In which the pond tries a little Newsom entertainment before heading off to Ukraine with the bromancer and our Henry ...

 

The reptiles at the lizard Oz rarely deliver childish pleasures, and yet sometimes it's great fun to think and act like a child.

Hence the unalloyed joy in the quaintly named Guv Newscum (so named in a bid to elevate political discourse) and his vigorous, neigh epic, trolling of King Donald.

Anyone wanting to surf the full to overflowing web can find stories and examples...

See the Beast

Newsom Threatens to ‘Punch’ Trump in the Face and Defends MAGA Trolling
TAKE THAT!
The California Governor also called out Fox News for ‘missing the point’ about his parody social media posts. (*archive link).

See The Bulwark ...

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS GOVERNOR! What to make of Gavin Newsom’s new social-media performance art.

See The Hill ...

Newsom's Trump act wins raves from Democrats (and also Dana allegedly getting the joke, as if Faux Noise folk had a sensa huma).

See Politico ...

How Gavin Newsom trolled his way to the top of social media, Inside the MAGA-parodying strategy that has rocketed the California governor to algorithmic dominance — while annoying leading Republicans (*archive link)

And so on, with the pond's algorithms full of talk of Newscum (*this just dropped into the pond's email in-tray), and while some moan and rub hands and sigh to the heavens about the dark side of sh*tposting and trolling, there are any number upsides, not least the high anxiety induced in Faux Noise, and in King Donald himself ...

Even though the pond doesn't have much time for Newsom, at least he's providing entertainment ... and drawing attention to the stark hypocrisy of Faux Noise and the rest of the barking mad right ... baulking at his gentle teasing, while normalising the deep weirdness of an eternity of weird trolling by whacky King Donald...

Why there's even a hint of Xians riding with dinosaurs, as revealed in the bible (which ain't liable to be true) ...

There wouldn't be a dry eye in the Faux Noise house if that figure had been King Donald ...

And his account occasionally shoots and scores ...

See Luckovich for a summary ...

The pond would like to have similar success trolling the lizard Oz, but it's very hard to troll a bog standard hive mind ...and so off to another dullard day with the heretical down under lollards, while noting that all it's possible to do is observe them in their native habitat, and hope for the best for them ...

Right there, at the bottom, somehow the reptiles found space for some TG bashing by prize loon Gary Johns ...

On the upside, it seems that productivity is finally winding down, with this the lead EXCLUSIVE ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘I wouldn’t go that far’: Productivity Commission boss tables her verdict
Productivity Commission chair Danielle Wood has cast doubt on whether the economic reform roundtable’s outcomes can fully repair Australia’s sluggish productivity.
By Matthew Cranston, Greg Brown and Ewin Hannan

Over on the extreme far right the reptiles were sounding bored and wanting to move on, with Chambers chambering a final round ...

Talking’s over, now it’s time for the cabinet to act
Put simply, the outcomes of the Albanese government’s three-day economic reform roundtable do not match the inputs.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

But what's the reptile idea of productivity? 

Here they're exceptionally canny. 

You get in a guest representing a tribe with whom you're in a perpetual war ...

Australia, don’t forget our shared history in the fight against fascism
During one of humanity’s darkest hours, China and Australia stood firmly as allies in the fight against fascism, making important contributions to the defence of world peace and justice.
By Xiao Qian

And then you write it up, embellishing a little and dubbing it an EXCLUSIVE, a veritable mailbox busting double bunger ,,.

EXCLUSIVE
Xi’s man in Canberra issues warning on Taiwan return
Xiao Qian, Xi Jinping’s top diplomat in Australia, is seeking to exploit the memory of World War II to push the Communist Party’s strategic aims over Taiwan.
By Geoff Chambers and Ben Packham

Double the productivity for no effort at all.

Meanwhile, the infallible Pope put a stopper in the productivity bottle this day ...

The pond's proudest boast, here no vulgar youff, no vulgar youff here ...

As for the rest, you follow the same strategy by having the bromancer and our Henry both muse about Ukraine, though our Henry does at least go off into the Finland woods ...

The bromancer wasn't happy as it dawned on him that King Donald was a bit of a TACO dud ...

The header: Trump’s Ukraine peace is already collapsing, The big winner out of all these so-called historic summits aimed at ending the war in Ukraine is Vladimir Putin. You can rest assured that Beijing is watching intensely.

The caption for the hand wrestle: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump shake hands during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on August 18, 2025. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)

It was only a three minute outing, a warm up for our Henry ...

The prospect of peace in Ukraine is fading away as quickly as Donald Trump conjured it up, just days after all those so-called historic summits.
Look not at what nations are saying but what they are doing.
Vladimir Putin has yielded absolutely nothing in these negotiations. He has refused to enter into a ceasefire and in fact has intensified his military campaign in eastern Ukraine. Trump says Putin has made all sorts of concessions. The problem is, neither Putin nor anyone in authority in the Russian system says the same thing.
Thus, Trump says Putin has accepted that a European military stabilisation force can be stationed in Ukraine. The Russian Foreign Ministry says that’s unacceptable. Trump says Putin has agreed to meet one on one with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, says lengthy negotiations should take place at the level of “experts” and only after they have agreed on a deal should Putin and Zelensky be brought together.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap showing the weirdness of it all, The White House released behind-the-scenes photos of Donald Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders on August 18, 2025 in the White House

Not being of an historical mind, in the way our Henry is, the bromancer failed to mention the fate of the last round of guarantees ... per Politico on proposed meeting places...

...Hungary would be an uncomfortable choice for Ukraine as it harkens back to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, during which the U.S., the United Kingdom and Russia promised to uphold Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and respect for its border in exchange for relinquishing its nuclear weapons. Putin’s 2014 assault on Ukraine proved the agreement meaningless when none of the signatories provided military forces to counter the attacks.

Well yes, explaining why all this has just been more Captain Bonespurs' nonsense, as the bromancer slowly caught up ...

Putin continues to insist the “root causes” of the war he launched against Ukraine must be solved. These root causes include Ukraine’s independence, its possession of armed forces, its desire to join the European Union, and the expansion of NATO among other nations near Russia. Trump agrees that Ukraine must never be allowed to join NATO.
Putin is also insisting on “land swaps”, which means he takes virtually all of the rest of Donbas that he has not yet conquered. This includes well-fortified cities on high ground that the Ukrainians have so far successfully defended.
The Europeans have done their best to show solidarity with Ukraine, but Britain was already talking about a much smaller stabilisation force for Ukraine than it had envisaged even a few months ago. Would such a force really deter Putin in the future?
Trump held out the possibility that the US could participate in such a force, then ruled that out. He now talks vaguely of US air support. But unless that air support means US Air Force assets would fire on Russian forces if they breached a peace agreement, it doesn’t really mean anything.

Then came another snap, Russian President Vladimir Putin meets US President Donald Trump on the tarmac after they arrived at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)

The bromancer seemed to get the notion that the Faux Noise warrior was just an authoritarian devoted to other dictators ...

And Trump has made it absolutely clear that there are no circumstances in which he would deploy Americans, in any capacity, to fight for Ukraine. But here’s the hard, inescapable, terrible truth about deterrence. Unless you’re really willing to fight, it’s meaningless.
Trump had threatened Putin with extensive new sanctions if he didn’t agree to a ceasefire, especially by applying tough US sanctions against any third country that traded with Russia. So nations would get a choice: trade with Russia or trade with the US. That would be a very tough measure to impose and enforce. But it’s the one non-military action the US could take that might make Russia change.
Instead, Trump dropped that demand in a minute, and about the only concrete result so far is that the US is now happy to supply Ukraine with weapons, so long as Europe pays for them.
There’s nothing wrong with Europeans paying for US weapons to go to Ukraine, but there’s nothing in this that will cause Russia to make peace.
The failure of Trump’s earlier threat of “very serious consequences” for Russia if Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire tells you everything.
Virtually every war that doesn’t result in total victory for one side and total defeat for the other side ends with a ceasefire in place.

There came a final AV distraction, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is warning Moscow is aware of what he calls “clumsy attempts” from the European Union to change US President Donald Trump’s position on Ukraine. Mr Lavrov says there can be no security guarantees for Ukraine without Moscow’s approval. “We cannot agree with the fact that it’s now proposed to resolve collective security issues without the Russian Federation – this will not work,” Mr Lavrov said.

No wonder the bromancer has avoided writing about Ukraine, because his thoughts aren't Faux Noise friendly ...

These ceasefires typically harden and become lines of permanent settlement, as in the Korean War, the China/India border wars, the India/Pakistan border wars, and the Russia/Japan end to World War II after Russia took the Kuril Islands from Japan. If there were a ceasefire in place in Ukraine, Russia would get to keep the 20 per cent of Ukraine it has conquered through invasion. But it seems Ukraine would now wear that.
But it’s not enough for Putin. He wants a great slab of extra territory from Ukraine on top of this, and as far as possible he wants Ukraine to be incapable of defending itself in the future, and reliant instead on security guarantees, minus US force. If Putin gets a deal like that, will he wait even three years for Trump to be gone from the Oval Office before he pushes on with the further conquest of Ukrainian territory?
Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, once predicted that Putin would “play Trump like a fiddle”.

The pond is pleased the bromancer has caught up ...

And so to a few final words...

That seemed a harsh prediction at the time. But Putin’s shimmy-shammy diplomacy, his dance of the seven veils and his majestic flattering of Trump seem to have robbed Trump of whatever purpose and conviction he once, recently, briefly, had on Ukraine.
So long as Trump gets to announce a deal with himself as hero, that seems to be good enough for him.
Ukraine and the Europeans have to go along with this and get the best deal they can. But so far the big winner out of all these summits is Putin.
You can rest assured that Beijing is watching intensely.

On the upside, King Donald is doing his level best to turn the US into a carbon copy of Russia ...

And so at last to our Henry, the reptiles' regular, reliable Friday treat...

The header: Europe’s history offers a template, but it’s unlikely to fit Ukraine, As Donald Trump seeks to shepherd Russia and Ukraine into a negotiated agreement, the similarities to the Finnish-Soviet wars that raged from 1939 to 1944 are overwhelming.

The caption for the affectionate caress: President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin arrive at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson last week. Picture: Getty Images

This was a more substantial, five minute outing (so the reptiles said) and for some reason our Henry did a Finlandia ...

As Donald Trump seeks to shepherd Russia and Ukraine into a negotiated agreement, the similarities to the Finnish-Soviet wars that raged from 1939 to 1944 are overwhelming. But while the settlement of those wars did stem the bloodshed, preserve Finland’s democratic constitution and retain elements of its sovereignty, the longer-term consequences of the current process are far harder to predict.
The circumstances that led to the outbreak of war between Finland and the Soviet Union on November 30, 1939, are well-known. After the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in late August 1939, Joseph Stalin’s focus shifted to preventing Finland, the Baltic States and the Baltic Sea from being used to launch attacks on the USSR. In September and early October, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were coerced into “mutual assistance” pacts with the Soviet Union that paved the way for their annexation. Finland, however, rejected Stalin’s sweeping territorial demands, triggering the Soviet invasion.
The Soviets claimed the invasion was legitimate under their doctrine of “indirect aggression”, which stated that any “internal change or change of foreign policy” by a neighbouring government that could facilitate an attack on the USSR amounted to aggression. As a result, by rejecting the USSR’s demands, Finland had committed an act of war, with the Soviet action being mere self-defence.

The reptiles interrupted with an AV distraction featuring a chat with Rita, meter maid,  Author Douglas Murray says Russian President Vladimir Putin is an “exceptionally slippery” character to negotiate with. This comes amid the Russian President’s meeting with his American counterpart, US President Donald Trump, in Alaska to discuss peace talks over the Russia-Ukraine war. “The first meeting … in Alska between Trump and Putin was very interesting,” Mr Murray told Sky News host Rita Panahi. “Putin is an exceptionally slippery character to be negotiating with.”

Please allow the pond to wonder at this point why our Henry takes Finland as his example, when Munich might be more suitable ... per Politico, Why there are fears of Munich 1938 in Washington 2025, Putin is focusing on a deal that would grant him Ukraine’s key defensive lines, just as Hitler secured Czechoslovakia’s fortifications in 1938. (*archive link)

...In September 1938, Adolf Hitler argued that handing over the ethnic-German majority Sudetenland region to the Reich would satisfy his ambitions and end the threat of war in Europe. France and Britain agreed, and browbeat Prague into accepting. Hitler — whose word was as reliable as Putin's — said he had no further territorial ambitions.
Czechoslovakia had spent several years building thousands of pillboxes, blockhouses and fortresses in the forested and mountainous region — staffed by a modern and well-equipped army of 1.2 million. Germany took it all without firing a shot.
In March 1939, German troops swept into the rest of the country with the Czech army unable to put up any resistance.
Kyiv eyes Munich
The Ukrainians are very well aware of what happened to the Czechs 87 years ago.
“Without security guarantees, freezing the war means a second Munich 1938,” warned Olexiy Haran, professor of comparative politics at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, in a comment for Germany’s Federal Center of Civic Education.
That's a reference to supposed security guarantees for Kyiv, which Trump's Ukraine war negotiator, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, has said are similar to NATO's Article 5 common defense provision — although Trump has repeatedly ruled out Ukraine joining the much more reliable Atlantic alliance.
Haran argued that “if we sign a ceasefire agreement or even hold an election without security guarantees, Putin could resume his aggression the very next day.” Such an agreement, he said, would “de facto recognize Russia’s control of Ukrainian territories for an indefinite period,” and repeat the mistakes of 1938, when concessions to an aggressor only invited further escalation.
Yaroslav Hrytsak, a Ukrainian historian and professor at the Ukrainian Catholic University, warned that the danger goes beyond another Munich-style betrayal. “It’s the Yalta moment too,” he said.

Well yes, and so it's back to our Henry in Finland, and never mind King Donald trying to arrange his very own Munich, though perhaps scraps of paper are now too heavily tariffed to wave about ...

However, legal pretences aside, Stalin’s decision was based on his conviction that a “military weakness and internal divisions” made Finland an easy target, ensuring the war would be over “in 12 days”. As the Red Army swept to victory it would, his intelligence services claimed, be “cheered on by happy Finns, free from the yoke of Fascist oppression”.
In reality, the Soviets’ overwhelming numerical superiority did not stop the Finns from bringing the invasion to a blood-soaked halt, before a complete change in the Red Army’s strategy and tactics led to a Soviet breakthrough in February 1940. Fearful of being “wiped off the map”, the Finns agreed to negotiate, finally making significant territorial concessions in the Moscow Treaty of March 12, 1940.
That agreement proved short-lived. When Hitler launched “Operation Barbarossa” in June 1941, the Finns joined the German attack on the USSR and once again proved their fighting prowess. Indeed, even after the German army had all but collapsed, the Finnish armed forces managed to prevent the Red Army from occupying Finland.
It was nonetheless apparent by then that the Finns could not prevail. They were consequently forced into a second round of territorial concessions, albeit ones that left the bulk of pre-war Finland intact.
That Stalin accepted the June 1944 armistice was understandable: his priority was the march on Berlin. What needs explaining, however, is that even after Germany’s capitulation the Soviet Union neither occupied Finland nor sought to transform it into a full-blown “people’s democracy”.
Instead, the 1947 Finnish-Soviet Peace Treaty and the 1948 Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance allowed Finland greater autonomy than any of the USSR’s satellite states.

The reptiles again interrupted with a snap, Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pose for a picture with European leaders following a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House on Monday. Picture: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Our Henry maintained his fixation with Stalin ...

That was partly because the USSR had achieved its initial goal. Given the Soviets’ territorial gains, there was no conceivable scenario in which Finland could be used by a third power to stage an attack on the USSR. The crucial factor, however, was that attempting to completely suborn Finland might provoke a renewal of the war, dangerously undermining Stalin’s grand strategy.
In effect, by 1947-48, Stalin had three major objectives. The first was to consolidate the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe and on the Soviet zone in Germany, both of which imposed substantial demands on the Red Army.
A second was to prevent Sweden, Denmark and Norway from going ahead with a proposed Nordic Defence Union, which would have given the soon to be formed NATO a platform from which to attack the USSR’s northern flank. Sweden told Stalin it was willing to scuttle the Nordic Defence Union, and not seek security guarantees from the US-led alliance, if and only if he desisted from making Finland a Soviet satellite.
Finally, a third objective was to secure Communist participation in the coalitions governing France and Italy. A renewed invasion of Finland could scupper the electoral prospects of those countries’ communist parties, which were masquerading as champions of national sovereignty. But none of that meant the Soviet Union withdrew from Finnish affairs. On the contrary, Finland was forced into a condition of coerced neutrality, which Finland’s leading political parties enforced by ensuring the politicians the USSR regarded as “unfriendly” were excluded from senior positions, that the media remained extremely circumspect in its attitude to the Soviet Union, and that all major foreign policy decisions were quietly cleared through the KGB.
As anti-Soviet politicians were starved of funds and relegated to the sidelines, while the Soviet Union’s “friends” received massive support, a deeply ingrained culture of anticipatory acquiescence to Soviet demands developed, in what became known as Finlandisation but would be better described as “Helsinki syndrome”.
Yet no matter how seriously that corrupted the Finnish polity, it did not undermine the Cold War peace, which was solidly anchored by the bipolar global order. Finland’s fate consequently had few wider ramifications. But that is no longer the world we live in.

The reptiles interrupted with a final AV distraction, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has drawn a hard line against any Western security guarantees for Ukraine. He claims any guarantees would only work with Moscow’s co-operation. The Russian Minister's remarks contradict Donald Trump's claim that Vladimir Putin agreed to European and US security guarantees at their summit in Alaska. Mr Lavrov says any peace deal should be based on a Russian proposal which allows Moscow to veto any action by guarantors. “We cannot agree with the fact that it’s now proposed to resolve collective security issues without the Russian Federation – this will not work,” Mr Lavrov said.

Actually speaking of the world we live in, hasn't our Henry's Finlandia obsession completely obscured the role of TACO King Donald?

Instead of blathering on about Finland and Stalin, he might have done a Tom Nichols in The Atlantic, Trump Keeps Defending Russia, The president sees the Ukraine war through Kremlin-tinted glasses. (that's an archive link).

No need to scribble about Stalin when the world has a variant Chamberlain leading the way ...

Donald Trump loves to speak extemporaneously, and usually, he makes very little sense. (Sharks? The Unabomber? What?) Trying to turn his ramblings into a coherent message is like trying, as an old European saying goes, to turn fish soup back into an aquarium. But he is the president of the United States and holds the codes to some 2,000 nuclear weapons. When he speaks, his statements are both policy and a peek into the worldview currently governing the planet’s sole superpower.
This morning, the commander in chief made clear that he does not understand the largest war in Europe, what started it, or why it continues. Worse, insofar as he does understand anything about Russia’s attempted conquest of Ukraine, he seems to have internalized old pro-Moscow talking points that even the Kremlin doesn’t bother with anymore.
The setting, as it so often is when Trump piles into a car with his thoughts and then goes full Thelma & Louise off a rhetorical cliff, was Fox & Friends. The Fox hosts, although predictably fawning, did their best to keep the president from the ledge, but when Trump pushes the accelerator, everyone goes along for the ride.
The subject, ostensibly, was Trump’s supposed diplomatic triumph at yesterday’s White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and seven European leaders. The Fox hosts, of course, congratulated Trump—for what, no one could say—but that is part of the drill. A Trump interview on conservative media is something like a liturgy, with its predictable chants, its call-and-response moments, and its paternosters. Trump ran through the usual items: The war was Joe Biden’s fault; the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax”; the war never would have happened if Trump had been president. Unto ages of ages, amen.
But when the hosts asked specifically about making peace, the president of America sounded a lot like the president of Russia.
The war, Trump said, started because of Crimea and NATO. Considering his commitment to being a “peace president,” Trump was oddly eager to castigate his predecessors for being weak: Crimea, he said, was handed over to Russian President Vladimir Putin by Barack Obama “without a shot fired.” (Should Obama have fired some? No one asked.) Crimea, you see, is a beautiful piece of real estate, surrounded by water—I have been to Crimea, and I can confirm the president’s evaluation here—and “Barack Hussein Obama gave it away.” Putin, he said, got a “great deal” from Obama, and took it “like candy from a baby.”
Trump did not explain how this putative land swindle led to Putin trying to seize all of Ukraine. But no matter; he quickly shifted to NATO, echoing the arguments of early Kremlin apologists and credulous Western intellectuals that Ukraine existed only as a “buffer” with the West, and that Putin was acting to forestall Ukraine joining NATO. Russia was right, Trump said, not to want the Western “enemy” on their border.
This might be the first time an American president has used Russia’s language to describe NATO as an enemy. Perhaps Trump was simply trying to see the other side’s point of view. He then added, however, that the war was sparked not only by NATO membership—which was not on the table anytime soon—but also by Ukrainian demands to return Crimea, which Trump felt were “very insulting” to Russia.

And so on, and so our Henry, in his Finland obsessed outing, managed to entirely avoid what really matters at the moment ...

The bipolar anchor, and the stability it brought, have disappeared, creating no end of opportunities for revanchist autocracies. Moreover, after three years of intense combat, Vladimir Putin’s military is more credible and capable, and his hold on power even firmer, than in 2022, while his ambitions remain untamed. Nor are there factors at work comparable to those that restricted Stalin’s claims over Finland.
Even were Ukraine to obtain effective security guarantees – and that is far from certain – Putin’s strengthened resources of credibility, force and power are therefore likely to be put to use, both at Russia’s fringes and elsewhere. That is not to blame Trump, who is making the best of a bad lot. 

Say what? All that to make a feeble fudge excuse for the TACO Captain Bonespurs? Even the bromancer wasn't that desperate or pathetic.

As if it were all the fault of Europe, as if King Donald and his minions weren't in NATO and had nothing to do with proceedings...

Rather, the fault lies squarely with the Europeans, who passively accepted the annexation of Crimea and did nothing whatsoever to enforce the agreements that had been reached about the Donbas.

Um, is it wrong to recall that the Russians provided their own guarantee way back in 1994, worth the paper it was written on, but no more than that?

To make things worse, once the war started, their military assistance was so paltry, and, like the Biden administration’s, so laden with restrictions, that the Ukrainians could not strike a decisive blow when the invading forces were at their weakest.
As Russia absorbs what was Ukrainian territory, China will not hesitate to draw the lessons of this conflict – which, along with that in Gaza, defines the era – and translate them into action. And no lesson is starker than the fact that one has go back to the 1930s to find a time when the democracies so largely lacked the will to win or were so readily, and so cheaply, intimidated into anticipatory acquiescence.
With our own government showing a timidity worthy of Helsinki at the height of the Cold War, there is no need to ask for whom the bell of Finlandisation now tolls. It tolls for you and me.

At least he's at one with the bromancer on using Ukraine to stoke fears of China, but what a disappointment. 

The 1930s dismissed, the role of King Donald downplayed, his vain attempt at demanding he be the new Nobel-prize winning Kissinger of the ages ignored ...

And as for the many other many other examples of abandoned treaties and broken guarantees that litter history ...starting with that one in 1994? All forgotten so that our could rage on about Finland. 

Are the days of Thucydides lost forever? What about the Thirty Years' Peace? (which lasted only 15 years)...

Besides, is Finlandisation what's really tolling? 

Isn't Americanisation what is tolling for thee and me?

Cue Gary Johns assaulting a TG charity, and you're well on your way ...