsory acquisition, lower costs for easements, compensation and vegetation maintenance, and no loss of property values.

As one farmer reacted when told of a proposed overhead line through his property, “go underground and I will dig the trench”.

The reptiles knew exactly what needed to be done, roll out petulant Peta, berating city folks, and ravaging renewables, what with this the new best angle for reptile climate science denialism, Sky News host Peta Credlin has commented on the “disaster” befalling rural Australia as prime farmland and some of Australia’s national parks “disappear” under giant wind turbines and massive arrays of solar panels. “Then there are all the transmission lines to get the power from these wind turbines and solar monstrosities,” Ms Credlin said. “It's country people who are paying the price of the emissions obsession of the inner-city Greens, Labor and those well-off Teal voters.”

Ted had done a splendid job showcasing Sky Noise down under, and signed off with a final gobbet ...

Importantly, underground HVDC has far less environmental impacts and much lower biodiversity offset costs ($500m for HumeLink). Underground HVDC is more reliable, as it is unaffected by above-ground disturbances, such as lightning strikes, severe weather, bushfires, or accidental contact. There are less electrical losses (a significant saving over the life of the cable) and no corona buzz, or electric fields or electrical interference. There is no risk of bushfire ignition and no access restrictions for firefighting. HVDC can provide system strength services in lieu of synchronous condensers that are needed for a HVAC-only network, costing billions.

While underground HVDC will not be appropriate in every situation, there will be many instances where it is the better option after the broader long-term benefits are taken into account.

For example, by only considering capital cost comparisons, the NSW and federal governments allowed Snowy 2.0 to bulldoze a 140m wide easement through 9km of pristine subalpine bush in Kosciuszko National Park and Bago State Forest for two side-by-side double-circuit overhead lines. Surely this should have been an irrefutable instance for undergrounding, especially as it would have been in keeping with the rest of the project. These will be the first transmission lines to be constructed in a NSW national park for half a century.

As with overseas developments, consideration also needs to be given to the merits of establishing an HVDC backbone across the eastern states before an overhead HVAC-only network is entrenched. Australia has embarked on the biggest extension of the overhead electricity transmission network to serve for the rest of the 21st century, but clearly it is not going well and changes are needed.

We need to prioritise renewable generation closer to load centres, upgrading existing transmission lines, making transmission companies accountable for project estimates, instituting a broader regulatory consideration of all costs and benefits, and genuinely considering the advantages of underground cables.

Ted Woodley is a former managing director of PowerNet, Gas Net, EnergyAustralia and China Light & Power Systems.

The pond reluctantly had to mark Ted down. 

What was missing was an explanation of how nuking the country in seven places would really fix that pesky transmission lines problem ...

And so to wrap up proceedings with an immortal Rowe celebrating the arrival of martial law ...

It's always in the details, and out of many the pond selected this one of a vampire with a triangle ...(but maybe not a wife)...