In which the pond struggles to find anything interesting in the lizard Oz, with Dame Groan's groaning no help at all ...

 

With the winter chill kicking in, it's increasingly hard to get up in the morning and attend to herpetological studies ... especially as the lizard Oz rabbit hole seems to miss out on all that's interesting...

Once again no mention of the ethnic cleansing going down in Gaza, and over on the extreme far right, the blinkers were on in the usual way ...

Even if the pond had wanted to, it was impossible to get excited by petulant Peta and plunge into that internecine bog of Victorian partisan warfare, driven by the Liberal party encouraging all sorts of far right crazies and fundamental Xians into their "broad church" ...

Liberals have no business bailing out Pesutto
It would seem the legal nous of these Liberal men is about on a par with their ability to defeat the Labor Party.
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

Dear sweet long absent lord, did she completely miss the federal election result that she and the onion muncher helped produce?

That pair couldn't organise a knighthood as a BBQ stopper. Talk about being Krogered, as pond correspondents are wont to do.

Not surprisingly the reptiles played down the feud for the ages, though it gave everyone else great fodder for fun times. Per the Graudian ...

Elon Musk further criticizes Trump's spending bill, saying a new one should be drafted
Elon Musk, who only days ago left his role in Donald Trump’s administration, continues his onslaught of attacks on the president’s spending bill working its way through Congress, saying on social media that a new one should be drafted.
He wrote on his X platform:
A new spending bill should be drafted that doesn’t massively grow the deficit and increase the debt ceiling by 5 TRILLION DOLLARS.
In a phrase he repeats in several posts from today, the billionaire said:
America is in the fast lane to debt slavery.
It comes only a day after Musk blasted the bill as a “disgusting abomination”. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” he wrote on X yesterday.
He had previously said he was “disappointed” by the bill, which in adding $2.4tn to the budget deficit would “undermine” the work of his Doge federal cost-cutting team.

What's curious is the way that the truthing Taco King Donald has done his best to ignore his one true love ...

Indeed, if you scan the incessant lying in search of the truth, the best you can come up with by way of a mention is an ad featuring Uncle Leon in what Taco lovers think is fashionable head gear ...

Sorry, it's a screen cap. No black hat or red pill for pond users.

Poor old MAGA Taco Mike was also on the outer ...

Everybody and his dog has been explaining at great length how the BBB will fuck the deficit ...(cue Steve Rattner on YouTube for anyone who cares).

Naturally the cartoonists couldn't resist ...

The reptiles did report on the latest MAGA Ukraine follies, but left the job to the agencies...

BREAKING
Putin vows payback for Ukraine drone attack in call with Trump
In a phone call lasted more than an hour, the Russian leader told the US president he would respond ‘very strongly’ to Ukraine’s weekend strike.
By Agencies

That's the best the reptiles could do? 

And behind a paywall when it's out there in the wild in abundance? 

Perhaps it was too much for the reptiles to bear. Yet again confirmation that Taco King Donald is now acting as a messenger boy, merely reporting on Vlad the Sociopath's search for revenge?

What need of the reptiles when you can read Taco King Donald himself?

No mention of an attempt to dissuade him? No mention of Ukraine. Just a passing on of the message that Vlad the Sociopath will keep on bombing the shit out of them.

So much for the sarcastic offer to bring about peace in 24 hours, and not much different to what the Taco King was 'truthing' a few weeks ago ...

The pond has often wondered what it would be like to be living in the age of a running dog lickspittle, a combination of Vichy, Quisling, Chamberlain and Lord Haw-Haw and now the pond knows...

After all that the reptiles decided to let a heretic into their ranks ...

Yes, spend more on defence – because we can’t rely on US
We need to ignore Pete Hegseth and start thinking for ourselves.
By Hugh White

Yes, and maybe we should be dropping our cash on non-US kit, because who knows what bugs they might have put in the operating systems?

Sssh, nobody mention the heresy to the bromancer.

After all that fun, the pond supposes it should at least tip the hat in the direction of herpetology studies, what with the reptiles obsessed in their usual way ...

Chalmers slams PM’s door shut on unrealised capital gains tax
Jim Chalmers has declared he will not negotiate with the Coalition on superannuation tax reforms just a day after Anthony Albanese left the door open to a compromise.
By Greg Brown and Matthew Cranston

Co-operate with Libs? That’s so yesterday
Jim Chalmers has no interest in dealing with the Coalition to legislate his super tax or compromising on Labor’s controversial plan to slug unrealised capital gains.
By Geoff Chambers

Yes, yes, all that and more, because Dame Groan was on hand to announce the end of the world, with the country certain to be rooned by COB Friday ...

The header: Jim Chalmers is on another planet on economic growth, GDP figures, The Treasurer is on another planet if he thinks there’s any joy in the latest GDP figures. It would be better if he owned up to it.

The caption: Treasurer Jim Chalmers holds a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

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

The trouble was, given that the reptiles had promoted the yarn as "Ground control to Doctor Jim: our economy is on life support", that Dame Groan could only spare a three minute read to announce the rooning, the urgent need for life support lest the patient cark it on the morrow ...

Three measly minutes. Such terrible blather and in such small portions.

It was all sizzle and a minuscule steak, a lot of foam and not much amber fluid, a little glitter, but mainly iron pyrites, all broth as a form of beefing and bitching ...

Jim Chalmers is living on another planet when he tells us “with all the uncertainty in the world, any growth is a decent outcome”.
But hang on, GDP per capita fell by 0.2 per cent in the March quarter. Through the year to March 2025, GDP per capita fell by 0.4 per cent.
This is not a decent outcome. Taking out the rise of GDP per capita in the last December quarter, eight out of the nine past quarters have been negative GDP per capita – a reasonable measure of living standards. The economy is on life support, and it would be better to recognise this.
The fact the household saving rate increased from 3.9 per cent in the December quarter to 5.2 per cent in the first quarter of this year points to a noticeable twitchiness on the part of households. Soothing words from the Treasurer as well as rambling comparisons with other advanced economies are unlikely to make a difference.
According to the Chalmers view of the world, “the national accounts show that our economy continues to grow in the face of substantial headwinds at home and abroad”. At least, he acknowledges domestically generated constraints on growth for which his government bears a high degree of responsibility.

Things might be grum, but has Dame Groan taken a look at the US economy, the BBB or the way that the mob at Faux Noise have aided and abetted the destruction of the world economy?

Of course not, they're too busy slipping in Sky Noise down under distractions, Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell has commented on the “anaemic” GDP growth numbers for the March quarter, which were released on Wednesday. “There’s a real silver lining for the Treasurer – they get rate cuts which everyone wants, inflation’s low, unemployment’s low,” Mr Clennell said. “But we see productivity’s a massive issue for this country.”

How many times has Dame Groan gone down this road? How tedious it is to read, how repetitive, what a sullen and dismal groaning ...

Creating a hostile environment for private investment as well as limiting spare capacity for that investment – think here the over­investment in the care economy and escalating costs – is clearly an important part of the story.
Recall Chalmers’s demand that the private sector now do the heavy lifting on powering the economy. He cherry-picks the figures to tell us household consumption, mainly essential, and invest­ment in dwelling construction have been growing. He doesn’t highlight the fact private investment on machinery and equipment fell by nearly 2 per cent in the quarter. It’s business investment that will drive economic growth and a pick-up in productivity.
There is no joy in these figures in respect of productivity. There was no movement over the quarter, or the previous one. In the year to March, labour productivity as measured by GDP an hour worked fell by 1 per cent. It is therefore more than passing strange that Chalmers would take this moment to introduce a punitive new tax on the very people who might seek out investment opportunities and have the funds to do so.
What he fails to understand is that the very principle of taxing unrealised capital gains is anathema to investing, particularly in illiquid, unlisted assets. If it can be applied to large superannuation balances, why would the government stop there?
As for Chalmers’s proposition that taxation of unrealised capital gains already exists, particularly in the form of council rates generally levied on the basis of unimproved land values, several points need to be made. First, the rate at which council rates are calculated is low. Second, homeowners receive services for the rates they pay, even if the price imposed has the hallmarks of a wealth tax. Finally, property investors can claim council rates as a tax deduction.
None of these applies to Chalmers’s harebrained scheme to tax unrealised capital gains for superannuation balances above $3m. Any moneys received heads straight to general revenue.
Let’s be clear: the only reason he is doing this is because industry super funds have underinvested in IT and they cannot calculate the earnings of individual members according to the size of their accounts. It doesn’t matter whether the Coalition is serious on doing a deal on the super tax; Chalmers should either ditch the proposal altogether or, at the least, instruct the Treasury secretary to return to the drawing board and work out a tax arrangement that doesn’t involve taxing paper profits.

Let's be clear? 

It's clear she's agin it. Waddya got? Like Marlon Brando, she's agin it ...

What else? Well the only mention of anything middle eastern was tucked away, no doubt designed to come out later in the day ...

Rein in this rogue sheik before it’s too late
The trouble with rogue Islamists in Australia, such as Wissam Haddad, is that they have no loyalty to the democratic ideal that is the foundation of our Western society.
By Rachael Kohn

The trouble with rogue Zionists is their wilful refusal to acknowledge the current ethnic cleansing and the shameless butchery, worse than hell so they say ...

The pond woke to news about how very little about Gaza was reported in Israel's media, and how the current government is intent on controlling not just the courts, but the entire country and all coverage ... per The Times of Israel ...

Inter alia ...

...In her paper, the attorney general said the law gave rise to “real concern of severe harm to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, which are inseparable parts of the democratic character of the State of Israel,” and should therefore not be advanced in the Knesset in its current format.

Baharav-Miara criticized, in particular, the abolition by the new legislation of the current arrangements for broadcast news content providers, whereby the news outlet must be an independent company and news corporation, separate from the commercial television station on which it is broadcast.

This system, she wrote, was designed to ensure that broadcast news content remains unaffected by the commercial interests of the owners and directors of the commercial television channel, and to insulate it from political interference as well.

But Karhi’s new bill removes these barriers, and merely expresses the importance for news media to refrain from using their platform as a mouthpiece for the owners of the commercial channels, but without providing any structural guarantees that this requirement will be upheld.

The bill requires news stations to adopt a code of ethical standards, but the news stations themselves are responsible for drafting it and they are not enforceable, the attorney general wrote.

“The current proposal will not establish any minimal guarantees to ensure the reliability and professionalism of the news, the independence of these bodies, and their detachment from commercial or political considerations,” she wrote.

Abandoning the current model of clear separation between commercial television stations and news corporations, while abandoning the need for enforceable news standards “makes the news network much more vulnerable to commercial and political influences,” wrote the attorney general, adding that these changes would “undermine the credibility and quality of the news and are likely disrupt and distort the mediation of reality to the public within the framework of the news, and undermine the principle of democratic participation.”

Outside a few outlets such as Haaretz, the country is already pretty much there.

Whatever that brutalist, extremist, dangerously radicalised and authoritarian government is, it ain't a democratic ideal ...

In desperation the pond turned to the lizard Oz editorialist for filler. 

Perhaps a little celebration of the recent election in Poland, a victory for Taco Don and Vlad the Impaler?

Nah, they were determined to be gloomy ...

South Korea’s new leftward path
China and North Korea will welcome the election result.
Editorial
less than 2 min read

It would have been so much better if they'd managed to pull off that coup and run the country as a military venture ...

It remains to be seen whether opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, 61, who won Tuesday’s presidential election in South Korea, really is, as some American commentators claim, his country’s version of US independent senator Bernie Sanders.
What is not in doubt is that he is a leftist whose emphatic 49.2 per cent to 41.5 per cent defeat of the conservative People Power Party – the former party of staunchly pro-US president Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached last year after imposing martial law – holds the potential to usher in significant change in the alliances of a country of immense strategic and economic importance to the West, including Australia, at a challenging time in the Indo-Pacific.
In domestic terms, Mr Lee, who has a chequered and controversial record in public life, could be South Korea’s “most left-wing leader in memory”, The Wall Street Journal writes. He wants to shut down all coal-fired power plants, reduce the use of natural gas, move to a four-day working week and expand time allowed for holidays and sick leave. While he says he supports the US alliance (28,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea), he wants to build enhanced relations with the madcap Kim Jong-un regime in North Korea and with China. He also effectively has ruled out any help if Beijing invades Taiwan, asking: “Whatever happens between China and Taiwan, what has that have to do with us?”
That, undoubtedly, is exactly what the Beijing-Pyongyang-Moscow axis wants to hear from the new leader in Seoul, where anti-American sentiment has been boosted by resentment over 25 per cent tariffs imposed by Donald Trump. That resentment is likely to spill into Mr Lee’s decisions as he recalibrates the relationships of one of the most strategically important countries in our region.
It is early days. There is no certainty about how far or how fast Mr Lee may go in changing things in Seoul. But his agenda, with applause from Beijing, Pyongyang and Moscow, is likely to have far-reaching implications for the Indo-Pacific.

Another big win for Taco Don and Faux Noise, a tariff triumph ...

And with that the pond is pleased to end with the immortal Rowe and the infallible Pope, both delighted by the feuding and the ketamine-fuelled fussing ...

Hugh White would be pleased by that detail, as the monsters battle it out ...

It's always in the detail ...

And for those too lazy to click on that Rattner link ...