In which the bromancer tracks the war with China, and "Ned" natters about the battle between Susssan and the lettuce ...

Some days the pond knows exactly the feeling recorded by George Packer in his review of Laura K. Field's Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right for The Atlantic:

...The author’s background perfectly positions her to deliver this lively, devastating taxonomy and critique of MAGA’s ideologues. She was originally trained in Straussian scholarship—a reading of classical political thought that criticizes the modern turn away from the sources of moral authority toward liberalism and, in Strauss’s view, nihilism. His approach has had a deep influence on leading conservative American intellectuals of the past half century, including Allan Bloom and Harry Jaffa, the godfather of the Claremont Institute. Nearly a decade in these academic circles makes Field a knowledgeable guide to a subject she takes seriously. She’s also a Canadian woman, a double identity that puts her at a skeptical distance from the more and more extreme world of the American right.
Her exodus, as she tells it, began in 2010, when she was a fifth-year graduate student, during a lavish banquet at the University of Virginia where she was seated next to an important member of the host organization’s staff, who described meeting First Lady Michelle Obama: “Very tall, very impressive. I’d really like to f*ck her.” Field excused herself to go to the restroom. Gazing in the mirror, she wondered: “What on earth am I doing here?”

Reading the lizard Oz some days, descending into a maelstrom roughly equivalent to Dante's hell, the pond is inclined to phrase it a little more strongly: "What the f*ck am I doing here?" (*blogger bot approved)

Wednesdays always brings the pond closer to this feeling of fraught existential alienation from the hive mind ...and so it came to pass this day ...

There doesn't seem to be any sign of the latest reptile jihad ending, with Rice on the boil with an EXCLUSIVE ...

EXCLUSIVE
Legal fee secrecy in Higgins fallout as Labor wheels out top silks
Labor’s legal fee secrecy in Brittany Higgins case fallout
Heavy-hitting barristers commanding up to $25,000 a day have been hired to fight Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown – but the Albanese government won’t say what it’s paying them.
By Stephen Rice

Luckily the pond's rice cooker has an auto switch, though it did mean that Dame Slap was able to take a break - so much jihadism, so little time - and indulge in her usual favourite sport, a bit of black bashing ...

The hustle for special rights is a hoax
The Victorian Treaty is evidence of a wider trend where race alone becomes a reason to treat people differently.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Even luckier for the pond, there was no need to go there, because the war with China by Xmas had suddenly heated up, with the chance of King Donald selling the hive mind down the river causing the reptiles grave anxiety...

Ben was packing it ...

DIPLOMACY
PM has a secret China chat, as Xi’s Trump call sparks Taiwan fears
Anthony Albanese has refused to reveal details of secret talks with China’s No. 3 leader as Xi Jinping positioned Taiwan as central to relations with Donald Trump.
By Ben Packham

Young Will of Glasgow was on the case ...

How worried should we be about Xi’s call to Trump?
The US president has given American allies and partners much to fear as he goes over their heads to deal with China’s leader. For Beijing, it is a dream scenario.
By Will Glasgow
North Asia Correspondent

Why were they worried? All was well ...

As always, the pond knew that the bromancer would have the right advice, the correct insight, but alas, this day he confessed to being in the dark ...

Luckily - it was a day for pond luck - his befuddlement and confusion only took 3 minutes without illustrations, save the opening flourish of the deviant conspirators in action ...

The header for the darkness in the morning story: Stakes are high, but we’re left in the dark on Australia-China talks, Anthony Albanese has refused to reveal what he discussed with China's third most senior leader, prompting opposition claims his government is Australia's ‘least transparent’ in history.

The caption for the deviants hiding in plain sight: Anthony Albanese with Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress chairman Zhao Leji at Parliament House on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

The bromancer immediately jumped into bewildered high gear:

Anthony Albanese doesn’t think the Australian people have any business knowing, even in the broadest sense, what topics he discussed with China’s third most ­senior leader, Zhao Leji.
His disdain for public scrutiny is perhaps less Donald Trump and more Joh Bjelke-Petersen – “don’t you worry about that”.
Trump for his part doesn’t think American voters, or indeed anyone else, should know that he had a substantial discussion with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on the future of Taiwan, which Xi has repeatedly threatened to take control of by force. Xi announced that discussion, while Trump was silent.
Sussan Ley is surely right to label the Albanese government “the least transparent” in Australian history. It offends democracy that the Prime Minister engages in substantial talks with a political leader at the very top of the Chinese system and doesn’t think we have any business knowing what they discussed.
That’s the way dictatorships ­behave. It’s not the way of democracies, although it’s certainly Beijing’s preference: government to government deals without the pesky business of public disclosure or democratic debate.
The world must also now wait with some apprehension to see what Trump may have conceded to Xi on Taiwan.
In the week when Trump has tried to betray Ukraine with a proposed peace deal that is effectively a surrender to Vladimir Putin and a de facto invitation to Moscow to complete its invasion of Ukraine at a later date, Trump has now won warm words from Xi after a secret discussion on Taiwan.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is not necessarily a good thing either.
Taiwan may be the one issue on which Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, was much stronger than Trump himself. Biden so often declared the US would defend Taiwan if Beijing attacked it – breaching the official US doctrine of strategic ambiguity on that precise question – that it can only be that Biden was internationally sending a message to Beijing. That message was one of deterrence. The whole US system, the Pentagon, the State Department, overwhelming congressional opinion, is committed to keeping peace in the Taiwan Strait by maintaining a stable system of US-led military deterrence against China.
On the very rare occasions when the Albanese government has a spasm of strategic honesty, it has sometimes said the same thing (though generally without mentioning China). Indeed, Foreign Minister Penny Wong has declared Canberra’s commitment to a system of deterrence.
For those connoisseurs of strategic irony, even Zhao’s visit to Parliament House was enough to spark a warning to MPs and others to keep their mobile phones switched off, because of the heightened danger of Chinese cyber hacking occasioned by the visit.

After that ferocious foray, the bromancer revealed he'd been reading the wrong sort of people, dastardly wretches likely to undermine his undying loyalty and fealty to King Donald, what with bolting down a little too much Bolton.

Thanks to King Donald, the world knows he's a real sort of lowlife, a sleazebag, a very dumb person, and a victim of TDS, but the bromancer seemed to take him seriously:

But back to America. The effort of the US system to maintain deterrence is always at risk of being undermined by Trump, who is happy to do personal deals that contradict the thrust of US policy, as we have seen in his grotesque accomm­odation of Putin.
John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser in his first administration, recounts in his memoir Trump comparing Taiwan to the tip of a felt pen while China in contrast was the entire Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
Bolton wrote: “As I left the White House, there was speculation about who Trump might abandon next. Taiwan was right near the top of that list.”

What next? Will the bro bolt and go full Bolton, and explain how King Donald is stunningly uninformed and easily manipulated by foreign adversaries, and is completely unfit for office, without the competence to carry out the job, a man running a retribution presidency?

Trump has said he’s unlikely to defend Taiwan militarily in the event of aggressive Chinese actions but would use economic sanctions, although he’s confident Beijing won’t act militarily.
Yet the sanctions Trump has used against Russia have been wholly ineffective.
Xi sometimes flatters Trump and sometimes intimidates him – as Beijing’s rare earths embargo, since lifted, illustrates.
Japan’s new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, has been blasted by Beijing because she said Japan would help defend Taiwan militarily if necessary. She, like Australia traditionally, wants to support and strengthen US-led deterrence – for Beijing’s conquest of Taiwan would be strategically disastrous for Japan, Australia and, ultimately, America itself.
But does Trump believe in this deterrence? Alas, we know as little about this as we know of Albanese’s discussions with Zhao.

He knows so little, even less than he usually knows before flying off into a bout of paranoia and hysteria?

Talk about unenlightening, talk about disappointing. 

When the bromancer's lost for words, a little gloom comes into the pond's world ...

Luckily the immortal Rowe and Wilcox managed a little light on a matter that the reptiles had skirted around...

But on the upside the bromancer had contained his anxiety to a bare 3 minutes, thereby creating space for "Ned" to natter on, as he weighed in on the fierce contest between lettuce and Susssan ...

The header: Liberals’ act of self-harm risks party’s extinction, How bizarre is it that conservatives rail against the folly of being Labor-lite but seem happy about being Hanson-lite? How does that work for the Liberals? (*Ned in the archive for anyone wanting to follow the links)

The caption for brave Susssan stealing a march on the lettuce: Question time in the House of Representatives as Opposition Leader Sussan Ley speaks. Her media performances selling an energy policy she didn’t want have been impressive. She has been aggressive in outlining an economic policy agenda, loaded with dangerous ambition. It is extraordinary this has been virtually ignored. Picture: NewsWire / David Beach

"Ned" was gloomy, in a way that both the pond and the lettuce found peculiarly satisfying:

It is all self-inflicted. As the year ends the Coalition sits on 24 per cent of the primary vote – the lowest in Newspoll history – pointing, without recovery, to extinction as a governing party with the senior partner, the Liberal Party, burdened by a leadership crisis, also self-inflicted.
Revival to achieve a competitive position is not impossible but hardly likely. The Liberals are guilty of the deepest self-harm displayed by an election-defeated party over the past half-century. In truth, the party is clueless about how to extricate itself from the identity crisis it has engineered.
That crisis was revealed at the May 2025 election defeat. It is far deeper today, as documented by the polling slide. Its origins lie in the emotional and intellectual agitation of the Australian centre-right in response to the election humiliation and, above all, the conservative breakout to remake Liberal identity.
The triumph of the conservatives has been stunning – they carried the Coalition and the Liberal Party room to declare political war on net zero at 2050; they subverted reducing emissions as a mechanism to combat climate change; their purpose is to limit renewables and promote fossil fuels; they champion a large-scale reduction in immigration; their tactics helped to ferment a divided and disrupted party over the past several months; the upshot was to discredit in the public’s mind the already vulnerable first female leader of the party, Sussan Ley; and with the enthusiastic backing of most of the conservative media Ley has been reduced to an interim status, awaiting her political execution sometime next year at the hands of a conservative successor.

The reptiles paused to insert a gallery of rogues: Arriving at the Liberal party room: Senator Jessica Collins, left facing the camera, Angus Taylor, Senator Sarah Henderson, Andrew Hastie and Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

That sighting seemed to trigger "Ned":

Many conservatives are pleased, believing this is progress. It is trite to state the obvious: none of this needed to happen. What comes next? When Ley narrowly defeated Angus Taylor 29-25 as leader, future rivalry was assured. But instead of offering a nominal veil of unity, the party, assisted by Ley’s own mistakes, chose the option of massive ill-discipline triggering a collapse in Liberal Party standing only to find that neither of the potential challengers, Taylor and Andrew Hastie, actually wanted the political odium of doing the deed at year’s end.
So the Liberals stagger onwards. Much of the party along with the media won’t let the leadership issue die. But this ugly inheritance raises only more ugly issues. The conservatives calculate they need to wait longer until the party’s fortunes are so dire that even the moderates are conscripted to eliminate Ley.

That line, Much of the party along with the media won’t let the leadership issue die, inspired the lettuce.

If not by Xmas, then surely in the New Year?

As if to ram that hope home, the reptiles featured Susssan herself, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley slams Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for promising Australians that electricity and energy costs would come down, despite them increasing by 40 per cent. “Australians deserve affordable energy and responsible emissions reduction,” Ms Ley said during a press conference on Monday. “The Coalition knows that you can’t have both, but we will prioritise affordable energy.”

"Ned" stayed resolute, standing tall with plucky Susssan:

But Ley won’t surrender easily. Her media performances over the past fortnight selling an energy policy she didn’t want have been impressive. Who, pray, would be a better salesperson? The Liberals have no John Howard or Tony Abbott available to take command. Any newly elected conservative leader in 2026, after liquidating Ley, will face a herculean job achieving a united party and persuading the public the Coalition is a viable alternative.
As these events unfolded, the structural woes of the re-elected Albanese government deepened dramatically. Australia is locked on a low-growth path, apparently unable to resurrect productivity, facing meagre gains in living standards, the cycle of interest rate cuts over or nearly over and Labor’s energy transition discredited by rising power prices, uncompetitive industry and unachievable emission reduction targets.

Focus on the enemy! 

"Ned" was going so well, then for some unearthly reason, the reptiles felt the need to go full irrelevance, by dragging in the narcissistic onion muncher, always wanting to get all the attention for himself, Then Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott speaks during question time at Parliament House in Canberra.

"Ned" did his best to ignore jibber-jabbering, gesticulating man:

It offers a golden opportunity for a credible opposition. The Liberals need to decide their core purpose. Is it to wage an ideological battle within the centre-right to convert the party into a legion of conservative crusaders or is it to appeal to the Middle Australia voters they have so spectacularly lost?
If the answer is the former then the Liberals are effectively finished over time as a majority governing party. But they will have some compensation: their depiction as heroes by the pro-Trump populist conservative media that believes Australia must find its own way to bottle the spirit of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. It is time to say again: that doesn’t work in Australia’s preferential voting system, something Labor understands perfectly.
This type of conservative cultural mentality has two consequences. First, it makes Pauline Hanson more acceptable to conservative voters as she campaigns against net zero and immigration. How bizarre is it that conservatives rail against the folly of being Labor-lite but seem happy about being Hanson-lite? How does that work for the Liberals? The symbolism of Barnaby Joyce’s expected defection to Hanson will only encourage voter defection from Coalition to One Nation.
Second, the conservative decision that policy action on climate change must be reversed or limited is already unleashing a populist hostility towards much of mainstream Australia’s concern that climate change is real and needs to be met with meaningful action. Just six months after the 2025 election it seems a forlorn prospect that the Liberals will win back any of the currently held teal seats at the next election. How smart is this tactic? It has the fatal consequence of allowing the teals to prevail at a third election with the risk of the permanent loss of these seats. And it invites the teals and their backers such as Simon Holmes a Court to look to fresh acquisitions.

Poor "Ned", still tormented by the way his American-owned company pays homage to assorted populists, US President Donald Trump listens as Nigel Farage speaks during a Make America Great Again rally in Phoenix in 2020. Picture: AFP

Great, an excuse to slip in a Luckovich, showing Donald with his real bestie:

"Ned" looked to the future, a new zeitgeist:

The future of the Liberals was defined recently in speeches by two conservatives, Taylor and James Paterson, both saying the indispensable need for the party was to represent and uphold its two traditions – classical liberalism and conservative faiths. Saying the Liberals must retain both traditions, Taylor told the author: “It’s not the Liberal Party if we don’t.” Precisely.
Their message: there is no alternative. Paterson rejected any UK type Farage-lite populist identity. On economic policy, Paterson said the Liberals must stand by free markets, and on cultural policy they must champion conservative faiths. These are the conservative realists. Taylor and Paterson repudiate wild recent talk about a split in the party.
Obviously, that would consign the country to the Labor Party for the duration. While nothing short of madness, it typifies an aberrant populist view in some quarters that a new zeitgeist beacons and that the Liberals must rededicate themselves and polarise the nation in the noble cause of fighting the tyranny of the left. That misreads Australia and is their path to doom.
Provided the Liberals can get the balance right between strong alternatives to Labor – as distinct from stances that unnerve the voting public – they have a chance to recover. That means a credible energy policy, a reduced but responsible immigration intake, an economic policy based on spending restraint, enhanced productivity and tax relief, and a cultural agenda anchored in patriotism and social cohesion.

The reptiles kept all the hits rolling, though the pond must fault them for not dragging in a snap of the lying Bennelong rodent, preferring instead Peter Dutton from the deep north...

Must we be reminded?

Peter Dutton was the least popular leader at a federal election in four decades
Peter Dutton was the least popular leader to go to a federal election in at least four decades, a long-standing survey of voting trends has revealed, with women in particular turned off by him and the Coalition’s policy offerings.

"Ned" wrapped up proceedings by talking of cults, apparently unaware that he himself was in a hive mind cult:

While Ley was too passive during the internal energy debate, she has been aggressive in outlining an economic policy agenda, loaded with dangerous ambition. It is extraordinary this has been virtually ignored. In her economic speeches, Ley has pledged a personal income tax cut at the next election, a pledge Abbott avoided when he won in 2013. (Abbott actually increased personal tax in his first budget.)
She put industrial relations back on the agenda, an option Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton all refused to do. And Ley signalled in her commitment to small government and spending restraint she would welcome and defy the inevitable Labor scare campaign triggered by her fiscal responsibility pledge.
These high-risk in-principle economic pledges are far more substantial than the net-zero debate that has gobsmacked the nation for months. What is going on in this crazy country? Our politics seem driven by cults – if the cult is that Ley stands for nothing then the cult must prevail over the reality that contradicts it. Will a new leader stand by Ley’s economic promises or chicken out? Or maybe in the current situation of the Liberals it doesn’t even matter.

How weird did this outing get?

In his very last sentence, "Ned" provided a link to an earlier 9 minute ramble by himself, proving that navel gazing and fluff gathering remains the way forward in the lizard Oz hive mind...Angus Taylor and James Paterson have emerged as voices of clarity amid Liberal Party turmoil, delivering a unified vision

If that beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, shown gazing off into the ether, is the future, then it's a fair bet the lettuce will have a new rival in the future.

You see, for all "Ned's" kind words, hopes and dreams, Geoff was chambering an EXCLUSIVE ...

EXCLUSIVE
Vision and drinks: McIntosh woos Liberal MPs looking for leadership
Amid ongoing speculation about Sussan Ley’s leadership, Melissa McIntosh hosted up to 40 Coalition colleagues for drinks, not far from the Opposition Leader’s Christmas media reception.
By Geoff Chambers

Still trouble at mill, or at least at scheming drinkie poohs ...elbows up lettuce!

To be fair, the pond should have noted the story that was top of the reptile digital world early in the morning (and sill running strong at time of writing)...

It was the lead EXCLUSIVE in a proud day of reptile EXCLUSIVES ...

EXCLUSIVE
COP president in residence: Bowen 747 faces delay
COP president in residence: Chris Bowen faces delay to climate summit
Chris Bowen’s international climate role has sparked a dramatic parliamentary showdown that forced the minister to abandon plans for a crucial April summit in Colombia.
By Sarah Ison and Dennis Shanahan

On the other hand, the pond only copped to that story so it could segue to the immortal Pope 'toon for the day ...

And so to an early morning after dark segment.

The pond hopes that vulgar youff left the site long ago because the pond wanted to pay homage to the poetical skills (allegedly) of Robert Kennedy ...RFK Jr.’s Sex Poetry Is Sophomoric Cringe: Author (*archive link):

Yr open mouth awaiting my harvest. 

Drink from me Love. 

I mean to squeeze your cheeks 

to force open your mouth. 

I’ll hold your nose 

as you look up at me 

to encourage you to swallow. 

‘Dont spill a drop.’ 

I am a river. 

You are my canyon. 

I mean to flow through you. 

I mean to subdue and tame you. 

My Love.

What to say? What could possibly be said? 

Best instead to link to a profile by Michael Scherer in The Atlantic, Why Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. So Convinced He’s Right? How an outsider, once ignored by the public-health establishment, became the most powerful man in science

Scherer ended up sounding baffled, which is pretty much how any outsider feels contemplating King Donald's court and his assorted minions ...

...as we sat in his living room, I realized that Kennedy was making an argument I had not previously understood—a policy claim, not a factual one. He was saying that regardless of the lives saved by vaccines, it was irresponsible for the government to recommend them without first comprehensively ruling out all hidden dangers. He believes that only a few vaccines, including the tuberculosis vaccine, have been studied enough to clear this bar. Kennedy had slashed the budget of his own department. But now, he says, he plans to spend billions of dollars on hundreds of studies investigating vaccines’ potential ties to chronic diseases. “The default setting in medicine is ‘Do no harm,’ ” he said, as we talked about the COVID-vaccine boosters. “You never do an intervention—particularly with a healthy human being—unless you know that it’s safe and effective. And we don’t know if it’s safe and effective.”

What if you are wrong about vaccines? I asked. Six former surgeons general, most vaccine experts, and almost the entire scientific establishment believes he is. What if, over time, the evidence shows that his actions lowered vaccination rates with no reduction in chronic diseases, but with an increase in suffering and death from viruses and bacteria? How would he respond?

“I mean, we would listen,” Kennedy said. It was the answer I wanted to hear. But then he listed, once again, the reasons he would not be wrong: He spoke about the chronic diseases that appear as potential adverse reactions on the manufacturers’ label for vaccines; the evidence that death rates from the diseases that vaccines inoculate against were already declining before the vaccines materialized; and America’s poor policy decisions and high mortality rates during the COVID years. “You know, we have all kinds of interventions,” he said. “Good health does not just come in a syringe.” The trial lawyer was still laboring to connect the dots that led to his preferred verdict, the orphaned child of American royalty, back from hell, still fighting to fulfill his birthright.

One of many startling dangers, not just to the disunited states, but to the world ...