It's Thursday, which usually means it's petulant Peta archive day ...
Alas, there was no sign of her, so the pond was denied the pleasure of sending her off to the archive cornfield.
There was further humiliation for the reptiles however, because a fiendish coupling disrupted the Force ...
Oh the bitterness of that early morning pill ...
Critical praise and a presidential pat: PM basks as Trump talks up $13bn deal
Donald Trump has delivered unexpected praise for Anthony Albanese over Australia’s $13bn critical minerals deal during a warm exchange at an APEC dinner during which the pair sat next to each other.
Golden opportunity: Trump showered in gold on Asia trip
Both Donald Trump and allies used the president’s favoured colour to make their cases to each other.
By Alexander Ward, Meridith McGraw and Dasl Yoon
Another loss: after his most excellent appearance in Media Watch at the start of the week, there was no sign of the bromancer being on hand to celebrate the proceedings...
Luckily there was one baleful monster to hand to terrify the reptiles ...
Chalmers taps super to net billions for Labor priorities
Jim Chalmers has signalled plans to unlock Australia’s $4.3 trillion superannuation pool to boost investment in areas such as housing and clean energy projects.
By Geoff Chambers
Over on the extreme far right there were alarming pearls of wisdom ...
The Liberals must resist the siren song of a halfway house position on net zero, which will only exacerbate policy uncertainty and play into Labor’s hands.
by David Pearl
Will was willing but nervous ...
Donald Trump and Xi Jinping prepare for their most crucial meeting of the year in South Korea, as North Korea fires a missile ahead of their high-stakes summit.
By Will Glasgow
North Asia Correspondent
Jack the Insider made his usual Thursday appearance, bangering on in his usual way ...
Australian democracy outperforms US, UK in key electoral measures
Australia’s success is not dumb luck. It was engineered and its engineers knew what they were doing. Raise a sausage sandwich to them next time you’re at the ballot box.
By Jack the Insider
Columnist
Nick contemplated the perils of Pauline:
Anti-establishment populism once powered Pauline Hanson’s brand. Yet the politician who once embodied outsider defiance has become part of the establishment.
Nick Dyrenfurth
Contributor
So pleasing that the executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre should find a comfortable new home in the hive mind ..
And Jemma gave Andrew a spanking ...
With every new headline, Prince Andrew increasingly resembles a greedy Roald Dahl character. But a tipping point looms.
By Jenna Clarke
Culture Writer
And after that lengthy roll call, the pond felt entitled to indulge in a serve of the Lynch mob ... though this came at some personal sacrifice, because all the cartoonists this day were celebrating Susssan, and once again the lettuce looked pretty spruce in its T-shirt...
Never mind, sacrifices have to be made ...and the pond will always find space for the Lynch mob, for how else to go on defaming the reputation of the University of Melbourne?
The header: Trump 3.0 is a fantasy, but it’s the ultimate troll for the ‘derangers’, Like Rocky III, Superman III and Godfather III, Donald Trump’s dream of a third term presidential term is a fantasy. It’s also the ultimate troll for the Trump ‘derangers’.
The caption for the wretched collage, wisely offered without any sign of a reptile credit: Bad sequels come in threes: Donald Trump 3.0 risks the fate of the movie flops like Al Pacino's The Godfather III, left, Sylvester Stallone's Rocky III, second from right, and Christopher Reeves' Superman III, right. Pictures: AFP/Supplied
As always, the reptiles missed some perfect artwork opportunities, visions, dreams that are currently doing the rounds ...
Sieg Heil, and from the get go, the pond wondered if the Lynch mob had missed the point.
After all, Rocky didn't just stop at III, there were VI of them, plus III Creed spin-offs ...
And there was a lot of juice in the Godfather, what with there being two versions of III, and a seven hour HBO Godfather epic, a chronological cut featuring deleted scenes.
Who knows how they might repackage King Donald - milk the franchise - perhaps even getting him to rule from a mausoleum, with assorted minions serving as his regent while his embalmed body resisted the ravages ot time and Tribe ...
What a relief to be able to relax, forget about Vlad the Sociopath in Ukraine, or the quagmire of Gaza ...
Donald Trump, however, will need constitutional supermen to pull off the same feat.
Trump 3.0 is a fantasy. I suspect he knows this but likes to raise it, as he did this week, just to keep Trump derangement syndrome at fever pitch. The prospects of a third term discombobulate the Democrats. He does not present them as a constitutional argument but as a tease. His opponents should treat them as such.
Consider the constitutional impediments; these unavoidably dictate the accompanying political ones.
The reptiles immediately interrupted with a snap ... US President Donald Trump alights from Air Force One after flying into Japan. His dreams of a third presidential term won’t fly as well. Picture: AFP
What a manly hunk, what a role model, why do the reptiles consistently miss the obvious? The vision splendid ...
Sieg Heil, and carry on Lynch mob ...
The only conceivable loophole here would be Trump leaving office, becoming vice-president and then (somehow) engineering to take back the presidency from that elected president. We are in Vladimir Putin territory here. In 2008, Putin stepped down as Russian president, became prime minister, before returning to the presidency in 2012. Who on the Trump team would play the Dmitry Medvedev role in any Americanised version? It is cloud cuckoo land.
The 12th amendment (1804) would kybosh a repeat of Putin’s castling manoeuvre: “No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President”, as Trump would be under the terms of the 22nd amendment, “shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States”.
Checkmate.
Then the reptiles decided to remind the pond of Vlad the Sociopath, Russian President Vladimir Putin went from Russian president to prime minister, then back to president. Picture: AP
At last an excuse to segue to an immortal Rowe, showing the oily sociopath off ...
The Lynch mob was still busy showing a lack of imagination, as if there was no chance of staging a decent Reichstag fire, or simply not bothering with an excuse, what with there being so many emergencies in the land ...
Across 250 years of US history only one amendment has repealed another. The 21st amendment (in 1933) made alcohol legal after it was made illegal in the 18th amendment (in 1919): those intervening 14 years were the era of Prohibition and moonshine.
To pass a new amendment allowing him a third term, Trump would need to convince not only his own side – possible, but the Republican Party at some stage will scratch an itch and move him along – but an impossible number of Democrats, too.
On current numbers, he’d need 69 of his sworn enemies in the House of Representatives to back a third term and 18 in the Senate. He can draft in Washington powerbroker Kevin Rudd to help. I am not sure it will do any good.
The only way around this congressional obstacle would be convincing the 50 states to hold a constitutional convention. If 38 (three-quarters) voted for the amendment, Trump wins. The Republicans have a trifecta in only 23 states – states where they control both houses of the legislature and the governorship. Oh, and this extraordinary process has never happened before.
When George Washington got on his horse and rode back to Mount Vernon in March 1797 after two terms in office, he set a strong precedent that every president until 1940 followed.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt won four presidential elections: 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944. He died a few months into his fourth term.
Presidential term limits were ratified in 1951 because there was a consensus that the presidency had grown too powerful under America’s World War II leader.
Again the reptiles inserted a snap of King Donald, showing his ability to destroy democracy and the White House, US President Donald Trump holds an artist rendering of the new White House ballroom he’s ordered, to outcry. Picture: AP
Really reptiles? That's the best you can do, when the Übermensch is transforming not just the White House, but the entire country?
Sieg Heil.
Nary a black or brown person to be seen, just endless Norman Rockwells, which is right and seemly, while all the Lynch mob could manage was to miss the vision ...
There is nothing close to an equivalent consensus today. On anything. It took the expansion of White House power from 1933 to 1945, in the New Deal and a world war, to convince majorities of both parties to limit any new president to two terms. The legacy of FDR’s marathon presidency still endures. He rewrote the rules of American politics. He had 12 years to do so. Trump was elected in part to undo that legacy. But he will get only eight years in which to try. The US still lives in the shadow of Roosevelt.
The reptiles decided to go the AV route, and feature destruction ... President Trump’s $250 million addition to the East Wing is his most ambitious makeover of the White House yet.
But surely this is the most ambitious makeover, a return to the 1950s, or better still, to a Führer future ...
The Lynch mob at last began to understand, and briefly argued against himself ...
If Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had a prospect of winning a third time, why not let the American voter make that call? Members of congress are not term limited. Supreme Court justices go gentle into that good night only when they or death decide.
But any president – who symbolises the nature of the American system, the only official nationally elected – must quit because of the partisan politics of the late 1940s.
Whatever you think about Trump’s merits, this seems a democratic deficit. Life expectancy has increased. American men died in their middle 60s in the 1940s, in their middle 70s today.
Why cut off leaders in their prime? In theory, dropping term limits makes sense.
Faint heart never won fair disunited states.
How desperate did the reptiles get in their attempts to distract?
Why, they dragged in former chairman Rudd ... United States President Donald Trump has warned he won't forget Kevin Rudd's comments about him. During Anthony Albanese's recent White House meeting with the President, Mr Trump said to Mr Rudd, "I don't like you." This is in relation to old social media posts by the now Ambassador to the US, which referred to Donald Trump as a 'village idiot' and 'traitor to the West.'
Bollocks to that ploy ...
And so to the Lynch mob calling for a coup...
There is no way, constitutionally, Trump can run again in 2028. He is a revolutionary figure, of course. But it is a coup he needs to extend his presidency into his 84th year.
Consider it done ...
Sieg Heil, and finally a finally, where the Lynch mob decides to remind us he has absolutely no idea how to milk a franchise, until its as dead as Stone Cold Steve's time at the top ...
Sheesh, no wonder no studio would allow him to helm its franchises, and so he ended up amongst the southern sparrows...
— Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.
And with that it was time to sign off with the infallible Pope, with the pond wanting to preserve the immortal Rowe's T-shirt parade for the late arvo ...
Just to indulge in a bit of pissant nit-picking - anything to try and counter the smug pomposity of the Lynch mob - he’s a bit slapdash in his claim that the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution “made alcohol illegal “. To quote Wikipedia (because in this instance it’s correct, and I too lazy to rewrite it as this time of the morning) -
ReplyDelete>>The Eighteenth Amendment declared the production, transport, and sale of intoxicating liquors illegal, although it did not outlaw possession or consumption of alcohol. Shortly after the amendment was ratified, Congress passed the Volstead Act to provide for the federal enforcement of Prohibition. The Volstead Act declared that liquor, wine, and beer qualified as intoxicating liquors, and were therefore prohibited. >>
Indeed, if you look at contemporary accounts there was widespread shock and surprise at just how restrictive the Volstead Act was; there had been some expectation that things like low-alcohol beers and wines would still have been allowed following the Constitutional Amendment, but the alcohol limit imposed by the Act (0.5 %) was so low that even many foodstuffs would technically have been illegal if anyone has chosen to enforce restrictions in that regard.
Anyway, given this shoddy bit of work the Lynch Mob should apply his high academic standards to himself and resign his position forthwith. Given the way the bloke has bounced around academia he appears to be some sort of DEI hire anyway.
Assuming 'contributor' Dyrenfurth, as with the others of that title, is essentially his own editor, the greengrocer's apostrophe does impress. Always some fun in being really picky with what appears across Rupert media, given how obsessed Peta, and Doggy, Sharri (disrespect), Polonius and - well, all of them on their day - can be, with trivia.
ReplyDeleteIn a continuing spirit of fun (we have had good rain, with none of the hail and gale, so spirits lifted). Others who come here, who also try to keep up with where research/speculation is going into the very nature of the universe that we can (almost) observe, may have been intrigued by renewed theorising on where the magnetic force might fit into a possible grand unifying theory.
ReplyDeleteSo, with his recent remarkable revelations about the interaction of magnetism and water, and his deep knowledge of the uses of some 'rare earths' in magnets, should nations, such as ours, thinking they are making deals with Dictator Don for supply of those 'rare earths', also be nominating him for at least one other Nobel - in physics?
To surpass the people who have won two Nobels, in different fields (Marie Curie, a, gasp! woman, and Linus Pauling) the Mighty D really should try to score in two different fields in the same year. Peace and Physics would be an alliterative match. Sadly, the 'award' in economics isn't a truly ruley Nobel, so, while he richly (no pun intended) deserves it for completely upending conventional economics, it wouldn't quite put him ahead of that woman.
Perhaps a trifecta, Chad, with the economics prize for the application of chaos theory to international trade?
DeleteI’d like to think that in his acceptance speech for the Physics prize, Trump would thank “Dick Tracy”’ creator Chester Gould for awakening his adolescent interest in magnetism.
Oh my, Dick Tracy and magnetism: that is going back quite a way.
DeleteAnonymous and GB - I get the feeling that the intuitive understanding of what the magnetic force actually is, has not advanced much since Chester was speculating.
DeleteBut while we are having a chortle at reptiles, a fringe reptile (I did not recognise, and the screen did not put up a name) on Sky Noise, t'other night, apparently had had some kind of AI do a quick brief on 'rare earths', so that that head could pretend to be an expert, for the purposes of that 'presenter'. Also apparently, instant expert had not troubled to study the AI brief, and suffered a mild brain spasm when its eyes encountered 'Ytterbium' on its cheat screen. Took a few stutters and stumbles to almost get the name out.
Yep, if ya gunna play the expert, it helps if you can seem familiar with the terminology.
A dream worth fighting for says the poster.
ReplyDeletePity the Lynch Mob didn't ask Abigail Disney, or Ingrid Robeyns - author of Limitarianism - for a quote.
"The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales"
"In this feature-length, personal essay documentary, The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales filmmaker and philanthropist Abigail Disney grapples with America’s profound inequality crisis. The story begins in 2018, after Abigail encounters workers at the company that bears her name struggling to put food on the table. Could she, a descendent, with no role in the multinational conglomerate, use her famous last name to help pressure Disney and other American corporations to treat low-wage workers more humanely? Believing her conservative grandfather, Roy Disney, (Walt’s brother and company co-founder) would never have tolerated employee hunger at “The Happiest Place On Earth”, Abigail reexamines the story of modern American capitalism from the middle of the last century, when wealth was shared more equitably, to today, when CEO’s earn upwards of 800 times more than their average employees. What happened? What Abigail learns-about racism, corporate power, and the American Dream, is eye-opening, unexpected, and inspiring in that it begins to imagine a path to a fairer future for everyone."
https://americandreamdoc.com/about/
"Film Review: The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales"
by INGRID ROBEYNS
JANUARY 11, 2023
https://crookedtimber.org/2023/01/11/film-review-the-american-dream-and-other-fairy-tales/
Lachlan’s chief offsider leaves News Corp - deserting the sinking ship, perhaps?
ReplyDeletehttps://archive.li/k7wDV