The pond had decided not to do a late arvo post, but once again was blind-sided by the way that the reptiles deliberately made it hard for the pond to keep track of the inimitable Mein Gott's offerings.
The pond realised it simply had to provide archive access to his latest outing ...
Victoria may soon become ungovernable
Victoria’s public service could face an unprecedented administrative burden under proposed treaty legislation giving sweeping powers to a new First Peoples’ Assembly.
By Robert Gottliebsen
Business Columnist
Victoria’s public service could face an unprecedented administrative burden under proposed treaty legislation giving sweeping powers to a new First Peoples’ Assembly.
By Robert Gottliebsen
Business Columnist
Now here's a teaser trailer for the latest bout of Mein Gott 'sky is falling' hysteria:
That's enough, that's more than enough ... but let no one say that attention wasn't paid to this carrot planter.
The pond provided a pointer earlier in the day to Dame Slap's hysteria on the same matter, and now duty has been done by noting Mein Gott's splendid effort.
To provide a little filler, a little ballast to add weight to the Mein Gott offering, the pond turned to the lizard Oz editorialist, a strange beast which rarely makes the cut in the pond archives.
There were a number of links in the text, all of which were designed to keep punters inside the hive mind, and which were active in the archived version ...
This was the follow up to news that King Donald the peacemaker was again on the move ...
Trump must home in on Ukraine
As the US President conceded when he addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem on Monday, the Russia-Ukraine war has proved harder to settle than Israel’s existential war against Hamas.
Editorial
3 min read
October 15, 2025 - 12:00AM
As the US President conceded when he addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem on Monday, the Russia-Ukraine war has proved harder to settle than Israel’s existential war against Hamas.
Editorial
3 min read
October 15, 2025 - 12:00AM
The lizard Oz editorialist was in a "must" mode, and seemed to think that at last King Donald might make a stand against Vlad the sociopath, though on the evidence to date, it seems he will forever be in TACO mode...
As Donald Trump conceded when he addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem on Monday, the Russia-Ukraine war has proved harder to settle than Israel’s existential war against Iran-backed Hamas. But while his original claim that he would be able to halt the Ukraine war within 24 hours of returning to the White House was futile, he will now “focus on Russia first”, starting by meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington on Friday. The pressure tactics the US President used over Gaza, while a vastly different conflict, need to be deployed to compel Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire. “Putin can be forced into peace – just like any other terrorist,” Mr Zelensky insists.
The stakes are high and rising. Poland, which suffered under Russian occupation for centuries, now has the largest military of any European nation in NATO after lifting defence spending to 4.7 per cent of GDP. For more than a decade, The Wall Street Journal notes, it has prepared for its worst-case scenario – becoming the frontline in a war between Russia and the West. Last month, as Putin escalated his standoff with the West, Polish airspace was violated by 20 Russian drones equipped with additional fuel tanks to help them fly further.
From Ukraine’s perspective the game changer in its ongoing war would be Mr Trump making good on the issue he raised on Monday. “Do they (the Russians) want to have Tomahawks going in their direction? I don’t think so. I think I might speak to Russia about that. Tomahawks are a new step of aggression,” he told journalists aboard Air Force One as he flew to the Middle East. It was an understatement. Tomahawks are among the most precise missiles in the US military arsenal. Worth about $US1.3m, they have a 2500km range that effectively would disrupt Moscow’s ability to wage war, potentially destroying Putin’s missile and drone factories deep inside Russia and severing routes that are important to the Russian war effort. The Russian despot’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has conceded that the prospect of Ukraine gaining US Tomahawks would be a matter of “extreme concern” for Russia.
After almost four years of unrelenting war against Ukraine, Putin remains obdurate in refusing to halt his attack, a sign that Mr Trump, while reluctant to do so in the past, must be willing to use every possible pressure to get him to change. Unlike Israel, which found itself increasingly isolated around the world (apart from vital US support) largely because of Hamas propaganda emanating from Gaza, Putin can count on the “no limits” economic and other support of China and the military support of North Korea, which is supplying him with missiles, drones and even boots on the ground.
As the war drags on, with Russia directing attacks to energy infrastructure in Ukraine as winter approaches, first lady Melania Trump is making a worthwhile contribution in focusing US and world attention on one of the war’s horrors, intervening directly with Putin to plead for the release of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children ripped from their families by invading Kremlin forces and taken across the border to an unknown fate inside Russia. The precise number of children abducted is unknown but a report last month by the Yale School of Public Health spoke of tracking more than 35,000 in what is being described as “digital child trafficking masked as bureaucracy”. The children are put on adoption databases according to age, eye colour and other characteristics for selection by Russians. In a weekend announcement at the White House, Mrs Trump said eight children had been reunited with their families in the previous 24 hours following negotiations between her team and Putin’s. Mrs Trump, who grew up in Slovenia when it was part of the former Yugoslavia, acted following a meeting with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska. She sent Putin a letter via her husband when they met in Alaska in August. The venture has far to go but communication channels are open.
If Mr Trump applies himself seriously to ending the war in Ukraine, he should supply Ukraine with the weapons, which would make a vast difference to the prospect of peace. Concerns about a potential escalation with NATO would arise. But supplying Ukraine with US Tomahawk missiles would push Putin towards a ceasefire. Mr Trump also could ratchet up Russia’s economic hardship. He has imposed steep tariffs on India and China but he has yet to target Moscow’s shadow fleet of illicit oil tankers doing much to raise revenue for the Russian war machine. If Mr Trump can draw any lesson from the Israel-Hamas deal to apply to the Ukraine war, European officials believe, it boils down to one word: pressure.
The stakes are high and rising. Poland, which suffered under Russian occupation for centuries, now has the largest military of any European nation in NATO after lifting defence spending to 4.7 per cent of GDP. For more than a decade, The Wall Street Journal notes, it has prepared for its worst-case scenario – becoming the frontline in a war between Russia and the West. Last month, as Putin escalated his standoff with the West, Polish airspace was violated by 20 Russian drones equipped with additional fuel tanks to help them fly further.
From Ukraine’s perspective the game changer in its ongoing war would be Mr Trump making good on the issue he raised on Monday. “Do they (the Russians) want to have Tomahawks going in their direction? I don’t think so. I think I might speak to Russia about that. Tomahawks are a new step of aggression,” he told journalists aboard Air Force One as he flew to the Middle East. It was an understatement. Tomahawks are among the most precise missiles in the US military arsenal. Worth about $US1.3m, they have a 2500km range that effectively would disrupt Moscow’s ability to wage war, potentially destroying Putin’s missile and drone factories deep inside Russia and severing routes that are important to the Russian war effort. The Russian despot’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has conceded that the prospect of Ukraine gaining US Tomahawks would be a matter of “extreme concern” for Russia.
After almost four years of unrelenting war against Ukraine, Putin remains obdurate in refusing to halt his attack, a sign that Mr Trump, while reluctant to do so in the past, must be willing to use every possible pressure to get him to change. Unlike Israel, which found itself increasingly isolated around the world (apart from vital US support) largely because of Hamas propaganda emanating from Gaza, Putin can count on the “no limits” economic and other support of China and the military support of North Korea, which is supplying him with missiles, drones and even boots on the ground.
As the war drags on, with Russia directing attacks to energy infrastructure in Ukraine as winter approaches, first lady Melania Trump is making a worthwhile contribution in focusing US and world attention on one of the war’s horrors, intervening directly with Putin to plead for the release of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children ripped from their families by invading Kremlin forces and taken across the border to an unknown fate inside Russia. The precise number of children abducted is unknown but a report last month by the Yale School of Public Health spoke of tracking more than 35,000 in what is being described as “digital child trafficking masked as bureaucracy”. The children are put on adoption databases according to age, eye colour and other characteristics for selection by Russians. In a weekend announcement at the White House, Mrs Trump said eight children had been reunited with their families in the previous 24 hours following negotiations between her team and Putin’s. Mrs Trump, who grew up in Slovenia when it was part of the former Yugoslavia, acted following a meeting with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska. She sent Putin a letter via her husband when they met in Alaska in August. The venture has far to go but communication channels are open.
If Mr Trump applies himself seriously to ending the war in Ukraine, he should supply Ukraine with the weapons, which would make a vast difference to the prospect of peace. Concerns about a potential escalation with NATO would arise. But supplying Ukraine with US Tomahawk missiles would push Putin towards a ceasefire. Mr Trump also could ratchet up Russia’s economic hardship. He has imposed steep tariffs on India and China but he has yet to target Moscow’s shadow fleet of illicit oil tankers doing much to raise revenue for the Russian war machine. If Mr Trump can draw any lesson from the Israel-Hamas deal to apply to the Ukraine war, European officials believe, it boils down to one word: pressure.
How desperate did that optimistic talk of King Donald action get?
One set of numbers seemed to sum it up.
That talk of 35,000 children taken, and 8 reunited. That's boosterism of an amazing kind, suggesting Melania and Vlad know how to pull the wool over the lizard Oz editorialist eyes.
And while King Donald can no doubt chew gum and talk endlessly about his peace-making genius, perhaps the Gaza job at hand isn't yet complete?
Already there's the sight of Hamas roaming the streets, and conducting public executions at gun point, while Benji has reverted to collective punishment and mass starvation as a tactic (and a war crime), with talk of only allowing in half of the previously agreed 600 aid trucks.
And already barking mad fundamentalists are circling, ready to create trouble, per Haaretz ...
King Donald and his minions have had the chance of standing back, giving the Ukrainians what they need, and letting the Ukrainians get on with the job, but it's his TACO way to always wilt when the going gets tough.
At least Andrew Ryvkin provided the pond with a boost by scribbling in The Atlantic ...
Putin Is Not Winning
Underestimating the Russian leader is dangerous, but ascribing dark powers to him plays right into his hand
Underestimating the Russian leader is dangerous, but ascribing dark powers to him plays right into his hand
While at The Atlantic, enjoy the bizarre sight of David Brooks - yes, that one - posting as defiant radical, verging on revolutionary ...
Without one, America may sink into autocracy for decades.
Having done his best to muddy the waters and pave the way for the likes of King Donald with his dullard conservatism, Brooks made the pond roll eyes and roll Jaffas down the aisle at this sort of rhetoric ...
Other peoples have risen. Other peoples have risen up to defend their rights, their dignity, and their democracies. In the past 50 years, they’ve done it in Poland, South Africa, Lebanon, South Korea, Ukraine, East Timor, Serbia, Madagascar, Nepal, and elsewhere.
In the early 1970s, for instance, the democratically elected leader of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, tried to centralize power in his own hands. Students rose up: A clash between them and police left six protesters dead. Transit workers went on strike, followed by joint student-worker demonstrations. Marcos countered by declaring martial law. Led by Cardinal Jaime Sin, the archbishop of Manila, Catholics arose to resist.
In 1983, Marcos’s key opponent, Benigno Aquino, was assassinated. Marcos banned TV coverage of Aquino’s funeral. But 2 million mourners showed up for what turned into an 11-hour rally against the regime. The middle and professional classes then joined the protesters. The Manila business community held weekly demonstrations. The following year, there was a general workers’ strike. After Marcos stole the next election, members of the armed forces began to mutiny. Millions of ordinary citizens marched to defend them. The Reagan administration threatened to cut off aid to the regime. By early 1986, Marcos and his family had no choice: They fled the country. It had taken more than a decade, but the people had defeated the autocrat.
Such uprisings are not rare. For their 2011 book, Why Civil Resistance Works, the political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan looked at 323 resistance movements from 1900 to 2006, including more than 100 nonviolent resistance campaigns. What Chenoweth and Stephan showed is that citizens are not powerless; they have many ways to defend democracy.
For the United States, the question of the decade is: Why hasn’t a resistance movement materialized here? The second Trump administration has flouted court decisions in a third of all rulings against it, according to The Washington Post. It operates as a national extortion racket, using federal power to control the inner workings of universities, law firms, and corporations. It has thoroughly politicized the Justice Department, launching a series of partisan investigations against its political foes. It has turned ICE into a massive paramilitary organization with apparently unconstrained powers. It has treated the Constitution with disdain, assaulted democratic norms and diminished democratic freedoms, and put military vehicles and soldiers on the streets of the capital. It embraces the optics of fascism, and flaunts its autocratic aspirations.
What followed after that rhetorical blather? An immortal Brooksian line ...
I am not one of those who believe that Donald Trump has already turned America into a dictatorship.
What a foolish fop he is. Why rise up against a dictator if there's no dictatorship?
If David Brooks is the radical answer, best forget the question.
Perhaps instead try Anne Applebaum ...
The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark
For nearly 250 years, America promoted freedom and equality abroad, even when it failed to live up to those ideals itself. Not anymore.
For nearly 250 years, America promoted freedom and equality abroad, even when it failed to live up to those ideals itself. Not anymore.
...The shift against these historically bipartisan institutions, against the belief that Americans should defend and promote democracy around the world, and against the democratic faith itself is part of something broader. We have a president who regularly attacks judges and journalists, who bullies CEOs into handing over stock in their companies and university presidents into paying meritless fines, who sends military forces into American cities, who is building a new form of interior police, and who raucously encourages the deepening divide between red and blue America. Abroad, Donald Trump appears much happier with dictators than with democratic allies. His random, punitive tariffs sent Lesotho, a small African country, into economic decline. His demands to occupy Greenland created a political crisis in Denmark, a longtime U.S. ally.
His vice president’s single notable speech since taking office, made in a room full of people expecting a serious discussion of security, berated Europeans with a list of dishonest or exaggerated attacks on them for alleged assaults on free speech. Trump’s own attacks on “radical-left judges” and “fake-news media” now travel around the world much faster than “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” did. Vladimir Putin has banned media that spread “fake news”—that is, accurate information—about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The autocratic ex-president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, called Rappler, a famous investigative-reporting site, a “fake-news outlet” to discredit its work. In places as varied as Egypt and Myanmar, the fake charge of “fake news” has been used to destroy legitimate journalists.
All of these changes are part of a larger shift, a revolutionary transformation in the way Americans present themselves to the world, and the way they are therefore perceived by others. The most ubiquitous form of American culture nowadays is not jazz programming going out on shortwave radio across Eurasia, but the social-media platforms that pump conspiracy theories, extremism, advertising, pornography, and spam into every corner of the globe. After Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union for political dissent, the U.S. government facilitated his arrival in America. Now we have different heroes: The Trump administration went out of its way to rescue and welcome the Tate brothers, who had been arrested and briefly held in Romania, charged with rape in Great Britain. (The Tates deny the charges.) Instead of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, we now have the Conservative Political Action Conference, a kind of movable rent-a-troll event. Identikit nationalists anywhere—Hungary, Poland, Britain, Mexico, Brazil—can pay the CPAC team to come to their country and produce a MAGA show. Steve Bannon or Kristi Noem will show up, deliver a rowdy speech alongside the local talent, and help them make headlines. A CPAC conference held near Rzeszów a few days before the second round of the Polish presidential election featured Noem and was sponsored by a Polish cryptocurrency company that wants a U.S. license.
American culture is no longer synonymous with the aspiration to freedom, but with transactionalism and secrecy: the algorithms that mysteriously determine what you see, the money collected by anonymous billionaires, the deals that the American president is making with world leaders that benefit himself and maybe others whose names we don’t know. America was always associated with capitalism, business, and markets, but nowadays there’s no pretense that anyone else will be invited to share the wealth. USAID is gone; American humanitarian aid is depleted; America’s international medical infrastructure was dismantled so quickly that people died in the process. The image of the ugly American always competed with the image of the generous American. Now that the latter has disappeared, the only Americans anyone can see are the ones trying to rip you off.
His vice president’s single notable speech since taking office, made in a room full of people expecting a serious discussion of security, berated Europeans with a list of dishonest or exaggerated attacks on them for alleged assaults on free speech. Trump’s own attacks on “radical-left judges” and “fake-news media” now travel around the world much faster than “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” did. Vladimir Putin has banned media that spread “fake news”—that is, accurate information—about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The autocratic ex-president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, called Rappler, a famous investigative-reporting site, a “fake-news outlet” to discredit its work. In places as varied as Egypt and Myanmar, the fake charge of “fake news” has been used to destroy legitimate journalists.
All of these changes are part of a larger shift, a revolutionary transformation in the way Americans present themselves to the world, and the way they are therefore perceived by others. The most ubiquitous form of American culture nowadays is not jazz programming going out on shortwave radio across Eurasia, but the social-media platforms that pump conspiracy theories, extremism, advertising, pornography, and spam into every corner of the globe. After Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union for political dissent, the U.S. government facilitated his arrival in America. Now we have different heroes: The Trump administration went out of its way to rescue and welcome the Tate brothers, who had been arrested and briefly held in Romania, charged with rape in Great Britain. (The Tates deny the charges.) Instead of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, we now have the Conservative Political Action Conference, a kind of movable rent-a-troll event. Identikit nationalists anywhere—Hungary, Poland, Britain, Mexico, Brazil—can pay the CPAC team to come to their country and produce a MAGA show. Steve Bannon or Kristi Noem will show up, deliver a rowdy speech alongside the local talent, and help them make headlines. A CPAC conference held near Rzeszów a few days before the second round of the Polish presidential election featured Noem and was sponsored by a Polish cryptocurrency company that wants a U.S. license.
American culture is no longer synonymous with the aspiration to freedom, but with transactionalism and secrecy: the algorithms that mysteriously determine what you see, the money collected by anonymous billionaires, the deals that the American president is making with world leaders that benefit himself and maybe others whose names we don’t know. America was always associated with capitalism, business, and markets, but nowadays there’s no pretense that anyone else will be invited to share the wealth. USAID is gone; American humanitarian aid is depleted; America’s international medical infrastructure was dismantled so quickly that people died in the process. The image of the ugly American always competed with the image of the generous American. Now that the latter has disappeared, the only Americans anyone can see are the ones trying to rip you off.
And so on, and while in an editorial mood and in search of examples to support the Applebaum thesis, the pond decided to take a look at the WSJ, what with King Donald lawfare all the rage ...
Donald Trump and Letitia James, Lawfare Pals
The New York Attorney General sued him for fraud. Now the President’s Justice Department indicts her for fraud. This is madness.
By The Editorial Board
The New York Attorney General sued him for fraud. Now the President’s Justice Department indicts her for fraud. This is madness.
By The Editorial Board
It was an example of both siderism at its best, worthy of the NY Times...though in the end came an almost Brooksian notion of madness ...
Tell that to Faux Noise, all in on the madness, lathering up a frenzy.
As an aside, why does the Murdoch empire never do links?Why to they trade on others, but refuse to allow anyone to stray outside the hivemind?
Where's the harm in linking to that ProPublica story?
Trump Is Accusing Foes With Multiple Mortgages of Fraud. Records Show 3 of His Cabinet Members Have Them.
The White House has targeted opponents, including a Fed governor, for having more than one primary residence on their loan papers. ProPublica found that, in one case, a Trump cabinet secretary got two such mortgages in quick succession.
The White House has targeted opponents, including a Fed governor, for having more than one primary residence on their loan papers. ProPublica found that, in one case, a Trump cabinet secretary got two such mortgages in quick succession.
Remember that Applebaum line?
Identikit nationalists anywhere—Hungary, Poland, Britain, Mexico, Brazil—can pay the CPAC team to come to their country and produce a MAGA show.
She omitted one major troll ... Milei, famously caught celebrating with another troll in their very own chainsaw lunch time...
Making sense of this proved tricky for the WSJ ...
It did make sense, if you remember the original meaning of MAGA, Make Argentina Great Again, but the best the editorial board could do was a little handwringing in the Brooksian manner ...
Argentina: Right Country, Wrong Rescue
Javier Milei needs U.S. help, but his country really needs dollarization.
Javier Milei needs U.S. help, but his country really needs dollarization.
US president says ‘we will not be generous’ if leader fails to win key midterms after promising $20bn to prop up struggling economy
Is the TACO King already at it again?
Or is it yet another attempt at a shakedown by the politician voted 'most admired by Mafia bosses' in many bigly polls?
What the mindless MAGA mob make of this bail out is a complete mystery to the pond, but it is a source of endless titillation.
And what of King Donald's wars at home, the many that continue to drag on?
Not this war, at best a minor skirmish ...
Gavin Newsom Trolls Trump With Touch-Up of TIME Cover Photo
A HARD TIME
The California governor blurred out the most unflattering part of Trump’s TIME magazine cover.
A HARD TIME
The California governor blurred out the most unflattering part of Trump’s TIME magazine cover.
Nor this war, it just being a tactical advance in a much more extensive authoritarian campaign ...
Trump Melts Down at ABC Over Stephanopoulos Snub to Vance
BROMANCE!
The president snubbed an ABC News reporter because of the network’s treatment of the vice president.
BROMANCE!
The president snubbed an ABC News reporter because of the network’s treatment of the vice president.
The pond was pleased to see that others have bromances - it's not just our own bromancer's devotion to the onion muncher - though it stretches the imagination to think of anyone wanting a bromance with a couch molestor.
The daily relentless flow of skirmishes aside, the pond was more interested in some of the other wars that raged on ... the sort that made that Brooksian fop wonder in his epic bewilderment what he'd paved the way for, and what had sent Applebaum into despair.
Elbows up Canada ...
And is it time to look for some other sky pilot?
How bad is it? It's not just the paramilitary uniforms, they really love Hitler.
Read the article celebrating the master race:
Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.
By Jason Beeferman and Emily Ngo
Watch the movie based on the article, starring the master race in all their glory:
Their only crime? Getting caught, and not being canny enough to keep it private until the new thousand year Reich was fully in place ... as the Bulwark team noted, it all comes from the top ...
Gosh, the Reptiles love a dithering panic, don’t they? The likes of the Dames trot out a hostile “fuck the lot of you” approach, but Mein Gott, following the lead of Ned - a panic merchant if ever there were one - is a true devotee of running around in ever decreasing circles before collapsing in a whimpering, shivering heap.Oddly it appears to be always be the uppity blacks - a group who historically have had minimal power and influence - who trigger the most extreme terrified response from elderly white opinionistas.
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