Mein Gott, it's a late arvo bonus ...

 

The pond has begun to drift away more and more from its reptile reading assignments, and there's a goodly chance it might fail its herpetology 101 exams at end of year, thereby sadly missing the war on Xmas. (Too soon? Aldi is already flogging Xmas treats, and of course the pond raced in to stock up on its brand of pfeffernüsse gingerbread biscuits. They and peppermints are the only good thing to emerge from the German blut).

It means the pond has to rely on correspondents for devastating news of Freya being cancelled, as if reptiles would indulge in any kind of cancel culture. (Media Watch for the full humiliation).

Does this mean the end to routine Muslim-bashing jihads at the lizard Oz? Will cancel culture run rife through News Corp?

Relax, bacon and Freya lovers, apparently she'll still be turning up on The Late Debate, not that the pond knows anything about any of that, with the thought of Sky Noise after dark leading to biblical thoughts about plucking out eyes.

One of the reasons the pond has tended to go MIA is the reptile refusal to cover the deeply dire situation the United States finds itself in, such as the endless arguments about the motivations of assorted mass murder shooters, and never mind the easy availability of guns.

That often sends the pond down rabbit holes, as in the case of the recent mass Mormon killings.

What to make of this?

Karoline Leavitt Says MAGA Shooter Just Hated Mormons

...while Leavitt also stopped short of stating a motive for Sanford’s “unfathomable” Mormon massacre, the 28-year-old agreed with President Donald Trump’s Sunday Truth Social claim that it was an “attack on Christians.”

Sure enough ...

Now the pond doesn't wish violence on anyone, but it has to be asked, are the Mormons Xian? 

They think they are, but outside the hothouse of a massacre, ask anyone deeply embedded in the Xian mainstream, evangelical or Roman Catholic, and at best they'll be labelled heretics and schismatics ...

Ask Are Mormon Heretics? and it's pretty clear they are:

...I know too many Christians are prone to throwing around the "heresy" word in a willy-nilly fashion at anyone who disagrees with them. Preachers who talk about social justice or have rock-and-roll worship on stage are called "heretics." But the word has an historical legitimacy. It does apply to some beliefs that depart from the faith once delivered. And the historical record of creeds and councils of the Christian church is clear, as is the word of God from which they are deriving their theological guardrails: if you deny the traditional doctrines of the deity of Christ and of the triune Godhead and mess with salvation by grace, you are indeed a heretic.

Ask again, What separates Christian orthodoxy from the heresy of Mormonism? 

In an age in which the Mormon Church is attempting to pass itself off as mainstream, it is crucial that Christians are equipped to scale the Mormon language barrier and use Mormon doctrinal deviations to communicate effectively the everlasting gospel of the historic Christian faith.

It's a tough world for competing cults. The Xian mainstream cults have had a lock on Christ for a long time, and late blooming interloper cults aren't welcome.

Too soon for theological niceties? Just ask Sky Noise or perhaps the Spanish Inquisition (apparently this elite also controls Medbeds).

Speaking of cults, the pond also saw a follow up story about the cult of far right economics in WaPo...

Trump set to bail out Argentina, irking some in ‘America First’ camp
The Trump administration is set to provide a $20 billion financial lifeline to Argentina, a move that has sparked controversy among some of his supporters.

It's worth quoting at length ...

And so on, and Argentina's in such deep doo-dah it needs a US$20 billion bail oout?

Inevitably that's the moment when the pond's thoughts turned back to home and special brands, such as Killernomics ...

That's at the IPA, but as it's outside the paywall, punters with a strong stomach can see what originally ran in the lizard Oz ...

What a relief Killer's not helming the Australian economy. Who knows where we might have ended up?

At one point many of the reptiles were infected by the Argentinian infatuation.

See Mein Gott's ...

BHP’s $9.6bn mine project delay puts Aussies jobs on hold
While our productivity panel tinkers at the edges, BHP delayed work on a major project with Argentina set to benefit from our lack of zeal for developing new mining revenue.

It was only in passing, but it was winners all the way with King Donald and Milei...

...President Donald Trump is determined to get the huge joint Rio Tinto and BHP Resolution mine in the US off and running. He will almost certainly succeed, and it will absorb even more of Australia’s mining cash.

To have a productivity summit that did not mention this dramatic development given that our tax revenues are dominated by minerals means that the Chalmers’ committee could never get to the nub of the problem and was left to look at rearranging taxes rather than growing the revenue base.

Argentina was once like Australia but has learnt its lesson and Milei will be looking for other opportunities to take advantage of the fact that our leaders do not understand how the mining industry works even though mining revenue is the reason we have a standard of living that is the envy of most countries.

Unless we wake up, that standard of living will not be maintained.

 

What better way to round out the day than with a reheated serve of day old Mein Gott, waking up as usual?

The header: How power bills and IR changes could impact borrowers, Mortgage holders face prolonged pain as renewable energy policies and workplace reforms drive up costs across the economy, leaving the RBA with limited options.

The caption: If the RBA, led by governor Michele Bullock, doesn’t cut rates at its November meeting, Australians with mortgages will feel the full brunt of bad policy. Picture: Martin Ollman

The pond routinely misses out on Mein Gott because the reptiles insist on putting him up outside the pond's usual hours, but every so often the pond tries to remedy this, and get in good with its herpetology 101 teachers:

If the Reserve Bank does not lower interest rates this week it will mean mortgage holders will suffer from the impact of the combination of Australia’s high-cost industrial relations and energy strategies. And it will keep happening.

The latest inflation figures have been boosted beyond expectations because the removal of subsidies skyrocketed power prices, which then flowed onto the cost of many services.

And, the industrial relations act changed the bargaining power balance, boosting costs.

The Reserve Bank may still lower rates this week but a lot more power price rises are in the pipeline and so longer-term mortgage holders are going to suffer interest rates higher than those would have occurred with a low-cost energy emissions strategy.

Among the major power users, aluminium smelters, led by the Rio Tinto smelter near Newcastle, will simply not be economic unless the high-cost renewable power is subsidised or coal becomes the long-term power source.

But, our aluminium smelters are merely a forerunner of the fate destined for a whole range of industries that process and manufacture goods and need globally competitive power prices.

By the time the next federal election takes place this will be evident to most of the community, although the government will use unsustainable subsidies to mask the situation.

Liberal MP Andrew Hastie has started on the task of making sure the nation understands what is going to happen when wind and solar are used as a base load power to achieve high emission targets.

Accordingly, Hastie hits the government’s woke-style high-cost energy policies and is spruiking the looming renewables disaster.

There's nothing strange about Mein Gott embracing the pastie Hastie - after all, he thought Milei was a winner - but what was strange was the size of the snap, Andrew Hastie has found support from a surprising place. Picture: Martin Ollman

The pond will try to replicate the effect:

Deeply weird, hagiography, iconography cranked up to 11, and as for that smirk and that undertaker suit ...

Mein Gott was all in, and suitably stunned ...

He believes that if we have competitive energy pricing we can develop specialised product design and manufacturing.

His views are opposed by both the government and parts of the Coalition.

But, stunningly, Hastie has a ‘supporter’ in South Australian ALP Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis who warns, “job destroying, woke policies are sending our young people into the ranks of the hard right”.

Hastie believes that his job creating policies will mean that, instead of going to the hard right, young people and their parents will vote for the Coalition.

In my view, the government has made fundamental mistakes because many of the installations in our solar, wind and power transmission network are owned by private sector developers under contracts which guarantee returns even if capital costs rise.

The capital costs have exploded, so these contracts are now revenue bonanzas. Those higher developer revenues will require increased power prices or unsustainable subsidies.

Wind and solar installations produce enormous amounts of cheap power when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. But, they produce virtually no power during the night if there is no wind.

And over-reliance on renewables can cause system breakdowns, as Spain discovered. Therefore there must be a backup system via batteries, hydro or gas.

Current technology makes big batteries expensive and, as we saw with Snowy Two, hydro can cost vast amounts of money.

Gas driven power is the only viable, flexible generation alternative.

Meanwhile, we will be relying on our old coal plants for much longer than would have been necessary, had we earlier understood the future requirement for gas.

But, despite the looming rise in domestic gas usage, there is a strong community desire in Australia to reduce emissions.

Ah, it's gas the country to save the planet time, and a little renewables bashing with one of those patented reptile images of a terrifying threat, A renewable plan which costs the nation $500bn is simply too expensive. Picture: iStock

Agreed, it's all stock standard reptile stuff, no different in intent or manner than this morning's Groaning, but the pond is pleased it could round out the day spending quality time with Mein Gott, even if every word just helped the pond's eyes glaze that little bit more ...

Australia’s greatest opportunity to absorb carbon at low cost is by using the ability of plants to use photosynthesis to absorb carbon and release oxygen. The carbon can be stored via timber in buildings (based on renewable forests so every tree felled is replaced) and via the deep roots of saltbush and similar vegetation that can be grown in arid land.

Both storage systems generate profits. Builders pay for the carbon stored as timber and the saltbush surface protein leaves can be sold to China and other markets. Vegetation with carbon absorbing roots can also be part of regenerative farming.

At the moment there is widespread vigorous debate about forecasting emission levels. We know from the Business Council of Australia the current government plan will cost around$500bn, which will ravage the economy.

In my view every future target that is established needs to come with a cost estimate. Currently, we ignore the costs, preferring just to sell the target itself.

The Coalition should not get into that disaster game and demand all forecasts have a realistic cost attached them.

And the business of targeting is made more complex because WA has a different way of calculating its emissions and Queensland is sticking with coal. That leaves NSW, Victoria and SA to bear the domestic burden.

And, unless there is a change in government next year it looks like Victoria is going to lead the way in reducing emissions using the highest possible cost method, therefore eliminating vast employment areas.

Yet, Victoria, near Sale in East Gippsland, has potentially the lowest-cost gas deposits in Australia, which also release water to accelerate emissions reduction via vegetation.

But, about six wells need to be drilled to ensure the vast reserves that have been internationally estimated will flow. Victoria also has gas near the South Australian border.

Outside Victoria there is non-contracted gas in NSW at Narrabri, in Queensland in the Bowen Basin and in the Northern Territory at Beetaloo.

The actual impact of the higher power prices on households will be neutered if there is a rush to install solar panels and batteries on domestic houses, but that involves outlays by individuals to counter government-imposed costs.

Many in the Coalition have not yet understood the disaster emerging in the energy sector and the opportunity it presents.

Many reptiles seem not to have understood the disaster emerging from their climate science denialism, but never mind ...

And did you see this one?

Childish no doubt, possibly immature, but if the glass slipper fits, wear it with pride...and just another day in these disunited states ...